Exploring American in the Gilded Age

Dear Diary,

My journey of exploring my native land has finally become eventful. For the past decade, I have been trying to be the Alexis de Tocqueville of the era. It is today that I have finally met someone that has left an impression on me. I spoke with a lady by the name of Helen Hunt Jackson here in Southern California. She was going around visiting Mission Indians and documenting their conditions. Curious on what she was doing, I approached her. She told me that she was working in partner with the U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs to help get land for the deteriorating population of Mission Indians.

After the Mexican-American War, Mexican secularization policies led to the removal of mission lands as well as the plight of Mission Indians. At one time, there were as many Indians in California as language dialects but with growing mistreatment by the US government, they were in a worse shape than the slaves had been. They, according to the surrounding white population, had no rights and governmental concern.

This issue and neglect attracted the eyes of Mrs. Jackson and after hearing about the issue in a lecture in Boston by the chief of the Ponca Tribe, she decided to advocate on their behalf. Mrs. Jackson explained to me how she started investigating and publicizing government misconduct, circulating petitions, and raising money to reach an audience and find relief for the issue. We even talked about her next idea on how she was going to reach an even wider audience. She told me, “I am going to write a novel, in which will be set forth some Indian experiences in a way to move people's hearts...If I could write a story that would do for the Indian one-hundredth part what Uncle Tom's Cabin did for the Negro, I would be thankful the rest of my life." 

My time talking with Mrs. Jackson was very insightful and really opened up my perspective on Native Americans and the situation they’re in. I wish Mrs. Jackson the best on her book and I hope it proves to be effective on attracting more viewers to understand and support her cause.

April 17, 1886

Dear Diary,

I am writing to document my experience with the Great Southwest Railroad Strike. I encountered it in Illinois when I was expecting to head east. I heard that people were on strike in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, and Texas as well. The civil conflict brought about this strike was between the Knights of Labor and the Union Pacific and Missouri Pacific railroads. The Knights of Labor had organized the strike after the railroad terminated their shopmen and it soon became a clash between management and organized labor. I learned that Knights of Labor is a secret society tailored towards helping protect and better the treatment and conditions of the American workforce. This is a great thing especially since American workers seem to be in a bondage of wage labor right now.

At the strike, I was introduced to the Grand Master Workman Terence V. Powderly, who had been trying to elicit more support for his organization. My initial impression of him wasn’t so good; I felt that he was struggling to get everything under control and did not seem to be a great administrator for the organization and strike. It was also difficult to communicate with him being that he was deaf in one ear. However, through conversing with him, he seemed like a knowledgeable and passionate man. I learned that he had been a railroad worker at the age of 13 in Pennsylvania, a place I plan on visiting soon for my exploration. At 17, he became a machinist’s apprentice and worked there until the age of 28. He joined the Knights of Labor in 1874 and used the organization as a vehicle to seek abolition of child labor and equal pay for equal work. He also advocated for the eight hour day and I overheard him say, “Give men shorter hours in which to labor, and you give them more time to study and learn why bread is so scarce while wheat is so plenty.” Though the strike was bit hectic for my taste, I think the work Powderly is doing is great and can beneficially uplift the working man and my time there was pretty informative.

June 25, 1892

Dear Diary,

It has been 6 years since I’ve written a diary entry but I find it imperative to write about the person I met today. I am currently in Pittsburgh and I had heard that Andrew Carnegie had just established a steel producing company here. Andrew Carnegie has accumulated a lot of wealth through his investments in railroads and seems to be dominating the steel industry. With this in mind, I decided to go check it out. Boy am I so glad I did!

I was surveying the perimeter of the mills (I couldn’t really go in) when I saw Andrew Carnegie himself outside! Knowing that talking to him would prove beneficial to my study, I mustered up all my gut and approached him. See, I didn’t know what to expect for I was just, you know, a plain white, Protestant American male and he, one of the richest people in the world (with the best story of growing from rags to riches). To my delight, he was very welcoming and open to talking to me. Whew what a lucky day!

