History may not repeat itself but today’s economic and social reality does rhyme with Mark Twain’s Gilded Age of the 1870’s – and into the 20th century. Mega-corporations and our current neo-feudalism are reflections of the railroads and other large industries of those earlier years. And, the consequences of this are as well.

The change from agrarian food production and craftsman guilds to assembly lines is not a clear-cut change from good to bad but it did provide an environment for extreme accumulations of wealth in the hands of very few to an extent seldom seen. This was not a new phenomena, as Churches and Venetian merchants demonstrated.

Twain did not write much about this in his own country but he did note the disparities in other countries, particularly between the Church and Italian peasantry, in his book “The Innocents Abroad”.

Early in American history labor scarcity provided workers with a degree of power and freedom. Soon, however, they could go no further west. Choices had been erased by mechanization and the mass immigration prompted in part by foreign recruitment efforts of businesses such as the railroads. The majority of workers were now employees, not entrepreneurs. In the workplace, independence, a favorite characterization of American society, had given way to the autocracy of bosses. As industry grew without regulation, financing for craftsmen became increasingly unlikely.

The Chicago World’s Fair, or The Columbian Exposition was an influential social and cultural event and had a profound effect on Chicago's self-image and American industrial optimism. It was also gilding.

Race was another grave issue that troubled the celebration of progress at the Fair. With the demise of Reconstruction, the nation was reverting to racial hatred. The Jim Crow system condemned black people to permanent second-class citizenship. On the fair’s Midway, visitors could watch West African natives “brandishing war-clubs and grinning as only Dahomeans can grin,” a guidebook noted. Frederick Douglass condemned the White City as a “whited sepulcher.” The ethnological displays, he said, were an effort “to shame the Negro,” depicting him as a “repulsive savage.””

Railroad corporations were the first really big businesses in America and have been called “the seedbed of the American labor movement.” A series of strikes, beginning in 1877, had jolted the country with increasing frequency through the 1880s. The revolts rattled the moneyed elite. Ordinary citizens found themselves ranked among the “dangerous classes,” a common term for workers when they asserted collective rights.

In 1870, the Northern Pacific Railroad made Jay Cooke & Company its exclusive bond agent. But Cooke had difficulty marketing the bonds to investors and wound up owning 75 percent of the company, and overextended his bank. As this liability became public, investors began withdrawing money from Cooke & Company.

A run on the bank ensued, and its operations were suspended. When the New York Stock Exchange heard the announcement, equities plummeted, causing a chain reaction of bank runs and failures throughout the United States that signaled the arrival of the Panic of 1873 to American shores.

Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner’s book, “The Gilded Age” was published in 1873. The Clemens family had been living in London, England from June to November of 1873. After only six days back in the United States, Mark Twain returned alone to England until January of 1874.

In 1877, steep wage cuts led American railroad workers to launch the series of protests and riots , dubbed Great Railroad Strike. Initial protests broke out after the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) cut workers' pay for the third time in a year. West Virginia Governor Henry M. Mathews sent the militia to restore order but was unsuccessful, largely because the militia sympathized with the workers. The governor called on US President Rutherford B. Hayes who then sent in federal troops. Many newspapers were critical of Matthews's characterization of the strikes as an "insurrection", rather than an act of desperation and frustration. One notable paper recorded a striking worker's perspective that he "had might as well die by the bullet as to starve to death by inches".

Within a week, similar protests had erupted in other cities. In Baltimore, Maryland where strikers set fire to buildings owned by B.& O. Railroads and an outnumbered militia guard division opened fire when they were surrounded by rioters, killing 10 and injuring 25 more leading to a days-long standoff at Camden Yards.

In New York, striking workers began pelting arriving trains with thrown objects, prompting a response from local police. Pennsylvania saw perhaps the worst violence of the railroad strikes; see Pittsburgh railroad strike of 1877, Reading Railroad massacre and Scranton general strike. In Chicago, Illinois, striking workers brought freight and passenger trains to a standstill, leading to an order from judge Thomas Drummond that such actions were illegal. The United States Marshals Service responded by arresting dozens of strikers. In Missouri, strikers also brought rail traffic to a halt, and at least 18 people died in conflicts.

