What is The Gilded Age?

It's the hottest show on TV and one of the most pivotal periods in human history, so in celebration of The Gilded Age S4 dropping on Paramount+ this week, we're unpacking the big question that's hot on everyone's lips - What actually IS the 'Gilded Age'? Shout out to our incredible researcher Gracie McCamish and editor Jamie Rose for pulling this together. If you're wanting more Hot History you can follow along on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.instagram.com/hothistoryclub/?hl=en, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.tiktok.com/@hot.history?lang=en, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Substack⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://substack.com/@hothistoryclub, and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/@hot.history ! 'Til next week, Ainslie x

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ainslie Harvey?

  I love experiencing history firsthand, guys. I'm such a nerd. We all need to do it. If you can travel, if you can go to your local libraries, if you can go to your local city institutions, if you can, you know, absorb yourself in history, in galleries, in archaeology, in any way, shape or form, please go and do it. Okay? It changes your life genuinely because it alters your perspective.

• 0:40Ainslie Harvey?

  Hi, guys, and welcome back to Hot History, your corner of the internet where we cover all the things in history that you probably should know, but don't. I'm Ainslie Harvey, your hot historian here, guys, live from New York City. That is right, my divas. We are in the Big Apple for a very exciting week, celebrating the launch of season four of The Gilded Age. Guys, I am, okay, the biggest Julian Fellow's stan. Honestly, if that meant asking me to go to war tomorrow, I would be packed, dressed and ready tonight. So when The Gilded Age first premiered, I was watching as a loyal Downton Abbey fan. But ever since watching episode one, I have not only been hooked, but genuinely on the edge of my seat,

• 1:24Ainslie Harvey?

  waiting for the next season to drop as we follow the Russells, the Van Ryns, the Astors and the Scots in their lives during one of the most turbulent and opportunistic times in human history. So to be here with Paramount Plus for the premiere of season four is just insane. Now, for those of you watching on video, you'll realise I am glammed to the max. And the reason for that is because I'm actually recording this episode an hour before the premiere from the Plaza Hotel, where I interviewed the cast, had a Gilded Age high tea experience and will later in the evening party with the cast and crew at the after-party in the ballroom. So, uh, yeah. One, what the hell is this life?

• 2:08Ainslie Harvey?

  And two, this was the perfect location for us to dive into the first of our series on The Gilded Age, which will drop for you the day after season four has premiered. So whether you're a seasoned fan like me or someone who simply wants to jump on the hottest bandwagon on TV, this episode is going to give you everything you need to know about the history, answering the one key question. What even is The Gilded Age? And it's a fair one, guys. So let's get into it today by rewinding it all the way back to 1861, where candidate for the newly formed Republican Party, Abraham Lincoln has just become president. Now, this is a pretty precarious time for America, guys, because the nation is very much not the United States.

• 2:53Ainslie Harvey?

  Instead, being divided into two different, separate countries known as the Union, which included the Northern States, and the Confederacy, which made up the South, after seven southern states broke away from the rest of the nation on February 4th, 1861, after Lincoln's appointment. Which probably leaves you guys asking, why? You know, what did Lincoln do that was so appalling other than having obnoxiously large sideburns? Well, it was a reaction to the question of how he would manage the institution of slavery, something that had existed in America since the 1500s with the arrival of Spanish colonialists and had boomed in the years since with the transatlantic slave trade, which became essential, guys, to the agrarian-based economy

• 3:38Ainslie Harvey?

  that relied on the production of crops like cotton for its wealth. This, as you can imagine, required a huge labour force to operate, which is expensive. And so the use of slave labour was the foundation upon which the southern economy stood on. The North, on the other hand, was becoming increasingly industrialised. And while, yes, guys, absolutely, northern states had also relied on and happily participated in slavery across a number of different enterprises, namely, taking the cotton from the South and turning it into textiles, alongside things like domestic work. By 1861, slavery had effectively disappeared from most of the North, with Vermont being the first state to prohibit adult slavery in 1777.

• 4:22Ainslie Harvey?

