Tennessee WordSmith: A Liberal Dose, January 9, 2025 "Working Class Resistance in the Gilded Age"

A Liberal Dose

January 9, 2025

Troy D. Smith

“Working Class Resistance in the Gilded Age”

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been talking about the Gilded Age (1870s-1890s), a time dominated by robber barons (super-wealthy industrialists). This was an age when there were practically no regulations on businesses, and no protections for workers. It was during this time that the term “social Darwinism” started being used, which was an effort to use the (increasingly popular) works of Darwin about evolution, especially “survival of the fittest,” to justify the economic realities of the day. People who become rich, this theory explained, did so because they were exceptional, and the best examples of the human species. People who were poor, the theory went, were the worst examples of the human species -due either to their own inferiority or their own laziness. In other words, rich people are rich because they deserve to be, and poor people are poor because they deserve to be. Elevating (or sustaining) poor people, then, would be a disservice to the human species, because only the “fittest” should survive. Another common theory of that age was called the “horse-and-sparrow” theory: it is wasteful to feed seeds and grain to birds, one should feed it to the horses instead. Then, when the horses poop, the birds can peck out what they need from that. The obvious metaphor was that government should not give aid to the poor, they should use that money to help business and the poor will get their living that way. Will Rogers would later rename that idea the “trickle-down” theory.

Social Darwinism was a new term in that time, but it was not a new idea. Half-a-century earlier, Charles Dickens had Ebenezer Scrooge say of the needy, “Let them die, then, and decrease the surplus population.” Half-a-century after the Gilded Age, at the beginning of the Great Depression, banking magnate (and Hoover’s Secretary of the Treasury, and who also used the term trickle-down) Andrew Mellon said that depressions are good things, because “enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.”

Social Darwinism was a way that the wealthiest individuals could counter the accusation that they were “robber barons” -they were only following the dictates of nature. They also pointed to the good works they did with some of their wealth -the names Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Vanderbilt are still connected with a lot of things which those men and their families initially paid for (maybe you’ve heard of Carnegie Mellon University- I know you’ve heard of Vandy).

Most working people of the time, though, were not content with being told to pick through the poop and be grateful. The Gilded Age saw the birth of the modern labor movement, and decades of struggle to secure better wages and working conditions rather than count on the robber barons deciding to just GIVE them such things (which they almost never did). The Gilded Age was also the time when Wild West outlaws and bank robbers started to be celebrated by many in the country, especially in the Midwest, and viewed as Robin-Hood-like social heroes. In reality, Jesse James, the Dalton Gang, and others like them did not really rob from the rich and give to the poor -they robbed from the rich and went home. But for many farmers in the Midwest, who felt oppressed by banks and railroad companies, that was enough. Stick it to the man. Fifty years later, there would be another wave of dubious “social bandit” bank robbers who would be popular in rural America -people like John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, and others. I speak, of course, of the Great Depression. When income inequality reaches a tipping point, working class people throughout history have tended to celebrate the outlaws working against the system, misplaced or not. I see some of that in the wave of support for Luigi Mangione.

By the way, in 1904 Elizabeth Magie invented “The Landlord’s Game,” later known as “Monopoly.” The original point of the game was not to show how much fun establishing monopolies can be, but rather to show how unfair and frustrating the system was for everyone involved except the one winner. Side note: I absolutely hate playing Monopoly. It’s hard enough just trying to pay the bills without being bankrupted for entertainment.

Eventually, as enough working-class people got tired of the robber barons’ control, farmers and industrial workers started organizing, which led to the Populist Movement of the 1890s, and to a fairly successful third political party (The People’s Party, better known as the Populist Party), which had a profound influence and led to the Progressive Era (starting with Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican).

Standing by and cheering on outlaws may have felt good to a lot of people, but it didn’t change anything. Organizing and turning the tide of public opinion, especially among the middle and working classes, did.

Don’t be content to be trickled down on. Don’t be content to live on the poop that is cast your way. Make a REAL change.

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE