America’s industrial revolution was backed by the Gilded Age, 1850-1900, and many of the events that happened during this time period changed how Americans live today. The expansion of regional and transcontinental railroads helped to carry goods and people across the nation. The inventions invented at this time changed modern life. The Gilded Age was named “gilded” by Mark Twain for a reason, there were many good things to come from it, but underneath the surface, rich powerful men who owned factories did not take responsibility for worker’s rights, pollution clouded parts of the sky, and the gap between the rich and poor was largest during the Gilded age. America was at it’s turn of the century, people were moving from rural areas to urban areas, from working in agriculture to working in industry. Railroads started expanding across the nation due to more …show more content…
This pollution combined with long, intense labor for the factory and railroad workers led to horrible working conditions. Many workers that laid tracks died in the dangerous working conditions they were under, the tracks took 7 years to be laid down. Because of the injustices against them, workers wanted their rights, and factory owners did not want to take responsibility for them. This often led to violence and strikes. Andrew Carnegie was one of these factory owners, often after a day of work, his worker’s shoes were sloshy from their own sweat, in the winters it was too cold, in the summers too hot, as they lived in shacks by the factories, so the workers went on strike, and they were asked to only come back if they were not going to be apart of the worker’s union, which promoted worker’s rights. After these events, the workers started becoming violent in their strikes, so Carnegie’s manager hired his own ‘private army’ to fight against the