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Electric power delivery spread rapidly across Gilded Age cities. The streets were lighted at night, and electric streetcars allowed for faster commuting to work and easier shopping. Petroleum launched a new industry beginning with the Pennsylvania oil fields in the s. The United States dominated the global industry into the s. Kerosene replaced whale oil and candles for lighting homes. Rockefeller founded Standard Oil Company and monopolized the oil industry, which mostly produced kerosene before the automobile created a demand for gasoline in the 20th century. According to historian Henry Adams the system of railroads needed:.
The impact can be examined through five aspects: First they provided a highly efficient network for shipping freight and passengers across a large national market.
The result was a transforming impact on most sectors of the economy including manufacturing, retail and wholesale, agriculture, and finance. The United States now had an integrated national market practically the size of Europe, with no internal barriers or tariffs, all supported by a common language, and financial system and a common legal system. Railroads financing provided the basis for a dramatic expansion of the private non-governmental financial system. Construction of railroads was far more expensive than factories. New York by was the dominant financial market.
In —, they liquidated their American assets to pay for war supplies. Railroad management designed complex systems that could handle far more complicated simultaneous relationships than could be dreamed of by the local factory owner who could patrol every part of his own factory in a matter of hours. Civil engineers became the senior management of railroads. The leading innovators were the Western Railroad of Massachusetts and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in the s, the Erie in the s and the Pennsylvania in the s.
The railroads invented the career path in the private sector for both blue-collar workers and white-collar workers. Railroading became a lifetime career for young men; women were almost never hired. A typical career path would see a young man hired at age 18 as a shop laborer, be promoted to skilled mechanic at age 24, brakemen at 25, freight conductor at 27, and passenger conductor at age White-collar careers paths likewise were delineated.
Educated young men started in clerical or statistical work and moved up to station agents or bureaucrats at the divisional or central headquarters. At each level they had more and more knowledge, experience, and human capital. They were very hard to replace, and were virtually guaranteed permanent jobs and provided with insurance and medical care. Hiring, firing, and wage rates were set not by foreman, but by central administrators, in order to minimize favoritism and personality conflicts. Everything was done by the book, whereby an increasingly complex set of rules dictated to everyone exactly what should be done in every circumstance, and exactly what their rank and pay would be.
By the s the career railroaders were retiring, and pension systems were invented for them. America developed a love-hate relationship with railroads. Boosters in every city worked feverishly to make sure the railroad came through, knowing their urban dreams depended upon it. The mechanical size, scope, and efficiency of the railroads made a profound impression; people dressed in their Sunday best to go down to the terminal to watch the train come in.
Travel became much easier, cheaper, and more common. Shoppers from small towns could make day trips to big city stores. Hotels, resorts, and tourist attractions were built to accommodate the demand. The realization that anyone could buy a ticket for a thousand-mile trip was empowering. Historians Gary Cross and Rick Szostak argue:. The engineers became model citizens, bringing their can-do spirit and their systematic work effort to all phases of the economy as well as local and national government.
But there was also a dark side. Local merchants and shippers supported the demand and got some " Granger Laws " passed. The most hated railroad man in the country was Collis P. Huntington — , the president of the Southern Pacific Railroad who dominated California's economy and politics. Business rivals and political reformers accused him of every conceivable evil. Journalists and cartoonists made their reputations by pillorying him Historians have cast Huntington as the state's most despicable villain. The growth of railroads from s to s made commercial farming much more feasible and profitable.
Millions of acres were opened to settlement once the railroad was nearby, and provided a long-distance outlet for wheat, cattle and hogs that reached all the way to Europe. Shipping live animals was slow and expensive. It was more efficient to slaughter them in major packing centers such as Chicago, Kansas City, St. Louis, Milwaukee, and Cincinnati, and then ship dressed meat out in refrigerated freight cars.
The cars were cooled by slabs of ice that had been harvested from the northern lakes in wintertime, and stored for summer and fall usage. Chicago, the main railroad center, benefited enormously, with Kansas City a distant second. Historian William Cronon concludes:. During the s and s, the U. The corporation became the dominant form of business organization, and a scientific management revolution transformed business operations.
By the beginning of the 20th century, gross domestic product and industrial production in the United States led the world. Kennedy reports that "U. Europe, especially Britain, remained the financial center of the world until , yet the United States' growth caused foreigners to ask, as British author W. Stead wrote in , "What is the secret of American success? Wealthy industrialists and financiers such as John D.
