Libertarians . . . .. . . siiiiiggggghhhh . . . . .

[HughBeaumont]

23. Rural life in the late 19th century was just as bad as city life.

The farmer and his family toiled for 14-16 hours a day to merely sustain themselves on a barren landscape that produced little, if any, results. Most farms were foreclosed thanks to them needing machinery to survive and lacking it due to no money. They had to increase their debts to reduce pressure, and finally, the corporate farmers and railroad monopolies with their exorbitant land rates drove them away for good.

There wasn't really any hygiene or safety to speak of. The expanses of manure and lack of sanitation and proper drainage systems poisoned well water and attracted ticks, flies, mosquitos and worms to add to the misery. Dust storms were not uncommon in the Great Plains; prairie fires and locusts were also problematic. It's no wonder the children, particularly the females, were lured to the city to escape the drudgery and loneliness that often drove people insane. Waiting for them there, however, was everything I described above, and more.

What was galling in this particular exchange is that there's not any speck of a notion of "left version/right version". This isn't any fairy tale, it's all historical fact that anyone with access to books can read about. It's unbelievable to me that anyone not named Getty or Rockefeller would praise such a rotten era for workers (and, then as now, the 99%) as the Gilded Age. The only reason any of the Robber Barons were philanthropists at all was because of legacy and peer pressure, not because they were interested in parting with even one red cent of their wealth. Let's look at good ol' Marshall Field on this:

The Field Museum of Natural History was named after him in 1894 after he gave it an endowment of one million dollars. Field was initially reluctant to do so, reportedly saying "I don't know anything about a museum and I don't care to know anything about a museum. I'm not going to give you a million dollars." However he later relented after railroad supplies magnate Edward E. Ayer, another early benefactor (and later first president) of the museum, convinced Field that his everlasting legacy would be achieved by financing the project.