Industrial Revolution During The Gilded Age

The second Industrial Revolution began in 1865, right after the Civil War. This was a huge turning point for America because the agrarian economy it once was, was now becoming modern and industrialized. Before the Gilded Age, many US citizens were forced to create everything by hand, causing products to have slight differences with one another and production to be slow. As time went on, inventors found new ways to make the lives of both consumers and producers more efficient than ever before. Without these newer techniques, who knows if society would have gotten this far in today’s age. The Industrial Revolution is known as a revolution because it was an era of new inventions and methods that helped society push further.

During the Industrial

For example, one of the most important techniques that played a major part in the Industrial Revolution was the Bessemer Process. In 1856, Sir Henry Bessemer managed to develop an inexpensive technique that took steel out of iron, which helped build railroads and new cars for trains. Furthermore, these trains not only helped people travel from one state to another faster, but it also allowed for fresher foods. It is worth noting that in 1798, Eli Whitney introduced interchangeable parts in weapon making, which helped introduce mass production to this newer era. Towards the late 1800s, thanks to Henry Ford, mass production began to spread to the manufacturing of other goods, such as shoes or articles of clothing. As this method grew more and more popular within industries, skilled workers weren’t needed as much and were replaced with machines run by unskilled workers. As a result of these job opportunities, many of these unskilled workers competed with each other by working for lower wages; due to this, the cost of creating goods became increasingly cheaper and were able to be shipped farther. Over the course of this new era, the economy began to skyrocket because of the cheaper cost of making goods and transportation allowed that for these goods to be shipped farther and

Beginning in the 1820s, the first major wave of immigrants came from Ireland, Germany, and China. Many of these immigrants left their home countries due to poverty and came to the United States looking for land, jobs, peace, and stability. For example, Irish immigrants were fleeing a major famine and Germans were fleeing political upheaval. Most of these “old” immigrants included land owners, skilled laborers, and merchants that usually ended up settling in the US. Towards the late 1880s to the 1920s, the second wave of immigrants, now coming from Italy, Poland, and Russia, came to the US to escape widespread poverty, loss of land, persecution, and high unemployment rates. These “new” immigrants included unskilled workers or farmers who usually returned to their home countries. Many of them believed that America was safe and had many resources that could help them create better lives for themselves. Unfortunately, once immigrants actually arrived to the US, most of their hopes of starting a better life would be wiped away by the discrimination they received from nativists. Unlike what many thought their experiences would be like, immigrants were slapped in the face with constant discrimination because of where they came from. Thus forcing them to create their own segregated communities or to