Civilisation des Etats-Unis 9b: Gilded Age Prof. Sämi LUDWIG

“Robber Barons” or “Captains of Industry”? → eliminate competition: Vertical integration and horizontal integration Quotes: Cornelius Vanderbilt: “Law? What do I care about the law? Hain’t I got power?” Thomas Mellon advises his son to hire a substitute in the Civil War: “... such opportunities for making money had never existed in all my former experience.” - Vanderbilt sells leaky ships - J.P. Morgan, age 24, sells discarded cabins to government for $112’000.--

Herbert Spencer’s Social Darwinism John D. Rockefeller to his Sunday School class: “The growth of a large business is merely the survival of the fittest …” Andrew Carnegie: “I had found the truth of evolution.” L: The Gospel of Wealth (1889) “… the man who dies rich dies disgraced.” public libraries = philanthropy!

private universities: Ezra Cornell Johns Hopkins Leland Stanford Cornelius (Commodore) Vanderbilt James B. Duke art collections: Henry Clay Frick Huntington library Guggenheim Museum (Peggy Guggenheim) → Lengnau AG (Meyer Guggenheim)

Trusts competing companies exchange trustee certificates → ownership original → management consolidated 1879 Standard Oil Company (John D. Rockefeller) “cutthroat competition” 90% refinery business 1892 Supreme Court orders dissolution 1899 Standard Oil Company of New Jersey → business-friendly legislation 1892 Carnegie Steel Company (Andrew Carnegie) rebates from railroad

Antitrust laws: 1887 Interstate Commerce Act (I.C.A.) against rebates drawbacks long and short hauls pooling 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act “conspiracy in restraint of trade or commerce” → ant. WTO? Investment bankers - J.P. Morgan 1901 buys Carnegie steel corporation

Labor: tariff protects capital but not workers 1866 National Labor Union 8-hour day, better living conditions (slums) 1869 Knights of Labor “Grand Master Workman” Terrence V. Powderly ’000 members also black and mixed local chapters 1886 Chicago: Haymarket Square bombings anarchist speeches 200 policemen 4 foreigners executed

1886 AFL: American Federation of Labor Samuel Gompers conservative, skilled workers only white members 1894 Pullman strike Sherman antitrust act invoked, “restraint on trade” American Railway Union president Eugene V. Debs arrested

International Workers of the World (1905)