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Gilded Age Politics: Crash Course US History #26

From: U.S. History by Crash Course

In which John Green teaches you about the Gilded Age and its politics. What, you may ask, is the Gilded Age? The term comes from a book by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner titled, "The Gilded Age." You may see a pattern emerging here. It started in the 1870s and continued on until the turn of the 20th century. The era is called Gilded because of the massive inequality that existed in the United States. Gilded Age politics were marked by a number of phenomena, most of them having to do with corruption. On the local and state level, political machines wielded enormous power. John gets into details about the most famous political machine, Tammany Hall. Tammany Hall ran New York City for a long, long time, notably under Boss Tweed. Graft, kickbacks, and voter fraud were rampant, but not just at the local level. Ulysses S. Grant ran one of the most scandalous presidential administrations in U.S. history, and John will tell you about two of the best-known scandals, the Credit Mobilier scandal, and the Whiskey Ring. There were a few attempts at reform during this time, notably the Civil Service Act of 1883 and the Sherman Anti-trust act of 1890. John will also get into the Grange Movement of the western farmers, and the Populist Party that arose from that movement. The Populists, who threw in their lot with William Jennings Bryan, never managed to get it together and win a presidency, and they faded after 1896. This brings us to the Progressive Era, which we'll get into next week!

Full Transcript

Gilded Age Politics Crash Course US History 26

speaker01 00:00:00

Hi I'm John Green, this is Crash Course us history and today we're going to continue our look at the Gilded Age by focusing on political science. Green, green, it's another history class where we don't actually talk about history from the past. Your insistence on trying to place academic exp into little boxes creates a little box that you yourself will live in for the rest of your life. If you don't put your interdisciplinary party hat on.

speaker01 00:23:00

So the Gilded Age takes its name from a book by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner that was called the Gilded Age. A tale of today was published in 18000 hundred 73 and it was not that successful. But while the Gilded Age conjures up visions of fancy parties and ostentatious displays of wealth, the book itself was about politics, and it gives a very negative appraisal of the state of American democracy at the time, which shouldn't come as a huge surprise coming from Twain, whose comments about Congress included. Suppose You were an Idi and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself, and also it could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly Native American criminal class except Congress. So when faced with the significant changes taking place in the American economy after the Civil War America's political system, both nationally and locally, dealt with these problems in the best way possible by becoming incredibly, incredibly corrupt.

speaker01 01:23:00

Oh, Stan says I have to take off my party hat. So former House Speaker Tip O'neill once famously said that all politics is local. And although that's not actually true, I am going to start with local politics today, specifically with one of America's greatest inventions, the urban political machine. So a political machine is basically an organization that works to win election so that it can exercise power. The most famous political machine with New York City's Tammany Hall dominated Democratic Party politics in the late 19th century, survived until the 20th, and is keenly associated with corruption.

speaker01 01:56:00

Oh, it's already time for the mystery document. This is highly unorthodox, stand, well, the rules here are simple, I guess. The author of the mystery document. I'm usually wrong and I get shocked with the shock pan.

speaker01 02:07:00

All right, let's see what we got here. My party's in power in the city and it's going to undertake a lot of public improvements. Well I'm tipped off say that they're going to lay out a new park at a certain place and I buy up all the land I can in the neighborhood. Then the board of this or that makes its plan public and there's a rush to get my land, which nobody cared particularly for before. Ain't it perfectly honest to charge a good price and make a profit on my investment in foresight?

speaker01 02:30:00

Of course it is, that's honest graft Stan, I know this one, it's about machine politics. It from New York, doesn't say it's from New York, but it is because it is George Blanket. How do you like them apples? You want to know the name of the book? It's Nnk of Tammany Hall. Transition me back to the desk with the Libertas, please.

speaker01 02:51:00

Plunket became famous for writing a book describing the way that New York City's government actually worked, but he was a small fish compared with the most famous shark like machine politician of the day, William Boss Tweed, seen here with a head made of money. Boss Tweed basically ran New York in the late 1860s and early 1870s, and his greatest feat of swindling helps explain how the machine system, it revolved around the then new county courthouse that now houses the New York City Department of Education building.

speaker01 03:19:00

The courthouse was initially estimated to cost around $250000, but ended up costing $13 million by the time it was finished in 1871. Included in that cost was a bill of $180000 for three tables and 40 chairs, $1.5 million for lighting fixtures, and $41000 for brooms and cleaning supplies to $500000 for his initial job, and then $1 million to repair his shoddy work. The standard kickback in these situations was the Tammany Hall received 2 dollars for every one dollar received by the contractor. That may seem like a bad deal for contractors, but remember that plasterer still got to keep half a million, which is worth about 9 million in today's money. Now, of course, that makes it sound like political machines were pure evil, especially if you were a taxpayer footing the bill for that courthouse.

