By contrast, new money, sometimes referred to as nouveau riche, emerged from the explosive growth of industry, railroads, steel, oil, and finance during the Industrial Revolution. Entrepreneurs such as John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and Cornelius Vanderbilt amassed fortunes on a scale previously unimaginable. Their wealth was often sudden, immense, and highly visible, expressed through grand mansions, lavish parties, and conspicuous consumption. However, old money elites viewed these industrial tycoons' public display of wealth as vulgar and those acquiring it as lacking sophistication, proper manners, education, and pedigree. They believed that because their wealth had been untested through generations, it was less legitimate and lasting. 

The tension between the two groups played out most visibly in city social life. New money families attempted to purchase acceptance by mimicking old money customs—hiring European tutors, collecting fine art, and building large mansions along Fifth Avenue or in Newport. The Vanderbilts, for example, spent enormous amounts of money on architecture and social events to assert their status. Yet despite their wealth, acceptance was not guaranteed. Old money families guarded their social circles carefully, using etiquette and ancestry as barriers against what they saw as offensive displays of wealth.

Old money families like the Astors used ancestry, etiquette, and social institutions to define “true” respectability, implying that wealth alone was insufficient without pedigree. This continued to cement the idea that class is not structured on wealth but through education, neighborhoods, accents, race, social networks, etc. This helped define an interesting dichotomy of American life: the “American dream” of upward mobility and success is still shaped by inequalities of social hierarchies.