America’s Rise to Greatness Under God’s Covenant: From the Late 1880S to the End of the 1950S

By Miles Huntley Hodges

This book is part of a three-part series on America as a Covenant Nation. This volume covers from the rise of America’s industrial revolution in the late 1800s to America’s taking the position in the Cold-War 1950s as the leader of the “Free World.” It is a typical social (political, economic, and military) history of America—untypical however in how it connects the intellectual, moral and spiritual character of America with those same social events. It takes the reader through the days of Western imperialism, World War One, the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, World War Two, the beginning of the Cold War, and finally the age of Middle-America’s grand success (the 1950s). It focuses heavily on the leaders (most frequently the country’s presidents) and how their own personal spirituality shaped their times—and the way the Christian community in particular responded to both the social challenges facing it and the spiritual leadership attempting to inspire and guide it. It seeks to give the Christian reader (or Secular reader if he or she is willing to be challenged) a highly-detailed knowledge of the historical path—social and spiritual—that has brought us to today’s world … and its enormous challenges.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Apr 26, 2020
• ISBN: 9781973681038

Miles Huntley Hodges

Miles Hodges received an M.A. and Ph.D. from Georgetown University (political science: comparative world politics) and an M.Div. from Princeton Seminary (Biblical studies). He has long served as a professor (University of South Alabama: founder and head of the International Studies Program), as a corporate political-risk instructor and consultant, as a pastor (street and prison ministry plus three Presbyterian congregations), and finally as a social dynamics (the cause of the rise and fall of societies), history, and French teacher at a Christian high school (The King’s Academy) in Pennsylvania.

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Copyright © 2020 Miles Huntley Hodges.

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ISBN: 978-1-9736-8102-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-8104-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-8103-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019919942

WestBow Press rev. date: 04/22/2020

Contents

1   THE GILDED AGE OF AMERICAN CAPITALISM

CAPITALISM IN THE GILDED AGE

THE RAPID GROWTH OF AMERICAN MATERIAL POWER

NATIONAL POLITICS DURING THE LATE 1800S

THE WHEELS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS

2   AMERICAN PROGRESSIVISM

THE EMERGENCE OF AMERICAN PROGRESSIVISM

JANE ADDAMS

WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN

THEODORE (TEDDY) ROOSEVELT

WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT

3   THE RATIONALIZING OF WESTERN CULTURE

UNDERSTANDING THE SPIRIT OF THE TIMES

THE RISING AGE OF WESTERN RATIONALISM

ROMANTICISM AND NATIONALISM

DARWINISM

KARL MARX

VLADIMIR ILYICH ULYANOV (LENIN)

DEMOCRACY AS THE RISING IDEAL OF AMERICAN POLITICS

WOODROW WILSON, THE DEMOCRATIC IDEALIST

AMERICAN LIBERALISM

JOHN DEWEY AS A FOUNDING FATHER

CHRISTIANITY RESPONDS

4   NATIONALISM, IMPERIALISM, AND THE GREAT WAR

EUROPEAN IMPERIALISM

AMERICAN IMPERIALISM

THE CLOUDS OF WAR BEGIN TO GATHER

1914—WAR FINALLY BREAKS OUT

1915/1916—THE UGLY WAR HAS NO END IN SIGHT

REVOLUTION IN RUSSIA (1917)

AMERICA ENTERS THE WAR (1917)

THE TROUBLED PEACE

5   THE ROARING TWENTIES

AMERICA DOES INDEED ROAR AFTER THE WAR

TRADITIONALIST AMERICA

A STRONG SENSE OF CYNICISM AFFLICTS URBAN AMERICA

THE AMERICAN QUEST FOR MORAL GROUNDING

AMERICA CONFRONTS THE WORLD DURING THE 1920S

THE 1920S COME TO A CRASHING END

6   DEPRESSION AND DICTATORSHIP

EARLY ATTEMPTS TO ANSWER THE ECONOMIC CRISIS

ROOSEVELT'S NEW DEAL

A SHIFT IN THE AMERICAN SENSE OF ORDER

THE RISE OF THE DICTATORS

THE GATHERING CLOUDS OF WAR

7   WORLD WAR TWO

A SECOND WORLD WAR ERUPTS

AMERICA ENTERS THE WAR

THE WAR IN ASIA AND THE PACIFIC

THE WAR IN EUROPE

VICTORY

8   A COLD WAR DEVELOPS

A GROWING SENSE OF AMERICA'S GLOBAL RESPONSIBILITIES

THE START-UP OF THE COLD WAR IN EUROPE

GLOBAL CONFLICT

THE CHINESE CIVIL WAR (1946–1949)

THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN QUESTION

THE FRENCH IN INDOCHINA

9   MIDDLE AMERICA COMES OF AGE

POST-WAR AMERICA

CHRISTIANITY IN POST-WAR AMERICA

THE COLD WAR AT HOME

THE SUPREME COURT SEPARATES CHURCH AND STATE

THE WAR IN KOREA (1950–1953)

MOUNTING CULTURAL-IDEOLOGICAL TENSIONS WITHIN AMERICA

EISENHOWER TAKES OVER FROM TRUMAN

MIDDLE-CLASS AMERICA SETTLES IN

BLACK AND WHITE AMERICA

MEANWHILE, LIFE GOES ON OUTSIDE OF AMERICA

AMERICA—AS IT IS ABOUT TO HEAD INTO THE 1960S

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND ENDNOTES

CHAPTER ONE

THE GILDED AGE OF

AMERICAN CAPITALISM

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CAPITALISM IN THE GILDED AGE¹

During the time of post-Civil-War recovery, a new social dynamic had been rising within the fast-growing American cities: the adoration of modern technology and those who provided it, the promise of wealth flowing out of this dynamic, and the seeming control over life provided by the scientific mentality that undergirded this whole social-cultural revolution. This was due in no small part to the Civil War and its lasting effect on the American economy. The war's demand for steel, and the iron ore and coal to make it, and the railroads and boats to ship it, and the financial institutions to fund its initial outlay, and the laborers to work the whole system—all this had made a deep impact on what was formerly almost purely an agrarian society.

Apart from the early railroad ventures during and immediately after the war, the government played in the post-war period only a minimal role in the on-going development of this new industrial society, especially as the war and its needs receded from view and the system seemed to run simply under its own dynamics rather than on the basis of popular social-political demands.

Nor was God invited to play a role in the development of this new society. America's Grand Destiny now seemed to be driven forward largely by the huge material rewards that fell to the particularly ambitious and fearless. Fortunes could be made rather quickly by very enterprising individuals (and they could be lost almost as quickly). And these fortunes were awesome, often exceeding (sometimes vastly) the levels of wealth of the European nobility. Indeed, it was a Gilded Age (Age of Gold) for successful American industrialists.

This was a perfect setting for the spirit of Darwinism to soar. Certainly the basic theme of this rising social order was quite Darwinian: progress through survival of the fittest. To the strong belonged the spoils of their conquests. But for those who fell to the wayside in this struggle for survival there would be no tears wept. But the risk of this competitive struggle seemed worth it, at least to those who anticipated striking it rich in this new game of potentially limitless opportunity (if you were willing to play it hard and fast).

For others, however, this game offered virtually no opportunity—only drudgery and painful hardship on this path of survival. With the closing of the Western frontier and loss of the ability to secure cheap Indian land, farm boys were forced to find work in these industrial enterprises, not with the hope of striking it rich, for there was almost no entry point for them into a game that required substantial startup money or capital to get up and running in this new capitalist system. These farm boys came penniless, offering only their labor. But for their labor they received very little in return. In the eyes of the Darwinists these new industrial workers were not seen as people, as fellow Americans to whom they owed some sense of mutual responsibility. Instead they were viewed by the rising class of wealthy capitalists only as economic costs, costs which they had to keep low in order to gain the profits that would win them victory in this Darwinian game.

What was happening to America? Had it gone from African slavery only to replace it with a shockingly similar wage-slavery? Was this the social outcome that so many young men had given their lives for in the recent Civil War?

The Captains of Industry (or Robber Barons as others termed them). The rapidly widening gap between hard-working American laborers and the Captains of Industry was vast … and shocking. According to a survey done in 1896,1 of a total of 12½ million American families in 1890, 125,000 very wealthy families, or 1 percent of the total number of families in America, earned over 50 percent of America's total family wealth. The well-to-do, comprising about 11 percent of the total number of families, earned about 35 percent of the nation's family wealth, the middle classes, comprising about 44 percent of the total, earned about 12½ of the total wealth, and the poorer classes, comprising another 44 percent of the families, earned only about 1 percent of the total wealth.

And among this very wealthy 1 percent of the population, an even smaller number of families stood out way above the rest. A few are mentioned here just to point out how capitalism was working in the latter part of the 1800s.

Cornelius Commodore Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt was nicknamed Commodore because he got his climb out of poverty as a boat operator back in the 1810s, ferrying New York passengers between Staten Island and Manhattan. It was a very competitive business, but Cornelius Vanderbilt knew how to compete. He fought against the well-defended steamboat monopolies that had secured privileged routes around New York, buying out companies, although at times he even had some of his own operations bought out by others.

