America in the nineteenth and the early twentieth century saw electricity in homes, telephones, the transcontinental railroad, massive urbanization, and millions of immigrants! The era bears the term “Gilded Age” after Mark Twain and Dudley Warner’s book The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today. The implication was that prosperous and industrialized America was tarnished under the surface with corruption, poor working conditions, and social problems. While heavy industry skyrocketed industrial growth, this translated into poor conditions for the working class. The Gilded Age is most notorious for producing the wealthiest industrialists of the time, aptly called Captains of Industry and Robber Barons. Continue reading to understand what the Gilded Age meant for America!
American Experience in the Gilded Age
Let us take a look at the American experience in the gilded age.
New Technology
East and West Shaking Hands at Laying Last Rail. Source: Wikimedia Commons
Technological advancements during the gilded age ushered in a new standard of living for Americans. The late nineteenth century saw an explosion of inventive creativity that brought inventions such as harnessing electricity, vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, and sewing machines. With access to commercial electricity, factories began situating themselves in large cities. As factories became commonplace, waves of immigrants arrived in America searching for work.
Did you know?
By 1880, the transcontinental railroad transported roughly $50 million worth of products each year. You could order almost anything and have it shipped across the country via train!
The country saw a rapid wave of industrialization with technological advancements such as railroads, steel, and new communications technology. For example, the railroad became the first extensive and significant technological advancement that saw use even in the Civil War and ultimately created an efficient method of quickly transporting goods across the country. Production processes, such as steel-making, saw an advancement known as the Bessemer process, which allowed for stronger quality steel. Also, the commercial use of electricity allowed businesses, offices, and other manufacturers to increase production and, consequently, working hours. Unfortunately, the extended working day deteriorated conditions and workers' lives.
Rose Memory Acronym:
This Acronym will help you remember the key technological advancements throughout the Gilded Age.
Railroads (Transcontinental)
Oil
Steel
Electricity
Did you know?
Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876, and towards the end of the 19th century, almost 50,000 telephones existed!
Urban life
Fueled by millions of immigrants and industrialization, the sweeping urbanization of the U.S. population caused movement toward large cities instead of rural areas. Due to the rapid pace of American urbanization, logical urban planning did not exist, leaving city infrastructure poorly equipped to handle the population surges. The result led to the poorest living conditions, such as overcrowded tenements and slums. Housing generally did not provide heating and sanitation, and with no access to medical care, millions died from diseases. However, while many slums had poor living conditions, others believed them to be crucial social hubs, especially for new immigrants.
"She argues that many urban dwellers proudly identified with their urban “slums,” which served as vital points of cultural transition for the new arrivals.” -Hasia Diner, Lower East Side Memories and Erin's Daughters in America, 2002
The above quote implies the importance of ethnic enclaves in urban areas throughout the Gilded Era. These areas gave immigrants a familiar place to transition into American life.
Tenement- A set of rooms with a building that forms a separate residence
Slums- An overcrowded street generally inhabited by a lower class
Immigrants in the Gilded Age
Immigrants flooded the United States in the millions throughout the Gilded Age seeking the "American Dream ."Roughly 11.7 million immigrants came to America during this period, with 10.6 million coming from Europe. Immigrants rarely brought substantial belongings or funds, making a new life in America a rough start. Most immigrants arrived in major urban centers like New York, Chicago, and Boston. Taking advantage of immigrants, business owners and managers paid meager wages for the most challenging jobs, long hours, and dangerous conditions. Owners took other precautions to keep immigrants from organizing and voicing opinions against their conditions. However, eventually, labor unions started to form and ultimately began to organize protests and strikes against the factories. The American Dream was Gilded, and many immigrants found it more complex. For example, low wages and deteriorating working conditions translated into poor living conditions, especially in urban slums.
Native American Issues During the Gilded Age
While America became an industrial nation, Native American culture, lifestyle, and lands disappeared with the Congressional passing of several social and political acts.
Native American Traditional Dress. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
In 1871, the Indian Appropriations Act imparted a crushing blow to Native American sovereignty as it dictated the U.S. government's attitude and policy regarding Native Americans. The act stated that the government no longer accepted or recognized Native American tribes as legitimate. All tribal lands belonged to the United States, not Native Americans. The government's refusal to acknowledge Native American independence made them subjugated to further congressional acts that sought to continue the erosion of Native American culture.
