Robber Baron Gilded

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ROBT R KIM KELLY

ROBBER BARRON 1877 rr

1919 STEEL, SEATTLE 1934 DOCK WEST AND EAST TEXTILE

TAFT HARTLEY 1947

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During the 2024 presidential race, Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee (RNC) claimed that then-Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats were obsessed with culture-war issues when they needed to be focusing on the economy, inflation and the working class. A GOP ad famously said, "Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you."

Harris' campaign pushed back, warning that Trump's economic policies — from aggressive tariffs to tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires — would be terrible for the working class. But Trump's messaging worked: Trump won the popular vote by roughly 1.5 percent.

When Trump was inaugurated on Monday, January 20, 2025, however, he was surrounded by tech billionaires — an image that, critics argued, was inconsistent with the message of economic populism he pushed during his campaign.

In an article published on March 2, Politico's Joshua Zeitz draws a parallel between "growing wealth inequality" in 2025 and the Gilded Age of the 19th Century — and lays out some reasons why conservatives should be worried about this disparity.

"At his second inauguration, as President Donald Trump promised to usher America into a new 'golden age,'" Zeitz observes, "he was surrounded in the Capitol Rotunda by a handful of tech billionaires whose companies account for roughly one-fifth of the market cap of U.S. public equities. It was a not-so-subtle sign that the second Trump Administration will be staffed, advised and led by titans of wealth. Which means that Trump's golden age looks an awful lot like a new Gilded Age."

:{Zeitz continues, "The Gilded Age was the era in the late 19th Century when business and industry dominated American life as never before or since. It was a period of unprecedented economic growth and technological progress, but also, of economic consolidation and growing wealth inequality. Titans of industry enjoyed enormous control over political institutions, while everyday Americans buckled under the strain of change. }:As the gap between the haves and the have-nots widened, political culture ultimately grew coarse — and violent. Then as now, growing income and wealth inequality opened a rift in American society, with a small group of elites amassing substantial power and influence."

The elites of the Gilded Age, Zeitz notes, included "industrial magnates like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie" — whereas in 2025, they include Amazon's Jeff Bezos (who owns the Washington Post) and Tesla/SpaceX/X.com CEO Elon Musk.

"Despite Trump's mass appeal among white working-class voters — and the fact that he performed better with working-class voters of other races than ever before — his coziness with billionaires like Musk and his pursuit of an economic agenda that focuses on tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans both suggest that his presidency will be more of a boon to modern-day tycoons than the average working person," Zeitz explains. "That could mean that the coming of America's second Gilded Age carries with it a warning for the GOP."

Zeitz adds, "By the 1890s, the pendulum had swung so hard in the direction of wealth and industry that America's brittle social compact threatened to come undone. In response to the extremes of the Gilded Age, a wave of progressive reform swept the nation from the 1890s to the 1910s, fundamentally reordering the social compact between citizens and their government."

*Joshua Zeitz's full article for Politico is available at this link.

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alternet-NO LNX

Democracy dies in their wallets

Twitter employees respond to new owner Elon Musk’s annihilation of top execs — on Twitter

Thom Hartmann October 28, 2024

Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.—Yale historian Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny

I cancelled my Washington Post subscription Friday evening. Jeff Bezos, Mister “Democracy Dies In Darkness” (the Post’s slogan on their masthead), by blocking his editorial staff from endorsing Harris chose darkness over his nation’s future, and I can’t support that.

The big mistake John D. Rockefeller made back in the day — that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk appear committed to not repeating — was not buying a media outlet like a newspaper. Had John D. had that sort of a vehicle to mold public opinion, American history may be very different.

By 1880, Rockefeller’s Ohio-based company controlled over 90 percent of the nation’s oil, owned 4000 miles of pipelines, and employed over 100,000 people. As Rockefeller’s oil empire got larger and larger, eating alive hundreds of smaller operations, ruthlessly driving up prices, destroying his competitors, and throwing workers out of a job, public outrage grew.

In 1887, Ohio sued him, arguing that he was operating in ways that were detrimental to the state and its citizens and businesses; in 1892 the Ohio Supreme Court ordered his company dissolved. As I lay out in detail in Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became “People,” this led Rockefeller to move Standard Oil to New Jersey after that state changed its corporation laws to allow for his monopolistic behavior.

Which brought in the federal government; in 1890, Ohio Senator John Sherman introduced and saw passed into law the Sherman Anti-Trust Act which provided not just fines but jail sentences against people like Rockefeller who were committed to destroying competition and owning entire markets. The law was flawed with a few loopholes and ambiguities, so it was amended in 1914 with the Clayton Anti-Trust Act.

