How did Gilded Age Change the US?

How did America's Gilded Age change the social politics of the United States? The Gilded Age was a period where the outer part of it was all good and shining but in reality deep down inside, it was really bad. This all happened next to the Progressive Era in the 1980's. The growth in the economies growth was very fast but it mostly happened in the West and North. The wages for Americans were very high compared to the people in Europe. Chief Joseph was the leader of Nez Perce Indians and he delivered a speech in Lincoln Hall. U.S. Troops had tracked Joseph and his people on a 1,700 mile trek through the Far West as they sought to escape to Canada after fights with settlers who had encroached on tribal lands in Oregon and Idaho.

After four months, the Indians were forced to surrender, and were removed to Oklahoma. This happened during the Gilded Age and it shows how Chief Joseph was a big part of it.  In the early 1900's there was a huge increase in the number of immigrants coming to the eastern shores of America. A lot of immigrants were being pulled to America because it had better economic opportunities and also freedom. Not many of the settlers spoke english and some were even unable to write in their own language. I see men of my race treated as outlaws and driven from country to country, or shot down like animals.This shows how this period of time was nothing to joke about because many lives were taken away. Another thing that happened in the Gilded Age was the Rockefeller Incorporates Standard Oil. John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company is incorporated in Ohio. He has been active in the oil business since 1863. Standard Oil was first formed as a partnership in 1868.

By the early the 1880s the standard oil controlled about 90 percent of U.S. refineries and line ducts. As you can see many things has happened in the Gilded Age, there is still plenty more to go. The Garfield Assassination was when President James Garfield was shot by Charles Guiteau, a deranged federal office-seeker. This happened less than four months into his term as President in 1881. Social Darwinism was also a big part of this era because it was a theory of evolution and natural selection to contemporary social development. Charles Darwin's great work On The Origin of Species expounded the theory of evolution among plant and animal species, to explain the success and failure of individual human beings and entire social classes.

This is the theory that human classification and races are questioned to the same laws of natural selection as Charles Darwin had comprehended in plants and in humans as well. During the Gilded Age the labor movement presented a very different understanding of freedom. It offered a wide array of programs, from public employment in hard times to currency reform, anarchism and socialism. This is basically how a second declaration of independence started. There were a lot of important people in the Gilded Age and I will explain some of them. One of these important people were Andrew Carnegie, whom lived from 1835 to 1919. He was the owner of the Carnegie Steel Company and also a major philanthropist. Theodore Roosevelt was a part of the Gilded Age. He was a part of the Republican Party and also the 26th president. He was also a leader of the Progressive movement. Boss Tweed was the headman of a untrustworthy political crowd in New York who took money from poor immigrants and had his very own public works program and got dishonorable leaders into his office.

Edward Bellamy stated Oppressive and intolerable as was the regime of the great consolidations of capitals, even its victims, while they cursed it, were forced to admit the prodigious increase of efficiency which had been imparted to the national industries.Bellamy was a writer who was famous for his book Looking Backward in 1888. In his novel he talks about, inequality has been banished and with it the idea of liberty as a condition to be achieved through individual striving free of governmental restraint. This clearly shows how Bellamy wanted to make a positive change for the Gilded Age. He did not want inequality for anyone and he also wanted to people to have the right to their own liberty. Some of the bigger corporations during this era were the U.S. Steel, Standard Oil and International Harvester.

Many of the skilled workers asked for a raise to their wages. For the factory workers, they had a more harder and scarrier job because a lot of workers died every year due to accidents in the mines. The Gospel of Wealth was in the time of the Gilded Age, where Ira Steward, who a labor leader, gave a speech and started the movement for the 8 hour work day in july 4, 1879, which took place in Chicago Illinois. The Haymarket Affair was the results of a bombing that took place at a industry corroboration on Tuesday May 4, 1886. Which was one of the very deadly times of the Gilded Age. The Civil Service Act of 1883 which accustomed the Civil Service Commission and pronounced the end of the spoils system. This instructed that the orientations within the federal government should be awarded on the basis of worthiness instead of political association. Knights of labor was the first group trying to organize unskilled and skilled workers, white and black, women and men to work. They made this in order for everyone to have the same rights and so that people make it fair for any type of person.

For the Interstate Commerce Commission in response to public outcries against railroad practices, they also ensured that the railroads charged farmers and merchants reasonably. This was something else that was also very helpful because it would not be right for the railroads to take advantage of the farmers and merchants. This act happened in 1887, with this act, the railroads became the first production substance to federal regulation. The Dawes Act broke up all Indian lands into small parcels turned into Indian families, with the rest of them being sold to white men. This is cruel but at the same time the small parcels went to some families which did not go completely into waste. The significance of the frontier in american history was a celebrated presentation by Frederick Jackson Turner, argued that American cultural standards were completely faked on the western frontier.This was an essay that the American historian Frederick Jackson Turner wrote. A tactic in which numerous antagonist companies are obligated out of employment to be able to capture the market in a monopoly, which was called a horizontal integration.

On the other hand there was also a vertical integration which was also a type of employment strategy that included acknowledging and utilizing all the steps of manufacturing, which was pioneered by Carnegie from his Standard oil. Captains of Industry vs. Robbers of Barons were obviously two different things but they were both involved in the Gilded Age. Captain of industry raised productivity, expanded markets, created more jobs, and also increased availability in goods by building factories. On the other hand Robbers of barons drained the country of its natural resources, drived competitors to ruin, paid poor wages, and forced workers to toil under dangerous and unhealthy conditions.

In Chief Joseph's article it says, they stole many of our horses, and we could not get them back because we were Indians. The white men told lies for each other. This shows so much ignorance on how people did not understand how everyone is the same no matter the race, those white men did the wrong thing by taking advantage and stealing those horses. The white men even found gold in the mountains of the area where the Indians lived, which is just completely unfair. The Gilded Age basically increased immigration, political participation and social reform. It was characterized by economic and industrial growth.

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