Gilded Age: Great Wealth Creation, Excesses of ‘Robber Barons’ Sparked First Progressive Era
Evidence we are in a new gilded age. Might a new progressive era follow?
People may think corporations and wealthy business owners have too much power today. Still, there was a time in the 19th century — from the 1870s through the 1890s — when “robber barons” held monopolistic power and ruled over presidents.
Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner wrote a novel dubbing this era “The Gilded Age,” satirizing its greed, excessive materialism, and political corruption.
There is strong evidence that America, with its vast income inequality, is in a new gilded age. Fortune magazine in March 2024 called it just that. “CEOs and Shareholders Gobble Up Hundreds of Billions in Profit As Workers Are Laid Off.”
CBS News reported in 2021 on research indicating that “2,750 people have more wealth than half the planet.”
The Economic Policy Institute in 2018 produced “A New Gilded Age: Income Inequality By State, Metropolitan Area and County.”
J. Bradford Long, Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, asked in 2023: “Can America Escape Its Second Gilded Age?”
Extreme and rising income and wealth inequalities are derailing human progress and undermining American democracy at a time when we need effective governance to tackle problems like climate change. Yet despite all the fodder for pessimists, history shows that the optimists still have a strong case.
The New Yorker in 2008 produced an anthology of its writing on a new gilded age. Stanford University Press published a book by the same title in 2012, subtitled “The critical economic inequality debates of our time.”
Crash Course US History: “It started in the 1870s and continued on until the turn of the 20th century. The era is called Gilded because of the massive inequality that existed in the United States. Gilded Age politics were marked by a number of phenomena, most of them having to do with corruption. On the local and state level, political machines wielded enormous power. John Green gets into details about the most famous political machine, Tammany Hall. Tammany Hall ran New York City for a long, long time, notably under Boss Tweed. Graft, kickbacks, and voter fraud were rampant, but not just at the local level.
“Ulysses S. Grant ran one of the most scandalous presidential administrations in U.S. history. John will tell you about two of the best-known scandals, the Credit Mobilier scandal, and the Whiskey Ring. There were a few attempts at reform during this time, notably the Civil Service Act of 1883 and the Sherman Anti-trust Act of 1890. John will also get into the Grange Movement of the western farmers, and the Populist Party that arose from that movement. The Populists, who threw in their lot with William Jennings Bryan, never managed to get it together and win a presidency, and they faded after 1896. This brings us to the Progressive Era, which we'll get into in the next episode!” Transcript.
Gilded Age — Transition from Farm to Factory, from Local to National Economy and Media — Transformed America
PBS American Experience: “Meet the elite of the lavishly wealthy Gilded Age — and the struggling workers who challenged them. Learn more about our documentary, THE GILDED AGE, including a transcript and where to watch the full film: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexpe…“
The series focuses on the titans of industrialization who used new technology and mass production to secure enormous personal wealth — among them, Andrew Carnegie in steel; John D. Rockefeller in the oil-refining business; and Cornelius Vanderbilt in railroads. They didn’t invent anything. They were just managers, but they had a vision.
“In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, during what has become known as the Gilded Age, the population of the United States doubled in the span of a single generation. The nation became the world’s leading producer of food, coal, oil, and steel, attracted vast amounts of foreign investment, and pushed into markets in Europe and the Far East. As national wealth expanded, two classes rose simultaneously, separated by a gulf of experience and circumstance that was unprecedented in American life. These disparities sparked passionate and violent debate over questions still being asked in our own times:
“How is wealth best distributed, and by what process? Does government exist to protect private property or provide balm to the inevitable casualties of a churning industrial system? Should the government concern itself chiefly with economic growth or economic justice?
“The battles over these questions were fought in Congress, the courts, the polling place, the workplace and the streets. The outcome of these disputes was both uncertain and momentous and marked by passionate vitriol and a level of violence that would shock the conscience of many Americans today. The Gilded Age presents a compelling and complex story of one of the most convulsive and transformative eras in American history.”
This 18-minute video from Knowledge Hub is also instructive.
The Age When Capitalism Went Too Far
Palm Beach: Where the Gilded Age Never Ended
CBS Sunday Morning: “Palm Beach: Where the Gilded Age never ended. The first thing you should know about Palm Beach is that it’s an island (unto itself) – the most exclusive town in America, and (according to writer Laurence Leamer) America’s first “gated community.” Mo Rocca takes a tour of the city that rose from Florida’s tropical wilderness, which today features one of the richest commercial strips in America, and is home to Mar-a-Lago, the “Winter White House” resort of President Donald Trump.”