Gilded Age and Industrialization - Assignment Example

The gilded age was a time in the 1890s when there were several railroads built and led to the establishment of the enormous initial concentrations of money, produced the first big corporations, and created vast treasures. At the same time, was the rising of labor demands that unified thousands of farmers as well as immigrants. The railroads also connected several towns and cities. Such a development, the building of railroads increased three times particularly after the existence of the Civil War and subsequently tripled once more over forty years.

Fundamentally, railroads were the business of the day. The Gilded Age was characterized by massive property accumulation, political corruption, unequal wealth distribution. Industrialization was established on steel, railroads, and companies producing them held the nation’s biggest businesses. A mushrooming of the companies demanded innovations in corporate organization, better managerial approaches, as well as vast amounts of money for sustainability. Consequently, nationwide, as the railroad companies grew more and more in the nation, a national market was established, with a countrywide economy, and what appeared, a new nationwide tradition.

With time, railroads drove economic growth, new ways of manufacturing spawning new structures of labor. Many workers had conventionally viewed working in a factory as a temporary means of achieving their small businesses or farmsteads. Industrialization proliferated since new technologies had been developed and mechanization of operations had taken root hence affecting the manual workers by limiting their roles and shut their dreams of aspiring to economic freedom. Labour unions were born, and they became firmer and highly organized to protect the expanding, more permanent workforce.

 Industrialization saw the remaking of much of the American life beyond the places of work rapidly expanding industrialized towns and cities connected urban consumers and rural production units into a single, cohesive national market. As more food was produced and consumed more, so did these instances become nationalized. In this regard, slaughterhouses were set up around the country, and they were connected with railroads, where refrigerated slabs of meat could be transported across the nation.

The industrialization of meat production changed the face of the landscape whereby cities like Chicago developed into a gateway city connecting American agricultural supplies, capital marketplaces in New York as well as London, and customers from all around the United States. Industries vastly sprung up rapidly, accompanied by technological improvements, and increased urban population during the 1870s and as a result restructured business. A second industrial revolution was begotten because of the availability of natural resources, expansion of available labor by immigrants, more money in circulation, new laws governing business entities, new manufacturing approaches, and a widening national marketplace.

Steel and oil companies joined hands, and others like logging companies also were created. With the growth of industrialization came wealth and poverty, owners and investors, as well as employees. The general attitude toward employee-employer relations was a mixed emotion. For instance, workers from Mexico in the U.S. in 1947 developed various attitudes towards their companies. Some took up the jobs gladly since they believed it was a blessing to them because of the handsome pay and more work while others claimed that they had been mistreated.

The employee-employer relationship was not satisfactory, and at times civil rights leaders would organize a march to call for the making of laws to support civil rights, integration of workers in schools, stopping of discrimination by employers, provision of capacity building among the unemployed, as well as an increment in the minimum remuneration. In as much as industrialization brought more benefits to the people in different settings, the ravages of it also soared. There were several adverse outcomes of manufacturing including extraordinary wealth and unparalleled poverty, controversies over imperialism, increasing filth in urban centers, contention between capital and labor, destruction of social values, poor sanitation and hygiene in the food industry, elevated foreign immigrant population, pollution of the environment, and the outburst of political radicalism.

Various challenges of industrialization led to widespread dissatisfaction among workers, and it sparked the urge for reforms. Manufacturing had its objectives, money and a large market, however, workers had several different ideas about the way development should have been driven. Firstly, they demanded civil rights particularly for African Americans; women also demanded an increasingly equal role in society. Also, they wanted more wages, guaranteed safety at their workplaces besides the union acknowledgment that would assure those rights.

From such fights for rights and improvements was born the word reform which later bore a reform era. Positive the development was to the nation, it had consequences, which included increased poverty, increased wealth, more filth in towns, poor sanitation in the food industry, more immigrant influx, as well as pollution of the environment. Workers then decided to face such challenges through a reform agenda that entailed fighting for civil rights, women inclusion, raising wages, and safety at workplaces.