The Gilded Age

The Gilded Age

During the Gilded Age, New York was the epicenter for industrialization, urbanization, and wealth. The Gilded Age took place in the 19th century and consisted of many aristocrats that shaped the wealth, poverty, and politics in New York. Andrew Carnegie, Henry George, Phillip A. White, and Mrs. Astor were a few of many individuals that expanded responsibility for the health, welfare, and education in this time period. For example, Andrew Carnegie was a philanthropist known as captain of industry. Mrs. Astor was also a philanthropist who donated millions of dollars on education. Phillip A. White was a black pharmacist, businessman, and member of the Board of Education. And Henry George was a white American economist, political activist, and journalist. 

Mrs. Astor

The Gilded Age

Mrs. Astor - Philanthropist

History 20

Itzel Mejia

The Gilded Age was a time period where the rich lived lavishly and carefree. Meanwhile many Americans and immigrants were poor and living in cramped and harsh conditions. Mrs. Brooke Russell Astor was an accomplished and giving person. Mrs. Astor a was a socialite, philanthropist and writer. She brought about many great changes in New York.  After the death of her third husband Vincent Astor in 1959 was when Brooke began to run the Astor Foundation.  Mrs. Astor was probably one of the last or is the last bridge to the Gilded Age.

As the head of the Vincent Astor Foundation Mrs. Astor promoted many organizations in New York City. She donated about 195 million dollars to New York City alone. Overall she was just a grand figure in New York. Mrs. Astor had stated that she donated a lot to New York since most of the Astor fortune was made in New York she felt the money should be spent in New York. So she began to give grants to the city’s museums, libraries, elderly homes, boys and girls clubs and other programs.  She really wanted to help out the community she herself would visit and become a member of foundations in where she would donate such as the New York Public Library, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. She had stated she wanted to donate but know what the money was going for.  

Mrs. Astor had a huge devotion to New York City; she would donate to parks, museums, cultural institutions, and the New Work Public Library. She had donated $20 million to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. One of her donations was for the Chinese Courtyard in Metropolitan Museum of Art. Mrs. Astor also made a huge contribution to education in New York City. She had donated $20 million to the New York Public Library. She wanted to help disadvantaged New Yorkers so she had donated many grants for education. And even today her donations are still helping, such as a grant to Hunter College of $300,000 to train second grade teachers in East Harlem to teach children who don’t speak English at home. Or Teaching Matters,$120,000 for a new system to help kindergarten through third grade teachers give high quality reading instruction in poor communities. Out of the $43 Million Brooke Astor Funds in The New York Community Trust, 9.2 million was for early childhood education.

Her main focus was to help better the lives of many New Yorkers. Brooke Astor gained the respect of many community activists, politicians, and other philanthropists due to her humility and will to help others. The Vincent Astor Foundation is still around today and still helping across all New York State. 

           

Works Cited

1. Estrin, James. Brooke Astor's donations helped develop a block on Astor Row on 130th Street in Harlem. Mrs.Astor on 130th Street in 1997. Digital image. The New York Times. Marilyn Berger, 13 Aug. 2007. Web. 3 Dec. 2014.

2.Gallery 217-Chinese Coutyard in the Style of the Ming Dynasty

Modeled on a seventeenth-century courtyard in the Garden of the Master of Fishing Nets in

Suzhou Gift of the Astor Foundation in 1981.

3. Marilyn Berger.”Brooke Astor,105.Aristrocrat of the People, Dies” New York Times 14,August2007:print

4.Sauro, William.“Brooke Astor” New York Times.March 28,2012 http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopic/people/a/brooke_astor/index.html

5.The Last Mrs. Astor: A New York Story Frances Kierman-W.W.Norton-2007

Henry George

 The Gilded Age

Henry George - Political Economist

History 20

Deborah L. Larnor

Henry George’s Proposal and Its Impact on Economic and Social Life in the Gilded Age

In the 1870s, there was an economic depression. After the economic depression, Henry George an American political economist struggled to understand how an era of exceptional economic growth and industrial production could cause widespread poverty, financial panic, unemployment and inequality of wealth by investigating the issue. By the time George finished his investigation on the economic disaster, he came out with a book titled Progress and Poverty in 1879. This book challenged the accepted policies of property rights and laissez-faire. It changed the way many people thought about and understood the political economy. In George’s book, he proposed a solution to economic inequality and industrial depression problems. My focus in this paper is to discuss George’s economic impact in the Gilded Age.

