With depression looming as a continual threat to the U.S. economy in the late 19th century, Americans debated how the government should respond to hard times--a question still unanswered today. Manufacturers--then as now--usually took the position that government should not interfere with the workings of the "free market." Manufacturers found support for their laissez-faire positions in the speeches and writings of the leading academic experts of the day. On August 22, 1878, Yale faculty member William Graham Sumner testified before a select committee of the U.S. House of Representatives charged with investigating the Causes of the General Depression in Labor and Business. Sumner preached a strict "hands-off" approach to ameliorating the widespread economic dislocations then plaguing the country.

As the depression of the 1870s deepened, demonstrations by unemployed workers took place all over the country. Workers and their allies demanding relief and job programs often were met with official violenceand were treated with hostility by the nation's press. On January 13, 1874 a workers' demonstration in Tompkins Square in New York City was broken up when mounted police moved in, beating demonstrators with clubs.