Nonetheless, in 1906 progressive Republican Teddy Roosevelt’s administration filed an antitrust action against Rockefeller that went to the Supreme Court in 1911 during the administration of progressive Republican President William Howard Taft. The behemoth was broken up into 34 separate companies, an action that, like the breakup of AT&T by Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, led to an explosion of competition in the marketplace and a dramatic increase in shareholder value.

But back to Jeff Bezos and his 2013 purchase of The Washington Post.

It was reporters and editors for the hundreds of independent newspapers during the First Gilded Age (1880-1900) era that led the crusades against Rockefeller and his fellow monopolists. Investigative journalism was all the rage then, and it fed public demand for a return to competition and the de-throning of that age’s oligarchs.

The vast majority of workers were struggling and they worked for a very small 10 percent of the population who controlled most of the nation’s wealth (a situation we’re at again).

The result was constant strife, strikes, and the murder of labor leaders; entire towns were in arms (and sometimes ablaze) with labor conflict. The “problem of labor”was the number one issue of the day. As President Grover Cleveland — the only Democrat elected during that period — proclaimed in his 1887 State of the Union address:

“As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people’s masters.”

There was a broad consensus across American society that those “Robber Barons” were feathering their own nests at the expense of the American public, hurting both working class people and small businesses. The Supreme Court endorsed breaking up Standard Oil in 1911, and even broke up the Associated Press in 1944.

The law was so rigorously enforced — so the game of business could be played by all comers, not just the “big boys” — that in the 1960s the Supreme Court barred the merger of the Kinney and Buster Brown shoe companies because the new combined company would control a mere 5 percent of the shoe market.

Back in the ’60s every mall and downtown in America was filled with small, locally-owned businesses; there might be a Sears to anchor the shopping center or a retail part of town, but most shops, restaurants, and hotels were family-owned.

But then Reagan, in 1983, ordered the DOJ, SEC, and FTC to stop enforcing the Sherman Act, which is why today Nike, for example, controls about a fifth of the entire nation’s shoe market. It’s the same across industry after industry, from retail to grocery stores to railroads to computer software to social media to chip manufacturing to airlines to hotels…and on and on. In virtually every industry, a handful of massive companies control 80 percent or more of the market.

The Biden administration is the first to seriously try enforcement of the nation’s anti-trust laws since Carter broke up AT&T, going after Google and blocking mergers in multiple industries. It’s led a bunch of American billionaires to demand that the Federal Trade Commission’s head, Lina Kahn, be fired.

Kahn and her FTC went after Bezos last year, suing Amazon for running a monopoly that price-gouges customers and blocks out competition. The trial is scheduled for 2026 if Kahn keeps her job; a Trump administration would fire her immediately, and pressure from major corporate donors and billionaires is building on Harris to do the same.

Bezos also must remember well when he got on the wrong side of then-President Trump because of the Post’s coverage of the orange oligarch’s lies and crimes; Trump, in a fit of pique, awarded a $10 billion Pentagon contract for cloud computing to Microsoft, shocking analysts across the industry.

Bezos is also working for his Blue Origin spaceship company to get more billions in NASA and Pentagon contracts. He and his companies also own billions in Google and AirBNB stock as well as owning outright almost a hundred other companies.

Might be a good time to own one of the two most influential newspapers in America, eh?

Similarly, billionaire oligarch Elon Musk, in addition to apparently taking orders from Russian President Vladimir Putin, is fighting numerous government efforts to regulate his companies (which exist in large part because Obama bailed out Tesla in 2010 with $465 million, and NASA is now pouring hundreds of millions into SpaceX):

— Tesla is fighting the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) over union-related issues, with Musk taking a lawsuit to the Supreme Court alleging government protections of unions are unconstitutional.

— SpaceX is battling the NLRB over employee firings.

— The SEC is investigating Musk’s acquisition of Twitter (now X) and his “funding secured” tweets about taking Tesla private.

— The FTC is investigating X’s compliance with a $150 million privacy settlement.

— The Federal Communications Commission recently denied SpaceX’s Starlink a $886 million rural broadband award.

— The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is suing Tesla over alleged racial harassment.

— The FAA is in conflict with SpaceX over launch licensing and environmental reviews.

— The EPA has fined SpaceX for water-related violations.

— The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened multiple investigations into Tesla’s vehicle safety and Autopilot system.

— SpaceX faces scrutiny over its environmental impact at its Texas launch site.

To avoid the Rockefeller mistake, Musk — with the apparent help of two Russian oligarchs and the leader of Saudi Arabia — purchased Twitter, the online digital equivalent of our nation’s largest newspaper.