Mr. Carnegie controls the most extensive integrated iron and steel operations. He has cheap and efficient mass production of steel and is the largest manufacturer of pig iron, steel rails, and coke in the world. He has also installed vastly improved systems of material-handling. He has done so much and has grown to be such a successful person yet he still stays very humble. I had applaud him for all of his hard work and he responded with, “No person will make a great business who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit.” What a guy!

However, there is one thing I do worry about. As his mills expand, the labor force will grow more rapidly, especially with less skilled workers. I fear that this may cause bitterness to grow between workers and that they may react with a strike. Mind you, it’s not the first time I have seen a strike like this happen, I even wrote about one in my last entry. Nonetheless, I am so fortunate to have spoken with Mr. Carnegie for I have nothing but respect for the man. Maybe he had considered it part of his charity work to have spoken to someone so low (me) but I will take it as a gift from the heavens. I wish that man the best and for continuous prosperity with his steel empire.

July 23, 1892

Dear Diary,

 What I feared had come true. I wouldn’t say I wasn’t expecting anything to happen but it was still very surprising. I’m in Homestead, Pennsylvania now, just a little over 6 miles from Pittsburgh, where I was before. I had heard about the Homestead Strike which started early June and wanted to see what is was about and whether or not my fears regarding Carnegie’s expansion in steel may have possibly played out. However, I was not expecting what had happened when I was there to have occurred.

Carnegie had gone to Scotland leaving his partner Henry Clay Frick to deal with labor disputes between the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers and the Carnegie Steel

Company. When negotiations between the two failed, Frick began locking out and discharging workers. This led to immediate angry responses from workers and a strike was instigated. A gun fight even broke out when hired Pinkerton guards were confronted with a crowd of armed union workers. 7 guards and 9 union workers were killed in this 12-hour fight.

The Homestead Strike ended on July 6 and today being the 23, I figured it would be safe to visit and be around the steel plant to have a look around. As I was walking around and chatting with a carpenter nearby, we hear some sort of loud commotion come out of Frick’s office. It was audible through the whole street. As it went on, a crowd started growing outside of his office. I, myself, was one of the people that gathered around. We all listened as blows, gunshots, and struggle was sounded. After a while, we came to learn that a man by the name of Alexander Berkman was responsible for the ruckus and that he had attempted to assassinate Frick. This elicited many different responses from the people around. Mostly, everyone was mad.

An angry crowd gathered as Berkman was taken to jail and I followed along. As many screamed and criticized him on what he had just done, he says, “Terrorism is tempting with its tremendous possibilities. … the principles of terrorism unavoidably rebound to the fatal injury of liberty and revolution.” I assume his anarchist principles got the best of him and he decided to do something extreme without looking at the underlying reasons for the revolt. Being that this incident happened today, everything is still not very clear and there isn’t much coverage on it. So, I will update you further when I find out more about this.

July 25, 1892

Dear Diary,

I am now following up on the failed assassination of Frick. Initially, Berkman claimed to have worked on his own but, two possible accomplices have been discovered. I was leaving the motel I’m staying in when I bumped into Emma Goldman, one of the people accused of being involved in Berkman’s plot. I was very thrown off when I saw her and was quite flabbergasted (not going to lie a little scared too). I told her I recognized her and was surprised to be seeing her at a motel. She explained how the police, being convinced that she had taken part in the assassination, had raided her apartment and convinced her landlord to evict her, so now she was just staying at a motel.

I, already being curious on Berkman’s motives like I previously said, proceeded to question her regarding the assassination. She told me that despite what many may believe, she had not taken part in trying to kill Frick. She had only been ordered by Berkman to explain his motives once he had been sent to jail.

