The Gilded Age was characterized as an era of intense competition in the marketplace, more corruption in politics, and the ever increasing poverty of the lower class. Many of the problems during the Gilded Age were thought to be disguised with a thin glittering layer of gold. The social conditions in the Gilded Age was criticized by two particular people: Henry George and Walter Rauschenbusch. Henry George tackles the main problem of progress and increased concentrated wealth, but at the expense of increased poverty and unfair social conditions for workers. However, Walter Rauschenbusch has a more religion based approach to the social conditions. Henry George places high emphasis on justice and liberty. He believes “the poverty which in the midst of abundance, pinches and embrues men, and all manifold evils which flow from it, spring from a denial of justice” (Foner 40). He argues that nature offers its resources and opportunities to all men but because men allow monopolization and inequality in the distribution of nature’s resources, they are ignoring all the characteristics and requirements of true Justice. Henry George’s proposal to reform unfair social conditions starts with the distribution of land. “His solution was the ‘single tax,’ which would replace other taxes with a levy on increases in the value of real estate. The single tax would be so high that it would prevent speculation in both urban and rural land, and land would then become available to aspiring businessmen and urban working men seeking to become farmers” (Foner 39). He briefly mentions the Declaration of Independence where he goes on to say that the unalienable rights mentioned are “denied when the equal right to land -- on which and by which men alone can live -- is denied” (Foner 40). Henry George also believes that the main cause of poverty, political corruption, and ignorance starts with unequal distribution and access to land. He also exp