Employment in Agriculture and Industry During the Gilded Age

During what is known as the Gilded Age there was economic growth within the United States. There was significant growth in the labor section between the years 1870-1920 according to the article “Understanding Economic Change in the Gilded Age”. What is interesting is which sectors contained growth and which decreased. Between 1870 and 1920 farm production and land increased significantly while labor in the agricultural sector decreased significantly. The job sector that increased the most was the industrial sector. “This growth plus new positions created in trade, services, and administration proceeded at a fast pace so that the agricultural workforce actually shrank proportionately between 1870 and 1920 despite its absolute (numeric) growth.”  This leads to the question of why this happened. What was happening that more people had jobs in industry when America was largely an agricultural economy just a few years prior? How were the farms able to increase production while decreasing employment?

In the 1870s the population grew, and more people moved to the cities to find work. There was an influx of immigration that contributed greatly to the rise in population. According to the United States Census Bureau, the population growth was due to the integration of the African Americans as citizens, Irish, Chinese, and other white nationalities. According to Campbell, fifty-two percent of the population worked in the agricultural sector while twenty-nine percent worked in industry in 1870. By 1920 the data shows that the agricultural sector jobs dropped to twenty-seven percent and industrial jobs rose to forty-four percent. America was industrializing on a large scale as some of the best-known companies and tycoons were created during this time. This created the demand for industrial jobs and many immigrants chose to work in these industries as it was easy to obtain a job and not land.

Technological advancements were responsible for the decrease in jobs in the agriculture sector. Some of the major inventions were the reapers, binders, threshers, and combined harvesters changed the whole lifestyle of farming. Suddenly one man could do the work of many. With steam engines and eventually gas engines taking over farming, it became more efficient.

The labor was divided by class and race. Racism has always been an issue within the United States. “Race, ethnicity, and gender stratified all groups of workers. Still, several broad tendencies are apparent. Laboring ten to twelve hours a day with crude machinery, industrial workers suffered high rates of accidents.”  This would eventually lead to the labor regulations that we know today. Some examples of the racism that existed are the Chinese immigrants were the main workers in building the railroads that would soon crisscross the nation. Many Irish and Catholic immigrants worked in the factories. Both these groups of people were considered less than because of race and religion. The large cities became divided into sections based on race and culture that still exist today.

The big draw of the cities were the industrial factory jobs that were created by the tycoons and what some people would call the men that built the American economy during this age. “The emergence of large-scale enterprises in the last decades of the 1800s is generally associated with legendary figures in American business history Rockefeller, Carnegie, Edison, Swift, Duke, and others. Their rise to fame and fortune provides material for interesting stories, but historians should resist entrapment in the "robber barons" stereotype.”  These men were able to obtain wealth and conduct business in the way that they did because of the lack of regulation. However, these men did build the industries that created jobs. J.P. Morgan even helped bail out the government during the economic crisis of 1907. This created a distrust of the big industry. It also created a lot of the regulations that corporations must face today.

The rise of these industrial giants while some of the practices seem wrong, did help create jobs that boosted the economy and population of America. As technology progressed and increased the production of farms without the need for employees it left opportunities for people to move to the cities. The industrialists were able to capitalize on this workforce that had an influx of people from around the world looking to create their “American Dream” and those looking for work after leaving the farms. This combination of things is responsible for the rise of employment in the industrial sector and the drop in the agricultural sector during the time known as the Gilded Age. It was an interesting time that had a lot of growth within America. New inventions, bigger cities, more connections, and the increase in goods available to the average person is a good indicators of the growth that America’s economy was experiencing. 

 

Bibliography

Campbell, B. C. “Understanding Economic Change in the Gilded Age.” OAH Magazine of History 13, no. 4 (1999): 16–20. https://doi.org/10.1093/maghis/13.4.16. 

Hunt, William C. “1920 Census: Volume 4. Population, Occupations.” Census.gov, 1923. https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1923/dec/vol-04-occupations.html. 

Moore, Sam. “Ten Agricultural Inventions That Changed the Face of Farming in America - Farm Collector.” Farm Collector - Dedicated to the Preservation of Vintage Farm Equipment, June 24, 2022. https://www.farmcollector.com/equipment/ten-agricultural-inventions-in-farming-history/. 

Walker, Francis A. “1870 Census: Vol. i. the Statistics of the Population of the United States.” United States Census Bureau, 1870. https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1870/population/1870a-04.pdf.