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Expansive growth was the moniker which expressly defined the Gilded Age. Industry in all sectors, witnessed massive growth leading to the creation of an American economy. Due to the rapidly changing nature of industrialization important men of both the public and private sectors attempted to institute their own controls over it. However this transforming landscape integrated both economic and political changes, but also cultural and social interactions. In turn, those who controlled the flow of business would also steadily impact the American social scene by extension. Alan Trachtenberg, professor of American studies at Yale and author of The Incorporation of America, argues that the system of incorporation unhinged the idea of national identity that all American’s had previously shared. As a result incorporation became the catalyst for the great debate about what it meant to actually be American, and who was capable of labeling themselves as such. Throughout his work Trachtenberg consistently tackles the ideas of cultural identity and how those ideas struggled against one another to be the supreme definition of Americanism. This work not only brings to life the issue of identity but it attempts to synthesize various scholarly works into a cohesive work on the Gilded Age and demonstrates that concepts developed during the incorporation of the time period have formed the basis for the American cultural, economic, and political superstructure. The Incorporation of America sets a high standard for itself one in which it doesn’t necessarily meet; however the work is still expansive and masterful at describing the arguments of the Gilded Age.
As the work starts Trachtenberg makes an understanding that pre-industrial American is the w...
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...kman more dependent; depriving him of his skill and of opportunities to acquire it; lessening his control over his own condition and the hope of improving it; cramping his mind, and in many cases distorting an enervating his body.”
While this is a dramatized statement regarding the plight of the worker under the new machine driven industrial system, rhetoric such as this did represent the fears of the working class. Over time as industrialization appeared more commonly there emerged more heated debates between the working class and business owners.
Struggle between the two opposing classes of labor was the embodiment of the argument for national identity according to Trachtenberg. His attention to detail of the divide between the lower class workers and the rich upper crust industrialists, serves to illustrate the varying changes which occurred across the country.
Accurately established by many historians, the capitalists who shaped post-Civil War industrial America were regarded as corrupt “robber barons”. In a society in which there was a severe imbalance in the dynamics of the economy, these selfish individuals viewed this as an opportunity to advance in their financial status. Thus, they acquired fortunes for themselves while purposely overseeing the struggles of the people around them. Presented in Document A, “as liveried carriage appear; so do barefooted children”, proved to be a true description of life during the 19th century. In hopes of rebuilding America, the capitalists’ hunger for wealth only widened the gap between the rich and poor.
Dissatisfaction continued within the middle class. As new industrial machines emerged, designed for mass product... ... middle of paper ... ... disrupting the equilibrium of American society, they confronted these issues and pushed for political, economic, and social reform. (H)
Since the government used laissez-faire in the late 1800s for the big businesses to grow, corporations like Carnegie’s Standard Steel Company or Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company could expand without limits.... ... middle of paper ... ... Lastly, the laws for the regulation of businesses were enforced until President Theodore Roosevelt had also contributed by suing companies that violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. The Gilded Age was known as the Second Industrial Revolution because there was change in the economy, politics, and society.
... and movements, pertaining to the rise of the working class, led to an excessive analysis of the evidence within the pages of Chants Democratic. At times Wilentz’s scrutiny of the trade unions and many other pretentious accounts of the Jacksonian era led the author’s prose to become silted to the reader. In lieu to the disarray of evidence, provided by Wilentz to give application to his arguments on the rise of the labor class; the primary thesis became lost. This leads Chants Democratic to be a great hindrance for the basic student, yet is an excellent source for someone engaged in researching the rise of a working class in American history.
The time period from 1860 to 1914 is defined by the surfacing of the "mass societies." The social order practically ignored the industrial proletariat and the foundation for a reform was laid. The industrial proletariat refers to all the workers who desperately depended on their wages. These people had absolutely no role in politics or in society in general. Even as late as 1860, the workers had to depend on themselves only to improve their social conditions. During the Industrial Revolution, as the number of machines mu...
5. Perry, Elisabeth Israels, and Karen Manners Smith. The Gilded Age and Progressive Era: a student companion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Print.
The rapid development of global economy with the opening of new markets worldwide gave way to the development of new means of production and also to the change of ideologies across the world. Alongside with that, the division between different groups or classes within societies became more apparent as some people got richer and other poorer. These two phenomena, the worldwide development of industries and consequent class struggles, have been analyzed by two major thinkers of their times, Karl Marx and Robert Reich. Their essays have been influential and are similar in sense that they analyze existing conditions of societies and give projections on future fates of people, or more specifically, fates of classes. In this paper, the main focus will be on the fate of the wealthiest people; these are the bourgeois for Marx and symbolic analysts for Reich. More specifically, it will be argued that the rich people will be in the worst position according to Marx and this position will cover two aspects: material aspect, which is how well the rich will eventually manage their properties, and the inherent antagonism of classes and its consequences for the wealthy.
