Examples of wealth in late 1800s

Answer:It was a party, but also a paradox. As discussed in this exclusive clip from the new PBS American Experience documentary The Gilded Age, premiering Feb. 6, the ball held in New York City in 1897 exemplified both sides of the period in which it was held. The very wealthy flaunted their newly extravagant lifestyles, viewing their riches - a result of that century's great social and technological changes - as proof that the U. S. was on the right track. Meanwhile, others in the city struggled to get by.

That's why that term for that late-19th-century period in American history - the Gilded Age - is so apt. As historian Nell Irvin Painter explains, "'Gilded' is not golden. 'Gilded' has the sense of a patina covering something else. It's the shiny exterior and the rot underneath."

But, while the original Gilded Age inspired a wave of political change, from the first march on Washington to the rise of the Populists, its fallout did not lead to the end of inequality in the United States. As Painter tells TIME, there have been several major cycles of inequality in the U. S. since then: the mitigation of inequality during the Progressive era, the return to inequality in the 1920s, the great equalizer that was the Great Depression and the New Deal, and then the rise of inequality once again in the late 20th century. That trend has continued to this day, and Americans are now living in an era that has been called a new Gilded Age.