Morgan , Leland Stanford , Meyer Guggenheim , Jacob Schiff , Charles Crocker , Cornelius Vanderbilt would sometimes be labeled " robber barons " by their critics, who argue their fortunes were made at the expense of the working class , by chicanery and a betrayal of democracy. Private money endowed thousands of colleges, hospitals, museums, academies, schools, opera houses, public libraries, and charities.
Nevertheless, many business leaders were influenced by Herbert Spencer's theory of Social Darwinism , which justified laissez-faire capitalism, ruthless competition and social stratification. This emerging industrial economy quickly expanded to meet the new market demands. From to , the U. The economy repeated this period of growth in the s, in which the wealth of the nation grew at an annual rate of 3. Australian historian Peter Shergold found that the standard of living for industrial workers was higher than in Europe.
He compared wages and the standard of living in Pittsburgh with Birmingham, England, one of the richest industrial cities of Europe. According to Shergold the American advantage grew over time from to , and the perceived higher American wage led to a heavy steady flow of skilled workers from Britain to industrial America. Workers had to put in roughly 60 hours a week to earn this much. Wage labor was widely condemned as 'wage slavery' in the working class press, and labor leaders almost always used the phrase in their speeches.
The unequal distribution of wealth remained high during this period. King , were concerned that the United States was becoming increasingly in-egalitarian to the point of becoming like old Europe, and "further and further away from its original pioneering ideal. There was a significant human cost attached to this period of economic growth, [65] as American industry had the highest rate of accidents in the world.
Craft-oriented labor unions, such as carpenters, printers, shoemakers and cigar makers, grew steadily in the industrial cities after These unions used frequent short strikes as a method to attain control over the labor market, and fight off competing unions.
The railroads had their own separate unions. The strike and associated riots lasted 45 days and resulted in the deaths of several hundred participants no police or soldiers were killed , several hundred more injuries, and millions in damages to railroad property. Hayes intervened with federal troops. Starting in the mids a new group, the Knights of Labor , grew rapidly. Too rapidly, for it spun out of control and failed to handle the Great Southwest Railroad Strike of The Knights avoided violence, but their reputation collapsed in the wake of the Haymarket Square Riot in Chicago in , when anarchists allegedly bombed the policemen dispersing a meeting.
Seven anarchists went on trial; four were hanged even though no evidence directly linked them to the bombing. By , membership had plummeted to fewer than ,, then faded away. Strikes organized by labor unions became routine events by the s as the gap between the rich and the poor widened. By far the largest number were in the building trades, followed far behind by coal miners. The main goal was control of working conditions and settling which rival union was in control.
Most were of very short duration. In times of depression strikes were more violent but less successful, because the company was losing money anyway. They were successful in times of prosperity when the company was losing profits and wanted to settle quickly.
The largest and most dramatic strike was the Pullman Strike , a coordinated effort to shut down the national railroad system. Debs and was not supported by the established brotherhoods. The union defied federal court orders to stop blocking the mail trains, so President Cleveland used the U. Army to get the trains moving again. The ARU vanished and the traditional railroad brotherhoods survived, but avoided strikes.
The AFL was a coalition of unions, each based on strong local chapters; the AFL coordinated their work in cities and prevented jurisdictional battles. Gompers repudiated socialism and abandoned the violent nature of the earlier unions. The AFL worked to control the local labor market, thereby empowering its locals to obtain higher wages and more control over hiring.
As a result, the AFL unions spread to most cities, reaching a peak membership in Severe economic recessions—called "panics"—struck the nation in the Panic of and the Panic of They lasted several years, with high urban unemployment, low incomes for farmers, low profits for business, slow overall growth, and reduced immigration. They generated political unrest. Gilded Age politics, called the Third Party System , featured intense competition between two major parties, with minor parties coming and going, especially on issues of concern to prohibitionists, to labor unions and to farmers.
The Democrats and Republicans nicknamed the "Grand Old Party," GOP fought over control of offices, which were the rewards for party activists, as well as over major economic issues.
Competition was intense and elections were very close. In the southern states, lingering resentment over the Civil War remained and meant that much of the South would vote Democrat. After the end of Reconstruction in , competition in the South took place mainly inside the Democratic Party.
