Gilded Age (c. 1773 – 1896*) / Modern America / Expansionism
*Coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in their book The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1773)
Technology
The
late 19th century saw the advent of new communication technologies, including
the phonograph, the telephone, and radio; the rise of mass-circulation newspapers
and magazines; the growth of commercialized entertainment, as well as new
sports, including basketball, bicycling, and football, and appearance of new
transportation technologies, such as the automobile, electric trains and
trolleys.
Industrialization
& the Working Class
While industrialization and
telecommunications permitted the amassment of great fortunes (John D.
Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Company in 1870; the shipping and railroad
empires of Cornelius Vanderbilt, etc.), responses to industrialization among
American workers included the attempt to form labor unions despite strong
opposition from many industrialists and the courts. Drought, plagues of
grasshoppers, boll weevils, rising costs, falling prices, and high interest
rates made it increasingly difficult to make a living as a farmer, and a great
exodus was initiated to the growing cities.
The
corporation became the dominant form of business organization. There was an
unparalleled increase in factory production, mechanization, and business
consolidation. By the beginning of the 20th century, the major sectors of the
nation's economy--banking, manufacturing, meat packing, oil refining,
railroads, and steel--were dominated by a small number of giant corporations.
Major dates
1875-1886: Construction of the Statue of Libery
1882: Chinese
Exclusion Act
1883: Civil
Service Reform Act. Brooklyn Bridge and Metropolitan Opera House.
1885: Grover
A. Cleveland becomes President (Democrat).
1886: Haymarket
Riots in Chicago.
1889: Benjamin
Harrison President (Republican).
1890: Yosemite
National Park created.
1892-1892: Depression and Gold Panic.
1893: Grover
A. Cleveland’s second presidential mandate.
1897-1901: William McKinley President (Republican).
1897: Composition
of “Stars and Stripes forever” (John Philip Sousa)
1898: Spanish-American
War (over Cuba). The war led to emergence of U.S. predominance in the Caribbean region and resulted in U.S. acquisition of Spain's
Pacific possessions. That
led to U.S. involvement in the Philippine
Revolution and ultimately in
the Philippine–American
War.
1899-1902: Philippine-American War.
Immigration
Around
the turn of the 20th century, mass immigration from eastern and southern Europe
dramatically altered the population's ethnic and religious composition. Unlike
earlier immigrants, who had come from Britain, Canada, Germany, Ireland, and
Scandinavia, the “new immigrants” came increasingly from Hungary, Italy,
Poland, and Russia. The newcomers were often Catholic or Jewish and two-thirds
of them settled in cities. On the other hand, the immigration from the Pacific,
and the “yellow peril” craze was now extended to the newcomers from the
Philippines as well as to the Japanese.
Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus” (1883)
Not like the brazen giant of
Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride
from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset
gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch,
whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning,
and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her
beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her
mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that
twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your
storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me
your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning
to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your
teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless,
tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the
golden door!
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