In United States history, Gilded Age refers to the period following the Civil War and Reconstruction, running from the late 1860s to 1896. The term "Gilded Age" was coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in their book The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, published in 1873. The term refers to the gilding of a cheaper metal with a thin layer of gold, with a hint of the "golden age" of a nation's glory. Many critics complained that the era was marked by ostentatious display, crass manners, corruption, and shoddy ethics.
Historians view the Gilded Age as a period of rapid economic, technological, political, and social transformation. This transformation forged a modern, national industrial society out of what had been regional "island communities." By the end of the Gilded Age, the United States was at the top end of the world's leading industrial nations. In the Progressive Era that followed the Gilded Age, it became a world power. In the process, there was much dislocation, including the destruction of the Plains Indians, hardening discrimination against African Americans, and environmental degradation. Two extended nationwide economic depressions followed the Panic of 1873 and the Panic of 1893.
The Gilded Age saw impressive economic growth and the unprecedented growth of major cities (Chicago's population increased tenfold from 1870 to 1900). Technological innovations including the telephone, steel production, skyscrapers, refrigerator car, linotype machine, chromolithography, electric light bulb, typewriter, electric motors, and many others provided the bases for modern consumerism and industrial productivity. Politically, the period saw the two major parties in very close parity, with occasional third-party political campaigns by farmers and labor unions, civil service reform, organized movements that enlisted many women working for prohibition and women's suffrage, the strengthening of big city machines, and the transition from party to modern interest group politics. Socially, the period was marked by large-scale immigration from Germany and Scandinavia to the industrial centers and to western farmlands, the deepening of religious organizations, the rapid growth of high schools, and the emergence of a managerial and professional middle class.
In United States history, Gilded Age refers to the period following the Civil War and Reconstruction, running from the late 1860s to 1896. The term "Gilded Age" was coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in their book The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, published in 1873. The term refers to the gilding of a cheaper metal with a thin layer of gold, with a hint of the "golden age" of a nation's glory. Many critics complained that the era was marked by ostentatious display, crass manners, corruption, and shoddy ethics.
Historians view the Gilded Age as a period of rapid economic, technological, political, and social transformation. This transformation forged a modern, national industrial society out of what had been regional "island communities." By the end of the Gilded Age, the United States was at the top end of the world's leading industrial nations. In the Progressive Era that followed the Gilded Age, it became a world power. In the process, there was much dislocation, including the destruction of the Plains Indians, hardening discrimination against African Americans, and environmental degradation. Two extended nationwide economic depressions followed the Panic of 1873 and the Panic of 1893.
The Gilded Age saw impressive economic growth and the unprecedented growth of major cities (Chicago's population increased tenfold from 1870 to 1900). Technological innovations including the telephone, steel production, skyscrapers, refrigerator car, linotype machine, chromolithography, electric light bulb, typewriter, electric motors, and many others provided the bases for modern consumerism and industrial productivity. Politically, the period saw the two major parties in very close parity, with occasional third-party political campaigns by farmers and labor unions, civil service reform, organized movements that enlisted many women working for prohibition and women's suffrage, the strengthening of big city machines, and the transition from party to modern interest group politics. Socially, the period was marked by large-scale immigration from Germany and Scandinavia to the industrial centers and to western farmlands, the deepening of religious organizations, the rapid growth of high schools, and the emergence of a managerial and professional middle class.