How Gilded Age Corruption Led to the Progressive Era As the rich grew richer during the Gilded Age, the poor grew poorer, spurring the call for reforms. Author: Fotosearch/Getty Images As the rich grew richer during the Gilded Age, the poor grew poorer, spurring the call for reforms. Propelled by a Second Industrial Revolution, the United States arose from the ashes of the Civil War to become one of the world’s leading economic powers by the turn of the 20th century. Corporate titans such as Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan amassed spectacular fortunes and engaged in the most conspicuous of consumptions. Beneath this golden veneer, however, American society was tarnished by poverty and corruption, which caused this period of American history to be called the “Gilded Age,” derived from the title of an 1873 novel co-authored by Mark Twain.