Gilded Age

Extracted Attributes

• Time Period

  Late 1870s to late 1890s

• Preceding Era

  Reconstruction Era

• Succeeding Era

  Progressive Era

• Real Wage Growth

  40% increase between 1860 and 1890

• Primary Industries

  Railroads, Oil, Steel, Mining, Finance

• Average Annual Wage (1880)

  $380 USD (equivalent to $12,381 in 2024)

• Average Annual Wage (1890)

  $584 USD (equivalent to $19,738 in 2024)

Timeline

• Publication of 'The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today' by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner. (Source: Wikipedia)

  1873-01-01

• The Panic of 1873 begins, triggering a major nationwide economic depression. (Source: Wikipedia)

  1873-09-18

• End of the Reconstruction era and the rise of Jim Crow laws in the South. (Source: Wikipedia)

  1877-01-01

• Average annual industrial wage per worker reaches $380. (Source: Wikipedia)

  1880-01-01

• Setting of the historical drama series 'The Gilded Age' in New York City. (Source: Web Search)

  1882-01-01

• Average annual industrial wage per worker reaches $584. (Source: Wikipedia)

  1890-01-01

• The Panic of 1893 begins, causing another major nationwide depression and social upheaval. (Source: Wikipedia)

  1893-01-01

• The US Supreme Court rules in Plessy v. Ferguson, sanctifying racial segregation. (Source: Gilder Lehrman Institute)

  1896-05-18

Gilded Age

In United States history, the Gilded Age is the period from about the late 1870s to the late 1890s, which occurred between the Reconstruction era and the Progressive Era. It was named by 1920s historians after Mark Twain's 1873 novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today. Historians saw late 19th-century economic expansion as a time of materialistic excesses marked by widespread political corruption. It was a time of rapid economic and capital growth, especially in the North and West. As American wages grew much higher than those in Europe, especially for skilled workers, and industrialization demanded an increasingly skilled labor force, the period saw an influx of millions of European immigrants. The rapid expansion of industrialization led to real wage growth of 40% from 1860 to 1890, spreading across the expanding labor force. The average annual wage per industrial worker, including men, women, and children, rose from $380 in 1880 ($12,381 in 2024 dollars) to $584 in 1890 ($19,738 in 2024 dollars), a gain of 59%. The Gilded Age was also an era of significant poverty, especially in the South, and growing inequality, as millions of immigrants poured into the United States, and the high concentration of wealth became more visible and contentious. Railroads were the major growth industry, with the factory system, oil, mining, and finance increasing in importance. Immigration from Europe and the Eastern United States led to the rapid growth of the West based on farming, ranching, and mining. Labor unions became increasingly important in the rapidly growing industrial cities. Two major nationwide depressions—the Panic of 1873 and the Panic of 1893—interrupted growth and caused social and political upheavals. The South remained economically devastated after the American Civil War. The South's economy became increasingly tied to commodities like food and building materials, cotton for thread and fabrics, and tobacco production, all of which suffered from low prices. With the end of the Reconstruction era in 1877 and the rise of Jim Crow laws, African American people in the South were stripped of political power and voting rights, and were left severely economically disadvantaged. The political landscape was notable in that despite rampant corruption, election turnout was comparatively high among all classes (though the extent of the franchise was generally limited to men), and national elections featured two similarly sized parties. The dominant issues were cultural, especially regarding prohibition, education, and ethnic or racial groups, and economic (tariffs and money supply). Urban politics were tied to rapidly growing industrial cities, which increasingly fell under control of political machines. In business, powerful nationwide trusts formed in some industries. Unions crusaded for the eight-hour working day, and the abolition of child labor; middle-class reformers demanded civil service reform, prohibition of liquor and beer, and women's suffrage. Local governments across the North and West built public schools chiefly at the elementary level; public high schools started to emerge. The numerous religious denominations were growing in membership and wealth, with Catholicism becoming the largest. They all expanded their missionary activity to the world arena. Catholics, Lutherans, and Episcopalians set up religious schools, and the largest of those schools set up numerous colleges, hospitals, and charities. Many of the problems faced by society, especially the poor, gave rise to attempted reforms in the subsequent Progressive Era.