speaker01 04:09:00

But machines also provided valuable services to immigrants and other poor people in the cities.

speaker01 04:14:00

As Plunket explained, Tammany could help families in need. I don't ask whether they are Republicans or Democrats, and I don't refer them to the Charity Organization Society, which would investigate their case in a month or two and decide they were worthy of help about the time they are dead from starvation. I just get quarters for them, buy clothes for them if their clothes were burned up, and fix them up until they get things running again in return. For this help, Tammany expected votes so that they could stay in power.

speaker01 04:40:00

Staying in power meant control of sea jobs as well as city contracts. Plunkett claimed to know every big employer in the district, and in the whole city for that matter. And they ain't in the habit of saying no to me when I asked them for a job. But with all the corruption, sometimes even that wasn't enough. Fortunately, Tammy, politicians could always fall back on fraud. CA he found bearded men to vote, then took them the barber to shave off the beard, but left the mustache so that they could vote a second time, and then they would shave off the stash so they could vote for a third. And then, of course, there was always violence and intimidation. By the end of the century, a Tammany, regular La to the good old days when, quote, it was wonderful to see my men slug the opposition to preserve the sanctity of the ballot.

speaker01 05:18:00

But corruption wasn't limited to big cities like New York and Chicago. Some of the biggest boondoggles involved the United States Congress and the executive branch under President Ulysses S Grant scandal, dubbed the King of Frauds by the New York Sun, involved credit mobiliar the construction company that did most of the road building for the Union Pacific Railroad. This two pronged accusation involved first overcharging the public for construction costs and off profits to credit mo, and second, bribery of congressman. Now the second charge was, of course, much juicier and also more partisan because only Republican congressmen, including the speaker of the House were implicated in it, eventually Massachusetts Congressman Oakes Ames was found guilty of giving Brun, but no one was ever found guilty of receiving those bribes. As you can imagine, that did wonders for the reputation of Congress.

speaker01 06:07:00

The second major scandal involved the sole carelle whiskey ring, which was a group of distillers in St Louis who decided that they didn't like pen excise taxes on their product, perhaps a slightly more noble cause than that of the 2009 Bling Ring, who just wanted to dress like Paris Hilton. John McDonald, a grant administration official, helped distillers reduce their taxes by intentionally undercounting the number of kegs of booze. But then, in 1875, the tax evasion grew out of control when McDonald eventually confessed and was convicted thereby taints the presidency with corruption, Just as credit mobili had taint of Congress. That leaves the Supreme Court untainted. But don't worry, the Dred Scott decision is worth at least like 80 years of taints.

speaker01 06:45:00

So with all this distrust in government, after Grant served two terms, presidential elections featured a series of one term, or Hayes Garfield, whose term was filled out by Chester Arthur after Garfield was assassinated, Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, and then Cleveland again. McKinley, who was elected twice, but then he was assassinated.

speaker01 07:03:00

As for their parties, Gilded Age Republicans favored high tariffs, low government spending, paying off national debt, and reducing the amount of paper money or greenbacks in circulation. Democrats opposed the tariffs and were often linked to New York bankers and financiers. In short, both parties were pro business, but they were pro different businesses.

speaker01 07:22:00

Despite that and the widespread, some national reform legislation actually did get passed in the Gilded Age. The Civil Service Act of 1883, prompted by Garfield's assassination by a disgruntled office seeker, created a merit system for 10% of federal employees who were chosen by competitive exam rather than political favoritism. But this had an unintended effect. It made American politicians much more dependent on donations from big businesses rather than small donations from grateful political appointees. But, you know, nice ideas. And then in 1890, the Sherman Antitrust Act forbade combinations and practices that restrain trade, But again, it was almost impossible to enforce this against the monopolies. Us Steel. More often it was used against labor unions, which were seen to restrain trade in their radical lobbying for like health insurance and hard hats.

speaker01 08:07:00

But all in all, the National Congress was pretty dysfunctional at the end of the 19th century. Stop me if that sounds familiar.

speaker01 08:12:00

So state governments expanded their responsibility for public health and welfare. Cities invested in public works like transportation and gas, and later electricity. And the movement to provide public education continues. Some northern states even passed laws limiting the work day to 8 hours. What is this? France is what courts would often say when striking those laws down.

speaker01 08:32:00

Reform legislation was less developed in the south, but they were busy rolling back reconstruction and creating laws that limited the civil rights of African Americans, known as Jim Crow laws. In the West, farmers became politically motivated over the issue of freight rates. Wait, when we talk about railroads, let's go to the thought Bubble.

