Talk:Gilded Age

Real Wages

" The average annual wage per industrial worker, including men, women, and children, rose from $380 in 1880 ($12,381 in 2024 dollars) to $584 in 1890 ($19,738 in 2024 dollars), a gain of 59%."

IF you follow the second citation, it links to a census bulletin for the city of new haven. So that seems clearly inappropriate to me. Obviously what happened in one city is not necessarily representative of the nation as a whole.

Rothbard instead gives (1900–1914 = 100) Date Urban Labor Farm Labor Combined 1869 77 96 87 1879 61 61 61 1889 72 78 75

In his History of Money and Banking in the United States.

Which is a more realistic 23% increase. Interesting also that farm wages grew more rapidly during this time period.

It may be true that industrial workers specifically did see skyrocketing wages, but at present I do not believe the sources substantiate this claim.

I haven't checked the first citations (also surely it is bad practice to list 3 citations as one?), because by the titles they seem to be simply about converting nominal prices to real prices, not about real wage increases during the Gilded Age. ~2026-94481-9 (talk) 12:03, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

city of New Haven??? what cite?? I think it shows https://www.americanantiquarian.org/proceedings/44525121.pdf

Rjensen (talk) 12:30, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

it is now the first cite, some deleted the previous first cite.

it links here :

https://books.google.com/books?id=-szrAAAAMAAJ&pg=PP2 ~2026-94481-9 (talk) 21:11, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

About the native americans

It is quite startling that the Native assimilation section says so few about the real violence the natives suffered.

For instance, Dee Brown compiled some of these events in Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee (1970), showing how in the 1860s-1880s the railroad expansions or the installation of more and more white settlers was often made by slaughtering entire settlements, starving them on purpose, and breaking promises. Many other sources can be used:

- Thornton, Russell. (1942) American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History Since 1492.

- Wooster, R. (1995). The Military and United States Indian Policy 1865–1903

- David Smits, «The Frontier Army and the Destruction of the Buffalo: 1865-1883"

- etc

The fact that it is written "Native Americans individually had the choice to [...]" makes this page unfaithful to history, by ignoring -or hiding- a part of America's Gilded Age. "Settlers killed American bison by the millions" misses one of the central points: it was made on purpose with the support of military and political authorities to starve the natives.

Such information is no detail as it allows a fundamentally different reading than just "the settlers just killed too many bisons and natives had fair opportunities to make choices". It was made on purpose, and central to the Gilded Age. ~2026-15511-26 (talk) 13:04, 11 March 2026 (UTC)