3rd year

Study of Civilisation texts

Teacher: Mr. Mokhtari

The Gilded Age

“The Gilded Age” is the term used to describe the tumultuous years between the Civil War and the turn of the
twentieth century. The Gilded Age was a time of significant growth in America, with new industries like
railroads, oil, and steel propelling the country to new heights. It was a period marked by intense
industrialization with a focus on America’s development as an industrial and business power. The term was
coined by Mark Twain by writing a famous satirical novel called ‘’ The Gilded Age’’. During this era, America
became more prosperous and saw unprecedented growth in industry and technology; hence, was a period where
greedy, corrupt industrialists, bankers and politicians enjoyed extraordinary wealth and opulence at the
expense of the working class. Twain’s message was that The United States was not experiencing a golden age,
an era of prosperity and happiness, but rather a Gilded age during which immense wealth was accumulated by
a number of individuals many of whom still have their names on things today like Andrew Carnegie, and J.P.
Morgan. They got enormous wealth by being the captains of these new expanding industries. In fact, it was
wealthy tycoons, not politicians, who inconspicuously held the most political power during the Gilded Age.
The era eventually gave way to reforms thanks to government intervention and labor movements.

Urbanization in the United States increased gradually in the early 1800s and then accelerated in
the years after the Civil War. Americans increasingly moved into cities over the course of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a movement motivated in large measure
by industrialization. Eleven million people migrated from rural to urban areas between 1870 and
1920, and a majority of the twenty-five million immigrants who came to the United States in these
same years moved into the nation’s cities. . By 1890, twenty-eight percent of Americans lived in
urban areas, more Americans lived in towns and cities than in rural areas for the first time in US
history.
The principal force driving America’s move into cities was the Second Industrial Revolution.
The latter took off following the Civil War with the introduction of interchangeable parts, assembly-
line production, and new technologies, including the telephone, automobile, electrification of homes
and businesses, and more. The businesses and factories behind the industrial revolution were located
in the nation’s towns and cities. Eleven million Americans migrated from the countryside to cities in
the fifty years between 1870 and 1920. During these same years an additional 25 million immigrants,
most from Europe, moved to the United States—one of the largest mass migrations in human
history—and while some settled on farms, most moved into the nation’s growing towns and cities.
The growth of industry and a wave of immigrants marked this period in American history. In 1869,
the Transcontinental Railroad was finished and led to rapid settlement of the western United States.
It also made it much easier to transport goods over long distances from one part of the country to
another. The production of iron and steel rose dramatically and western resources like lumber, gold,
and silver increased the demand for improved transportation. Railroad development boomed as trains
moved goods from the resource-rich West to the East. Steel and oil were in great demand. Railroad
tycoons such as Cornelius Vanderbilt and Jay Gould were just one of many types of so-called robber
barons that emerged in the Gilded Age. The industrial revolution produced a lot of wealth for a
number of businessmen like John D. Rockefeller (in oil) and Andrew Carnegie (in steel), known as
robber barons (people who got rich through ruthless business deals). These men used union busting,
fraud, intimidation, violence and their extensive political connections to gain an advantage over any
competitors. Robber barons were relentless in their efforts to amass wealth while exploiting workers
and ignoring standard business rules—and in many cases, the law itself. They soon accumulated vast
amounts of money and dominated every major industry including the railroad, oil, banking, timber,
sugar, liquor, meatpacking, steel, mining, tobacco and textile industries.

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 Although wealthy entrepreneurs such as Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and Henry
Frick, who are often referred to as robber barons, built huge monopolies often by crushing any small
business or competitor in their way, they were also generous philanthropists who did not always rely
on political ploys to build their empires. They tried to improve life for their employees, donated
millions to charities and nonprofits and supported their communities by providing funding for
everything from libraries and hospitals to universities, public parks and zoos.

The Gilded Age was in many ways the culmination of the Industrial Revolution, when America
and much of Europe shifted from an agricultural society to an industrial one. Millions of immigrants
and struggling farmers arrived in cities such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, St. Louis
and Chicago, looking for work and hastening the urbanization of America. By 1900, about 40 percent
of Americans lived in major cities. Those immigrants lived in deplorable conditions of tenement
slums as most cities were unprepared for rapid population growth. Housing was limited,
and tenements and slums sprung up nationwide. Heating, lighting, sanitation and medical care were
poor or nonexistent, and millions died from preventable disease. Many immigrants were unskilled
and willing to work long hours for little pay. Gilded Age plutocrats considered them the perfect
employees for their sweatshops, where working conditions were dangerous and workers endured long
periods of unemployment, wage cuts and no benefits.

