A different 1860s

1891-1900 (part I).

The last third of the 19th century, commonly known as the “Gilded Age”, witnessed the flourishing of the Second Industrial Revolution in America and Europe, and its spread to Russia, Japan, and the Southern Cone. Its consequences included rapid economic and population growth, establishment of a globalized modern industrial economy, social changes and tensions, and the imperialistic division of the world between the great powers. The socioeconomic issues created by industrialization eventually ushered in the Progressive Era, a period of social activism and reform that occurred between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, while growing imperialistic tensions between the great powers resulted in the Great War.

The Gilded Age got most remarkable for the creation of a modern industrial economy. The corporation became the dominant form of business organization, and a managerial revolution transformed business operations. The bourgeois elites of the Second Industrial Revolution grew into a powerful and proud upper class who led a lifestyle of opulence and considerable leisure (which also caused the first development of the tourism industry). This was most noticeable in America, where the super-rich industrialists and financiers enjoyed full social dominance. A bit less so in Europe, where the bourgeois upper class shared the apex of the social ladder with the portion of the traditional landed elites that successfully weathered transition to industrial economy. Critics greatly resented the upper class’ wealth who believed the wealthy elites cheated to get their money, lorded it over the common people, and ruthlessly exploited the workers. The power and luxury of the ruling elites contrasted with the plight of the lower class that suffered poor working and living conditions.

This contrast triggered the growth of labor union movements and left-wing political parties that tried to improve the lot of the working class. It also drove the growing middle class to seek an improvement of their own living conditions and share of wealth through a series of social reform movements and progressive political movements. To be fair, the wealth of the period was not just highlighted by the upper class’ opulence, but also by the rise of philanthropy (especially common in America, but also known in Europe) to endow thousands of colleges, hospitals, museums, academies, schools, opera houses, public libraries, symphony orchestras, and charities.

As it concerns the US political system during the last third of the 19th century, its main features included intense voter interest, routinely high voter turnout, unflinching party loyalty, dependence on party platforms and nominating conventions, hierarchical party organizations, and the systematic use of government jobs as patronage for party workers. Cities developed ward and citywide "bosses" who could depend on the votes of clients, especially recent immigrants. Newspapers were the primary communication system, with the great majority closely linked to one party or the other. In politics, the two parties engaged in very elaborate get-out-the-vote campaigns that succeeded in pushing turnout to very high levels. The "spoils system" financed it whereby the winning party distributed the majority of local, state and national government jobs and many government contracts to its loyal supporters. Large cities were dominated by political machines, in which constituents supported a candidate in exchange for anticipated patronage — favors back from the government, once that candidate was elected — and candidates were selected based on their willingness to play along.

The Republicans remained politically dominant and in control of the Congress and the Presidency during the Reconstruction Era and the first part of the Gilded Age. The American people were grateful to the Republicans and kept them in power for the successful leadership they had provided the nation during its time of trial in the Civil War and the Anglo-American War. Economic growth, foreign-policy successes, and the mostly positive outcome of Reconstruction were other reasons for the prolonged political dominance of the Republicans. Throughout the Union, capitalists, shop owners, skilled artisans and workers, clerks, and professionals favored the Republicans, as did more modern, commercially oriented farmers. In the South, the Republicans also won strong support from the newly enfranchised freedmen and the Black and ‘poor White’ middle class created by the Reconstruction reforms. The party kept pursuing its established agenda of protectionism, government intervention in the economy to foster modernization and industrialization, vigorous defense of American national security and US interests abroad with a powerful military, and a strong federal government. Nonetheless, as time went on, a growing amount of dissatisfaction emerged in several sectors of society about the Republican dominance and its policies.

Many came to perceive the ruling party as excessively subservient to the upper class and its advocacy of government intervention in the economy as bent towards favoritism of business interests and matched by a “laissez-faire” attitude towards the social inequalities and injustices created by industrialization. The scandals associated with the Gilded Age shocked the Americans' sense of civic virtue: corrupt state governments, massive fraud in cities controlled by political machines, political payoffs to secure government contracts, and recurring evidence of government corruption. There was a sense that excessive ties between the government and the business elite (the “invisible government”) inevitably led to favoritism, bribery, kickbacks, inefficiency, waste, and corruption. Reaction to these issues gradually split the Republicans into two different factions, the pro-business conservatives and the pro-reform Progressives.

