From: IN%"H-SHGAPE@H-NET.MSU.EDU" "H-Net Gilded Age and Progressive Era List" 27-JUL-1998 23:15:21.91
To: IN%"H-SHGAPE@H-NET.MSU.EDU" "Recipients of H-SHGAPE digests"
CC:
Subj: H-SHGAPE Digest - 26 Jul 1998 to 27 Jul 1998
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 08:16:35 -0500 From: Kriste Lindenmeyer <KLINDENMEYER@tntech.edu> Subject: Query: Use of "Gilded Age" among U.S. historians?
From: IN%"alessoff@falcon.tamucc.edu" "Alan Lessoff" 26-JUL-1998 15:17:21.95
Colleagues:
Everyone knows the provenance of the term "Gilded Age," but has anyone ever investigated a matter more relevant to the profession, which is when and how historians began routinely to use it to refer to the decades between Reconstruction and the Spanish-American War.
The name is as good as any, and debates over the appropriate names for historical periods quickly become pedantic. Still, the term invariably forces most of us to inject a constraining element of revisionism into our work, i.e. we almost always find ourselves suggesting that the Gilded Age wasn't as directionless, crass, and materialistic as the image. Thus, it would be useful to know how the term became common currency among us.
From my own inchoate and therefore inconclusive investigations, I suspect that "Gilded Age" became standard by the mid-late 1940s and that this labelling reflected several professional trends, not least of which was the standardization of the format of the US history survey that seems to have taken place in the middle of this century. Writers such as Hofstadter were already employing the term as a given that readers would understand in works such as "American Political Tradition" (1948). It was clearly accepted and widespread (though not universal) by the 1950s. However, in truly solid interpretative overviews of the late-nineteenth century from the early- and mid-1930s, such as Schlesinger's "Rise of the City" (1933), the term does not appear. Indeed, Schlesinger's book retains fans among historians after two-thirds of a century in part because it adopts a framework wholly independent of that implied by the term "Gilded Age." I have no copy of Josephson's "Politicos" or "Robber Barons" at hand, and I can't recall whether he used the term, though he obviously had the idea.
In the Beards' "Rise of American Civilization" (1927), there is an engaging chapter on late-nineteenth century culture entitled "The Gilded Age" (ch. XXV). The Beards use the term with many of the same connotations as we do. The Beards refer to the Twain/Warner book as "Mark Twain's caricature of the passing show." (1930 ed., Vol. II, p. 395). They also wrote, (pp. 436-437), that Twain and Warner "decided that the title, The Gilded Age, covered their view of the scene; and under that head, which we have used from their coinage, they portrayed the social structure from top to bottom." Now, Charles Beard had a deep intellectual interest in the problem of periodization, and he was fertile in imagining names for periods. [Think of the brilliant, "Second American Revolution."] Is it possible that for seventy years the profession has been using yet another Beardian creation without really realizing it, because of the huge influence of "Rise of American Civilization" on the generation that began to write in the 1940s and 1950s?
Maybe I am wrong, but I do not recall ever coming across a document from the late-nineteenth century that uses the term "Gilded Age," except in reference to the Twain/Warner novel. By comparison, the frequently-attacked "Progressive era" rests on solid ground, since the reform activists of the early twentieth century eventually did come to call themselves "progressives," and by the 1920s, they often referred to themselves as "old progressives."
In several years of admittedly unsystematic historiographic research, I do not recall coming across an article that investigates the historiographic origin of "Gilded Age" itself, though many books and articles comment on the term and the image it conveys.
Refutation or confirmation of these hypotheses would be most appreciated.
Alan Lessoff
Associate Professor of History
Texas A&M University--Corpus Christi
alessoff@falcon.tamucc.edu
ph: 512-994-2605
fax: 512-994-5844
From: IN%"H-SHGAPE@H-NET.MSU.EDU" "H-Net Gilded Age and Progressive Era List" 28-JUL-1998 23:03:48.31
To: IN%"H-SHGAPE@H-NET.MSU.EDU" "Recipients of H-SHGAPE digests"
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Subj: H-SHGAPE Digest - 27 Jul 1998 to 28 Jul 1998
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 08:44:57 -0500 From: Kriste Lindenmeyer <KLINDENMEYER@tntech.edu> Subject: Re: Use of "Gilded Age" among U.S. historians (1)
From: IN%"crockrc@mail.auburn.edu" "Ruth C Crocker" 27-JUL-1998 15:10:03.62
Thanks for the interesting post on the Gilded Age. My "take" on this term is my assumption that gilt can peel off, but gold is solid all the way through (well there/s gold-plated, perhaps we should save that for the 1980s).
Thus, the use of the term "gilded age" seems to me to indicate an approach that is almost self-consciously revisionist. ie. The glittering surfaces can be scraped, peeled away to reveal -- whatever. The idea is one that distinguishes between the real and the surface/appearance of things. I take this to be a Progressive-era view, one that offers to peel back the skin, draw aside the curtain, etc. and show the "real" stuff beneath. Whether the things revealed are the slums (as in Riis); or the corruption of political "machines" (mixed metaphor here); or the seedy motives of the seemingly disinterested reformers and self-described social scientists, etc.