One of the most influential ideas of the Gilded Age was laissez-faire. proponents of laissez-faire
policies, known as liberals, opposed government intervention in society or the market. They believed
that the free market would naturally produce the best and most efficient solutions to economic and
social problems. Laissez-faire combined the principles of limited government and the free market
with some of the ideas of Social Darwinism. Social Darwinism, a term scholars use to describe the
practice of misapplying the biological evolutionary language of Charles Darwin to politics, the
economy, and society, pervaded many aspects of American society in the Gilded Age, including
policies that affected immigration, imperialism, and public health. Many Social Darwinists
embraced laissez-faire capitalism and racism. They believed that government should not interfere in
the “survival of the fittest” by helping the poor, and promoted the idea that some races are biologically
superior to others.
Some sociologists and others were taking up words and ideas which Darwin had used to describe
the biological world, and they were adopting them to their own ideas and theories about the human
social world. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these Social Darwinists took up the
language of evolution to frame an understanding of the growing gulf between the rich and the poor
as well as the many differences between cultures all over the world. The explanation they arrived at
was that businessmen and others who were economically and socially successful were so because
they were biologically and socially “naturally” the fittest. Conversely, they reasoned that the poor
were “naturally” weak and unfit and it would be an error to allow the weak of the species to continue
to breed. Many sociologists and political theorists turned to Social Darwinism to argue against
government programs to aid the poor, as they believed that poverty was the result of natural
inferiority, which should be bred out of the human population.
The pernicious beliefs of Social Darwinism also shaped Americans' relationship with peoples of
other nations. As a massive number of immigrants came to the United States during the Second
Industrial Revolution, white, Anglo-Saxon Americans viewed these newcomers—who differed from
earlier immigrants in that they were less likely to speak English and more likely to be Catholic or
Jewish rather than Protestant—with disdain. Many whites believed that these new immigrants, who
hailed from Eastern or Southern Europe, were racially inferior and consequently "less evolved" than
immigrants from England, Ireland, or Germany. Similarly, Social Darwinism was used as a
justification for American imperialism in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines following
the Spanish-American War, as many adherents of imperialism argued that it was the duty of white
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Americans to bring civilization to "backwards" peoples. Applying Charles Darwin’s theory of
evolution to human institutions, liberals believed that competition was necessary for progress. During
the Gilded Age, this belief that laissez-faire capitalism produced optimal results for society came into
conflict with the efforts of reformers and labor unions to rein in the influence of big businesses.
Laissez-faire ideology influenced government policies toward labor relations.
Labor unions arose in the nineteenth century as increasing numbers of Americans took jobs
in factories, mines, and mills in the growing industrial economy. The Knights of Labor, founded in
1869, was the first major labor organization in the United States. The Knights organized unskilled
and skilled workers, campaigned for an eight hour workday, and aspired to form a cooperative society
in which laborers owned the industries in which they worked. The Knights’ membership collapsed
following the 1886 Haymarket Square riot in Chicago. By 1886 the American Federation of
Labor (AFL), an alliance of skilled workers’ trade unions, was growing.

