before we get to the books, the golden age is our topic. please define the phrase.
The Gilded Age refers to the period between the end of the American Civil War in 1865 and the beginning of the Progressive Era in the early 20th century. The phrase comes from Mark Twain’s novel The Gilded Age. in the nineteenth century, on the surface, everything seemed golden. the country was growing rapidly in population and industrial capacity. but beneath the gold was a society in crisis. things were getting worse for most people. there was a lot of rot, a lot of corruption. that is why the name golden age was kept until the end of the 19th century.
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The phrase suggests to me a time plagued by materialistic excesses. how fast was economic growth? How dramatic were the changes that were underway?
In 1865, the United States emerged from the Civil War with an economy based primarily on agriculture and small-scale production. At the beginning of the 20th century, the United States was on its way to becoming the largest industrial nation in the world. In 1865, America was largely a small, rural town. At the beginning of the 20th century, most Americans lived in cities. At the end of the 19th century, most Americans were independent producers and small businessmen. In the early 20th century, most Americans worked for wages. virtually everything in the country changed during the golden age, in ways that no one would have expected in 1865.
How was the Golden Age different from the ongoing Victorian era in the UK and the Belle Epoque in France?
The Victorian period in Britain overlaps with the Gilded Age in the United States. The main difference is that Britain had experienced its industrial expansion long before the United States. The other big difference is that the United States was a democracy while Britain was still monarchical and aristocratic. Furthermore, Britain already had a deep cultural past. The United States was sensitive to its lack of culture, despite the fact that the Gilded Age is a period of explosion in American arts and literature. finally, British imperialism was advancing outside its borders, while US imperialism was developing mostly within its borders. The United States was still conquering much of its western territory.
I insisted that you include your superlative study of the oxford period of united states history among the five books we discussed about the gilded age. Let’s start talking about the republic it represents.
Most of the books in the Oxford History of the United States series end on a triumphant note. the volume on the revolution ends with the establishment of the republic. the civil war volume ends with emancipation and union victory. my volume begins with the end of the civil war, but then enters a period of great change and conflict. my volume ends in 1896, the turmoil subsides but without any sort of triumphant note or clear idea of what comes next.
The Gilded Age is so relevant to read right now because it’s so similar to the period we’re in. we are in a period of great turmoil, it is difficult to say whether we are moving forward or backward. .
In the book, you refer to the golden age as “the greatest reconstruction”. what does that mean?
When I use the phrase “major reconstruction” I mean that the reconstruction efforts that followed the civil war were not limited to the South. There was also an attempt to rebuild the western United States, and indeed even the northern United States. The victorious Republican Party wanted to remake the entire country into a replica of Abraham Lincoln’s hometown of Springfield, Illinois. Reconstruction was an effort to make the United States a nation without great disparities in wealth, a largely small town and rural Protestant country, and a nation of more or less equal people.
“virtually everything in the country changed during the golden age”
as the victorious republicans saw it, once we freed the slaves, once reconstruction took place, once American farmers settled on land previously occupied by Native Americans, all in the states united they would be roughly equal and the federal government would ensure that all black and white men had equal political rights. that’s basically the vision they had for reconstruction. and failed. the great tragedy of reconstruction is that it fails to ensure black equality and prosperity. Reconstruction fell far short of what the Republican Party in the South intended.
Equality: An American Dilemma 1866-1896, by Bancroft Prize-winning historian Charles Postel, seems to pick up on those points.
Charles Postel’s book assumes the meaning of equality in an industrial society. She discusses three organizations that were critical to the period but are largely forgotten today: the Farmers, the Knights of Labor, and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. all of these organizations were interest groups in ways that will become familiar in the 20th century.
Farmers, established when agriculture was the largest economic sector, fought to ensure that farmers retained a fair share of society’s profits. Farmers argued that what’s good for farmers will ultimately be good for America.
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The Knights of Labor were a labor organization that opposed wage labor. they wanted to democratize American industry, so capital and labor cooperated to shape labor rules and distribute profits. the knights wanted to transform the entire industrial system.