  This then started a chain reaction of additional northern states who introduced gradual emancipation laws as the power of such pieces of legislation sat with the state, not with the federal government. However, when Lincoln was elected without carrying a single southern state vote, the South felt that he would eventually institute a federal ban abolishing slavery and therefore destroy the economic and political system on which the South depended. But this wasn't necessarily his intention, guys, at least not at first, anyway. Instead, what Lincoln opposed was the expansion of slavery into new American territories, namely, the West, which will pop up as a bigger factor shortly. But he never initially proposed abolishing slavery

• 5:07Ainslie Harvey?

  in states where it already existed. The seven southern states, however, didn't see it that way and as such broke from the Union on the basis that the individual states had a right to withdraw when they believed the federal government threatened their interests. So Lincoln now has a divided nation on his hands, which he attempted to combat by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1st, 1863, which declared that enslaved peoples in areas of rebellion against the Union were to be freed. Now, I am, guys, gonna do a whole series on the Civil War, probably next year, so I'm not gonna go into heaps of detail like today. But basically, guys, Lincoln did this as a political move

• 5:52Ainslie Harvey?

  to try and keep his country together, even though we do know, you know, he totally did find slavery immoral. But the desired effect did not take hold here, with four other states joining the Confederacy and eventually leading to the Civil War, which saw the deaths of over 620 to 750,000 Americans from both sides, including, in the end, President Lincoln himself, who was assassinated just five days after the end of the war when the Union prevailed. This led to the 13th Amendment being ratified in December of 1865, abolishing slavery throughout the United States as a whole, except as punishment for a crime following conviction. This, of course, had major impacts for the southern economy,

• 6:36Ainslie Harvey?

  which, again, we will cover in the Civil War episode, guys. But for the North, it was deeply transformative, leading to the rise of industrial capitalism, aka the domination of factories, machinery, large corporations and private investment as the foundations of the US economy, which the war influenced in two main ways, guys. Firstly, combat on the scale of the Civil War required mass production of things like medicine and uniforms and munitions, all of which required new machinery and manufacturing techniques to produce faster and more cheaply than traditional workshops. And secondly, guys, once you have those things, right?

• 7:21Ainslie Harvey?

  You then need to be able to transport them, again, faster and more frequently than horse and cart, which led to the boom of the railway. This really was, guys, the backbone of the next period in American history, which saw ordinary men become titans of industry, crushing poverty, take hold of the streets, industry monopolies dominate, and most importantly, for the sake of this series, anyway, the battle between the old-money families of wealth, influence and prestige and the new-money robber barons with more cash than cents, who want one thing more than money, to be in the illustrious 400 members of good society. This, my divas, is The Gilded Age.

• 8:06Ainslie Harvey?

  So let's get into it, starting with what The Gilded Age actually means, right? Which is a good question here, because unlike their counterparts across the pond, the Americans didn't define their periods by their leaders like the Victorian or the Edwardian or the Georgian ages. So why call the period between 1870 to the birth of the new century in 1900 The Gilded Age? Well, the truth is, they didn't technically give the name to themselves. It was instead bestowed upon them by one Mark Twain, the author and social commentator who co-wrote the satirical 1873 novel titled The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, which painted a revealing portrait of post-Civil War America where the booming economy and industrial revolution

• 8:50Ainslie Harvey?

  in peacetime gave the appearance that this was a moment of like pure, solid gold for the US, when in reality, guys, it was only the top 1% who held and enjoyed this wealth, therefore becoming the gilding on top of the rest of society, who was suffering under crushing labour violations, widespread poverty and dishonest politicians. So quite the statement to make from Mark Twain here, although he hardly came up with it himself, instead taking the reference from Shakespeare's King John, where the Earl of Salisbury says, quote, "To gild refined gold to paint the lily is wasteful and ridiculous excess", which, in the case of post-war America here,

• 9:35Ainslie Harvey?

  the lily is the nation as a whole and the gild gold paint is the 1% covering the reality under its shining opulence. Or, guys, as Miami University historian Kimberly Hamlin puts it, "The gilding metaphor is used to describe the false splendor covering up the foundations undergirding industrialists' vast accumulation of wealth."

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• 10:56Ainslie Harvey?

  All right, now that we're all on the same page definition-wise, let's unpack exactly what is the gilding, right? And what is beneath? Because the big question is, really, what exactly was so shiny about the Gilded Age? Why do we love it? Why is there a TV show about it? Well, that comes down to change and opportunity. Because really, this period, guys, from 1870 to 1901, is, in my opinion, and I think in most people's opinion, looking back on it, the second most significant technological time in human history, with industrialization revealing new and exciting inventions, including the 1869 invention of the air brake system by George Westinghouse, which made railroads

• 11:41Ainslie Harvey?

  safer, the telephone in 1876 by Antonio Mucci, which was then developed by Alexander Graham Bell and Alicia Gray, alongside the photograph in 1878 by Thomas Edison, the automobile in 1886 by Carl Spence, electric streetcars in 1888 by Werner von Simons, and then, really, ending this period is the airplane in 1903 by the Wright Brothers. So, again, guys, like reflecting here, we look at the Civil War, right? Where horse-drawn carriages and slow, unsafe, ineffective railways were the mode of transport, to the end of the Gilded Age where we have planes?