speaker01 08:47:00

In the 1870s, farmers formed the Grange Movement, put pressure on state governments to establish fair railroad rates and warehouse charges. Railroads in particular, tended to be pretty monopolistic, they owned the track going through town, after all, so it was hard for farmers to negotiate fair shipping prices. The Grange movement eventually became the Farmers Alliance movement, which also pushed for economic cooperation to raise prices, but was split into northern and southern wings that could never really get it together. The biggest idea to come out of the Farmers Alliance was the sub Treasury plan. Under this plan, farmers would store grain in government warehouses and get low rate government loans to buy seed and equipment using the stored grain as collateral. This would allow farmers to bypass the bank so increasingly came to be seen, along with the railroads, as the source of all the farmers troubles.

speaker01 09:36:00

Eventually, these politically motivated farmers and their supporters grew into a political party, the People's Party, or populist. In 1892, they held a convention in Omaha and put forth a remarkably reform minded plan, particularly given that this was put forth in Omaha, which included sub Treasury plan, which didn't exactly happen, although the deal farmers ended up with was probably better for them.

speaker01 09:55:00

Government ownership of railroads, which sort of happened if you count Amtrak, graduated income tax, which did happen after the passage of the 16th Amendment. Government control of the currency, which happened with the creation of the Federal Reserve System. Recognition of the rights of laborers to form unions, which happened both at the state and federal level, and free coinage of silver to produce more money, which we'll get to in a second.

speaker01 10:16:00

The People's Party attempted to appeal to a broad coalition of producing classes, especially minors and industrial workers, and it was particularly successful with those groups in Colorado, Idaho, as the preamble to the party platform put it, corruption dominates the ballot box, the legislatures, the Congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench from the same prolific womb of governmental injustice we breathe the two great classes, tramps and millionaires. Banks thought bubble, so some Western states were so populous, they even granted women the right to vote in the 1890s, which added tremendous lead to the populist electoral power, but most American voters stuck with the two main parties industrial workers never really joined in large numbers because the populist calls for free coinage of silver would lead to inflation, especially in food prices, and that would hurt urban laborers. But if it hadn't been for that threat of silver inflation, we might have three major political parties in the us today, or at least two different ones, stupid inflationary in everything populist leaders also struggled to unify because racism. Some populist leaders like Tom Watson, argued that black and white poor farmers were in the same boat, but southern populists were not inclined to take up the fight against segregation, and even Watson himself later began spouting antiques, andic rhetoric. But in the House on populist days of 1892, their presidential candidate, James Weaver, gained 1 million votes as a third party candidate. He carried five Western states and got 22 electoral, which is better than Mondale did. But the best known populist candidate was actually the Democratic nominee for president in 18 eight 96, William Jennings Bryan Bryan, who once spoke of America as being crucified on a cross of gold, firmly supported free coinage in 2000 thousand, and in the hopes that increasing the amount of money in circulation would raise prices for farmers and make it easier for people to pay off their debts, William Jennings Bryant is probably better known for the anti-semu lution stance he took in the famous Scopes Monkey trial, where he was up against none other than Clarence Darrow, but he did almost become president, so the populists were really wary of Brian as a Democrat because they feared that their ideas would be reduced to simply free silver, but they voted for him anyway, but Brian still lost the 1896 election to William McKinley in what has become known as the first modern political campaign business classes gave McKinley's campaign an unprecedented $10 million, which these days will buy you 9 ads in Iowa, but back then one UN entire presidential election he won the Electoral College in a landslide 271 to 170 Brian's defeat in 18890 five-six effectively put an end to the Populist Party the corruption in government, both federal and local continued.

speaker01 12:47:00

And new journalists, called muckrakers began exposing it in the press. And even though they were defeated at the polls, populist ideas, especially direct election of senators and a progressive income tax, quickly became mainstream. Now, these days, we don't necessarily associate those ideas with populists, which suggest that maybe they were right to worry about hitching their wagon to Brian Star. But in the end, would you rather have your name survive or see your ideas enact? But of course, many of the problems the populists were concerned with persisted, as did the scourge of Jim Crow. We will discuss those next week when we look at the Progressive era.

speaker01 13:18:00

Thanks for watching Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan Muller. Our script supervisor is Meredith Danko, the associate producer is Danica Johnson. The show is written by my high school history teacher Raul Meier, rosiana Rojas A, and myself, and our graphics team is Thought Cafe will make film's. If you like to one. So also questions about video that will be answered by our team of Hiss.

speaker01 13:42:00

Thank you for watching Crash Course. And as we say in my hometown, don't forget to be awesome.