But by the end of the 1830s, Vanderbilt had secured a number of his own steamboat monopolies, and in the early 1840s he began to manage small railroads that connected with his steamboat lines. In 1847 he took over a major railroad running from New York to Boston, and bought out a number of competitors, putting his railroad line in a dominant position on that vital route. Then with the beginning of the California gold rush in 1849 he switched to shipping on the high seas, even at one time attempting to put together a group to build a canal across Nicaragua between the Atlantic and Pacific. He failed at this attempt, but did set up a land and water connection between the two oceans, and then developed a Pacific steam line to California.

In the 1850s he bought a large company that manufactured the steam engines for the steamboat industry, and also jumped into the trans-Atlantic steamship business. Even at one point he found himself deeply involved in Central America with a major competitor—and local authorities supporting his competitor (including some military action). So Vanderbilt moved his operations further south to Panama and then acquired a monopoly on a steamship line running from there to California.

During the Civil War he donated and staffed at his own expense his flagship, the Vanderbilt, which was used to hunt Confederate raiders (such as Confederate Admiral Semmes and his warship, Alabama).

After the war he was joined by his son Billy in acquiring a number of New York railroads, and brought them together as the future New York Central Line, one of the first corporate giants in America. He also constructed a large railroad terminal in Manhattan on 42nd Street, also the forerunner of the New York's Grand Central Terminal, the world's largest train station.

The only time Vanderbilt found his move blocked was in his attempt to buy up the Erie Railroad, which Jay Gould and his associate James Fisk fought off by watering down stock (quite in violation of the law, which Fisk avoided by bribing New York legislators!), to weaken Vanderbilt's position after Vanderbilt had bought up, at some considerable expense, what he thought would be a controlling share of the business. This massive issue of new stocks by Gould and Fisk devalued Vanderbilt's stocks so badly that his losses were enormous. This created a deep and lasting enmity between Vanderbilt and these two equally ambitious and notoriously clever financial wizards. But Vanderbilt would not again be on the losing side of this rivalry, a rivalry that lasted all the way up to his death in 1877.

At his death he was worth the monumental sum of $100 million,² most of which went to his son Billy (although he was very generous to his other many sons and daughters). He also donated the $1 million that founded the university in Nashville, Tennessee, that still carries his name, which at the time was the largest charity contribution ever offered by a single donor. He also gave rather generously to churches, including the 8½ acres which he gave to the Moravian Church on Staten Island for a cemetery, where he himself is buried.

Andrew Carnegie.² Carnegie came with his very poor parents from Scotland to Pittsburgh in 1848 at age thirteen, to live with relatives, and soon found a menial job to help support the family. But he quickly taught himself to read Morse Code messages without having to first translate them, impressing officials at the Pennsylvania Railroad who hired him for just such work. Obvious to his supervisor, Carnegie was an eager and fast learner, and as he studied the larger world of business he proved to be a great strategic thinker—one who thought about how different industrial operations could be combined to produce a complete in-house operation, from securing a company's own raw materials, to building its own machinery, and shipping on its own carriers to its own distribution centers. Taking up this process of industrial combination himself, Carnegie detected the central importance of the iron industry and set up his own company to build the iron bridges that would be needed by the railroad industry. He then branched into the world of iron production, supplying his bridge company with its own iron. He then advanced to the bigger business of steel production, assembling a huge team of steel engineers, and soon was helping America to outpace Britain and Germany (Prussia) in steel production. He then complemented this business by going into the coal/coke business to supply his ever-improving furnaces with their own fuel. His operations were so efficient that he was able to slash steel prices, increasing immensely the demand for his steel production. By the end of the 1800s Carnegie was producing steel at the rate of 6,000 tons per day.

But his aggressive industrial empire-building put him at odds with his skilled laborers (as opposed to the larger unskilled work-force he employed), who were driven less by a desire for personal success than by a desire to see high wage rates applied collectively to their craft union. As Carnegie viewed matters, this was designed merely to produce among the skilled workers a sense of wage and labor security rather than individual opportunity for advancement. And worse, the union seemed to be running his Homestead Plant ever since their victory in the 1889 strike. Thus when in 1892 Carnegie's aggressive corporate supervisor Henry Clay Frick decided to break the growing power of the craft union by declaring a huge reduction in skilled workers' wages, a massive strike was again called by the union at the huge Homestead plant. (This strike Frick would have to deal with himself because Carnegie was back in Europe at the time). The strike was finally broken by the heavy-handed measures of the Pinkerton agents (resulting in deaths on both sides of the conflict). And Frick was shot twice by a frenzied anarchist, but survived the ordeal, the shooting helping to stir a general antipathy against the striking workers.

