The late 19th and early 20th century
The late 19th and early 20th century was a very extreme time for the United States, mainly in the differences between the rich and the poor. Which is my thesis statement for this research paper. During this era the poor got poorer and the rich got richer, rarely was there a middleclass population. The rich people never paid attention to the poor; they were only concerned with themselves and their well-being. In this paper I will support this thesis elaborately.The "Gilded Age" was a term used by Mark Twain to describe the late 19th century and the early 20th century. It brought change for the middle class people as well as the rich and poor (Hakim p. 9). Vacations became part of the lives of ordinary people for the first time. It was a time of extremes for the American population.
Another instance in which the rich was greatly different from the poor was during deflation. The rich lived the good life while the poor struggled to put food on the table. Some of those owners got rich but refused to pay their workers a fair wage (p. The rich will always be on the top and the poor will always be on the bottom. The owner sometimes didn't even live in the same town as their workers. This shows how the rich kids went to school and got an education while the poor kids stayed with family members either to work or take care of younger ones. This shows how the rich gained and the poor lost. Because the poor usually borrowed money, deflation lowered their income but they still had to payback loans at interest rates based on the old higher prices (p. Fat-cat industrialists stuffed themselves on profits from high tariffs, while poor farmers were excluded from the good life (p. While the rich rarely had debts, the poor were in trouble. These immigrants who had no families sometimes slept in "five-cents-a-spot" lodgings-as many as 12 people jammed into a room 13 feet square. The poor immigrants who came from other countries looking for a better life were faced with difficult living conditions.
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