What Cars Say about the Gilded Age

Studying cars can provide insight into the culture of a society. Cars became a vital component in American society since the mid-twentieth century. By the 1940s, virtually every middle class and upper class household had a car. Now they are an extension of cultural and artistic values. This is the case even during the Gilded Age. The replacement of coach-builders resulted in cars with a lack uniqueness and diversity since cars were now not individually handcrafted and tailored to person. Cars were now bland and mass produced. These changes mimicked the culture of the time. The era of interchangeable parts and assembly line resulted in the devaluation of skilled labor and overall humanity. People were now simply tools that could be thrown in and out of factories at the disposal of the employer. In fact, this careless disregard for human life and individuality gave rise to term “Gilded Age,” or underlying social problems that were masked by a thin gold lucrative plating of economic success for the 1%. The coach-builder system revealed that the individuality and humanity was reserved for the wealthy while the rest of society plunged into the era of mass production: working tirelessly in factoring in poor, barely survivable conditions.