Mark Twain once commented that New York City's industries "have made 5,000 men wealthy, and for a good round million of her citizens they have made it a matter of the closest kind of scratching to get along" (Mark Twain's New York -- A Birthday Walking Tour). One effect of the technological boom of the late nineteenth century was that it clearly separated American society into the haves and the have-nots. The gap between the rich and poor widened as more people made fortunes or were driven to hard factory labor. In order to illustrate the specter of poverty that loomed over so many victims of industrialization, H.W. Brands, in his book The Reckless Decade: America in the 1890's, quotes extensively from Jacob A. Riis's How the Other Half Lives, published in 1890. Riis's book details life in the tenements of New York City during the 1880's, and he drives home one striking conclusion: not everyone during the Industrial Revolution was living out the American Dream. Mark Twain coined a term for the late nineteenth century that reflects the same dichotomy of wealth and poverty: "The Gilded Age." Many small farmers, driven out of work by large consolidated farms that could afford to produce at a lower cost, moved to the cities -- and hence, the factories -- to find work. Women, too, whose families were financially strapped, sought work in the factories. Riis notes,
These facts [on the working women of New York City] give a slight idea of the hardships and the poor pay of a business that notoriously absorbs child-labor. The girls are sent to the store before they have fairly entered their teens, because the money they can earn there is needed for the support of the family. If the boys will not work, if the street tempts them from home, among the girls at least there must be no drones. To keep their places they are told to lie about their age and to say that they are over fourteen. The precaution is usually superfluous. The Women's Investigating Committee found the majority of the children employed in the stores to be under age, but heard only in a single instance of the truant officers calling. In that case they came once a year and sent the youngest children home; but in a month's time they were all back in their places, and were not again disturbed. When it comes to the factories, where hard bodily labor is added to long hours, stifling rooms, and starvation wages, matters are even worse. The Legislature has passed laws to prevent the employment of children, as it has forbidden saloon-keepers to sell them beer, and it has provided means of enforcing its mandate, so efficient, that the very number of factories in New York is guessed at as in the neighborhood of twelve thousand (Riis chapter 20).In the grip of large corporations, factory workers endured mindlessly mechanized jobs and long hours under the hum of heavy machinery. The actual use of the great inventions showcased in America's expositions turned humans themselves into machines, giving new meaning to Hank Morgan's own decision in Connecticut Yankee to create a "Man Factory" to liberate the Britons.
A close examination of life in Industrial America reveals another contradiction: while domestic life, on average, became easier because of new technology, working life got harder. Cashman notes that the number of factories exploded in the last half of the nineteenth century: "Between 1865 and 1900 more and more workers were drawn into factories, foundries, and mills on the same low terms as common laborers. The total number of people employed in manufacturing increased from 1.3 million to 4.5 million. The number of factories or sweatshops rose from 140,000 to 512,000" (143). Progress and poverty, it seemed, could not be separated. Workers, often laboring under life-threatening conditions, had no protection from industrial accidents: in the same time period, 556 miners were killed in anthracite fields, and 1,565 were maimed for life (Cashman 149).
With so many millions of workers oppressed by their employers, something had to give. The tension released itself in the form of labor disputes and strikes, conflict between the high and low strata of society. One of the most famous strikes, against Carnegie Steel, took place in Homestead, Pennsylvania, in July 1892 (The Homestead and Pullman Strikes). The picture to the left shows the Carnegie Steel factory at Homestead.These facts about life in Mark Twain's America cast an ominous note on Hank Morgan's desire to spark a revolution. In Twain's time, the potential for revolution was directed against the people who held a place in American society similar to Hank's place among the Britons: the captains of industry.
Robber Barons
Who made up that fraction of society that held most of America's wealth? They were called "robber barons," lords of big business. They owned the companies whose workers were going on strike. Their names are familiar to us even today: among others, John D. Rockefeller, owner of Standard Oil; Andrew Carnegie, owner of Carnegie Steel; J.P. Morgan, railroad tycoon; and Jay Gould, active on Wall Street. Mark Twain remarked of Gould, "The people had desired money before his day, but he taught them to fall down and worship it" (Mark Twain's New York -- A Birthday Walking Tour). Brands notes that the robber barons were heroes to the youth of the time: primary models of success and objects to be emulated (96). To America of the time, money became the sole vehicle for obtaining power (Brands 51).During this time of consolidation of industry, when it seemed that anyone with the right inventive and business senses could make a fortune, even the inventors themselves tried to get in on the great fortunes being won and lost every day. Cashman states that Edison himself understood the monetary significance of selling his product -- a motivation that caused him to gain and lose several fortunes over the course of his life (20).
No matter how much money America had locked up in its industries, however, it was not enough to stave off economic depression. On May 5, 1893, four years after Mark Twain published Connecticut Yankee, the stock market crashed -- six hundred banks closed their doors and thousands of businesses failed (Schlereth 174). America faced a long period of pulling itself out of economic trouble, from which the nation now saw that technology could not protect it. For many Americans, the Gilded Age had lost its shine.
Celebrating American Ingenuity
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