Gilded Age

The Gilded Age is the period of US history from the end of the Civil War (1861–1865) to the early two decades of the twentieth century. This period saw tremendous social upheaval, as well as industrial and technological advances. However, for the working class, it was also a time when corrupt bankers, industrialists, and politicians increased their wealth at the expense of the poor, leading to tremendous wealth inequality. These factors combined to prompt great change in the United States.

The name given this era comes from an 1873 satirical novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today. Gilding refers to the practice of painting or applying a thin layer of a valuable metal, such as gold, over a lower-value metal. For the tycoons and their families, the late nineteenth century was a golden age; for the working class, the promises of a better life brought about by industrialization and technology were generally not kept. Changes wrought by the bloody Civil War rippled across society for decades. The period that immediately followed the war, known as Reconstruction, had a strong impact on the nation and increased income disparity.

Background

Before the Civil War began, the United States had extended its western boundary all the way to the Pacific Coast, displacing or killing local Native American groups to make way for European-American settlement. However, reaching these vast expanses of land was a slow and dangerous prospect for settlers. While many rail companies laid tracks between cities on the East Coast, building lines to stretch across the continent was a monumental and expensive task. Settlers and prospectors drawn to California’s gold fields during the 1840s Gold Rush spent months making the journey from the East to West Coasts, at a cost of almost $1,000.

A railroad to link the coasts was necessary for commerce and travel. Engineer Theodore Judah scouted a route through the Sierra Nevada Mountains and convinced President Abraham Lincoln and leaders in Congress to approve the project. Under the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862, Congress authorized the Central Pacific Railroad Company to build from Sacramento, California, eastward. The Union Pacific Railroad, meanwhile, laid tracks from the Missouri River westward. Both lines of track were to meet at a middle point to be determined. As an incentive, both companies were granted land and $48,000 in government bonds for every mile of track they built.

Construction on the first transcontinental railroad began in 1863. As miles of rail were constructed, the railroads also built roundhouses and other infrastructure in the territories. Business leaders sold land around these facilities, hoping to encourage settlers. By some estimates, The US government handed over up to two hundred million acres of land to rail companies and their executives. Politicians were eager to make deals with railroad and shipping tycoons.

The ceremonial final spikes connecting both railroads were hammered home on May 10, 1869, in Promontory Summit, Utah. With completion of the transcontinental railroad, coast-to-coast travel cost just $150 and took a week instead of months. The success of the first transcontinental railroad prompted more rail growth.

By 1890, $50 million in freight was shipped over the 1,776 miles of track annually. Crops, imported goods, and raw materials traveled west to east, while manufactured and imported goods were shipped from the east to west. This continent-wide shipping network helped the United States become the largest market in the world and the globe’s most powerful economy.

The building of the railroad led to the development of a new business model. While the tycoons running the railroads reaped profits, they took little personal financial risk. The federal government provided land grants, government guaranteed bonds, and government loans for construction. When the loans came due, and the industrialists refused to pay, the US government had to sue them.

The railroad also completed a process of social change that was long in the works. The United States had been founded as an agricultural economy and society, but with the onset of the Industrial Revolution in the second half of the nineteenth century, the economy rapidly changed. The railroads allowed settlers to move west, but also provided farmers with the means to move to urban centers to find work. Rapid population growth overwhelmed many cities, leading to growth of slums where poor living conditions contributed to disease and high death rates. By the start of the twentieth century, about 40 percent of Americans lived in major cities.

Overview

The so-called “robber barons” epitomized the Gilded Age. These were industrialists and shipping and railroad tycoons who would go to almost any lengths to amass fortunes and power. They were willing to bribe politicians, exploit workers, and commit illegal and unethical acts to achieve their goals. Robber barons controlled major industries including banking, liquor, meatpacking, mining, oil, railroads, steel, sugar, textiles, timber, and tobacco.

The robber barons were in favor of immigration because it provided unskilled laborers for their industries. Such workers were paid low wages and endured dangerous working conditions. The tycoons were accused of being monopolists; these practices allowed an industrialist to limit production to raise prices of goods.

Some of the nation’s most lavish mansions were built by the wealthy of the Gilded Age to reflect their wealth and status. George and Edith Vanderbilt, for example, constructed Biltmore in Asheville, North Carolina. The Biltmore mansion, which took six years to complete, had thirty-five bedrooms, forty-three bathrooms, and sixty-five fireplaces. The estate included a horse barn and dairy and extensive landscaped gardens. While the Vanderbilts were an old-money family, many newly wealthy constructed mansions of their own. Newport, Rhode Island is the site of many mansions the wealthy built in the late nineteenth century to use as summer coastal cottages.