• 12:21Ainslie Harvey?

  And you start to see just how rapid and significant this period was, which are also adjectives you could use to describe the infrastructure that was popping up in cities. With pre-Gilded Age buildings only being a few stories tall, but with steel frame construction, safer elevators, and improved fireproofing, skyscrapers started to pop up all over the US, which accommodated the increased population, with the post-Civil War baby boom and employment opportunities in cities for both rural families and migrants requiring more housing. Mostly, though, guys, they were mainly for businesses, with new enterprises taking over whole buildings, making the skyscraper the very symbol of American capitalism. But it wasn't just technology.

• 13:06Ainslie Harvey?

  Okay, culture and intellectual life also thrived, with new social sciences emerging, major museums and institutions like the Met forming, graduate degree programs launching, and the formation of professional groups like the American Historical Association, all stimulating conversations and the arts. Chemistry and physics were also making major advances during this time, with Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which was published about 10 to 15 years earlier in 1859, being a hot topic of discussion, expanding scientific knowledge, and really challenging biblical ideas. We also have literary contributions from Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, Emily Dickinson,

• 13:48Ainslie Harvey?

  Walt Whitman, who were writing in America during this period to comment on politics, the role of women, race, the impact of the war, and more, all of which have become classics across both the page and the screen ever since. So, an enormous amount of change and progress in this one 30 to 40-year period, but the big piece of the puzzle left out to date is the money, right? We get that all this new and exciting stuff was happening, and it's amazing, but how did the economy boom as a result of it? Well, that largely comes down to three key industries: steel, oil, and railroads, which

• 14:31Ainslie Harvey?

  ultimately transformed the United States from its agrarian economy we spoke about pre-war to the world's leading industrial power, while also creating some of the richest men in history, who we are going to meet. The other key thing with these three industries, and really the essential factor which made them boom so rapidly, and what's important here, is that they are so deeply interconnected, okay? Railroads, for example, cannot run without steel and oil, and steel and oil could not grow at first without servicing the railroads. So, it really was this period of win-win for American manufacturing, which, before the Gilded Age, had relied heavily on iron, which was cheap, but heavy and incredibly

• 15:16Ainslie Harvey?

  brittle, while steel, which was historically expensive to manufacture in large quantities, was stronger and more versatile. However, with the development of the Bessemer process in 1856, the cost and time required to produce steel dropped, allowing production to expand rapidly, which is where one Andrew Carnegie comes into the picture. Now, he was a Scottish-born immigrant who came from very little, and, thanks to his hard work in the telegraph and railroad industries, saw the opportunity for steel in the growing markets. As such, he scraped together his pennies and opened the Edgar Thomas Steel Works near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which supplied material to almost all of America's biggest

• 16:00Ainslie Harvey?

  industries, including oil and railroad, plus, of course, the skyscrapers, which began dominating skylines across major US cities. This was such a significant enterprise, guys, that Carnegie went on to sell the company to banking giant JP Morgan for $480 million at the time, laying the foundations for what would become US Steel, the world's first billion-dollar corporation. So, quite the legacy here. Next on the chopping block is oil, which, thanks to Edwin Drake, who successfully drilled an oil well near Pennsylvania in 1859, became the most important commodity of the 19th

• 16:42Ainslie Harvey?

  century, and, let's be real, guys, still largely is today. Back then, however, it was truly used for everything by my divas, from lighting to lubricants, and of course, you know, fuel oils, which later led to gasoline that expanded with the growing automobile industry. This is where we meet John D. Rockefeller, who, like Carnegie, grew up in modest working class conditions before entering the oil refining business in Cleveland, Ohio during the 1860s, before co-founding the Standard Oil Company in 1870, which, in the next 10 years, controlled approximately 90% of all American oil refining capacity, becoming

• 17:24Ainslie Harvey?

  the country's first great industrial and trust monopoly, which basically means he owned the whole market, or at least the largest percentage of it. This made Rockefeller the richest man of the American Gilded Age, with his peak net worth hitting around $1.4 billion by his death in 1937, which, for context, was around 1.5% of the US gross domestic product. Next up is the railroads, guys, which, for us Gilded Age TV show lovers, will be the one you've all been waiting for, because this is Daddy Russell's world, which is arguably the most important in physically uniting the American economy and people after the war.

