Civil War Times

Mark Twain called the period after Reconstruction the Gilded Age because it was an era during which great wealth and great poverty existing side by side: superficially, it looked like gold, but it was ugly underneath. It was the largest period of sustained economic growth in the country’s history. It was a period of political corruption as well, the most famous example being Boss Tweed of New York. By skimming money from construction contracts, he stole millions of dollars.

This era coincided with the Second Industrial Revolution, which was concentrated in steel, heavy manufacturing and, above all, railroads. This growth was matched in agriculture, where devices like Cyrus McCormick’s industrial reaper made it possible to harvest substantially more wheat. Economic growth led to the rise of large businesses called corporations. Some corporations became so large that in certain sectors of the economy one company effectively dominated the market, creating monopolies or oligopolies. They were also referred to as trusts.

FOR EXAMPLE . . .
Standard Oil is one of the most well-known trusts. Founded by John D. Rockefeller in 1870, Standard Oil aggressively took over its competitors. It bought up and down the supply chain so that it controlled every step of oil production. By 1904, the company controlled 91 percent of refining and 85 percent of sales.

Railroads had existed since the 1830s, but between 1865 and 1898, the miles of track increased by 567 percent. During the war, President Lincoln signed a law authorizing a transcontinental railroad that would make it possible to travel across the United States. Finished in 1869, the railroad was followed by several other coast-to-coast railroads.

The construction of these railroads enabled settlement in places such as Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas, and other parts of the Great Plains. The Homestead Act of 1862 gave 160 acres of land to anyone willing to live on a plot of land for five years and make improvements to it. This land was difficult to farm because the Great Plains usually receives relatively little rainfall, but railroad companies that depended on having goods to ship to and from locations advertised the plains as excellent farmland. This settlement provoked the last wave of wars with Native Americans in the Plains whose land had been left untouched. By the 1880s, the Native Americans had been either starved into surrender or beaten on the battlefield.

Example

Who coined the term “The Gilded Age”?

The correct answer is A. Mark Twain coined the term.