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Overview In this experience, students read an excerpt from Twain and Wagner’s satirical novel, The Gilded Age, and predict characteristics of this period. Then they learn about the rise of big business and define related economic terms and create a concept map of characteristics. Next they learn about four leading industrialists—Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and Morgan—reflecting on why critics called them robber barons and examining Carnegie’s philosophy on philanthropy. Finally they analyze the Sherman Antitrust Act and the break up of the Standard Oil monopoly. Objectives:
The Gilded Age is probably best remembered for the rapid economic development that occurred during this period. As the economy expanded, the nature of business in the United States was changing. In this experience you will learn about some of these changes brought about by the second Industrial Revolution.
Objectives:
The name for this historical time period, the Gilded Age, originated from the title of a satire by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, published in 1873. If you don’t remember the definition of the word gilded, look it up in a dictionary.
The adjective gilded has two main meanings:
Read a short excerpt from the novel. In this chapter, a small businessman who uses various get-rich-quick schemes is trying to secure a loan to save his failing coal mine.
Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that this is not the golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance upon human promises? That is a peculiar condition of society which enables a whole nation to instantly recognize point and meaning in the familiar newspaper anecdote, which puts into the mouth of a distinguished speculator in lands and mines this remark:—“I wasn’t worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars.”
Based on the definition and the brief excerpt, predict characteristics of this period that Twain and Warner chose to call “the Gilded Age.”
The term Gilded Age defines the period between Reconstruction and the beginning of the twentieth century. It was a period of significant economic development in the United States, but not everyone shared in the wealth. In the eyes of many, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. Twain and Warner’s novel also satirizes the widespread corruption of big business, the political machine, and financial institutions.