• 18:09Ainslie Harvey?

  So, as we said, guys, before the conflict, transporting goods across the country was slow, expensive, and heavily dependent on rivers, canals, roads, and coastal shipping. But with the invention of the air brake, the dropping prices of steel, and the California gold rush of 1869, the ability and demand for faster, safer, and more reliable travel across the US soared, as did Cornelius Vanderbilt. Also a man of no great means, Vanderbilt began his career in shipping yards on Staten Island before expanding into ferries and then railroads, accumulating control over several important railway companies, including the New York Central Railroad throughout

• 18:51Ainslie Harvey?

  the 1860s, again, starting to build his own monopoly, which culminated in arguably one of the greatest milestones in American infrastructure history: the transcontinental railroad. Finished in 1869, this line created the continuous railway connection between the eastern railroad network and the Pacific coast, which allowed farmers and manufacturers to sell their products across the country, creating a national market, encouraging western settlement, something which, also FYI, guys, harrowingly accelerated the displacement and dispossession of Native American communities, and, you know, as we kind of said earlier, guys, it stimulated other industries, with railroads requiring steel, timber, coal, machinery, and enormous amounts of labor.

• 19:37Ainslie Harvey?

  So, while Standard Oil Company and Rockefeller, you know, may have been the biggest dog, none of the other dogs would be half their size without Vanderbilt and the railways, which is really what made it the perfect industry for our very own Mr. George Russell, placing him and therefore his family at the very heart of the American economy.

• 20:00Ainslie Harvey?

  Now, there were of course many other industries that evolved during this period beyond the big three, chief amongst them, banking, with finance giant JP Morgan, who made a fortune off of reorganizing and consolidating the companies that built modern America while financing and investing in new ones, rising to extreme prominence around this time. He was, guys, so significant to the American economy that by the late Gilded Age, I love this story, he actually saved the economy altogether when huge runs on trust companies threatened to destabilize the American financial system. Seeing the writing on the wall of this, the then seventy-year-old JP Morgan called leading New York bankers

• 20:43Ainslie Harvey?

  and financiers into his office and locked them there until they agreed on a rescue arrangement with the US Treasury. So, you can see here, guys, why the Gilded Age really is this time of incredible opportunity, industry and wealth, which really allowed everyday men with no money, no influence and zero pedigree to grow into industry titans. But not every average working-class man can become a robber baron. So let's talk about what lies beneath the gilding with the everyday American.

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• 22:18Ainslie Harvey?

  So, guys, amongst the rail lines and the skyscrapers and the new parks and monuments lied what can only be described as absolute object poverty, especially in New York City. But the basic rights of the lower classes were being trampled and ignored for the privileges of the upper class, including, for example, the building of Central Park, which involved displacing sixteen hundred lower-class residents and an entire African-American community called Seneca Village to build. So, while the one percent, like Mrs. Fish, for example, were throwing dinner parties to honor their dogs who donned fifteen thousand dollar diamond

• 23:00Ainslie Harvey?

  collars, eleven million of America's twelve million families earned less than twelve hundred per year, with the average income being three hundred and eighty dollars, according to PBS, which adjusted for inflation today, guys, is roughly fourteen thousand Australian dollars. So, well below the poverty line both then and now. We also mentioned briefly before that the wave of opportunity in the US brought immigrants from Europe, which totaled eleven million across the Gilded Age itself, according to writer Catherine Paljug, which then put, you know, increased pressures on the nation's already crippled housing market, leading to the expansion of tenements, which we spoke about in our Clara Bow episode, which according to historians, made up about two-thirds of New York's population

• 23:45Ainslie Harvey?

  by nineteen hundred. So, we have a lot of issues coexisting at the same time, guys, which really is just wild. And again, I absolutely want to express here, this was over ninety percent of the entire nation's families that were living in abject poverty. Ninety percent, guys, which probably leaves you all thinking, hang on a minute, diva, this is sounding a bit like the French Revolution here, you know, like surely the one percent aren't living it up lux with diamond necklaces and huge parties while the nation starved, à la Marie Antoinette. But you actually couldn't be more wrong. Not only were the upper class earning and spending absorbent amounts of money, largely off the backs of

