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American History Lecture Nine (view source)

Revision as of 18:55, October 26, 2013

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→‎The "Gilded Age": move to prior lecture
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By the late 1800s the wealthiest city in the United States was Williamsport, Pennsylvania, which was the center of the profitable lumber industry.  Now it is best known for hosting the Little League World Series!
 
By the late 1800s the wealthiest city in the United States was Williamsport, Pennsylvania, which was the center of the profitable lumber industry.  Now it is best known for hosting the Little League World Series!
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== The "Gilded Age" ==
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In our last lecture we introduced the term the "Gilded Age," which was first coined by a popular writer from Missouri, Mark Twain (his real name was Samuel Clemens).
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He described the era towards the end of the 1880s as "gilded" because it appeared golden, but beneath the shiny surface was greed, corruption and hardship.  Mark Twain wrote a novel by that name in which Washington, D.C. was run by greedy businessmen and corrupt government officials.  (Mark Twain wrote several other influential novels, including "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," describing a fictional journey on a raft on the Mississippi). 
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The Gilded Age featured "robber barons," who were people who became extremely wealthy through ruthless business practices.  The worst "robber baron" was Jay Gould, a financier on Wall Street who committed rampant fraud by printing false stock certificates to defraud investors.  He even tried to corner the gold market in 1869.  That led to a financial panic known as Black Friday.  After Gould drove up the price of gold by hoarding it, President Grant learned of the scheme and started selling the government gold reserves on the market to cause the price to fall.  The price of gold then fell sharply, and many lost everything they had.  Gould, however, had sold out at the highest price to make the biggest profit!
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There were also phenomenal successes during this era.  Andrew Carnegie immigrated from Scotland without any money and ended up with massive wealth from founding the Carnegie Steel Co. (later became U.S. Steel Co.).  He amassed a fortune that he then donated to build structures like Carnegie Hall, Carnegie-Mellon University, and the enormous New York Public Library (plus 2800 other public libraries).  He wrote the "Gospel of Wealth" in 1900 to describe his vision of capitalism.
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'''Debate:  it wasn't the "Gilded Age," it was the "Golden Age!"  Agree?'''
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'''Debate:  do you support "caveat emptor," or do you prefer government regulation of monopolies and robber barons?'''
      
== Bimetallism ==
 
== Bimetallism ==
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