THE GILDED AGE

"All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and well-born, the other the mass of the people. . . . Give therefore to the first class a distinct permanent share in the government."
--Alexander Hamilton

Capitalists endlessly invoke the wonders of their ideology as responsible for the affluent modern society; they look back on the Gilded Age (1870 - 1929) as the closest to their "ideal" -- the laissez-faire capitalist society. Below are some excerpts from Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States which should give you an idea of what "laissez-faire" capitalism is all about -- laissez-faire for the poor, government handouts for the rich!

It's important to note this: anarchists don't seek to reform capitalism -- to make it more tenable to workers -- quite simply, capitalism cannot be reformed! It is an unjust and evil system. This distinguishes us from the so-called "liberal" view, which simply holds that an unregulated capitalism is bad -- that capitalism itself is a good thing. But this is a fallacy -- capitalism allows the wealthy to control society -- which must invariably mean the death of democracy, and of course, anarchy.

• In 1856, in Wisconsin, the LaCrosse and Milwaukee Railroad got a million free acres from the government after giving $900,000 in stocks and bonds to seventy-two state legislators and the governor.

• Throughout the1850s, state governments GAVE railroad speculators 25 million acres of public land FREE of charge, along with millions of dollars in loans. During the Civil War, the national government gave railroad capitalists over 100 million acres of land. Intercontinental railroads were NOT built by laissez-faire capitalism -- they did it entirely through government land and money. The Central Pacific Railroad got 9 million acres of free land and $24 million in loans (after spending $200,000 in Washington on bribes). The Union Pacific Railroad got 12 million acres of free land and $27 million in government loans.

• By 1904, the railroad had concentrated from a thousand disparate lines to six conglomerates, allied with either Morgan or Rockefeller interests.

• In 1904, 27,000 workers were killed on the job in manufacturing, transportation and agriculture. In one year in New York, there were some 50,000 accidents in factories.

• In 1907, Edwin Markham wrote in Cosmopolitan:

  "In unaired rooms, mothers and fathers sew by day and by night. Those in the home sweatshop must work cheaper than those in the factory sweatshops.... And the children are called in from play to drive and drudge beside their elders...

  All the year in New York and in other cities you may watch children radiating to and from such pitiful homes. nearly any hour on the East Side of New York City you can see them -- pallid boy or spindling girl -- their faces dulled, their backs bent under a heavy load of garments piled on head and shoulders, the muscles of the whole frame in a long strain....

  Is it not a cruel civilization that allows little hearts and little shoulders to strain under these grown-up responsibilities, while in the same city, a pet cur is jeweled and pampered on a fine lady’s velvet lap on the beautiful boulevards?"

• Testimony of one of New York’s garment workers:

  . . . dangerously broken stairways. . . windows few and so dirty. . . . The wooden floors that were swept once a year. . . . Hardly any other light but the gas jets burning by day and by night. . . . the filthy, malodorous lavatory in the dark hall. No fresh drinking water. . . . mice and roaches. . . .

  During the winter months...how we suffered from the cold. In the summer we suffered from the heat. . . .

  In these disease-breeding holds we, the youngsters together with the men and women toiled from seventy and eighty hours a week! Saturdays and Sundays included! . . . A sign would go up on Saturday afternoon: "If you don’t come in on Sunday, you need not come in on Monday." . . . Children’s dreams of a day off shattered. We wept, for after all, we were only children. . . .

• A 1909 account of women working in steam laundries:

  "How would you like to iron a shirt a minute? Think of standing at a mangle just above the washroom with the hot steam pouring up through the floor fro 10, 12, 14 and sometimes 17 hours a day! Sometimes the floors are made of cement and then it seems as though one were standing on hot coals, and the workers are dripping with perspiration. . . They are. . . breathing air laden with particles of soda, ammonia, and other chemicals! The Laundry Workers Union. . . in one city reduced this long day to 9 hours, and has increased the wages 50 percent. . . ."

