a vicious cold snap hit New York in the
first week of February 1897 but nothing
could slow the preparations for the
impending revelry the city's wealthiest
citizens were readying themselves for
one of the most anticipated balls in the
nation's history an extravagant
exclamation point on what would come to
be known as the Gilded Age during the
Gilded Age Americans feel quite
certainly that they are the vanguard of
civilization and progress there's an
enormous period of opportunity and
possibility and hope no group felt more
confident about the future than the
guests who would gather for the party at
the luxurious Waldorf Hotel the evenings
total price tag according to newspaper
reports was enough to feed nearly a
thousand working-class families for a
full year
Defenders noted that the ball stood to
benefit the entire city
critics beg to differ with all the
people warned one Minister who have to
lie awake nights contriving to spend
their time and their money and all the
others who lie awake wondering how they
may get food there is danger in the air
it was a fractious time in which a sense
of desperation amidst growing wealth was
emerging increasingly workers begin to
say if I as a member of the society lack
the ability to pay my bills and to feed
my family then I am NOT a free citizen
of a healthy republic I'm something
something else something that the
founding fathers would not recognize the
magnitude of the late 19th century
transformation of American society is
hard to exaggerate it was as if you you
woke up in one country and you went to
bed in another
thirty years after the Civil War America
had transformed into an economic
powerhouse but the transformation had
created stark new divides in wealth
standing and opportunity it's shocking
for people to see a country developing
before them that is increasingly clearly
divided into the haves and have-nots
guilded is not golden gilded has the
sense of a patina covering something
else it's the shiny exterior and the rot
underneath by the time New York's elite
gathered at the Waldorf Ballroom the
richest 4,000 families in the country
less than 1% of all Americans had
scooped up nearly as much treasure as
the other 11.6 million families combined
we are the rich one partygoer remarked
we own America we got it god knows how
but we intend to keep it if we can there
is this fight over what is America's
collective self-identity who are we are
we two nations the poor and the wealthy
or are we one nation where everybody has
a chance to succeed
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when the station comes out of the Civil
War we are still a nation divided by
regions there's very little national
market if you need a pair of shoes you
don't get it from a factory a hundred
miles away you get it from the local
shoe maker life was much much more local
much more what was going on right around
you what your neighbors were doing what
your friends were doing what your
enemies were doing and how you were
doing on a day to day basis America had
been founded its political system had
been founded for a country of farmers
but it was becoming a nation of
industrialists becoming a nation of
urban workers it was becoming a nation
of cities
[Music]
railroads knit the entire country
together
in a way that hadn't existed before so
now merchants manufacturers industrious
can think nationally you don't have to
think simply in terms of your local
market if you have a good idea if you
have a good procedure for producing
something you can think of selling your
goods all over the country by the early
1880s the nation's largest corporation
the Pennsylvania Railroad carried more
than 2 million tons of industrial and
consumer goods every year steel left
mills in Pittsburgh for destinations
around the country so too did refined
oil from Cleveland factory made
furniture from Cincinnati and harvesters
from Chicago
railroads move coal from Wyoming timber
from Oregon silver from Nevada and
Colorado and copper from Montana
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tens of thousands of young men and women
from farm families could hop on the
train to go where the jobs were the
newly industrializing cities
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former slaves and their children joined
the urban migration bound for new
opportunities in Memphis Atlanta
Richmond or as far north as Philadelphia
and New York
the hope is for equality and for
first-class citizenship and to be a part
of what is happening in terms of
progress and change they're trying to
make the democracy and the country work
for them progress is part of the
American credo and has been almost from
the beginning of the nation Americans
prided themselves on their inventiveness
their ingenuity their entrepreneurial
get-up-and-go progress is thought of as
inevitable
it's divinely inspired there's a pastor
who talked about these technological
innovations as God's tools to make a
more perfect society
and so becomes almost a spiritual idea
this industrial spirit one of the most
innovative entrepreneurs of the day was
Andrew Carnegie
he owned a stable full of fine blooded
horses and enjoyed taking long rides
through Central Park
[Music]
in the spring of 1881 he was a man in
the saddle in always having just
consolidated his growing manufacturing
enterprises under a single banner
Carnegie Brothers & Company
some days Carnegie would ride out of the
park and head north on upper Broadway
other days he would ride all the way to
the high bridge where traffic loosened
and he could open up to a gallop along
the banks of the Harlem River in the few
hours he was out riding through New York
his blast furnaces 300 miles to the west
produced more than 60 tons of steel and
earned him about as much as the average
American made in a year
this remarkable and novel fact made
forty-five year old Andrew Carnegie the
emblem of a new kind of American dream
like john d rockefeller in the oil
refining business and Cornelius
Vanderbilt in railroads Carnegie was
riding a wave of industrialization using
new technology and mass production to
secure enormous personal wealth what's
important to realize is that these men
they have visions Carnegie Rockefeller
the railroad barons they don't invent
anything they're managers
Carnegie is one of the few American
millionaires of this era or any other
who can genuinely call himself a
self-made man he really does come from
humble origins
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