Murray State's Digital Commons Murray State Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 2017 Making the Gilded Age: Myth, Money, and Misery in a Market Society Austbrook D. Hudson Murray State University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.murraystate.edu/etd Part of the Cultural History Commons, Intellectual History Commons, Labor History Commons, Political History Commons, Social History Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Hudson, Austbrook D., "Making the Gilded Age: Myth, Money, and Misery in a Market Society" (2017). Murray State Theses and Dissertations. 52. https://digitalcommons.murraystate.edu/etd/52 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Murray State's Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Murray State Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Murray State's Digital Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. MAKING THE GILDED AGE: MYTH, MONEY, AND MISERY IN A MARKET SOCIETY A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of History Murray State University Murray, Kentucky In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in History By: Austbrook Hudson December 2017 i Acknowledgements I would like to thank several people for contributing to my maturation as a history student and as an individual. I would like to thank my grandmother, Betsy Flynn. The opportunity to get to this point in my academic career would not happen without her, and I am deeply indebted to her for past, present, and future successes. I would also like to thank other family members: Dan, Suzanne, Will, Meg, and Molly—a good family goes a long way.