{"version":"1.0","type":"rich","provider_name":"Acast","provider_url":"https://acast.com","height":250,"width":700,"html":"<iframe src=\"https://embed.acast.com/$/9a03fe9e-1ff0-4dcc-b3f6-50bd1f016ea4/94b8d07a-03f4-4e67-9239-55d2e83e3313?\" frameBorder=\"0\" width=\"700\" height=\"250\"></iframe>","title":"Talking Politics Guide to ... The Gilded Age","thumbnail_width":200,"thumbnail_height":200,"thumbnail_url":"https://open-images.acast.com/shows/6195701f2eacc3a36070252a/619570bccb3c660012e3d1a4.jpg?height=200","description":"<p>We talk to historian Sarah Churchwell about the Gilded Age in&nbsp;late nineteenth century America and the comparisons with today. Rampant&nbsp;inequality, racial conflict, fights over immigration, technological&nbsp;revolution: is Trump's America repeating the pattern or is it something&nbsp;</p><p>new?</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Talking Points:</strong></p><p><br></p><p>In 1873, Mark Twain and Charles W. Warner coined the term “The Gilded Age,” in their eponymous novel.&nbsp;</p><ul><li>The phrase was re-discovered in the 1920s and applied retrospectively to the period of the 1870s-roughly 1900.</li><li><em>The Gilded Age</em> satirized the way wealth and consumerism were taking over American life and showed how this move towards a “huxterist” culture was subverting America’s democratic ideals.</li></ul><p><br></p><p>Yet this was also a period of real growth.&nbsp;</p><ul><li>The major transformation of the period was the railroad.&nbsp;</li><li>Rampant inequality characterized the era: the robber barons on the one hand, and poor immigrant communities on the other. But in the middle of this, there was also a group of people working their way into the middle class.</li></ul><p><br></p><p>Immigration, particularly from Eastern Europe, exploded during this period.</p><ul><li>America did not have immigration control.&nbsp;</li><li>The first immigration laws were passed in the 1880s and 1890s, most notably the Chinese Exclusion Act.</li></ul><p><br></p><p>Reconstruction overlaps with the Gilded Age.</p><ul><li>There was no redistribution to the former slaves. Johnson effectively pardoned the former Confederates.&nbsp;</li><li>The Klan emerged during this period as domestic terrorists.</li><li>This ultimately leads to the Great Migration, African Americans leaving the South to seek opportunities further North.</li></ul><p><br></p><p>The bridge between the Gilded Age and the Progressive Period was the age of populism.</p><ul><li>William Jennings Bryan was a grassroots populist who almost became president.</li><li>There are many echoes to the present moment: white working class men asserting their right to be middle America at the cost of excluding other communities.</li></ul><p><br></p><p>Is this a new Gilded Age?</p><ul><li>Today, the tech giants are cornering technology the way that Carneige cornered steel.&nbsp;</li><li>But maybe the gilt is the story, and the exceptional moments are the aberrations.&nbsp;</li></ul><p><br></p><p>Further Learning:</p><ul><li><a href=\"https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/behold-america-9781408894774/\" target=\"_blank\">Sarah’s book, <em>Behold America</em></a></li><li><a href=\"https://www.amazon.com/Chapters-Erie-Charles-Francis-Adams/dp/1577662512\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Chapters of Erie, Henry Adams</em></a></li></ul>","author_name":"David Runciman and Catherine Carr"}