The Gilded Age takes its name from a book by Mark Twain called The Gilded Age: a Tale of Today. It was written in 1873 and unfortunately was not very successful. While the Gilded Age conjures up visions of ostentatious displays of wealth and decorative parties, the overarching topic was politics. The book provides an extremely negative assessment of the state of American democracy at the time. Which is no great surprise from Twain, who famously said, “It could probably be proved by facts and figures that there is no distinctly Native American criminal class except Congress.” So, faced with radical changes in the American economy after the Civil War, the American political system, both nationally and locally, dealt with these problems as best it could, inevitably becoming incredibly corrupt. Former House Speaker Tip O'Neil once said that all politics is local, and while that isn't actually true, local politics is a prime example of common corruption. Specifically, one of America's greatest inventions, the political machine is most easily explained as an organization that works to win elections so that the machine can exercise political and civil power. The most famous political machine was New York's Tammany Hall, which dominated party politics in the late 19th century, survived into the 20th, and is most associated with widespread corruption. Tammany Hall's "Boss" Tweed ran New York in the 1860s and 1870s, and some of his con exploits help explain how the machine system works. It focuses primarily on the then-new county courthouse. The courthouse was initially estimated to cost $250,000 to build, but ultimately cost well over $13,000,000. Inclus...... half of the paper ......w bankers of York. In short, both parties may have been considered “pro-business,” but they were actually “pro-different-business.” Despite all this, some national reform legislation actually took place. The Civil Service Act of 1883 created a merit system for 10% of federal employees, chosen through competition. And then in 1890 the Sherman Antitrust Act prohibited combinations and practices that restrained trade, but, again, it was nearly impossible to enforce unions that seemed to dampen trade with their "radical" lobbying for things like health insurance and protective helmets. But all in all the National Congress was extremely dysfunctional in the late 19th century, stop me if this sounds familiar, state governments expanded their responsibility to public health.