• 24:28Ainslie Harvey?

  everyday Americans, but Mrs. Astor, who we're going to get into later, guys, don't you worry, actually did wear the diamond necklace that lost Marie Antoinette her head. So, the delusion and the arrogance actually is comparable to that at the Court of Versailles. In fact, an economist in eighteen seventy-nine noted, quote, "A widespread feeling of unrest and brooding revolution is settling over the nation." So, absolutely outrageous, guys, which was made all the more worse by the total disregard for working conditions and labour safety. You see, while the Industrial Revolution brought many an opportunity for

• 25:09Ainslie Harvey?

  work to the lower classes in factories and manufacturing centers, it was very much a catch-22, with the abilities of mass production and therefore more money now dependent on the labour of these factory workers to operate machinery and man their posts. So, what we have, guys, is industrial labourers expected to work six days a week in shifts of ten to twelve hours, averaging a total of sixty hours per week, which you may think, like, that's a lot of hours, you know, but if you want to make it, you've got to work for it, which I totally understand, guys. No one has more sleepless nights than me, spent tattling away on the little computer, getting these scripts out for you guys. But these

• 25:53Ainslie Harvey?

  were not air-conditioned, white-bootsy sanitary warehouses, okay? Steel workers, for example, in this time, guys, faced extreme heat, molten metal and heavy industrial equipment, while miners risked explosions, cave-ins and respiratory disease. Textile workers, on the other hand, endured noisy, dusty conditions and dangerous machinery, with many, many injuries and deaths. Meanwhile, railroads depended on cheap labour, mainly done by Chinese immigrants, many of whom died from the conditions. And it doesn't stop at the adults, because children, guys, kids as young as six to seven worked in factories, from glassworks to steel mills

• 26:38Ainslie Harvey?

  to coal mines, with the eighteen seventy US census finding that approximately seven hundred and fifty thousand children aged ten to fifteen had jobs in factories, often for the smallest pay and with the most dangerous tasks of crawling under and sometimes into machinery. This then led, rightfully so, guys, to a series of discontentments between workers and their various robber barons, with protests, strikes and union organization to demand better wages, shorter hours and safer working additions, which eventually led to legislation being passed in the early twentieth century under President Roosevelt, with the nineteen thirty-five Wagner Act and the nineteen thirty-eight Fair Labour

• 27:21Ainslie Harvey?

  Standard Act, which established a federal minimum wage of twenty-five cents per hour, overtime pay after forty-four hours a week initially, and restrictions on employing children in certain occupations. But, guys, for the Gilded Age lower classes, it was all too little too late. And so, while the top one percent got richer, ninety percent of the nation got poorer, with another class making up the remaining nine percent, which was relatively new. The middle. Sat between the robber barons and the factory workers, the middle class included people who took advantage of the Industrial Revolution in adjacent roles as teachers, doctors, lawyers, journalists, shopkeepers and small business

• 28:04Ainslie Harvey?

  owners who earned salaries rather than hourly or daily wages. This was a pretty decent life, guys. And while, again, nothing as grand as the one percent, it could allow a family to have a safe and proud home, with one's address being linked to the status of their finances. As such, manufactured fine furniture, decorative wallpaper, imported carpets and art all began making their way down the social ladder, with some prosperous middle-class households even having indoor plumbing. This was also the environment in which the ideals of the modern American family emerged, which still very much reflected the Victorian concept of separate spheres, with men, you know, kind of going off to work outside the house and women holding domestic responsibilities. But it did begin

• 28:49Ainslie Harvey?

  to expand beyond this, with middle-class women working as teachers, nurses, writers, clerks and other professionals, kicking off a long-term decline in marriage rates and fertility as the dawn of the suffragette movement approached. Even upper-class women as well, while still, you know, largely being treated as tradable assets between pedigree-rich dukes and cashful business partners, were given enormous amounts of responsibility managing their giant estates, helping make introductions amongst social circles for their husbands and finding good matches for their children, with the cause of Votes for Women and other charity work becoming increasingly popular as we move towards the twentieth century, where Victorian values begin to shed and the new world dawns with

• 29:34Ainslie Harvey?