Nationwide, turnout fell sharply after The major metropolitan centers underwent rapid population growth and as a result had many lucrative contracts and jobs to award. To take advantage of the new economic opportunity, both parties built so-called "political machines" to manage elections, to reward supporters and to pay off potential opponents.
Financed by the " spoils system ", the winning party distributed most local, state and national government jobs, and many government contracts, to its loyal supporters. Large cities became dominated by political machines in which constituents supported a candidate in exchange for anticipated patronage. These votes would be repaid with favors back from the government once the appropriate candidate was elected; and very often candidates were selected based on their willingness to play along with the spoils system.
Political corruption was rampant, as business leaders spent significant amounts of money ensuring that government did not regulate the activities of big business — and they more often than not got what they wanted. Such corruption was so commonplace that in the New York state legislature legalized such bribery. Numerous swindlers were active, especially before the Panic of exposed the falsifications and caused a wave of bankruptcies.
Grant was the most famous victim of scoundrels and con-men, of whom he most trusted Ferdinand Ward. Grant was cheated out of all his money, although some genuine friends bought Grant's personal assets and allowed him to keep their use. This corruption divided the Republican party into two different factions: There was a sense that government-enabled political machines intervened in the economy and that the resulting favoritism, bribery, inefficiency, waste, and corruption were having negative consequences. Accordingly, there were widespread calls for reform, such as Civil Service Reform led by the Bourbon Democrats and Republican Mugwumps.
The Bourbon Democrats supported a free-market policy, with low tariffs, low taxes, less spending and, in general, a laissez-faire hands-off government. They argued that tariffs made most goods more expensive for the consumer and subsidized "the trusts" monopolies. They also denounced imperialism and overseas expansion. Presidential elections between the two major parties were so closely contested that a slight nudge could tip the election in the advantage of either party, and Congress was marked by political stalemate.
With support from Union veterans , businessmen , professionals, craftsmen, and larger farmers, the Republicans consistently carried the North in presidential elections. Some sources consider that America in the Gilded Age was led by a string of relatively weak presidents collectively referred to as the "forgettable presidents" Johnson , Grant , Hayes , Garfield , Arthur and Harrison , with the possible exception of Cleveland [95] who served in the White House during this period.
Overall, Republican and Democratic political platforms remained remarkably constant during the years before Republicans generally favored inflationary, protectionist policies, while Democrats favored hard-money , free trade , and other laissez-faire policies. From to the early 20th century, the Republicans took advantage of the association of the Democrats with " Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion ". Demographic trends boosted the Democratic totals, as the German and Irish Catholic immigrants became Democrats and outnumbered the English and Scandinavian Republicans.
The new immigrants who arrived after seldom voted at this time. During the s and s, the Republicans struggled against the Democrats' efforts, winning several close elections and losing two to Grover Cleveland in and Religious lines were sharply drawn. They strongly supported the GOP, as the table shows. In sharp contrast, liturgical groups, especially the Catholics, Episcopalians, and German Lutherans, voted for the Democrats. They saw the Democratic party as their best protection from the moralism of the pietists, and especially from the threat of prohibition.
Both parties cut across the class structure, with the Democrats more bottom-heavy and the GOP better represented among businessmen and professionals in the North. Many cultural issues, especially prohibition and foreign-language schools, became hard-fought political issues because of the deep religious divisions in the electorate. For example, in Wisconsin the Republicans tried to close down German-language Catholic and Lutheran parochial schools, and were defeated in when the Bennett Law was put to the test. Prohibition debates and referendums heated up politics in most states over a period of decades, as national prohibition was finally passed in and repealed in , serving as a major issue between the wet Democrats and the dry GOP.
Prior to the Gilded Age, the time commonly referred to as the old immigration saw the first real boom of new arrivals to the United States. During the Gilded Age, approximately 20 million immigrants came to the United States in what is known as the new immigration. Some of them were prosperous farmers who had the cash to buy land and tools in the Plains states especially.
Many were poor peasants looking for the American Dream in unskilled manual labor in mills, mines, and factories. Few immigrants went to the poverty-stricken South, though. To accommodate the heavy influx, the federal government in opened a reception center at Ellis Island near the Statue of Liberty.
These immigrants consisted of two groups: The last big waves of the "Old Immigration" from Germany, Britain, Ireland, and Scandinavia, and the rising waves of the "New Immigration", which peaked about Some men moved back and forth across the Atlantic, but most were permanent settlers. They moved into well-established communities, both urban and rural.
