Failures of the Gilded Age

To explain the causes which keep much of the finest intellect of the country away from national business is one thing; to deny the unfortunate results would be quite another. Unfortunate they are. But the downward tendency observable since the end of the Civil War seems to have been arrested.
When the war was over, the Union saved, the curse of slavery gone forever, there came a season of contentment and of lassitude. A nation which had surmounted such dangers seemed to have nothing more to fear. Those who had found with tongue and pen and rifle might now rest on their laurels. 
After long continued strain and effort, the wearied nerved and muscle sought repose. It was repose from political warfare only. For the end of the war coincided with the opening of a time of swift material growth and abounding material propensity in which industry and the development of the West absorbed more and more of the energy of the people. Hence a neglect of details of politics such as had never been seen before. 

We have an era of material inventions. We now need a renaissance of moral inventions... Monopoly and anti-monopoly... represent the two great tendencies of our time: monopoly, tendency to combination; anti-monopoly, the demand for social control of it. 
As the man is bent toward business or patriotism, he will negotiate combination or agitate for laws to regulate them. The first is capitalistic and the second is social. The first, industrial; the second, moral. The first promotes wealth; the second, citizenship. Our young men can no longer go west; they must go up or down. Not new land, but new virtue must be the outlet for the future.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that the provisions of this act shall apply to any common carriers engaged in the transportation of passengers or property wholly by railroad... from one state or territory or the United States or the District of Columbia, to any other state or territory of the United States, or the District of Columbia...
     Section 3. That it shall be unlawful for any common carrier subject to the provisions of this act to make or give any undue or unreasonable preference or advantage to any particular person, company, firm, corporation, or locality...
     Section 4. That is shall be unlawful for any common carrier subject to the provision of this act to charge or receive any greater compensation in the aggregate for the transportation of passengers or of like kind of property, under substantially similar circumstances and conditions, for a shorter than for a longer distance over the same line. 

By the act of the legislature of 1888, the factory inspectors were required to enforce the law relating to the indenturing of apprentices... The industrial conditions existing at, and previously to, the time of the passage of the Law of 1871 are so completely revolutionized that the old form of apprenticeship has become almost obsolete.
Where, in former times, boys were expected to learn a trade in all its features, they are now simply put at a machine or at one branch of the craft, and no understanding exists that they shall be taught any other branch or the use of any other machine.
Employers claim that these boys are not apprentices, and even if they so desired, could not teach... an apprentice all the intricacies of a trade, for the reason that where the skill and intelligence of a journeyman [trained] workman were once essential, a simple machine now unerringly performs the service, and consequently there is no occasion for an apprentice to learn to do the labor by hand. These were the principal reason given by employers as to why the law had become inoperative.

The Chairman: We want to find out how the working people of Fall River [Massachusetts] are living and doing... Just tell us the condition of the operatives there, in your own way.
The Witness: [Dr. Snow]: With regard to the effect of the present industrial system upon [the laboring classes] physical and moral welfare, I should say it was of such a character as to need mending, to say the least. It needs some racial remedy. Our laboring population is made up very largely of foreigners, men, women, and children, who have either voluntarily come to Fall River or who have been induced to come there by the manufactures. As a class they are dwarfed physically...
They are dwarfed, in my estimation, sir, as the majority of men and women who are brought up in factories must be dwarfed under the present industrial system; because by their long hours of indoor labor and their hard work they are cut off from the benefit of breathing fresh air and from the sights that surround a workman outside a mill. Being shut up all day long in the noise and in the high temperature of these mills they become physically weak.