  even greater change. Speaking of change, guys, and the new dawn, the group who absolutely experienced the greatest transformation in the Gilded Age were African-Americans, whose entire existence in the US had now been altered. Many of them up until this point were former slaves or at least had parents who were, and now, as free citizens, had to really figure out how to exist in a nation who, a mere decade earlier, used them as property. Which leaves us really asking, guys, like, it is an essential question, an essential part of the Gilded Age that we have to speak about, and why I love Julian Fellow so much for including the Scott family in the show. How does one go from an enslaved

• 30:19Ainslie Harvey?

  cotton picker to a free man or woman with no education and no money? Not that the Scots, that is a situation, but you understand what I mean. This is a fair question, because this is not a smooth nor an easy transition, with an initial period of reconstruction dating from eighteen sixty-five to eighteen seventy-seven, first seeing African-Americans gain citizenship, voting rights and even become elected officials. However...

• 30:46Ainslie Harvey?

  This didn't last forever, guys. With southern governments increasingly stripping away these freedoms through discriminatory laws, voter suppression and racial violence, with groups like the Ku Klux Klan targeting particularly black men as lynchings became commonplace from eighteen seventy seven to nineteen fifty. This was something, like, obviously horrific, guys, and I actually found out the other day, that there was almost as many lynchings in the North than there were in the South. So we say, you know, oh, the South is so bad, Confederacy, like, obviously terrible, that they wanted to keep slavery, but the North did their fair share as well, guys, which was investigated by the absolute powerhouse of a journalist, Ida B. Wells,

• 31:31Ainslie Harvey?

  with her work challenging the claim, like we said, about the North and the South, and also challenging that lynching was primarily a response to criminal behaviour, demonstrating its role in enforcing white supremacy, which continued throughout Jim Crow and segregation in the twentieth century. Meanwhile, on the economic front, many formerly enslaved southern people became sharecroppers, farming plots owned by white landowners in exchange for a portion of their crops, which, you know, sounds good on the surface, but actually resulted in many families finding themselves trapped in cycles of debt and poverty. This led many southern peoples of colour to migrate by the late eighteen seventies,

• 32:12Ainslie Harvey?

  moving into Kansas and other western areas in search of greater freedom and opportunity, which became known as the Exodus migration. Here, African American communities welcomed new members, who began attending local churches, looking for work, and, most importantly, guys, engaging with their education, which became the key priority for black communities across the entire US, with the majority of peoples of colour prior to the Civil War being unable to read or write. As a result of this, several historically black institutions emerged, including Howard University, the Hampton Institute and the Duskegee Institute, where black women in

• 32:55Ainslie Harvey?

  particular played essential roles in education and civil rights organisations, which were backed by a number of prominent white men and women, including Rockefeller and George Peabody, alongside wealthy African Americans. That's right, my divas, we are talking about families akin to the Scots in the Gilded Age, who, again, I just love seeing them on my screen week in, week out, I'm so excited the Gilded Age is back, like, genuinely, Gilded Age Mondays, it's Sundays for Americans, nothing beats it. I love the drama, I love the tea, I love the costumes, but I also love the social commentary, and it is so refreshing to see people of colour represented in a way that

• 33:38Ainslie Harvey?

  is so historically real and economically real, especially with Peggy and Mrs. Scott being such fierce women, both intellectually and morally, who, to be honest, guys, and I was thinking about this before, I had done the junket just before this, earlier today, and I was listening to Danae, who plays Peggy Talk, and she's kind of saying, you know how Peggy is, you know, a very incredible character who is still dealing with really modern issues, but she still fits in the Gilded Age so well, and when you actually do think about it, of all of the characters on the show, perhaps, like, also in line with Jack, who does, like, the clock, the clock twink, and Mr. Russell, although we don't see his origin story, I actually think that Peggy really embodies the spirit of

• 34:22Ainslie Harvey?

  not only the Gilded Age, but New York at large, more than perhaps any of them. I mean, think about it, guys, she is this incredible young woman of colour who is living in a time where the country is still grappling with ideas of freedom and race and, you know, me decades after the Civil War, and yet, here she is, refusing to rest on her laurels, despite the wider social hardships and what stacked against her personally from, like, season one, guys, heartbreaking, and just, like, striving day in and day out to make her dreams become a reality. Obsessed, guys, like, I can't deal, and from what Danae and the team were saying,

• 35:04Ainslie Harvey?

  like, Peggy's journey this season, chef's kiss, so I'm really excited to see that. And again, I think, you know, you want to talk about taking a hold of opportunity is this kind of key theme for the Gilded Age as a historical period, Peggy, case in point, as were so many black Americans during this period, which we absolutely overlook, in exchange for the rags to riches story of Carnegie and Rockefeller and Vanderbilt, who were skint broke, and yes, they did build fortunes from nothing, but they weren't treated as property in their lifetimes, nor did they suffer the intergenerational pain and trauma from their parents and grandparents and siblings and community being enslaved.

• 35:45Ainslie Harvey?

  And so I think, guys, the real story of transformation and greatness throughout the Gilded Age is black America, who took opportunity in both hands, whether it was through education or relocation or publication or incorporation, and looked the coming age dead in the eye and said, let's go.

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• 37:06Ainslie Harvey?

  Now, going from the lives of black Americans taking new opportunities head on, we look to really the most stark of contrasts against this, with a crowd who needed neither opportunities nor the new, and that is the old money families of Gilded Age New York, whose lives revolved not only around the stock market, the property listings, all the finest furnishings money could buy, but around one woman in particular. The matron, the general, the queen of polite society herself, Mrs. Caroline Astor, which, fans of the show, you do know exactly who I'm talking about with this accent.

• 37:48Ainslie Harvey?

  It's like my inner Ward McAllister, he comes to me whenever I say Mrs. Astor's name, Mrs. Astor, like, obsessed. I'm also obsessed, guys, with Donna Murphy, who plays Mrs. Astor on the show, and for my divas who don't know, also voiced Mother Gothel in Tangled. Yeah, it's gonna rock you all forever, guys, I cannot watch Tangled without hearing Mrs. Astor, and if I ever close my eyes during the Gilded Age, uh, Mother Gothel is currently fighting with Mrs. Russell, which is quite the experience. But anyway, the old money crowd of Gilded Age New York is not a fragment of Mr. Julian Fellow's imagination, but a very real institution of families whose hereditary dates back

• 38:31Ainslie Harvey?

  to the English and Dutch settlers aboard the Mayflower, although the amount of them that claimed this, it would have needed to have been, like, the size of an aircraft carrier, but alas, the thinking is the same, we're old, we're fancy, we've been here from the beginning. Now, the key thing to understand about this old crowd is that, yes, their wealth did often lie in cash, but it actually largely lied in pedigree, with an established family who held a relatively modest inheritance, enjoying a greater social prestige than the newly wealthy industrialists worth millions, AKA the Vanderbilts, who, spoiler alert, guys, because I'm in a charitable mood, we're gonna be focusing on them for the next two weeks.

• 39:13Ainslie Harvey?

  Most of the time, though, guys, these old families had plenty of cash, made in trades such as fur, land holdings, diplomacy and politics, long before Rockefeller or Standard Oil were dreamed up, which continued to grow through controlled and planned out marriages, business dealings and social relationships, all held within the same families, creating an extremely exclusive network ruled over by the queen bee, Mrs. Astor, the matriarch of one of the four key old families. So let's meet them all, starting with the Astors, just because it's easy, and they really are the most important and the richest, guys, okay? With their original ancestor, John Jacob Astor, making enormous wealth through both

• 39:55Ainslie Harvey?

  the fur trades, Manhattan real estate, and even opium, from the seventeen eighties into the early nineteenth century. And while he died more than twenty years before the Gilded Age conventionally began, his son, William Backhouse Astor Senior, inherited and expanded the family's real estate fortune, providing more wealth and the right pedigree to kick off the old society, which, I mean, probably just has our British listeners, like, rolling their eyes into the back of their skulls at the thought of seventeen eighty being old, but in lieu of actual aristocracy and peerage, these old family dynasties with wealth and influence kind of had to, you know, pick up the slack.

• 40:36Ainslie Harvey?

