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+The Gilded Age: 1870-1900
+
+The war grew Northern industry
+- Wars require more resources
+    - Food, railroads, clothes
+    - Favoured large-scale businesses
+    - Built a national economy
+    - Huge growth, 6x indus. growth, twice as many indus. companies,
+      join NYSE, increased agr. growth
+
+Women started working as clerks, typists, secretaries.
+Most workers worked in unskilled, low-wage jobs.
+Big business used a lag in legislation to exploit workers, environment,
+and contracts to build fortunes.
+    Wealth gap --> social instability
+
+Why is it called The Gilded Age?
+    America is not yet a wealthy world power
+    Not a cultural center, ethnically homogenous
+        Both change near end of 19th century.
+    Coined by Mark Twain in book of same name (1873)
+        Gild: A thin layer of gold (in this case, over a rotten core)
+        Surface full of prosperity and promise, but much corruption and
+        scandal
+    American idealism fading, lassez-faire (unregulated) business polit.
+    Agrarian --> urban-industrial
+        Urbanization
+        Immigration
+        Industrialization
+
+The rise of cities
+    Packed streets, new resources and shipping
+    Tenements
+        Foul, unsanitary
+        Noisy, nauseating, cholic, and sickly
+    Much populated of immigration
+
+What caused migration patterns, incl. natural Americans' response?
+
+Immigration waves:
+17th-18th century: white anglo-saxon protestants from N, W europe.
+    mostly homogenous, coming from constitutional gov'ts
+18th-19th century: similar makeup, but now Scots-Irish, slave trade
+1840s+: >1/2 Irish-Catholics flee potato famine.
+Gilded age: "New Immigrants" from S,E Europe (unskilled, poor, autocrat)
+    Europeans look different, diff relig (+jew). And Asian immigrants
+    Came in search of economic opportunity, sometimes fleeing economic
+    disruptions at home or religious persecution (jews). Ethnic enclaves
+    Seasonal immigrants
+
+Nativism:
+    - First wave immigrants (WASPs)
+    - Xenophobic movement
+    - Viewed new immigrants as an economic, political, power threat
+        - Claimed new immigrants couldn't self-govern and undermined
+          "moral fiber" of US.
+        - Republican party feared that they would undermine democracy by
+          voting with Democrats.
+Social Darwinism:
+    - Anglo-Saxons believed they were intrinsically superior
+    - And that society had a natural racial/ethnic order that progressed
+      society by rewarding a small "deserving" group and eliminating
+      weak
+    - Anti-immigrant legislation
+        - Chinese banned from entry
+        - President can arbitrarily block entry to migrant "threats"
+          (radicals like members of unions blocked)
+        - Women marrying foreigners could be stripped of citizenship
+Dillingham Commision
+- 41 vol report on immigration
+- Denounced "new immigrants" as less "fit" phys., intellect., and cult.
+- Literacy Law (1917) requires migrant literacy
+
+What stimulated industrial growth?
+
+Industrialization
+- Immigration
+- Abundance of natural resources (coal, iron, lumber)
+- Gov't supported businesses directly (land, grants, loans)
+- Bessamer steel process = cheap steel = better buildings, ships,
+  bridges
+    Pitsburgh, Birmingham become centers of steel production and US
+    produces more steel than Germany and UK combined.
+- Railroads helped nationalize the US
+    Steel, coal, iron, glass dev
+
+Era of Carnegie, Rockefeller
+    Huge lobbies (even bribery)
+    Corporations separate owners from management
+    Shareholders in jointly-held companies
+    Limited liability: if company goes under, debt disappears
+    Religious leaders! encouraged:
+        Russel Conwell, baptist minister: "Money is power. Any good man
+        or woman should seek power to do good with it when obtained"
+            Carnegie, Rockefeller used all means (incl unethical) to
+            obtain money but used it for "moral" means
+    4k millionaires, >$20mm families controlled politics
+        Families typically English anglo-sax, in NE (esp NY)
+            Glorified individual freedom and will
+    Philosophy of wealth:
+        Believed that those who could acquire wealth should
+        Richest men became philanthropists
+    Why could they become so rich? (laissez-faire)
+        Deregulated businesses and practices
+        Government unprotective of laborers and consumers
+
+Working conditions for blue-collar laborers
+    Young people migrated agri --> urban/factory
+    Skilled workers >> Unskilled
+    Difficult, long hours (59 = 6x10 hours)
+    No safety regulations (like respirator, ventilation, machine stops)
+        US top in on-the-job injuries, which were uninsured
+    Women+children worked because they were cheap
+    Unions were weak, because Americans perceived them as Unamerican and
+    full of aliens
+        In early 1900s, labor unions grew.
+        Companies' management discouraged unions (firing)
+        Frequent worker striking
+    "Neuresthania": disease of the mind caused by poor work conditions
+        John Pemberton introduces Coca-Cola (in long line of other
+        attempts to cure neuresthenia).
+        He was addicted to morphine from days as soldier.
+            Coca-Cola = opium-free reliever
+            Dies of stomach cancer, continuing to be addicted to
+            morphine
+        The "nerve tonic" formula gets passed to new business owner Asa
+        Candler
+            It did not actually cure neuresthania
+Amusement parks as urban/commercial entertainment provides a "release"
+for modern life (like Coney Island)
+    Self-fulfillment prioritised over Victorian self-restraint
+        Assimilation for immigrants
+        Men and women together
+        Escape from tenements and factory life
+    Contrasts with slow, bucolic Central Park
+    Phase transition in urban life
+        
+