The Gilded Age

Following the Civil War the United States experienced a time of drastic change that molded the country into a true world power. While the South experienced reconstruction; industry in the North was converted to peacetime purposes. As a result industry became more prominent than ever before in an almost completely agriculture driven nation(The Gilded Age). Accordingly. the United States entered a new era known as the “Gilded Age” in which the American economy, cities, and population grew at an astonishing rate. Be that as it may, the term “Gilded Age” to describe the United States during this period of time was coined by renown American author Mark Twain with a negative connotation. Being that to be “gilded” means to be covered thinly with

The United States was ill-prepared for the massive influx of immigrants. Immigrants were attracted to cities like moth to a flame with the promise of easily finding employment. New new industry companies practices fierce tactics in order to establish monopolies, controlling an entire type of business. All the while food production to support a massive population was vile and unsanitary. The United States was in need of reform in order to recognize these new problems, consequently towards the beginning of the 20th century reforms came. This was known as the Progressive Era(Digital History). A few brave individuals known as “muckrakers ” took it upon themselves to inform the American people of these problems by publishing books, or by simply taking pictures. These muckrakers such as Upton Sinclair, Jacob Riis, and Ida Tarbell pioneered the Progressive movement by publishing work that demanded reform; and reform is what they

Tarbell was born in 1857 in northwest Pennsylvania(People). Tarbell went on to lead her high school class of 1875 and then entered Allegheny College. Her dream was to become a scientist however she resigned this pursuit and returned to Titusville where she began to write for a newly-launched McClure’ Magazine(People). As a writer for McClure’s Magazine, Tarbell began to take interest in one of America’s worst layer that rested beneath the gilded, monopolies(People). In a 19 part series spanning from November 1902 to October 1904 Tarbell exposed the economic complications brought by monopolies, by showcasing the most impeccable example of a monopoly, the standard oil company(Allegheny College). Then in 1904 the individual parts were combined as a book, The History of the Standard Oil Company(Allegheny College).”To know every detail of the oil trade, to be able to reach at any moment its remotest point, to control even its weakest factor—this was John D. Rockefeller’s ideal of doing business. It seemed to be an intellectual necessity for him to be able to direct the course of any particular gallon of oil from the moment it gushed from the earth until it went into the lamp of a housewife. There must be nothing—nothing in his great machine he did not know to be working right…”(Tarbell). The book attracted the public eye, and eventually the government’s. Consequently in 1911 The U.S Supreme