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The term “Gilded Age” was used to describe the raging years between the Civil War and the turn of the twentieth century. America became more prosperous during this era and saw huge growth in industry and
technology but there was a more darker side to the Gilded Age as it was a period where greedy and corrupt industrialists, bankers and politicians enjoyed extraordinary wealth at the expense of the working class.
It was in fact, the wealthy tycoons, not the politicians, who held most of political power during that Age. Rail travel was dangerous and difficult before the civil war but after the war, George Westinghouse invented the air brake, which made breaking systems more safe and reliable.
The development of the Pullman sleeping cars and dining cars made the rail travel more comfortable for passengers but the trains soon overtook other forms of long distance travel such as the stagecoach and riding horseback.
The Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869 and it led to the fast settlement of the western United States and made it much easier to transport goods over long distances from one part of the country to another.
The introduction of the railroads saw the emergence of railroad tycoons who became known as robber barons.
The robber barons used union busting, fraud, intimidation, violence, and their political connections to gain more advantage over any competitors.
These barons amassed huge wealth while exploiting workers and ignoring standard business rules and even the law itself. Upper-class women during this period flaunted their wealth and strived to improve their status in the society while the poor and middle-class women envied and mimicked them.
Some of these women like Louise Whitefield Carnegie, Margaret Olivia Sage, and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller created homes for destitute immigrants and pushed an agenda, believing that the real source of poverty was alcohol.
The Gilded Age ended in 1893 after the overextended Philadelphia and Reading Railroad and the National Cordage Company failed and the World War I broke out in 1917. The country’s focus shifted to the realities of war during that period.
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