Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
The Gilded Age (Series of 1 term presidents following Hayes (Garfield,…
The Gilded Age
-
Corruption
Tammany Hall - a democrat political machine that dominated party politics in the late 19th century and associated with corruption
-
-
-
Monopolisation
-
Larger businesses would buy up failing smaller businesses to form a huge monopoly, for example, by the late 1880s, Standard Oil controlled 90% of the US oil industry. Small businesses could not compete with the huge cartels and trusts and went bankrupt
Immigration, industrialisation and urbanisation
-
-
Working conditions
Labourers commonly worked 60 hours per week within pensions or injury compensation and the US had the highest rat of industrial injuries in the world: an average of over 35,000 people per year died on the job
The conditions led to the formation of Unions, which were mostly local but occasionally national. The first national union was the Knights of labour which
Farmers became politically motivated over the issue of freight rates, so in the 1870s farmers formed the Grange Movement to put pressure on state governments to establish fair railroad rates. Railroad companies were very monopolistic
The Granger Movement eventually became the Populist Movement, which eventually died down and the Progressive Movement emerged
The populist party fought for 'free silver,' which meant increasing the amount of money in circulation, which would lead to inflation, and thus make money more readily available so that farmers could pay debts and loans easier and the prices of their produce would rise
-
Social Darwinism
During the Gilded Age, people tended to follow the philosophy of social darwinism. Social darwinists believed that the theory of evolution should be applied to people and corporations, and that the government should not intervene in industry as the economy was better off left to grow without regulation, and bigger businesses would survive and eliminate smaller businesses, like Darwin's idea of the 'survival of the fittest'
-
-
-