The_Guilded_Age

The Guilded Age The Steel Beneath the Gold “Gild’ed: To Make seem more attractive or valuable than it is” -Webster’s New World Dictionary Between the Civil War and the early 20th century, an era of growth, wealth, and power was born. In this era, the United States became an Industrial powerhouse amongst the world, becoming the most industrialized nation on the planet. The population had doubled within 30 years of fighting one of the most deadly battles of the country’s history. The level of technology had skyrocketed, and with technology, wealth is not far behind. Yet, alas, if only this wasn’t too-good-to-be-true. While the previous statements were in no way false, they are only half of the era’s characteristics. The United States became an industrial powerhouse through monopolization and weighted negotiations, so that eventually there would be one company left that controlled the usage/sales of a certain product throughout the entire country. The population had doubled within 30 years, driving many citizens out of business (farmers being the majority) and into either factory jobs with horrible conditions, or no job at all, resulting in an unemployment rate rising almost as fast as the immigration rate. The level of technology had skyrocketed, leaving even more people without guilded, age, companies, labor, workers, while, people, one, nation, jobs, conditions, america, yet, war, united, throughout, technology, states, rate, railroad, product, population, job, fact, era, end, doubled, civil, amongst, wanted, unions, two, time, resulting, railroads, provided, life, left