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The Pros And Cons Of The Gilded Age

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America in the 19th century was a country undergoing change and quite rapidly accumulating wealth. That is, the upper 99% of the population were accumulating wealth, while the lower 1% (Give Me Liberty, Pg. 601-602) suffered unfair work conditions, discrimination, and low wages. America was dubbed The Gilded Age due to its apparent overall prosperity and wealth. However, this was not really the case because the lower classes/immigrants of the time had many disadvantages and the government did not do much to help them. Of course, this arose various complaints from the lower classes who called the government to action regarding the inequalities that they were facing. However, their needs and wants were often ignored by the government as it was …show more content…

They supported high tariffs, which they believed would “restore prosperity by protecting manufacturers and industrial workers from the competition of manufactured goods...” (645) and in turn would benefit the economy. Their Protectionist policies that heavily involved government was not at all supported by their Democratic counterparts. The Republican economic policies reduced competition of foreign goods and gave the banks all the control over money that was issued. They favored the Eastern industrialists and bankers because they believed in a form of politics where the government would be an active participant in the economy. The Republican Party also encouraged federal spending and discouraged the use of “paper money issued by the Union during the Civil War” (Give Me Liberty, 619) from being distributed. Despite having several differences in the economic agenda, both the Republicans and Democrats were “under the control of powerful political managers with close ties to business interests” (Give Me Liberty, 619) and thus less interest in the lower classes/farmers. Because many of the Republicans were small business owners and businessmen, this economic agenda fit perfectly with what they believed to be the best path for …show more content…

As opposed to the Republicans, Democrats strongly opposed high tariffs as a tool that would help the economy and favored free trade. They thought that the tariffs would make monopolies grow and makes things more expensive for Americans. They favored a decentralized form of government in which government had less of a part in trade businesses and where the state power was above the national power. The Democratic Party also believed that free silver coinage would be a way of steadying the economy because it would provide the country with enough money to end the depression that America was going through at the time. The idea of free silver coinage was also thought to end the unequal distribution of powers in the government. The free silver coinage, however, was something that the Republicans did not entirely agree with because they thought it would make the face value of money unstable in the eyes of businesses and decrease the amount of money that was being handled, thus they favored the gold standard. Despite controversies, the Democratic Party’s National leaders still “remained closely linked to New York bankers and financiers [and] opposed demands of the agricultural areas for an increase in the money supply” (Give Me Liberty, 720). These kinds of controversies was part of what led many, especially farmers, to seek other parties that were actually preoccupied

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