It wasn’t just the railroads in financial difficulties. In July 1877, the market for lumber crashed, leading several Michigan lumber companies to go bankrupt. Within a year, the effects of this second business slump reached all the way to California.

The depression ended in the spring of 1879, but tension between workers and the leaders of banking and manufacturing interests lingered on.

The Homestead Strike or Riot of 1892, a violent labour dispute between the Carnegie Steel Company and many of its workers, occurred on July 6, 1892, in Homestead, Pennsylvania. The strike pitted the company’s management, which included owner Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, strikebreakers, who had been hired, and the Pinkerton National Detective Agency against members of the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, who worked for the company. A gun battle resulted in which a number of Pinkerton agents and strikers were killed and many were injured.

The conflict between the union workers and the strikebreakers took on racial overtones . The union barred African Americans and many of the strikebreakers were African Americans brought in from the South. Given the alternatives they faced in the rural South, the steelworker jobs, even at the lower wages, provided them with a better life. Another riot in November 1892 pitted some 2,000 white workers against African American workers and their families, and several people were severely wounded by gunfire. However, by November 21 the union had given up, and some workers reapplied for jobs at the mill, agreeing to 12-hour days and reduced wages.

The Panic of 1893 lasted until 1897. As a result of the panic, stock prices declined. Five hundred banks closed, 15,000 businesses failed, and numerous farms ceased operation. The unemployment rate hit 25% in Pennsylvania, 35% in New York, and 43% in Michigan. Soup kitchens were opened to help feed the destitute. Facing starvation, people chopped wood, broke rocks, and sewed by hand with needle and thread in exchange for food. In some cases, women resorted to prostitution to feed their families. To help the people of Detroit, Mayor Hazen S. Pingree launched his "Potato Patch Plan", which were community gardens for farming.

The Great Northern Railroad had begun cutting wages in August of 1893, with more cuts made in January and in March of 1894. In April, ARU workers voted to strike. The Great Northern was completely shut down for 18 days, and wages were restored as a result of an arbitration award. Workers were joining the ARU at the rate of 2,000 a day!

As the Panic of 1893 shut down much of the economy, railroads stopped purchase of new passenger cars from Pullman. When his company laid off workers and lowered wages, it did not reduce rents, and the workers called for a strike. Among the reasons for the strike were the absence of democracy within the town of Pullman and its politics, the rigid paternalistic control of the workers by the company, excessive water and gas rates, and a refusal by the company to allow workers to buy and own houses

Eugene Debs and the ARU called a massive boycott against all trains that carried a Pullman car. It affected most rail lines west of Detroit and at its peak involved some 250,000 workers in 27 states. The American Federation of Labor (AFL) opposed the boycott. The railroad brotherhoods of Conductors and Engineers were opposed to the boycott. The Fireman brotherhood—of which Debs had been a prominent leader—was split. The General Managers' Association of the railroads coordinated the opposition.

Thirty people were killed in riots in Chicago alone. An estimated additional 40 were killed in other states. Property damage exceeded $80 million.

The federal government obtained an injunction against the union, Debs, and other boycott leaders, ordering them to stop interfering with trains that carried mail cars. After the strikers refused, President Grover Cleveland ordered in the Army to stop the strikers from obstructing the trains. Violence broke out in many cities, and the strike collapsed. Defended by a team including Clarence Darrow, Debs was convicted of violating a court order and sentenced to prison; the ARU dissolved. Debs served six months in prison and emerged as a committed adherent of the international socialist movement.

President Grover Cleveland was blamed for the depression. Gold reserves stored in the U.S. Treasury fell to a dangerously low level. Cleveland borrowed $65 million in gold from Wall Street banker J.P. Morgan and the Rothschild banking family of England. His party suffered enormous losses in the 1894 elections, largely being blamed for the downward spiral in the economy and the brutal crushing of the Pullman Strike.

