644 ★ CHAPTER 16 America’s Gilded Age
southerners joined in the campaign for federal regulation of individual behav-
ior, something whites in the region had previously strongly opposed, fearing it
could lead to action against slavery. The key role played by the white South in
the campaign for moral legislation helped earn the region a reputation as the
Bible Belt— a place where political action revolved around religious principles.
Although efforts to enact a national law requiring businesses to close on Sun-
day failed, the Christian lobby’s efforts in the 1880s and 1890s set the stage for
later legislation such as the Mann Act of 1910, banning the transportation of
women across state lines for immoral purposes (an effort to suppress prostitu-
tion), and Prohibition.
A Social Gospel
Most of the era’s Protestant preachers concentrated on attacking individual
sins like drinking and Sabbath- breaking and saw nothing immoral about the
pursuit of riches. But the outlines of what came to be called the Social Gospel
were taking shape in the writings of Walter Rauschenbusch, a Baptist minis-
ter in New York City, Washington Gladden, a Congregational clergyman in
Columbus, Ohio, and others. They insisted that freedom and spiritual self-
development required an equalization of wealth and power and that unbridled
competition mocked the Christian ideal of brotherhood.
The Social Gospel movement originated as an effort to reform Protestant
churches by expanding their appeal in poor urban neighborhoods and making
them more attentive to the era’s social ills. The movement’s adherents estab-
lished missions and relief programs in urban areas that attempted to alleviate
poverty, combat child labor, and encourage the construction of better working-
class housing. They worked with the Knights of Labor and other groups
demanding health and safety laws. Some suggested that a more cooperative
organization of the economy should replace competitive capitalism. Within
American Catholicism, as well, a group of priests and bishops emerged who
attempted to alter the church’s traditional hostility to movements for social
reform and its isolation from contemporary currents of social thought. With
most of its parishioners working men and women, they argued, the church
should lend its support to the labor movement. These developments suggested
the existence of widespread dissatisfaction with the “liberty of contract” under-
standing of freedom.
The Haymarket Affair
The year of the dedication of the Statue of Liberty, 1886, also witnessed an
unprecedented upsurge in labor activity. Inspired by a successful strike by
western railroad unions against lines controlled by the powerful financier Jay