Why she and Berkman resolved to assassinate Frick was due to the fact that newspapers across the country were defending and showing support for union workers and strikers. This then made them believe that through an assassination, union workers would come together and revolt against the capitalist system. This in turn, would be an act of propaganda of deed (something she was left responsible with). Propaganda of deed is a political action taken by anarchist, like herself and Berkman, used as a catalyst for revolution. It is primarily associated with perpetrated acts of violence and used to expand support for anarchist movements.

Though she is great anarchist in political philosophy, I find that she may be too overly passionate about it and take things way too extreme. Being that she is an advocate of politically motivated murder and violent revolution, she can be viewed as dangerous in the eyes of many. She believes that, “Every society has the criminals it deserves,” but, I hope she doesn’t continue to incite riots and violence.

May 1, 1894

Dear Diary,

The United States is encountering a severe economic depression right now. The U.S. , which depended on high international commodity prices for expansion, crashed as wheat crops failed. This heavily affected every sector of the economy, causing major unemployment to occur everywhere, banks to be incapacitated to the local financial system, and credit to dry up. A long period of deflation also put negative pressure on wages prompting widespread lockouts. And through past experiences that I have documented, lockouts lead to strikes.

I’m in Washington, DC right now and I just encountered a protest march for the issue. It was a large crowd, probably 500 people, all protesting and demanding the United States Congress to assist funds to create jobs for the unemployed. The leader was Jacob S. Coxey and his group called themselves Coxey’s Army. I was approached by a man in the group trying to gain more support and then introduced to Mr. Coxey himself. Curious on Coxey’s course of action, I asked him what he was doing and why. He told me that he believes he could provide relief to the nation's economic woes if he protests to help improve infrastructure, put unemployed workers to work, and loosen the credit situation. He believes that by assembling a mass of unemployed workers to boldly march to DC from Ohio, the United States government would be forced into action. He also stressed how, “for a quarter of a century the rich have been growing richer, the poor poorer...the struggle for existence has become too fierce and relentless,”

Though I admire Coxey for his political ambition and self confidence, I do not see his protest to be very effective in changing the government’s public policy. However, I do find that his march is very symbolic to the unrest of working people and that he can influence many others into marching and provide more publicity to this issue thus, helping us all in this time of panic.

July 1, 1905

Dear Diary,

Currently, I am staying at a hotel in Buffalo. When I was checking in, I saw a group of black people walk in. They were immediately refused service and accommodation. I watched as they, all being very disappointed and angry, tried to compromise a stay. The owner of the hotel, however, would not budge, telling them to leave immediately. This, though very unfortunate, comes to no surprise here in the United States.

During the era of Reconstruction following the American Civil War, African Americans had a greatly improved amount of civil freedom and civic participation. However, after Reconstruction ended, it came to an end and many laws were then implemented to significantly restrict the political and civil rights of African Americans. Laws were passed restricting voting rights, or making it a lot more difficult to exercise their voting rights, as well as, requiring racially segregated facilities.

I approached the group, asking them what their plans were and if that meant finding some place to stay would be a struggle. A man by the name of W.E.B. Du Bois explained to me that they were a civil rights group he had just organized that consisted of business owners, teachers, and clergy. They had wanted to stay the night in Buffalo before heading to Niagara Falls the following day to draft a declaration of principles in demand for an end to segregation and discrimination in unions, courts, and public accommodations. They oppose the Atlanta compromise which calls for Southern blacks to have to submit to white political rule and, “refuse to allow the impression to remain that the Negro-American assents to inferiority, is submissive under oppression and apologetic before insults,” and so, they had decided to hold a meeting. 

Though our conversation was brief for the the owner of the hotel was threatening arrest if they didn’t leave, I found that Du Bois was an extremely smart intellectual whos hardwork and commitment to gain equality of economic and educational opportunity for all can help pave the future of people of color. I suggested they find a place to stay elsewhere, preferably in Ontario, Canada (a place still convenient to the Niagara Falls) that would probably let them get a room and wished them well on their journey.

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