It's an approach that tends to dismiss the self-representations of historical actors, to look instead for "what's really going on," and perhaps also to be ready to believe the worst of people. Beard certainly would be an example of this kind of historical writing, as would Josephson.
More recent and I think more useful approaches to interpreting historical approaches can still keep this critical skepticism toward "sources" but I think can also enjoy the play of surfaces themselves, even if they are "Gilt." Does anyone want to speculate about the relationship between Gilt and Guilt? As in the Robber Baron literature.
Ruth Crocker
Auburn University
From: IN%"H-SHGAPE@H-NET.MSU.EDU" "H-Net Gilded Age and Progressive Era List" 29-JUL-1998 23:04:08.84
To: IN%"H-SHGAPE@H-NET.MSU.EDU" "Recipients of H-SHGAPE digests"
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Subj: H-SHGAPE Digest - 28 Jul 1998 to 29 Jul 1998
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 10:55:32 -0500 From: Kriste Lindenmeyer <KLINDENMEYER@tntech.edu> Subject: Re: Use of "Gilded Age" among U.S. historians (1)
From: IN%"bcohen@worc.mass.edu" "bcohen" 28-JUL-1998 10:28:39.82
In The Rise of Silas Lapham William Dean Howells' novel the main character Lapham is a self-made man because of his success in the paint industry.However as Kermit Vanderbilt points out in his introduction to the Pengiun edition of the The Rise of Silas Lapham," ...paint is a convenient symbol in Silas' moral struggle. Here lies the danger of coating over the ethical sense in his paint-business transactions."
In the beginning of the novel Silas is being interviewed by a reporter who asks him: "Never tried it on the human conscience,I suppose," suggested Bartley. "No,sir,"replied Lapham,gravely. "I guess you want to keep that as free from paint as you can,if you want much use of it.I never cared to try any of it on mine." As Vanderbilt continues,"Yet in the removal of his partner, Rogers, Silas has not quite kept his conscience 'free from paint.'"
I believe that the Gilded Age defined the period-if Howells had written his book in 1874 rather than in 1885 and the nuances of the paint theme had been undrstood then America might have called the period the Painted or Painted- Over Age. But in either case as the authors of the novels mentioned pointed out, how many people in the late 19th century wanted to recognize the unvarnished truth?
Bruce Cohen Worcester State College
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 17:04:23 -0500 From: Kriste Lindenmeyer <KLINDENMEYER@tntech.edu> Subject: Re: "Use of Gilded Age" Among U.S. Historians (1)
From: IN%"eckman@u.washington.edu" "John Eckman" 29-JUL-1998 15:45:06.61
>I believe that the Gilded Age defined the period-if Howells had written his >book in 1874 rather than in 1885 and the nuances of the paint theme had been >undrstood then America might have called the period the Painted or Painted- >Over Age.
Except, of course, that Mark Twain's _The Gilded Age_ was first published in 1873!
John
From: IN%"H-SHGAPE@H-NET.MSU.EDU" "H-Net Gilded Age and Progressive Era List" 30-JUL-1998 23:05:31.27
To: IN%"H-SHGAPE@H-NET.MSU.EDU" "Recipients of H-SHGAPE digests"
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Subj: H-SHGAPE Digest - 29 Jul 1998 to 30 Jul 1998
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 13:52:07 -0500 From: Kriste Lindenmeyer <KLINDENMEYER@tntech.edu> Subject: Re: Use of "Gilded Age" Among U.S. Historians (1)
From: IN%"bcohen@worc.mass.edu" "bcohen" 30-JUL-1998 08:35:24.70
Alan Trachtenberg in The Incorporation of America (p.150) uses 1874 as the date of publication for The Gilded Age [Mark Twain].
Bruce Cohen
Worcester State College
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 15:04:31 -0500 From: Kriste Lindenmeyer <KLINDENMEYER@tntech.edu> Subject: Re: Second look, Use of "Gilded Age" Among U.S. Historians (1)
From: IN%"eckman@u.washington.edu" "John Eckman" 30-JUL-1998 15:00:29.26 On 7/30/98 11:52 AM, Bruce Cohen wrote:
>Alan Trachtenberg in The Incorporation of America (p.150) uses 1874 as the >date of publication for The Gilded Age [Mark Twain].
I've just gone back and re-read my last message to H-SHGAPE, noting the date of _The Gilded Age_, to find that it reads a bit more antagonistically than I had intended. Such is the danger of quickly jotted email notes - no offense intended.
I actually just went and looked it up in the library catalogue, not having a copy handy nor knowing the date for certain myself.
Here's the cite I based my date on:
Author: Twain, Mark, 1835-1910.
Title: The gilded age / Mark Twain & Charles Dudley Warner ;
foreword,
Shelley Fisher Fishkin ; introduction, Ward Just ;
afterword,
Gregg Camfield.
