The Gilded Age (the Late 1860s - 1890s) was the time period following the Civil War that brought in much-needed Industrial, populous, and economic growth for the United States of America. Although this period garnered essential evolution, this state-wide technical progression brought upon political, economic, and social issues with it. Problems of the era included “Political Machines”, marginalizing the vote of the citizen, poor treatment of Industrial workers, and a few more to name. Resolutions to bring much-needed reform was needed during this time. Eventually, the change did come, for the most part. This revolution would eventually come in the form of the Progressive Era (the 1890s - 1940s). In this era, solutions to Gilded Age problems came in the form of individual and group entity efforts. Although in result this era still came with problems of its own, the barbaric problems fostered from the preceding age still met it’s closing.
Gilded Age politics came with a number of shady practices, some of which included political machines and the marginalization of citizens votes. One of the most notorious political machines in this period was from that of New York City’s Tammany hall which was a dominant force in democratic party politics up until the early 1900s and is known for its corrupt manipulation tactics. A political machine is “a party organization, headed by a single boss or small autocratic group, that commands enough votes to maintain political and administrative control of a city, county, or state.”[footnoteRef:0] The “head” of these groups, who would also be one the ones running for an elected position, would use the resources and affiliates available to them, like big business owners and Immigrants (Mainly the Irish, Italian, and other long time arriving immigrants, so not including the Chinese.) freshly moving into these areas looking for work, to give themselves an exponential boost by taking advantage of these situations. For instance, let’s say the head boss of one of these machines decides to run for a mayoral position, the first thing he’ll do is contact all of the district leaders he has an affiliation with and has them offer benefits to the ward bosses in that district to collect voters for election day. Ward bosses would usually be of either Irish, Italian, or German descent and this would be of an advantage to them because they held control of wards that consisted of people from their respected ethnicity. They'd make offers with immigrants that if they voted for the head bosses, they would find them a place to live in these cultural wards, along with a secure job. This was an offer the new immigrants could not turn down so as a result, the bailout boxes would fill and the head boss would be elected mayor. The progressive era would soon bring in new tactics to end this behavior because of the unfair use of these political machines. This reform came in the form of the secret ballots law. Secret ballots sought out to make sure voter elections would stay completely anonymous. This would make it difficult for political machines to buy people's votes to gain landslide victories, and level the playing field for party nominees. [0: ]
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With new innovations coming into the economy of the gilded age, came new business models. Some of the biggest innovations meant more factory style processes, and this was through all forms of business. From hard steel manufacturing, all the way to the way businesses handled food and medicine, this style made running big businesses much more efficient than earlier times. There was one drawback though, with the increase in efficiency, came a decrease in the quality control of products. Big businesses wanted to increase sales and cut costs, and doing so sometimes meant throwing all types of questionable additives in their supply chain. So much so that a lot of foods consumed at that time were not actually completely safe for consumption. Companies would do things like adding poisonous dyes, to putting food in dangerous and irremovable preservatives, some even went as far as adding dangerous narcotics like heroin in some of their products. Luckily at the time investigative journalism so happened to be on the rise due to the large influx of worker riots and union forming, people wanted to know what exactly was going on in those big factories for all the commotion happening at the time, thus came the birth of the muckrakers. Muckrakers were investigative journalists who held the sole purpose of scooping up the dirt on big factory businesses and exposing them in literary pieces with the purpose of informing the people. These journalists would expose these dangerous practices from the big businesses, and widespread outrage would soon come about. After all, nobody at the time had any way to know if their food was safe, people just assumed that if it was out on the market that it was completely ok for consumption. Around the time of the progressive era, new laws came into play to tackle this dilemma. The Meat Inspection Act, and soon after, the Pure Food and Drug Act came into play and set concrete standards for food companies to meet or else they’d be refused the privilege to sell. To ensure that they’d meet these standards required by law, organizations like the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) were created to inspect and police these businesses for the sake of keeping the American people safe. In result, businesses finally cleaned up their acts, and items much safer for consumption were soon back on the market. Innovation never stopped, regulation only started.
Racism against African Americans was still at an eminent high, even in a post-slavery Gilded Age. African Americans would still receive the short end of the deal when given sharecropping deals, or working for cotton farms as trade. Black workers would literally receive pennies a day for hard labor in the cotton field, it was almost as if slavery had not already been abolished years before. This was a problem for workers and in response, colored farmers alliances popped up all around the south. Many of these alliances would soon meet demise due to many of the members having little to no literacy and persecution from racially motivated lynchings. This wouldn’t stop blacks from generally congregating for other rights though if anything this was added motivation. So in 1909, the spur of the progressive era, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (otherwise known as the NAACP) came about in response to all the disenfranchisement and injustice happening toward the black community at this time. This would set the tone for civil rights movements all throughout the 20th century to ensure colored people would be allowed their God-given rights to live an equal quality of life like their white counterparts.
With the coming and the passing of the Gilded Age, we have seen many innovations, transformations, and new ways of dealing with situations. But with these new solutions came many moral problems, due to the unevolved ways of thinking that was still around at that time. Soon after, the progressive era came in, fixing many of the political, economic, and social problems that still persisted during the evolving of the gilded age. Many of these changes are of which still holds together the fabric of American society to this day.
Bibliography
- 'Colored Alliance Demands, 1889.' Houghton Mifflin Company. Last modified September 11, 1889. http://college.cengage.com/history/ayers_primary_sources/coloredalliance_demands.htm.
- Croker, Hon. Richard. 'Tammany Hall and the Democracy.' North American Review, February 1892.
- 'Political Machine | Politics.' Encyclopedia Britannica. Accessed February 18, 2019. https://www.britannica.com/topic/political-machine.
- 'Pure Food and Drug Act: A Muckraking Triumph.' United States American History. Accessed February 18, 2019. https://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h917.html.
- United States Congress. The Statutes at Large of the United States of America from December 1905, to March 1907, Concurrent Resolutions of the Two Houses of Congress. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1907. https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes-at-large/59th-congress/session-1/c59s1ch3915.pdf.
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