Industry, Immigration, and the Gilded Age (1877–1900)
Industry, Immigration, and the Gilded Age (1877–1900)
In the decades after Reconstruction, the United States became an industrial giant. Railroads spanned the continent, factories and cities boomed, and millions of immigrants arrived. Enormous fortunes rose beside grinding poverty, giving the era its ironic name, the "Gilded Age," coined by Mark Twain to suggest a glittering surface over deep problems.
8.1An industrial colossusAmerican industry exploded after the Civil War. Abundant resources, a growing labor force, new technologies, and a national railroad…8.2A nation of immigrants and citiesIndustry drew people to the cities in unprecedented numbers. Millions of immigrants arrived, increasingly from southern and eastern…8.3Labor fights backIndustrial workers faced long hours, low pay, and hazardous conditions, and they organized to resist. Labor unions such as the Knights of…8.4Party politics of the Gilded AgeGilded Age politics was fiercely competitive but often short on substance. Republicans and Democrats were closely matched nationally, and…8.5The Populist revoltWhile industrialists prospered, farmers struggled with falling crop prices, heavy debts, and the power of railroads and banks. Their anger…8.6The nadir of race relationsFor Black Americans, especially in the South, these decades marked a brutal retreat from the promise of Reconstruction. Southern states…8.7Meanwhile, elsewhere (1877–1900)Europe's powers raced to carve up Africa in the "Scramble" of the 1880s and 1890s, dividing nearly the entire continent among themselves at…