The German American communities spoke German, but their younger generation was bilingual. In terms of immigration, after the old immigration of Germans, British, Irish, and Scandinavians slackened off. The United States was producing large numbers of new unskilled jobs every year, and to fill them came number from Italy, Poland, Austria, Hungary, Russia, Greece, and other points in southern and central Europe, as well as French Canada.
The older immigrants by the s had formed highly stable communities, especially the German Americans. Irish Catholics had arrived in large numbers in the s and s in the wake of the great famine in Ireland when starvation killed millions. Their first few decades were characterized by extreme poverty, social dislocation, crime and violence in their slums. By the late 19th century, the Irish communities had largely stabilized, with a strong new "lace curtain" middle-class of local businessmen, professionals, and political leaders typified by P.
Kennedy — in Boston. In economic terms, Irish Catholics were nearly at the bottom in the s. They reached the national average by , and by the late 20th century they far surpassed the national average. In political terms, the Irish Catholics comprised a major element in the leadership of the urban Democratic machines across the country.
They were part of an international Catholic network, with considerable movement back and forth from Ireland, England, France, Germany and Canada. The "New Immigration" were much poorer peasants and rural folk from southern and eastern Europe, including mostly Italians, Poles and Jews. Some men, especially the Italians and Greeks, saw themselves as temporary migrants who planned to return to their home villages with a nest egg of cash earned in long hours of unskilled labor. Others, especially the Jews, had been driven out of Eastern Europe and had no intention of returning. Historians analyze the causes of immigration in terms of push factors pushing people out of the homeland and pull factors pulling them to America.
The push factors included economic dislocation, shortages of land, and antisemitism. Pull factors were the economic opportunity of good inexpensive farmland or jobs in factories, mills and mines. The first generation typically lived in ethnic enclaves with a common language, food, religion, and connections through the old village. The sheer numbers caused overcrowding in tenements in the larger cities.
In the small mill towns, however, management usually built company housing with cheap rents. Asian immigrants—Chinese at this time—were hired by California construction companies for temporary railroad work. The European Americans strongly disliked the Chinese for their alien life-styles and threat of low wages. In the census, there were 63, Chinese men with a few women in the entire U. Immigrants from China were not allowed to become citizens until ; however, as a result of the Supreme Court decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark , their children born in the U. Congress banned further Chinese immigration through the Chinese Exclusion Act in ; the act prohibited Chinese laborers from entering the United States, but some students and businessmen were allowed in on a temporary basis.
The Chinese population declined to only 37, in Although many returned to China a greater proportion than most other immigrant groups , most of them stayed in the United States. Chinese people were unwelcome in urban neighborhoods, so they resettled in the " Chinatown " districts of large cities.
The exclusion policy lasted until the s. A dramatic expansion in farming took place during the Gilded Age, [] [] with the number of farms tripling from 2. The number of people living on farms grew from about 10 million in to 22 million in to 31 million in Even larger numbers purchased lands at very low interest from the new railroads, which were trying to create markets. The railroads advertised heavily in Europe and brought over, at low fares, hundreds of thousands of farmers from Germany, Scandinavia and Britain.
Despite their remarkable progress and general prosperity, 19th-century U. Along with the mechanical improvements which greatly increased yield per unit area, the amount of land under cultivation grew rapidly throughout the second half of the century, as the railroads opened up new areas of the West for settlement. The wheat farmers enjoyed abundant output and good years from to when bad European harvests kept the world price high.
They then suffered from a slump in the s when conditions in Europe improved. The farther west the settlers went, the more dependent they became on the monopolistic railroads to move their goods to market, and the more inclined they were to protest, as in the Populist movement of the s. Wheat farmers blamed local grain elevator owners who purchased their crop , railroads and eastern bankers for the low prices.
The first organized effort to address general agricultural problems was the Grange movement. Launched in , by employees of the U. Department of Agriculture , the Granges focused initially on social activities to counter the isolation most farm families experienced. Women's participation was actively encouraged. Spurred by the Panic of , the Grange soon grew to 20, chapters and 1. The Granges set up their own marketing systems, stores, processing plants, factories and cooperatives. The movement also enjoyed some political success during the s.
