Life in the Gilded Age (1865-1900)

The Tate Family

• Mary McGladrey (born in China, 1857)

  • Orphaned in California
  • Adopted the name Mary McGladrey
  • Learned English, school subjects, piano, and middle-class etiquette

• Joseph Tate (born in China, 1852)

  • Emigrated to San Francisco in 1869
  • Learned English
  • Operated a successful business
  • Americanized his name to Joseph Tate

• The Tate Family's Life and Challenges

  • Lived outside Chinatown
  • Four children: Mamie (born 1876) and three others
  • 1884: Lawsuit to enroll Mamie in the neighborhood school
    • Court ruled in favor of the Tates, as did the state Supreme Court
    • San Francisco school superintendent lobbied for segregated schools
    • Mamie and her siblings attended the new segregated Chinese school
  • Moved to Berkeley in 1895 for non-segregated education
  • Mary: award-winning photographer
  • Joseph: prosperous business, investments in real estate, and owned ranches
  • Historians label them as rapid assimilators

The Gilded Age

Introduction

• Period: Late 1860s to 1890s
• Themes:
  • Rapid urbanization
  • Technological advancements
  • Economic expansion
  • Social and racial disparities
• Inspired by the book "The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today" by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner (1873)
  • Satire on business and politics
• "Gilded" = Thin gold coating over a cheap base
• Key aspects:
  • Economic expansion and technological marvels
  • Great wealth and power for industrial entrepreneurs
  • Grim realities for most industrial workers and minorities

Urban and Social Changes

Transformation of American Cities

• Rapid growth: Example cities
  • Chicago, San Francisco, New York
• Technological innovations
  • Skyscrapers, electric lights, streetcars
• Urban complexities
  • Rich cultural activities vs. poverty, crime, and filth

Social Patterns

• Middle class and emerging suburbs
• Gender roles questioned by women, gays, and lesbians
• Wealth disparities:
  • Suburbs for the wealthy or middle class
  • Inner cities for the poor

Challenges and Responses

• Limited infrastructure planning
• Utilities and services lagged behind urban growth
  • Sewage and garbage disposal issues
  • Street maintenance and water quality concerns
• Public utilities often provided by private companies
• Efforts to improve conditions
  • Police forces, firefighting, building codes

Middle Class in the Gilded Age

Daily Life & Consumer Culture

• Middle-class suburbs
• Single-family homes with lawns
• Emphasis on owning property
• Domestic servants
• Women's participation in social organizations
• Consumer culture
  • Daily newspapers, magazines, advertising targeted at women

Education Reforms

• Compulsory school attendance laws (1870-1890)
  • Primarily in Northern and Western states
• Growth of high schools and curriculum expansion
• College enrollment increases
  • Land-grant universities
  • New subjects: engineering, agriculture, business

Gender Role Changes

• Women: Education & Professional Work
  • Teaching, journalism, medicine, law
  • Women's clubs and reform activities
• Challenges to Domesticity & Separate Spheres
  • Involvement in social and political reforms
  • WCTU (Women's Christian Temperance Union)
    • Led by Frances Willard
    • Focused on temperance and suffrage
• Men: Redefining Masculinity
  • Fraternal organizations, wilderness activities, YMCA
  • Spectator sports

Urbanization and LGBTQ Subcultures

• Cities allowed anonymity
• Development of gay and lesbian subcultures
  • Social redefinition of gender roles
  • Emergence of homosexual meeting places, clubs

Ethnicity and Immigration

European Immigrants

• Post-Civil War Immigration Surge
  • Motivations: Economic opportunities, escaping hardships
• Settlement patterns
  • Ethnic communities, language, and cultural retention
• Nativism and Anti-Immigrant Sentiment
  • American Protective Association (APA)
  • Anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism

Asian and Latino Communities

• Chinese Immigration

  • Significant majority in the West
  • Experience of discrimination and violence
  • Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)

• Japanese Immigration

  • Increased after 1890
  • Similar hostilities faced by Chinese immigrants

• Mexican Americans

  • Loss of land post-Mexican American War
  • Cultural and social subordination by Anglos

Native Americans

• Forced Assimilation Policies
  • Education and religious restrictions
  • Dawes Severalty Act (1887)
    • Individual land ownership
    • Failed to end reservations but reduced community land holdings
• Cultural Resistance & Adaptation
  • Peyote cult and Native American Church
  • Blending of cultural practices

Labor and Industrial Workers

Work Conditions and Labor Movements

• Industrialization Effects

  • Long hours, dangerous conditions, low wages
  • Child labor and women's participation in the workforce

• Development of Labor Unions

  • Craft unions (skilled workers)
  • National Labor Union (NLU)
  • Great Railway Strike of 1877

• Knights of Labor

  • Inclusive membership: skilled/unskilled, racial, gender diversity
  • Radical reforms
  • Declined after 1890

• American Federation of Labor (AFL)

  • Samuel Gompers' leadership
  • Limited to skilled, mostly white male workers
  • Focus on wages, hours, and working conditions

Labor Strikes and Conflicts

• Homestead Strike (1892)
  • Carnegie Steel: Wage cuts and lockouts
  • Battle with Pinkertons
  • State militia intervention
• Pullman Strike (1894)
  • American Railway Union (ARU)
  • Boycott of Pullman cars
  • Federal intervention and the strike’s collapse

Summary

• Industrialization: Transformed economy, society, and labor conditions
• Urbanization: Created new social patterns and cultural changes
  • Urban middle class and suburb growth
  • Emergence of LGBTQ subcultures
• Immigration: Diverse influx reshaped demographics
  • Rise of nativism and anti-immigrant policies
  • Social and economic challenges for minorities
• Labor: Union formation and significant labor conflicts
• Gender Roles: Redefined due to education and professional opportunities