Web Search Results

• The Gilded Age (TV series) - Wikipedia

  The Gilded Age is an American historical drama television series created and written by Julian Fellowes for HBO that is set in the United States during the Gilded Age, the boom years of the 1880s in New York City. Originally announced in 2018 for NBC, it was later announced in May 2019 that the show was moved to HBO. The first season premiered on January 24, 2022, and the second on October 29, 2023. In December 2023, the series was renewed for a third season, which premiered on June 22, 2025. [...] | In 1882, New York City, industrialist George Russell moves into an elaborate Stanford White-designed mansion with his wife, Bertha, and their young adult children, Larry and Gladys. Across the street, sisters Agnes van Rhijn and Ada Brook await their niece Marian, a modern-thinking woman leaving Doylestown, Pennsylvania after her bankrupt father's death. Peggy Scott, a graduate of the Institute for Colored Youth, offers help when Marian's purse and train ticket are stolen. Marian's aunts [...] | Composers | Harry Gregson-Williams Rupert Gregson-Williams | | Country of origin | United States | | Original language | English | | No. of seasons | 3 | | No. of episodes | 25 | | Production | | Executive producers | Julian Fellowes Gareth Neame David Crockett Michael Engler Salli Richardson Whitfield Sonja Warfield Robert Greenblatt | | Producers | Holly Rymon Claire M. Shanley Luke Harlan | | Running time | 46–80 minutes |

• Hayes Historical Journal: The Gilded Age in American History

  The Gilded Age was one of the most remarkable generations in American history. It was a time of exciting and important scientific and technological inventions and improvements, such as the electric light, the telephone, and the typewriter, which have had and continue to have a profound impact upon American life. The Gilded Age was also a significant and fertile period in intellectual and cultural matters with the birth of new social sciences, the founding of major museums, the organization of [...] In recent years, however, historians have taken a closer look at the Gilded Age, uncovering its cultural, literary, and technological achievements long overshadowed by the emphasis on its unfortunate political and economic life. These impressive accomplishments have shown that the Gilded Age was not the sterile and barren period that so many contemporary and subsequent critics said it was. To the contrary it was one of the most intellectually fertile eras in all of American history. [...] The book's title, The Gilded Age conveys the message intended by the authors. The term caught on and was used by contemporaries and has been used by historians and other writers ever since to describe these years. It seemed a fitting epithet for the tawdry gilt that appeared to characterize many features of American life in this era. It reflected the cynical spirit and crudeness of the new age and the graft, corruption, and material values that accompanied it.

• Gilded Age | Definition, History, United States, & Mark Twain

  Gilded Age, period of gross materialism and blatant political corruption in U.S. history during the 1870s that gave rise to important novels of social and political criticism. The period takes its name from the earliest of these, The Gilded Age (1873), written by Mark Twain in collaboration with Charles Dudley Warner. The novel gives a vivid and accurate description of Washington, D.C., and is peopled with caricatures of many leading figures of the day, including greedy industrialists and [...] The great burst of industrial activity and corporate growth that characterized the Gilded Age was presided over by a collection of colorful and energetic entrepreneurs who became known alternatively as “captains of industry” and “robber barons.” They grew rich through the monopolies they created in the steel, petroleum, and transportation industries. Among the best known of them were John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Leland Stanford, and J.P. Morgan. [...] Encyclopedia Britannica Encyclopedia Britannica Gilded Age: Marble House Britannica AI Icon Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Gilded Age: Marble House # Gilded Age Britannica AI Icon ### What was the Gilded Age? The Gilded Age was a period of flashy materialism and overt political corruption in the United States during the 1870s. ### Who were some of the key figures of the Gilded Age?

• The Gilded Age - Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History |

  The Gilded Age marked a key moment in the rise of American racism—a transition from the relatively fluid race relations of the Reconstruction era to the rigid segregation of Jim Crow. By 1900, separation of the races had been sanctified by the US Supreme Court (in Plessy v. Ferguson) and written into state constitutions across the old Confederacy. Despite black people’s heroic and sustained efforts to maintain some presence in public life, their systematic disenfranchisement had accelerated [...] So from our current vantage point, the Gilded Age offers a mix of strangeness and familiarity. American society was poised on the brink of fundamental transformations—the shift from an isolated republic to an interventionist empire, from an individualist, entrepreneurial economy to one dominated by a handful of monopolistic corporations, and from a Protestant preoccupation with salvation to a therapeutic ethos of self-realization. None of these changes was fully underway until after 1900, but [...] Forty years on, there is no reason to re-title them. The Gilded Age can still be characterized as the prelude to our own time. Patterns of tension that persist to the present—black and white, capital and labor, science and religion, republic and empire, public good and private gain—can be traced to the era of corsets and spats. Indeed the similarities between then and now are stronger than they were forty years ago. Decades of economic deregulation have released constraints on accumulating

• America's Gilded Age - Flagler Museum

  In the span of a single lifetime, from the end of the Civil War to the Crash of the Stock Market in 1929, American culture as we know it sprang into being. Dubbed The Gilded Age by Mark Twain in 1873, it was a time of unparalleled growth in technology. Virtually everything we take for granted in our daily lives was an invention and/or convention of this fascinating time in America's history. The captains of industry and commerce of The Gilded Age became wealthy beyond what most can imagine [...] Without exception, these great homes from America's Gilded Age are wonderful and unique windows into a time of unprecedented change and creativity in American culture. A time when the explosive growth in technology made some wealthy and promised a utopia where individuals could develop to their highest and best purpose. A time when, for many Americans, all of human history seemed to point to America and its destiny to bring Western culture to its ultimate expression.