Themes of the Gilded Age:
1. Industrialism: U.S. became the world’s most powerful economy by 1890s: railroads, steel, oil,
electricity, banking – America was transformed from an agrarian nation to an urban nation
between 1865 and 1920.
2. Politics: hard vs. soft money ('70s & '90s); tariff ('80s); corruption due to greed, patronage &
trusts (throughout late 19th c.)
3. Urbanization: millions of "New Immigrants" came from Southern and Eastern Europe, mostly
to work in factories.
a. Unions and Reform movements sought to curb the injustices of industrialism.
b. Farmers increasingly lost ground in the new industrial economy and eventually
organized (Populism)
4. The “Last West”: farming, mining, & cattle raising
5. By 1900 society had become more stratified into classes than any time before or since.
