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The economic history of the United States is about characteristics of and important developments in the economy of the U.S., from the colonial era to the present. The emphasis is on productivity and economic performance and how the economy was affected by new technologies, the change of size in economic sectors and the effects of legislation ...
The period of U.S. history between 1921 and 1929, known as the Era of Prosperity, was dominated by the Republicans in the national government. The three Republican presidents who served during that time were: Warren G. Harding (1921 – 1923), Calvin Coolidge (1923 – 1929), and Herbert C. Hoover (1929 – 1933).
The era from 1870 to 1890 was called the Gilded Age because it suggested that people's outward appearances were accurate reflections of their wealth and station in life. It referred to the extravagant economic prosperity shared across most social and economic classes of the period.
- New Jersey. Median Household Income: $96,346. New Jersey has a total of three counties among the 15 wealthiest counties in the U.S., according to 2017-2021 Census Bureau figures.
- Maryland. Median Household Income: $94,991. Maryland’s Howard County, with a median household income of $129,549, was the seventh-wealthiest county in the nation, according to 2017-2021 Census Bureau estimates.
- Massachusetts. Median Household Income: $94,488. The education and health services supersector is the largest in Massachusetts, with more than 840,000 workers employed in those fields as of October 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
- Hawaii. Median Household Income: $92,458. With large workforces in the trade, transportation and utilities supersector and in the leisure and hospitality supersector, the public sector remains the largest employer in Hawaii, with more than 124,000 government workers as of October 2023, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
- Financial Instability
- The Triumph of Capital
- Wealth Inequality
- The Labor Movement
- Immigration and Race
- The People’s Party
- Bryan, Mckinley, Debs
- Primary Source Readings
- References
Although the Civil War was about slavery and not about states’ rights, as many revisionists have claimed, it is nonetheless true that the war and its aftermath catalyzed a widespread increase in federal power at the expense of state and local control. The Lincoln administration’s Pacific Railroad Act created a new transcontinental rail industry. It...
The great national strikes first hit the railroads only because no other industry had so effectively marshaled together capital, government support, and bureaucratic management. But labor unrest grew with the increasing success of industrial capitalism. Many workers perceived their new powerlessness in the coming industrial order. Skills mattered l...
Industrial capitalism produced the greatest advances in efficiency and productivity that the world had ever seen. Giant corporations marshaled capital on an unprecedented scale, produced affordable consumer products, and earned profits that created unheard-of fortunes. But mass production also created millions of low-paid, unskilled, unreliable job...
The ideas of social Darwinism attracted little support among the mass of American industrial workers. Although at the turn of the twentieth century farmers were still the largest workforce in America, industrial workers toiled in difficult jobs for long hours and little pay. Mechanization and mass production threw skilled craftsmen into unskilled m...
Americans celebrated in 1886 when President Grover Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor. A million people attended New York’s first ticker-tape parade and Cleveland promised the statue’s “stream of light shall pierce the darkness of ignorance and man’s oppression until Liberty enlightens the world.” The famous poem written b...
“Wall Street owns the country,” the Populist leader Mary Elizabeth Lease told dispossessed farmers around 1890. “It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street.” Farmers, who remained a majority of the American population through the first decade of...
Two of the most famous politicians of their day were a Populist, William Jennings Bryan, and a Socialist, Eugene V. Debs. Bryan (1860–1925) was a famous orator, a Nebraska congressman, a three-time presidential candidate, U.S. secretary of state under Woodrow Wilson, and a lawyer who supported prohibition and opposed Darwinism in the 1925 Scopes Mo...
William Graham Sumner on “What the Social Classes Owe to Each Other”, 1883 William Graham Sumner, a professor of sociology at Yale University, penned several pieces associated with the philosophy of Social Darwinism. In this excerpt, Sumner argues that “the rich are good-natured.” Henry George, Progress and Poverty, Selections (1879) In 1879, the e...
This chapter is based on Chapter 16 of The American Yawp. In its original form the chapter was edited by Joseph Locke with content contributions by Andrew C. Baker, Nicholas Blood, Justin Clark, Dan Du, Caroline Bunnell Harris, David Hochfelder Scott Libson, Joseph Locke, Leah Richier, Matthew Simmons, Kate Sohasky, Joseph Super, and Kaylynn Washno...
During the colonial era, from 1492 to 1821, Spain sent explorers, conquerors, and settlers to the New World. The territories that became part of the Spanish empire were called New Spain.
Giants of Wealth: Carnegie and Morgan. The evolution from technical innovation to massive industry took place among entrepreneurs whose sometimes risky business ventures paid off, making them some of the richest Americans of their day and some of the richest in history.
