Ragged Edge of Anarchy
Term Paper for AMH202 with Mark Howard Long
12 February 2005
By the end of the nineteenth century the United States seemed to be hedging towards the “ragged edge of anarchy” according to Attorney General Richard Olney. The Omaha Platform said it best in the preamble of said platform, “…we meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political and material ruin. Corruption dominates the ballot-box, the Legislatures, the Congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench. The people are demoralized; […] From the same prolific womb of governmental injustice we breed the two great classes – tramps and millionaires.”[1]
Labor unions were attempting to tear at the faceless machine of industry, machine politics were admittedly corrupt, the role of women was changing drastically, and sexuality was seen increasingly out of the home and on the streets. While the government did its’ best to generally stay out of the lives of citizens, the organization of government forces (state militia, etc.) towards the rebelling public seemed to lead citizens to believe that the government was against them rather than for them.[2] Everywhere through out America, traditional thoughts and roles were changing drastically. Where once it was an absolute necessity for a woman to marry young and procreate, women were beginning to attend college in larger levels, and when and if they did marry, have far fewer children than before.[3]
In addition to the turmoil between the middle and upper class sexes because of this new found freedom for women, lower classes also experienced a good deal of tumult as well. Poorer women and immigrants were being drawn more and more into prostitution as medical doctors were declaring the practice a necessary evil and few factory jobs could provide the income that prostitution did. Repeated reform movements first tried to redeem prostitutes then, when that tactic failed, prevent women from “falling” by means of education and attempts to instill the middle class value of the domestic, virtuous female.[4] Poor and immigrant men were also at some semblance of a loss, as their jobs were certainly not stable. Due to the growing influx of immigrants, cheap labor was easy to come by for most factories and if employees did not fall in line with the demands of bosses, they were unceremoniously dispatched regardless of the employee’s ties to union groups.
The Populist movement threw the Democratic and Republican parties into a state of flux nationally as well, with the Populists picking up a good deal of black voters in addition to farmers. The idea of free silver and having full governmental control over banks created a demand for the government to serve the people rather than just having the people serve the government. The rise of socialist thought, popularized by Karl Marx and brought to America by German immigrants, also lead to a general fear from the Democratic and Republican parties as it soon became “a force to be reckoned with in American Politics.”[5]
The combination of all of these factors could definitely cause one to agree with Olney that the nation was indeed headed towards anarchy. The conflicts between sexes, classes, races and political groups were not just apparent in their doctrines, but also in the ways that these groups contradicted their doctrines.
While Andrew Carnegie espoused high ideals, stating that workers had the right to unionize and that employers should not bring in strikebreakers, he did not follow through with these sentiments. When Carnegie “decided that collective bargaining had become too expensive, and […] that his skilled workers could be replaced” by machinery, he had no problem refusing to negotiate with his workers’ union and showed no hesitation at bringing in the Pinkerton Detective Agency and then the state militia to usher out the workers in Homestead, Pennsylvania. Other companies, like Pullman, brought in governmental force after striking workers disrupted not just the company, but caused a secondary labor boycott.[6] The contrasting feelings of workers and employers is evident not only from Henry Clay Frick’s interview with the Pittsburgh Post in which he lays the blame for the entire Homestead mess at the feet of the workers[7], but also in the workers’ strike songs where they labeled the Pinkerton men “bum detectives” and referred to them as thieves[8]. The main problem stems from businesses looking upon their employees as replaceable and the employees themselves feeling like they deserved more than they were getting. Businesses were not the only hypocrites in this arena, with the government issuing the National Eight Hour Law but not actually enforcing it.
The idea of laissez-faire (the government the governs best governs least) also caused a bit of a quandary during the time period. While President Cleveland had no problem brutally breaking up strikes and perpetuating the idea that the people worked for the government, not vice versa, machine politics progressively allowed for more and more government interaction, even if on a local level. Whereas the national government had no welfare system in place, the lower classes relied on machine politics for necessities. Jobs were provided in return for the promise of a vote. When all else was up in the air in regards to political situations, the corruption of machine politics was a welcome stability for the poor and the new immigrants.
The stereotype of the chaste, pure woman who married for stability and engaged in intercourse solely for procreation was beginning to get turned on its ear as well. While ideals of domesticity still existed in the belief that it was a woman’s role to maintain purity and chastity, this ideal also started including a single standard for both sexes. Groups like the YMCA and the White Cross Society attempted to place an emphasis on chastity for both sexes.[9] The Comstock laws also attempted to ban the publication and distribution of pornographic or illicit material. However, by enacting these laws, society also acknowledged that these things were occurring. By condemning contraceptives and free love societies, the people that were hoping to end these endeavors were actually promoting them. In actively fighting against the movement of sexuality out of the home, moral reform societies and people like Comstock were allowing popular culture to gain more knowledge about a subject that they previously did not consider. The rise of homosexuality being viewed as a mental disease made people who previously believed that they were having natural same-sex friendships reconsider their motives and feelings.
Even as women like Susan B. Anthony tried to create an expanding role for women based directly on the belief that women were moral superiors, they slowly eradicated traditional roles for women by removing them from the home and placing them in positions of power, either through lobbying for bill passage or by forming picket lines in front of saloons. Increasingly, women found voices even as society continued to propagate the idea of the pious feminine ideal.
In relative terms, American was still a young country by the end of the nineteenth century. The changes in American culture, politics, social and sexual beliefs not only showed that America was an evolving country but that the people within America were attempting to find some form of stability where none had existed previously. Immigrants looked towards the machine to find them jobs and a life that previously had not existed in their country of origin. Farmers of Texas and the Midwest looked towards the Populists for stability in an environment that was never hospitable to them. Women looked toward the definitions of their own gender to justify increased presence in society. Whereas some could see this transformation as heading towards anarchy, some could also see it as a young nation with a varied populous attempting to stabilize and define itself.
[1] The World Almanac, 1893 (New York: 1893), 83-85; reprinted in George Brown Tindall ed., A Populist reader, Selections from the Works of American Populist Leaders (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 90-96; available from History Matters, http://historymaters.gmy.edu/d/5361.
[2] James A. Henretta, David Brody, and Lynn Dumenil, America: A Concise History, 2nd ed., vol. 2, (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002), 511.
[3] John D’Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 174.
[4] D’Emilio and Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America, 131.
[5] Henretta, Brody, and Dumenil, America: A Concise History, 514.
[6] Henretta, Brody, and Dumenil, America: A Concise History, 511-512.
[7] Interview of Frick, Pittsburgh Post, 8 July 1892, reprinted in House Report 2447, 52nd Congress, 2nd session: Employment of Pinkerton Detectives (Washington, D.C.: 1892), available at History Matters, http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5349.
[8] “Song of a Strike”: George Swetnam, “Song of a Strike,” (1892), reprinted in Linda Schneider, “The Citizen Striker: Workers' ideology in the Homestead Strike of 1892,” Labor History 23 (Winter 1982): 60, available at History Matters, http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5322.
[9] D’Emilio and Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America, 153.
All contents copyright Elizabeth Tibbert 2005.