CHAPTER REVIEW ★^647that year marked the high point of the Knights of Labor. Facing increasing
employer hostility and linked by employers and the press to the violence and
radicalism associated with the Haymarket events, the Knights soon declined.
The major parties, moreover, proved remarkably resourceful in appealing to
labor voters.
Thus, America’s Gilded Age witnessed deep and sometimes violent divi-
sions over the definition of freedom in a rapidly industrializing society. The
battle between upholders of Social Darwinism and laissez- faire, who saw free-
dom as the right of individuals to pursue their economic interests without out-
side restraint, and those who believed in collective efforts to create “industrial
freedom” for ordinary Americans, would continue for many decades. In the
early twentieth century, reformers would turn to new ways of addressing the
social conditions of freedom and new means of increasing ordinary Americans’
political and economic liberty. But before this, in the 1890s, the nation would
face its gravest crisis since the Civil War, and the boundaries of freedom would
once again be redrawn.
CHAPTER REVIEW
REVIEW QUESTIONS
- The American economy thrived because of federal involvement, not the lack of it. How did
the federal government actively promote industrial and agricultural development in this
period? - Why were railroads so important to America’s second industrial revolution? What
events demonstrate their influence on society and politics as well as the economy? - Why did organized efforts of farmers, workers, and local reformers largely fail to achieve
substantive change in the Gilded Age? - Describe the involvement of American family farmers in the global economy after 1870
and its effects on their independence. - According to The Gilded Age by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, the era’s slo-
gan was “Get rich, dishonestly if we can, honestly if we must.” Explain how this was true
of the politics of the era. - How did American political leaders seek to remake Indians and change the ways they
lived? - Explain how social thinkers misapplied Charles Darwin’s ideas to justify massive
disparities in wealth and power and to deny government a role in equalizing
opportunity.
How did reformers of the period approach the problems of an industrial society?