Pub. Info.: New York : Oxford University Press, 1996. Phy Descript: xlii, 574, 51 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.
Notes: Facsimile reproduction of the first American ed.,
published, Hartford, Conn., American Pub. Co., 1873.
Includes bibliographical references.
LC Subject: City-and-town-life -- Washington-DC -- Fiction.
Washington-DC -- Politics-and-government -- To-1878 --
Fiction.
Other Sub.: Livres-a-clef.
Satire.
Other Author: Warner, Charles Dudley, 1829-1900. Other Title: Gilded age, a tale of to-day.
Oxford Mark Twain.
Series Info.: Twain, Mark, 1835-1910. Works. 1996.
---
In fact, in _Incorporation_ Trachtenberg gives both dates- on p.150 he gives 1874, but on page 162 he gives 1873.
Any Twain/Warner scholars out there who can give a more definitive answer? I'm not one!
John
From: IN%"H-SHGAPE@H-NET.MSU.EDU" "H-Net Gilded Age and Progressive Era List" 31-JUL-1998 23:02:31.17
To: IN%"H-SHGAPE@H-NET.MSU.EDU" "Recipients of H-SHGAPE digests"
CC:
Subj: H-SHGAPE Digest - 30 Jul 1998 to 31 Jul 1998
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 10:14:05 -0500 From: Kriste Lindenmeyer <KLINDENMEYER@tntech.edu> Subject: Re: Use of "Gilded Age" Among U.S. Historians (1)
From: IN%"rweir@mtholyoke.edu" "Robert Weir" 30-JUL-1998 15:39:24.79
I'm not surprised that there is confusion over the date of THE GILDED AGE. Our Mr. Clemens added to it.
I happen to be at work on a Twain research project of my own, so here's the skinny.
Twain himself wrote to various papers in 1873 BEFORE the novel was even published. In April of 1873 he wrote to the NEW YORK GRAPHIC to call his own book "one of the most astonishing novels ever written." That didn't prevent the GRAPHIC from panning it in a 12/23/73 review!
The book actually came out in 1874, but some reviewers got advance copies in Dec. of 1873. So which is it? Take your pick. For most of those non-critics who actually read the book, it was 1874.
Hope this clears the air a bit.
Rob Weir
Associate Professor
Bay Path College
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 10:20:49 -0500 From: Kriste Lindenmeyer <KLINDENMEYER@tntech.edu> Subject: Re: More on Use of "Gilded Age" Among U.S. Historians (2)
[1]
From: IN%"mersoz@carbon.cudenver.edu" "Meryem C. Ersoz" 30-JUL-1998 17:37:53.39
The publication date of THE GILDED AGE is one of those notoriously confusing factoids because the novel (pub. date 1873) preceded the 1874 stage play version (April 1874). The original play version was unauthorized, but Twain eventually bought the rights to it and used it as the basis for another play, COLONEL SELLERS (not to be confused with the collaborative efforts of W.D. Howells and Twain on still another play entitled COLONEL SELLERS AS A SCIENTIST).
The recycling of titles and variations on characters and themes can be tough to unravel. Thomas Schirer in MARK TWAIN AND THE THEATER provides a useful chronology. Also, check the invaluable MARK TWAIN A TO Z by Kent Rasmussen.
Hope this helps.
Meryem Ersoz
University of Colorado-Denver
John Eckman and I are both right; as my Bobbs-Merrill edition of The Gilded Age states the book was first published in 1873-1874.There is a rationale for the dual dates of publication. As Bryant Morey French points out TGA was first published in December,1873 by the American Publishing Company.Twain wrote a new preface for the London edition of TGA in London, completing it on December 11,1873.However George Escol Sellars,a business associate of Warner took umbrage with Twain and Warner's portrayal of Colonel Eschol Sellars.THe authors chose to change the name of the character to Beriah Sellars in the second printing of the first edition of TGA in 1874.This is the text of TGA that French used in the 1972 Bobbs-Merrill edition.I guess that Alan Trachtenberg can use both dates!
Bruce Cohen
Worcester State College
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 12:11:24 -0500 From: Kriste Lindenmeyer <KLINDENMEYER@tntech.edu> Subject: More on Use of "Gilded Age" by U.S. Historians
From: IN%"alessoff@falcon.tamucc.edu" "Alan Lessoff" 31-JUL-1998 10:28:53.10
Comrades:
The "Gilded Age" was published in 1873 and is full of references to current headlines, such as the Pomeroy scandal, the "Salary Grab" (which they call the "Indigent Congressmen's Retroactive Appropriation"), Credit Mobilier (the "National Internal Improvement Director's Relief Measure"), the Tweed Ring, and so on. The traditional story is that Clemens and Warner began the book in late 1872 when challenged by their wives to write something better than the sentimental melodramas they were grousing about one evening. The book works well with students on many levels, though those who are not habitual readers have a hard time getting through the first chapters, which take place in Tennessee and Missouri in the 1850s.
