Examples Of Social Issues In The Gilded Age

Social Issues of the Gilded Age The Gilded Age created a divide between a growing class of millionaires, and the labor force. Employee and employer could never trusted each other. Every worker felt overworked and underrepresented leading to strikes, which in turn made employers feel like their right to acquire wealth was being denied. The government was no longer for the people, and instead backed large corporations and the rich men behind them. During the Gilded Age, the majority of factory workers lived lives of uncertainty. Millions of workers lost their jobs, so those who had jobs couldn’t complain about sixty hour work weeks. They didn’t have pensions and working conditions were horrendous and unsafe. The contrast between the wealthy and working class became more and more extreme as the Gilded Age progressed. The wealthy class had exclusive social clubs, and attended fancy, expensive schools, and at the same time working class families scrambled to survive. Through the Gilded Age, a new philosophy called Social Darwinism emerged. Social Darwinism was the idea that the poor, even in the Depression, were responsible for their situations, and economically successful people were successful because they were the fittest and not because they were already had access to money.

Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, who believed it was their right to acquire wealth because of social Darwinism, and were backed by the United States Government. Bills regarding a maximum of hours worked and safe working conditions were seen infringements of economic freedom and didn’t become laws. And government allowed companies get away with outrageous and absurd things in the name economic freedom and free labor. For example, the government let a company continue to pay workers in paper that was only accepted at company stores and declared a state law that would limit work hours for children unconstitutional in