The Gilded Age in the United States from 1875 to 1900 witnessed enormous industrial and economic growth driven by expanding railroads, new industries like steel and oil, and waves of immigration to cities. This period also saw the rise of large corporations, the growth of urban centers and problems with labor conditions. Reform efforts emerged to address issues created by rapid industrialization and unchecked capitalism.

1. Bridges to the Gilded Age

2. United States in 1875

3. The Gilded Age witnessed
enormous increases in output
and value. Huge population
increases helped drive
industrial and farm output.

4. The North
• Railroads

7. Railroad Expansion, 1870-1890
This map provides a vivid illustration of the railroad expansion in just two decades.

8. Transcontinental Railroads and Federal Land Grants, 1850-1900

9. The ―Big Trestle‖ near Promontory Summit show some of the engineering accomplishments of the railroad
construction crews. This trestle, at 405 feet long and 85 feet high, was assembled in just 38 days and was so
flimsy that one reporter warned it ―will shake the nerves of the stoutest hearts to cross it.‖

10. “The Last Spike” at Promontory Summit, 10 May 1869 completing
the transcontinental railroad. A.J. Russell was the photographer

11. Transcontinental Railroads and Federal Land Grants, 1850-1900

12. Big Business

13. Vertical Integration
Horizontal Integration

14. John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil

16. Standard Oil Refinery in Cleveland, OH (1889)

17. Standard Oil horse-drawn oil tank, probably selling kerosene.

18. ―What a Funny Little Government‖
The Verdict on January 22, 1900 shows Rockefeller holding the White House in his hand, while
the U.S. Capitol has been converted into an oil refinery.

19. Andrew Carnegie and Steel

20. Bessemer process

21. Andrew Carnegie‘s Steel Works, General View of Blast Furnaces, Homestead, PA

23. The McCormick Reaper Works outside Chicago in 1887.

24. Inventions

25. This is Alexander Graham-Bell's telephone,
which he demonstrated to the world in 1876
at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition.
After witnessing how voice was transmitted
over wire, the emperor of Brazil cried out,
"My God, it talks!"

26. Alexander Graham Bell placing the first telephone call
between New York and Chicago in 1892

27. Young Thomas Edison with an early phonograph

28. Thomas Edison‘s application for a patent
for the incandescent light bulb.

29. Replica of Edison‘s
first incandescent
electric light bulb.

30. Thomas Edison's Laboratories in Menlo Park, NJ, c. 1880
Thomas Edison's dream of illuminating the world is illustrated by this fanciful drawing of his
laboratories in Menlo Park, New Jersey. For the time being, however, it was the American home
that was the primary beneficiary of Edison's wonderful light bulb, since electricity was slow to
arrive in many parts of the world.

31. Edison's Chemistry Lab at Meno Park, NJ

32. Christopher Scholes typewriter, 1873

33. Later typewriters and their keys.

34. “Consuming”

35. A ―mom and pop‖ general store.

36. A small ―dry goods‖ store in Upper Sandusky, OH. Notice counters separate customers from merchandise.

37. The Marble Palace of Alexander T. Stewart in Manhattan
opened for business in 1846. Notice the street-level
windows for merchandise display.

38. Macy‘s department store in New York City

40. The 1897 Sears catalog.

41. Uneeda Biscuit‘s national
campaign poster.

44. Cream of Wheat advertisement, probably 1895.

45. Ads for the Kodak ―box
camera‖ in 1888

47. 1898 Ivory soap poster
1916 Ivory soap advertisement
showing US Army soldiers using it.

48. Labor

49. ―New England factory life—―Bell Time,‖ Harper's Weekly, 25 July1868. Drawing by
Winslow Homer. Workers going to the Lowell Mills.

50. Small children working in the mills was common

51. Boys in a North Carolina textile mill in 1908.

53. ―Breaker Boys‖ at work.

54. Women workers in a ―sweatshop‖

55. ―The Female Slaves of New York. –
‗Sweaters‘ and their Victims. 1) Scene in a
‗sweater‗s‘ factory; 2) The End; 3) Scene at
the Grand Street Ferry,‖ Frank Leslie's
Illustrated Newspaper, November 3, 1888

56. Shoeworkers in Haverhill, MA ca. 1880

57. Drawing of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 in Baltimore, MD

59. Picture and map of Pullman, Illinois

60. Railroad cars destroyed in Pullman strike
Cleanup after strike.

61. Immigration

63. ―Welcome to All!,‖ Puck, April 28, 1880.
―We may say that the present influx of immigrants to the United States is something unprecedented in our generation.‖ -- N.Y. Statistical Review

64. ―New York - Welcome to the land of freedom - An ocean steamer passing the Statue of Liberty:
Scene on the steerage deck‖ Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 2 July 1887.

