The Government barely regulated businesses at all during Gilded Age.
Gilded Age, a time in American history in the 1870s marked by obscene materialism and apparent political corruption, inspired significant works of social and political criticism.
The Gilded Age, a book by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner published in 1873, gave rise to the era's moniker. The book paints a vivid picture of Washington, D.C., and it has caricatures of many influential characters from the era, including avaricious businessmen and dishonest politicians.
A group of colorful and brash businessmen who alternately came to be known as "captains of industry" and "robber barons" presided over the immense flurry of industrial activity and corporate expansion that defined the Gilded Age. They amassed wealth by establishing monopolies in the steel, oil, and transportation sectors.
