Corruption Of Immigrants In Mark Twain's Gilded Age

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Gilded Age Essay In the late 19th century there was an author named Mark Twain. He wrote a book that represented the time period from the 1870’s to the 1890’s. He called the novel the Gilded Age. He writes in his novel, that during this time, it seemed from the outside that America was the promise land. Everything from an outside view seemed perfect and “golden”. When you really got to America, you would find out that things weren’t golden at all. It just appeared to look like gold (in a metaphoric way). That’s where Mark Twain got his comparison. America looked like something golden in the eyes of people. When you scratched down to the surface of America politics was immensely corrupt. Immigrants…show more content…
The United States to them appeared like that golden place, until they really got to see what America was really like. Immigrants during this time had some of the worse living conditions ever. Not only were the conditions bad but immigrants had to face a numerous amount of problems. Most immigrants had to live in the cramped cities. There were a lot of immigrants; they were constantly entering the U.S. The population was very high in the city. Everybody was crowded living in “multifamily urban dwellings” called tenements. These were at first housing for a single family. For one family it was already crowded. What they did later on when the population increased, they started putting two families in the single-family house. This lead to the whole city being overcrowded which lead to unsanitary living. The landlords never did the job right. The landlord didn’t give the immigrants a place to put their garbage so they just put it in the hallway, or just throw it out on the street. Nobody came to clean up the mess, which left terrible stenches in the air. Another harsh condition to live under for the immigrants was the water. During this time there was no water sanitation department, and barely any indoor plumbing. Residents of these atrocious tenements had to collect water by scooping their water up from the streets or faucets on the street and then heat it up…show more content…
What we see and hear can really deceive us all. The immigrants came to America for a chance at a better life. They came to America to escape the harsh conditions of their native countries. To there surprise, immigrants got the exact opposite of what they thought America was going to be like. Politicians and entrepreneurs did what ever it took to better their lives. Not really worrying about their steadily increasing poverty rates. Not trying to find a solution to the cities issues that mainly immigrants had to face. People in high positions were all about themselves. They did what ever it took to get to where they wanted to be. No matter how corrupt it might be to get there. That being, a big part of America’s population suffered. Mark Twain has discovered it. The country that looked like gold wasn’t even worth copper. A lesson that we can all get from this is that if there’s a problem we can’t really wait on somebody to solve it for us. We all have to get together and stand up for what we think is right. Sadly, everybody in politics doesn’t have your best interest at heart. So the only person that can help you is you. America can’t put all of its trust in anybody. Doing that would just set yourself up for a huge disappointment. Just like the immigrants were, when they found out that America wasn’t the golden place they thought it

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