65. Emigrants coming to
the ―Land of
Promise― (ca 1902)

66. Immigrants on a ship waiting to set foot in their new home

67. Immigrants just arrived
from foreign countries –
Immigrant Building,
Ellis Island, New York
Harbor (1904)

68. Inspection room at Ellis Island

69. Dalrymple‘s cartoon giving a harsh warning about ―The High Tide of Immigration.‖ He believes the danger
lies in the number of immigrants as well as in their origins and character as ―riff raff.‖ (1903)

70. ―What Shall We Do With Our Boys?‖ The Wasp, 1882

71. ―In the Clutches of the Chinese Tiger‖ -- 1885

72. Urbanization

73. Technological advances, the Brooklyn Bridge under construction. It
was completed in 1883 and connected the largest and the third
largest cities together (Brooklyn and New York)

74. Brooklyn Bridge in 1890 with sailing ship beneath. Notice how the
bridge towers over the surrounding neighborhoods.

75. New York and Brooklyn Bridge in 1889

76. Electric trolleys in New York City in 1900

77. Electric street cars of New Orleans. Rail lines transformed
cities in the late 19th century

78. The first Oldsmobile was built in 1897.

79. Tenements in New York City, with clotheslines strung between buildings.

80. Mulberry Street, New York, 1905 part of the Russian Jewish Lower East Side

81. Street life for the urban poor.

82. ―Garbage in the streets, East Fifth Street, N.Y.C. tenement area,‖ Jacob Riis photo (ca 1890)

83. New York City in 1885
This photograph shows the crowded,
chaotic nature of lower Manhattan in
the 1880s. This is Broadway at
Cortlandt Street. Note the crowded
street, with horse-drawn street car and
the utility poles containing telephone
and electric wires.

84. Urban congestion in Chicago in 1890s.

85. Chicago‘s State
Street.

86. World‘s Columbian Exposition, Court of Honor (1893)

87. World's Columbian Exposition: Grand Basin (1893)

88. The Midway, World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, IL (1893) In the background is the Ferris
Wheel on the ―Midway‖. The wheel was 264 feet high, held 36 cars capable of holding 60 people
at once. Fully loaded, 2,160 people could be on the wheel at a time.

89. Ferris Wheel in 1893 at the ―fair‖. Notice how it towers over the landscape.

90. The West

91. Mining and Cattle Frontiers, 1860-1890

92. The Texas Cowboy

93. Moving cattle on the ―long drive‖

94. Cowboys with their herd.

95. Packing houses in the distance. Covered pens for hogs and sheep; open pens for cattle. Area of yards, 75 acres;
50 miles railroad tracks. Daily capacity: 25,000 head cattle, 160,000 hogs, 10,000 sheep, and 1,000 horses.

96. The beginning of the ―disassembly line.‖

97. Meatpacking industry

98. Sylvester Rawding family in front of sod house, north of Sargent, Custer Co., Nebraska (1886)

99. Sodhouse

100. Morrison residence on Victoria Creek near Merna, Custer County, Nebraska (1886)

101. ―Bonanza‖ farm

102. Harvesting wheat on ―bonanza‖ farm

103. The American Bison, or Buffalo

104. William J. Hays painted Herd on the Move
He was accused of exaggerating the numbers of bison.

105. Another William J. Hays painting of bison on the Great Plains. The Gathering of the
Buffalo Herds (1866)

106. An advertisement for the
fashionable buffalo robes
(1870s).

107. ―Buffalo Hunters‖

108. Stacks of buffalo hides in Dodge City, Kansas in 1873. This one
company could handle 80,000 hides at at time.

109. “The Buffalo Hunt” by Frederic Remington (1890) By the time he
painted this picture, such hunts would have been a rarity.

110. Indian Reservations, 1875 and 1900

112. Tom Torlino as he arrived Tom Torlino several months
at The Carlisle school later
October 21, 1882 from his
Navajo tribe.

113. The students at the Carlisle School of Captain Richard Pratt.

115. Annie Oakley. Though she “advertised” the West in Buffalo
Bill’s Wild West show, she never lived west of Ohio.

116. ―Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill, 1885‖
Photograph originally taken by William
Notman studios, Montreal, Quebec,
Canada, during Buffalo Bill's Wild West
Show, August 1885

117. Indian Reservations, 1875 and 1900

118. ―The opening of the fight at Wounded Knee,‖ a drawing by
Frederic Remington for Harper’s Weekly, 24 January 1891.

119. Burying the Dead at Wounded Knee
Throwing the frozen bodies of the Sioux into
an open trench was a grim reminder of US
Army-Indian relations.

120. The New South

121. Trolley car in the South with the ―For Whites‖ sign.

122. Poll tax receipt for Birmingham, Alabama.
Note the date the tax was paid – April 1896.
Note the two ―labels‖ (Col.) (White.)

123. The New South
• Booker T. Washington
• W.E.B. Du Bois

124. Booker T. Washington

125. W.E.B. DuBois

126. Imperialism

128. An artist‘s rendering of the explosion which destroyed the Maine
on 15 February 1898 in Havana, Cuba harbor.

129. ―DECLINED WITH THANKS‖
The Antis, ―Here, take a dose of this anti-fat and get thin again!‖
Uncle Sam, ―No, Sonny! I never did like any of that stuff, and I‘m too old to begin!‖
Lithography by S. Pughe in Puck, 5 September 1900

130. Progressive Reform – efforts to solve
problems of the Gilded Age
• Big Business
– Is big necessarily “evil” or bad?
– Consumer rights and protections
• Labor issues
– Child and women workers
– Hours, wages, conditions
• Urban problems
• Democracy
• “Welfare State”
– Expansion of government functions