Friday, February 5, 2010

The Gilded Age


“The Gilded Age”
During the late 19th Century America started transforming into Modern America. The growth of industry and a wave of immigrants marked the period in American history known as the Gilded Age. The Gilded Age gets its name from the many great fortunes created during this period and the way of life this wealth supported. Mark Twain actually termed this period because he believed that the period was glittering on the surface but corrupt underneath. This period was viewed as a time of greed. A couple of the businessmen that benefited from this wealth were John D. Rockefeller who benefited from oil and Andrew Carnegie who benefited from Steel. These businessmen were known as robber barons which were considered people who got rich through ruthless business deals.
In my opinion, we are living in a “Gilded Age” today. The American people are still consumed with greed and the material things they have. In society, it is still about defeating and taking over the market you are in. These people want to put their competitors out of business where they can have the power over their market. Andrew Carnegie figured out a way to produce his product at a cheaper rate which would give him a lead on his competition. He did this with a technique called vertical integration. Vertical Integration is a technique which the company owns all means of production. This gave them the upper hand because other companies had to pay higher prices to get the things they needed from other companies. While Carnegie owned the companies of everything he would need which allowed him to get these items at a lower price which was actually the cost to produce the items.
We still live in an industrialized nation today. Factories continue try to do things bigger, better, quicker and at a cheaper price. This has cut out the need for all of the skilled workers in trades because now it is done by the machines so the person is there just to make sure the machine stays on track. This has caused the people to get paid less while the companies are able to produce more goods at a cheaper rate. While are society has chosen to stay with this because of the greater quantity they can produce we have had to adjust to a lower quality item. The positive is we are able to go replace the item at the cheaper price. In conclusion, although we have adopted industrialism in our society which started during the Gilded Age we have realized you will still be faced with the positive and negative effects.

1 comment:

  1. Stephanie:

    Super Job on both blogs so far!

    Keep it up!

    Dr D

    ReplyDelete