Reconstruction, Expansion, and the Triumph of Industrial Capitalism 39er that something is valuable when it is not. At its worst, a gild simply covers
up a rotting structure. That was what Twain meant. While Capitalism was
creating great production and wealth, Twain saw the impact it was making on
workers’ lives and attacked it. Laborers had lost their old cultures and habits,
lost their crafts, had to move into crowded cities, and often lived in diseased
and impoverished conditions. The media and others provided the gild for this
rotting economic structure, Twain was telling Americans.
Class Violence in America
Millions of workers did not need Twain or anyone else to tell them about their
poverty and the dangers of their jobs, and took to the streets themselves to
protest this new economic system. In fact, in the period from 1877 until the
1890s, the United States saw its most sustained and violent series of workers
uprisings in its history. Working men went on strike, took political action, and
even took up arms against the new capitalist order. In the end, the Capitalists
maintained their power against these angry laborers, but the cost in lives,
bloodshed and money was enormous.
Workers had begun to establish Unions, organizations of workers who
could act collectively to seek better wages and jobs and more safety measures,
beginning in the early 1800s but had little success. Most employers refused
to negotiate with workers, telling them they lived in a free labor system and
could either do their jobs or quit, as part of their free labor contract. Most
workers who organized unions were skilled laborers, because, as we noted,
they were not easily replaced. Many labor leaders tried to organize both
skilled and unskilled workers–the entire working class–but until the 1870s
were unable to create a movement of a large segment of Americans who
worked. But in 1877, that changed.
In 1877, labor all over engaged in “The Great Uprising.” What started as
a railroad strike over safety because thousands of rail workers a year were
getting killed on the job, turned into a protest over pay cuts by the bosses.
Railroad men had been taking pay cuts for many years already while the own-
ers turned profits and paid dividends. In 1877, workers in Martinsburg, West
Virginia spontaneously struck against the Pennsylvania Railroad, owned by
Carnegie. President Hayes send troops in to protect the railroads from “insur-
rection” but the presence of the army only angered the strikers more and led