Running Head: The Rise of a Mass Society Summary

The Rise of a Mass Society Summary
Team C Due Week 2
Erik Escobar
Kimberly Foster
Brianna Gomez
Cristina Gonzalez
Isabel Ortega
Ricardo Ruiz

The Rise of a Mass Society Summary The word Gilded is best described in the words of writer Mark Twain from his novel written in 1873; The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today. When asked today what we thought Gilded means people think of this novel and describe Gilded as a form a greedy political corruption. The first gilded age was in 1874 to 1900. Twains book and definition of Gilded definitely summarized the corruption in public lives during the late 1800s. The term “Free Market” is a voluntary agreement of the exchange between two or more people in society. The type of exchange do vary and in any combination of two economic goods either tangible commodities or the services from another person. (Rothbard, Murray, N. 2008) Like many new things there are benefits as well as disadvantages to any system. The Free Market has its high points one of which helped society out of the first gilded age in the 1890s. However even though the free market was successful certain social classes still struggled and did not get the opportunity to enjoy what the market had to offer.
The department store was introduced to society back in the nineteenth century. The very first real department store was owned by a man named Aristide Boucicault in Paris, France. Before the free market Aristide sold differently than other houses, he sold dry good and specialty that came before the four ways to sell the goods. The four stages were; first sell products in a high price and a slow turnover of production, then experienced that having a small profit will make a high turnover of product. Of course the high turnover of production will automatically have a greater profit. Secondly instead of having to bargain products as expected and allowed the customer then had a fixed price in Boon Marche department store and the same price was honored to every customer without exception. Followed by the third changed made by Boucicault was that the previous custom or tradition was that when a person entered the store that individual was obligated to buy something. Aristide made a change of having any customer enter his store without the obligation of purchasing any item in the store. The last change was the customers could return items, products or goods. The customer returning items then received their money back or had the chance to exchange their goods for something else in the store. The French idea of the free market was first followed by United States (Unknown, 2009).
An important part in the rise of big business in the U.S. was that business profited from a favorable political environment – a sympathetic government (Unknown, 2007). The U.S. government generally supported business. The U.S. Constitution decreed that there should be no trade barriers between the states so America could grow into the largest free market in the world (Unknown, 2007). During this period businesses built huge factories and employed thousands of workers; and because of that they needed to manufacture a lot of product to make profit (Unknown, 2007). They needed a way to give out the large quantities that were being produced so they looked to large markets for division like chain stores. Even though there was a lot of criticism about big business, it had its advantages. They made more and often better products that are inexpensive, and created better lifestyles and amenities for some. The middle class rose because they were needed to supervise its complex practices as well as the hundreds of thousands of workers in the factories (Unknown, 2007).
The Consequences of Economic Instability: 1874-1875
As the effects of economic depression grew, congressional debate over monetary policy became more heated. As a reaction, and in hopes of relieving some of the problems, in early 1874 congress approved the Legal Tender Act. This legislation promised to add nearly $20 million in greenbacks to the national economy (Freeman Clark, 1992, p.41).
However, continuing concern for the economy prompted Congress to respond to inflation with yet another legislative solution. In January 1875, a move that acknowledged public pressure saw both houses of Congress pass the Resumption of Specie Payment Act. It called for gradually withdrawal of greenbacks from the economy and replacement of this paper currency with gold coins (Freeman Clark, 1992, p.42). Labor activity in this period increased, fueled by wage cuts in mining and manufacturing. The proliferation of labor unions, secret societies and similar groups that supported working person’s rights caused occasional ripples of concern among rich mine and factory owners. An increase awareness of the need for change led to the reformation of organizations seeking to impose higher public and personal standards (Freeman Clark, 1992, p.43).
The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890
In the United States before the 1890s, two corporations that held large portions of the manufacturing and mining industries into nationwide monopolies were the sugar trust; the collaboration of both John D. Rockefeller’s oil trust and J.P. Morgan’s steel trust (Bunn, 2009). In an act against such an event like the sugar trust from occurring, the Sherman Antitrust Act was put out. The act went in opposition to any “combination in the form of trusts or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade [and prohibit the occurrences of monopolies]” (Sponsors of u-s-history.com, 2009).
Because a monopolist has the ability to dominate the market, the act applied to domestic and foreign companies dealing within the U.S.’s passing of the Sherman Antitrust Act gave authority to the Federal Trade Commission and Antitrust Division from the Department of Justice to temporarily stop companies from attempting to perform anticompetitive techniques. Such examples of these techniques are buying out the competition, forcibly making customers sign long-term agreements, and make customers pay for unwanted products to receive other items (Bunns, 2009). Note that the Sherman Antitrust Act was the first federal antitrust law of its kind. Given that fact, the first 10 years had brought more problems for the unions than the intentioned big businesses.
The Populist uprising of the 1890s briefly threatened to reconfigure the American political scene. Since the fall of the Second American Party System in the 1850s, it seemed more accurate to view the populist as the culmination of a long term reform more in the economic area. No third party had posed such a serious challenge to the major parties. Looking at the ground swell of economic and political discontent mobilized by the Populist movement, political thinking is causes of the antimonopoly. Many historians have argued that the farmer cooperatives and the People's Party represented a radical alternative to the corporate America that was rapidly emerging in the country. Populists were not old-fashioned agrarian romantics who clung stubbornly to a pastoral past that never actually existed. Instead, they used the traditional images of republicanism, producerism, antimonopoly, and the labor theory of value to fashion a thorough reappraisal of economics and the emergence of a corporate economy. In place of the free market and push back the competition, the Populists organized in a variety of cooperative ventures to build a cooperative commonwealth. They also embraced a growth of power of the federal government, especially in the area of the nationalization the businesses of the railroads, as a means to counter the power of big business. Even thought that is a bit harder these days because of corporatist government because there is need for regulations and licensing laws. The free market is not based that profit is good but that people will seek profit no matter what! That is why the rich get richer.
It’s no secret that the Gilded Age, 1876-1900, that very little serious legislation was passed; between 1875 and 1896 only five major bills made it through Congress to the president's desk. Even discussion of the graduated income tax, by any definition a revolutionary measure, failed to arouse much interest or public debate. (Academic American, 2009) All the same, there was wide voter participation and interest in the political process; most elections saw about an 80% turnout. Yet unprecedented dilemmas being created by industrialization, urbanization, and the huge influx of immigrants were met with passivity and confusion. The introduction to Free Market had opened a whole new world to society and today it is a huge commodity to how we survive daily life.

References
Academic American, last retrieved November 2, 2009. http://www.academicamerican.com/recongildedage/topics/gildedagepolitics.html Bunns, Phyllis (2009). Business Encyclopedia: Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. Retrieved November 1, 2009, from http://www.answers.com
Judith Freeman Clark, American’s Gilded Age, An Eyewitness History, 1992, p. 41, 42, 43.
Rothbard, Murray. N. 2008. Free Market. The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. Retrieved from The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics website Nov 2, 2009. http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/FreeMarket.html
Sponsors of U-S-History.com (2009). Sherman Antitrust Act: Acts, Bills, and Laws, 1890. Retrieved November 1, 2009, from http://www.u-s-history.com
Unknown, 2009. Department Stores in the Gilded Age [Pre Department Store]. Message posted to http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/INCORP/stores/tableset.html
Unknown. (2007). Industrialization Part1: The rise of big business. Retrieved from http://www-personal.umd.umich.edu/~ppennock/L-BigBusiness.htm