Essay On The Gilded Age

During the Gilded Age, there were many views and ideas on what could be improved regarding the United States government. Some of these ideas were widely supported and eventually came to fruition, while others lost support over time. When examining these ideas, one could relate them to our current government to find improvements, because the government can always be improved. Some of the popular ideas at the time related to social Darwinism, women in the workforce, work related liberties, and helping the lower class. In 1894, William Sumner published “The Absurd Effort to Make the World Over.” This article described his view on social Darwinism. Social Darwinism is the theory that the community and economy are subject to Darwin’s laws of natural …show more content…
In 1898, Charlotte Gilman wrote Women and Economics which inspired women across the nation. In this piece, Gilman describes how “women work longer and harder than most men” and that “young girls [desire] to be independent, [and to] have a career all their own.” She goes on to describe how women need economic independence to “achieve a much better fulfilment of their duties as wives and mothers and contribute to the vast improvement of health and happiness of the human race.” While Gilman is striving for economic independence, industrial workers like John Mitchell are looking for industrial independence. John Mitchell was head of the United Mine Workers and in his article, “The Workingman’s Conception of Industrial Liberty,” he describes how his fellow workers had no say in new laws that directly affected them. According to Mitchell, “A number of years ago the legislatures of several coal producing states enacted laws requiring employers to pay the wages of their workmen in lawful money of the U.S.,” while before this they were paid with coal which was “a great hardship to the workmen”. These local laws were taken to the Supreme Court and found that they were an “invasion of the workman’s liberty to deny him the right to accept merchandise in lieu of money as payment of his wages.”Help me l to deny hime the right to accept merchandise

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