• In 1910, Mary Jones describes conditions in a Milwaukee brewery:

  "Condemned to slave daily in the wash-room in wet shoes and wet clothes, surrounded by foul-mouthed, brutal foremen . . . the poor girls work in the vile smell of sour beer, lifting cases of empty and full bottles weighing from 100 to 150 pounds. . . . Rheumatism is one of the chronic ailments and is closely followed by consumption. . . . The foreman even regulates the time the girls may stay in the toilet room. . . . Many of the girls have no home nor parents and are forced to feed and clothe and shelter themselves. . . on $3.00 a week. . . ."

• On March 25, 1911 at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company a fire began in a rag bin, burning through the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors of the building -- higher than fire ladders could reach, even though half of New York’s workers worked above the seventh floor (some 500,000 people). The laws said that factory doors had to open outward, but at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company they opened inward. The law also stipulated that the doors of the factory couldn’t be locked during working hours, but the Company kept the doors locked to keep track of employees. As a result of this company’s violations, 146 women were killed -- either burned to death or trampled.

• An account from the New York World on this event:

  ". . . screaming men and women and boys and girls crowded out on the many window ledges and threw themselves into the streets far below. They jumped with their clothing ablaze. The hair of some of the girls streamed up aflame as they leaped. Thud after thud sounded on the pavements. It is a ghastly fact that on both the Greene Street and Washington Place sides of the building there grew mounds of the dead and dying. . . .

  From opposite windows spectators saw again and again pitiable companionships formed in the instant of death--girls who placed their arms around each other as they leaped."

• In 1912, A New York State Factory Investigation Commission reported:

  "Sadie is an intelligent, neat, clean girl, who has worked from the time she got her working papers in embroidery factories. . . . In her work she was accustomed to use a white powder (chalk or talcum was usual) which was brushed over the perforated designs and thus transferred to the cloth. The design was easily brushed off when made of chalk or of talcum. . . . Her last employer therefore commenced using white lead powder, mixed with rosin, which cheapened the work as the powder could not be rubbed off and necessitate restamping.

  None of the girls knew of the change in powder, nor of the danger in its use. . . .

  Sadie had been a very strong, healthy girl, good appetite and color; she began to be unable to eat. . . . Her hand and feet swelled, she lost the use of one hand, her teeth and gums were blue. When she finally had to stop work, after being treated for months for stomach trouble, her physician advised her to go to a hospital. There the examination revealed the fact that she had lead poisoning. . . .

• In 1914, according to the Commission on Industrial Relations, 35,000 workers were killed in industrial accidents and 700,000 injured. In that same year, the income of 44 families making $1 million or more equaled the total incomes of 100,000 families earning $500 a year.

• An exchange between Commissioner Harris Weinstock of the Commission on Industrial Relations and President John Osgood, head of a Colorado coal company controlled by the Rockefellers:

  Weinstock: If a worker loses his life, are his dependents compensated in any way?
  Osgood: Not necessarily. In some cases they are and in some cases not.
  Weinstock: If he is crippled for life is there any compensation?
  Osgood: No sir, there is none. . . .
  Weinstock: Then the whole burden is thrown directly upon their shoulders.
  Osgood: Yes, sir.
  Weinstock: The industry bears none of it?
  Osgood: No, the industry bears none of it.
  

1. Little or no workplace safety
2. Extremely low pay
3. Extremely long hours
4. Child labor
5. No workplace injury compensation, no vacation time
6. Industrial pollution
7. Workers reduced to the level of mere products to be used and discarded
8. Concentration of capital
9. No workplace organizing allowed -- no unions

The question is whether this is the kind of world you want to live in -- whether it is the kind of world you want your children to live in. Capitalism will NEVER bring about social justice, and certainly never equality -- it never has, and it never will!

Only anarchists refuse to defend capitalism -- we are all forced to live within a capitalist society right now, but we needn't sit back and let it remain this way forever. Each of us has the ability to work to destroy this inhuman system, defended and promulgated by the state.

Anarchism, in its uncompromising rejection of authority, hierarchy, and coercion, provides the means by which workers can free themselves from the yoke of capitalist tyranny!