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Gilded Age Problems

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In a time after the Civil War, the national government encouraged production which improved their financing by switching to the gold standard, improved communication by boosting the telegraph, improved transportation by building railroads. The economy was also improving massively also due to natural resources, demography, and law. Railroads allowed people as well as supplies to be transported quicker, safer, and cheaper. Companies started taking advantage of the demand for building materials, they bought each other out through vertical and horizontal integration, formed monopolies which made the price go up, and made the owners very wealthy. Aside from all of these positives, there are also various problems that were caused during the Gilded …show more content…

During the Gilded Age billionaires like Carnegie, Vanderbilt, and Rockefeller were earning massive profits off of the backs of underpaid labor. Working conditions in the late nineteenth century were terrible and the pay was even worse.Workers would work for 12-hour days in harsh, dangerous conditions with no job security and no safety standards These employees would earn a bare minimum wage of one dollar a day for six days a week. Outraged workers wanted better conditions and better pay, so they formed unions like the Knights of Labor (KoL) and the American Federation of Labor (AFL). These unions fought for eight-hour work days, better conditions, and better pay along with other demands. The Knights of Labor included black and female members, unlike the American Federation of Labor. To get workers’ demands unions would hold negotiations with the boss or with the floor manager. If the negotiations failed the labor unions would hold walkouts and strikes. These strikes had to be strategic because the employees wouldn’t get paid while they protested. If a floor manager like Henry Frick, who watched over one of Carnegie's steel mills, doesn’t want to meet his employees' demands he can either hire temporary scabs to keep the factory productive, or he can hire the Pinkerton Detective Agency. The Pinkerton …show more content…

The Populist Party found a presidential candidate to carry out the Populist views. William Jennings Bryan was the presidential candidate for both the Populist and the Democratic Party. Bryan and A major party and a minor party to receive votes from. Sadly big business, as well as the industrialist, were against Bryan and he lost. Even though Bryan lost the presidential election, he stated that farmers are important and if prices get any higher the rest of the world is going to starve. The Haymarket Square Riot allowed unions to receive some of their demands as well as xenophobic viewpoint which gave Americans some job security. The Gilded Age (1865-1900) changed the way farmers viewed and participated in politics, as well as changing the working standard for Americans and Immigrants. Working in factories became safer, better paying, and less tiresome because of shorter

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The Gilded Age, created a big impact with the use of technology, it affect the people and the environment of that time period. Many things helped contribute to this affect, like the Bessemer Process, railroads, oil, and light. The Bessemer process help make steel at much faster rate; therefore it helped make railroads and skyscrapers for the future. Andrew Carnegie, one of the richest men at the time, helped with the steel industry and production. He was the man who made the steel industry grow and make it built things that we thought weren't even imaginable during that period.

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A period of tremendous growth and economic prosperity swept across the United States following the North’s victory in the Civil War. The industrial boom helped propel America to become a leading industrial/economic powerhouse. However, industrialization had a dark side: capitalism’s emergence with America’s dramatic expansion led to a poverty-stricken working-class fighting for better wages and working conditions. Unions emerged in the United States, with the Knights of Labor becoming the largest during this time, with goals including increasing wages to $1.25 per day, an eight-hour workday, and overall better working conditions. The Knights rose to power as, unlike local unions, they called to have a diverse organization of individuals regardless

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The Knights of Labor, founded by Terence Powderly and Uriah Stephens in 1869, helped create a union contract with Carnegie’s Braddock Mill. While the Knights of Labor were trying to have broad social reform around the country, they created a lockout in the Braddock Mill. Workers like Kratcha did not care as much about the union’s goals, instead they wanted the mills to be open so that they could earn money (25). Large business owners, like Carnegie, tried, and usually succeed, at breaking strikes and unions in their mills. In Homestead and Braddock, Kratcha experienced the effects of strikes, and they were not positive.

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As this was a new group, they had no true representation. Companies at this time were used to exploiting their workers for little to no pay, as well as making them long hours all seven days. Because of this many unions were very reluctant, or even outright refused, to compensate their workers properly during the early 20th century. American workers saw what was happening in other countries, where worker revolution and civil unrest was taking place.

