Wall Street and the fruited plain
Subtitle: money, expansion, and politics in the Gilded Age
By: James T. Wall.
Publisher: University Press of America
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Lanham, Md
Language: eng
Number of pages: 382
ISBN-13: 9780761841241; 9780761842583
Subjects: United States -- Politics and government -- 1865-1933; United States -- Economic policy; United States -- History -- 1865-
Description: "Wall Street and the Fruited Plain delves deep into the parody known today as the "Gilded Age." The last decades of the 19th century saw both industrial and agricultural explosions in the United States. However, the base metal beneath this glittering facade was comprised of sweat-soaked, underpaid laborers, many of whom had just splashed ashore from Europe's seething cauldrons." "In the early years of the period, the nation underwent the wrenching challenge of Reconstruction, nominally resolved in the compromise of 1877. In the Gilded Age, America expanded both internally and externally. The frontier moved from Kansas to California. Trappers, miners, cattlemen, and - finally - homesteaders, with the help of a burgeoning railroad network, fanned out across the central plains and the western plateaus. Wall Street dominated not only the economic and social life of the country, but the politics as well. A series of lackluster presidents between Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt facilitated this dominion and by the end of Roosevelt's first Administration, America had become an adolescent headliner on the world stage." "James T. Wall is Professor Emeritus having taught at the University of Tennessee, Georgetown University, West Point, Edinburgh University in Scotland, and National University of Costa Rica."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [371]-373) and index.