With all due respect, however, the drift of this conversation, subsequent to Professor Crocker's interesting observation, illustrates the point that I meant to make in my original message over the weekend. For decades we have been labelling a key period of US history, the "Gilded Age," without having clear in our minds of how the phrase entered historiography. Everyone knows that Twain and Warner wrote a popular novel of that name, but how did historians begin to apply it to the period? Since periodization is, in our business, largely synonymous with explanation, we ought at least know how the profession came to use the term, though one would be loath to suggest dropping it.
If one checks in current listings of an on-line bookseller like Amazon.Com, one will find dozens of books published in the last fifteen years with "Gilded Age," in the title. Many more use the term as a conceptual or narrative foundation. Still, I do not know of anyone who has investigated the historical career of the term.
If anyone knows of a document of any kind (other than the Twain/Warner novel, of course) from the decades between Reconstruction and the Spanish-American War, in which the present epoch is referred to as the "Gilded Age", I would appreciate hearing about that. Otherwise, we can assume that there is no such document.
Also, I would appreciate refutation of my hypothesis that the first historians to use the term in the way we now do were Charles and Mary Beard in "Rise of American Civilization" (1927), ch. XXV. By the way, in that chapter, they use lower-case letters, as in "gilded age." I was leafing the other day through another popular textbook from the middle of the century, Cochran and Miller's "The Age of Enterprise" (1942) and could not find "Gilded Age," though I probably wasn't looking hard enough.
Cheers,
Alan Lessoff
Associate Professor of History
Texas A&M University--Corpus Christi
alessoff@falcon.tamucc.edu
ph: 512-994-2605
fax: 512-994-5844
Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2006 07:58:38 -0600
From: Linda Endersby
[Editors note: Would anyone like to tackle assisting this inquiry? Please =
respond directly to greensprings1@cs.com.]
I am writing an article about the history of the Belleview Hotel in=20
Florida (built by Henry Plant c. 1896) for a regional magazine and need=20
some expert advice about some very general introductory wording concerning =
the Gilded Age. Can you advise me if the following sentence is correct?
Opportunistic entrepreneurs like Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Morgan, and=20
Gould formed powerful monopolies in a time of lax business regulation=20
while their society wives competed to throw the most outlandish soir=E9es=20
until tax and antitrust legislation during the Wilson administration=20
brought the party to an end.
Some online sources state that WWl was the end of the Gilded Age, some say =
the Great Depression, and some cite 1901 as the end of the age. I am not=20
a historian and need some guidance.=20
When did the Gilded Age end? What brought it to an end? The legislation=20
of the Wilson administration?
Thanks for any help you can provide. I will credit your website in my=20
list of sources.
Lani Friend Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 18:03:56 -0500
From: Linda Eikmeier Endersby
I would first like to express my heartfelt appreciation for your astute
and informative answers to my question about the conclusion of the
Gilded Age. I feel like I have been privileged to attend an online
seminar on the topic! You are all from such esteemed and authoritative
backgrounds that I feel quite overwhelmed at my good fortune to be
honored with your insights.
I am basically an ESL instructor embarking on the freelance writing
career that has been my secret ambition for 20 years. I am also the
unofficial (and uncredentialed) public historian for my small historic
community on the river here on the St. Johns River in Central Florida.
Recently I have had the unprecedented good (or bad) luck to have been
commissioned to write a series of feature articles on Florida history
for a new magazine published on the west coast.
However, this question has made me wonder what I got myself into!
I have lost sleep on this sentence for two weeks. But there was no way
I could write my way out of it! I had to mention the Gilded Age and
give some kind of general parameters for the period even though I well
know the difficulties of doing that with any phenomenon. History is
anything but neat or easily categorized.
So I frantically read everything online that I could, and I found a half
dozen different time frames and as many different issues involved!
The best part about this whole experience is that I have found out that
not even the experts agree on the answer, and there may not actually BE
such a "creature" as the Gilded Age at all!
Each of you has a slightly different take on the issue, but you all
agree on the basics. There seems to be a divide on the issue between
culture references (architecture, lifestyles, preservation) and
political history, so I might restrict my description to the latter.
Several of you suggested the Age began to end in 1893 with the onset of
depression and various other events and legislation. RE national
politics, two people suggested that it ended about 1901 when Roosevelt
became President, one person suggested 1900.
I will certainly delete my reference to the Wilson administration.
Another person pointed out that the publicity given these lavish
lifestyles in the mass media of the times pressured the nouveau riche to
be more discreet. One of you observed that these lifestyles had become
targets for criticism and reform by the time of the Wilson administration.
I will include that somewhere in my article.
One very helpful suggestion was to revise the end of the sentence to say
that tax and antitrust legislation during the Progressive Era
contributed to the end of the Age.
In short, you have each thrown me a lifeline and rescued me from a
potentially horrible death by drowning in a sea of outraged letters to
the editor about historical correctness! I cannot thank you enough.