After their defeat in 1896, the Democrats did not regain control of any branch of the Federal Government until 1910.

In 1895, Mark Twain began a world tour to pay off his own debts. Traveling on the Northern Pacific Railroad, departing from the Missoula, Montana station enroute to Spokane, Washington (from Major Pond’s journal)...”Attached to our train from Missoula Station were two special cars, bearing an excursion party of the new Receiver of the Northern Pacific Railroad, and his friends, one of whom was the U. S. Supreme Judge who had appointed this receiver. An invitation was sent to Mark to ride in their car, but as it only came for him alone and not the ladies he declined.”

Mark Twain and Major Pond arrived in Spokane, and “… walked about this remarkable city, with its asphalt streets, electric lights, nine story telegraph poles, and commercial blocks that would do credit to any Eastern city. Buildings were ten stories high, with nine stories empty. Many fine stores with great plate glass fronts “to rent.” Afternoon we drove about the city, our entire party in an open carriage. Our driver pointed out some beautiful suburban residences, and told us who occupied them. “That house,” said he, as we drove by a palatial establishment, “is where Mr. Brown lives. He is receiver for the Spook Bank, which failed last year for over $2,000,000. You all know about that failure, of course. The Receiver lives there.”

“Another, “That man, living up in that big house is receiver for the Great Falls Company. It failed for nearly a million. The President and directors of that Company are most all in the State Prison, and this ’yere house that we are coming to now is where the Receiver of the Wash. Gas & Water Company lives,” &c.”

“Mark said to the ladies, “If I had a son to send West I would educate him for a receiver. It seems to be about the only thriving industry.”

Samuel L. Clemens was not a Jabez Stone, who sold his soul for wealth. He did not hold contracts over the heads of others less fortunate. His actions did not drive others into penury. But he was on a constant search for wealth. And, he did need the assistance of “Hell Hound” Rogers, a vice president of Standard Oil, to escape financial disaster. He began his working life as an apprentice type setter and was ironically driven to near bankuptcy investing in a machine designed to eliminate jobs for type setters (among a number of other unwise investments). Twain’s novel, “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”, offers a keen view into his contradictions regarding civilization. Published in 1900. It ends with the utter destruction of Hank Morgan’s vision of civilization at the Battle of Sand-Belt.

Today, in the United States, the top one-tenth of 1% owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90%. The three richest people in America now own more wealth than bottom 160 million people. More than just America, it is a global issue. While millions of people throughout the world live in dire poverty, without clean drinking water, adequate health care, decent housing, or education for their kids, the six wealthiest people in the world own more wealth than the bottom half of the world’s population, 3.6 billion people.”

From the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

In 2021, there were 16 major work stoppages beginning in the year, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. A major work stoppage involves 1,000 or more workers and lasts at least one shift during the work week, Monday through Friday excluding Federal holidays. The lowest annual total of major work stoppages was 5 in 2009 and the highest was 470 in 1952. Between the years 2000-2021, there have been an average of 17 work stoppages beginning in the year. There were 80,700 workers involved in major work stoppages that began in 2021. Service-providing industries accounted for 76 percent of idled workers over the year or 61,000 workers. Within service-providing industries,the education and health services sector accounted for the idling of 52,600 workers; 45,400 health care and social assistance workers and 7,200 educational services workers were idled as a result of major work stoppages. In 2021, goods-producing industries accounted for 24 percent of idled workers or 19,700 workers. Within goods-producing industries, the manufacturing sector accounted for the idling of the majority of workers involved in work stoppages; 16,600 manufacturing workers were involved in major work stoppages in 2021. In 2021, there was one local government work stoppage, where 2,000 workers were idled 11 days resulting in 22,000 days of idleness. In private industry, 78,700 workers were idled beginning in the year, resulting in 1,081,700 cumulative days of idleness.