  It was, it was like the Timo version, that's so bad to say, guys, but kind of true. Next, we have the Van Ryslers, which sounds akin to the Van Ryns on purpose, and who made their coin in enormous land holdings around Albany after their ancestors immigrated as part of the 17th century Dutch contingent, followed by the Livingstons, who were also noted throughout the show as relatives of the Van Ryns, and were a real influential New York family, whose wealth and political prominence also dated back to the colonial era, with cash made in major land-ownings and professions as judges and politicians. Then, there were the Jays, whose status rested more on generations of public influence and established social connection

• 41:21Ainslie Harvey?

  than actual cash, with the family being associated with law, politics, and public service versus necessarily business. Honorable mentions of the old club also go out to the Stiversons, the Beekmans, the Galets, and the Skirmerhorns, which brings us back, very neat and tidy, almost like I planned it myself, to Mrs. Astor, who descends from the latter, and whose social capital and bank account was second to none, which is why she controlled who was in and who was out of polite society, otherwise known as the 400. Now, this very ominous and foreboding number was everything for both the old and new money crowd, as being on the list gave you access to all the balls,

• 42:06Ainslie Harvey?

  all the drawing rooms, and all the marriage proposals, and could not be made unless Mrs. Astor herself put you on it. Which, you may think, you know, sounds very Regina George of her, and to be honest, you're not far off. In fact, she actually came up with this idea when throwing a ball at her mansion at 350th Fifth Avenue, where she agreed to only entertain those that could fit in her ballroom, which turned out to be 400 people. Also, conveniently, the number of old money, kind of, you know, families around. This, guys, for the new money crowds, was their endgame, okay? And much like the Avengers franchise, it took a while to get into it. With the various court cases of fraud, corruption,

• 42:50Ainslie Harvey?

  and the general belief that these newly-rich robber barons had no class, keeping them out of the famed 400 as whispers of gaudy social climbers with their petite chateaus and huge steel skyscrapers passed around parlor rooms of the Astors and Co. At least, until one night on March 28th, 1883, where another ball, more grand, more great, and more gargantuan than any that ever came before or after, changed the tide of the Gilded Age and American society forever. Thrown by our subject for next week, guys,

• 43:30Ainslie Harvey?

  the inspiration for Mrs. Russell herself, the one, the only, Alba Vanderbilt. Guys, I'm so excited. Honestly, I cannot wait to unpack her with you guys. She is one of my historical Roman empires, okay? And being in New York, going to meet her on-screen counterpart, yeah, I was chatting with Carrie Coon this morning, whatever, it's fine. And also, just generally, like, walk the curbs where she kind of strutted her social status and suffragette causes, is thrilling to me. Like, I love experiencing history firsthand, guys. I'm such a nerd, we all need to do it. If you can travel, if you can go to your local libraries, if you can go to your local city institutions,

• 44:14Ainslie Harvey?

  if you can, you know, absorb yourself in history, in galleries, in archaeology, in any way, shape, or form, please, go and do it, okay? It changes your life genuinely, because it alters your perspective. So, rant over, make sure you come back next week for that episode on Alba. But before then, let's once and for all answer the original question we had. What actually is the Gilded Age? Well, I think we can now pretty confidently say, guys, it was not simply an era when Americans became rich, but an era where Americans learned how to produce and maintain wealth

• 44:57Ainslie Harvey?

  on an industrial scale, producing networks and industries and corporations, which not only changed the time, but altered history forever. All of which was happening against the backdrop of crushing repression and poverty, raising the question, we, rather chillingly still today, don't seem to have the answer to, who should benefit from that much money? A rather sobering reflection for us today as we experience our own lives in the very eye of the storm that is the Second Gilded Age. Except, instead of oil, railroads, and steel, we are in the world of satellites, AI, and flying cars. It's a pretty crazy time, guys, both then and now, and I appreciate you spending both of them with me.

• 45:42Ainslie Harvey?

  Which does mean, we are at the end of another episode of Hot History, guys. Thank you so much for listening along with me. I'm about ready to set off in like, 20 minutes, guys, to the premiere of The Gilded Age: Season 4, which sees the Russells, the Van Ryns, the Scots, and more all face up to the new challenges that this wild period brings. From books, to babies, to businesses, and more bustle skirts than Aunt Agnes knows what to do with. It is going to be a ride, which you can watch now and every week after on Paramount+. If you would also like to see what goes down after this episode ends, then I actually have a vlog on the 24 Hours of Premiere Day, including a bit of BTS on how we pulled this episode together, guys,

• 46:27Ainslie Harvey?

  because it was not the easiest thing to do. Then you can definitely go ahead and watch that before coming back next week. I'm watching you for our deep dive on Alba Vanderbilt. But now, though, guys, if you want more hot history, you can follow us along on Instagram and Substack at Hot History Club, and on YouTube and TikTok at hot.History. It has been a pleasure getting down and dirty in time with you, and I will speak to you all shortly. Thanks, guys, love you, bye.

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