Week 7: The gilded age Flashcards
1
Q
What are the dates of Gilded Age?
A
1870-1900
2
Q
characteristics of the Gilded Age
A
- Rapid industrialization: railroads
- Huge concentration of wealth: influence of big business
- Widespread corruption
- Mass immigration from Europe
- Mass poverty and terrible working conditions
3
Q
Where did the name “Gilded Age” come from?
A
- derived from Mark Twain’s novel of the same name
- era of social problems hidden by a thin layer of gold
4
Q
Industrialization in the US
A
- new forms of transport, communication and production: steamboats, telegraph, railroads, machines, factories (created new markets)
- expansion of railroad system: sustained hundred of thousands of new:
- jobs
- coal and iron mines
- iron and steelworks
- towns
- skills
- forms of financial and industrial organization - birth of modern America
- led to increasing urbanization: turned America from a nation of farmers into a nation of city dwellers
- biggest economy in the world by the end of the 19th century
5
Q
Monopolies and trusts
A
- Availability of capital was central to the industrialization of the US:
- provided by wealthy individuals
- thereby increased their wealth and power - Industrialization went along with increasing economic concentration in:
- traditional industries (textile, railroads, steel)
- the new industrial sectors (oil and electricity) - Economy dominated by a few monopolies or trusts: able to drive competitors out of business and make fortunes for themselves
6
Q
Who created and controlled Standard Oil?
A
Created and controlled by John D. Rockfeller
7
Q
Who created and controlled US Steel?
A
Created and controlled by Andrew Carnegie
8
Q
“Robber Barons”
A
- became a popular term in the late 19th century
- describe wealthy tycoons who had profited from industrialization
- profited from other people’s labour without contributing anything in return: hence the notion of ‘robbing’
- criticized for:
- the influence they commanded over Congress (lobbying and bribes) and the country’s politics
- appropriating public money for their own uses - unscupulous business practices: controlled prices, especially railroads rates, and exploited the workers
9
Q
How did the leaders of industry justified economic concentration and social inequality?
A
- By funding various educational and cultural institutions
- allowed them to appear as public benefactors and patrons of the arts
10
Q
Carnegie
A
- one of the few industry magnates of the Gilded Age who had come from a poor backgroud
- Scottish immigrant who had started as a textile worker in a Pittsburgh cotton factory
- could rely on the appeal of the self-made man ideal
- “The King of Steel”
11
Q
“Social darwinism”
A
- application of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution to human society
- very popular in the US in the late 19th century
- found its way in the writings of economists and industrialists such as Ardrew Carnegie:
–> Darwin’s ideas of the “struggle for existence” and “the survival of the fittest” were used to justify increasing economic and social inequality
12
Q
Immigration
A
- 19th century immigration to US was largest peaceful migration in recorded history
- mid-19th century: great majority of the population was Protestant and of English or Scottish descent:
–> rural in origins, residence, outlook and occupation - after 1845, a million Irish Catholics arrived, fleeing the Great Irish Famine: first wave of anti-immigration xenophobia
- many Europeans fled upheavals in europe caused by Industrial Revolution and wars
- With the invention of the steamboat, travel became quicker and easier: immigration between 1880 and 1930: Italians, Austrians, Russians (including many Jews fleeing the pogroms), Germans and Poles
- changed to demographic make-up of the US especially in the cities
