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lilycp · Joined: 07 May 2010 Posts: 20

Why is this era called the "Gilded" age? For whom is it gilded? How?

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lilycp · Joined: 07 May 2010 Posts: 20

If the winners are the ones who write history than I find it highly appropriate to call this time period the “gilded” age because to me gilding something just implies covering it with a thin layer of gold. It is not solid gold. It is not a thick coating of gold. It is not even a nice golden plating. To me gilding something is just pounding down what ever you have into the thinnest sheet possible and then covering up something not so pretty. This works so well as a metaphor for the late 1800’s because the capitalist monopolizers were just like this gilding and the rest of America the cheap plaster they covered. They were the glorious few who lived beautiful lives while the majority of America lived under them in white washed squalor.

aegilman · Joined: 07 May 2010 Posts: 17

Why is this era called the "Gilded" age? For whom is it gilded? How?

Following this definition of gilded: having a pleasing or showy appearance that conceals something of little worth, I would argue that this era is called the gilded age because a very few people (The Upper 1%) in this era achieved greeeaaatttt wealth, never before seen in American society, while most of the people (3/4 of all Americans in 1900) were wage workers living/struggling from paycheck to paycheck in order to provide their family with food and other necessities. I would argue that the term/classification "working class" especially during the Gilded Age where the government effectively worked to protect the employers/corporations and too some extent today is really a euphemism and would be better classified as group of people more closely resembling serfs. So although the era was ostensibly extremely prosperous for America it really was only for a very small group of Elite people while the rest of Americans were locked into the working class. I think this quote from the book answers this question pretty well: "a quarter century of glittering riches for American capitalists and leaden poverty for masses of working people. Even more than in the past, politics and law protected class privilege and the accumulation of wealth." The Poet Walt Whitman is right in that the increase in capitalist wealth was "a sort of anti-democratic disease and monstrosity" b/c I would argue that there was little to no democracy during the Gilded Age era as the government was more like an oligarchy: controlled by the few wealthy American Capitalists. So the era is most certainly gilded toward this small elite class and it is so because they were in power and they could pass any law and do anything they wanted. Here is one of many examples of what they did do: bribed judges and lawmakers with lavish gifts which lead to many favorable decisions including the interpretation of the 14th amendment that still stands to this day that Corporations are entitled to the same protections guaranteed to citizens. (yet today you can't criminally prosecute the executives of Big Tobacco or Big Pharma for mis-marketing and killing millions) Also, they were able to do this without too much dissent because they hired armed forces to protect them. But this leads to my question: If "the richest 1 percent of Americans had a combined annual income larger than the poorest 50 percent" why weren't there violent revolts attempting to overthrow the U.S. oligarchy? Was it that the wealthy Capitalists just have too much power that they could overcome/defeat any revolution, was it the violence and disputes between different groups of people, or was it something else?

wquinn · Joined: 24 Nov 2009 Posts: 15 Location: undisclosed, MA.

Answer two alex:
The working class strikes were at least some kind of resistance to the "U.S. Oligarchy". I think the reason that there was never an all-out revolt was because the workers believed that the system that made the millionaires rich could make them rich as well. However rich the rich got, they were not the same as the feudal lords or the czar in Russia because they had (theoretically) earned their place there. I'm not saying working people believed this, but i think they would be hesitant to attack the rich because that would be like attacking the very thing they were working for.

question: when was it given the name 'the gilded age'?

jpark · Joined: 07 May 2010 Posts: 17

Why is this era called the "Gilded" age? For whom is it gilded? How?

This era was called the “Gilded” age because just as lily have said above, a very thin coat of gold is covered in America. Just as how only small amount of people were overflowing with money and power, majority of workers and their families were struggling with poverty. I think this concept can be easily understood when you think about the difference between a 99.9% gold ring and gold-plated sterling silver ring. Even though, gold-plated sterling silver ring might seem valuable because it’s covered with thin coat of gold, sooner or later it will wear off over time and will be left with sterling silver which basically worth nothing. So the point that im trying to get across is that, during Gilded age, the conditions of millionaires and rest of the people in America were living a whole different life… and therefore, this time of period seemed only fancy and glittery on the surface which was totally not true because… in reality, they were so many workers who suffered and worked harder than before.

and to answer the question above: when was it given the name 'the gilded age'?
i guess the name was given when there was big divergence of those who are rich and powerful to those who are poor and weak. The Gilded Age was.. formed when many people became millionaires and made fortunes and began to live a totally different way of life to those who are poor because they basically have everything. Because they have money and power, they are on the top of the social rank.

canderson · Joined: 07 Apr 2010 Posts: 23

I think Will is largely right about the reasons the lower classes didn't ultimately try to overturn the system. There were always stories like Andrew Carnegie (I believe?), who rose to be a steel magnate from the bottom of the heap, to fuel the desperate hope that "if I work hard I'll get there". That sort of sentiment is still alive and well today: and the mythic American Dream in its many incarnations only perpetuates it (that and people believing things they want to believe).
On the other hand, no one knew better than the workers who worked full time for just enough (or not enough) money to make ends meet that the system didn't really work that way. Unless they truly believed they weren't trying their best, that system of thinking gave no reason why they weren't rolling in money.
I'd be interested to read primary sources on the rationale the workers gave to explain why those men got ahead. Things like education, which could explain it now, or family connections, didn't seem to play into it as much then. In the reading, the quotes from these "great men" smacked of social Darwinism: all that stuff about the survival of the best over the weaker workers. Do you think any of the working classes bought into this? Do you think they believed that they had a place they had to fill in society, God-given or otherwise?