Soon after this, Carnegie was ready to get out of the business world (the Carnegie Steel Company had by that time achieved the awesome goal of producing more steel than all of Britain's mills combined!) and in 1901 sold his entire operation to the financial titan J.P. Morgan for $480 million (the largest such corporate transaction ever, amounting to over $13 billion in today's dollars), thus helping to create the United States Steel Corporation. This also made Morgan the uncontested giant of the American financial world and Carnegie a very rich man, though over the next years Carnegie would give most of that wealth away to various charities and social endeavors and spend the rest of his life traveling.

John Pierpont (J.P.) Morgan.³ Morgan was born in 1837 at the opposite end of the social scale from Carnegie, Morgan being the son of a very successful Connecticut businessman and banker, schooled in his youth at fashionable schools in Boston, Switzerland and Germany. Finishing his schooling, he joined his father's banking office in London for a year before returning to the States to work for his father's company in New York City. He was a clever financier, for instance during the Civil War purchasing 5,000 rifles from a Union depot at $3.50 and then reselling them to the U.S. Army for $22 each!

Over the years he demonstrated his skill at buying up struggling companies at bargain rates and then reorganizing them into profitable operations. He even at one point came to the aid of the U.S. Treasury in the midst of the Panic of 1893, when by 1895 the Federal Treasury was nearly out of gold and facing financial default. Morgan joined with the Rothschild bankers of Paris to offer to sell the government 3.5 million ounces of gold in exchange for thirty-year bonds. At first U.S. President Cleveland turned down the offer, but then realizing how close the government was to default, finally accepted Morgan's offer. It indeed saved the status of the U.S. Treasury, but undercut Cleveland's standing with the agrarian wing of his Democratic Party

Again in 1907 Morgan stepped in to rescue the American economy, this time caused by a massive sell-off on Wall Street after the failure of a large copper venture threatened to pull down a number of banks that had invested heavily in the venture (actually Knickerbocker, New York's third largest trust company, did fail). This crisis was so big that Morgan did not attempt to answer the challenge alone, but gathered a number of other New York banks to join him in putting money back into Wall Street and restoring investors' confidence, thus averting a stock market collapse.

Another crisis soon followed, this time caused by the collapse of a major industrial conglomerate invested in coal, iron, and railroads. With President Teddy Roosevelts permission, Morgan stepped in to take over the fallen conglomerate, aware that this would invite charges of monopolistic behavior. But it had to be done to avert yet another panic in the world of American investment.

But as a result of these interventions, the U.S. government finally (1913) made the move to set up a government agency, the Federal Reserve, to intervene when such economic crises began to show signs of developing. In a sense, Morgan himself had shown the U.S. government the proper procedure by which to intervene when necessary, contributing greatly to the stability of the U.S. economy, which throughout the 1800s had experienced one speculative crisis after another.

John D. Rockefeller.⁴ Rockefeller was raised in tough circumstances in upstate New York and then in Ohio, his father being a wandering con-man who only infrequently visited the home, his mother however being a very strong, positive influence on his life. As a youth he proved himself to be very bright, quick with numbers, hard-working, and loving learning, putting himself through a large amount of schooling. He was also a person of deep Christian faith. Together these elements made him an eager challenger of the larger world.

During the Civil War he and his brother raised the capital to found a business providing produce to the Union armies, and then the two of them in 1863 joined a team of investors to build in Cleveland's fast-growing industrial area an oil refinery designed to produce kerosene, helping to move the country away from expensive whale oil as the source of its lighting. In 1865 he bought out the leading partners of the business and through considerable borrowing put himself (and the remaining investors, including his brother) in a well-placed position within an economy turning more and more to the use of kerosene.

By 1870 he moved to establish the Standard Oil Company, which quickly became Ohio's largest oil company. Then moving into the shipping business, he was able to acquire for his oil business special railroad rates that allowed him vast advantage in his competition with smaller oil companies, which he was quick to buy out when they stumbled. Then in 1874 he signed a secret deal with his largest New York competitors, Pratt and Rogers, to buy out their oil company and bring the two on his company as partners. And thus Rockefeller proceeded to move through the infant oil industry, buying out company after company until, by the end of the 1870s, Standard Oil owned 90 percent of America's oil business. He even at one point took on the huge Pennsylvania Railroad Company, starting a price war in shipping rates, which finally forced the railroad to sell its own oil interests to Standard Oil (actually Rockefeller was moving away from shipping by rail to shipping by pipeline). But this in turn brought charges of monopolistic practices (not the first time, however, nor the last) in the courts of Pennsylvania and other states. These court cases Rockefeller found himself battling constantly, gaining for Rockefeller a very negative national reputation.

