Andrew Carnegie, steel magnate and one of the 19th century’s richest men, made an offhand remark while bragging about his wealth to a newspaper reporter in early 1892: “It isn’t the man who does the work that makes the money. It’s the man who gets other men to do it.”
Several months later while on vacation in Scotland, Carnegie sent a telegram approving of his deputy’s decision to unleash a private army on strikers and their families at his steel mill in Homestead, Pennsylvania, sparking a bloody gun battle that left at least 10 dead and dozens seriously wounded.
Carnegie was getting other men to do the work.
Accounts like these pepper tales of the Gilded Age, the period in US history roughly from the end of the Civil War to the start of the 20th century. They have made the term “Second Gilded Age” a convenient shorthand for affluent arrogance and economic inequity today.
The term “Second” or “New Gilded Age” has been appearing in print for nearly four decades, describing everything from the junk-bond 1980s to the internet-bubble 1990s, and the Collateralized-Debt-Obligation 2000s to the top-1-percent 2010s.
As a historian of US class relations, I understand the appeal. The comparison — though superficial — keeps working because economic inequality keeps growing, and most Americans associate the Gilded Age first and foremost with excesses and egotism of great wealth.
But those who use the phrase “Second Gilded Age” to criticize contemporary inequality are also paying unintended tribute to Carnegie’s logic. They are trying to get a previous historical era to do the work of offering critiques and solutions for this one’s problems. Our grasp of both eras suffers for it.
Explanation:
It’s become commonplace to describe the current economic situation in the United States as a second Gilded Age. Commentators cite the low-wage service economy, the rapidly growing income gap, entrenched poverty, a shrinking middle class, and the quasi-legal violence that targets communities of color. Their references to an age of robber barons, economic dislocation and racial apartheid resonate. Times are tough for most Americans, though a chosen few live in luxury. Corporate money in politics — a prerogative of both parties — corrodes democracy.
Michael J. Lansing
More careful commentators have noted that the analogy falls a little short. In fact, the Gilded Age saw an uptick in voter engagement, intense union organizing, radical critiques of corporate capital, and a broad push for a more democratic political system. In the late 19th century, powerful challenges to the establishment matched the concentration of economic and political power in the hands of a few. In recent years, Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party offered tantalizing challenges to that concentrated power. Yet both ultimately fizzled out.
