5 Quotes About Gilded Age

The Gilded Age was a period in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the United States. The term was coined from the extreme wealth of railroad tycoon Jay Gould, who is referred to as “the king of the robber barons”. The Gilded Age was a time of great economic inequality in the United States, when industrialists and financiers were widely viewed as being out of touch with the struggles of the average American worker. While this period came at a time when most people had little to no access to electricity or many modern conveniences, it was also a time when many Americans worked extremely hard for extremely little money.

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America's industrial success produced a roll call of financial magnificence: Rockefellers, Morgans, Astors, Mellons, Fricks, Carnegies, Goulds, du Ponts, Belmonts, Harrimans, Huntingtons, Vanderbilts, and many more based in dynastic wealth of essentially inexhaustible proportions. John D. Rockefeller made $1 billion a year, measured in today's money, and paid no income tax. No one did, for income tax did not yet exist in America. Congress tried to introduce an income tax of 2 percent on earnings of $4, 000 in 1894, but the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional. Income tax wouldn't become a regular part of American Life until 1914. People would never be this rich again. Spending all this wealth became for many a more or less full-time occupation. A kind of desperate, vulgar edge became attached to almost everything they did. At one New York dinner party, guests found the table heaped with sand and at each place a little gold spade; upon a signal, they were invited to dig in and search for diamonds and other costly glitter buried within. At another party - possibly the most preposterous ever staged - several dozen horses with padded hooves were led into the ballroom of Sherry's, a vast and esteemed eating establishment, and tethered around the tables so that the guests, dressed as cowboys and cowgirls, could enjoy the novel and sublimely pointless pleasure of dining in a New York ballroom on horseback. Bill Bryson
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I’m a man of words, yet you rob me of them every single time. Joanna Shupe
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This isn't London, sweetheart. This is New York City and we can spot a fraud from a mile away. Joanna Shupe
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Love was like a stock, Lizzie realized. You gambled on its paying off in the long run–but it could just as easily cost you everything. Joanna Shupe