Adding to this negative image was when in 1882 Rockefeller set up the Standard Oil Trust, a move to bring the many separate state corporations under a single domain (at that time companies were licensed to operate within only the state granting the corporate license). Not only did the creation of this new trust produce a huge outcry of monopoly in the nation's press, other corporations, seeing the benefits of this move, were quick to set up similar organizations, birthing the age of the massive American trust companies. He also birthed the practice (taken up by New York's National Petroleum Exchange) of selling oil futures on the open market as shares or certificates based on oil held in storage, thus making the pricing of oil a public matter.

Eventually Rockefeller ventured into the growing world of international oil production, then moved from kerosene production into the business of natural gas, and even the refinement of gasoline (previously considered just a wasteful byproduct of kerosene production), just as the world of automobiles, with their new internal combustion engines, was opening up.

But the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act, originally designed to break up labor organizations, would soon be turned against Rockefeller, especially as he moved to acquire oil fields in other American states, his vast oil fields in Pennsylvania beginning to play out. He also entered the business of iron ore production and shipment with Carnegie, causing a huge public uproar.

With the arrival of the 20th century, Rockefeller found himself under constant attack, by U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt, wielding the Sherman Antitrust Act wherever he could; by Ida Tarbell, publishing a lengthy exposé on Standard Oil’s underhanded business practices; and finally in 1911 by the U.S. Supreme Court, which handed down the decision that as a monopoly violating the Sherman Act, Standard Oil had to be broken up into thirty-four separate companies (eventually becoming Conoco, Amoco, Chevron, Exxon, Mobil, Sohio, Pennzoil, etc.). Yet Rockefeller remained a significant stockholder in these various companies, and the oil business continued to be personally very profitable for Rockefeller. This eventually made Rockefeller the richest man in the world at the time (and by comparison, even still today!).

But like Carnegie, Rockefeller’s business sense was based on a larger view of his responsibilities to the world around him. He never saw the making of money as evil, seeing how though some people would fall by the wayside in the competitive world of business and finance, the overall effect was clearly one of economic advancement for the society as a whole.

True, some benefitted vastly more than others in this trend, but even here Rockefeller felt a sense of responsibility to his world, setting up charity organizations designed to help the young and ambitious climb to greater social heights. Indeed, this was part of his understanding of his Christian responsibilities, which began with his church tithing even as a teenager, and which interestingly included teaching Bible at the Baptist church he attended as an adult. But his charity helped turn by 1900 a small Baptist college into the University of Chicago, his grants to church mission produced the Central Philippine University in 1905, and ultimately his sense of charity led to the creation of an outstanding medical research center in New York City. In 1913 he established the Rockefeller Foundation, granting it $250 million to aid in medical research and training, and in 1918, granted $550 million for another foundation (later absorbed into the Rockefeller Foundation) for social research.

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THE RAPID GROWTH OF AMERICAN MATERIAL POWER

America as a brash, young, industrial giant. As powerful as the financial-industrial giants Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Morgan, and Rockefeller were, they were not the only thing powering America. There was a sense of dynamic infecting the entire country, born of the very obvious changes in the material foundations of American society. America was quite obviously joining the ranks of the great powers of the world. You did not even need to be told this. The feeling was just there.

But there was indeed a factual basis for this feeling. By the time just prior to the outbreak of the Great War (World War One) in 1914, America alone was responsible for one-third of the world's total industrial production, more than Britain, France and Germany combined! That figure alone spoke volumes about what America was becoming. After all, there was evidence everywhere you looked.

Yet, as the 1800s came to a close, it was generally considered by those outside America to be the Age of Europe, with European empires stretching around the world, bringing British and Dutch business practices to Asia, French culture to virtually all parts of the world, the division of the African continent into spheres of English, French, Portuguese, German and even Belgian political-cultural control. Islamic culture was in a mood to copy European ways, as was the Japanese culture as well. Europe understood itself to be the world's arbiter in the matter of what was good, what was worthy, and what was not.

It is not that America went unnoticed. But it was viewed by upper class Europeans as a primitive land of cowboys and Indians, and by working class Europeans as a place to escape to in order to find work, any kind of work. None of this presented a picture of sophistication or anything worthy of social attention.

Yet the fact was that America had just reached the status of being an industrial giant, the largest in the world, at about the time that Europe had reached the peak of its glory. And what Europe did not understand was that the next century (the 20th) would be a time of decline for itself. And it would also be a time when America would finally register itself—internationally—as the world's greatest power.

The railroad industry. Railroads were encouraged to reach West across empty plains, deserts and high mountains by governmental financial incentives. But overall and even more importantly, as more railroads spread elsewhere and everywhere across the nation, it was the huge private (non-governmental) financial trusts that were able to amass the capital necessary to finance this massive construction of rail-lines.