As the United States’ industrial economy grew in the late 1800s, conflict between workers and
factory owners became increasingly frequent and sometimes led to violence. The Homestead
Strike occurred at the Carnegie Steel Company’s Homestead Steel Works in 1892. The strike
culminated in a gun battle between unionized steelworkers and a group of men hired by the company
to break the strike. The steelworkers ultimately lost the strike. The Pullman Strike of 1894 started
outside Chicago at the Pullman sleeping car manufacturing company and quickly grew into a national
railroad strike involving the American Railway Union, the Pullman Company, railroads across the
nation, and the federal government.
The limits and legal rights of those who own companies and those who work in companies is
an ongoing debate in American politics. As a nation equally committed to both capitalism and the
rights of individuals, the United States has struggled to balance the needs of corporations and the
needs of workers. As in the Homestead and Pullman strikes, government in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries often sided with management and against unions. But not always. In the
1902 anthracite coal strike President Teddy Roosevelt threatened coal mine owners that if they did
not bargain in good faith with the coal workers’ union that the federal government—would take over
control of the mines. The owners quickly capitulated to his demands and the strike was settled.
The Populists were an agrarian-based political movement aimed at improving conditions for
the country’s farmers and agrarian workers. The People’s Party was a political party founded in
1891 by leaders of the Populist movement. The Farmer’s Alliance was a major part of the Populist
coalition. The Populists allied with the labor movement and were folded into the Democratic Party in
1896. It fielded a candidate in the US presidential election of 1892 and garnered 8.5% of the popular
vote, which was a substantial amount of support for a third party. The Populists allied with the labor
movement and were folded into the Democratic Party in 1896. The People’s Party continued to
function and fielded candidates in both the 1904 and 1908 presidential elections, but the heyday of
the party’s influence was over. Although the People’s Party was formally disbanded in 1908,
the Progressive movement would take up many of the goals and causes of Populism, including anti-
trust legislation, greater federal regulation of private industry, and stronger support for the nation’s
agricultural and working classes.
The industrialists of the Gilded Age lived high on the hog, but most of the working class lived
below poverty level. As time went on, the income inequality between wealthy and poor became more
and more glaring. Social Darwinism was used to justify the inequality between the classes. The theory
presumes that the fittest humans are the most successful and poor people are destitute because they’re
weak and lack the skills to be prosperous.
Many other pivotal events happened during the Gilded Age which changed America’s course
and culture. In 1890, the western frontier was declared closed. It saw violent conflicts between white
settlers and the United States Army against Native Americans. The Native Americans were eventually
forced off their land and onto reservations with often disastrous results. As muckrakers exposed
corrupt robber barons and politicians, labor unions and reformist politicians enacted laws to limit
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their power. Muckrakers is a term used to describe reporters who exposed corruption among
politicians and the elite. They used investigative journalism and the print revolution to dig through
“the muck” of the Gilded Age and report scandal and injustice.
In 1890, reporter and photographer Jacob Riis brought the horrors of New York slum life to
light in his book, How the Other Half Lives, prompting New York politicians to pass legislation to
improve tenement conditions. In 1902, McClure Magazine journalist Lincoln Steffens took on city
corruption when he penned the article, “Tweed Days in St. Louis.” The article, which is widely
considered the first muckracking magazine article, exposed how city officials deceitfully made deals
with crooked businessmen to maintain power. Another journalist, Ida Tarbell, spent years
investigating the underhanded rise of oilman John D. Rockefeller. Her 19-part series, also published
in McClure in 1902, led to the breakup of Rockefeller’s monopoly, the Standard Oil Company. In
1906, activist journalist and novelist Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle to expose horrendous
working conditions in the meatpacking industry. The book and ensuing public outcry led to the
passing of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act.
The Populists had a democratic agenda that aimed to give power back to the people and paved
the way for the progressive movement. The Panic of 1893 lasted four years and left lower and even
middle-class Americans fed up with political corruption and social inequality. Their frustration gave
rise to the Progressive Movement which took hold when President Theodore Roosevelt took office
in 1901. Although Roosevelt supported corporate America, he also felt there should be federal
controls in place to keep excessive corporate greed in check and prevent individuals from making
obscene amounts of money off the backs of immigrants and the lower class. Helped by the
muckrackers and the White House, the Progressive Era ushered in many reforms that helped shift
away power from robber barons, such as: trust busting, labor reform, women’s suffrage, birth control,
formation of trade unions, increased conservation efforts, food and medicine regulations, tax reform,
civil rights, election reform, fair labor standards. By 1916, America’s cities were cleaner and
healthier, factories safer, governments less corrupt and many people had better housing, working
hours and wages. Fewer monopolies meant more people could pursue the American Dream and start
their own businesses.
When America entered World War I in 1917, the Progressive Era and any remnants of the
Gilded Age effectively ended as the country’s focus shifted to the realities of war. Most robber barons
and their families, however, remained wealthy for generations. Even so, many bequeathed much of
their wealth, land and homes to charity and historical societies. And progressives continued their
mission to close the gap between the wealthy and poor and champion the needy and disenfranchised.