Argumentative Essay about The Gilded Age in America

📌Category: History, History of the United States, United States, World
📌Words: 738
📌Pages: 3
📌Published: 17 February 2022

The term gilded age was perfect for America.  The gilded age happened between 1870 to 1900.  First Gilded means that on the outside something is good but when you look on the inside you realize how bad it is.  One reason why the term gilded age was perfect was because of all the industrialization that happened during the time period.  Another reason why the gilded age was the perfect term was the lives of African Americans.   The final reason why the term gilded age was perfect was the immigration/urbanization.  The term gilded age was perfect because if you look at America overall as a country during that time you'll notice how the economy grew and how cities grew, but if you look closer you'll notice all the imperfections of America during the time period.  

The first reason why the term gilded age was perfect for America was industrialization.  Industrialization had factories and companies exploding in success all over America.  Companies and factories were growing at an insane rate.  Factories and companies employed a lot of people in new jobs.  For example, Andrew Carnegie was one of the biggest company owners in America.  On the outside, it looks very good because companies are growing and people were being employed but the problem was the worker’s wages and working conditions.  The workers were getting paid very low wages for the amount of work they were doing.  Most workers were making less than a dollar per hour for up to 12 hours a day.  They worked in terrible conditions most of the time. The factories people worked in were extremely dangerous and didn’t have any safety features like our buildings have nowadays.  

The second reason why the term gilded age was perfect for America was the lives of African Americans.  Overall the lives of African Americans during this time were awful.  One of the biggest problems for African Americans during this time was being themselves.  Because they were a different race than other people, people looked different and because of that they were and still are sometimes treated worse today.  One example of them being discriminated against was how most shops wouldn’t let them purchase stuff from their stores.  Unfortunately, that was the least of African Americans’ problems.  Another example and the worst example was lynching.  Lynching was when one or a group of white people would go kill African Americans.  Some ways they did it were disgusting,  usually, people would lynch African Americans by hanging, but sometimes people would kill African Americans by burning them alive.

The final reason why the term gilded age was perfect for America was immigration and urbanization.  In America, during this time there were a lot of people immigrating to America from all over the world.  Most immigrants came from Europe but there was still a lot coming from Asia.  The immigrants came to America for a better life whether that was because their home country was awful or they came to earn more money.  On the outside, immigrants living in America was a good thing for everyone.  Companies could hire more people and people could buy more things and because of that the economy grew, but when you look at it and see how immigrants lived or the process they took to get here was terrible.  The boats most Immigrants had to travel on had terrible conditions.  The boats were filled with disease, rats, and insects.  Also on the boat immigrants would not get properly fed.  Even after they arrived in America their lives didn’t really approve since the conditions they would live in were awful and the jobs they had to get were terrible too.  Most immigrants would live in apartments that had multiple families in tiny rooms.  The places they worked also had terrible conditions and they didn’t earn a lot of money either.  

The term gilded age was perfect for America.  On the outside everything looked amazing but on the inside it didn’t look so good whether that was because of Industrialization where companies grew and earned a ton of money or the lives African Americans who had to suffer from all the discrimination maybe the immigrants who had to deal with all the hardships they had to face.  America was like a gold medal, on the outside it was shiny and perfect but when you took off the top cover and revealed the inside all of sudden things didn't look as shiny and perfect.  This time period was great for America but not so great for the people in america.

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