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What role did the government play in workers' liberty during the Gilded Age?
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During the Gilded Age, the government played a minimal role in protecting workers' liberty, adhering to a laissez-faire policy. There were no labor laws, safety standards, or legal unions, leaving workers vulnerable to exploitation. The political elite believed labor conditions were a private matter between employers and workers. Consequently, the government often sided with businesses, using its power to suppress strikes and maintain pro-business policies.
The Gilded Age, which ran roughly from the end of the Civil War in 1865 to the turn of the century, was a time of great industrial growth in the United States and a period in which a few people were able to amass vast fortunes. The federal government during this period (and up until the New Deal, which began in 1933) did not define its role as protecting the well-being of the average American worker. There was no minimum wage, no forty-hour work week, no unemployment insurance, no safety standards, no laws to prevent children leaving school to begin work at a very early age, no legal unions—in fact, there was nothing in place to protect the American worker. Further, immigrants were flooding in from poor or persecuted sections of Europe with little understanding of how to shield themselves from exploitation. As you can imagine, with the government providing...
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no protection and the workers unable to protect themselves, workers were not in a good position to enjoy prosperity. One might call them lambs led to the slaughter.
With no labor laws and an uninformed workforce, it is not hard to see how business owners could make a fortune. They used this money, in part, to corrupt the political system and consolidate their power. The very wealthy simply had so much money they could buy politicians outright.
With the politicians beholden largely to the wealthy, they naturally sided with and protected the political interests of the wealthy. As such, they used the power of the government to enforce pro-business policies and refused to enact policies that would have helped the workers—or farmers—have better lives. Though there was much unrest and a call for a better deal for workers, with many innovative ideas floated, the average workers did not have the political leverage until later to bring change to fruition.
Government did little or nothing to protect workers' liberty during the so-called Gilded Age. Throughout this period, successive governments broadly adhered to a policy of laissez-faire, which meant that they refrained from interfering in how businesses ran their affairs.
Inevitably, this included relations between business and labor. The general consensus among the political elite was that pay and conditions were matters to be negotiated between management and individual workers; they were part of the employment contract and therefore no concern of government. This was a private matter between consenting contractual parties, and so it should remain.
As one can imagine, many businesses abused this freedom to drive down wages and conditions. A prime example would be the Pullman Company, which manufactured railroad cars. In 1894, it drastically reduced the wages of its workforce, precipitating a nationwide wildcat strike that dragged on for over two months, causing massive disruption and leading to the deaths of thirty people in violent protests.
The democratic administration of President Grover Cleveland sided with the Pullman Company, using the powers of the federal government to obtain injunctions against the American Railway Union and its leaders. Cleveland also ordered in the Army to prevent striking workers from obstructing trains. This showed the lengths to which government during the Gilded Age was prepared to go to ensure that businesses retained the upper hand in their dealings with labor.