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 …show more content…
Although receiving and education from a public school system was seen as a good way to incorporate immigrant children into America, most immigrants were only capable of attending school only part time. With such an influx in uneducated workers, certain companies began to take the education of their workers into their own hands. Colorado Fuel and Iron (CF&I) formed the Sociological Department in 1901 in order to improve the lives of their miners and their families. Although the Sociological Department started out schooling the miners in order to teach them English, it shortly began setting education standards for the miner’s children by regulating curriculum and encouraging company-sponsored activities. These programs became a way to Americanize the children, and teach them “what CF&I envisioned as the ideal life for employees’ families.” CF&I began urging immigrant families to begin their children’s education in kindergarten. “CF&I envisioned industrial labor as a component of their educational programs…so they could be taught the English language and the importance of industrial labor.” While the younger students attended camps that produced things such as baskets, woodcarvings, and rug weaving, older students were taught skills that would be helpful in industrial labor jobs, specifically within CF&I. Unfortunately; most children were not capable of reaching higher levels of education due to the fact that mining families frequently
The Gilded Age and Progressive Era are extremely important in America’s history. There were many good and bad things about these time periods. The Gilded age made everything look wonderful on paper but was horrible in practice hence the Progressive Era which helped to fix problems such as racial inequality, industry, inequality for women, and laissez-faire presidents.
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.
The Gilded Age was the last three decades of the nineteenth century, when America’s industrial economy exploded generating opportunities for individuals but also left many workers struggling for survival. With the many immigrants, skilled and unskilled, coming to America the labor system is becoming flooded with new employees. During this period, the immigrants, including the Italians, were unskilled and the skilled workers were usually American-born. There was also a divide in the workers and the robber barons. Robber barons were American capitalist who acquired great fortunes in the last nineteenth century, usually ruthlessly. There was much turmoil throughout the business and labor community. Two major organizations, the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor, helped represent the workers in this time of chaos. The Knights of Labor, founded in 1869, were representing both skilled and unskilled workers. They were quite popular with a large boost in membership becoming the biggest union in 1885. They sought for equal pay and equal work. All were welcomed to the Knights of Labor; there was no discrimination on race, gender, or sex. They called for an eight-hour day in order to reduce fatigue and for safety issues. The Knights of Labor Declaration of Principles states their purpose is to “make industrial and moral worth, not wealth” (Reading 9, p. 1). This means the moral worth is to what they could contribute to society rather than monetary gains. They were working towards this improvement of the common mans life to advance in civilization and create new ideas for society. They also called upon the employer to treat the employee with respect and fairness so they can contribute to not only their company but to Amer...
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.
During the 1900’s, children worked at factories and on family families. The adults working were not getting enough money to feed their families, so child labor was necessary to working-class families. The money that children got was put towards the food and their house. The supreme court would order these amendments unconstitutional, so reformers decided that the only way was to implement an amendment. Without children working, some families would not have made it. The ERA
The Gilded Age was the period of Reconstruction after the Civil War. During this time period, the recently separated North and South were piecing back together as one united nation. After being enemies for so long reuniting as a whole seemed easier than perceived to be, and required strong leadership to aide in the process. Unfortunately, many historians believe that this Reconstruction period did not experience the luxury of having these elite rulers. Chester Arthur, Grover Cleveland, and Benjamin Harrison deserve their historic reputation as they failed to maintain control of the country, and lacked authority when making decisions. However Rutherford B. Hayes and James Garfield do not deserve the historic reputation of a weak president as they succeeded in financially improving the country and continually making the right decision for the people and the nation.
The Gilded Age is marked as the thirty-five years between the end of the Civil War and the end of the nineteenth century. During this period of time, the economy grew at an astonishing rate, producing enormous amounts of wealth. This was also a time where the majority of the population was struggling to get by, and was classified as poor workers, while the industrial and financial aristocracy lives in beautiful homes and lived their lives with opulent amusement. Life was very different between different groups such as the rich and the poor, and even the men and the women. I definitely would not fit into the urban society of the Gilded Age because everything had to do with the men being in power, racism, and men’s constant control over politics, which would make being a women in this period of time very difficult.
Mark Twain collaborated with Charles Dudley Warner on The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today. Published in 1973, as Twain’s earliest work of extended fiction, The Gilded Age gives a name to the period of opulence and corruption at the end of the 19th century. Portraying the superficial luxury of Washington and high society, the authors describe “The general laxity of the time, and the absence of a sense of duty toward any part of the community but the individual himself” (Twain 203). Twain’s The Gilded Age, like Wharton’s The Age of Innocence focuses on high society. Yet, the imperfections in the gilding betray the dramatic change of the period. Forces of corporatization, unionization, immigration, urbanization, populism, post-reconstruction racism and machine politics were among the drastic changes in American lifestyle churning beneath the brittle “gilded” surface.