The latter faction gradually took a distinct identity and gained strength towards the end of the Gilded Age, merging with a vaster array of social reform movements that emerged in American society towards the end of the 19th century. One main goal of the Progressive movement was purification of government, as Progressives tried to eliminate corruption by exposing and undercutting political machines and bosses. A second theme was achieving efficiency in every sector of society by identifying old ways that needed modernizing, and emphasizing scientific, medical, and engineering solutions. Many people led efforts to reform local government, education, medicine, finance, insurance, industry, railroads, churches, and many other areas. Initially the movement operated chiefly at local levels; later it expanded to state and national levels. Progressives drew strong support from the middle class, and supporters included many lawyers, teachers, physicians, ministers, and business people.

The Progressives strongly supported scientific methods as applied to economics, government, industry, finance, medicine, schooling, theology, education, and even the family. The Progressives had a complex relationship with the US political system: many of them clustered within the Republican Party, whose main ideology of government intervention in economy and society was compatible with their own aims; however, they also loathed the subservience of the conservative faction to business interests and party machines and its frequent corruption. Consequently, Progressive activists at times made up the pro-reform wing of the Republican Party, in other moments they took the character of a distinct political faction and even supported a separate Progressive Party.

As it concerns the Democrats, they remained the political underdog during the Reconstruction and the early Gilded Age, their appeal tarnished and crippled by their association with the old slaver elites that had betrayed the nation. They only gradually managed to rebuild their image and reorganize a broad-based political coalition. The latter was made up of pro-business conservatives, hardscrabble old-stock farmers, the conservative middle-class, Southern segregationist Whites, and unskilled laborers. The party stood for agrarianism, a free market, low tariffs, low taxes, states’ rights, less spending, and, in general, a laissez-faire and decentralized, limited government. The conservative wing generally dominated the party during the first part of the Gilded Age; however, as time went on, a competitive pro-reform faction grew out of agrarian unrest for falling commodity prices and high railroad rates. This new faction, the Populists (so named because People’s Party was the most common label they used when they organized as a separate political movement), advocated the interests of the small farmers and the rural middle class against the economic elites. Much like the similar case of the Republicans and the Progressives, the relationship of the Populists with the Democrats was complex and variable during the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era. Sometimes it was more like the Populists making up the pro-reform wing of the Democrats; sometimes it was more akin to being a distinct political movement and even a separate political party.

Yet another political faction took shape out of the reaction of the industrial working class to the poor working and living conditions that prevailed during this period. Such a reaction initially manifested in the form of craft-oriented labor unions that grew strong in the USA since the 1870s. These unions often used strikes as a method to attain higher wages, shorter hours, and union control over working conditions and hiring. The first major manifestations of this strategy on a national level were a series of strikes in the railroad sector that took place in the 1870s and 1880s. These often took a violent character and were suppressed by the government or resulted in ultimate failure. These failures and revulsion at use of violence led to the decline of the radical labor movement and the rise of more moderate labor unions.

They instead advocated gradual improvement of working and living conditions through organization and cooperation with political movements that supported social reforms. The unions especially wanted restrictions on judges who intervened in labor disputes, usually on the side of the employer. Union activists and left-wing pro-labor social reformers often cooperated or even merged with sympathetic Populists and Progressives, but eventually coalesced in their own political faction. The latter took a variety of names, but most often, they identified it as the Labor party. It got support from trade unionists, progressive social reformers, populist farmers, and unskilled workers. The moderate wing of this movement often cooperated with the progressive wings of the other parties, but the rest of the political spectrum largely marginalized and ostracized the radical wing.

The three main reform-minded factions of the US political spectrum kept a relationship that wavered between effective cooperation on issues of common interest and antagonistic competition fueled by ideological differences, such as the interventionist vs. libertarian divide between the Progressives and the Populists, and the more radical left-wing character of the Labor movement vs. the rest. The late Gilded Age and the Progressive Age saw the rise of manifold single-issue reform movements that addressed many domestic issues. These included government regulation of railroads and large corporations ("trusts"), the protective tariff, the role of labor unions, civil service reform, child labor, the need for a new banking system, corruption in party politics, primary elections, direct election of senators, and efficiency in government. Other important issues were women's suffrage, government regulation of working and living conditions of the middle and lower classes, a graduated income tax, and abolition of national banks. Typically, one or more of the reformist political movements espoused these issues as part of their own platforms.

