The Poor In The Gilded Age

The greatest flaw of the “Gilded Age” was that the upper class were too rich and lower class was not moving up in the economy. The Gilded Age was an age of flaw for the economy system of America. The pictures taken by photographers, Lewis Hine and Jacob Riis compared to the pictures of The Carnegie Home, show the difference between both social classes; The poor and the rich. The picture taken by Hine and Riis are depicting the lower class.

The reading and video reveal that living conditions during the Gilded Age were terrible, unsafe drinking water, unwanted sewage disposal, animal waste, and air conditions were ineffective. Many people don’t have a place to live in the house so they gathered and lived in Tenements where they have no enough space for more people and is more contaminated. In tenements, kids had to live in crowded and unsafe areas. There was high death rate and high sickness rate because of diseases. Almost 8000 people died because of disease. So, the life condition was bad at that time. Similarly, the working conditions during the Gilded Age was also not better. Not only adults

The Gilded Age in American History was a time period of great controversy. Those in wealthier classes believed the changes that had been made socially were for the best. For instance, Andrew Carnegie in the The Gospel of Wealth sees the industrialization in a positive light. He, along with other Robber Barons of the late nineteenth-century are the ones that created the idea of a “Gilded Age”. His class of folks believed their contributions to society was bringing back a Golden Age. Carnegie, though, didn’t necessarily approve of the wealth distribution and was aware there was an issue. However, others didn’t feel exactly the same. Upton Sinclair shows this in the novel, The Jungle. The novel highlights the social injustice and unfair treatment of the working class in the nineteenth century. Although a work of fiction, the novel brings to light true occurrences from heavily populated cities during this time period. In several instances, the novel details how the quickly rising issue of poverty in the United States wasn’t treated, as it should’ve been. In addition to Sinclair and Carnegie, there were several other views on either ends of the spectrum. Whether it was a view of the poorer class; or that of the wealthy class, the opinions were very controversial and gave a strong sense of the issues that occurred throughout the Gilded Age.

The long Gilded Age of America started in 1870 and lasted until 1930. It started right after the Civil War and was a period of extreme economic and industrial growth. After the war, a period known as Reconstruction started. The Reconstruction was meant to rebuild the economy of the South. However, the Reconstruction not only didn’t help the South that much, it also didn’t help the newly freed African Americans. According to Eric Foner’s book Give Me Liberty Volume 2, “African-Americans’ understanding of freedom was shaped by their experience as slaves and their observation of the free society around them.” Even after the Civil War, life was still not good for African Americans. One deadly system that was very similar to slavery was the convict leasing system. According to the Reconstruction Amendments, the 13th Amendment outlawed all slavery except ones “ except as a punishment for crime”. Those few words were enough for many people to exploit this by falsely accusing people(many of them African American) of crime and forcing them to work in horrific conditions such as mines and factories. In the Slavery By Another Name video, it told of situations when convicts were through with their time and yet would be forced to stay by the harsh rule of the place they were working at. Many blacks would get sent to prison and then leased for minor misdemeanors or idiotic actions such as stealing a pig or the “Vagrancy Statutes”(from Slavery By Another Name). These statutes basically

In the late nineteenth century there were many groups of people who experienced rough times during the Gilded Age. These groups involves, farmers, labor workers, and African Americans. Each group were involved in different situations but they all wanted the same thing- change!

During the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, the Gilded Age was in full effect in America. Cities were growing and industry was booming and profitable. What most people did not see in that time was how the other half lived. In order for industries to accumulate their wealth, immigrants worked for little pay and lived in rundown, unsafe houses. Women were treated as inferior beings.

During the nineteenth century, there was a time of critical social problems we now know

The Gilded Age, a term coined by author Mark Twain, refers to the years 1879 through 1899. This was a time period of high extremes that included high immigration rates, rapid economic growth, poverty, concentrated wealth, and high urban violence often associated directly with alcohol consumption. Though wages were higher in America than across Europe, causing higher immigration rates, the influx of immigrants led to many of them enduring poverty and living in slums which was vastly different from the life they had imagined when traveling to America. “...tend to dichotomize Gilded-Age society into a few fabulously wealthy industrialists and a mass of impoverished workers…”1. During this time there was rapid economic growth, however the concentrated

The Gilded Age was a very special time for our nation that took place from the 1870s to around 1900. During this time, economic growth was at a rapid increase, politics were corrupted yet had high turnouts, and urbanization flourished. Every aspect of the life of an American changed drastically throughout this time of the Gilded Age. The entire era was focused on the enormous changes that each aspect of America was going through. As this is brought to attention, if we are to look into the way that America is in our time of today, we can find that there are many similarities to that of the original Gilded Age. The United States of America have currently found themselves to be experiencing the second era of the Gilded Age throughout the areas of economic, politic and social transformation.

Mark Twain collaborated with Charles Dudley Warner on The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today. Published in 1973, as Twain’s earliest work of extended fiction, The Gilded Age gives a name to the period of opulence and corruption at the end of the 19th century. Portraying the superficial luxury of Washington and high society, the authors describe “The general laxity of the time, and the absence of a sense of duty toward any part of the community but the individual himself” (Twain 203). Twain’s The Gilded Age, like Wharton’s The Age of Innocence focuses on high society. Yet, the imperfections in the gilding betray the dramatic change of the period. Forces of corporatization, unionization, immigration, urbanization, populism,

The 1860s to 1920s was known as the gilded age in the United States of America. Immigrants moved to the U.S. to have a better life but when they arrived, they an unexpected situation. In the gilded age, Robber barons or business owners made a tremendous amount of money. Most of them accomplished this by using monopolies and trusts which led them to gain power and money. While money was flowing in the United States, the lower class population lived in tenements, where diseases would spread fast and comfort was not available. Workers had to work more than twelve hours a day and they could lose parts of their bodies in the machines and therefore get fired. Children worked as much as their parents did. They were in a position of

The life of living as a poor settler or an immigrant was a problem in the urban life. Most of the immigrants faced poverty that needs to be secured with food, shelter, healthcare, and money. For example, if there were no food for the immigrants to eat, they will starve to death. A shelter was one of the most important things they need because it keeps them securities from harm and it is a cozy place for them to sleep. Another source they need was health care because without medical attention most of them had the disease. The disease like cholera, yellow fever, and typhoid came from bad hygiene which was preventing bad sanitation. The health factor was

From 1870 to 1900 era was called the Gilded Age, a time of immense growth in the United States in transportation, especially in railroads, American workers were paid higher wages than their peers in Europe. In this thirty year span the United States saw twelve million immigrants pass through her golden doors, 70% of these immigrants were English, Irish, and German. Crop failures (potato famine in Ireland), job shortages, and religious freedom were the motivations behind many immigrating to America. Newly arrived immigrants faced a harsh reality in America, employers took advantage of them, the men were often paid less than other native born men and the women were paid even less. Immigrants suffered verbal and physical abuse from employers and other employees because they were different. While researching my Italian heritage I learned that Italians, especially southern Italians were not treated well because they were hired as strikebreakers or scabs by mining and railroading companies. They were called derogatory names such as "dagoes or guineas". Newspapers of the time said the southern Italians were "intellectually inferior and having criminal tendencies" (Laura Teddy Turner, Demand Media n.d.) http://www.emmigration.info/us-immigration-tv

From 1938-1969, in America was in a period called the great compression, a time where the difference between the richest and poorest Americans was very small and economic growth was explosive. Due to past and current economic policies and events, income inequality has exploded in America, which is why in 2015 America had the highest level of wealth inequality in the world at 80.56 gini[1] . In the future this inequality will slow down economic growth, increase debt for middle income Americans, make America less democratic, and reduce economic mobility. This problem, however, does have solutions and this paper will lay out some of the solutions and the effect they will have on the economy, but first I will explain the history of income inequality in the US.

The Gilded Age is a time period in American history between 1870-1900. During this time period there was a boom in the United States economy and population. Unfortunately, during this time period there was a lot of financial corruption and inequality which caused the rich to become very wealthy. Interestingly enough there were a variety of distinguished authors, from William Graham Sumner, Henry Demarest Lloyd, Andrew Carnegie, and Henry George knew economic inequality was a major problem and something needed to be done.