WORKERS AND FARMERS IN THE GILDED AGE

1.  Meaning of the term “Gilded Age”

	Mark Twain

2.  General conditions for workers

	a) real wages rose (especially for “labor aristocracy”)

	b) increase in women and children in the labor force

		sweatshops

	c) paradox of industrialization

		Henry George, Progress and Poverty (1879)

	d) skilled workers

		8-hour day

		“ethic of mutuality”

2.  Class conflict, 1873-1877

	a) financial panic

	b) tramps

	c) Tompkins Square riot, 1874

	d) National railroad strike, 1877

3.  General conditions for farmers

	a) falling prices

		1864-68: wheat $1.96 per bushel

		1885-1889: wheat 90 cents per bushel

	b) impact of deflation on debtors

	c) sharecropping and debt peonage

4.  Farmers’ analysis

	a) “middlemen”

	b) insufficient money supply

		Greenbacks, silver

5.  Patrons of Husbandry (Grange), 1870s