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The historical lesson from the gilded age is that muckrakers will always inform the public of any wrong doing from companies and political figures.

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Muckrakers would expose problems rarely known to the public so the problem could be solved. The muckraker Upton Sinclair wrote the novel "The Jungle" that went through the problems in the meat industry. This led to the passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.
Muckrakers Document
Picture: Upton Sinclair

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Most immigrants usually went through the Ellis Islands. 80% of New York citizens were foreign born. New Immigrants usually didn't have enough money to buy a house right away so they lived in ghettos for a while. It was convenient for them because they could live with people who had the same culture and spoke the same language but the living conditions in the ghettos were terrible. Immigrants would have trouble getting jobs because they spoke very little english and weren't used to american culture.
Immigration in the Gilded Age
Picture: Immigrants arriving to Ellis Island.

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Workers were split into Skilled and unskilled. Skilled workers got payed more because their work was more important than unskilled labor. Eventually Skilled labor was turned into unskilled. "Complex tasks, until then done by skilled workers, were to be broken down into single motions and divided among lower-paid, unskilled people."
Usually the company owned the workers' homes so if the worker quit their job, they would be kicked out of their house instantly. Workers also faced a high chance of them being injured or killed on the job every day.
The Homestead Strike Document
Picture: Unskilled Labor

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The meat packing industry in chicago was able to do anything they wanted because the government didn't have regulations during the 1800's. The meat packing industry during could mix "tainted meat" with their normal meat and sell it to consumers like that.

"When they had speared out all they could reach, they emptied the vat on the floor, and then with shovels scraped up the balance and dumped it into the truck. This floor was filthy, yet they set Antanas with his mop slopping the "pickle" into a hole that connected with a sink, where it was caught and used over again forever; and if that were not enough, there was a trap in the pipe, where all the scraps of meat and odds and ends of refuse were caught, and every few days it was the old man's task to clean these out, and shovel their contents into one of the trucks with the rest of the meat!"

The consumers would eat their meat like that and they wouldn't even know. Body parts of workers would even be left in the meat if they were injured on the job and their limb or their whole body fell into the meat.
The Jungle Excerpts
Picture: Meat packing industry

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Child labor was a major problem during the gilded age. Children 16 and younger were able to work in factories if they chose to but for very little pay which wasn't worth the huge risk of being injured which was very likely. The children got payed 10 cents a day.
"This factory was run also by child labor. The machinery needed constant cleaning. The tiny, slender bodies of the little children crawled in and about under dangerous machinery, oiling and cleaning. Often their hands were crushed. A finger was snapped off."
Child Labor Scenario Document
Picture:Young Girl fixing machines in a factory