By my count, there are 15 people who have not yet given me an essay and who are not writing a research paper. Also, only 2 people have given me essays revised after feedback from members of their small group.
If you are unclear on any aspect of this requirement, please speak up now.
| 4,5 | October 31st |
| 2,3 | November 9th |
| 7,8 | November 14th |
| 1 | November 16th |
Please be in class the day your small group meets with me.
Before examining these works individually, it is important to consider some of the distinctive features of the newly industrialized society. We haven’t the time to attempt an historical review of industrialization, but we can attempt to single out the most problematic qualities of industrial society and indicate how those qualities were rooted in the industrialization process itself. What we gain by this, hopefully, is a better understanding of the social environment to which these works are addressed.
Industrialization was extraordinarily rapid: In thirty years industrial capacity and output increased over five-fold. “By 1860, $1 billion had been invested in American industry, and the factories and shops that made up our industrial community produced goods that year valued at about $1.8 billion. By 1890, the capitalization of industry had soared to $6.5 billion, and the annual value of industrial production approached $10 billion” (Hofstadter et. al., 473). By 1890 the United States was the leading manufacturing nation in the world. Another crude measure of the pace of change comes from patent records. In the entire history of the United States up to 1860, only 36,000 patents had been granted. For the period from 1860 to 1890, the figure was 440,000.
It was marked by a sudden shift from a rural, agrarian society to an urban one dominated by factories: After the 1890 census, the Census Bureau announced the closing of the frontier. There were no more large tracts of land open for settlement. At the same time, technological change made farming far more productive per farm worker but also more capital intensive. The influence of the ideal of an agrarian republic waned with the decline of the farming population and the thorough commercialization of agriculture. The ranks of the industrial working class swell, and a new middle class of corporate and public sector professionals emerges. By 1898 there were 17,000,000 million workers. The proportion of people living in cities doubled between 1860 and 1900, from 16% to 33%. Many cities experienced enormous growth spurts. Between 1850 and 1900 New York’s population increased from 1,200,000 to over 3,000,000, Pittsburgh’s from 67,000 to 450,000, and Chicago’s from 30,000 to 1,700,000. Urban growth is chaotic--virtually devoid of planning or zoning, controlled by private real estate interests, and marked by often unrestricted pollution of water, land and air. Urban political machines often provided protection and patronage to ethnic immigrants, but also tended to be very corrupt.
It established an economy dominated by large corporations: Before the Civil War, the corporate form of organization was confined to a few sectors of the economy. After the war, it became the leading form of economic organization. It allowed the wealth of thousands of investors to be pooled, and it enabled the firm to continue in existence despite changes in leadership (unlike partnerships or single proprietorships, which were liable to dissolution or reorganization when one of the principals departed). It protected the personal wealth of investors by the legal mechanism of limited liability, according to which investors were only liable for a corporation’s obligations to the extent of their own investment. Rulings by the Supreme Court from 1886 onward interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment so as to make corporations legal persons entitled to “due process” of law, weakening the states’ power of regulation.
Around the corporate economy new classes formed: an executive class at the top, as mergers built giant corporations and interlocking directorships facilitated cooperation among them; professional (and moderate stock-owning) classes in the middle; below them an industrial working class (itself stratified by skill, ethnicity, and other factors); and at the bottom, the destitute and the vagrant. Stock ownership was an important means by which many American of moderate means came to have a stake in the success of this economy (though stock manipulation by rich insiders also ruined some of them). By 1900 about 4,400,000 persons had investments in American corporations.
Periodic economic crises and the constant threat of ruinous competition inspired a search for stable bases of profitability, a search that varied with the condition of particular firms, industrial sectors, and the overall economy. The wave of mergers and buy-outs that occurred around the turn of the century was one expression of this. Concentration facilitated price-fixing and the division of markets. Spreading networks of interlocking directorates was another, since these enhanced businesses’ ability to negotiate agreements among themselves and blurred boundaries between firms that shared directors. The growing power of finance capital was a third stabilizing force, since it gave a handful of leading bankers the ability to rationalize groups of firms and even whole sectors of the economy. Government regulation, particularly federal regulation, was a fourth method of stabilization. Federal regulations could impose uniform requirements on an industry, for example uniform rates on railroads, thus limiting competition. Regulations could also be used as “entrance barriers,” raising the costs facing new firms wishing to enter a market.
The movement away from pure competitive capitalism was rooted in the process of capitalist industrialization itself. Competition, especially when combined with an accelerating pace of organizational and technical improvement, resulted in periodic overproduction, driving weaker firms bankrupt and precipitating depressions. Over time, this resulted in growing concentration of ownership, especially in older sectors, for example steel (US Steel), oil (Standard Oil), and the railroads (J. P. Morgan).
It created a new infrastructure for transportation, communication, and coordination and control: In 1873, there were 70,000 miles of railroad. In just the next 20 years, another 100,000 miles of track were laid. This period saw the invention and widespread use of the telegraph (195,000 miles owned by Western Union in 1878) and the telephone (invented in 1876, long distance service introduced in 1884).
A predominantly immigrant urban working class endured harsh working conditions yet faced very difficult obstacles to organizing: There was very little in the way of regulations governing wages, hours, or working conditions. Workers who suffered on the job injuries or who were not paid according to their expectations often had no legal alternative other than filing a civil suit for damages, an expensive proposition. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890), intended to curb the formation of trusts and other monopolies, was interpreted by the Supreme Court to prohibit strikes by unions against any firm engaged in interstate commerce, on the grounds that this constituted a restraint of trade. In general, the political and judicial climate was very anti-union.
The sharp cycles of the economy meant that workers faced periods of high unemployment when they weren’t working 60-80 hours a week for six or seven days a week. In addition, through the time and motion studies of Frederick Taylor and others and with the invention of the assembly line and other technological and organizational improvements, work was accelerated while becoming at the same time more monotonous and “deskilled.”
Labor organizing faced other problems besides opposition from employers and the state. The cultural and linguistic diversity of the working class and the unfamiliarity of many with the laws and customs of the new country was one. Many immigrants, moreover, were actually migrant laborers who intended to return once they had saved enough money to start over. Looking upon their work in America as temporary, they hoped for deliverance from its difficulties through emigration, not social transformation. Emigration back home varied between 30 and 40 percent of immigration from the 1880s through 1914.
Another obstacle to organizing was the ethnic stratification of workers. The influx of immigrants was a boon to native born workers, who were moved into lower managerial and administrative positions and--along with skilled British and German workers--into higher paying craft jobs. This stratification was reinforced by the American Federation of Labor, which was not an organization of workers but of craft unions, and which was dedicated to protecting the privileged positions of unionized craft workers.
Finally, belief in social mobility--the Horatio Alger dream of going from rags to riches--undoubtedly weakened efforts to forge solidarity among workers.
As a result of these and other problems, of the 17,000,000 million workers in 1898, only 500,000 were unionized.
If there is a common thread linking the readings in this segment, it is that each responds to the new realities of mammoth corporate and governmental powers, the consequent erosion of democratic institutions, the breakdown of older forms of community life, and the dangers of escalating civil strife. The authors generally attempt both to specify needed social reforms (or, in the case of Sumner, to justify existing conditions) and to rearticulate or reinvent traditional ideologies--particularly those of liberalism, republicanism and the Christian social ethic--in light of radically changed conditions. In doing so, they also incorporate new thinking, such as Social Darwinism (Sumner), an appreciation for scientific rationality (Dewey), “producerism” and the monetary thinking behind the call for “fiat money” (the Populists), Marxism (Debs), and so on.