The Women’s Christian Temperance Union was led by a largely forgotten figure who was one of the most transformative reformers of the 19th century. Frances Willard argued that everything that affects the home must be subject to the influence of women. alcohol use affected the home, so willard started with temperance. children were the responsibility of women, so schools should be shaped by women. the health of the home depended on women, so women must fight for clean and safe cities. Willard’s framework for women’s spheres of influence steadily expanded. she turned the women’s christian temperance union into a general reform organization under which women lobbied for change throughout society.
postel looks at these organizations’ attempts to remake post-civil war America into a reconciled nation in which there is equality of opportunity and no great disparities in wealth. but the South resisted a vision of equality that included black citizens. So these reformers created a comprehensive vision of what America is supposed to be, but undermined that vision by conceding white supremacy.
Historians Charles and Mary Beard noted that fraternalism was a “general craze” in late-19th-century America. Postel calls the post-war period “collective” decades. is this what you meant?
At the end of the 19th century, Americans were carpenters. they joined all kinds of organizations. masons were one of the greatest. most Americans belonged to churches, mostly Protestant churches, but also Catholic churches. all the organizations I have talked about are flourishing voluntary organizations. most Americans, men and women, belonged to at least one of these organizations, which were influential and powerful.
The usual interpretation is that all these organizations strengthened democracy, because they accustomed Americans to cooperate with each other. I’m not so sure about that. how these organizations worked was not as simple as scholars often make it seem. many were not particularly democratic. organizations like the masons were quite hierarchical. One of the great mysteries of the age is the social and political impact of fraternalism. It’s something I’m looking into right now.
You’ve mentioned a work of fiction among your Gilded Age books and it’s one of my favorites: A Peril of New Fortunes by William Dean Howells.
william dean howells isn’t widely read now, but it should be. he was one of the best known writers of the time. A Chance of New Fortunes may not be the best novel of the time, but it is quite important and very revealing. the plot is simple. Basil March and his wife, Isabel, move from Boston to New York, where he becomes the editor of a magazine and becomes involved in the social conflict of the time.
howells has a wonderful eye. makes the march house hunt an exploration of late 19th century new york. it takes you on a ride from the working class to the rich parts of the city. introduces you to a cast of characters ranging from radicals to nouveau riche. howells is scrupulously fair and sympathetic to almost everyone he writes about, even those who are unfair to others. Howells gives his readers a glimpse of what it was like to live in New York City in the 1880s, amid great disparities in wealth, while major political conflicts were opening up. that’s the power of the book.
A Chance of New Fortunes is known as the first New York life novel. How central was New York to the Gilded Age and how did the Gilded Age help shape New York?
new york city, for howells, was “the great american city”. during the golden age, new york dwarfed all other american cities.
new york became central because it is where capital flows. As a centralized capital, New York gained great influence over other parts of the country. People make their money across the country, but as inequality grows during the Gilded Age, the top layer of society is concentrated in New York.
The second reason New York became central was its diversity. new york was the place where immigrants from all over the world arrived. During the golden age, New York was an industrial city. it was full of medium-sized factories and workshops. New York became a place where the working poor congregated.
the rise of a wealthy elite and the rise of wage labor came together in new york. In the 1870s and 1880s, before Brooklyn and Queens were incorporated into New York, these two groups concentrated in Manhattan. new york city became one of the most densely populated places in the world; great wealth and great poverty rubbed against each other.
The Gilded Age was a period of accelerated industrial development when the financial industry became more concentrated in New York.
The financial industry grew out of the civil war. the union fought with borrowed money. after the civil war, the government no longer needed small savers to buy bonds to finance the federal government. So the banks turn to bond sales to finance railroads and other companies that expanded along with them.
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In the late 19th century, the united states built great railroads, which became the first great corporations. no one had the individual wealth to build these companies; they depended on borrowed money.
During the golden age, London, rather than New York, was the world’s financial center. but new york was the financial center of the united states. there is capital in boston, philadelphia, chicago; but the real money was in new york. It is not so much the stock market as the bond market that developed in the 1870s and 1880s in New York. Then, in the 1890s, when the corporate model expanded to all kinds of businesses, New York became even more important.