eraskin · Joined: 11 May 2010 Posts: 15

Another thing I think is really interesting about “the gilded age” is that it’s the illusion of having money. We know that a small 1% of the population held the majority of the money in America, so clearly their wealth was not an illusion, but it was an illusion that those people, those tycoons, where the American People. They were the one running it after all, they had the power, they made political decisions that effected the lower classes and favored themselves…One might think that a country which prides itself in being for the people, by the people, would have the government made up of it’s people, when in reality those in charge are almost part of a different country. They benefited from capitalism and completely detached from the working class.
What connections do people see between the historical divide in the classes and present day?

rzayas · Joined: 07 May 2010 Posts: 14

In response to candersons questions: I don't think that the working class people bought into the idea that society is established in social Darwinism way. I don't think many people would believe that because it was clear that the economic system was flawed in America; "In 1890, the richest 1% of America had a combined income larger than the poorest 50%." (p.111) Clearly, these stats aren't fair to say that they were created through "survival of the fittest" because somewhere along the line those poor people wern't given the chance to rise up in class/wealth. Which bring me back to idea that has been mentioned several times today, that its possible to go from rags to riches. But these statics show that its unlikely for that to actually happened, basically false hope for the American Dream.

Question: If you compare the income of the richest 1% in present day, what would that account for in comparasin to the poorest percentages? (Kind of confusing question, basically take the quote from the 1890 stat and apply it to today)

jcho · Joined: 20 Nov 2009 Posts: 22

As everyone before me elaborately mentioned, the era was considered a "Gilded" age because only a thin percentage of the population basically covered up the whole working class (the majority). This was a time when the very few at the top of the class pretty much had everything, from money to land. The average working class were left with the leftover wealth (distributed among thousands of people) and usually ended up with poor working and living conditions. I also agree with Will's point of the reason why the lower class didn't try to strike down the wealthy. As we saw on the video today, the television (media) emphasized a lot on the American Dream. It brought false hope to the working class that they might some day move up in their social rank although only a tiny percentage of the population owned everything.
If the working class would have seen through the false hope of the American Dream would the strike that they have led be successful?

Maxwell A · Joined: 10 May 2010 Posts: 19

Alex is wrong! ... well he is just not looking at the whole picture. The Gilded age was a period of great progress. It was period that spawned amazing technical advancements like Edisons' commercialization of electricity and Ford's development of the automobile and mass production. These benefits large numbers of Americans not just the richest classes of Americans. Other revolutions in railroads, ice and agriculture vastly improved the quality of living for most Americans. For example, the first person to commercialize ice was America's first millionaire.

The Gilded Age was a period of rapid advances in the arts and literature which benefited from the philanthropic largesse of the rich. Many of the key landmarks of New York trace their origins to the Gilded Age like the original Madison square garden, the Morgan Library and the Natural History Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Without these rapid technical advances and accumulation of wealth, such advances would not have occurred.

Alex's question about why the working class did not rebel during this period stems from two other points that he overlooks. Some of the people who accumulated such great wealth like Henry Ford came from very modest backgrounds. Although the working class did not benefit from the Gilded Age as the rich, many were better off materially than they had ever been.

Alex, your post is interesting but a little Guilded this time.

LeoSampaio · Joined: 10 May 2010 Posts: 8

lol that was intense.
anywho.
june's question : If the working class would have seen through the false hope of the American Dream would the strike that they have led be successful?
I think that a strike would not be enough to deconstruct the class divide that was beginning to take root in American society. I think American workers needed a REal revolution that dealt with the unfairness they were dealing with. The rich were the government, their bosses, and their priests. I'm thinking like, guillotine french style cake up their behinds revolution.

Martha's question: Why is this era called the "Gilded" age? For whom is it gilded? How?
I think it's Important to remember that this age is narrated to us by the media of that time, which was inevitably owned and controlled by the ridiculously rich upper-class,(as in the case of Jay Gould owning the New York World that is mentioned in the very first page of the reading) and that when things are literally gilded, it is so that cheap ugly metal can look like expensive gold to outsiders. I think it is called the gilded age because the rich controlling the media would gild American society for the lower classes. Americans received absolutely no other information other than information telling them America is doing great. This lead to the people who were of lower-classes to think that they were alone in what was happening. It wasn't made clear to the American people that everyone was suffering.

I think the movie had a name for this effect, I think it was class warfare but I might be mistaken. Lower class Americans lacked the solidarity within their class to rebel in sort of way because they didn't know there were others like them. It would obviously be clear to someone living in the city that their city was full of poor workers just like them, but the Rich showed them the entire rest of America as this golden futuristic heaven that they were a part of. I think the Rich did this on purpose in order to keep their workers in line. Like everyone said, the American dream disoriented people into thinking they could hit it big. The Rich upper-class fabricated(no pun intended) the American dream.

gchai · Joined: 18 Nov 2009 Posts: 16 Location: In your closet

History is indeed written by the victor. I would argue that the media is the "victor" because they control what we hear, and what we know.
Anyway, the gilded age implies that it looks all pretty and nice, but actually its crap and cheap. The "gold" in all of this are the monopolizers. Andrew Carnegie's story of growing up from the slumps and growing to be the main supplier of steel is known throughout the world. Everyone knows how successful America is. But they don't know the other side of the stories. The people who work for these monopolies, the people who are cramped into apartment buildings cramping hours upon hours of work. I think the statistics are 20% of the population owns 80% of the wealth today?
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