Gilded Age Dbq

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The gilded age was a time of scandal, poverty and a little progress. Almost all of these improvements were done after issues arose, but it was not until someone important noticed them and made everyone aware of them but also when it affected powerful people such as the government or an enormous amount of people. The gilded age was mostly a time of making up for previous mistakes.
The spoils system, was a system were the officials usually gave friends and supporters important government jobs, it didn’t matter if the people were qualified or if they weren’t, all that mattered was that they supported the president. By appointing supporters, they were guaranteed them a group of loyal supporters which would help them in future elections. Since …show more content…

There were presidents like Hayes that didn’t think the spoils system was a useful system and starting reforming it, of course many people were upset by this. Hayes began firing people who he thought were not qualified or were not needed and instead replaced them with qualified employees. This created a stronger government and by firing unneeded Republicans, he weakened them. It wasn’t with Hayes that people learned that spoils system wasn’t an efficient system but with Garfield. A man assassinated Garfield in form of revenge. He said Garfield promised him a job in the government if he helped him get elected. When Garfield didn’t give him the job, the man full of anger decided to kill Garfield. Arthur became president and passed the Pendleton Civil Service Act, which stated that jobs would be given to qualified people and stated that employees could only be fired due to political reasons. This was an improvement during the gilded age but again it was only made to prevent future …show more content…

Between the late 1800’s and the 1900’s many immigrants started settling in the U.S hoping to find a better life style, which the U.S offered during this period in time. In the U.S, Jews would have religion freedom and Italians wouldn’t have to pay those heavy taxes they had payed in Italy besides they wouldn’t have poor land to work on. Japanese immigrants would usually produce most of the vegetables and fruits in California, which definitely benefitted them, but at the same time didn’t, they were doing the job of others. Due not only this, immigrants from all over the world would face different types treatment but all would be discriminated in one way or another. Japanese people, while entering the country, would suffer less discrimination than Chinese people since Japan was a powerful country while China wasn’t. That wasn’t the only reason Chinese people suffered more discrimination than Japanese people. Chinese people would usually accept jobs under very low wages, which affected the amount of money an American would receive by doing the same job. Unions were supposed to help workers and to protect them but since they thought that if Chinese people continued to settle and work in America the wages would continue to decrease, they didn’t help Chinese. Chinese wouldn’t be helpful when it came to asking for wage rising due this. Eventually Americans realized that it

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