Answer:
Laissez-faire
One of the most influential ideas of the Gilded Age was laissez-faire (pronounced LAY-zay FAIR). From the French for “let them do [what they will],” proponents of laissez-faire policies, known as liberals, believed that the free market would naturally produce the best and most efficient solutions to economic and social problems. In other words, it was best to allow businesses to do what they wanted: trade freely, set their own prices, and determine workers’ wages and working conditions.
Liberalism, as it was known in the late nineteenth century, had a very different definition than it does today: instead of advocating for government intervention to solve social problems as today’s liberals do, liberals in the Gilded Age opposed most government intervention in the economy or labor relations. Libertarians are the closest equivalent to Gilded Age liberals in US politics today.
Laissez-faire combined the principles of limited government and the free market with some of the ideas of Social Darwinism. Applying Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution to human institutions, liberals believed that competition was necessary for progress. Any measures that interfered with complete freedom—defined as the freedom to buy and sell your labor and property any way you chose—were contrary to natural selection and impeded the march of civilization.
During the Gilded Age, this belief that laissez-faire capitalism produced optimal results for society came into conflict with the efforts of reformers and labor unions to rein in the influence of big businesses.
