Key Facts & Summary
- The Term Gilded Age was borrowed from the title of an 1873 publication by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley, about the period after the American Civil War and the beginning of the Twentieth Century.
- The period was marked by high corruption in both the public and private sector, curtailed in part by muck journalists who exposed the rot.
Meaning of the term “Gilded.”
In 1873 Mark Twain and Charles Dudley published a book titled “The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today.” Gilding refers to the process of coating cheap metals with a thin layer of gold. The term Gilded Age defines the period between the Civil War and the beginning of the twentieth century.
The period was one of unprecedented technological, industrial growth which enabled political and social transformation with industries rising from the small family-based enterprises and small-scale factories of the previous 1820s. At the end of the Gilded Age, the US was among the top ten industrial nations in the world. However, the gilded age was also marked by deep economic inequality, greed and corruption in both the public and private sectors.
Innovations that spurred the Gilded Age
The building of the continental railroad was followed by a series of inventions that significantly improved the comfort and safety of rail travel. In 1865, George Pullman invented the sleep cars, which meant that railroad travel was unusually comfortable for night travel. In the years before the Civil War, the continental railroad was a dangerous mode of transport until 1869 when George Westinghouse invented the airbrake system which made the transport safer. Still, in the same year, the railroad was finished meaning transportation of people and goods, who used to travel in caravans over many months was now efficient.
The other innovations such as the telephone, refrigerator, cars, electric light bulb, typewriter and electric motor among others enabled the consumerism culture that was sipping into the American psyche.
However, businessmen such as Cornelius Vanderbilt and Jay Gould became tycoons out of the backhanded deals, they made with government officials during the process of building the railroad. They and industrialists such as J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Flagler, Henry H. Rogers, the Astor Family were called “robber barons” because people thought that they created their wealth through corrupt deals with government and went on to act that they were better than the average American.
Still, other Americans labelled them the “Captains of Industry” and lauded their philanthropic work. Andrew Carnegie donated over 90% of his wealth and often said that philanthropy was a prerogative of the upper class an attitude referred to as the “Gospel of Wealth.” Rockefeller on the other hand also donated over half his net worth which was over $ 500 million. The money went into financing schools, hospitals, museums, opera houses, public libraries among others.
On the other hand, other businessmen were guided by the philosophy of Herbert Spencer called Social Darwinism. Social Darwinism is the application of Charles Darwin principle of evolution to a social and political situation. Social Darwinism advocated for laissez-faire capitalism and brutal competition with the understanding that only the strongest cultures and people would survive. It justified the existence of greed and unconscientious business models.
The Third-Party System
On the political front, the politics of the gilded age were referred to as the third-party system. Elections were characterised by deep contestation between the republicans and the democrats with third-party interest groups such as farmers, labour unions, civil service reformers, movements including women rights movements adding their voice to the issues of the day. Voter turns out was over 90% in some states, with such topics as eight-hour work days, women suffrage, the abolition of child labour among others being central in campaigns and influencing voting patterns.
There was also migration from Germany and Scandinavian countries other from Poland, Austria, Italy, Russia, Greece and other European nations. America was producing a large number of unskilled jobs that required people from outside the country to come to take up the opportunities.
Muckrakers
Some investigative journalists pried through “the muck” to expose scandals and injustices and were called the “Muckrakers.” In 1890, Jacob Rills published a book, titled “How the Other Half Lives” a photojournalistic style expose on the foul living conditions of New York city slums. The publication led to the enactment of the New York Housing Tenement Act” that sought to address the living conditions of the New York immigrant poor.
In 1902, McClure Magazine’s Lincoln Steffens exposed corrupt deals between public officials in the city and businesses through an article titled “Tweed Days in St. Louis.” Ida Tarbell also working for the McClure Magazine published a nineteen-part series that exposed and broke the Rockefeller monopoly through the Standard Oil Company.
The expositions led to an introduction of legislation and actions that addressed the underlying problems revealed. In 1906, Upton Sinclair wrote a book titled ‘The Jungle” which exposed the treacherous working conditions of the workers in the meatpacking industry. It led to the passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act.
African Americans in the Gilded Age
The end of the Reconstruction to the early twentieth century is one of the harshest periods of the African American history, next to capture, transportation across the Atlantic and the enslavement itself. Racism and white supremacy ideology characterised the Gilded Age, Africans Americans were confronted with violence that led to the loss of life and property from terrorists’ groups such as the KKK. The economic success of blacks meant victimisation and violence for demonstrating any form of excellence or achievement.
Many Confederate governments passed the Jim Crow laws that formed the legal basis for segregation. Black people could not vote, serve injuries and the justice system was bent on maintaining the status quo.
The termination of the Gilded Age
The Gilded Age was followed by the Progressive Era and was marked by the panic of 1893, the economic depression that followed.