On September 2nd, 1839 Henry George was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At the age 14 years, George left school and went to sea in 1855. In 1858, George reached California and settled over there. He was a California typesetter, printer, social and land reformer, political economist and journalist. By 1860s, he was a writer for the San Francisco Times and a reporter for the San Francisco Post. He later owned the San Francisco Evening Post. In 1879, George published Progress and poverty and issued in New York and London. This book in no time acquired world-wide reputation. In this book, George proposed the “single tax” that promoted economic and social growth in the 1880s. He later moved to New York and then became a candidate of the United Labor Party for New York mayor in 1886. George died in New York on October 29th, 1897 (D. Appleton and Company).

By the end of the nineteenth century, the book Progress and Poverty had the best-selling both in the United States and the international market. As a result, it evoked the global land reform movement about dealing with poverty in the modern industrial world. Henry George made a proposal known as the ‘single tax’ as a solution to the economic inequality and the industrial depression problems. The single tax was not like the general property tax that taxed both the value of real estate and the personal property. But, single tax applied to the full value of land. The land would be taxed according to the value of its natural resources and its use. George believed that taxing land values only could generate all revenue needed to operate government. It would produce greater levels of opportunity, enrich the government and its programs, eliminate hardship, and strengthen productive life. Since the economic hardship was the problem during the gilded age, the book drew people’s attention to the problem and changed how people thought and understood the political economy. His idea gave excitement and inspired many people. Also, the book gave solutions to an unequal worth problem and the distribution of land that was a key component of the Gilded Age. George believed that the single tax would lead to land ownership as a common property more than an individual property (George Jr.).

In the early of 1880s, the professional discipline of economic changed due to the way George’s work gained popular attention. It threatened the growing number of professional economists. It led an effort to reinforce the studies of political economy in the United States. Based on George’s social ethics, religious leaders in U. S and Great Britain were inspired to question the morality of social and economic policy. George’s book helped to change the course of economic thought and discussion in the United States. In challenging the classical economic theories about the causes of poverty and low wages, Progress and Poverty helped transform the perception of political economy as a depressing science and renewed interest in the study of the laws and processes that govern economic activity. Due to that, college and university professors could not ignore George Henry’s book  (Newton, 1971).

In conclusion, George proposed a deceptively simple solution to the problems of economic inequality and industrial depression after the Gilded Age. His book was contrast to other social commentators of his era, who attributed economic disruptions to overproduction or unsound monetary policies, Henry George singled out one of the most cherished institutions of liberal capitalist societies:  private property in land.

                     

The picture shows The Great Labor Parade of
September 1 of the Gilded Age

Henry George, political economist and author of Progress and Poverty by Karl Marx 

This picture is a cover page of Henry George Jr.’s book 

Bibliography

Cord, S. B. (1965). Henry George: Dreamer or Realist? Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

D. Appleton and Company. (1888). Biography of Henry George - 1839-1897. Retrieved from http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist9/hgeorge2.html

George Jr., H. (1900). The life of Henry George. New York: Robert Schalkenbach Foundation.

Newton, B. (1971). The Impact of Henry George on British Economists, I.: The First Phase of Response, 1879-82; Leslie, Wicksteed and Hobson. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 30, 179-186. doi:10.1111/j.1536-7150.1971.tb02957.x.

Pictures From:

“http://www.woodshistory.com/industrialization-and-the-gilded-age.html”

“http://democracyandclassstruggle.blogspot.com/2014/08/karl-marx-on-henry-george_6.html”

“http://www.amazon.com/Progress-Poverty-Henry-George-ebook/dp/B004HYH07Q”

Andrew Carnegie

 The Gilded Age

Andrew Carnegie - Philanthropist

History 20

Nabila Insanali

        During the Gilded Age, New York was the epicenter for industrialization, urbanization, and wealth. The Gilded Age took place in the 19^th century, and consisted of many significant aristocrats that helped shape the wealth, poverty, and politics in New York. Andrew Carnegie was a philanthropist, commonly referred to as the captain of industry due to his monopoly in steel. The road to Andrew Carnegie’s success greatly impacted the United States during the Industrial Revolution. He revolutionized the way things are done today in business, philanthropy, and architecture.  

As an immigrant from Scotland, he arrived in America when it was known as a land of agriculture, and thanks to the contributions of him and many others, America then transformed into an era of industry and commerce. Carnegie has greatly impact our economy and influenced our decisions as leaders, educators and business men.

Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish immigrant, who migrated to the United States when he was thirteen years old with his poor parents and settled in Pennsylvania. His acquired his first job that same year which was working in a cotton mill where he earned $1.20 per week. Later on in his life he began work as a telegrapher and always worked to the best of his ability. He had a longing for obtaining knowledge and took advantage of every opportunity that crossed his path. While working in the telegraph office, he met with a man named Thomas A. Scott who employed him as a private secretary and telegrapher at Pennsylvania Railroad, and began the series of events that led up to Carnegie’s steel tycoon (Meltzer 1997, Karwatka 12)

Carnegie embarked on his career working in the Pennsylvania Railroad at the same time the Civil War had officially begun. However, Carnegie felt a calling toward the steel industry and did a risky but bold thing and quit his job at the railroad company to invest in the steel industry. The Industrial Revolution was upon the nation and the demand for reliable transportation led to Carnegie venturing to the steel industry. Carnegie formed the Keystone Bridge Company which is soon where he built his first steel plant and worked to replace wooden bridges with iron ones for more strength and support. Carnegie saw the future in the steel industry and hired worked he believed could help him change the steel industry and advance the nation and in 1892 he formed Carnegie Steel Company.

Andrew Carnegie’s efforts to drive down the costs of steel and increase production revolutionized steel fabrication in the United States.  In addition, it also made steel more accessible and affordable to the nation. He built plants around the country, using technology and methods that made manufacturing steel easier, faster and more productive. For every step of the process, he owned exactly what he needed: the raw materials, ships and railroads for transporting the goods, and even coal fields to fuel the steel furnaces (Carnegie 2007). Cheap and efficient mass production of steel was what led to his monopoly of steel production. He is notoriously known for overworking workers and underpaying them. In effort to make enormous profits, he ruthlessly cut wages and increased hours. Carnegie also used a strategy called the Bessemer process for steel making which was an inexpensive way of producing steel from molten pig. The need for and use of steel skyrocketed.  Steel was being used for bridges, skyscrapers, railroads and much more to benefit our nation.

His work in the steel industry earned him title of the world's richest man at age 66.  With this new status Andrew Carnegie wanted to become a philanthropist, a person who gives money to good causes. “He [strongly] believed in the "Gospel of Wealth," which meant that wealthy people were morally obligated to give their money back to others in society” (American Library)

Even though Carnegie share his wealth by making charitable donations before his retirement, giving his money away became his new quest.  One way he made his money useful was the founding of the Carnegie Institution to fund scientific research to various areas.  He also felt that the educators of this country made great sacrifices and contribution and as a result he rewarded them by established a pension fund with a $10 million donation (Meltzer 1997).

Andrew Carnegie’s love for reading was greatly influenced by his childhood experience and by Colonel James Anderson who allowed the working boys to use his library freely.  His memory of Colonel Anderson's generosity influenced his support for education.  This cherished memory motivated him to give money to various towns and cities to build more than 2,000 public libraries and over $125 million to a foundation called the Carnegie Corporation to aid colleges and schools educate the American public (American Library).

World peace was another notable cause that Carnegie supported.  “He established the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and funded the building of The Hague Palace of Peace, which houses the World Court, in the Netherlands.  In a span of 12 years, Carnegie had given away about 90 percent of his fortune to notable and worthy causes.

Andrew Carnegie is remembered as a self-made steel tycoon and one of the wealthiest 19th century U.S. businessmen. Carnegie became the dominant force in the industry, a great innovator, and an exceptionally wealthy man (Karwatka 12, Meltzer, 1997). His business helped to fuel the economy and shape the nation into what it is today. As a Philanthropist, he led by examples.  He used this wealth to build libraries and made donations to various causes. He also gave back a lot by making Carnegie Hall in NYC and investing in many colleges Some see Carnegie as a robber baron in the sense that he made a lot of money, created a monopoly by purchasing all the steel and iron companies, and paid his workers very little. But on the other hand he is also considered as a captain of industry because he thought of something so revolutionary and something that changed the world and how things work forever .In addition to traveling and entertaining leading figures in an array of fields, he also wrote a few books and articles sharing his views on the social responsibility of wealthy individuals to use their assets to help others.  Carnegie’s impact on our economy continues to influence our decisions as leaders, educators and business men. 

Works Cited

Karwatka, Dennis. “Andrew Carnegie-America's steel Giant.”   Tech Directions: Dec. 96, Vol.56 Issue 5, p12.    

Meltzer, Milton.  The many lives of Andrew Carnegie (1915-2009).  New York: Franklin Watts, c1997.

Andrew Carnegie.  Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie.  BiblioBazaar, 2007.

Biography.com. < http://www.biography.com/people/andrew-carnegie-9238756#philanthropy>

Accessed November 17, 2014.

American Library.  <http://www.americaslibrary.gov/aa/carnegie/aa_carnegie_phil_1.html>

Accessed Nov 17, 2014.

