Profs and Pints Northern Virginia presents: “Make America Gilded Again?” a look at America’s Gilded Age and how it compares to our current time, with award-winning historian Allen Pietrobon, assistant professor and chair of the Global Affairs program at Trinity Washington University.
Crippling economic problems. Factory automation leading to job losses. Fears related to mass immigration that led to crackdowns and bans. The spread of misinformation by new media and communication platforms that were called “too fast for the truth.” The assassination of CEOs of hated companies. Corporate titans cozying up to politicians and using their money to unduly influence elections and politics.
Sounds like 2025? Actually, here we’re talking about America from 1875 to 1900.
Known as “The Gilded Age,” it was a crucial era of economic disruption, political turmoil, battles over immigration, and social change that set the United States on the path to becoming the most economically powerful country in the world.
A leading characteristic of the era was the astronomical wealth gap between the rich and everyone else. Industrial tycoons like the Rockefellers and the Carnegies built unthinkably large business empires and then used their monopoly power to hold down wages and shut down competition. They deployed their vast profits to buy politicians and corruptly tilt politics and the economy in their favor.
Many other Americans were ill-equipped to compete in the new economy and turned to strikes, labor violence, and protests to demand their fair share. The government aggressively used police and the military to crack down on any dissent. All the while Americans grew increasingly divided and angry at their political leaders, culminating the assassination of a president carried out by a disgruntled, unemployed young man.
Does the Gilded Age seem familiar yet? What can we learn from it going forward? (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)
Image: An 1883 cartoon from Puck magazine depicts rich robber barons being carried by the workers of their day (Library of Congress / Wikimedia).