Far too often, United States history curricula race through the fifty years between the Civil War and Reconstruction on the one end, and the Great Depression and World War II on the otherbut the tumultuous, crisis-filled, frequently violent, and wholly transformative Gilded Age (1870s-1890s) and Progressive Era (1890s-1920s) deserve our focused consideration. As the country closed out the nineteenth century and moved into the twentieth, its economy, governance, polity, culture, and position on the international stage were forever altered. Explore this digital primary source guide to learn moreand begin making your own contribution to this developing historical literature.
The Gilded Age entered the lexicon and the annals of American history through Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warners satirical 1873 novel of the same name, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today. The tales moral was the danger of privileging speculation over honest labor; the plots machinations exposed the rot beneath the gilded surface. To contemporary observers and historians alike, there was no better metaphor for the corruption and inequality that then suffused American politics and industry.
Beginning in the 1870s, thanks to a modern corporate form of ownership, a new merger movement, and a dominant form of competitive, proprietary capitalism, industrialists like John D. Rockefeller, James Pierpont Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, and Cornelius Vanderbiltknown as captains of industry or, more derogatively, as robber baronsrose to unprecedented heights of prosperity and power. More and more, wealth was concentrated in the hands of the fewbut many ordinary citizens flourished, too, and per capita wealth generally increased throughout the age. Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse began bringing electricity to the public, while innumerable less famous, perhaps even more diligent tinkerers invented new devices and procedures that drastically reordered American society and culture. The Gilded Age was a period of mass immigration and urbanization, and new city-dwellersanxiously but rapidlyintegrated streetcars and elevators packaged processed foods and machine-made clothing into their daily lives.
Not all of the changes were positive. During the Gilded Age, Americaand the worldexperienced a series of periodic economic crises, including a devastating Wall Street crash that inaugurated the Panic of 1873. Recurrent cycles of boom and collapse wrought dramatically different consequences for those at the top and bottom rungs of the economy. As industrial workers faced wage cuts and untenable living conditions, labor unrest spread across the nation, including the 1886 Haymarket Affair and the 1894 Pullman Strike. These persistent conflicts gave strength to myriad labor unions, an insurgent Populist Party, and even radical revolutionaries and anarchists, dedicated not to the reform of capitalism but to its abolition, who wielded bombs and sticks of dynamite alongside their fierce editorials and soapbox oratory. At the turn of the century, political violence was unsettlingly common. President James A. Garfield was assassinated in 1881, and President William McKinley in 1901; eleven years later, former President Theodore Roosevelt survived a shot to the chest.
Less gruesome, if no less contentious, the social reforms and protective legislation that typified the Progressive Era also constituted concerted attempts to limit the social costs of aggressive, market capitalism. Increasingly, crusaders of all stripes lobbied local, state, and federal government officials to step in and address their concerns, from temperance, to agricultural subsidies, to monetary policy. In concert with their counterparts across the North Atlantic world, American civil servants and policymakers worked to ameliorate the problems and miseries of great city life, the insecurities of wage work, the social backwardness of the countryside, [and] the instabilities of the market itself. Though they could not yet vote in most of the country, middle-class women directed settlement houses, womens clubs, and social movements for compulsory public education, regulation of sweatshop labor, public sanitation, and the arbitration of strikes. Throughout this veritable golden age of womens politics, maternal social reformers helped recas[t] the welfare of mothers and children as an issue for public policy while also creating new, viable spaces for women to operate outside the home. That women could effect positive social change was a guiding premise of the movement for womens suffrageand in 1920, the states ratified the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution, granting women the right to vote.
Scholars continue to debate whether the mantle of progressivism can and should apply to the American South. Beginning in the 1890s, southern legislatures passed Jim Crow laws that mandated racial segregation, creating whites-only restaurants, schools, bathrooms, and other public spaces. Across the South, states instituted poll taxes, literacy tests, and discriminatory grandfather clauses that systematically stripped black men of their right to vote. It was precisely at this moment, historian Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore explains, that middle-class black women became the black communitys diplomats to the white community and built social service and civic structures that wrested some recognition and meager services from the expanding welfare state, enacting their own version of progressive politics. If not as voters then as clients of the welfare state, black women led various successful education and public health and safety campaigns.
These fifty years witnessed a dramatic expansion of American empire. After four hundred years of strife, the United States devastated its Native American population and in 1887, the Dawes Act bestowed the president with the power to break up Indian reservations among individuals. In 1898, the nation annexed Hawaii; that same year, it waged the Spanish-American War, bringing Puerto Rico, Cuba, Guam, and the Philippines under American control; and between 1903 and 1914, it constructed the Panama Canal, linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. In 1917, after three years of bloody war in Europe, the U.S. military entered the Great War, helping to ensure Allied victory over the Central Powers and rocketing the United States to a new status as a global superpower.
