📚 > 🇺🇸> 🚂 AP US History 🇺🇸Bookmarked 15.5k • 457 resourcesWith great growth also came great problems ⚠️. As mentioned earlier the name of this period was coined by Mark Twain for that very reason. From afar, the period seemed all shiny and new; however, upon a closer look, it was teeming with problems. Journalists 📰 known as muckrakers began to focus on issues such as the plight of the urban poor and the corruption of big business. These individuals helped bring these problems into the public eye and, because of this, there was a great call to reform in the latter half of the period. The problems that came about during this period led to new political debates around issues such as citizenship, economic corruption, and civil rights. Many believed it was the job of the federal government to step in and regulate the issues the nation was facing. 💭 The Social Gospel movement advocated that Christians work to improve the plight of the urban poor. As a result of this movement, charitable groups such as the Salvation Army and YMCA were created. Many artists and authors also began to use their platform to call for reform. One of the major reform movements of the period focused on women’s suffrage 🗳️, with groups like NAWSA leading the call. Women faced greater educational opportunities 🏫, but few career opportunities and even fewer opportunities in politics. Female involvement in reform efforts was widespread and not solely limited to the area of gender equality. 👒 🎥 Watch: AP US History - Period 6 Review Was this guide helpful?
Technological innovation, the concentration of vast wealth in few hands, government corruption, anti-immigrant hysteria, and progressive proposals to combat social and economic disparities: These may seem like items pulled from today’s headlines, but they entered America’s consciousness more than a century ago in an era that took its name from Mark Twain’s satiric novel of greed and corruption, “The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today” (1873). Now you can find primary sources (business, legal, and personal papers) documenting the rise of American modernity in The Gilded Age and Progressive Era located in the Library’s A-Z Databases list. Learn about the high-rise transformation of American cityscapes in the papers of the architectural firm McKim, Mead & White. Learn about personal and business dealings of the rich in the papers of John Jacob Astor and John D. Rockefeller as they built family dynasties from successes in real estate and oil. Learn the extent of government corruption in the papers of Chauncey Mitchell Depew, lawyer for Cornelius Vanderbilt’s New York Central Railroad, who bought his way into the United States Senate by favoring corporate interests. Learn how in the 1890s countervailing forces of progressive reform moved the nation’s economy from laissez-faire capitalism to regulation of monopolies and turned exploited immigrants into organized labor. “IS THIS A REPUBLICAN FORM OF GOVERNMENT? IS THIS THE EQUAL PROTECTION OF THE LAWS?” Harper’s Weekly cartoon by Thomas Nast in 1876 following the Hamburg massacre of Black militiamen in South Carolina. The Gilded Age began with the withdrawal of federal troops from the defeated Confederate states. (Open image in a new tab to enlarge) Although past histories have concentrated on the two percent of American households that controlled more than a third of the nation’s wealth, the database uncovers details about the bottom 40% who had no wealth at all, including African Americans left behind when workplace reform became a concern for the welfare of white workers only. The daybooks of William O’Gorman, Overseer of the Poor in Newtown (now Elmhurst) in the New York borough of Queens, reveal how the poor fared while the rich played. Accounts and activities include descriptions of visits to formerly enslaved African Americans and immigrants in need, and the circumstances and history of individual cases. A scrapbook in the McKim, Mead & White papers shows the harm perpetrated on Native people in the name of uplift. A clipped article on The Ramona Industrial School for Apache Girls in Santa Fe boasts of bringing “genuine Apaches” from three hundred miles away and transforming them from “unkempt girls in moccasins, buckskins, blankets and paint into eager pupils who are dressed and can read, count, write, draw, sing, sew and work like American white girls in our own home …” The goal was to train the girls “to become skilled cooks and housekeepers … in American households.” Documents are tagged with at least one theme to help guide your study. Key themes include:
THEMATIC FOCUS Social Structures (SOC) |
What were the reform movements during the Gilded Age?
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