ABSTRACT
THE GILDED AGE OF MARK TWAIN was marked by materialism, greed, and corruption. It was also a time of energy, enterprise, and industry. The idealism and reformism that prevailed in ante-bellum America was long gone. It had been replaced by a more down-to-earth, practical, active, handson, and real-world approach to life. Aristotle trumped Plato in this new industrial world order in the making. In the time of Emerson, Webster, and Melville, Americans were on a mission to seek out evil in the world and destroy it. That was then. Reform was no longer foremost in the American mind. While Americans did not exactly shake hands with the devil in the Gilded Age, they were more tolerant towards things as they were. The fratricidal Civil War had used up American taste for the quest to construct a heaven on earth. They were in this respect more tolerant. This is not to say there was no interest in reform or that there were no reformers. The reformers of the time did not engage in sweeping reforms but limited their activities to such things as civil service reform. Americans wanted to build in a physical sense. The mission was to make America. They found presidents to match their new mood.