These vital rail-lines spanned the nation from ocean to ocean, from Canada to Mexico, carrying a massive amount of goods needed to fuel the huge national economy (food and raw materials headed East, finished goods headed West) built on farming, mining, manufacture. And they carried a restless population always looking for new horizons and new opportunities in this vast nation.

The telegraph and the telephone. Keeping the country linked together was also the telegraph3, which followed the railroad lines so that a flow of vital information kept up with the huge flow of goods and people across the nation. Never before had such a huge territory possessed such instant linkage, so that these massive distances from ocean to ocean found themselves melted down to the level of human horizon that only a couple of generations previously would have reached out only ten or so miles (the distance from the farm to the local town nearby). Distance seemed virtually to have been annihilated!

In 1876 Alexander Graham Bell patented the phone and formed the company of his name, taking phone service in 1877 from three thousand users to 260 thousand by 1893, when his patent ended his exclusive right to operate a phone service. Then thousands of independent companies jumped into the market and soon even poorer Americans could afford the luxury of a phone. By 1920 thirteen million phones were providing service to over a third of the American households, rural as well as urban.

The American iron and steel industry. Of course the railroad steam engines and the vast use of iron rails called forth a massive iron industry, and from that eventually the more expensive but more sophisticated steel industry. Soon steel would be a key part of America's industrial success. From 1870 to just before World War One, America's annual growth rate in steel production averaged 7 percent (thanks in great part to Carnegie), whereas Britain's was a mere 1 percent (Germany's was 6 percent; the rate for France, Belgium and Russia, the other major steel producers, was a little over 4 percent). Overall, American annual steel production climbed from 380 thousand tons in 1875 to sixty million tons in 1920.

The oil industry. We have already seen that the oil industry got off to a huge start when it was discovered how to replace expensive whale oil with kerosene refined from the crude oil seemingly abundant in Pennsylvania. The age of the machine also required oil as a lubricant. Then with the development of the internal combustion engine fired by gasoline or diesel fuel, the demand would grow even stronger for oil's distillate, gasoline.

Gas and electric lighting. Gas lighting (distilled from coal) was already in wide use in England in the early 1800s, lighting streets (making them safer at night), factories (24-hour work was now possible), theaters (much brighter than candles), and even homes (of the wealthy, of course). America quickly caught on to the possibilities, and Baltimore (1817) was quick to adopt the use of gas for lighting. By the mid-1800s gas lighting (and the lamp-lighter who moved from lamp to lamp to light them at night) was a regular feature of America's major cities.

But gas had one major disadvantage. It was dangerous. Theaters burned down when something went wrong with the gas distribution or lamp system. Homes could also suffer the same catastrophe. This then led by the 1870s to electric lighting in theaters, but also in city streets and businesses, using the electric arc system that produced a very bright light (used also in coastal searchlights). Helping to develop this technology into a huge business venture was the amazingly versatile inventor, Thomas Edison (he held over 1,000 patents).

Thomas Alva Edison. Edison grew up in Michigan selling newspapers and candy on trains, but also conducting chemical experiments aboard, which eventually got him in trouble. He turned to printing his own paper, the beginning of his very successful business career. He became a telegraph operator and then news wire operator for the Associated Press. Meanwhile he engaged himself on the side in experimenting with electricity, batteries, and transmission lines. Moving as an impoverished young man to a friend's house in New Jersey, he there developed the stock ticker and then patented (his first) at age twenty-two the electronic vote counter.

Although being hard of hearing, he went on to develop the first phonograph (1877, age thirty) on tin foil wrapped around a cylinder, being invited to Washington to demonstrate his invention before U.S. President Hayes and the Congress. He was now a celebrity inventor!

He moved on to develop his own research lab (which eventually expanded to two city blocks), financed initially from a sophisticated telegraph bought from him by Western Union. Here, with the help of hired assistants, he went about the business methodically of conducting experiments involving a wide array of instruments and machines, and ultimately the incandescent light bulb. He began experimentation on such a light in 1878, the next year ran a successful test on a low voltage (thus inexpensive) carbon-filament light that lasted for over thirteen hours. With some more improvements, he was able to patent the year after that (1880) a very durable light using a bamboo filament that could burn for over 1,200 hours.

He was tireless in his pursuit of invention, commenting at one point: I have not failed, I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work!

He had an excellent eye for the business aspect of his inventions. While still conducting his lighting experiments, in order to manufacture and market his lights he set up the Edison Electric Light Company in New York City in 1878, including J.P. Morgan and some of the Vanderbilts as investors. From this venture he then went on (1880) to form the electricity utility, Edison Illuminating Company, to distribute electricity to New York City using a 110-volt generating system—establishing that as the American standard (a 220-volt system is used in Europe).

