4 the social darwinist william g sumner believed that

4. The Social Darwinist William G. Sumner believed that freedom required frank
acceptance of inequality.
3. Liberty of Contract and the Courts
1. Labor contracts reconciled freedom and authority in the workplace.
2. The courts viewed state regulation of business as an insult to free labor.

6/25/2017 Chapter 16: America's Gilded Age, 1870­1890 | Give Me Liberty! An American History | Eric Foner: W. W. Norton StudySpace
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3. The courts generally sided with business enterprises that complained of a loss of
economic freedom.
4. Lochner v. New York voided a state law establishing ten hours per day or sixty per
week as the maximum hours of work for bakers, citing that it infringed on
individual freedom.
6. Labor and the Republic
1. "The Overwhelming Labor Question"
1. The 1877 Great Railroad Strike demonstrated that there was an overwhelming
labor question.
2. The Knights of Labor and the "Conditions to Essential Liberty"
1. The Knights of Labor organized all workers to improve social conditions.
2. Labor raised the question of whether meaningful freedom could exist in a situation
of extreme economic inequality.
3. Middle­Class Reformers
1. Alarmed by fear of class warfare and the growing power of concentrated capital,
social thinkers offered numerous plans for change.
2. Henry George's solution was the single tax.
3. Lawrence Gronlund's Cooperative Commonwealth (1884) was the first book to
popularize socialist ideas for an American audience.
4. Freedom, Edward Bellamy insisted, was a social condition resting on
interdependence, not on autonomy.
5. Bellamy held out the hope of retaining the material abundance made possible by
industrial capitalism while eliminating inequality.
4. A Social Gospel
1. Walter Rauschenbusch insisted that freedom and spiritual self­development
required an equalization of wealth and power and that unbridled competition
mocked the Christian ideal of brotherhood.
2. Social Gospel adherents established mission and relief programs in urban areas.
5. The Haymarket Affair
1. On May 1, 1886, some 350,000 workers in cities across the country demonstrated
for an eight­hour day.
2. A riot ensued after a bomb killed a policeman on May 4.
3. Employers took the opportunity to paint the labor movement as a dangerous and
un­American force prone to violence and controlled by foreign­born radicals.
4. Seven of the eight men accused of plotting the Haymarket bombing were foreign­
born.
6. Labor and Politics
1. Henry George ran for mayor of New York in 1886 on a labor ticket.
2. The events of 1886 suggested that labor might be on the verge of establishing
itself as a permanent political force.
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