Donald Trump and The Golden Age – Part Two- The Rise of the Robber Barons
In the years following the Civil War, the entire country was in a state of poverty. The war had decimated the South, with the bulk of the population having homes destroyed and land scared from the fighting. To restore the South, infrastructure projects began to rebuild the railroads, pushing the need for steel which produced the need for coal.
Coal was discovered in the Appalachian Mountains about the time the United States saw its need for coal explode. Coal had been discovered in the Appalachian Mountains in the 1700s, but the need at the time didn’t warranty the investment. However, speculators bought “mineral rights” from the mountain people for next to nothing. By 1810, 70% of the land in West Virginia was held by “absentee owners.” They held the mineral rights while the people who lived on the land had “surface rights.”
Once the shift to the industrial revolution began, people in suits showed up with the sheriff and a court order stating they had the right to mine the minerals on these lands. Soon, the people whose family had lived on this land for generations, saw the mountains being cut up into pieces with coal being carried out. With the mountains ruined, the people who had lived off the land found themselves forced to go to work in the mines to feed their families. Soon they were living in the company housing, buying from the company store, attending services at the company church where the preacher handed down the gospel of being loyal to the coal company and later on their children attended the company school where they were pointed toward the mines.
A typical Appalachian miner would spend the week working long hours, in a dangerous environment. Then the company would charge him for his house, the food from the company store, leaving the worker at the end of the week indebted to the company. Essentially a slave on the land his family owned for generations.
While the coal companies were exploiting their workers, Andrew Carnegie was busy building steel mills. Carnegie was a Scottish Immigrant who worked his way up quickly the Pennsylvania Railroad. Business trips to England proved to Carnegie steel was where the money was, so he “borrowed” processes from English steel mills and started his empire. Carnegie was famous demanding long hours and low pay from his workers. He created a monopoly through owning coal mines, steel mills, railroads and barges.
Vanderbilt dominated the railroads, Rockerfeller had Standard Oil, JP Morgan and Andrew Carnegie controlled the steel mills. Collectively, they decided to “buy them a president” and they did with William McKinley. The robber barons flooded McKinley with cash, which was used to print 250,000,000 leaflets denouncing his opponent Williams Jennings Bryant. (three times the population of the United States at the time). Hanna also hired “surrogate speakers” to spread misinformation about the candidates. This is reminiscent of X, Facebook, Truth Social and Newsmax flooding the airwaves with misinformation during the 2024 election.
Cleveland millionaire Mark Hanna connected McKinley to the robber barons and the money started flooding in. On inauguration day, Hanna rode in the carriage with McKinley (much like Musk, Zuckerberg and Bezos being with Trump on his inauguration).
McKinley “pledged support to America’s workers” but they found out pretty quickly there was no action to his words. McKinley immediately began a “pro business agenda.” He fired the Civil Servants that carried out jobs for the government and replaced with McKinley loyalist. McKinley instituted tariffs under the guise of “protecting America’s interest.” He pushed the ideas of monopolies and closed markets.
McKinley was an imperialist, and annexed Hawaii, went to war with Spain over Cuba, took over Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines. Not unlike Trump’s fixation over Canada, the Panama Canal and Greenland.
In 1901, J.P. Morgan bought Carnegie Steel from Andrew Carnegie to combine their companies to form US Steel. The deal involved a public stock offering of 1.4 billion dollars. The problem was, the two companies together were only worth about $880,000,000. While that padded Morgan’s pockets, when it came time to pay dividends he had an issue. More people held stock in the company than the profits covered. So, Morgan and Carnegie waged war on the workers. Driving down wages and demanding long hours, workers were personally paying the price for the transfer of wealth to Morgan and Carnegie. McKinley imposed tariffs of steel to allow US Steel to raise their prices, with consumer goods picking up the tab. For good measure, the government decided to have an “all steel Navy” ordering millions of dollars of steel at inflated prices. Morgan and Carnegie got richer, workers paid the price through lost wages and higher taxes. At the moment Donald Trump is imposing tariffs on goods working class Americans buy. A tariff is a tax, that gets paid at the consumer level. These tariffs are adding money to the government to cover tax cuts to the wealthiest of our number. Trump is replacing government contracts that have been in place with new ones to Elon Musk’s companies. Star Link and Space X are replacing systems that have been in place for generations. All as a payback for bankrolling his faltering campaign and spreading lies on his X platform to benefit Trump Golden Age- mirroring the Gilded Age.
Late in Andrew Carnegie’s life, he decided he wanted to “build libraries” across the country. He offered a grant to build a library in Wheeling, West Virginia. However, Labor Leaders successfully lobbied against the Carnegie Library grant in Wheeling. Teamster Valetine Reuther (father of Walter Reuther) went before the city leaders with other members of labor and said "Wheeling is one place on this great green planet where Andrew Carnegie can't get a monument with his money." The grant offer was rejected and school children conducted a penny drive to help fund the library.
McKinley courted black voters, much like Trump, but also like Trump turned his back on them once in office. Violence against black citizens was growing, particularly in the South and McKinley turned a blind eye toward the murders and heinous acts against many of his citizens. The Tariff Act of 1890, pushed by McKinley when he was Speaker of the House, resulted in the recession of 1890, costing McKinley his position of Speaker of the House. But, through the help of the robber barons and a misinformation campaign, McKinley returned to power with debts owed to his wealthy backers. Donald Trump has followed the same path, using lies and intimidation that he hides behind with a slogan of “the Golden Age.” The question remains, who is it golden for?