Industrialization:

Confronting Economic Dislocations

Contents

Industrialization At Turn of the Century

At the turn of the century America was in the midst of a great industrialization that had begun in the civil war. Great concentration of wealth had fallen to a few Americans who turned them into industrial development. These included Rockefeller in oil, Gould, Vanderbilt, Huntington and Stanford in railroads, Carnegie in steel, and so on. Political power at the turn of the century was promised to those who could address the problems of industrialization.

Conditions of Industrialization

Looking around, Americans of 1900 could see the burgeoning industrial system and the material realities that it presented.

• Conditions of Labor. Immigration and the migration from farms provided a seemingly inexhaustible supply of labor. This made labor a cheap part of industrial production as a result of the laws of supply and demand. To the industrialist, expenditures for safety made no economic sense: an injured or deceased worker was easily replaced by another. Wages could be kept low because there was always another worker willing to work for the lower wage. Attempts by workers to organize to confront the organized wealth of the barons for whom they worked were unsuccessful. Replacement workers were readily available. Hiring these "scabs" as labor called them inevitably led to disasters such as the Homestead Strike and the Pullman Strike in which quasi-military forces were brought in my the barons and workers died.
• Exploitation of Customers. In the climate of the times, the industrialists had the power to set prices. Railroads serviced the farmers along their lines, but the farmers needed the railroads to survive. There seemed no limit to the profit that the railroads could extract from the farmer. Furthermore with entire industries controlled by one source, there was no compulsion for quality. Books like The Jungle portrayed the meat packing industry in Chicago and the lack of concern with the safety of food.
• Corruption of Government. The concentrated wealth had an outlet in the corrupting of governmental officials. In the late 19th century the United States Senate was owned by the railroads. The wealthy poured money into the campaigns and pockets of key governmental officials who in turn protected their interests. In the large cities, the political machines organized politics not to address community concerns but as a provider of private largesse to those who supported the machine, rich and poor.  Thus, government was not a regulator nor particularly vigilent about these conditions.  Rather the forces of economic power owned government.
• Great disparities of wealth marked the economic life of the industrial cities. The most squalid of slums contained the urban poor mere blocks from opulent mansions in which the wealthy lived like royalty.

The rhetorical problem for leadership: How could these material conditions be converted into public concerns.

Barriers to Successful Remedy to Problems of Industrialization

Leaders addressing the dislocations of industrialization had to overcome barriers

• Government is controlled by the wealthy. Democrats and Republicans are supportive of industrialization. With the degree of government corruption, normal politics resisted rather than addressed the problems.
• Great wealth financed means of resistance. Industrialists hired quasi-military "detective agencies," well armed and aggressive, to enforce their will through physical intimidation. Wounding in resistance to these forces would cost the worker his/her job and with it create economic and personal ruin. And, loss of life in pitched gun battles was not an uncommon experience. In addition, wealth could purchase all the legal expertise to prevent the courts from responding to the problems of industrialization.
• Domination of the industrial factory for employment trapped workers into the system. Business access in this environment required capital unavailable to ordinary citizens. So, the economy was coming to be dominated by the need for industrial jobs. Threats to the loss of a job were threats to life as well as livelihood. Resisting the industrialists was dangerous for economic reasons.
• Resistance of individualism. The ideology of American rhetoric celebrated the triumph of rugged individualism in the American experience. The country was built, and success came, in the wake of individual initiative. The industrialists represented this individualism. The idea that Americans needed to organize seemed un-American.

Rhetorics of Radical Resistance

In public life at the turn of the 20th century, voices urging radical solutions to the problems created by industrialization took root. Three rhetorics dominated.

Radical Labor Rhetorics

• Strategy was to organize workers into an economic force to confront the economic power of the industrialists. American Federation of Labor offered a rhetoric that offered to provide the factory with skilled workers. But the strategy was less effective in mass production where no skill was needed. The result of a growth of more radical labor rhetoric.
• Strategies in the rhetoric. The key was to instill unity through creating consciousness of being in a working class, and directing that unified identity into economic action, most dominantly strikes. Note this is not a rhetoric requiring involvement in politics. Thus, it seeks to do an end run around the corruption of government.
• Characteristics of the rhetoric
  • Celebration of being a worker. Argument and emotional raising of the importance of the worker. The role of capital in industrialization was diminished and it was the worker who was portrayed as taking the world into the new prosperity. But the worker was being denied reward for that effort.
  • Polemical denunciation of the industrialists. The rhetoric drove home the foulness of the suppression of labor, deifying the martyrs of the labor struggle, playing up the pitched battles of private armies and workers, and incidents such as the Triangle Shirt Waist fire. In these narratives the industrialists were at the lever of control and they became the enemy to be opposed.
  • Heavy sense of victimage. The maldistribution of power was a major feature of the narratives. The power of wealth was dramatized and organization was portrayed as the only way to oppose it.
• Resistances. The radical labor leaders were portrayed as un-American. To join a union was to forfeit one's individuality and abandon the power of rugged individualism. Furthermore, the activity was unlawful and governmental power of arrest accompanied the industrialists assertion of physical and economic suppression.

Socialism

• A political movement seeking to take over government by building an electoral block delivering the workers to partication in the elections. Once controlling the government, socialists would establish government ownership of the means of production.
• Strategies. Socialists could call on more common ideographs such as <democracy> and <the vote> as a way of addressing the problems. The power of government could be seen. Thus, the thought of having that power removed from the industrialists and given to the workers became an attractive alternative.
• Characteristics of the rhetoric
  • Emphasis on the power of the electoral system. Like labor rhetoric the worker was celebrated and urged to meld into a unified power, but for the purposes of exercising the vote rather than for the strike.
  • Denunciation of the industrialists focused on their corruption of government.
  • Possibility of success was dependent on worker unity. Thus, the ordinary worker became the agent for the socialists success. It gave them a sense of their own ability to address their problems.
• Resistances. Third parties do not do well in the United States. The hope of success through the socialists was often a hard sell. And the more the socialists emphasized the power of the corrupt government the less likely their success seemed.

Anarchism

• Strenuously anti-government. Emphasized how the current corruption of government made pursuit of power through the electoral process folly. Emphasized instead resistance to the government.
• Strategies.
  • Expanded victimage beyond economics. Anarchists opposed US involvement in World War I and pointed to other abuses of individual liberty.
  • Emphasized that voluntary association was more American than labor unions. Based in Alexis d Touqueville's celebration of voluntary association as the heart of Democracy in America.
  • Attempted to take advantage of Eastern European immigrants' familiarity with such ideas in Europe.
• Rhetorical Characteristics.
  • Strenuously anti-government. Target of their narratives was as likely to be government as the industrialists.
  • Broad attack rather than narrowly on economic disparity.
• Resistances. Anarchism seemed an attack on lawfulness itself. When an Anarchist assassinated President McKinley in 1901, it seemed to reflect the essence of their strategy. And, the full power of government came down on anarchists.