For decades, Americans have wondered if we are living through another Gilded Age. Mark Twain coined this term to describe the period between the 1870s and 1890s in which the nation experienced unprecedented industrial growth that created a new class of wealthy entrepreneurs, supported by low-skilled labor. The lopsided economics of industrialization elicited the critique from Twain, who saw industrialism’s shiny façade as a cover for larger systemic inequities.
On the surface, the parallels to today’s industrial growth are easy to see. The fast-paced industrial growth fueled by microchips and clouds has created a reality unimaginable to previous generations. Celebrity industrial leaders like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have replaced John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. And the federal government hesitates to use its regulatory power in the name of record profits and stock dividends. But if we are to see these shiny similarities, we must also look beneath the gold gilding and examine the darker parallels. Like now, the unprecedented corporate earnings and profits contributed to the growing wage disparities between the managerial and working classes during the Gilded Age. Like then, wages did not keep up with the cost of living leading to lives of despair. And in both moments, individuals with few economic, political, and social opportunities turned to acts of violence. Americans have crafted a progressive narrative grounded in the belief that upward mobility supported by democratic practices is universally available. But the reality rarely supports this dream. If we want to understand either Gilded Age, we must explore the darker realities of inequity—economic hardship, social despair, and political isolation. And we need to understand public violence, in any era, as part of the process for systemic change.
