For as long as humans have been on Earth, people have been judged and characterized by the multitude of their wealth. Whether it be the Roman Empire where the majority of people were poor slaves and servants who often abandon their children that they can not afford and the minority of rich who live away from the overpopulated smelly city or the African natives who were defenseless and stolen from their homeland for centuries to be used as slaves, the poor have been treated as such while the rich continue to flourish. Even as time progressed and more economic opportunities opened up with the arrival of new inventions and technology, this problem continues, and is traceable throughout the history of America. As the economy has advanced as described, situations not yet encountered may be found that have to be dealt with. There many different ideologies on how specific national economic problems should be dealt with, and can be reflected through legislation, presidential policy, and public belief during these situations. An example of such situation could be the rise of monopolies during the gilded age and the lack of legislation that caused a plethora of bad working conditions such as hazardous environments, low wages, and long hours. During this time period the major public belief among the working class was to fix these problems, and they argued for this through labor unions. Another example would be the stock market crash and the great depression in the early 20th century, which was troublesome and complicated. After many presidential attempts were made to end it, it eventually was slightly soothed with president Roosevelt's New Deal that helped somewhat, but more specifically World War 2 and the war time economy. America is economically growing, but the prosperity is not distributed equally among citizens, a trend that can be traced throughout history and analyzed in time periods with specifically high income gaps such as the gilded age, the 1920s, and the 1980s due to presidential policies, cultural beliefs, and ( )
The Gilded Age was named according to the state of America during this time period. It seemed great on the outside and encouraged the immigration of many foreigners, but was filled with slums and poverty on the inside. A time shining with inequality. This poverty was the outcome of an explosion of new technology and innovation. Some technologies created small unskilled jobs in factories while others replaced a man's work with a machines. Between 1860 and 1900 a total of around 440,000 patents were issued, a statistic that proves the massive boom in enginuity that occured in the Gilded age both in the industrial area and agricultural economy. The inventions of steam tractors along with mechanical harvesters, combines and reapers transformed a time and worker requiring job into a short machines job, with an operator. This in effect was one of many causes of unemployment in the era. The economy was not any better in the industrial side of the country. With the creation of many manufacturing companies led to the need for lots of unskilled workers, many of whom were assigned jobs that only required them to build a small piece of a bigger product hundreds of times a day. Between 1869 and 1900, the nation's workforce increased from 13 million to 19 million workers, most of which involving low wages, long working hours, and hazardous working environments. This increase also came with an increase in the manufacturing sector in the economy, which rose from $3 billion to $13 billion. The increase in factories and massive work forces helped spark the increase in creation of cities. By 1900 over 40% of America's population lived in a city. The thousands of workers employed in large needed places to live, but very little wages limited the available options for housing. Poor workers turned to tenement housings and poverty ridden slums where hundreds of fellow workers crowded into small cramped rooms as their homes. Tenements were mostly occupied by residents of similar backgrounds. With the increase in available jobs came the increase of immigration by foreigners struck by famine or poverty at home, such as the irish potato famine, or others with hope in America and economic possibility. In 1860 half of the total population of city dwellers were immigrants, with an increase in 3.7 to 5 million immigrants in the late 1800s. Immigrants tended to live in separate communities that formed miniature colonies off their culture. For example Irish immigrants lived in separate districts along with fellow Irish, and the same with different ethnicities. This led to modern day places such as Chinatown.
As industry expanded and ventured into places not yet explored, the government had a hard time catching up. With new areas of business discovered, such as steel, manufacturing leaders sought complete control over their industries with the hope of full power of those areas economies. These industry leaders were called monopolies, where industries were operated by one or very few other businesses with little to no other competition, leaving free reign to set prices however high they would be pleased. An example of this would be Rockefeller and the oil industry. An already successful Standard Oil business that needed more, Rockefeller used many unconventional methods of eliminating other competitors in the oil business, such as supposedly blowing up another competitors oil wells. Other means of taking over entire industries was through alliances and mergers, or buying other companies. The number of mergers in the United States increased from 69 to 1208 in 2 years during this Era. Monopolies were not immediately outlawed due to the economic ideology during the Gilded age. With Americans believing in a Laissez Faire style of economy, or an economy with little government interference, monopolies continued to thrive with. As long as the government would not interfere with them, there was nobody that could shut down a monopoly or even compete in a monopolized industry. When government did attempt to interfere, such legislation was normally shot down by state courts as unconstitutional. This starts after McKinley's presidency, often known as the last “hands on†president towards the economy up until FDR and the New Deal.