The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today was a famous satirical novel by Mark Twain set in the late 1800s, and was its namesake. The 1880s and 1890s were years of unprecedented technological innovation, mass immigration, and intense political partisanship, including disputes over currency, tariffs, political corruption and patronage, and railroads and business trusts. But while the middle and upper classes enjoyed the allure of city life, little changed for the poor. Bronze tools and weapons soon replaced earlier stone versions.
It was also obvious this wouldn’t happen without some degree of violence. The strike spread among other railroads, sparking violence across America between the working class and local and federal authorities. The only parts of the Far West that were highly settled were California and Texas. Bryan’s decisive defeat inaugurated a period of Republican ascendancy, in which Republicans controlled the presidency for 24 of the next 32 years. It is easy to caricature the Gilded Age as an era of corruption, conspicuous consumption, and unfettered capitalism. 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. The late 19th century saw the creation of a modern industrial economy. Temperance leader Carrie Nation gained notoriety during the Gilded Age for smashing up saloons with a hatchet to bring attention to her sobriety agenda.
The Doll House: Wealth and Women in the Gilded Age.
Many scholars call the era the “medieval period” instead; “Middle Ages,” they say, incorrectly implies that the period is an ...read more, The Iron Age was a period in human history that started between 1200 B.C. 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. Overview of the Gilded Age Digital History ID 2916. The 100,000 square foot, 75-room mansion was completed in 1902 and is now a popular museum. In 1860, most Americans considered the Great Plains the “Great American Desert.” Settlement west of Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana averaged just 1 person per square mile. But it is more useful to think of this as modern America's formative period, when an agrarian society of small producers were transformed into an urban society dominated by industrial corporations. Some wealthy Gilded Age women were much more than eye candy, though, and often traded domestic life for social activism and charitable work. While the wealthy lived in opulent homes, dined on succulent food and showered their children with gifts, the poor were crammed into filthy tenement apartments, struggled to put a loaf of bread on the table and often accompanied their children to a sweatshop each morning where they faced a 12-hour (or longer) workday. The labor movement led efforts to stop child ...read more, It was the time of the world’s first Industrial Revolution, political reform and social change, Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin, a railway boom and the first telephone and telegraph. https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/gilded-age.
During the Stone ...read more, Shipping and railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877) was a self-made multi-millionaire who became one of the wealthiest Americans of the 19th century. Nation’s belief that alcohol was the root of all evil was partially due to her difficult first marriage to an alcoholic, and her work with women and children displaced or abused by over-imbibing husbands. A national transportation and communication network was created, the corporation became the dominant form of business organization, and a managerial revolution transformed business operations. The most momentous political conflict of the late 19th century was the farmers' revolt. Heating, lighting, sanitation and medical care were poor or nonexistent, and millions died from preventable disease. Between the Civil War and World War I, the modern American economy emerged. Digital History ID 2916. The period takes its name from a novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner.