Gilded Age Dbq

The Gilded Age in America was a time full of political corruption at the highest level of the federal government making insufficient to deal with problems the nation was facing at the time. Consequently, this lead to the presidents of the late nineteenth century to be insignificant since they couldn’t fulfill any of the solutions they promised being stuck with political party corruption scandals. Furthermore, Americans were plagued with poverty, farmers were overwhelmed with high tariffs, and structured racism in politics was facing certain ethnic groups. Certainly, one of the worst era’s America has gone through.
During this time the political platforms that were highlighted started with the controversy of the spoils system, a system that presidents abused of until 1883 with the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act stating that political office openings were to be given to people who qualified, not to members of a certain political party. To the ordinary American they found this to be unacceptable and infuriating, they started movements against the spoil system, and at its peak a new political party, the liberal republican party who were in favor of a civil reform, according to author Corbett, “With newspaper editor Horace Greeley as their

The politicians believed that high tariffs were a better alternative to lower tariffs. However, the damage that they caused farmers was uncanny, farmers were affected the most by this decision because of high tariffs they kept increasing debt but getting minimum profit for the same products that were being produced abroad and being sold domestically. Gold was a major highlight of political platforms, to the average American gold was making life harder and easier to stray towards poverty, although the US tries to solve the problem with silver being put into circulation in hopes to alleviate the average citizen, miner, and farmer it proved to be