Gilded Age Responses to Poverty

I. INTRODUCTION.

The Gilded Age saw the greatest period of economic growth in American history, mostly due to industrialization, but it was not all good in the American Economy as the name implies “Gilded Age” was coined by Mark Twain And Charles Dudley Warner in their book “The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today.” The name refers to the process of gilding an object with superficial layer of gold, meaning that even though everything looked good on the outside it was just a façade for what really was going on with society. An example was the increase of urban poverty in the United States, and it was visible in the culture and politics of the country. Two novels, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and Ragged Dick by Horatio Alger, represent the appearance of urban poverty in American literature. These two novels represent very different understandings of the causes and consequences of poverty in the United States during the Gilded Age.

II. BODY

Ragged Dick is the story of a young boy named Dick who roams the streets of New York and works as a boot-black, one who shines people’s boots for a living. Dick is an honest young boy and this shows, one day a patron, Mr. Whitney, puts his nephew, Frank, into Dick's charge to be given a tour of New York while he attends to business. Frank gives Dick a new suit to replace the old rags he is wearing. During the tour, Frank is impressed by Dick's street smarts and encourages Dick to go to school. Following his advice Dick soon finds a place for his own at the same time he scores a deal with one of his fellow boot blacks, Henry Fosdick that has had some education in the past and offers him to stay with him in exchange for reading classes.

Lastly, the two boys, while on the search for more respectable jobs, take a trip on the ferry to Brooklyn by. En route, a boy falls into the river. Dick dives off...