Then he ran into trouble with his direct current (DC) system when George Westinghouse began to compete with an alternating current (AC) system that distributed electric power much more widely and cheaply than Edison's DC system. A corporate battle thus erupted between the two men, one that Edison was not destined to win. By 1890 he was forced out of his own company by J.P. Morgan, and the company merged with an AC company, to become General Electric (a huge AC company which then controlled almost three quarters of the electrical business, Westinghouse being the largest holder of the other quarter of the business).

Edison went on to develop motion pictures, his first invention in 1891 being a kinetoscope, or peep-hole viewer. Then in 1896 he invented a movie projector able to cast a film image on a screen in front of a full audience. He even invented a recording machine able to synchronize the sound with the film. His movie projector proved to be a grand success, his film studio making almost 1200 short films, and prospering Edison greatly.

He was active in other fields as well, the rubber industry, mining, x-ray (which he learned the hard way was very dangerous because of its radiation). And besides his activity in New Jersey he had a house built in Fort Meyers, Florida, next door to a man who had once worked for his lighting company—and whom he took a liking to and encouraged his own development: Henry Ford. The two would remain close friends all the way until Edison's death in 1931.

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NATIONAL POLITICS DURING THE LATE 1800s⁵

Presidential and congressional politics were fairly tame during the late 1800s. With the issue of Reconstruction simply fading away and with the government-financed railroad to the Pacific completed, the federal government seemed to be called on to play only a secondary role in the further development of American society. America seemed to run mostly on the basis of its own industrial-economic dynamics, rather than on the deep involvement of the Washington government in the life of the nation, such as was the case during the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Social reform would be a big issue during this time. But the initiative for action came not from the halls of Congress or the White House but from the public itself. Through the publicity of America's newspapers, from books written by social reformers, from Christian pulpits, much energy would be given to the idea of perfecting American society. And it would eventually involve the national government, in the form of legislation designed to firm up a reform that the public was demanding. But in this, the government played not the initiating role but merely the confirming role.

One issue however did occupy much governmental attention: the vast corruption going on within its own ranks. President Hayes had tried to clean up some of the corruption left behind by the Grant administration. But Hayes's effort to do so only weakened his position in the face of the considerable political forces benefitting from the spoils system of awarding political appointments as reward for the political support needed to bring politicians to power. The spoils system was understood simply as how politics was expected to work. To try to change things would merely upset the entire political system.

But such spoils became easy targets for journalists looking for a spectacular story to uncover and report. Consequently, there was considerable pressure coming from such molders of public opinion to do something about the problem.

Hayes tried to answer this call for reform when he took action to remove Chester A. Arthur from the lucrative (in terms of spoils) job of director of the New York customs-house. This brought the wrath of New York Boss Conkling, and the anti-reformist Stalwarts in the U.S. Senate who, with the Democrats, held up confirmation of Hayes's subsequent government appointments. Then the Democrats reversed the publicity spotlight, turning it on the Republican Hayes, bringing up the corrupt nature of the deal Hayes had worked with the Louisiana governor to get himself elected to the presidency. But this merely unified Republican Party support for Hayes, though it hardly appeased the press.

The election of 1880, and Garfield's brief presidency. But when election-time came around again, Hayes could not muster enough support from his Republican Party to get himself re-nominated. There were a large number of contenders, including Grant, who was supported by the Stalwarts for a third term. Finally, after 36 ballots, the Republicans turned to a relatively unknown James A. Garfield, and, to Hayes’s great shock, Chester A. Arthur as his vice-presidential running-mate.

Garfield was actually an excellent choice, hard-working, intelligent (once a college president), brave (rose to the rank of brigadier general during the Civil War), and politically experienced (having served in both houses of Congress). Running against him as the Democratic Party nominee was the well-known (but politically inexperienced) former Union General Winfield Scott Hancock. The election was close, except again in the electoral college where Garfield gained 214 votes to Hancock's 155.

Chester Arthur's vice-presidential nomination had been the price paid to get Conkling's New York support. But once in office, Garfield had other ideas about how much he owed Conkling in patronage and worked hard to get truly qualified individuals posted to government jobs. In the end, Conkling overplayed his hand, and New Yorkers turned against Conkling.

But also in the end, it was this patronage question that made Garfield's presidency short-lived. He was in office only a few months when he was shot by an unhappy and mentally unstable office seeker—and Garfield died 2½ months later of the wound doctors were unable to heal (they could not find the bullet).

