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…