A few Midwestern states passed " Granger Laws ", limiting railroad and warehouse fees. American society experienced significant changes in the period following the Civil War, most notably the rapid urbanization of the North. New York, Philadelphia, and especially Chicago saw rapid growth. Louis Sullivan became a noted architect using steel frames to construct skyscrapers for the first time while pioneering the idea of " form follows function ". Chicago became the center of the skyscraper craze, starting with the ten-story Home Insurance Building in — by William Le Baron Jenney.
As immigration increased in cities, poverty rose as well.
Web sites explain the late 19th century, the Industrial Revolution and the Gilded Age. Discover the impact of Industrial Revolution in the late 19th century. The Gilded Age and the Second Industrial Revolution . During the Gilded Age, politics were riddled with corruption as presidents awarded government.
The poorest crowded into low-cost housing such as the Five Points and Hell's Kitchen neighborhoods in Manhattan. These areas were quickly overridden with notorious criminal gangs such as the Five Points Gang and the Bowery Boys. Rapid outward expansion required longer journeys to work and shopping for the middle class office workers and housewives. The working-class generally did not own automobiles until after ; they typically walked to nearby factories and patronized small neighborhood stores.
The middle class demanded a better transportation system. Slow horse-drawn streetcars and faster electric trolleys were the rage in the s. However, this produced uneven wear, opened new hazards for pedestrians, and made for dangerous potholes for bicycles and for motor vehicles. Manhattan alone had , horses in , pulling streetcars, delivery wagons, and private carriages, and leaving their waste behind.
They were not fast, and pedestrians could dodge and scramble their way across the crowded streets. In small towns people mostly walked to their destination so they continued to rely on dirt and gravel into the s. Larger cities had much more complex transportation needs. They wanted better streets, so they paved them with wood or granite blocks. Brick surfacing was a good compromise, but even better was asphalt paving. With London and Paris as models, Washington laid , square yards of asphalt paving by , and served as a model for Buffalo, Philadelphia, and elsewhere.
By the end of the century, American cities boasted 30 million square yards of asphalt paving, followed by brick construction. Big-city streets became paths for faster and larger and more dangerous vehicles, the pedestrians beware. In the largest cities, street railways were elevated, which increased their speed and lessened their dangers. Boston built the first subway in the s followed by New York a decade later. The South remained heavily rural and was much poorer than the North or West. The most significant of these was sharecropping , where tenant farmers "shared" up to half of their crop with the landowners, in exchange for seed and essential supplies.
Most sharecroppers were locked in a cycle of debt, from which the only hope of escape was increased planting. This led to the over-production of cotton and tobacco and thus to declining prices and income , soil exhaustion, and poverty among both landowners and tenants. Agriculture's Share of the Labor Force, []. There were only a few scattered cities — small courthouse towns serviced the farm population. Local politics revolved around the politicians and lawyers based at the courthouse. Mill towns, narrowly focused on textile production or cigarette manufacture, began opening in the Piedmont region especially in the Carolinas.
Racial segregation and outward signs of inequality were everywhere, and rarely were challenged. Blacks who violated the color line were liable to expulsion or lynching. Cotton prices were much lower than before the war, so everyone was poor. White southerners showed a reluctance to move north, or to move to cities, so the number of small farms proliferated, and they became smaller as the population grew. Many of the White farmers, and most of the Blacks, were tenant farmers who owned their work animals and tools, and rented the land.
Others were day laborers or very poor sharecroppers , who worked under the supervision of the landowner. There was little cash in circulation, because most farmers operated on credit accounts from local merchants, and paid off their debts at cotton harvest time in the fall. Although there were small country churches everywhere, there were only a few dilapidated elementary schools.
Apart from private academies, there were very few high schools until the s. Conditions were marginally better in newer areas, especially in Texas and central Florida, with the deepest poverty in South Carolina, Mississippi, and Arkansas. The vast majority of African Americans lived in the South, and as the promises of emancipation and reconstruction faded, they entered the nadir of race relations.
They mandated de jure legal segregation in all public facilities, such as stores and street cars, with a supposedly " separate but equal " status for Blacks. In reality, this led to treatment and accommodations that were dramatically inferior to those provided for White Americans, systematizing a number of economic, educational and social disadvantages. Schools for Blacks were far fewer and poorly supported by taxpayers, although Northern philanthropies and churches kept open dozens of academies and small colleges.
