Gilded Age
In United States history, the Gilded Age is the period from about the late 1870s to the late 1890s, which occurred between the Reconstruction era and the Progressive Era. It was named by 1920s historians after Mark Twain's 1873 novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today. Historians saw late 19th-century economic expansion as a time of materialistic excesses marked by widespread political corruption.
It was a time of rapid economic and capital growth, especially in the North and West. As American wages grew much higher than those in Europe, especially for skilled workers, and industrialization demanded an increasingly skilled labor force, the period saw an influx of millions of European immigrants. The rapid expansion of industrialization led to real wage growth of 40% from 1860 to 1890, spreading across the expanding labor force. The average annual wage per industrial worker, including men, women, and children, rose from $380 in 1880 to $584 in 1890, a gain of 59%. The Gilded Age was also an era of significant poverty, especially in the South, and growing inequality, as millions of immigrants poured into the United States, and the high concentration of wealth became more visible and contentious.
Railroads were the major growth industry, with the factory system, oil, mining, and finance increasing in importance. Immigration from Europe and the Eastern United States led to the rapid growth of the West based on farming, ranching, and mining. Labor unions became increasingly important in the rapidly growing industrial cities. Two major nationwide depressions—the Panic of 1873 and the Panic of 1893—interrupted growth and caused social and political upheavals.
The South remained economically devastated after the American Civil War. The South's economy became increasingly tied to commodities like food and building materials, cotton for thread and fabrics, and tobacco production, all of which suffered from low prices. With the end of the Reconstruction era in 1877 and the rise of Jim Crow laws, African American people in the South were stripped of political power and voting rights, and were left severely economically disadvantaged.
The political landscape was notable in that despite rampant corruption, election turnout was comparatively high among all classes, and national elections featured two similarly sized parties. The dominant issues were cultural, especially regarding prohibition, education, and ethnic or racial groups, and economic. Urban politics were tied to rapidly growing industrial cities, which increasingly fell under control of political machines. In business, powerful nationwide trusts formed in some industries. Unions crusaded for the eight-hour working day, and the abolition of child labor; middle-class reformers demanded civil service reform, prohibition of liquor and beer, and women's suffrage.
Local governments across the North and West built public schools chiefly at the elementary level; public high schools started to emerge. The numerous religious denominations were growing in membership and wealth, with Catholicism becoming the largest. They all expanded their missionary activity to the world arena. Catholics, Lutherans, and Episcopalians set up religious schools, and the largest of those schools set up numerous colleges, hospitals, and charities. Many of the problems faced by society, especially the poor, gave rise to attempted reforms in the subsequent Progressive Era.
The name and the era
The term Gilded Age was applied to the era by 1920s historians who took the term from one of Mark Twain's lesser-known novels, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today. The book, co-written with Charles Dudley Warner, satirized the promised "golden age" after the Civil War, portrayed as an era of serious social problems masked by a thin gold gilding of economic expansion. In the 1920s, and 1930s, the metaphor "Gilded Age" began to be applied to a designated period in American history. The term was adopted by literary and cultural critics as well as historians, including Van Wyck Brooks, Lewis Mumford, Charles Austin Beard, Mary Ritter Beard, Vernon Louis Parrington, and Matthew Josephson. For them, Gilded Age was a pejorative term for a time of materialistic excesses and widespread political corruption.The early half of the Gilded Age roughly coincided with the middle portion of the Victorian Era in Britain and the Belle Époque in France. With respect to eras of American history, historical views vary as to when the Gilded Age began, ranging from starting right after the Civil War ended in 1865, or 1873, or as the Reconstruction Era ended in 1877. The date marking the end of the Gilded Age also varies. The ending is generally given as the beginning of the Progressive Era in the 1890s.
Industrial and technological changes
Technical advances
The Gilded Age was a period of economic growth as the United States jumped to the lead in industrialization ahead of Britain. The nation was rapidly expanding its economy into new areas, especially heavy industry like factories, railroads, and coal mining. In 1869, the first transcontinental railroad opened up the far-west mining and ranching regions. Travel from New York to San Francisco then took six days instead of six months. Railroad track mileage tripled from 1860 to 1880, and then doubled again by 1920. The new track linked formerly isolated areas with larger markets and allowed for the rise of commercial farming, ranching, and mining, creating a truly national marketplace. American steel production rose to surpass the combined totals of Britain, Germany, and France.Investors in London and Paris poured money into the railroads through the American financial market centered in Wall Street. By 1900, the process of economic concentration had extended into most branches of industry—a few large corporations, called "trusts", dominated in steel, oil, sugar, meat, and farm machinery. Through vertical integration these trusts were able to control each aspect of the production of a specific good, ensuring that the profits made on the finished product were maximized and prices minimized, and by controlling access to the raw materials, prevented other companies from being able to compete in the marketplace. Several monopolies—most famously Standard Oil—came to dominate their markets by keeping prices low when competitors appeared; they grew at a rate four times faster than that of the competitive sectors.
Increased mechanization of industry is a major mark of the Gilded Age's search for cheaper ways to create more product. Frederick Winslow Taylor observed that worker efficiency in steel could be improved through the use of very close observations with a stop watch to eliminate wasted effort. Mechanization made some factories an assemblage of unskilled laborers performing simple and repetitive tasks under the direction of skilled foremen and engineers. Machine shops grew rapidly, and they comprised highly skilled workers and engineers. Both the number of unskilled and skilled workers increased, as their wage rates grew.
Engineering colleges were established to feed the enormous demand for expertise, many through the Federal government sponsored Morrill Land-Grant Acts passed to stimulate public education, particularly in the agricultural and technical fields. Railroads, which had previously invented railroad time to standardize time zones, production, and lifestyles, created modern management, with clear chains of command, statistical reporting, and complex bureaucratic systems. They systematized the roles of middle managers and set up explicit career tracks for both skilled blue-collar jobs and for white-collar managers. These advances spread from railroads into finance, manufacturing, and trade. Together with rapid growth of small business, a new middle class was rapidly growing, especially in northern cities.
The nation became a world leader in applied technology. From 1860 to 1890, 500,000 patents were issued for new inventions—over ten times the number granted in the previous seventy years. George Westinghouse invented air brakes for trains, making them both safer and faster. Theodore Vail established the American Telephone & Telegraph Company and built a great communications network. Elisha Otis developed the elevator, allowing the construction of skyscrapers and the concentration of ever greater populations in urban centers. Thomas Edison, in addition to inventing hundreds of devices, established the first electrical lighting utility, basing it on direct current and an efficient incandescent lamp. Electric power delivery spread rapidly across Gilded Age cities. The streets were lit 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 1860s. The United States dominated the global industry into the 1950s. Kerosene replaced whale oil and candles for lighting homes. John D. Rockefeller founded Standard Oil Company and monopolized the oil industry. It mostly produced kerosene before the automobile created a demand for gasoline in the 20th century.
Railroads
According to historian Henry Adams the system of railroads needed:The impact can be examined through five aspects: shipping, finance, management, careers, and popular reaction.