The Gilded Age People
Who Made It Happen
Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) was a Gilded Age industrialist, the owner of the Carnegie Steel Company, and a major philanthropist. He epitomized the Gilded Age ideal of the self-made man, rising fr...
John D. Rockefeller
John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937) was a Gilded Age industrialist and the founder of Standard Oil. Born in New York, he was trained as a bookkeeper but entered the oil business shortly after the dis...
George Washington Plunkitt
George Washington Plunkitt (1842–1924) was an influential leader in Tammany Hall, New York's Democratic political machine. He served as a state senator and a representative to the New York Assemb...
George Pullman
George Pullman (1831–1897) was an industrialist, the designer of the Pullman Palace sleeping car, and the developer of a set of labor practices labeled "industrial paternalism." Born in New York,...
Eugene Debs
Eugene Debs (1855–1926) was the president of the American Railway Union and a founding member of the Social Democratic Party of America. Born in Indiana, he dropped out of high school and went to...
Frank Norris
Frank Norris (1870–1902) was an author whose major works include McTeague (1899), The Octopus (1901), and The Pit (1903). Norris was born in Chicago but moved west with his family and attend...
Frederick Winslow Taylor
Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915) was an inventor and engineer who became famous as the father of scientific management, also called Taylorism. The organization of modern industry, management,...
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) was the 26th President of the United States, a leader of the Republican Party and, later, the Progressive movement. He was the first president to become a truly "po...