Thesis/ Argument: During the Second Industrial Revolution, industrialists recorded multiple profits at the expense of their workers and the federal government could not intervene because the laws and privileges of the country applied to both factions.
Background: The economy of the Gilded Age
The country ushered in a period of extensive trade and manufacture as the government imposed high tariffs to protect American factories from outside competition.
The westward expansion created more lands for railway construction to boost transportation.
Factory owners thrived on the given opportunities, but those without capital and access to the productive industry-based economy suffered.
According to a study that the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics conducted in1881, workers hired in the textile factory of Fall River lacked proper housing as their employers exploited them (Foner GML, 499).
Economics of the Second Industrial Revolution: wealth was not subject to the amount of hard work an individual executed; rather, the amount of money and skills necessary to a successful business were the key to higher wages.
Aristocratic livelihoods were inevitable: economic freedoms beget social hierarchies as every American worked for his or her person and not the general population.
The aristocrats were free to utilize their riches according to their wishes, including secluding themselves from the poorer sections of cities.
If the government intervened, with the social order, such as by forcing the wealthy to help the poor, the actions would be an infringement on the rights of the rich individuals.
In the words of Henry Demarest Lloyd, it was impossible to have “liberty and monopoly” at the same time (Foner GML, 482).
Still, for a person to enjoy his or her freedoms in the Gilded Age, money was necessary to gain access to the best institutions and neighborhoods in the country.
The Second Declaration of Independence (1879): “Slavery is the child of poverty, instead of poverty the child of slavery: and freedom is the child of wealth, instead of wealth the child of freedom. The only road, therefore, to universal freedom is the road that leads to universal wealth” (Foner VOF, 37).
Extensively, it was impossible for the federal law to ensure economic equality: Social Darwinism theory exempted the government from all liabilities that concerned income inequalities in the United States.
The publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859 provided answers for observed differences in human societies (Foner GML, 499).
Apparently, just as the fittest animals and plants survive during evolution, only the best-fitted individuals were able to utilize the environment of booming industries to their advantage.
Therefore, if the government sets any restrictions on factories, they would be returning the United States to an early age where innovations and massive productions were impossible.
Concurrently, laws that regulated work conditions and the programs that sought to provide “public assistance to the poor” would inhibit the natural process of industrialization (Foner GML, 499).
William Graham Sumner On Social Darwinism (ca.1880): “Liberty means the security given to each man that, if he employs his energies to sustain the struggle on behalf of himself and those he cares for, he shall dispose of the product exclusively as he chooses” (Foner VOF, 35).
Therefore, if the government was protecting the rights and freedoms of the populace, then it was performing its duties appropriately.
Thus said, in the case of factory laborers, the government had no grounds on which it could interfere and still claim to respect the rights of all the involved parties.
Among the plant owners, an “unrestrained free market” for their products and limited government interferences epitomized freedom in the industrial field (Foner GML, 500).
Hence, the government and labor unions could not interfere with the contracts that laborers signed willingly.
Workers received payments and could not claim to be slaves.
Thus, as William Sumner summarized the economy and society of the United States, there were only two alternatives: liberty, inequality, survival of the fittest; not liberty, equality, survival of the [unfit]” (Foner VOF, 35).
When employers paid their employees, any regulations that allowed laborers to choose working conditions became baseless before the judiciary (Foner GML, 500).
For instance, in the 1905 Lochner V. New York case, the Supreme Court ruled against a state law that sought to limit working periods for bakers to ten hourly shifts.
On the contrary, The Second Declaration of Independence held that democracy in the United States was not a matter of “freedom and slavery, but [one] between wealth and poverty” and for that reason, the government was to intervene just as it did for the African Americans (Foner VOF, 37).
Conclusion: in the case of factory workers and their employers, democracy was a double-edged sword that served both parties equally and could not favor one over the other. Hence, unlike in the case of the slavery where blacks were not legal citizens of the United States and the federal government could easily side with the whites that were not the case during the Gilded Age. After all, slavery was illegal at the time and among those complaining, there were white laborers as well.
Works Cited
Foner, Eric. Give Me Liberty!: An American History. 4th. Vol. II. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013. Print.
—. Voices of Freedom: A Documentary History. 4th. Vol. II. New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc, 2013. Print.
