The Gilded Age was the era in American history from around 1870 to 1900, during which swift industrialization, a labor group enlarged by immigration, and nominal government regulations permitted the upper classes to amass great wealth and enjoy luxurious lifestyles. While the rich wore diamonds and furs and threw lavish and ostentatious parties, many people wore rags. In 1890, the average annual income was $380, well below the poverty line. Rural Americans and new immigrants crowded into city areas; tenements swelled, teeming with crime and filth. Most people toiled in the gloom of poverty.
Corruption extended to the highest levels of government. During Ulysses S. Grant's presidency, the president and his cabinet were implicated in a number of political scandals. The Gilded Age, as Mark Twain noted, was the period that was glittering on the surface but corrupt underneath. It was a period of greed and duplicity, of mercenary Robber Barons, unscrupulous speculators, corporate swashbucklers, shady business practices, scandal-plagued politics, conspicuous consumption, vulgar displays of wealth and unfettered capitalism.
The tycoons of the Gilded Age included in this informative and educational book are Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould, Andrew W. Mellon, John Pierpont Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Corruption extended to the highest levels of government. During Ulysses S. Grant's presidency, the president and his cabinet were implicated in a number of political scandals. The Gilded Age, as Mark Twain noted, was the period that was glittering on the surface but corrupt underneath. It was a period of greed and duplicity, of mercenary Robber Barons, unscrupulous speculators, corporate swashbucklers, shady business practices, scandal-plagued politics, conspicuous consumption, vulgar displays of wealth and unfettered capitalism.
The tycoons of the Gilded Age included in this informative and educational book are Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould, Andrew W. Mellon, John Pierpont Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Cornelius Vanderbilt.