Now my only question is why I insist on writing about history and
getting myself into "another fine mess" like this in the first place
(apologies to Laurel and Hardy)!
Lani Friend
Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 02:27:58 -0000
From: endersby@MAIL.H-NET.MSU.EDU
Hello,
I just received the letter of thanks sent to the list by Lani Freind re:
all of the responses to her query about the gilded Age.
I, for some reason, do not believe that I saw any of these responses come
across my email. I certainly might have just missed them, but based on
the
enthusiasm of Lani's letter, I'd love to "hear" the responses if they
could be sent my way. I would love to use the exchange with my graduate
students.
Best,
Elizabeth Duclos-Orsello
Elizabeth Duclos-Orsello, Ph.D.
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 08:36:32 -0600
From: Linda Endersby
I, for one, agree with Dr. Duclos-Orsello. I was looking forward to a
lively discussion on this issue, and was disappointed that the respondents
apparently chose to keep it off the board. I like seeing the opinions of
my more experienced colleagues on topics such as this. Perhaps it's an
old argument; for me that is all the more reason to value current opinions
on the subject.
Sincerely,
Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 02:32:58 -0000
From: endersby@MAIL.H-NET.MSU.EDU
Subject: REPLY: H-SHGAPE Query: Gilded Age
Hello all,
I was also disappointed. It was timely to see a question like this only
because I just started a seminar where this was discussed.
Cheryl Lemus
Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 02:40:59 -0000
From: endersby@MAIL.H-NET.MSU.EDU
Subject: H-SHGAPE: Gilded Age discussion
[Editor's note: The original query came from someone not on the list.
Those who responded to the query are welcome to post their responses to
the list.]
We were instructed to reply privately !
Bruce Cohen
Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 02:44:02 -0000
From: endersby@MAIL.H-NET.MSU.EDU
Subject: H-SHGAPE: Gilded Age
Dear H-SHGAPE subscribers,
I agree that Lani Friend’s question should stimulate an interesting list
discussion. I am willing to share the message I sent her. Perhaps other
will as well, although she did a good job summarizing the messages she
received. I would like to hear what other subscribers think about this
question.
Kris
-----Original Message-----
From: Kriste Lindenmeyer [mailto:lindenme@umbc.edu]
Sent: Saturday, January 21, 2006 6:08 PM
To: 'Greensprings1@CS.COM'
Subject: RE: Gilded Age
Hum. This is a very interesting question. I have forwarded it to the
other editors for posting on the H-SHGAPE list.
Most historians would agree that the “Gilded Age and the Progressive
Era” are a single period that ran from approximately the end of the
American Civil War up to 1917 or 1920. If they are forced to divide the
GA from the PE, very few would argue that the Gilded Age extended beyond
1900. In other words, for most historians the Gilded Age does not extend
into the 20th century, although there were still many trends of the late
nineteenth century (especially in business and economics) that ran into
the twentieth. It is also important to remember that the Wilson tax code
only taxed the upper 1% of incomes in the U.S.---and even then at a very
low rate. So, it was not really the tax code that ended the “gilded”
aspects of the Gilded Age. Indeed, as you note, some would argue that it
took the stock market crash and the onset of the Great Depression to
really break the back of the Gilded Age rich industrialists and bankers.
It will be interesting to see what other historians say about this
question. I suspect it will be posted on the discussion list on Monday.
You can subscribe for free at
http: h-net.msu.edu/~shgape
KL
Dr. Kriste Lindenmeyer, Chair
Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2006 14:55:29 -0000
From: endersby@MAIL.H-NET.MSU.EDU
Subject: H-SHGAPE: Gilded Age Discussion Thread available on web site / revised H-SHGAPE web site
Dear H-SHGAPE Colleagues:
Regarding the recent queries about the term "Gilded Age," I would remind
you that there is an archived Discussion Thread on this subject, just
updated to reflect recent postings, on the H-SHGAPE web site at
http://www.h-net.org/~shgape/disclist/gildage.html
If those who posted replies on the Gilded Age privately post those replies
on H-SHGAPE, I will add them to the above discussion thread so as to
assist anyone making similar queries in the future. As more replies to
this query come in, they will be added as well.
While you are on the web site, please note that the entire site has been
updated and revised to reflect changes in the officers, policies, and
records of SHGAPE as of December 2005 located at
http://www.h-net.org/~shgape/resources.html.
As soon as newly-installed SHGAPE President Peter Argersinger forwards
changes in officers/policies/records made at the SHGAPE meeting during the
American Historical Convention in Philadelphia in January 2006, those
changes will be made on the web site.
Sincerely,
Patrick D. Reagan, Ph.D.
Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2006 14:57:03 -0000
From: endersby@MAIL.H-NET.MSU.EDU
Subject: H-SHGAPE: Did the Gilded Age really end?
Reopen the discussion with another question?
So many of your members are interested in this topic, I hate to see it
die.