Income disparity increased rapidly during the Gilded Age. In contrast to the opulence of the mansions of the rich, the crowded tenements of the cities were filthy and squalid. The working class lived in poverty, scraping to afford food. Parents and children alike worked twelve or more hours a day in sweatshops. Eventually, organizers began to form labor unions so the working poor could bargain for better wages and working conditions. On July 16, 1877, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company cut workers’ wages for the second time in less than a year. The workers went on strike, a movement that became known as the Great Upheaval. It eventually included more than one hundred thousand railroad workers. It did not succeed in raising wages, but it showed business leaders the potential power of unions. To prevent workers from gaining ground, tycoons used lockouts and replacement workers to undermine strikes. They also created and shared blacklists of union workers.

Technology and engineering strongly influenced the growth of the nation and economy. Engineers created amazing bridges and canals. Elevators powered by electricity allowed buildings to be constructed to new heights. Trolley lines and subways moved people more efficiently and quickly and allowed for the birth and growth of bedroom communities and early suburbs where the middle class moved to escape the filth and heat of the cities. Electricity changed daily life, giving people more hours in the day and essentially creating social night life. It also expanded the hours of industry, allowing factories to add shifts and operate around the clock, and caused many domestic servants to be replaced by household appliances such as vacuum cleaners and washing machines. When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876, he gave business and industry a better and faster way to communicate with buyers, sellers, and suppliers.

The Gilded Age also saw the rise of social Darwinism. This refers to theories about poverty and wealth based on evolution. Conservatives and liberals both saw Darwinism as an explanation for poverty, but for different reasons. Conservatives blamed the poor for their status because they believed traits such as idleness and a predisposition to alcohol abuse were hereditary. Liberals believed that the environment was largely to blame for social ills such as poverty. The advocated for better nutrition and education to help the disadvantaged develop. Some philanthropists on both sides shared the idea that charity was often wasted by the people it was meant to help.

The political landscape changed during the late nineteenth century. Despite the influx of workers from farms to cities, agriculture expanded rapidly. Acreage devoted to farming more than doubled from 1860 to 1890, with an additional 421 million acres plowed and planted. However, income from farming was inconsistent, and many farmers had heavy debts for their land and equipment. They began to form organizations to lobby government and market their products. The most influential, the National Farmers’ Alliance and Industrial Union, advocated for empowerment. It promoted education among farmers to develop better agricultural and business practices and improvement of rural schools. The Populist movement in the West and Midwest supported women’s suffrage, and women in Colorado and Idaho won the right to vote during the 1890s under Populist state governments. The Farmers’ Alliance also sent lobbyists to Washington to represent farmers’ interests. When they were unable to sway legislators of the major parties, the farmers took the next step and formed the Populist Party in the early 1890s. This third party advocated for more involvement of the federal government. Important parts of its platform were the call to nationalize the railroads, telegraphs, and other industries and a demand to adopt a federal income tax on the wealthiest Americans. While the party gained ground in a number of states, members were divided over the presidential election of 1896. Many backed Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan. His loss laid low the Populist Party’s power.

Many prominent women of the Gilded Age were inspired to improve society. Those with social and economic power often worked to benefit the nation and their cities. Louise Whitfield Carnegie founded Carnegie Hall and supported charities such as the Red Cross and YWCA. Abby Aldrich Rockefeller helped create the New York Museum of Modern Art. Margaret Olivia Sage donated more than half of her inheritance to women’s causes, education, and services for the poor. Many women became activists for social causes. Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Star founded Hull-House in Chicago to serve women in the immigrant community. Temperance leader and suffragist Carrie Nation famously used a hatchet to smash saloons. She also worked to help women and children abused by alcoholic husbands and fathers. Her efforts against alcohol use and abuse played a significant role in the Temperance movement that eventually led to nationwide Prohibition in 1920.

Writers and journalists, in particular those known as muckrakers, prompted social change. Reporter and photographer Jacob Riis’s 1890 book, How the Other Half Lives, exposed the horrible conditions in New York City’s slums. In 1902, Ida Tarbell wrote a series of magazine articles on John D. Rockefeller and his business practices running the Standard Oil Company. The company had monopolies on kerosene—which was used to fuel lamps—and later on gasoline as the automobile industry developed. In The Jungle, Upton Sinclair revealed the sordid truth about the meat-packing industry, both in its treatment of workers and its processing of food that was often contaminated or rotten. His novel led the federal government to establish new food safety laws. However, as Sinclair noted sadly, the public was largely outraged about food production, and not about the suffering of the workers.

The beginning of the end for the Gilded Age was the Panic of 1893, an economic depression following the failure of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad and the National Cordage Company. Banks and businesses failed, and stock prices plummeted. Unemployment in some states was nearly 50 percent. The depression, which lasted four years, further convinced Americans that social welfare programs were necessary and many called on the federal government to take steps to help the working class.

The progressive movement helped Theodore Roosevelt win the presidential election and take office in 1901. As the muckrakers continued to expose the deeds of robber barons and the plight of the working class, social and economic reforms began. Labor reform, women’s suffrage, regulation of food and medicine, tax reform, trade union development, fair labor standards, and election reform were a few of the results. As the United States entered World War I in 1917, the nation’s attention turned to the conflict, and the Gilded Age officially came to an end.

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