Railroads and soon, telephone lines, stretched across the country, creating new opportunities for entrepreneurs and cheaper goods for consumers. Grant in 1868 to the elevation of reformer Theodore Roosevelt to the presidency at the turn of the 20th century, the term 'Gilded Age' has survived because historians have found a great deal of validity in Twain's and Dudley's characterization of their own time.ĭuring those years, America's economy did grow at an extraordinary rate, generating unprecedented levels of wealth. Now usually applied to the period extending from the election of Ulysses S. Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner were the first to call the years after the Civil War the 'gilded age.' Struck by what they saw as the rampant greed and speculative frenzy of the marketplace, and the corruption pervading national politics, they satirized a society whose serious problems, they felt, had been veiled by a thin coating of gold. Most Americans during the Gilded Age wanted political and social reforms, but they disagreed strongly on what kind of reform.Gilded Age politicians were largely corrupt and ineffective.Industrial workers and farmers didn't share in the new prosperity, working long hours in dangerous conditions for low pay.New products and technologies improved middle-class quality of life.

Rapid economic growth generated vast wealth during the Gilded Age.

The Gilded Age by Mark Twain