And he’s now using it to try to get Trump and Republicans into office, presumably so they can gut the FTC, FCC, SEC, NLRB, and any other regulator that might take him on to protect workers, the public, and the national interest.

We took on the superrich with success during the First Gilded Age, and our enforcement of antitrust laws lasted all the way to 1983, when Reagan blocked them, leading to the “merger mania” of the 1980s and bringing us today’s oligarchic business empires across multiple industries.

Now that we’re in America’s Second Gilded Age — with today’s billionaires vastly richer than Rockefeller’s wildest dreams — we confront a similar crossroads to that of previous generations.

Is it okay, for example, for billionaires to own media properties they can use to manipulate politics and government agencies to amplify their other business interests? Or that five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court have ruled that our morbidly rich plutocrats can own judges and politicians? Most Americans would probably say “No” to both.

At some point, America is going to have to confront its oligarch problem. And the sooner the better, if we don’t want darkness to entirely subsume our democracy.

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The Gilded Age in United States history is the late 19th century, from the 1870s to about 1900. The term for this period came into use in the 1920s and 1930s and was derived from writer Mark Twain's 1873 novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, which satirized an era of serious social problems masked by a thin gold gilding. The early half of the Gilded Age roughly coincided with the middle portion of the Victorian era in Britain and the Belle Époque in France. Its beginning in the years after the American Civil War overlaps the Reconstruction Era (which ended in 1877),^[1]. It was followed in the 1890s by the Progressive Era.

The Gilded Age was an era of rapid economic growth, especially in the North and West. As American wages were much higher than those in Europe, especially for skilled workers, the period saw an influx of millions of European immigrants. The rapid expansion of industrialization led to real wage growth of 60% between 1860 and 1890, spread across the ever-increasing labor force. The average annual wage per industrial worker (including men, women, and children) rose from $380 in 1880 to $564 in 1890, a gain of 48%. However, the Gilded Age was also an era of abject poverty and inequality as millions of immigrants—many from impoverished nations—poured into the United States, and the high concentration of wealth became more visible and contentious.^[2]

Railroads were the major growth industry, with the factory system, mining, and finance increasing in importance. Immigration from Europe and the eastern states led to the rapid growth of the West, based on farming, ranching, and mining. Labor unions became important in the very rapidly growing industrial cities. Two major nationwide depressions—the Panic of 1873 and the Panic of 1893—interrupted growth and caused social and political upheavals. The South after the Civil War remained economically devastated; its economy became increasingly tied to cotton and tobacco production, which suffered from low prices. With the end of theReconstruction era in 1877, African-American people in the South were stripped of political power and voting rights and were left economically disadvantaged.

The political landscape was notable in that despite some corruption, turnout was very high and national elections saw two evenly matched parties. The dominant issues were cultural (especially regarding prohibition, education, and ethnic or racial groups), and economic (tariffs and money supply). With the rapid growth of cities, political machines increasingly took control of urban politics. In business, massive, powerful, and wealthy trusts formed. Unions crusaded for the 8-hour working day and the abolition of child labor; middle class reformers demanded civil service reform, prohibition, and women's suffrage. Local governments across the North and West built public schools chiefly at the elementary level; public high schools started to emerge. The numerous religious denominations were growing in membership and wealth, with Catholicism becoming the largest denomination. They all expanded their missionary activity to the world arena. Catholics and Lutherans set up parochial schools and the larger denominations set up numerous colleges, hospitals, and charities. Many of the problems faced by society, especially the poor, during the Gilded Age gave rise to attempted reforms in the subsequent Progressive Era.^[3]

The name and the era

The term "Gilded Age" for the period of economic boom after the American Civil War up to the turn of the century was applied to the era by historians in the 1920s, who took the term from one of Mark Twain's lesser known novels, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873). The book (co-written with Charles Dudley Warner) satirized the promised 'golden age' after the Civil War, portrayed as an era of serious social problems masked by a thin gold gilding of economic expansion.^[4] In the 1920s and 30s "Gilded Age" became a designated period in American history. The term was adopted by literary and cultural critics as well as historians, including Van Wyck Brooks, Lewis Mumford, Charles Austin Beard, Mary Ritter Beard, Vernon Louis Parrington and Matthew Josephson. For them, "Gilded Age" was a pejorative term used to describe a time of materialistic excesses combined with extreme poverty.^[5][6]

The early half of the Gilded Age roughly coincided with the middle portion of the Victorian era in Britain and the Belle Époque in France. With respect to eras of American history, historical views vary as to when the Gilded Age began, ranging from starting right after the American Civil War (ended, 1865), or 1873, or as the Reconstruction Era ended in 1877.^[1] The point noted as the end of the Gilded Age also varies. It is generally given as the beginning of the Progressive Era in the 1890s (sometimes the United States presidential election of 1896)^{[7][8][9][10][11][12]} but also falls in a range that includes the Spanish–American War in 1898, Theodore Roosevelt's accession to the presidency in 1901, and even the U.S. entry into World War I (1917).^[1]

Industrial and technological advances

Main articles: Second Industrial Revolution, Rail transportation in the United States, and Economic history of the United States

The May 10, 1869 celebration of the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad.