Chester A. Arthur. Actually, the man who had been dismissed from his job at the New York customs house proved, in inheriting the office of U.S. president, to be one of the country's leading anti-corruption reformers. He personally vetoed bills coming out of Congress (most importantly the Rivers and Harbors Act) that were merely opportunities for more political patronage and financial corruption. He also signed into law the 1883 Pendleton Act which turned an increasing number of civil service appointments over to a Civil Service Commission charged with the responsibility of filling government positions on the basis of proven merit rather than political connections.

Finally gaining the deep respect that few at the outset of his presidency ever would have expected, he nonetheless chose to retire from politics after one term in office rather than run for re-election (he was suffering from poor health).

The 1884 election. The 1884 election was fought largely over the issue of personal integrity, the Republican candidate, James Blaine, suffering from a well-known history of deep involvement in the railroad industry spoils system and the Democrat candidate, Grover Cleveland, on the other hand well-recognized for his incredible integrity—except for the claim raised by Democrats that the unmarried Cleveland (but he would soon marry in the White House) had once fathered a child out of wedlock.

The election was so very close that it came down to the electoral vote of New York, in which the final tally gave Cleveland a little over a thousand more votes than Blaine out of a total of over a million votes cast in New York. Part of what ended this long Republican control of the presidency was when a number of reformist Republicans, the Mugwumps,4 cast their votes for the Democrat Cleveland because they viewed Blaine as being simply too corrupt.

Grover Cleveland.⁶ During his first term in office (1885-1889) Cleveland faced the usual problem of filling government jobs with personal appointments, a deep change in personnel usually accompanying the election of a new president, especially if from a different party than the previous president. But Cleveland announced that he would not remove office holders because of their political affiliation, though he did intend to reduce the size of a greatly inflated federal bureaucracy (because of the spoils system). But eventually he bent to pressure from fellow Democrats to replace some of the Republican officeholders with Democrats, though he was even then restrained in doing so by comparison to previous presidential administrations.

He also tackled the job of improving the navy, by getting rid of inferior ships built by corrupt contractors. He also had much of the railroad land in the West claimed by the railroads, but undeveloped by them, returned to federal government control. And being a limited-government supporter, he cut back on the government's financial support of veterans and farmers that he felt appeared more like spoils than compassion, and which he was certain would merely set up a form of dependency on continuing government bail-outs.

Gold and silver. Another troubling (and persistent) issue he faced was over this matter of the value of the national currency, the U.S. dollar. The country was caught in deep controversy over the matter of inflation, easy credit, and a cheap dollar—versus a tight money policy. Logically speaking, it would seem that this was a matter for the government's financial experts to handle. But after the Civil War this issue had become a matter of almost religious dimensions, so much had been printed and proclaimed on the subject. It had become a matter of simple faith, especially among America's large farming and industrial working-class sectors, that the road to happiness would be easy credit and inflation: to gain higher wages at the workplace or to be able to pay back a loan later in currency that was cheaper in value than when the loan was first assumed. The best way to do that was simply to have the government print dollars, lots of them. Industrial owners and financiers however were very concerned about rising labor costs and the relative loss of the value of their investments through just such inflation and therefore they wanted dollars to remain relatively scarce and thus of ever-greater value.

For most ordinary Americans, the monetary theories involved in this matter were far too complex to follow, so they used the symbols of silver and gold to represent their respective positions. Gold was scarce, and the tight money people insisted that each dollar printed be backed up in the nation's treasury by an equivalent value of gold, and gold alone. Silver, on the other hand, was considered to be abundant and ever-increasing through the relatively easy possibility of more silver mining, and the easy-money people demanded that instead of gold (or at least in addition to gold) silver be the metallic basis for the nation's dollar supply.

So, silver versus gold became the hot national issue, symbolizing the deeper antagonisms between the industrial workers on the one hand and the business owners on the other, between the much humbler American classes in rural America and the growing numbers of up-East financiers—especially problematic if they happened to be Jewish.

In short, gold and silver became the rallying points in a growing class or social-cultural struggle tearing at the nation. Of course these tensions had complex causes, but how easy it was to sum it all up in the question of gold versus silver! And it all made for great conspiracy theories so appealing to the people who struggled to make sense of the difficult times they faced.

Like Grant before him, Cleveland was a gold man. Cleveland responded by attempting to cut back on the silver coinage which the government was required to mint under the Bland-Allison Act of 1878. This cutback merely put Southerners and Westerners and their representatives in Congress in a deeply angry mood, inspiring Bland, author of the 1878 bill, to try to pass a new bill in 1886 calling for the unlimited minting of silver currency. The bill did not pass, but left a bitter issue unresolved.

The tariff question. Another issue Cleveland was forced to tackle was the U.S. tariff. Cleveland strongly opposed the high tariffs imposed on foreign goods in order to protect the pricing of goods produced in America. The tariff revenues collected on