In the popular imagination as well as in scholarly works, the Gilded Age is perceived as an especially debased period of
American history. It was corrupt and its corrupters were often blatant, but it also abounded in active and vociferous reformers who publicized and at times exaggerated the shortcomings of the day. The Gilded Age, however, was not the only era in which politicians rigged elections, policymaking officials accepted bribes, administrators awarded padded contracts for public works and services, and civil servants extorted or stole money.
Prior to the adoption of the secret ballot in the 1890s, voters were frequently purchased in swing states like Indiana or marched to the polls on company time in Pennsylvania, where they voted as directed by their coal mine or steel mill boss. Lax registration procedures in cities enabled the Republican machine in Philadelphia, for example, or the Democratic machine in New York, to use “repeaters” who cast votes for fictitious names and for those long since dead. Voters were also “colonized” across state lines. Ballot boxes were “stuffed” with votes no one had cast legitimately. While some northern industrialists intimidated employees, southern white supremacists intimidated blacks. In the most violent and disgraceful election in American history they gained control of Mississippi in 1875 by threatening, beating, and murdering blacks to keep them from voting. By 1900 the secret ballot had reduced cheating at the polls, but southern blacks were totally disfranchised.
Throughout the country, however, most potential voters could vote and most votes were cast legitimately, but a close election could be determined by fraud or violence, and the four elections from 1876 to 1888 were close. Republican fraud prevailed over Democratic violence in the disputed presidential election of 1876, but it is impossible to determine who would have won if all enfranchised voters had been allowed to vote and their votes accurately counted. It is impossible to say whether or not zealous Republicans threw out too many Democratic votes to make up for intimidated black Republicans. In 1888 the successful Republican nominee Benjamin Harrison thanked God for his victory, but his cynical campaign manager Matthew Quay observed that God had nothing to do with it, quipping that a number of men risked the penitentiary to put Harrison in the White House.
With the spectacular rise of industry in the late 19th century, businesspeople were anxious to curry favor with powerful politicians who were in a position to make or break a venture. Railroads, some of which were dependent on land grants and all of which were subject to some governmental regulation as public carriers, were especially active in influencing politicians, but so too were large-scale importers and distillers. These supplicants attempted to seduce power brokers using a variety of methods, ranging from flattery in mansions and on boats to investment opportunities, generous loans, exorbitant fees, and outright bribery. Jay Gould and James Fisk of the Erie Railroad in
This cartoon parodies the strife and corruption within the New York Democratic Party (Harper's Weekly)
1868 bribed the New York state legislature with $1 million to legitimize the issuance of watered stock. The following year—after entertaining and temporarily duping President Ulysses S. Grant—they briefly cornered the gold market, sold short, made $11 million, and ruined many. During the Gilded Age, the Pennsylvania Railroad dominated the government of Pennsylvania, and the real capital of California reputedly was not Sacramento but the offices of the Southern Pacific Railroad.
Congressmen were also corrupted. Several accepted stock in the Credit Mobilier, the construction company controlled by insiders that made exorbitant profits in building the Union Pacific Railroad with federal funds. Speaker of the House James G. Blaine received $64,000 from the Union Pacific (which he was in a position to help) for some nearly worthless Little Rock & Fort Smith Railroad bonds, a payment that cost him the presidency. James A. Garfield, however, gained the presidency despite having received a $329 Credit Mobilier dividend (he said it was a $300 loan) and a $5,000 fee from a paving firm that he helped secure a contract for Washington streets. That fee was chicken feed compared with Boss William M. Tweed’s $1 million from the Erie Railroad for his legal services or the $5 million loan to Senator Nelson Aldrich—the major architect of Gilded Age tariff rates—from the American Sugar Refining Company, the major importer of the nation’s most valuable import.
Garfield was not alone in making money from a government contract. The New York County Courthouse built by the Tweed Ring for $12 million (three times what it should have cost) enriched insiders by padding contracts. Construction projects were especially lucrative for local politicians, and some like George W. Plunkitt of Tammany Hall differentiated between honest and dishonest graft. Plunkitt would have no part in outright stealing, but he saw no harm in profiting personally from the inside information politicians were often privy to. Urban bosses regularly awarded transportation franchises in exchange for hefty political contributions. The most spectacular example of padded contracts on the federal level were the star route frauds. In the late 1870s contracts for mail service in remote corners of the West were fraudulently increased by approximately $2 million, and this money helped finance the 1880 Republican presidential campaign. Postal officials who perpetrated the star route frauds—and urban bosses who padded contracts and sold franchises—funneled most of the money they realized into political party organizations in an effort to perpetuate their power.
Civil servants involved in collecting taxes often took bribes. The New York customhouse was notorious in the 1870s among New Yorkers for taking advantage of importers, but non-New Yorkers claimed it allowed New York firms to skirt regulations and achieve an advantage over competing merchants in other cities with honest customs officials. In St. Louis a group of distillers and internal revenue agents with ties to Grant’s personal secretary defrauded the government of large sums of money in a conspiracy known as the Whiskey Ring.
With the passage of the 1883 Pendleton Act, CiViL service reform decreased blatant political corruption. As public officers became less partisan and more professional, and with the outlawing of political assessments, politicians depended less and less on civil servants (and what by hook or by crook they could realize from their positions) for funding campaigns. And as the public service became politically neutral, politicians turned instead to businessmen for contributions and became increasingly amenable to their demands, further blurring the line between a contribution and a bribe.
Further reading: Mark Wahlgren Summers, The Era of Good Stealings (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
World History
