Gilded Age

A Brief Look at the Progressive Movement and the Gilded Age

The Gilded Age was a period of seemingly unbounded economic expansion in the United States that lasted roughly from the election of Ulysses S. Grant to the elevation of reformer Theodore Roosevelt to the presidency at the turn of the twentieth century. This period coincided with the expansion and emergence of the nation as the conquest of the west was completed and the country took the lead among other nations in industry and trade. The rapid transition from an agricultural and mercantile economy to industrialization presented unprecedented opportunities for speculators and entrepreneurs.

Mark Twin and Charles Dudley Warner were the first to call the years after the Civil War the "gilded age." They were satirizing a society where they perceived rampant greed and wild speculation in the market place fostered corruption in national and local politics. The...
[ View Full Essay]