The Gilded Age

The Gilded Age.

In United States history, the Gilded Age is a period spanning approximately the 1870s to the turn of the twentieth century. This article focuses on social history. For political history see also History of the United States (1865–1918) 
  The term was coined by writers Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873), satirizing what they believed to be an era of serious social problems disguised by a thin gold gilding. 
  The Gilded Age was an era of enormous growth, especially in the North and West. This attracted millions of emigrates from Europe. However, the Gilded Age was also an era of enormous poverty. The average annual income for most families was $380, well below the poverty line. Railroads were the major industry, but the factory system, mining, and labor unions also increased in importance. Two major nationwide depressions known as the Panic of 1873 and the Panic of 1893 interrupted growth. The South remained economically devastated; its economy became increasingly tied to cotton and tobacco production, which suffered low prices. African-Americans in the South were stripped of political power and voting rights. The political landscape was notable in that despite some corruption, turnout was very high and elections between the evenly matched parties were close. The dominant issues were cultural (especially regarding prohibition, education and ethnic and racial groups), and economics (tariffs and money supply). Reformers crusaded against child labour and for the 8-hour working day, civil service reform, prohibition, and women's suffrage. State & local governments built schools, colleges and hospitals that sometimes received donations from philanthropists and various diverse religious denominations structured the social and cultural lives of many Americans. 
  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 now took six days instead of six months . Railroad track mileage tripled between 1860 and 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 total of Britain, Germany, and France. London and Paris poured investment 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 by controlling access to the raw materials, prevented opponents from entering the marketplace. This practice would lead to a sole producer of a certain manufactured good and meant no competition in the marketplace to lower prices.  
  The United States became a world leader in applied technology. From 1860 to 1890, 500,000 patents were issued for new inventions—over ten times the number issued 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. Nikola Tesla invented a remarkable number of electrical devices, including an induction motor, making the use of alternating current more feasible; Thomas Edison, in addition to inventing hundreds of electrical devices, co-founded General Electric corporation. Oil became an important resource, beginning with the Pennsylvania oil fields. The U.S. dominated the industry into the 1950s. Kerosene replaced whale oil and candles for lighting. John D. Rockefeller founded Standard Oil Company and monopolized the oil industry—which mostly produced kerosene before the automobile created a demand for gasoline in the 20th century. 
Prior to the Gilded Age, the time commonly referred to as the old immigration saw the first real boom of new arrivals to the United States. During the Gilded Age, approximately 10 million immigrants came to the United States in what is known as the new immigration. Some of them were prosperous farmers who had the cash to buy land and tools in the Plains states especially. Many were poor peasants looking for the American Dream in unskilled manual labor in mills, mines and factories. Few immigrants went to the poverty-stricken South, though. To accommodate the heavy influx, the federal government in 1892 opened a reception center at Ellis Island near the Statue of Liberty. 
  These immigrants consisted two groups: The last big waves of the "Old Immigration" from Germany, Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia, and the rising waves of the "New Immigration", which peaked about 1910. Some men moved back and forth across the Atlantic, but most were permanent settlers. They moved into well-established communities, both urban and rural. The German American communities spoke German, but their younger generation was bilingual.