The Labor Question
A Milestone Documents E-text
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Abstract

In the late 1860s, America entered into a crucial transformative stage in its history. Decisions loomed about how to rebuild a nation devastated by the Civil War while continuing to grow as a result of immigration and westward expansion. Questions about how to manage what had become a nationalized railroad system beckoned leaders across America to ponder the labor issue and search for an answer about how to exercise power in a country ridden with class division and economic instability. This was the Gilded Age—a time when America turned its focus from agriculture to industry and, in doing so, prompted the labor question that would remain unanswered well into the twentieth century.

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