Germany retaliated by using its submarines to destroy neutral ships that were supplying the Allies. The formidable U-boats (unterseeboots) prowled the Atlantic armed with torpedoes. A string of attacks on merchant ships followed, culminating in the sinking of the British ship Lusitania by a German U-boat on May 7, 1915. In response to the U-Boat attacks, Allied merchant ships sailed in groups, called convoys, escorted by warships. The convoys were harder for U-Boats to find and attack, but the U-Boats still posed a terrifying threat. By the end of 1917, 3,170 Allied and neutral ships, totaling nearly six million tons, were sunk.
During the Gilded Age, most laborers were considered to be in the working class. inequality and social ills as the working classes and poor were forced to work more and more for less and less.
