Answer:
Vast corporate wealth and a fee-based governance structure fueled widespread corruption during America's Gilded Age.
Explanation:
The country's 4,000 millionaires held 20 percent of the country's wealth by 1890, and with that enormous affluence came enormous political corruption. The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States During Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896, states that the Gilded Age was one of the most corrupt eras in American history, particularly due to "corporations and the development of modern means of communication that intensified the way corruption works." In addition, railroads were responsible for the rapid expansion of the American economy during this period, with railroad tracks expanded nearly fourfold between 1871 and 1900. More than 150 million acres of land were granted by the federal government to railroad companies, which sold them to raise revenue for these massive infrastructure projects. The dawn of the Progressive Era, which ended the corruption of the Gilded Age, was ushered in at the turn of the 20th century. As a result of muckraking reporters who exposed political corruption, President Theodore Roosevelt enacted tax and election reforms as well as restrictions on corporate power.
