Gilded Age: Different Interpretations Of The Gilded Age

Many people may view something differently than others, this is usually and interpretation. An interpretation is an action of explaining the meaning of something or it can be an explanation of a way to explain something. We have all made interpretations about something and we do it often. Eric Forner and Howard Zinn had different interpretations of the gilded age, which was a time period where the United States population and economy quickly grew with a lot of corruption. Their ways of explaining this era was different from one another.
Howard Zinn approach to explaining the gilded age focused more with the financial part. He also gave names and their significance to the era and what they did to make it what is was. I would say Zinn went

into way more details with the facts, he gave me a “behind the scenes” insight of the chapter. For example in Chapter 11 of Zinn’s book he states:
“Andrew Carnegie was a telegraph clerk at seventeen, then secretary to the head of the Pennsylvania Railroad, then broker in Wall Street selling railroad bonds for huge commissions, and was soon a millionaire.

He went to London in 1872, saw the new Bessemer method of producing steel, and returned to the United States to build a million-dollar steel plant. Foreign competition was kept out by a high tariff conveniently set by Congress, and by 1880 Carnegie was producing 10,000 tons of steel a month, making $1 1/2 million a year in profit. By 1900 he was making $40 million a year, and that year, at a dinner party, he agreed to sell his steel company to J. P. Morgan. He scribbled the price on a note: $492,000,000.”
This fact gives much more insight of the gilded age from a different point of view because there is more to learn from just one perspective.
Forner’s interpretation on the gilded age was not as detailed and complex as Zinn’s. Forner’s chapter went more into detail about the growth, politics, and the life of people and their groups during the gilded age. Unlike Zinn’s chapter, Forner actually gave insight of the immigrants and what they went through. For example in chapter 16 Forner states:
“By 1900, roughly 53,000 Indians had become American citizens be accepting land allotments under the Dawes Act. The following year, Congress granted citizenship to 100,000 residents of Indian Territory. The remainder would have to wait until 1919 and 1924, when Congress made all Indians American

citizens.”
This statements gives a taste of the hardships that people had to overcome during this era especially if you’re not favored you had a little more difficult time.
Though both authors had different “interpretations” of the same topic you learned a lot about the topic at hand. It was explained differently you got a lot of information out. You got a lot of details from one author and other important details from the other author.