Gilded Age Review Writing

1. Gilded Age
“Gilded is not golden. Gilded has the sense of a
patina covering something else. It’s the shiny
exterior and the rot underneath.”
Nell Irvin Painter, Historian
Beautiful credit! The foundation of
modern society. Who shall say that this
is not the golden age of mutual trust,
of unlimited reliance upon human
promises?
Mark Twain, The Gilded Age

2. Self Made Man
• Rebecca Edwards (1): “period of opportunity,
possibility, and hope”
• What did you learn new about Carnegie?
• “smooth operator”, “go-getter”, “read the great
English philosophers, made studies of Confucius
and the prophets of Buddhism, Hinduism and the
Persians”, self educated intellectual
• Henry George (6) wrote “Progress & Poverty”
• (7) “We have to pit workers against employers, the
poor against the rich”
• David Nasaw (5) “people voted”

3. Gospel of Wealth
• H.W. Brands (8) Morgan “thought that people like him with his
background, with his understanding, with his intelligence were
the ones who really ought to direct the American economy.”
• Rebecca Edwards (9) Mary Elizabeth Lease is “very embittered
by poverty, and frustrated, and comes to feel that…the social
order just isn’t Fair.”
• “It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, for the
people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street and for Wall
Street.”
• RESULT: Populists! The “People’s Party”
• Herbert Spencer (10) “survival of the fittest”

4. Homestead Strike
• What did you learn new about Homestead?
Workers’ Condition
• (5) “work 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, with few
if any breaks”
• (5) “no workman’s compensation…workplace
safety was a major concern…shared peril bred
solidarity.”

5. Division Between Rich and Poor
• Steve Fraser (1) “clearly divided into the haves and have-nots”
• H.W. Brands (1) “Are we two nations, the poor and the wealthy,
or are we one nation where everybody has a chance to
succeed?”
• H.W. Brands (1) “founded for a country of farmers but it was
becoming a nation of industrialists…a nation of urban
workers…a nation of cities.”
• Steve Fraser (4) “nouveau riche world”
• Panic of 1893 (11)
• “sharper, faster, and more severe than before”
• Coxey’s March

6. What is the Gilded Age built on?
• Steel
• Immigrants (5) “1880 and 1885 more than three million men,
women and children entered the United States”
• NYC- (5)
• Gold (13) Richard White “a perfect storm”
• Who wants to stick with gold? (13)
• Importance of stability
• Cleveland and Morgan (13)
Today-Federal Reserve Bank (13) Richard John

7. William Jennings
Bryan
• (15) “You shall not crucify
mankind upon a cross of
gold.”
Why did Bryant lose?

8. William
McKinley
• Jackson Lears (16) “The
election of 1896 constitutes a
conclusion for this period of
class war.”

9. What three events or
people represent
America’s Gilded Age?
Essay Question