In the face of years of mounting violence and intimidation directed at blacks during Reconstruction, the federal government was unable to guarantee constitutional protections to freedmen and women. In the Compromise of President Hayes withdrew Union troops from the South; " Redeemers " White Democrats acted quickly to reverse the groundbreaking advances of Reconstruction. The new railroads provided the opportunity for migrants to go out and take a look, with special family tickets, the cost of which could be applied to land purchases offered by the railroads.
Farming the plains was indeed more difficult than back east. Water management was more critical, lightning fires were more prevalent, the weather was more extreme, rainfall was less predictable. The fearful stayed home, while migrants were mainly motivated by a search improve their economic life. Farmers sought larger, cheaper and more fertile land; merchants and tradesman sought new customers and new leadership opportunities. Laborers wanted higher paying work and better conditions.
With the Homestead Act providing free land to citizens and the railroads selling cheap lands to European farmers, the settlement of the Great Plains was swiftly accomplished, and the frontier had virtually ended by Native American policy was set by the national government the states had very little role , and after the national policy was that Native Americans either had to assimilate into the larger community or remain on reservations, where the government provided subsidies.
Reservation natives were no longer allowed to roam or fight their traditional enemies. Army was to enforce the laws. Natives of the West came in conflict with expansion by miners, ranchers and settlers. By , the buffalo herds , a foundation for the hunting economy had disappeared. Violence petered out in the s and practically ceased after Native Americans individually had the choice of living on reservations, with food, supplies, education and medical care provided by the federal government, or living on their own in the larger society and earning wages, typically as a cowboy on a ranch, or manual worker in town.
Reformers wanted to give as many Native Americans as possible the opportunity to own and operate their own farms and ranches, so the issue was how to give individual natives land owned by the tribe. To assimilate the natives into American society, reformers set up training programs and schools, such as the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania , that produced many prominent Native American leaders. However, anti-assimilation traditionalists on the reservations resisted integration and the resulting loss of their traditional life.
Voices against Conformity During the s and s, the U. Sinking Deeper and Deeper: They argued that tariffs made most goods more expensive for the consumer and subsidized "the trusts" monopolies. However, anti-assimilation traditionalists on the reservations resisted integration and the resulting loss of their traditional life. But while the middle and upper classes enjoyed the allure of city life, little changed for the poor.
In , the Dawes Act proposed to divide tribal land and parcel out acres 0. Such allotments were to be held in trust by the government for 25 years, then given to owners with full title, so they could sell it or mortgage it. As individual natives sold their land, the total held by the native community shrank by almost half.
The individualized system undermined the traditional communal tribal organization. Furthermore, a majority of natives responded to intense missionary activity by converting to Christianity. The long-term goal of Dawes Act was to integrate natives into the mainstream; the majority accepted integration and were absorbed into American society, leaving a trace of native ancestry in millions of American families. Those who refused to assimilate remained in poverty on reservations, supported until now by Federal food, medicine and schooling. In , national policy was reversed again by the Indian Reorganization Act which tried to protect tribal and communal life on reservations.
Few single men attempted to operate a farm; farmers clearly understood the need for a hard-working wife, and numerous children, to handle the many chores, including child-rearing, feeding and clothing the family, managing the housework, and feeding the hired hands. After a generation or so, women increasingly left the fields, thus redefining their roles within the family. New conveniences such as sewing and washing machines encouraged women to turn to domestic roles.
The scientific housekeeping movement was promoted across the land by the media and government extension agents, as well as county fairs which featured achievements in home cookery and canning, advice columns for women in the farm papers, and home economics courses in schools. Although the eastern image of farm life on the prairies emphasizes the isolation of the lonely farmer and the bleakness of farm life, in reality rural folk created a rich social life for themselves.
For example, many joined a local branch of the Grange; a majority had ties to local churches. It was popular to organize activities that combined practical work, abundant food, and simple entertainment such as barn raisings , corn huskings, and quilting bees. Women organized shared meals and potluck events, as well as extended visits between families. Childhood on western farms is contested territory.
One group of scholars argues the rural environment was salubrious because it allowed children to break loose from urban hierarchies of age and gender, promoted family interdependence, and produced children who were more self-reliant, mobile, adaptable, responsible, independent and more in touch with nature than their urban or eastern counterparts. Upper-class women of the Gilded Age have been compared to dolls on display dressed in resplendent finery. They flaunted their wealth and endeavored to improve their status in society while poor and middle-class women both envied and mimicked them.