In chapter “The Other Civil War” of A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn describes the underlying class tensions caused by industrialization during the nineteenth century. He claimed that these tensions would have led to radical labor reforms if the working class’s anger had not been directed towards other issues. Zinn used The Age of Enterprise by Thomas C. Cochran and William Miller to show the upper class’s indifference towards the problems of the lower class and to prove that the rich manipulated the poor to promote their own interests. He also used Class and Community by Alan Dawley to offer examples of working class resistance, government oppression, and the effects of the Civil War. While Zinn’s use of Class and Community accurately represents Dawley’s arguments, he misuses some of his evidence from The Age of Enterprise.
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.
From the period between the 1870’s through the 1890’s, it became an era known as the Gilded Age. The term was characterized by a famous American Literature author named Mark Twain. The writer tried to point out that the term means that while on the outside society may seem perfect and in order, underneath there is poverty, crime, corruption, and many other issues between American society’s rich and poor. This era’s gild is thicker than the cheaper material it’s covering. This can be shown through the countless numbers of achievements and advances America has made during the period of reconstruction and expansion, industrialization, and foreign affairs.
The Gilded Age gets its name from a book by Mark Twain called The Gilded Age: a Tale of Today. It was written in 1873, and unfortunately was not that successful. While the Gilded Age conjures up visions of ostentatious displays of wealth and decorative parties, the over all topic was politics. The book gives an extremely negative assessment of the state of American democracy at that time. Which does not come as a huge surprise coming from Twain, who famously said "It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.” So when faced with sweeping changes in the American economy after the Civil War, the American political system both nationally and locally dealt with these problems in the best way possible, by inevitably and incredibly becoming corrupt.
The period immediately following the American Civil War is a period often associated with industrialization and sweeping reforms. It is also a period where millions of immigrants made their way to the United States in search for a better life. However, after being pushed to accept poor living conditions and low wages, some families, both domestic and immigrant, were forced to send their children into the workforce just to be able to have enough income to survive. With the presence of children becoming increasingly common in the workforce during this time, things began to decline as far as the conditions they were forced to work in, as well as the rights that they were allowed as workers. Children during the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era
With the power of wealth and concentration of industry, the tremendous development in machinery, and power to drive machinery; with the improvement of the tools of labor, so that they are wonderfully tremendous machines, and with these all on the one hand; with labor, the workers, performing a given part of the whole product, probably an infinitesimal part, doing the thing a thousand or thousands of times over and over again in a day-labor divided and subdivided and specialized, so that a working man is but a mere cog in the great industrial modern plant; his individuality lost, alienated from the tools of labor; with concentration of wealth, concentration of industry, I wonder whether any of us can imagine what would be the actual condition of the working people of our country to-day without their organizations to protect them.
This monument is intended to honor all the people that do nothing but good for this world and are treated unfairly because of what they look like or how they think. These people should be remembered because they were treated poorly and even though they were treated badly they continued to do nothing but good for the world and no matter how hard times got they continued to stay strong without using any form of violence, but only peace to get their ideas across. We owe it to them because they help us every day without us thanking them or even recognizing it. The fact is that we need those kinds of people, the kind that helps their neighbors without asking for any pay, the kind that selflessly put themselves in danger for the sake of others, and
Marx is historically known for his critiques of the United States structure and through this piece it is explained how, in the capitalist world, the worker is immensely alienated in multiple ways. The idea that an individual takes pride and finds their purpose through their work and creations is highly crucial to the point. In the case of the factory worker, the worker is only creating objects as a means of survival in a world where money is valued most. He produces work that is appropriated and used by capitalists, he himself does not posses his own work because he can not afford to. This dynamic results in a resentment and isolation from his creations, himself, the capitalists, and his “species-being”, that being the human race as a whole. He cannot take pride in his labor as his position is so undervalued by his superiors, therefore every creations he create that is given up to benefit someone far removed from himself, takes a piece of himself and his self-worth with it. Making him feel less of a human being. For the worker who has little value and little pride in what he does, he feels purposeless and has little sense of identity. In this philosophy, the capitalists make it impossible for the lower class to get farther in life, substantially lessening their value and the value of their work. They use their labor to benefit themselves and the workers get paid an insecure, meager salary. An individual essentially needs money to make money, leaving the workforce in a constant state of stagnation