The Gilded Age: A Free Historic Documentary That Helps Make Sense of Our Personal Fraught Occasions

Ever-increas­ing eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty, speedy tech­no­log­i­cal change, the cre­ation of dom­i­nant cor­po­ra­tions con­trolled by a small busi­ness elite, politi­cians within the pock­et of huge busi­ness lead­ers, and the rise of pop­ulism and nativism. These are all fea­tures of Amer­i­can life in 2025. However our nation has additionally seen this film play earlier than, most notably again within the Gild­ed Age, which ran from the 1870s by the late Eighteen Nineties. Above, we’ve a free two-hour doc­u­males­tary on the Gild­ed Age cre­at­ed by PBS. They write:

Within the clos­ing a long time of the 9­teenth cen­tu­ry, dur­ing what has grow to be generally known as the Gild­ed Age, the pop­u­la­tion of the Unit­ed States dou­bled within the span of a sin­gle gen­er­a­tion. The nation turned the world’s lead­ing professional­duc­er of meals, coal, oil, and metal, entice­ed huge quantities of for­eign make investments­ment, and pushed into mar­kets in Europe and the Far East. As nation­al wealth increase­ed, two class­es rose simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, sep­a­rat­ed by a gulf of expe­ri­ence and cir­cum­stance that was unprece­dent­ed in Amer­i­can life. These dis­par­i­ties sparked pas­sion­ate and vio­lent debate over ques­tions nonetheless being requested in our personal occasions: How is wealth greatest dis­trib­uted, and by what course of? Does gov­ern­ment exist to professional­tect pri­vate prop­er­ty or professional­vide balm to the inevitable casu­al­ties of a churn­ing indus­tri­al sys­tem? Ought to the gov­ern­ment con­cern itself mainly with eco­nom­ic progress or eco­nom­ic jus­tice? The bat­tles over these ques­tions had been fought in Con­gress, the courts, the polling place, the work­place and the streets. The out­come of those dis­putes was each uncer­tain and momen­tous, and marked by a pas­sion­ate vit­ri­ol and lev­el of vio­lence that may shock the con­science of many Amer­i­cans at this time. The Gild­ed Age presents a com­pelling and com­plex sto­ry of some of the con­vul­sive and trans­for­ma­tive eras in Amer­i­can his­to­ry.

To a cer­tain diploma, this doc­u­males­tary will show you how to make guess­ter sense of our personal fraught occasions and per­haps really feel extra opti­mistic about the place we’d find yourself. (It’s price maintain­ing in thoughts that the dis­rup­tions of the Gild­ed Age even­tu­al­ly gave option to the reforms of the Professional­gres­sive Period.) What’s extra, in the event you’re watch­ing the excel­lent HBO collection, The Gild­ed Age, the movie professional­vides his­tor­i­cal again­floor that may direct­ly add to your appre­ci­a­tion of the present. You possibly can watch the movie on-line above, or discover it in our col­lec­tion of Free Doc­u­males­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Motion pictures On-line: Nice Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­males­taries & Extra.

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