Gilded Age Research Paper

Gilded Age Take-Home

The Gilded Age was an age of vast transformation for the United States. This period was was an era of vast economic, social, and political growth for the United States. It brought a vast number of immigrants to our shores. This era showed the true meaning of the “American dream” and also the suffering it brought with it. Andrew Carnegie, a Scottish immigrant who came to this country penniless became the owner of the Carnegie Steel Company, which became the most profitable company at the time. The Gilded Age was the age of the industrial tycoon where one extravagantly wealthy person had a monopoly of companies with people who worked for wages that would not be enough to get by, working in hazardous conditions, and living
There was an overwhelming amount of people coming from across the pond to look for work in hope for the American dream. While in reality very few found it and the rest were living well below the poverty level. The previous United States also welcomed immigrants but the usual immigrants were skilled workers from England, Ireland, and Germany. The economy of the United States changed from agricultural farming to industrial and manufacturing by mass producing. The average citizen earned a wage and bought all of their necessities at the store pre-prepared. In the previous state of America an average citizen would farm and make most of their own goods. Everything in the Gilded Age was mass produced, food was canned, medicine was bottled, everything was created ready to use. People bought goods at general stores, specialty shoppes were less abundant and everything was found in one place. The Gilded Age was an era of big business with monopolies controlling everything and basking in wealth and leaving the average citizen to squander in their
The Populists were a political party that sprung up in this era. It was comprised mostly of farmers from the South and Plains States who attacked the industrial growth of the United States and wanted to keep with the tradition of the agrarian society of the United States. They combated the low wages and they also fought for a way of farming not driven by debt. Farming in that time was not profitable because competition drove the price too far down so the farmers could not pay to plant, harvest, and ship their crop. The Populist Party died soon after it was conceived but its ideas live on to this