okay in this time period that we're going to review in this video we are talking about the Gilded Age uh this is a time period that can be best summarized as you know it looked really great on the outside but not so good on the inside so using our visual of the golden apple where we have time periods that's the golden age is usually a time where a country or an Empire really thrives and has a lot of advancements and peace and um and you know so it's golden all the way through what we're talking about in America from about 1880 to about 1910 is what we call the Gilded Age and when we talk about something being gilded it's covered in Gold but not necessarily golden all the way through so for the sake of the Gilded Age the outside looked really good we were making lots of money in the United States lots of profit lots of big businesses but on the inside there were issues a lot of social issues especially and um we're going to go through these in this video so let's look at the first one of the first big issues that happened during the Gilded Age and that's going to be the issue of Westward Expansion uh during this time this is whenever the American frontier which is going to be pretty much from the Great Plains All the Way West to California and this area is going to start closing off some of your major causes you're going to have the gold rush in um the kond de region Also earlier in California that's going to lead to a lot of people moving West uh probably one of the biggest things that's going to impact the uh closing of the frontier is going to be the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad this basically was the led to a railroad that you could essentially take from let's say New York City to San Francisco California before the railroad was completed for you to actually make that trip over across the land you would have to actually you know take a covered wagon or go on foot or on Horseback which would take months and was very dangerous now you have a railroad which cuts it down to to maybe weeks maybe less than that to get it from one side of the country to the other and so this is a huge factor in the completion of the in the closing of the frontier another big part that's going to contribute to the closing Frontier is going to be the Homestead Act and this act was actually passed in 1862 and it said that any citizen could occupy 160 Acres of government land and if the settler improved the land maybe used it for farming or made a home on it um after 5 years they would own that property so hey you can go out there and get a 160 acres of land that's about the size of 160 football fields and if you work it for 5 years and you take good care of it then that land is yours and of course at this point in time for the most part almost all the land from the Great Plains West was government land even if Native Americans lived on it so this was another huge factor of closing the frontier effects of closing the frontier uh because you had a lot of farmers move out to the Great Plains they had to learn how to adapt to that area uh the soil's a little harder to farm some times the weather's a little bit harsher than what you would get maybe in the South where you had a lot of uh Farmers um they didn't have a lot of trees or other things they could use to make homes so they had to learn to make do with what they had uh they even learn how to farm maybe uh plant certain crops that would Thrive more in that part of the country so they really benefited and really figured out how to make the most of that land another major effect of the um closing the frontier is you're going to have a boom in the cattle industry and one of the things that really helps the cattle industry boom is the presence of these railroads because now you have a way to transport the beef from the Texas region specifically and transport it either out to California or back East where there's a lot more people that need food one of the negative consequences of closing the frontier Was the removal of Native Americans to reservations when all these people came out and took the homestead the land and the Homestead Act uh that led to a lot of displacement of Native Americans and then another exam another negative effect is going to be the decimate sorry decimation the decimation of buffalo population there were Hunters they went and killed them for their hides didn't use any other part of their bodies and led to a near extinction of the species so some different images you might see with this topic um there picture of a steam engine from the Continental railroad this is an example of a family and creating a house pretty much a saw house a great example of adapting to the environment policies towards Native Americans whenever we started moving West um Americans felt like well this land belonged more to the Americans and not to the Native Americans even though they were there way before we were this led to a lot of fighting and conflict over the land it also led to a law pass called the do act the do act the main purpose of this was to try to americanize Native Americans make them look more like Americans have cut their hair off wear western clothing learn English um pretty much lose their traditional tribal ways also another major factor from the do act is it's going to give families reservation land and try to make them Farmers whereas most of them have been hunter gatherers their whole life and now they want to make them more like Americans and do farming so you could probably imagine the Doak did not bode well for Native Americans another policy with Native Americans that um occurred actually after the Gilded Age is going to be the American citizenship Act of 1924 and so it wasn't until 1924 until they finally decide to recognize native Americans as American citizens which I personally find ironic since they were they are the original Americans political issues during the Gilded Age uh some of your political issues we already kind of talked about the Indian policies so uh because of our differing views on land use and culture that's going to create a lot of conflict um there was a Bureau created in the government called The Bureau of Indian Affairs where they're going to basically you know monitor the issues with Native Americans during this time um another big thing that's going to happen during this time is the whole idea of assimilation which I already me mentioned and if you ever want to look up an example of um how they would disseminate Native Americans look up the carile school and that's a really a really good documented example of how we tried to assimilate Native Americans um also during with Indian policies this also involved creating the Indian Territory in Oklahoma that opened it to settlement so there's various ways that they various Indian policies they made during this guilded age and it was more where it's they kind of saw the Native Americans as a problem and how try to figure out how to deal with that problem rather than figuring out how we can all kind of live together another big issue that's going to happen during this time and this time is very um you have a lot of cities growing you have a lot of immigrants moving into the country there's a lot of crowding a lot of poverty so this is going to lead to kind of your um the root of what we later are going to see as organized crime and this is what we call political machines and political machines are groups that see a PE see a group in need such as immigrants or the poor and they decide they're going to help them and provide them with jobs and social services but it's all with at a price and so they would do these things for the poor and immigrants and these groups and in exchange those people would go and vote for whoever the political machine was endorsing in local elections and one of our big examples that you'll usually see um you'll probably see this picture show up on a test at some point this is Boss Tweed and this example this is a good political cartoon example of here's your ballot where you put your vote in and so it's kind of like well I gave you a job I gave you um you know gave you food and a job now you got to go vote for my guy so this is a big thing that H started in the guilded age civil service reform during this time and this is actually something that came out of this that was positive one of the issues that even was a big deal starting with even Andrew Jackson all the way up until through the Gilded Age and it still happens today some was this issue of the spoil system so this is basically when you reward your political supporters with government jobs so um that's why you see a lot of um maybe instead of getting them a job or maybe instead of picking the Secretary of Defense because they have a lot of military experience you pick them because they're your buddy and they helped you get elected as president that would be an example of spoil system um so one thing that happened to kind of Reform this is they pass the Pendleton Act and this is going to make things based on Merit or skill rather thany loyalty so this is going to lead to a positive direction of um trying to get rid of that old the good old boy spoil system another political issue that's going to come up during this time is going to be u a group that we're going to talk about more in the Progressive area and there um it's the idea of populism and this is going to stem from different farmer issues in the late 1800s um where there's Rising prices and Farmers can't pay their taxes and they um there's going to it's going to just lead to all kinds of economic problems that they want to try to take care of so the populists are really going to be their number one group that they work with are farmers and their big goals they wanted to get were the unlimited coinage of silver which they felt like would help improve the economy and take us off the gold standard uh they wanted a federal ownership of railroads so that people couldn't um maybe form a monopoly or or you know cheat people out of money um a graduated income tax which means the more money you make the more percentage of your income goes to taxes and the idea of a direct election of senators and direct election of senators is where you and I go and vote for senators where what it used to be is that a state the states would decide who were the Senators and not the people so this is a group that's going to show up again with the Progressive Era so just be looking for them populism they want to help farmers a lot of their goals do get um achieved but maybe not as a from a populist political leader other political parties adopt their IDE ideas so another image you might see associated with question you've got your new farm equipment and the problem with the new farm equipment is it increases the amount of crops you you know that you make but the problem is it decreases the price of crops and so this is going to be one of the big things that leads to the farmers's plight