The Gilded Age

Paper Summary:

This paper looks at the tremendous disparities between the rich and the poor during the Gilded Age in America. It does this by comparing the conditions and meager incomes of the masses to those of the well-known, wealthy men of that era: Jay Gould, the Vanderbilts, the Rockefellers.

From the Paper:

"One good way to get an idea of just how terrible the conditions were and how meager incomes were for the masses is to compare their fate with the grand estates of the rich. George Vanderbilt, son of Cornelius Vanderbilt, founder of a railroad empire, built himself a 250-room "home" on 8,000 acres in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina (Biltmore Estate Web site, "Visit Biltmore Estate"). Today, the "Biltmore Estate" chateau is a gleaming monument to the opulence of the Gilded Age still featuring the priceless artifacts and paintings that the Vanderbilt family had stocked it with. Compared with the poverty and squalor that residents of New York tenement houses had to endure, it could be said that the Vanderbilts " and people like Jay Gould, and other "robber barons" " lived in heaven, and New York City tenement dwellers lived in hell."

More papers on The Gilded Age:

• Analytical Essay # 42418 : "The Gilded Age"
• Analytical Essay # 118825 : "The Gilded Age in America"
• Essay # 51205 : "The New Women of the Gilded Age"

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