After the civil war, the United States had deep social divisions that strictly divided the classes. This period of time was called the Gilded Age. The economy was shifting more and more towards an industrial one, manufacturing in the United States was more than the greater powers of Europe combined. With these industries, there were huge monopolies over steel, oil, and various other markets. The wealthy over these corporations had much influence in the government and politics. All the while, the lower classes were led to believe that they had something wrong with them. They were told they had a “lack of character” that prevented them from being successful (Foner pg. 121). The upper class as well as many economists believed that being successful from unskilled labor was impossible. They believed that entrepreneurial skills were the only thing that would allow people to become successful. The labor movement vehemently disagreed with this. They knew that the reason why most lower class workers would never be promoted or paid a livable wage was because the wealthy believed they were subhuman. They held strikes and rallies against the big corporations, such as the Great Railroad Strike, and the Pullman Strike, but their voices were ignored. .
The Industrial Revolution restructured the employer-employee relationship into an impersonal association exhibited by indifference to the quality of life of the worker. Children were especially exploited because they could be hired for lower wages and were made to work equally long days (Miller). Around the 1830s, children constituted about one-third of the labor in New England (Illinois Labor History Society). The conditions of workers as a whole necessitated action on behalf of the rights of laborers.
The Gilded age and the Progressive Era are time periods that played an important role in the development of the American society. The Gilded Age is a period of American history between 1870 and 1900. This term was coined by Mark Twain in the late 1800s. By this, he meant that this period was glittering on the surface but corrupt underneath ("Learn About the Gilded Age"). The Gilded Age is well known for its political scandals and extravagant displays of wealth. At the same time, this was an era of major achievements in the industry and economy, which significantly changed life of American people. The Gilded Age was followed by the Progressive Era which lasted from the 1890s to the 1920s. Progressive Era is well known for its economical, political, social reforms and technological inventions. In my opinion, The Gilded Age had a more significant impact upon the United States than the Progressive Era because it gave rise to new industries, created transportation and communication networks which provided the infrastructure for further development of technology in the Progressive Era.
As industry grew in the period following the Civil War, children, often as puerile as 10 years old but sometimes much younger, labored. They worked not only in industrial settings but additionally in retail stores, on the streets, on farms, and in home-predicated industries. This article discusses the utilization of child labor in the Amalgamated States, concentrating on the period after the Civil War through the elevate of the child labor reform kinetics. These are kids who are as adolescent as 6 years old and are being coerced to fight against others. Albeit children had been auxiliaries and apprentices throughout most of human history, child labor reached incipient extremes during the Industrial Revolution. Children often worked long hours in hazardous factory conditions for very little mazuma. Children were utilizable as laborers because their size sanctioned them to move in minute spaces in factories or mines where adults couldn’t fit, children were more facile to manage and control and perhaps most importantly, children could be paid less than adults. Children are working at puerile ages endeavoring to fortify their family with the little pay that they are fortuitous to get. Children who are in economic child labor are less liable to be in school. Of the total children aged 5 to 14 years in economic child labor, about 15 percent were not in school. Child labor is generally defined as
Commonly referred to as the Gilded Age, the end of the nineteenth century was a period of social issues and political unrest. Following a period of Reconstruction after the Civil War, the Gilded Age was ridden with problems surrounding the countries recovery. Presidents such as Ulysses Grant and Rutherford Hayes were viewed fraudulent and incompetent leaders for the nation. Meanwhile, Congress was mostly ruled by large enterprises, allowing for little political representation of the masses. Additionally, the nation was plagued by an overwhelming amount of social issues including child labor, immigration, women and minorities, and rapid urbanization. Overpopulation was particularly troublesome for the state of democracy as most voters were
In the late 1700’s and early 1800’s big business began to boom. For the first time companies were developing large factories to manufacture their goods. Due to the new mechanics and cheap labor, factory owners could now produce their goods at a cheaper rate. As big businesses brought wealth and capitalism, it also widened the gap between the wealthy elite and the poor. One class in particular was horribly affected by the growth of big factories. This class was the poor working class. According to the article “Child Labor in the United States” written by Robert Whaples, a big proportion of the labour work force was made up of children: “In 1820 children aged 15 and under made up 23 percent of the manufacturing labor force of the industrializing
Between the time of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era in the United States, the mobilization of people and the communication of messages sent to the people changed. These changes led to many different movements throughout the country such as the creation of the American West Myth and the women’s push towards equality in all the states by gaining the right to vote. Both of these movements relied on the press’s manipulation of things and the effective use of photographs taken during the time and other printed material as well such as news articles, books, and speeches. In Alfred Bryan’s song called She’s Good Enough to be Your Baby’s Mother and She’s Good Enough to Vote with You, he addressed that men are not greater than women and