Introduction:

The second half of the nineteenth century saw an incredible burst of entrepreneurial energy that created the modern industrial state helping launch the United States on a course that would make it the most prosperous nation in history. For many, unimaginable goods were suddenly available to ordinary people. This prompted fundamental issues of wealth and power. The transition caused hardship everywhere but was especially in the South and West. It reduced the proportion of skilled artisans in the workplace and created a large class of unskilled factory workers who labored under terrible conditions for long hours and little pay. It fostered the growth of festering slums with high crime and disease. It led to concentrations of economic power that overwhelmed the ability of the ordinary person to control their lives and futures.

Certain reformers tried to secure legislation to counteract the effects of economic change but ran into an ideology called laissez-faire, a conviction that government only stunted prosperity when it tried to interfere with natural laws and occurrences that governed economic life. An offshoot of this was laissez-faire constitutionalism, sustained by the moral convictions of the Victorian age, which believed poverty to be a punishment for vice, laziness, and other sins. The courts’ endorsement of this type of constitutionalism in the 1880s and 1890s led reformers to see the judges as allies of powerful economic interests that opposed much-needed change.

Read: Chapter eleven, “The Industrial State.”

Optional Written Assignment I: (25 bonus points)

Pay attention to Lochner v New York (1905), a decision causing many business owners to question the growing distrust of the courts. What was this case about? Explain the court’s decision and whether or not it helped or hurt workers and labor unions. Please submit a one page summary for extra credit using the corresponding link below.

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