As we can see from our readings the Gilded age was a period of expansion and industrialization. The so-called robber barons made their fortune through corruption and cheap labor under deplorable conditions. Long hours, child labor and dangerous conditions existed in the factories. Cities became overpopulated causing disease and poverty to rise exponentially. While the situation was something all of us today would consider crimes against humanity, I think we have to consider the good that came from this insanity to produce as much as possible. As Calhoun stated, “While not denying the greed and self indulgence of the so-called robber barons, modern scholars emphasize their achievements in criss-crossing the nation with railroads, building factories and transforming the nation’s economy into a national, integrated, industrialized one.”(Calhoun, 3)\u00a0 Also, during this period we see laborers through riots and demonstration begin to fight for better working conditions and fair wages through the formation of unions. We also see anti-trust act formed in 1890 in order to control the monopolies as to stop from wiping out all the smaller players in their particular field. We begin to see reformers start to better their cities with fresh water and sewage systems, parks, lighted streets public transportation, construction codes and libraries.(Calhoun, 3) As we move through the later stages of the Gilded age continued strikes in agriculture, railroads and factories pave the way to a fair work day, a fair wage and safety on the job for future Americans. As we have read this was not a time that most would want to have lived in if they were not wealthy but it should be recognized as a time of sacrifice that gave us a chance for the opportunities that exist in the modern era today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As we can see from our readings the Gilded age was a period of expansion and industrialization. The so-called robber barons made their fortune through corruption and cheap labor under deplorable conditions. Long hours, child labor and dangerous conditions existed in the factories. Cities became overpopulated causing disease and poverty to rise exponentially. While the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":129,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions\/129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}