When Europeans arrived in the Americas, they discovered that there were already people living there. The diseases that they brought with them would absolutely devastate native populations, with some estimating that up to ninety percent dying. However, while the Europeans would eventually stop expanding, the young US had no qualms about further suppressing the Native Americans. Their goal was settler colonialism, which involves the complete replacement of a native population.
The US government and its citizens were hungry for Native American land. They repeatedly made and broke treaties with the tribes. The executive branch defied Supreme Court orders, such as Worcester v Georgia, which designated the Cherokee nation as a foreign power. It didn’t protect them from being forced from their land, in an event known as the Trail of Tears. Thousands died on the brutal march to Oklahoma, whether from disease, starvation or exposure.
The Trail of Tears wasn’t an isolated incident; the Navajo were forced off their land during the Long Walk. There were also wars, slow losing battles with odds stacked against the Native Americans. The US made every effort to destroy Native Americans’ culture, including boarding schools where they sent children stolen from their parents.
The early US’s economy, especially in the South, became heavily dependent on forced, low–cost labor. It started off with indentured servants, but indentured servants could only be worked so hard, as they would eventually be freed. Native Americans had already been driven off or died from disease, so settlers turned to Africa. This was the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade, which forced Africans to the Americas in such great numbers that by 1860, they were nearly forty percent of the total population in the south.
Slaves were treated as property, and brutally suppressed, both by the people that owned them and by the government. Escaping to a free state was not freedom for a slave, due to the Fugitive Slave Act. The oppression did not relent, even after the Civil war. While in theory, they could vote, in practice they couldn’t. They were subject to absurdly difficult “literacy tests” and gerrymandering designed to water down their voices. That, of course, is assuming that African Americans made it to the polling places.
The threat of violence from hate groups such as the KKK was effective in keeping most from exercising their right to vote. In addition, many states made use of the loophole in the constitution that allows for slavery as a punishment for a crime. They created vague, everyday crimes, including loitering, in order to create excuses to force free people into labor. However, this was not the only way to squeeze labor out of people.
Working conditions were not well regulated in the Gilded Age. A more apt way to describe it would be not regulated at all. The US government’s approach to the economy was laissez faire, which meant that they wouldn’t regulate it at all, instead trusting the free market to sort itself out. This lackadaisical approach was one of the main factors in the rise of the robber barons.
The second industrial revolution, sometimes called the technological revolution, was another factor. Many robber barons got into businesses as they were blooming from rapid technological growth during the era. John D. Rockefeller, for example, made his fortune in oil at a time when the demand for oil was rapidly growing. It was not just luck that contributed to his success, among others. The robber barons used several strategies to balloon their wealth.
First, they created monopolies. There are two kinds of monopolies; vertical and horizontal. In a horizontal monopoly, the goal is to completely control one step of the process in making a time, or to be the only one selling that item. In a vertical monopoly, better known as vertical integration, the goal is to completely control all production steps.
Trusts, on the other hand, were a group of companies or people that worked together to completely control an industry. These were the big strategies that robber barons used in their battles of the market place, but they were also waging a fight against their own workers. The robber barons’ goal was to optimize and lower costs at every step of the process, including their work force.
They couldn’t use slave labor, as that had been, for the most part, out-lawed. However, there were no regulations on what an employer could demand of an employee. Employers would set work clocks behind the actual time. Days stretched for over twelve hours, and children worked as soon as it was possible. Robber barons were named such because they stole from their workers. And when the workers dared protest? They were crushed. Unions were illegal in some places, or employee contracts were dependent on not joining a union. Strikes could turn dangerous.
A prime example of the brutalness in which strikes and protests were dealt with is the Homestead strike, at one of Andrew Carnegie’s steel plants. He told the plant manager to do whatever was necessary to deal with the strike. After the strike failed to resolve, the manager called in the Pinkerton detective agency to fill in for the striking workers. Fighting between the two sides erupted, and nearly a dozen died. In the end, it was the Pennsylvania national guard that allowed the plant to use scab labor.
This is far from the only example. The Haymarket riot, a protest following the deaths of six workers during a strike, resulted in four people being executed. The Pullman strike ended when the president used the national guard to break it up. This is far from the only example of the government intervening on the side of business. It happened during the Homestead strike, and it happened again during the Littimer Massacre. The protesters refused to stop marching, and the police fired into the crowd. It ended with nineteen dead. Time and time again, the government sided with business over labor, and business wanted to keep it that way.
While nowhere in the Gilded age was free from corruption, nowhere is there a clearer example of it than Tammany Hall in New York. Tammany Hall was a political machine, an organization that provided support to poor people and immigrants in exchange for their votes. It was run by William “Boss” Tweed, who was notoriously corrupt. He took and gave brides. He skimmed from municipal money, and gave out jobs in return for favors. The money from these brides came from rich business men who wanted to make sure that their way to profits stayed clear.
It was not just Tweed that took brides: 200,000$ were spent on brides to get land for the Pacific railroad. Corruption was widespread and deep reaching. It was not just shady business practices and dangerous products that allowed the robber barons to succeed. They got ahead by sneaking their forward, skirting ethics for the sake of profit.
Despite the efforts of the reformers during the first half of the twentieth century, robber barons have not gone away, they have instead gone global. Their wealth might not be as great as the likes of Carnegie or Rockefeller, but it was stolen through similar means. Union busting, corruption and exploitation have changed shapes, but a mask does not make a new face.
The Thirteenth amendment does not fully outlaw slavery. It creates a loophole for slavery as a punishment as a crime, and this is fully taken advantage of. While convict leasing has ended, prison labor has not. While most prisoners are employed to help with the upkeep of their own prisons, there some are employed by private companies. These private companies can profit off of workers who are exempted from normal labor laws, such as the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Seven states do not pay their prisoners anything for their work, and those that do charge heavy fees. Prisoners who work for private companies, which might have higher wages, are not exempted from these fees. This is not the only exception made for prisoners in labor laws, however.
Prisoners also do not have overtime protections, and they can have additional punishments heaped on them for not working. Working, however, can be just as dangerous. California reported six hundred injuries in a four year period, and there aren’t good records kept of injuries. This is likely due to 70% of prisoners not receiving formal job training.
Private company prison labor, while not as common governmental prison labor, is still prevalent. The cost-saving from this allows private corporations to under local ethical, local business and bankrupt them. Hundreds of companies, including Walmart, Starbucks and McDonald’s use prison labor.
Union busting has also not gone away. Starbucks was found guilty of five hundred labor violations in 2025, with an additional one hundred and twenty five accusations. Since 2000, the company has had 87 million dollars of wage violations. It also struggles to negotiate with its union, even though the union’s demands would barely cost the company.
Starbucks isn’t alone, either. Amazon is terrible for workplace injury; 41% of workers are injured on the job. When workers dare to speak up for the injuries that they receive, they might be fired unceremoniously, such as Juan Loera-Gomez. It also participates in illegal union suppressing tactics, such as threatening to shut down unionized facilities, and firing union activists.
The robber barons of the Gilded age had a profound impact on the US. They helped create long-lasting companies and technology. They also took advantage of the existing inequality in the US. Awareness of the tactics that they used is important because avenues for them still exist today, and workers have to be aware of how business fights against them. The robber barons twisted the system of the economy to their advantage, which fits them in with the work and technology theme of APUSH.