The Modern Gilded Age

The Gilded Age, spanning from around 1870-1900, was an era in the U.S. of great economic growth. Following the Civil War, the Industrial Revolution had created a booming, big business dominated economy, especially in the North and West. America saw the emergence of its first transcontinental railroad, increasing the efficiency of both travel and trade. This newer, industrialized economy provided millions of new jobs, and saw the migration of workers from farm lands into cities. However, this post Civil War era did not bring only positive changes. For example, this new era of industrialization led to the overspeculation of railroads, a prominent factor leading to the panic of 1873. This panic, which until the events of the 1930's was widely known as the Great Depression, caused widespread layoffs, steep wage cuts, forcing workers to join strikes and labor unions. In Henry George's Progress and Poverty, George argues that the middle class is not treated adequately, and people should be provided with enough to maintain their physical needs. The factories and railroads attracted millions of European immigrants, many of them unskilled. This not only contributed to the population of poor middle class workers, but angered Americans who were now faced with more competition for jobs. Feminists like Susan B. Anthony campaigned actively for women's rights, and were angry with lack of government actions to forward gender equality. This unrest reached a peak when the Fourteenth Amendment first inserted the word "male" into the constitution in rederring to a citizen's right to vote. Even Frederick Douglass, who had long supported woman suffrage, declared that the issue of gender equality was to be dealt with later, and this was "the Negro's hour." As demonstrated by President Obama's State of the Union Address on January 28, 2014, today's modern America, though to a lesser extent, still faces many similar issues as the ones of the Gilded age, such as economic depression, fights for sufficient wages, and gender equality.

The economic recession faced by America today is remarkably similar to the 1873 depression of the gilded age. As Obama discussed, "…massive shifts in technology and global competition had eliminated a lot of good, middle-class jobs, and weakened the economic foundations that families depend on." Workers of the Gilded Age, forced to compete with a rapidly advancing technology based economy, had to either keep up with industrilization or fail.

If they didn't have the latest technology, farms and factories would be wiped out by more technologically advanced and efficient competitors. Modern U.S. industry faces this problem as well. And now, with a competitive global economy to compete with, many middle-class jobs have been filled in foreign markets. Thankfully, in the modern workplace, Americans are not challenged with the harsh and inhumane working conditions that workers dealt with in the latter half of the 19th century. Fortuneately, over the past four years, the economy has grown, more jobs have been created, and those at the top have never done better. However, wages for those of lower classes have hardly improved.

Modern working class Americans struggle to support themsleves on they're barely-manageable salaries. As the rich have prosperess over the last four years, the gap between social

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