The following is a work of non-fiction. please tell me about princeton historian martha a. The Strange Passage of Sandweiss, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.
I really admire this book. uses a fascinating story to enlighten the whole society. The central character is a white man named Clarence King who was born into wealth and privilege. he was one of the famous figures of the golden age, explorer, scientist and bestselling author. he knew everyone, from the top of society to the bottom.
King was known among his friends as a bachelor who had romantic relationships with a wide range of women. What almost no one knows is that the king married Ada Copeland, a black woman who was born into slavery in Georgia. Ada believed that Clarence was an African American porter named James Todd, whose frequent absences were explained by his work on the railroad. so the king, a white patrician public figure, privately posed as black and had five mixed-race children. the book revolves around their incredibly complicated life together. the story is fascinating, the characters are fascinating, and it’s wonderful work.
what does the weirdness reveal about the fluidity and rigidity of gilded age society?
We believe that race was an impervious boundary in the Jim Crow era. the golden age becomes the era of the “one drop rule”. marni sandweiss uses this story to show us that there was mixing and that people crossed the color lines for all sorts of reasons. in the society of the golden age, the elites enjoyed the social possibilities of the poorer urban areas. passing strange makes it clear that racism is real, but that racial categories are artificial and often mocked throughout history, including during the golden age.
finally, the quest for order, a 1967 synthetic survey by historian robert wiebe.
The republic it represents is partly a reaction to this book. The Quest for Order is one of those history books that seemed to define a period so completely that other historians avoided the subject for decades after it was published. people use wiebe from the 1960s to the early 21st century.
According to Wiebe, the real story of this period is how America went from loosely connected local communities to a national community; it changed from the fragmented nation it had been before the civil war to a modern nation with a new middle class. it’s a story with a simple general thesis and almost too many details.
but wiebe did not have the evidence to support many of the claims that supported his thesis. many of the things he said happened in the golden age had happened before and other things didn’t happen at all. however, it is quite a narrative feat to fit so many disparate details into a simple framework. Although I do not agree with Wiebe, I always have my sights set on the search for order as a model of historical writing.
the search for order presents the golden age as the path for the progressive movement of the 20th century. how is the golden age connected to what came after?
wiebe argues that the growth of experience and the dissolution of island communities is the true beginning of the progressive era. he argued that the progressive era is quite different. During the late 19th century, there is a belief that the entire country can be democratized, including the economy, and that if we fail to democratize the economy and society, the United States will completely split apart. Wiebe and others project progressive beliefs about conflict management with only minor changes into the nineteenth century. I believe that the failure of 19th-century reforms, mired in the sandbanks of xenophobia and white supremacy, paved the way for the progressive era, but that the progressive movement only took root because more radical reforms failed.
Earlier, you mentioned that we have a lot to learn from the golden age because it has a lot in common with the current period. How does the golden age help us understand the 2010s and 2020s?
if you look in the history of the united states for a time when there were problems similar to ours, i can’t think of a better period than the golden age. The Gilded Age is the beginning of the great era of immigration in the United States, which exploded after the Civil War. If you’re looking for a time when fear of cultural change threatened to tear us apart, go back to the golden age. elites feared that the influx of Catholics was undermining American schools, Protestant churches, and the principles of American government. the reconstruction began with transformative intentions, but failed. Similarly, if you want to look at a period when America is adjusting to ethnic diversity and fighting historical injustices, look at the Gilded Age.
I could go on and on and on describing the parallels between the present and the golden age. If you think our democracy can’t handle the economic inequality that plagues the 21st century, go back to the golden days, when Americans feared the nation wouldn’t put up with the economic inequality that plagued the late 19th century. If you think the nature of work is changing drastically, go back to the golden age, when the economy was transformed. If you are concerned that changes in the environment threaten health and humanity, go back to the golden age when urbanization and industrialization gave rise to those concerns. these parallels allow us to move away from the preoccupations in which we are now immersed and to think about our world in new ways. the long lens of history shows us what we are too short-sighted to see in the present.
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