Introduction And Rationale
America today faces many challenges, as anyone can (and almost certainly will) tell you. Internationally, we face the question of the United States’ role in a swiftly changing world, how and even whether to exercise our military and economic strength, and an uncertain relationship with many other nations we have had historically strong ties with. Domestically, division pits parents against children, brothers and sisters against one another, with all parties convinced that their way forward is the only correct one, and that their political opponents are not only incorrect, but in many cases morally evil. In addition, wealth inequality is a growing concern,[1]with a 1,466,177% gap between the wealthiest American and the average, and the top 1% of Americans owning 50% of its stock market shares.[2] News pundits and influencers will often refer to these challenges as “unprecedented”, but are they really? This course unit will argue that not only do precedents for most or all of these circumstances exist in the periods of American history now known as the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, but that the ways in which the United States dealt with them (successfully and otherwise) can be a guide to us a hundred years later.
In many ways, the two ages in question, the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, must be discussed in association with one another, for the latter was a response and reaction to the former. These eras of American history also represent two conflicting visions of how America views itself which themselves have echoes in the present. In the Gilded Age, “rugged individualism” ruled the day, the economy, and the public imagination, with the industrialists (or robber barons, depending on your point of view) making millions from the factories of a newly industrial nation representing themselves, fairly or not, as men whose achievements came from the sweat of their brows, as well as personal skill and intelligence. These men, and their economic and political supporters, championed individualism as the ultimate American virtue. By hard work, personal skill, and ambition, their workers could achieve for themselves, on an individual basis, better treatment, pay, and standards of living, achieving the “American Dream.”
Of course, as the workers of the Gilded Era would come to realize, a single excellent worker asking for a raise and more humane treatment was easily fired. After all, the thousands of immigrants streaming into the “land of opportunity” from Southern and Eastern Europe were, by and large, looking for work in any industry that was hiring. Any factory employees who were injured or fell sick from the abysmal working conditions of the era could be replaced with equal ease. This realization led the blue collar workers of the Gilded Age to agitate for better working conditions and pay, and started what would become known as the Labor movement, one of the two great social movements of the early 20th century.
The other movement would be the one to put its stamp on the period, to the extent that the period from 1890-1920 is often known as “The Progressive Era.” The Progressives of this period embraced new scientific methods and a rational understanding of the world, and attacked with near evangelistic fervor the aspects of society that they considered to be disordered. The rights of women, the evils of alcohol, the relationship between American races, and the devolution of political power away from the elites and toward the common people may seem a wildly varied set of policies, but each can be considered to have its roots in the same, uniquely Progressive soil. Namely, Progressives of the period embraced, nearly uniquely in United States history, a belief in the collective over the individual. This belief, partially a result of scientific analysis of society at the time, partially a reaction to the rampant, uncontrolled individualism of the Gilded Era, led these men and women to seek nothing less than a complete remaking of society into something of a middle-class utopia, where the poor were uplifted and the rich were inculcated with the values of hard work and restraint they so often seemed to lack. Perhaps the most shocking thing about the Progressive era, then, is not the things they failed to accomplish, (Prohibition a failure, a government that adopted laissez faire economics well into the Great Depression), but that they managed to accomplish so much in the face of inertia from more than a hundred years of American history, as well as a hundred years of largely unfriendly response since.
Unfortunately, major social change is often heralded by major tragedies that upend the way people think society is “supposed” to function. In the case of the labor movement and Progressive era, two incidents are emblematic of the struggles of the period. The first, which will be discussed in its relation to the achievement of occupational safety regulations, is the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire. The second, the Blair Mountain war, will be used as an example of the very real and violent consequences of the American laborer’s struggle for recognition and better treatment.
These two movements, labor and Progressivism, would intersect and ignite one of the most violent, yet often disregarded, incidents in American peacetime history in the late summer of 1921.[3]
The United States in the early 20th century ran on coal, with over 667 million tons of coal being pulled from beneath the earth in 1920 alone. However, coal mining in the 1920’s, even more so than now, was a dirty and dangerous profession. Those 667 million tons of coal came at the price of 3.39 worker fatalities per million, meaning that in the single year of 1920, 2,261 coal miners lost their lives in the mines, leaving an unknown but undoubtedly horrifying number of women without husbands and children without fathers. And yet, this was heralded as magnificent progress by the coal industry, as it represented a significant decrease in fatalities from previous years.[4]
Unsurprisingly, the miners did not consider thousands of their brethren to be a reasonable cost of doing business, and so began to agitate and organize with an eye toward better working conditions and pay. In addition to safety, many mining companies of the era owned the housing and shops used by their employees, and often paid their employees in scrip, or “company currency,” usable only in the company store. This meant that miners, if they found themselves unemployed for any reason, immediately thereafter found themselves homeless and without any legal tender usable anywhere else. The final of the most frequently cited problems was the weighing system, whereby a miner’s coal production for the day was weighed at the end of his day, and the miner was then paid according to the amount of coal he had produced. This, in theory, encouraged hard work on the part of the miners, as well as innovation and responsibility (all concepts to make a Gilded Era industrialist nod approvingly). In practice, there was no governing body regulating the mine scales, and reports were common of weighing scales being inaccurate (always in the mine owners’ favor, of course) or weight results being misreported to shortchange the miners.
All of these issues were intermixed with a scientific, Progressive movement in the mines toward increased mechanization. As already mentioned, this did lead to a decrease in mine fatalities, but also created a fear amongst the miners of losing their jobs. Amongst the mine owners, this fear was reflected in an increasing feeling that the miners were themselves rather expendable. Both sides of the ensuing conflict, then, were further entrenched in their positions by these technological advancements. The miners felt that it increased the urgency of their demands, lest the machines replace them and leave them with nothing, while the mine owners were confident that they merely needed to weather a short while before the improving technology could allow them to forever rid themselves of the vast majority of their constantly-complaining workforce.
The Progressive era was a time of great change in American society and, thus far, an almost unique one. Working class Americans, tired of the exploitation of the Gilded Era of the late 1800’s, banded together and demanded better treatment from their employers, as well as a government that was truly controlled by the people, and operated for them.
Of course, the moneyed interests in society were loath to give up their power, and fought back, most often with propaganda and policy,
For students today, this period in American history is one that deserves and even requires close study. For the students who might wish to see change in how the nation is governed, and in the relationship between the government and the people, it can serve as a template. For those who perhaps have given up, or have never believed that the course of society can be changed by the actions of its citizens, it can serve as a wake-up call.
My course unit will examine the causes of the Progressive era, the actions American workers took to wrest political and economic power away from those who held them fast, and, finally, the battle that signifies the lengths those with power will go to in order to keep it. Throughout, the themes of resistance discussed in the seminar will be discussed and woven in, with the hopes of instilling in students a sense of their own potential power to correct the problems they see in society around them today.
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