As Americans encountered the Roaring Twenties andunbeknownst to themstood on the precipice of the Great Depression, they inhabited an utterly transformed nation. How they got therethe stuff of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Erademands deep, critical analysis. Find more resources below:
Everyday Life and Leisure in the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era
- via Library of Congress, America at Work, America at Leisure: Motion Pictures from 1894 to 1915
- via Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection, including 25,000+ images, mostly from the 1890s-1920s
- via Library of Congress, George Grantham Bain Collection, including 41,000+ images, mostly from the 1900s-1920s
- via Library of Congress Flickr, News in the 1910s
- via Harvard University, Women Working, 1800-1930
- via Library of Congress Flickr, Women Striving Forward, 1910-1940
- via Michigan State University, Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project
- the digitized cookbooks, arranged by date
- via Library of Congress, The Spalding Base Ball Guides, 1889 to 1939
- via Library of Congress, Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music, ca. 1870 to 1885
- via Public Domain Music, Music from 1866-1899
- via Public Domain Music, Music from 1900-1923
- via Northwestern University, digitized publications at Homicide in Chicago, 1870-1930
- via Library of Congress, California as I Saw It: First-Person Narratives of California, 1849 to 1900
- via Library of Congress, Before and After the Great Earthquake and Fire: Early Films of San Francisco, 1897 to 1916
- via Library of Congress, The Life of a City: Early Films of New York, 1898 to 1906
- via University of Sydney faculty, Digital Harlem: Everyday Life, 1915-1930
- via New York Public Library, mapping historical New York City photographs at OldNYC
- via New York Public Library, help correct and classify historical New York City maps at Building Inspector
- via University of Southern California, interactive maps and timelines at The Roaring Twenties
National Politics
- via Library of Congress, Presidential Elections, 1789 to 1920: Resource Guides
- via Our Documents, Pendleton Act (1883)
- via Library of Congress, Last Days of a President: Films of McKinley and the Pan-American Exposition, 1901
- via Library of Congress, Theodore Roosevelt: His Life and Times on Film
- via The American Presidency Project, Papers of Woodrow Wilson
- via Library of Congress, American Leaders Speak: Recordings From World War I and the 1920 Election
- Populism
- via Missouri State professor Worth Robert Miller, Documents on the Populist Party
- via Digital Public Library of America, Patronage and Populism: The Politics of the Gilded Age
- via Digital Public Library of America, primary sources for The Populist Movement
American Inventors and Technological Change
- via Digital Public Library of America, primary sources for Electrifying America
- via Our Documents, Thomas Edisons Patent Application for the Light Bulb (1880)
- via Library of Congress, Inventing Entertainment: The Early Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies
- via Library of Congress, Inside an American Factory: Films of the Westinghouse Works, 1904
- via Library of Congress, Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers
Industrialists and Industry
- via Our Documents, Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890)
- via Furman University, Andrew Carnegies Wealth
- via archive.org, digitized publications of Andrew Carnegie
- via archive.org, Cornelius Vanderbilts Electricity as a Motive Power on Trunk Lines
- The Online Collections and Catalog of Rockefeller Archive Center
- Online Collection Catalog of the Morgan Library & Museum, including the Morgan Archives
Labor History
- via New York University, interactive New York City Labor History Map
- via Georgia State University, 19th and 20th Century Labor Prints
- via Cornell University, digitized documents from The 1911 Triangle Factory Fire
- via archive.org, digitized publications of the Knights of Labor
- Industrial Workers of the World Documents Library
- via University of California, Berkeley, The Emma Goldman Papers
- Eugene V. Debs
- via Industrial Workers of the World, Documents by Eugene V. Debs
- via Indiana State University, Eugene V. Debs Correspondence Collection
- via Indiana State University, Debs Collection: Pamphlets, including many digitized pamphlets
- via University of Maryland, The Samuel Gompers Papers
- via Digital Public Library of America, primary sources for When Miners Strike: West Virginia Coal Mining and Labor History
- via Digital Public Library of America, primary sources for The Homestead Strike
- via Northern Illinois University, digitized sources at The Pullman Strike
- via Chicago Historical Society, Haymarket Affair Digital Collection
- via Library of Congress Chronicling America, a selection of newspaper articles on The Haymarket Affair
Social Reform
- via Library of Congress, an online exhibition on Jacob Riis: Revealing How the Other Half Lives
- via International Center of Photography, digitized photographs of Jacob Riis
- via Columbia University, interviews with
- via University System of Georgia, digitized organizational records at For Our Mutual Benefit: The Athens [Georgia] Womans Club and Social Reform, 1899-1920
- Jane Addams, Hull House, and the Settlement House Movement
- via Digital Public Library of America, primary sources for Settlement Houses in the Progressive Era