Technical advances:{:(style="margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit:{]}:

The Gilded Age was a period of economic growth as the United States jumped to the lead in industrialization ahead of Britain. The nation was rapidly expanding its economy into new areas, especially heavy industry like factories, railroads, and coal mining. In 1869, the First Transcontinental Railroad opened up the far-west mining and ranching regions. Travel from New York to San Francisco now took six days instead of six months.^[13] Railroad track mileage tripled between 1860 and 1880, and then doubled again by 1920. The new track linked formerly isolated areas with larger markets and allowed for the rise of commercial farming, ranching, and mining, creating a truly national marketplace. American steel production rose to surpass the combined totals of Britain, Germany, and France.^[14]

London and Paris poured investment money into the railroads through the American financial market centered in Wall Street. By 1900, the process of economic concentration had extended into most branches of industry—a few large corporations, called "trusts", dominated in steel, oil, sugar, meat, and farm machinery. Through vertical integration these trusts were able to control each aspect of the production of a specific good, ensuring that the profits made on the finished product were maximized and prices minimized, and by controlling access to the raw materials, prevented other companies from being able to compete in the marketplace.^[15]Several monopolies --most famously Standard Oil--came to dominate their markets by keeping prices low when competitors appeared; they grew at a rate four times faster than that of the competitive sectors.^[16]

Increased mechanization of industry is a major mark of the Gilded Age's search for cheaper ways to create more product. Frederick Winslow Taylor observed that worker efficiency in steel could be improved through the use of very close observations with a stop watch to eliminate wasted effort. Mechanization made some factories an assemblage of unskilled laborers performing simple and repetitive tasks under the direction of skilled foremen and engineers. Machine shops grew rapidly, and they comprised highly skilled workers and engineers. Both the number of unskilled and skilled workers increased, as their wage rates grew.^[17]

Engineering colleges were established to feed the enormous demand for expertise. Railroads invented modern management, with clear chains of command, statistical reporting, and complex bureaucratic systems.^[18]They systematized the roles of middle managers and set up explicit career tracks. They hired young men ages 18–21 and promoted them internally until a man reached the status of locomotive engineer, conductor, or station agent at age 40 or so. Career tracks were invented for skilled blue-collar jobs and for white-collar managers, starting in railroads and expanding into finance, manufacturing, and trade. Together with rapid growth of small business, a new middle class was rapidly growing, especially in northern cities.^[19]

A Los Angeles oil district, ca.1895–1901

The United States became a world leader in applied technology. From 1860 to 1890, 500,000 patents were issued for new inventions—over ten times the number issued in the previous seventy years.George Westinghouse invented air brakes for trains (making them both safer and faster). Theodore Vail established the American Telephone & Telegraph Company and built a great communications network.^[20] Thomas Edison, in addition to inventing hundreds of devices, established the first electrical lighting utility, basing it on direct current and an efficient incandescent lamp. Electric power delivery spread rapidly across Gilded Age cities. The streets were lighted at night, and electric streetcars allowed for faster commuting to work and easier shopping.^[21]

Petroleum launched a new industry beginning with the Pennsylvania oil fields in the 1860s. The United States dominated the global industry into the 1950s. Kerosenereplaced whale oil and candles for lighting homes. John D. Rockefeller founded Standard Oil Company and monopolized the oil industry, which mostly produced kerosene before the automobile created a demand for gasoline in the 20th century.^[22]

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According to historian Henry Adams the system of railroads needed:

the energies of a generation, for it required all the new machinery to be created--capital, banks, mines, furnaces, shops, power-houses, technical knowledge, mechanical population, together with a steady remodelling of social and political habits, ideas, and institutions to fit the new scale and suit the new conditions. The generation between 1865 and 1895 was already mortgaged to the railways, and no one knew it better than the generation itself.^[23]

The impact can be examined through five aspects: shipping, finance, management, careers, and popular reaction.

...

The Republic for Which It Stands

Professor Richard White talked about his book The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896, in which he provides a history of Reconstruction and the Gilded Age.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?434021-1/the-republic-stands

https://www.c-span.org/video/?435307-1/gilded-suffragists