Change and Continuity in the Guilded Age

Change and Continuity in the Gilded Age

Emergence of Modern America

“Every day things change, but basically they stay the same.”-Dave Matthews

Change and continuity are two major principles of life. They can easily be applied to history because their application accurately portrays the circumstances, and characterizes the era of interest. Merriam-Webster defines continuity as an uninterrupted connection, succession, or union, or an uninterrupted duration or continuation especially without essential change. Change is defined as to make different in some particular, to alter, to make radically different, to transform, or to give a different position, course, or direction to. These antonyms are critical in understanding history.

The gilded age of the United States is an extremely interesting era that generally gets diluted in the teaching of American history. However, this age was very critical in the development of many modern ideas and institutions we utilize today. Change and continuity are both prevalent in this time, but change is the primary element from 1877 to 1900.

When discussing change in the late 1800’s a few things come to mind, but the progression of capitalism was a major catalyst for most of them. Capitalism is an economic system of free market. It promotes private or corporate ownership of goods from investments based upon price, production, and distribution of goods. This new idea tended to promise wealth and stability, but when the distinction between the working lower class and bourgeoisie became more evident, people were irritated. Capitalism began to exploit the greed in man and bring fear to the strongest of wills. Many dreamed of this as the golden age of man kind and saw new prosperity as a benefit for all “for how could there be greed when all had enough.”(George, p.21) Poverty spread through the working class like disease and forced millions of Americans to fight for survival. In a trip to Chicago Rudyard Kipling furiously describes the dreary, money driven conditions that consumed the earth, water, and air. “I spent ten hours in that huge wilderness, wandering through scores of miles of these terrible streets, and jostling some few hundred thousand of these terrible people who talked money through their noses....

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...was also continuity. The country still faced severe issues of poverty, racism, and oppression, but the people of America were growing wise and understanding the system and how to change it. Inventions, technology and industrialization were fueled during this time, constantly changing and improving, to create a better America. Ideologically the United States was spawning great new ideas on government regulations, and equal rights. These forefront dreams created much of American society, as we know it today. It pushed the envelope and made top officials see that if the people were unhappy, the nation would not benefit but struggle to come to consensus. Though the end of this age did not completely put all the standards into practice, it set a foundation for future progress. In my opinion where there is change there is always continuity, and vice versa, but change primarily characterized the gilded age.

Bibliography

1. Fink, Leon. Major Problems in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era: second edition. Houghton Mifflin, 2001.

2. Merriam-Webster Dictionary. http://www.merriam-webster.com