The Gilded Age Essay

The hardworking men were getting cruel treatment and low pay. They would work for more than half the day with no beneficial rewards whatsoever. There was no such thing as minimum wage back in the Gilded Age so the progressives knew their was a change to be made. They began to focus more on this problem and show the American people some truth behind this. After the progressives had some say on it, the government began to put in safety conditions, a…

Booker Taliaferro Washington was determined to further the status of African Americans by altering the perspectives of the white community, showcasing their effectiveness towards the rise of an industrial society. Washington sought to reinforce the unyielding support from his antislavery uprising towards his community by sustaining a concrete foundation for his institutions. By enhancing the very platform that brought him success, he was capable of improving the minds of the African Americans in…

Pacific started building east from Sacramento, California, in 1863. But the Civil War delayed progress until 1865. Then the Union Pacific started out from Omaha, Nebraska, and the two companies worked towards each other to cover almost 2000 miles. (Gilded age) And in 1869 the first through train carrying 500 passengers arrived in Omaha within hours of completion of the link. This event was greeted with parades, fireworks, and general hoopla from coast to coast. Like most other technological…

Mark Twaine’s reference to the corrupted government, that it was “glittering on the surface corrupt underneath”, addresses the corruption that was shaping the nation in the mid-19th century. Reconstruction was a time when the U.S. population and economy grew quickly, but along with this, there was a lot of political corruption. The widespread belief in the middle to the late 19th century was that the United States had a special mission to expand westward. Urbanization during the Reconstruction,…

“I am a showman by profession...and all the gilding shall make nothing else of me." Phineas Taylor Barnum is arguably one of the most ingenious businessman of American history. P.T. Barnum is best known for his creation with James Bailey of the Greatest Show on Earth, a traveling circus featuring elephants, acrobats, and people with birth defects (whom he called “freaks”). Barnum was a firm believer in the concept of any kind of publicity is good publicity. In fact, if rumors were spread about…

Having The House of Mirth in the time period and setting of the Gilded age, a form of power shifts to those whom are economically stable and strays from those who are not. This distinctly American theory of survival of the fittest created by Charles Darwin sets the basis of social acceptance and power within a society…

This unit is about industrializing America in the years of 1877-1900. The era starts with the Gilded Age. The amount of industry increased and the Transcontinental Railroad made Manifest Destiny easier to accomplish. The government supported the growth of business, so there was a large amount of corruption. There were three powerful men that had control over the economy. These were, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and J. Pierpont Morgan. Rockefeller is considered to be America’s first…

even if they did have a job, were being paid very little and working in horrible conditions. In response to this, many workers joined labor unions to fight for higher wages and better working conditions. The picture on the right shows workers of all ages protesting unsafe conditions and low wages in hopes to get the attention of corporate companies and…

industry. A challenger and spoiler, Cornelius Vanderbilt was considered, according to the New York Times editor, a robber baron (Stiles, “Robber”). Born May 27, 1794 on Stanton Island, Cornelius Vanderbilt started working with his father at age 11, and by the age of 16, he bought a small ferry boat using a loan (“Cornelius Vanderbilt”). “Few could best him, in business, or on the street…. A cutthroat entrepreneur, he moves from sailboat to steamships, always undercutting, and then overcoming the…

New Spirits: Americans in the “Gilded Age”, 1865-1905 written by Rebecca Edwards explores and brings new light into one of the most significant eras in the history of the United States. The central point of New Spirits is to provide readers with a new outlook on what made the “Gilded Age” gilded and dismisses stereotypes that readers may have previously established about the era. Edward’s explores how the United States became a modern industrial nation after the harrowing aftermath of the Civil…