It doesn't seem to me (as a complete amateur with a budding interest in
the
subject) that the Gilded Age ever ended. I mean, the rich of that age
didn't
file for bankruptcy or end up on the street with a tin cup, did they? Did
the upper class artistocracy ever really vanish? Aren't they still with
us today in a different form?
The rules changed for big business, so now we have a different type of
upper
class --Donald Trump and Bill Gates and a host of other billionaires. But
they still have grand lifestyles that they enjoy flaunting.
And now we have Enron and similar corporate megaliths exploiting the
workers
only in a different way. And Nike and other corporations now outsource
their
manufacturing overseas to Asia and South America, using child labor,
paying
third world wages, and not implementing US standards of health and safety,
right?
So what's changed? Seems to me the whole thing just shifted around.
And the destruction of the environment to supply natural resources for
industry doesn't seem to have ended.
Forgive the lack of info behind my question.
Lani Friend
Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 19:09:10 -0000
From: endersby@MAIL.H-NET.MSU.EDU
Subject: Re: H-SHGAPE: Did the Gilded Age really end?
Here is one (rather idiosyncratic) answer:
I hate the term "Gilded Age" because it implies that all the phenomena
you
describe took place circa 1865-1900 and then died away. This reading
emphasizes corruption, excesses of wealth and poverty, and unregulated
corporate greed as THE hallmarks of the post-Civil War decades.
It is certainly true that legislation in the early 20th century,
especially the New Deal, mitigated some of the ills you named. But
concentrated wealth and environmental destruction, for example, were
hardly new in the late 19th century and neither stopped in 1900. And we
may be in an era now, sadly, when we are re-thinking whether or not the
New Deal represented more of an aberration than a complete break with the
past.
Even more, though, the "Gilded Age" strikes me as one of the narrowest
terms, socially and politically, used to describe any era of US history.
It doesn't describe the outlook or experiences of African-Americans after
Emancipation; it doesn't speak much to the experiences of Eastern
European
or Chinese immigrants, or frontier farmers or working-class
laborers(except in a negative sense, as historians point out that their
lives were not "Gilded.")
There was tremendous grassroots activity in the late nineteenth century
among women, moral reformers, economic radicals, civil-service advocates,
and many others; and considerable government activism. Reconstruction is
to me is an immense "mountain" of sweeping, positive government
legislation, in comparison to the rather modest "hill" of Progressivism.
I
have a suspicious feeling that Teddy Roosevelt and his cohort shaped the
terms of the discussion, here, positing themselves as saviors of a world
that had no moral compass before they arrived. The Greenbackers and the
People's Party, whom I study, would have vehemently disagreed. (Actually
Filipinos and Cubans might have had something to say about it, too, as
would African-Americans as Jim Crow and disfranchisement were fully
carried out around 1900. For all these people, the dawn of the 20th
century brought a shutting down, not an opening up of new possibilities.)
Anyhow, not to go on too long, I think your confusion is a result of lack
of clarity in the field about what, if anything, divided the late 19th
and
early 20th centuries. I'd love to see the term "Gilded Age" replaced
with
a broader term for the late nineteenth-century.
It might be possible to see the whole era from 1865 to 1920 as an
extended
Progressive Era, marked by industrial and urban growth, citizen activism,
struggles over racial and religious diversity, and government activism.
Or someone might come along with a better way to think of the late 19th
century.
Rebecca Edwards
Vassar College
reedwards@vassar.edu
Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 02:02:56 -0000
From: H-SHGAPE editor
I completely agree. I just had no idea how else to characterize the
period
of time when Plant built his hotels and the lifestyles of his clientele,
especially in an article that is trying to digest and explain hugely
complicated issues in a way that is understandable and palatable to the
general public.
I think Mark Twain's usage of the term GA maybe was not meant to be taken
as
a set of historical parameters, was it? Isn't that where the term came
from
or did it originate earlier?
New Kid on the Block,
Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 02:05:03 -0000
From: H-SHGAPE editor
You may add me to the list of historians who would be happy to find a
more inclusive term for the era extending roughly between Reconstruction
and World War I. (Not that "H-SHGAPE" doesn't roll lightly off the
tongue.) Until that happy day arrives, I quite like Elisabeth Israels
Perry's SHGAPE Presidential Address (republished in the Journal of the
Gilded Age and Progressive Era - see how much we have invested in these
labels? - for January 2002) with the wonderful title "Men Are From the
Gilded Age, Women Are From the Progressive Era." (It's online at
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jga/1.1/perry.html for
those with web access to JGAPE.)
--
Robert MacDougall
Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 23:08:11 -0000
From: H-SHGAPE editor
I would like to briefly defend the term "Gilded Age." Of course there
are
limitations to the meaning of any term used for periodization, but I
don't
share Professor Edwards' hatred of the term. It captures one main theme
of
the era fairly succinctly and gracefully, and it is up to us to add all
the
context not captured by the phrase directly. We can take apart almost
any
such descriptive term (despite Professor Edwards' endorsement of the term
"Progressive Era" I hardly think the victims of state-sponsored
sterilization programs, for instance, would think of the era as
progressive.
