The Gilded Age: industry, big business, and labor

Between about 1877 and 1900, often called the Gilded Age, the United States became the world's leading industrial power. New technologies and inventions, like the telephone, electric light, and steel made by the Bessemer process, and a national railroad network drove rapid growth. Business leaders such as Andrew Carnegie in steel and John D. Rockefeller in oil built enormous corporations and trusts, and critics called them "robber barons" for crushing competitors and exploiting workers, while admirers called them "captains of industry" for building the modern economy and giving away fortunes to philanthropy. Workers, many of them immigrants and children, faced long hours, low pay, and dangerous conditions, and they organized unions like the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor. Strikes were often met with force, as in the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, the Haymarket Affair in Chicago in 1886, the Homestead Strike of 1892, and the Pullman Strike of 1894. The name "Gilded Age," from Mark Twain, suggests a shiny surface of wealth covering deep poverty and political corruption.

This explanation is AI-generated and can occasionally be wrong. 🚩 Report