Some wealthy Gilded Age women were much more than eye candy, though, and often traded domestic life for social activism and charitable work. Some created homes for destitute immigrants while others pushed a temperance agenda, believing the source of poverty and most family troubles was alcohol. Wealthy women philanthropists of the Gilded Age include:.
Abby Aldrich Rockefeller , wife of John D. Many women during the Gilded Age sought higher education. Others postponed marriage and took jobs such as typists or telephone switchboard operators. Thanks to a print revolution and the accessibility of newspapers, magazines and books, women became increasingly knowledgeable, cultured, well-informed and a political force to be reckoned with. Jane Addams is arguably the best-known philanthropist of the Gilded Age. The neighborhood was a melting pot of struggling immigrants, and Hull-House provided everything from midwife services and basic medical care to kindergarten, day care and housing for abused women.
It also offered English and citizenship classes. Adams received the Nobel Peace Prize in Temperance leader Carrie Nation gained notoriety during the Gilded Age for smashing up saloons with a hatchet to bring attention to her sobriety agenda. She was also a strong voice for the suffrage movement. Convinced God had instructed her to use whatever means necessary to close bars throughout Kansas , she was often beaten, mocked and jailed but ultimately helped pave the way for the 18th Amendment prohibiting the sale of alcohol and the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote.
As muckrakers exposed corrupt robber barons and politicians, labor unions and reformist politicians enacted laws to limit their power. The western frontier 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. In , the western frontier was declared closed.
As drought and depression struck rural America, farmers in the west—who vilified railroad tycoons and wanted a political voice—organized and played a key role in forming the Populist Party. The Populists had a democratic agenda that aimed to give power back to the people and paved the way for the progressive movement, which still fights to close the gap between the wealthy and poor and champion the needy and disenfranchised.
In , both the overextended Philadelphia and Reading Railroad and the National Cordage Company failed, which set off an economic depression unlike any seen before in America. Banks and other businesses folded, and the stock market plunged, leaving millions unemployed, homeless and hungry. In some states, unemployment rose to almost 50 percent. The Panic of 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 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:. Fewer monopolies meant more people could pursue the American Dream and start their own businesses. 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. Wealth and Women in the Gilded Age. Journeys Into the Past: Jane Addams Hull-House Museum. The State Historical Society of Missouri: The Preservation Society of Newport County. The Progressive Era The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project. We strive for accuracy and fairness.
But if you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. The Stone Age marks a period of prehistory in which humans used primitive stone tools. An ice age is a period of colder global temperatures and recurring glacial expansion capable of lasting hundreds of millions of years.
Thanks to the efforts of geologist Louis Agassiz and mathematician Milutin Milankovitch, scientists have determined that variations in the The Bronze Age marked the first time humans started to work with metal. Bronze tools and weapons soon replaced earlier stone versions. Humans made many technological advances during the During the Iron Age, people across much of Europe, Asia and parts of Africa began making tools and weapons from iron and steel. The Iron Age started between B.
The labor movement in the United States grew out of the need to protect the common interest of workers. For those in the industrial sector, organized labor unions fought for better wages, reasonable hours and safer working conditions. The labor movement led efforts to stop child Shipping and railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt was a self-made multi-millionaire who became one of the wealthiest Americans of the 19th century. As a boy, he worked with his father, who operated a boat that ferried cargo between Staten Island, New York, where they One of the most powerful bankers of his era, J.
John Pierpont Morgan financed railroads and helped organize U. Steel, General Electric and other major corporations. The Connecticut native followed his wealthy father into the banking business in the late s, This website uses cookies for analytics, personalization, and advertising. Click here to learn more or change your cookie settings. By continuing to browse, you agree to our use of cookies. Transcontinental Railroad Before the Civil War , rail travel was dangerous and difficult—but after the war, George Westinghouse invented the air brake, which made braking systems more dependable and safe.
Robber Barons Railroad tycoons were just one of many types of so-called robber barons that emerged in the Gilded Age. Industrial Revolution 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. Income Inequality The industrialists of the Gilded Age lived high on the hog, but most of the working class lived below poverty level.
Muckrakers Muckrakers is a term used to describe reporters who exposed corruption among politicians and the elite. Railroad Strikes On July 16, , the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company announced a percent pay cut on its railroad workers in Martinsburg, West Virginia , the second cut in less than eight months. Women in the Gilded Age Upper-class women of the Gilded Age have been compared to dolls on display dressed in resplendent finery.