Likewise the citizens of nations in which the US fought proxy wars might
not
consider the "Cold War" cold).
Whether the unscrupulous individualism and acquisitiveness of the Gilded
Age
ever really ended is not a fault of nomenclature. We are well-advised to
encourage students to think about that, just as we should encourage them
to
think about other qualities of the years between Reconstruction and the
turn-of-the-century that expand upon, or critique the term. But I find
it
useful precisely because it is abstract and does not delimit nearly as
much
as, say, the "Progressive Era" does. I can't help admit that I also like
it
because it is a nice turn of phrase.
I would add here that the archived discussion (at
http://www.h-net.org/~shgape/disclist/gildage.html ) moderated by Alan
Lessoff on the etymology of the term gives much credence to the Beards'
use
of it in their 1927 American Civilization text. However, Thomas Beer in
"The Mauve Decade" used the term in 1926 and Vernon Parrington in "Main
Currents in American Thought, Vol. 3" was probably using it
contemporaneously with Beard. (Vol 3 wasn't published until 1930, but
Parrington died in 1929.) Parrington also used the wonderfully
descriptive
term "The Great Barbecue." A 1923 N.Y. Times article reflecting on the
reign
of Boss Tweed stated, "Tweed belonged to an age which the present would
not
recognize. It called itself the gilded age . . . " (Aug 26, 1923. p.
25)
The Twain and Warner book "The Gilded Age" was adapted into a play which
was
often panned by critics but was apparently quite popular with the public
and
was revived repeatedly in the 1890s and 1900s. The Gilbert Dinsmore San
Francisco production alone ran over 1000 performances. The Twain and
Warner
book could also be found on high school reading lists in the early part
of
the century. The title of the book and the play were thus in the common
coin and references to the play or book alluding to the era in general
rather than to the specific text can be found with some regularity (much
as
we might use the term "Generation X" generally but with a knowing nod to
Douglas Coupland's novel of the same name -- though in his case he was
not
the originator of the term).
I think then that the evolution of the term "Gilded Age" itself is of
some
interest and shows a tendency to broaden over time, from a specific link
to
the political corruption of the era, to a more generalized descriptive
term
for an entire cultural climate, internal conflict and all. I think its
use
by historians over the past few decades has proven to be inclusive of all
sorts of themes, and I'm among those happy to keep the term, warts and
all.
Linus Kafka
Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 23:08:47 -0000
From: H-SHGAPE editor
Twain and his co-author meant to suggest "gilt," the thin wash of gold
paint that covers the base metal beneath.
Larry C. Wilson
Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 23:09:58 -0000
From: H-SHGAPE editor
I think that Webster's definition of "gilded" -- "to overlay with or as if
with a thin covering of gold" and "to give an attractive but often
deceptive
appearance to" -- makes clear that gilded can be a very pejorative term
(unless you're gilding chocolate for a special dessert presentation, then
"it's a good thing," apologies to Martha Stewart).
Maybe we shouldn't lose sight of the essentially negative connotation of
this word that Twain used to describe what he saw around him --
superficial
values, huge fortunes made on the backs of the laborers, conspicuous
consumption, and glorification of the lifestyles of the rich and famous.
Gilded meant that beneath the apparent glitter lay a very base metal
foundation. So criticism of this lifestyle is inherent in the term used
to describe it. N'est-ce pas?
Upon further consideration (this from an English major, mind you) it
strikes
me that maybe this term isn't that far off base...
What do you experts think?
LKF (Not a historian, just trying to learn)
Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 23:10:43 -0000
From: H-SHGAPE editor
Rebecca:
I assigned New Spriits for my seminar, and have been reading it for
several days. What an amazing lot of information you harnessed to write
this book! And how well you periodize it and make sense of the whole
thing in the last 3 chapters. I have marked especially p. 199.
I am working on an essay, A New Look at the Settlement Movemnet, and my
ideas (and research) fit well with your interpretation.
Settlements in the early period : 1880s, 90s: experimental,
"progressive," innovative, radical, even, in their opening of a new
space for experiments in gender and activism.
Settlements by 1918, especially: deeply commited to Americanization, in
some cases they also aid the emerging segregartion of housing (in the
North) - my Gary, indiana study found this.
Increasinlgy conservative in their links with normative ideals of the
family, and so on.
And by the 20s, they are "group work" - -a branch of the new social
work, funded by business supported community chests.
Thus, the same narrative as you tell: radical dreams and efforts,
1880s, 90s. Violent repression and backlash (I would date that to
1915-19, including WW I and Red Scare), and emphasis on new structures
of control in the 1920s.
Ruth
Dr. Ruth Crocker
Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 23:11:50 -0000
From: H-SHGAPE editor
Dear H-SHGAPE:
I've found the debate over using the term "Gilded Age" to identify the
historical period falling roughly at the end of the nineteenth century
to be very interesting.
