Gilded Age (1 gen 1831 anni – 1 gen 1891 anni)

Descrizione:

Guiled means a object covered in a expensive material, however the bulk of the material is cheap. This is used as a synonym for the way America was in the time: Materialistic excesses combined with extreme poverty, beautiful gold exterior hiding major problems underneath.
• Rapid economic growth in Northern & Western states (factories, railroads, coal mining)
• Real wage growth of 60% (much higher than that of Europe)
• Surpassed Britain at this point
• Creation of career paths for the middle class
• Showcased American efficiency
BUT
• Labor shortage  urbanization, as you could earn a lot more in the city, led to everyone moving to cities.
• Devastation of South after Civil War: cotton & tobacco suffered low prices
• Not all Southern whites were slave owners, there were still a lot of poor southerners after the civil war
• Cotton gin + Civil War + sharecropping, all these things led to a cycle of debt, overproduction of tobacco and crops which led to soil exhaustion, impoverished farmers and landowners everyone was poor
• Sharecroppers (80% black, 20% poor whites)

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