During the first part of the Gilded Age, the Republicans maintained the political dominance that it had enjoyed since the Civil War. However, trouble was brewing for the Republicans under the facade of success. During the late ‘70s and the early ‘80s, dissatisfaction was brewing up in the public opinion about the policies of the ruling party and its corruption, while the Democrats got new life through the growing influence of the Populist movement. This allowed the Democrats to seize control of the Congress in 1884 and win the Presidential election of 1888. They approved a landmark civil service reform that gradually curtailed the spoils system to senior positions, freeing up most of the jobs for a nonpartisan merit-based evaluation. They also created a regulatory agency for interstate railroad travel, although its powers were initially limited. The influence of the conservative Democrat faction however stalemated other reforms in the Congress, to the frustration of public opinion.

The Progressive movement was increasingly getting into shape and it acquired growing influence both in US society and within a Republican party reeling from defeat. The 1892 election saw the victory of a Progressive-Republican candidate for the Presidency and a pro-reform coalition of Populist and Progressive candidates seized control of the Congress. They passed several measures that produced a sizable array of reform legislation, including the first peacetime graduated income tax, increased powers of the railroad regulatory agency, an anti-trust act to prevent large firms from controlling a single industry, laws to ensure the safety of foodstuffs and drugs, a child labor regulation act, and a federal job safety code. The Supreme Court, however, struck down some of these measures as unconstitutional. Frustration for this obstacle helped the President be re-elected with a strong majority and the pro-reform coalition to expand its majority in the Congress. This in turn opened the way to a new age of constitutional reform since the Reconstruction.

The Congress approved constitutional amendments to enforce direct election of senators and women’s suffrage and allow an income tax. When the Supreme Court struck down the child labor and the job safety laws, the Populist-Progressive majority of the Congress reacted by passing two other constitutional amendments. They empowered the Congress to regulate child labor and education without prejudice for the free exercise of religion and to enact regulations of business, property, and labor for the sake of public health, safety, general welfare, and protection of the environment. Frustrated with what they perceived as the slow pace of ratification due to the increasingly large number of states in the Union and obstructionist attitude of some state legislatures, they also passed another amendment that lowered the ratification threshold to 2/3 of the states and allowed to use state referendums to ratify constitutional amendments. The Progressive and Populist movements combined into a vast and successful lobbying effort to get the threshold referendum ratified by state conventions. This also provided momentum to have all the other Progressive amendments ratified in relatively short order through a mix of state conventions and referendums. The Congress subsequently passed laws to regulate child labor, establish a graduated federal income tax and inheritance tax, and set up a federal job safety and health code.

A similar effort at the state and local level mirrored Progressive-Populist activism at the federal level. Many states created the initiative, referendum, and recall processes for citizens to directly introduce or approve proposed laws or amendments to the state constitution, and to give voters power to recall elected officials. The use of state and national primary elections to reduce the power of bosses and machines spread across the nation. The Progressives worked hard to reform and modernize local and state governments and the education system, professionalize medicine, law, and social sciences. Although controversial, the vigorous reform effort of the reformist movements met the favor of the majority of the US public opinion, allowing them to keep control of the Congress and the Presidency throughout the 1890s and pursue further reforms.

The President’s assassination in 1897 by an anarchist enabled Theodore Roosevelt, one of the leaders of the Progressive faction of the Republican Party, to succeed him. He rose to national prominence and got the Vice Presidency because of his charismatic and exuberant personality, vast range of interests, many accomplishments (political leader, author, explorer, soldier, naturalist, and reformer), and his heroism during the Big Swords war. Once he became President, he strongly pursued enactment of the Progressive platform with the Congress into a sizable array of reform legislation and executive regulation. Conservation of the nation's natural resources and beautiful places was another high priority for Roosevelt, and he greatly raised national visibility of the issue. The result was strengthened anti-trust and railroad regulation legislation, a ban of federal injunctions against nonviolent labor disputes, a workers’ compensation law for work-related injuries and diseases, minimum wage and maximum workday laws. Other reforms included a postal savings banks system, a low-interest credit system for farmers, campaign reform laws, a program of conservation, reclamation and irrigation of American land, establishment of a national park service, and creation of the Federal Reserve.

Roosevelt pursued a foreign policy of vigorous defense of US interests in the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific and expansion of US military power. His vast popularity and the success of his reform program allowed him to win an effortless victory in the 1900 election. Efforts also grew to set up seminal welfare systems to provide coverage for sickness and pension plans, although those efforts kept a patchwork character. Calls to set up large-scale welfare plans by legislation failed for the time being. Another progressive reform that floundered was prohibition of alcoholic beverages by constitutional amendment. Although a few Christian denominations and the women’s suffrage movement strongly backed prohibition, it also met fierce opposition by many Old Catholics and immigrant communities that eventually stalemated it. Personal opposition of the President also helped kill the momentum for prohibition.