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After the Civil War, factories no longer had a reason to manufacture weapons. Instead they could focus on household products like textiles or building materials like steel. Such factories boomed and became more prosperous as their industries thrived. Also around this time, railroads that spanned across the country were being constructed, uniting the country more than ever and allowing the country to become a nation of wealth. These events and more brought about the Gilded Age, a time that would push America into the modern age of industrialization and plutocracy.

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Imagine working sixteen hours a day in an unsanitary, dangerous, place for a big business gaining two dollars. This is what laboring-class Americans had to go through during the Gilded age. Politically, the first largest American labor union was formed during the Gilded age and many other organizations formed as well as violent strikes. Socially, different ethnics joined together to share their thoughts and realize the evils of big business and of the federal government. Mentally, most we 're losing their personal life while some were financially stable and glad.

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Through our country's history, we have always dealt with power inequality. It has been an issue since as far as we can remember, although specifically the late 19th century was a very climatic era for the United States. It is considered to be the time of the most exceptional growth, prosperity, and innovation. Even so, the country had also been sent into a devastation because of the Civil War. The prime difficulty during this time was not only the constant struggles between the gap of the rich and the poor, but also the extreme fights towards power and wealth.

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Rise of Labor in the Gilded Age Over the years, the various efforts of labor unions in American history have resulted in the improvements and consideration of civil rights in the workforce. Following the Industrial Revolution in the first half of the 19th century, labor, due to the industrialization and innovations of the Gilded Age, experienced a tremendous rise. As big corporations gained success from forming connections with other corporations, so laborers realized that they should do the same: in order to have their voices heard, they would need to band together and demand change.

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The impact it had on the gilded age was the number of jobs it provided to the fresh-in immigrants. Vanderbilt knew that he could hire immigrants and they would work for not that much money and with these new railroads america will be shrunk for easier expansion of the immigrants.

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American society went through a rapid transformation from 1870s to 1900 and is referred to as the Gilded Age. Social realities were represented through arts and literature and portrayed a society of the working-class struggles contrasted with rising middle class and the wealthy industrialists. A Rally in Chicago on May 4, 1886 in Haymarket Square ended in tragedy when a bomb went off killing police officers and some participants. Public sympathy turned against Labor leading to the arrest and conviction of the rally organizers.

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The time period from when the Second Industrial Revolution was beginning, up until President McKinley’s assassination in 1901, is known as the Gilded Age. After the Civil War, many people headed out West to pursue agriculture, and many immigrants moved to urban areas to acquire jobs in industrial factories. It is in this context that farmers and industrial workers had to respond to industrialization. Two significant ways farmers and industrial workers responded to industrialization in the Gilded Age, were creating the Populist Party and the American Federation of Labor (AFL).

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The Gilded Age was an age that was directly dependent on the end of the Civil War. Jazz was a major parts of what the 1920s and it helped African Americans realize the where they are at that moment was not what they had to stay at. The end of the Civil War made most of the American populace believe that the lives of slaves would change drastically. American slaves were granted freedom by order of the President and the Congress.

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Businesses could not afford to slow downproduction during the Panic, so they continued to keep their prices high, but the people didn’thave access to the scarce money. Not only were businesses charging high prices, but also thePhiladelphia and Reading Railroad went bankrupt, causing less modes of transportation for work-ers and farmers. In total, over 15,000 companies went bankrupt during the Panic and the unem-ployment was the highest in history. Labor Unions were also created during the Gilded Age, which added to the idea of theGilded Age being truly “gilded”. The American Federation of Labor was one of the first laborunions created in the United States.

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Profits for the farmers were getting smaller and smaller due to the increase in prices for the goods to be sold. These farmers believed in many different things- they believed in rules and regulations for the road (which included the fact that the government should control the railroad), lower tariffs, and that money should be based off of silver standard. For the industrial workers, their working conditions were not ideal. Each worker did not get paid nearly enough to support them and their families, even though they worked ten plus hour days, six days a week. Workers were not paid for sick days or injury.

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What was the Gilded Age and why did Mark Twain refer to it as such? To help understand this question, one must know the meaning of the word gild. Per Merriam Webster, the term gild means to “to give an attractive but often deceptive appearance to” (Gild, n.d.). After the Civil War the American people had become tired of all the corruption and simply wanted to see an end to it and to have a stable economy. The Gilded Age was fashioned to be prosperous times for all Americans, promising wealth, and an end to past political corruption.

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