The Dawes Act of 1887, also called the General Allotment Act, gave the president the power to split up tribal lands and assign them to individual Native Americans instead of the entire tribe. The act allotted 160 acres for use as farmland and 320 acres for grazing to coerce Native Americans into gaining citizenship. However, to gain land ownership and citizenship, Native Americans lost their tribal identities as the government discontinued recognition of tribes. The Dawes Act subsequently tore land from Native American tribes and dissolved their culture overnight.
African American Life in the Gilded Age
Continuing to seek civil rights, liberties, and economic opportunities in the decades following the Civil War, African Americans sought new ways of life in the South and other areas of the country. Unfortunately, racism hit a new high in the Gilded Age, and race relations intensified with the segregation provisions of Jim Crow laws.
Group of Florida migrants near Shawboro, North Carolina, on their way to Cranberry, New Jersey, to pick potatoes. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Often, facilities became racially divided, allowing whites and forcing African Americans to use separate stores, bathrooms, lunchrooms, and train cars. The repercussions for not following Jim Crow generally resulted in extreme violence.
Many African Americans felt tied to agriculture and remained in the South. The prior plantation system evolved into tenant farming that generally employed African Americans. The new tenant system required payments for the rental of land, equipment, and seeds. The system existed to keep tenants indebted with no financial way out. However, other African Americans looked to the blossoming industrial nation as a way out and left rural areas to seek new jobs.
Jim Crow- laws enabling states to enforce legal segregation
Tenant Farming- A system where a person (tenant) rented land from someone to farm
Stratification of American Society in the Gilded Age
Inequality among Americans peaked during the Gilded Age creating a significant gap in the social stratification of American society. The gap between the social classes in American society became the most pronounced throughout the Gilded Age. By 1900, only ten percent of the country’s population controlled ninety percent of America’s wealth.
Stratification- the arrangement or classification of something into different groups
Robber Barons and Captains of Industry
The Protectors of our Industries. Source: Wikimedia Commons
Throughout the Gilded Age, business opportunities proliferated, leaving prominent industrial leaders some of the wealthiest individuals in the world, even by today's standards. The immense wealth gained by individuals such as John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Andrew Carnegie underscored the financial inequality between the upper, middle, and lower classes. The men who accessed such great wealth soon became known as both robber barons and captains of industry.
Robber barons and captains of industry are business tycoons, yet each title defined a particular method of acquiring wealth. The term robber baron is effectively hostile, labeling businessmen who used questionable and unethical practices to create a monopolistic industry. Captains of Industry became labeled philanthropists and used their wealth to benefit society. Wealthy industrialists of the era were often called by both titles due to the gap in the social classes.
Food in the American Gilded Age
New advancements in technology and manufacturing and the mass consumption market brought a unique variety of foods.
Dinner at Delmonico's restaurant in honor of Admiral Campion. Source: Wikimedia Commons
Before the Gilded Age, many relied on themselves for food and resources. However, people began relying on larger organizations to provide goods after mass industrialization in the late nineteenth century. New inventions of the Gilded Age brought about a food revolution that allowed for easily prepared food. For example, the food industry experimented with tin cans and frozen food to extend the shelf life of goods. However, with the diversity of food did not come equal accessibility. Income equality also translated into food disparity between the upper, middle, and lower classes.
American Gilded Age - Key Takeaways
- New technological advancements ushered in a wave of industrialization. These advancements included:
- Commercial Electricity
- Transcontinental Railroad
- Bessemer Steel Process
- New Communications
- Congress enacted several pieces of legislation that affected Native Americans
- Indian Appropriations Act announced that the U.S. no longer recognized Native American tribes as legitimate
- Dawes Act gave the president the power to split up tribal lands
- Race relations intensified with the segregation provisions of Jim Crow laws, and African Americans looked to the industrial nation as a way out of the South.
- Inequality between social classes peaked during the Gilded Age
- By 1900 only 10% of the country's population controlled 90% of the nation's wealth
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