The Gilded Age:

American Society in the 1890's

Andrew Carnegie

J.P. Morgan

The term "gilded age" was coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner to describe the concentration of wealth in late nineteenth-century American society.  During this period, industrial kingpins such as Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, and John D. Rockefeller amassed unprecedented fortunes.  Meanwhile, as the drive to accumulate wealth translated into miserable working conditions in factories, coal mines, and oil fields, violent strikes broke out throughout the country.  Of the thousands of strikes that erupted during the 1880's and 1890's, some of the most furious were the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, the Haymarket Riot of 1886, and the Pullman strike of 1894.

Resources:

• Cartoons of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

• Immigration in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

• The Women of the Gilded Age

• The Pullman Strike

• General Resources on the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

• The Dramas of Haymarket

• The Gilded Age - Web Quest