Phillip A. White

          

The Gilded Age

Dr. Philip A. White – Black Aristocrat 

History 20

Christopher Cherry

Black Aristocrats (Gatewood)

   The Gilded Age (1870 – 1890), was marked by the growth of industry, innovations, wealth and a wave of immigrants. The names commonly associated with this time were prominent White men, such as Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and J. P. Morgan.  These men and their families were the hallmark of this time period. However, often excluded and not discussed are those prominent, elite Black men and their families. Philip A. White was part of New York’s Black elite, third generation. He was born free in 1823, despite the fact that slavery was still legal in New York during this time (Peterson). He was described as a studious, temperate and methodical self-made man (The Late P.A White). A White newspaper in the 1880s did report that there was “a colored aristocracy in this city as distinct and as exclusive as that of Murray Hill” (Gatewood).  In 1901 W.E.B DuBois approximated that less than ten of New York’s Black elite owned over $50,000 worth of real-estate. This indisputably solidified your membership into what was commonly known as the “black 400”. However, during this period of time, few could be considered wealthy. 

Code of Ethics

            Great emphasis was placed on education, a Protestant work ethic, and a strict adherence to a code of respectability not so different from high class Whites.  Adhering to this code was crucial, in order to avoid retaliation of those who did not agree with the 14^th Amendment, which stated that everyone born on U.S. soil, regardless of color, was granted citizenship. Despite the fact that they were citizens, there was still a great divide over how they were able to contribute to society. Furthermore, due to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, if at any time they were accused of being a slave, they could be returned to slavery. This would mean losing any wealth obtained as well as being separated from their families indefinitely.  “...Upper-class black New Yorkers, many of whom were well educated, cultured, and refined, sought to avoid being ‘classed with the most degraded and brutal element of their race’ by keeping to themselves and trying to ‘make their standards as high as they can’” (Gatewood).  With all this in mind, Black aristocrats kept their families and social affairs private and out of site from the rest of the world.   Given that they were not welcome into the popular New York restaurants of the time (such as Delmonico’s and Sherry’s), they instead spent their money on their own homes, dinners, and parties as compared with White men of the same income, because they did not have the same opportunities to spend it outside their home (Gatewood).  

Biography

            African Free School No. 2 educated and produced the heads of many prominent, wealthy Black families, such as the Whites, Scottrons, Marses, Guigons, and Lansings, just to name a few.  Philip A. White attended the African free school system which was established in 1790 by the New York Manumission Society.  At the age of 16 he began an apprenticeship in the pharmacy of James

Black Aristocrats (Gatewood)

McCune Smith who was an alumni of the African Free School No.2 (Peterson, 2012), who later became the first Black doctor in the United States.  Philip A. White attended the College of Pharmacy of the City of New York and graduated in 1844. He was noted as being the first Black man to receive a diploma from that school. The same year as his graduation, he opened his own drugstore in Lower Manhattan, which later grew in to a large retail business (Peterson). Philip White became a member of the city’s major professional pharmaceutical societies as well as the Academy of Sciences and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Legacy

            In 1883 Philip A. White was appointed by Mayor Seth Low to the Brooklyn Board of Education. In this position he championed for the Black schools to be on the same par as the White schools. “What we contend for, and what Dr. White and every other colored man of sense contends for, is not that colored schools should be abolished but that no more inhibitions should rest upon colored children than upon White ones, that the same laws which govern one class of citizens should govern every other class, that discrimination should not be applied to one class while another is allowed every immunity – that a sign-board which proclaims that my child shall go this far and no further, while no such sign-board proclaims the limitations of my neighbor’s child’s rights is an outrage not to be borne in silence” (Dr. Philip A. White).  He successfully advocated for the improvement of education for African American children. He was responsible for a resolution being adopted by the Brooklyn School Board which directed White schools to accept Black children to their schools by using the same criteria as they would for other races (Dr. Philip A. White). He held this position on the school board until his death in 1891, at the age of 68. Dr. Philip A. White died in his home in Brooklyn, New York with his family and closest friends by his side.

Works Cited

“Dr. Philip A. White.” New York Globe. 22 December 1883.

Gatewood, William B. (1993). Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880 – 1920. Indian             University Press.

Peterson, Carla L. (2011). Black Gotham A Family of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City. University Press: New Haven and London.

Peterson, Carla L. “Answers About Black History in 19^th-Century New York, Part 1.” New          York Times. 15 February 2012.

“The Late P.A. White. One of the Most Prominent of Our Men Passes Away.” New York Age.    21 February 1891.