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The Big Idea: What we can learn from the Gilded Age and Progressive Era and how do we see history repeating itself

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The Big Idea: What we can learn from the Gilded Age and Progressive Era and how do we see history repeating itself

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The Gilded Age and Progressive Era were a time of deception and lies, were everything from the businesses to the politics were corrupt and filled with people who only cared about themselves. And from this we can learn a few things. Number one: Most people are oblivious. The Gilded Age lasted from the 1870's to about 1900, when finally people began to notice the problems our society was having and started addressing them. It took them 30 years! And throughout that time people like Jacob Riis had already been covering these issues and trying to spread awareness, and people were being ignorant, which leads to the second lesson, people won't address something if they don't have to. Most likely, people at this time, at least a good portion, did know about these problems for workers and women and children at the time, but they didn't bother to do anything. People only care (most of the time) when the problem affects them. For example, The Jungle written by Upton Sinclair talks about two major issues, the treatment of workers in meat plants and the disgusting quality of the meat being sold by them. But when people read the book, they didn't care about the workers in the factories for the majority, even though that was the main purpose of the book. Instead they only worried about the meat quality, which is a legitimate concern, but they completely disregarded the workers. And finally, we can learn from this that a Democratic society like ours needs a news system that is not run by the government. If it weren't for the news at this time, awareness of these issues may have never been publicaly addressed. The people cannot have a voice if there is no way to know what to put their voice into. Which leads to today, how do we see history repeating itself? I will begin aby talking about lesson number two, that people don't care about issues that don't effect them. I am going to use Donald Trump as an example. Donald Trump believes that immigration is a problem that needs to be fixed, by either "building a wall" or simply evicting all immigrants out. But this is a major issue for the immigrants, they live in America and most do pay their taxes, but Trump doesn't see that because it doesn't concern him. This leads to America needing a good news system. Most people think immigrants are bad and "all should get deported", but that is because of the news and how the news views the situation. Because the news always inadvertently affects our opinions on the issue while telling the story. They can choose the facts they want to tell that support them. And that in which leads into the first lesson that people are oblivious. They are just watching these stories and hearing these people talk about issues like immigrants but they are oblivious to the real facts. What facts out there are proving that immigrants are ruining the economy or why they should be deported? Why is it so bad that Donald Trump gets elected instead of Hillary Clinton? The problem is people are so oblivious they won't even look for these facts, they just assume one side is wrong or right based on what they see. My mother put it to me this way when I asked her how she thought the election would go. She said that, "Donald Trump is most likely going to win because he is way more well known that Hillary. And people aren't willing to bother looking into the two of them, so they will pick who they know." And unfortunately, that is exactly the case. So yes, there are multiple lessons we can receive from the Gilded Age/ Progressive Era, but we obviously have not learned from them, since a highly similar scenario is happening to us right now today.

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There may have been big organizations and popular reformers and muckrakers who were already well-known who helped during the Progressive Era, but there were also individuals who helped. People like Mother Jones who went from town to town spreading the word of Unions or Lewis Hine who took images of children and child labor to spread awareness to the public.

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During the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, there was a huge influx of new immigrants. So in order to help out these immigrants, there were people called reformers, who tried to teach immigrants the culture of America and help them get started here. There biggest way of doing this were settlement homes. These were small little "villages" within major cities that helped immigrants by providing education, food, and housing as well as teaching them new skills to help them find work and showing them our customs.

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Company owners who had workers always had more power than the individual worker. That is where the idea of the Union came, that an entire group of workers could stand up for what they wanted or needed. They would gather as many people in a factory or other workplace and convince them to strike until their boss would give them what they wanted, whether it be higher pay, safer working conditions, or more fair treatment. One example of this is during the Mine Wars, where Unions played a major role in improving the miners working and living conditions. You can watch this video yourself at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/theminewars/.

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During the Gilded Age, many women had to deal with many situations that men and children didn't have to. Women were considered to be house wives and property of the men they married, overall treated as lesser thans. One specific example of this is show in a video on http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/, where women had to deal with saloons, in which they weren't allowed in and men would frequently spend their whole paycheck on one night drinking.

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Workers and Immigrants, considered Worthless and Irrelevant

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Workers and Immigrants, considered Worthless and Irrelevant

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Workers and immigrants probably had the worst of the problems that people had during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Let alone the amount of child labor that was present during this time, there was still many problems for the other workers. They had low pay, terrible working conditions, and were forced into keeping their jobs through company towns. A video on the following link describes them well, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/theminewars/, but in short they were towns built by the company you were working for in which you had to live in in order to work there. Once in there, you were payed even less since you had to pay back the company to live in the homes, the company store was run by the company so they controlled what you could buy and even the mail that came in and out of the town.

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Consumers during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era had to deal with a lot of different unethical problems. Most notably was the meat they were consuming on a daily basis. The Jungle, written by Upton Sinclair has many explains many of these problems in lucid detail, as I will quote from his work, and I recommend you read to know more about this topic. For example, he stated that, "There was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage; there would come all the way back from Europe old sausage that had been rejected, and that was moldy and white – it would be dosed with borax and glycerine, and dumped into the hoppers, and made over again for home consumption." This was just one of the many different ways in which consumers had to face with harmful products, let alone the monopolies and secret agreements that forced them to pay more money than they should.

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Child labor was common during the Gilded Age, so common that almost any type of job would hire children. Farmer, we're hiring. Sewing machine worker, sure, just climb on top of the dangerous moving machine and do your duty. Coal miner, the other workers can't see you anyway, so come aboard! And doing these jobs were unsafe, were way below normal pay, even for normal workers, and were strict, forcing children as young as five to do almost as much work as a full grown man. To see the horror of these jobs, just check these slides posted by Mr. Weigman, my S.S. teacher.

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Jacob Riis was a muckraker who helped improve the slums, poor regions were crime, disease, and poor living conditions were prevalent, and improving them through photos and books during the Progressive Era. This website, created by me, describes him in better detail, and has plenty of different sources to learn more about him.