In Europe, background social issues driven by the Second Industrial Revolution were very much the same as in America. However the more conservative and hierarchical character of European society kept the transformation of the political and cultural landscape a bit more subdued. In the long term, the radical scope of ongoing socioeconomic changes would largely, although not entirely, smooth out the difference between the two sides of the Atlantic. The business upper class created by industrialization still rose to the apex of the social ladder, but they shared it with those elements of the landed elites that had successfully adapted to an industrial society. Those two elements gradually merged to form a unified ruling elite, with the “nouveau riche” bourgeois element being prevalent the economic field. The aristocratic and “old money” element was more frequent in the professional officer corps and the upper echelons of the civil service. Of course, plenty of contrary examples existed; the officer corps and the civil service saw an increasing influx of bourgeois upper and middle class elements due to the vastly increasing complexity of administration and size of the army in the Industrial Age. Industrialization was also creating a middle class of ever-increasing size that pressured to better its lifestyle and its share of power, and a vast number of industrial workers that were eager to ameliorate their poor working and living conditions.

In the liberal constitutional monarchies of Britain, Germany, Italy, and Scandinavia, the political system became sufficiently democratic to be stable and allow peaceful expression of those social issues. As a rule, in these countries a party system of 3-5 major parties or factions gradually took form. These typically included the conservatives, the liberals, the Christian democrats, and the left-wingers. The conservatives drew most of their support from the business and landed elites, the right-wing nationalist element of the middle class, and the non-politicized farmers. The urban middle class and the skilled workers mostly backed the liberals. The rural middle class and the politicized farmers formed the main support base of the Christian democrats. The left-wing labor movement drew power from the trade unions and the unskilled workers. Since in these countries the political system and the constitution had already evolved to be liberal in character, the tug-of-war on social issues between conservatives and progressives mainly characterized the political struggle. One side sought to maintain the status quo favorable to the upper class, the other pressured for various social reforms that would satisfy the concerns of the middle and working classes.

Democratic European countries did enact a few of those reforms, especially in the last decade of the 19th century, when progressive mass parties gradually swelled in following and influence. These included a graduated income tax and inheritance tax, job safety laws, reduction of working hours, regulation of child labor, and an end to government interference in peaceful labor disputes to back the employers. For those European countries that had established them (Germany, Italy, and Scandinavia), this also included expansion of their basic welfare systems, although they remained quite partial and limited by modern standards. The landmark political reforms that occurred essentially sealed the transition of Germany and Italy to parliamentary democracy. These included abolition of the three-class suffrage and reform of the constitution of Prussia and the other German states to match the liberal character of the German federal system, and adoption of universal male suffrage in Italy.

Despite this general course, the British political system remained dominated by conservatives that failed to enact much-needed reforms to ameliorate the burden of the British lower classes or the festering Irish problem. They also failed to appease the growing unease of Australasian settler colonies and India about their political status. After brutal repression of the nationalist insurrection in the 1860s-70s, Ireland remained quite restive and ever more resentful of British rule, simmering ever close to the brink of rebellion, even if police pressure and the support of the Protestant minority managed to keep the situation under control. Over time, would-be reformers attempted to try to pacify the island by granting it self-rule and emancipation of the Papal Catholics. However, dominant conservatives with the support of a ‘unionist” faction of liberals defeated pretty much all these efforts except for a few minor measures that slightly lessened (but not radically changed) the second-class status of the Papal Catholics. Much the same way, the British Parliament stalemated all attempts to enact most of the social reforms that occurred in America, Germany, and Italy.

In Oceania, the British colonies in Australia and New Zealand continued their development at a brisk pace. Gold rushes and agricultural industries brought prosperity and parliamentary governments with limited autonomy were set up throughout the colonies from the mid-19th century. European explorers went deep into the interior and British settlers continued their expansion across the continent and the islands into the lands of the Indigenous Australians and Maori. A series of land wars increasingly marginalized the natives. The development of railways and the telegraph brought the disparate settlements closer together and a stronger sense of national identity emerged. A Federal Council was set up in the 1880s to coordinate the activities of the various colonial governments. In the 1890s, a movement for the seven colonies to come together in a self-ruling federation on the model of the USA and Argentina gathered strength and momentum.

