HistoryExtra podcast The American Gilded Age: everything you wanted to know
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Dec 10, 2023 Learn about the Gilded Age in the US, the explosion of industry, influential industrialists, and their philanthropy. Explore the impact of monopolies and trusts, railroad expansion, and efforts to unionize. Discover how literature shaped the perception of society during this era and how industrialization transformed the Wild West.
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Gilded Not Golden
- The term "Gilded Age" means things looked golden from afar but were rotten underneath.
- Growth and technology hid overcrowding, corruption, environmental harm and racism.
Industrialization Replaced Skilled Craft
- Mass industrialization broke skilled crafts into simple tasks and created huge unskilled labor demand.
- New technologies like the Bessemer process, telephones and typewriters made tight urban factories possible.
Railroads Remade Time And Markets
- The transcontinental railroad knitted the nation, forcing time standardization and faster movement of goods.
- Railroads enabled national markets and triggered creation of official time zones in 1883.