Funny how the Gilded Age, a pejorative term BTW, gets a bad rap because a few people got extremely rich. It was actually one on the most economically successful periods in US history. As pointed out by Wikipedia real wages were up 60% in 30 years despite a doubling in population including around 8 million very poor new immigrants.

For comparison we have had around 5% real wage growth over the past 40 years and are having difficulty absorbing a similar number of poor immigrants despite being almost 10 time more populous.

To paraphrase Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to be UNABLE to repeat it."