overnment used the threat of a higher power to maintain the status quo. Some men seemed to be in power because God smiled on them. It was the natural order. Evolution came along and insisted that those men came from fish and apes, and so did all other people. If the population accepted the change necessary to make a Morgan out of an ape, how great a change in their own lives could they effect?
Asa Gray of Harvard begged Darwin to postulate some Grand Design, some Beneficent Deity in all this; but Darwin could not persuade himself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars (Morison, 1972, p. 88).
Darwin's influence was seen in the capitalist owners' ranks as well. Their collusion to manipulate the competition among industry, to make themselves impenetrably fit to survive and rule generated a response from government in the form of anti-trust legislation. However ineffective the laws proved to be, they represented an awareness within the government that it served two masters and was answerable to both. The masses were offered the regulatory legislation of the period as pacifiers:
What was clear in this period to blacks, to feminists, to labor organizers and socialists, was that they could not count on the national government. True, this was the "Progressive Period," the start of the Age of Reform, but it was a reluctant reform, aimed at quieting the popular risings, not making fundamental changes (Zinn, 1980, p. 341).
Without the strict interpretation of the bible, the hold of religion loosened. Commoners suffered in their faith. If there was no cosmic guardian, and this time on earth was all there was, then commoners wanted more from life than long hours and unhealthy working conditions. If "survival of the fittest" was the ruling philosophy of the day, then people's best chance for surviva...