- via University of Illinois at Chicago, Urban Experience in Chicago: Hull-House and Its Neighborhoods, 1889-1963
- via University of Illinois at Chicago, Seven Settlement Houses-Database of Photos
- Child Labor and Protective Legislation
- via Digital Public Library of America, an online exhibition on Children in Progressive-Era America
- via Library of Congress Flickr, Child Labor & Lewis Hine
- via Our Documents, Keating-Owen Child Labor Act of 1916
- Temperance and Prohibition
- via University of Iowa, digitized proceedings of the Womans Christian Temperance Union
- via HistoryIT, Frances Willard Digital Journals
- via Westerville Public Library, Anti-Saloon League Museum Collection
- via Westerville Public Library, Anti-Saloon League Museum Cartoons and Fliers
- via Brown University, Alcohol, Temperance & Prohibition Collection
- via Digital Public Library of America, an online exhibition on Indomitable Spirits: Prohibition in the United States
The American West, the Frontier, and Native American History
- via Our Documents, Dawes Act (1887)
- via Massachusetts Historical Society, Photographing the American Indian, 1860-1913
- via Northwestern University, Edward S. Curtiss The North American Indian
- via Montana State University, Indian Peoples of the Northern Great Plains Digital Collection
- via Library of Congress Flickr, Framing the West
- via University of Washington, Early Advertising of the West, 1867-1918
Immigration
- via University of Richmond, interactive maps and timelines at Foreign-Born Population, 1850-2010
- via Digital Public Library of America, primary sources for Immigration and Americanization, 1880-1930
- via Online Archive of California, The Chinese in California, 1850-1925
- via Our Documents, Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)
- via University of Minnesota, Digitizing Immigrant Letters (1850-1970)
Jim Crow, Segregation, and Black History
- via Our Documents, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
- via Library of Congress, primary sources for Jim Crow and Segregation
- via Digital Public Library of America, primary sources for Ida B. Wells and Anti-Lynching Activism
- via University of North Carolina, First-Person Narratives of the American South
- via Duke University, oral histories at Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South
- via Digital Public Library of America, primary sources for The Great Migration
- E. B. Du Bois
- via UMass Amherst, E. B. Du Bois Collection, including links to online content
- via Library of Congress, E. B. Du Bois: Online Resources
- via archive.org, W. E. B. Du Boiss The Souls of Black Folk
- Booker T. Washington
- via Library of Congress, Booker T. Washington: Online Resources
- via archive.org, Booker T. Washingtons Up from Slavery
American Imperialism and Foreign Relations
- via Mount Holyoke College, Documents Relating to American Foreign Policy, 1898-1914
- via Digital Public Library of America, an online exhibition on American Empire
- via Our Documents, Joint Resolution to Provide for Annexing the Hawaiian Islands to the United States (1898)
- via Our Documents, Platt Amendment (1903)
- Spanish-American War
- via Digital Public Library of America, primary sources for American Imperialism: The Spanish-American War
- via Library of Congress, primary sources for The Spanish-American War: The United States Becomes a World Power
- via Library of Congress Chronicling America, a selection of newspaper articles on the Major Events of the Spanish American War
- via Library of Congress Chronicling America, a selection of newspaper articles on The Sinking of The Maine
- via Library of Congress, The Spanish-American War in Motion Pictures
- Panama Canal
- via Digital Public Library of America, primary sources for The Panama Canal
- via Linda Hall Library, Explore the Map of the Panama Canal
World War I
- via Our Documents, Joint Address to Congress Leading to a Declaration of War Against Germany (1917)
- via Digital Public Library of America, primary sources for World War I: America Heads to War
- via Library of Congress, primary sources for World War I
- via University of North Carolina, North Carolinians and the Great War
- via New York Public Library, an online exhibition, Over Here: WWI and the Fight for the American Mind
- via Library of Congress, World War I Posters
- via University of Washington, digitized War Posters
- via University of Iowa DIY History, help review transcribed World War I Diaries and Letters
- via Library of Congress, Stars and Stripes: The American Soldiers Newspaper of World War I, 1918 to 1919
- via Library of Congress, Newspaper Pictorials: World War I Rotogravures, 1914 to 1919
- via Library of Congress Flickr, World War I Panoramas
Womens Suffrage and the Nineteenth Amendment
- via Our Documents, 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Womens Right to Vote (1920)
- via Digital Public Library of America, primary sources for Womens Suffrage: Campaign for the Nineteenth Amendment
- via Library of Congress, primary sources for Womens Suffrage
- via Library of Congress, Votes for Women: Selections from the National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection, 1848-1921
- via Library of Congress, Women of Protest: Photographs from the Records of the National Womans Party
- via Bryn Mawr College, Catt Collection Suffrage Photographs
- via Kansas Historical Society, The Suffrage Song Book
Works Cited