Gilded Age DBQ

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The Gilded Age boasted a lot of great things for the United States. It created so much in such a short amount of time, but that time also brought bad things. Monopolies, factory accidents, horrible working conditions, and an ever-growing gap between the rich and the poor. These problems were handled very poorly due. This was due to nobody really caring about the poor and not eliminating trusts. One of the bigger issues surrounding this age was the awful factory working conditions. Nobody listened to what the workers had to say during that time. “The employer desires to reduce wages and lengthen the hours of labor, while the desire of employees is to obtain shorter hours of labor and better wages, and better surroundings.” (Document C) This selection of document C shows that the employers wanted their employees to get paid even …show more content…

As big business owners like Rockefeller and Carnegie kept getting richer, the people that worked in the factories kept falling further into poverty. A lot of these people were immigrant factory workers, usually working in a factory owned by some business giant. And, the rich blamed the poor for being in poverty “The opportunity to get rich, to attain great wealth is here... You have no right to be poor, it is your duty to be rich... Let us remember, there is not a poor person in the United States who was not made poor by his own shortcomings...” (Document A) These rich businessmen also hated the idea of unions, and even insulted them because they wanted to extend hours with less pay, the opposite of what the unions wanted. An example of one of these businessmen insulting the unions was Henry Clay Frick, president of Carnegie Steel in 1892 who said “...I will never recognize the union, never, never” (Document D) These problems still aren’t fully solved today, there are still wealthy business owners that blame the poor for being poor, and dislike labor

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