However, there was still strong resistance in the British Parliament to grant extensive self-rule to any portion of the British Empire, since they feared it might become a gateway for disloyalty and separatism. It did not help to lay British suspicions to rest that the proposed Constitution of Australia largely used the US one as a model. The colonies voted to unite and submitted the draft of their Federal Constitution for the Commonwealth of Australia to the British Parliament. The British government however derailed the whole process by insisting that British courts retain their jurisdiction over Australia, which the Australians refused to accept. Frustration with stalemated self-rule drove several Australians to question their imperial loyalties, embrace the more radical vision of a separate nation or turn their sympathies to America, and agitate accordingly. The British remained largely oblivious to the danger of history repeating itself; however, growing unrest for autonomy in the Australasian colonies and its increasing pro-US character did not escape notice in America, where it drew important sympathy and support.

In comparison, there was much less discontent and potential unrest in the British settler colonies of Southern Africa, even if they had aspirations of their own to autonomy and federal union. As a rule, Southern African settlers were rather more content with the colonial status quo than their Australian counterpart was. This mainly occurred because the British government supported their brutal treatment of the Blacks and their extensive confiscation of valuable native lands, and helped them destroy or subjugate hostile African tribes. Over time, the practical benefits of British support for rapacious settler colonialism even helped lessen lingering bitterness of the Boer community for loss of their independence.

During the last third of the 19th century, Russia and Japan clung to a course that pursued modernization and a hybrid path between the liberalism of Britain, America, and Central Europe and the authoritarianism of France-Iberia. The Alexandrine reforms introduced constitutionalism with important liberal elements in the Russian political system and granted the Duma (parliament) a significant deal of power and influence. However, the Tsar kept direct control of the civil service and the army, and the throne and the legislature shared authority over the government in a constant tug-of-war. This dualism remained unsettled in an uneasy but apparently stable equilibrium throughout the Gilded Age. The economic reforms passed in this period started a modernization process in the Russian agrarian sector towards a market-based model. In the long term, this was bound to substantially ameliorate the backwardness of the Russian peasantry and indirectly boost industrialization. Education levels were steadily increasing, to close the embarrassing literacy rate gap with Europe and America. Agricultural productivity was on the rise. The excess rural population released by modernization moved in the cities to boost the ranks of the industrial workers, settled the new Asian lands made available by expansion of the Russian Empire, or immigrated to the New World.

Much like the other industrial powers, Russia also faced the social tensions created by ongoing industrialization. In comparison to the democratic great powers of America and Europe, the Russian political system was able to address them in a much less prompt and extensive manner, since it still largely focused on dealing with the incomplete transition to liberalism. Nonetheless, the power-sharing agreement between the Tsar, the traditional aristocratic elites, the business upper class, and the conservative middle classes was strong enough to keep Russia stable for the time being. The main exceptions were Poland-Lithuania and after its annexation Romania as well. The lands of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Danubian Principalities remained a hotbed of resentment, unrest, and latent rebellion against their Tsarist overlords, even if the Russian security apparatus was able to keep discontent from exploding.

More or less the same way, the Japanese Empire enjoyed domestic stability thanks to the Meiji reforms, modernization with vigorous industrialization, foreign policy successes, and fostering of patriotic loyalty through propaganda and the education system. Pretty much the only issue that caused considerable unrest was restricted suffrage. However, the end of the century witnessed a settlement of the issue when the ruling elites relented and allowed establishment of universal male suffrage. The Japanese government extended the electoral reform to the overseas territories of Korea and Taiwan, and enfranchisement further eased ongoing political and cultural integration of the Koreans in the Japanese Empire.

Due to its authoritarian political character, France-Iberia was much less able to ease the political and social tensions caused by industrialization through reforms. The regime did adopt a few measures of social protection when they seemed useful to reinforce popular support for the empire or improve its economic and military power. Propaganda typically depicted them as paternalistic care for the welfare of the masses. The regime otherwise doubled down on its repressive character and increased its efforts to vent domestic tensions through nationalist and imperialist policies and propaganda. This was remarkably effective to a degree but it had the side effect of significantly increasing international tensions. All great powers were strongly imperialist in the late 19th century but the Gallic empire became especially notable and infamous for its aggressive and destabilizing drive to spread its own power and Classicalist influence and weaken its rivals. Typical examples of this included (failed) Gallic meddling in the Balkan crisis and (successful) involvement in the Brazilian civil war; another example was the Franco-Iberian effort to destabilize Belgium and the French-speaking border areas of Germany and Italy.