ABSTRACT
Contradictory trends characterized the period between Reconstruction and World War I – what historians called the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. The Civil War’s horrific bloodletting was over, but its aftermath cast a long shadow. Efforts to rebuild dominated the political scene, but these efforts led to doubt about social and political institutions. Americans still had to deal with the war’s political, cultural, and psychological implications, and to do so during years of intense, transformative change evident in industrialization, market capitalism, and urbanization. Between the late 1870s and early 1890s, the railroad network rapidly spread – so rapidly that few communities now lacked access to modern transportation. Most communities greeted the railroad’s arrival enthusiastically, seeing it as a measure of progress and as a promise of future prosperity. But railroads also brought subtle and not-so-subtle changes: the rush of store-bought items whose prices usually were better than local goods; the incorporation of farm products into a commercial nexus; the new dependence on a cash economy; and the overall supremacy of an unrelenting and unforgiving market. In good times, these seemed like blessings, but in hard times, the crunch fell heavily. Economic expansion remade the United States into a global industrial power, but wrenching changes left many other Americans on the sidelines of prosperity. 1