I think that it's notable that the Gilded Age the only period (that I
can think of) that American academic historians have actually given
something other than a purely practical name. To my knowledge, the
periods unfold something like this:
Colonial Period (there may be divisions within it, but I know very
little about this period, and hence can't identify them)
Other than the Gilded Age, these periods are identified by their
relationships to wars or major national political movements, broadly
construed (Progressive, New Deal). Only in the case of the Gilded Age do
we borrow language from observers' description (and criticism) of their
surroundings.
We've all identified the Mark Twain/ Charles Dudley Warner novel as the
source of the term. But how did this term come to identify this period
in academic discourse? Setting aside questions of its usefulness, or
lack of same, I wonder if anyone can shed any light on the issue of when
academic historians first started using the term "Gilded Age" to
identify this period.
Was there a major work of scholarship that made the case for this
term's usefulness in describing the period? What was the argument that
it made for the use of this term? How did this work define the period,
in temporal terms?
Maybe we can begin to unravel why we use this term if we can sort how
when and how it first came into our profession's usage.
Best,
Drew
Drew E. VandeCreek
Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 21:43:44 -0800
From: "Robert W. Cherny"
I have never particularly liked the term Gilded Age, and when SHGAPE was picking its name I argued
for something else, almost anything else. I recall preferring Early Modern for the years between
the Civil War and WWI, but there was concern that that term would be confused with the different
periodization of Early Modern Europe.
Since the group that became SHGAPE agreed on its name and therefore also on the name for the time
period, I have followed that convention on the grounds that we have to call it something and that I
did not think it useful to use a different terminology than the one chosen by my colleagues engaged
in the study of that time period.
Bob Cherny
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2006 02:29:52 -0000
From: H-SHGAPE editor
I have a different understanding of these terms, dating from as long
ago as my undergraduate major in English & American History &
Literature at an institution deeply invested in such studies, and
reaffirmed in grad school, and in my own work as a scholar (albeit on
the literary and cultural side).
Taking the term Gilded Age directly from the novel, which was
published in 1873, and was a reaction to the explosion in speculation
and corruption *immediately following the Civil War*, I have always
used the Gilded Age in my teaching as a term for the period from 1865
roughly to 1880, before the beginning of the period (1880- c.1920)
that Hofstadter called the "Age of Reform" (i.e., the Progressive
Era) during which there was an explosion of reform movements which
had no equivalent during the "Gilded Age" (in my usage):
(My apologies for the length of this list, but I think it makes my
point, since few of these "movements" had a substantial presence
prior to 1880:
Anti-Saloon League (leads to Prohibition by the end of the era);
Of course, in my conception of the period, I cut off the last part of
Hofstadter's, and left with no term for succeeding period but "the
Twenties" (there is a logic to separating the twenties from the
previous period, as Robert Wiebe did, and the last messager suggested
re "structures of control"). I then speak of the next era as the "New
Deal Era" or, in some courses, the era of the Popular Front.
ajf@KINGJOE.ORG
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2006 02:32:06 -0000
From: H-SHGAPE editor
To all:
Pardon me if this has already been mentioned, but there is a special
issue of the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era that will be
issued in the summer on the topic of defining the Gilded Age. It
consists of an article by myself entitled "Thoughts on Periodizing the
Gilded Age: Capital Accumulation, Society, and Politics, 1873-1898" and
responses by James L Huston and Rebecca Edwards.
Rich Schneirov
Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2006 15:23:47 -0600
From: Kimberly Porter
From: Rebecca Edwards
This is a fascinating discussion so I'll weigh in one more time to
keep the conversation going.
Like Bob Cherny I feel stuck with the term Gilded Age because there's
been, to date, tacit agreement on using it and no clear alternative
has emerged I notice that some recent textbooks (like Faragher's)
downplay the term but do not (yet) offer a new nominee or a generally
accepted re-periodization.
Alan Lessoff has done considerable research on when and how the term
Gilded Age came into general usage; he's just settling in for a
Fulbright in Turkey, I believe, but once his e-mail is up and running
again perhaps he can weigh in.
The 1865 to 1880 periodization makes much sense, especially since
Twain and Warner published _The Gilded Age_ in 1873 and applied the
term largely to the years of the Grant Administration. Saying that
an "Age of Reform" started in 1880, however, leaves out a tremendous
amount of grassroots activism during Reconstruction: freedmen's
farmer cooperatives, public education in the South, foundation of
colleges like Fisk and Howard, and many developments in the North as
well (see below). If we think outside this box, isn't there a direct
parallel between the Yankee schoolteachers who went South to teach
freedpeople during Reconstruction--in some cases, like Lucie Stanton
Day and Laura Towne, staying for a lifetime--and the kind of work the
next generation of women did in settlements like Hull House?
My fundamental concern is that Reconstruction and agrarianism in the
South and West get labeled as "failures" under the Gilded-Age/
Progressive Era model. This suggests that the terms "Gilded Age" and
"Progressive Era" essentially reflect middle-class, Northeastern,
Anglo perspectives. By the same token, I agree with the discussant
who says that "Progressive Era" may not be very accurate, either
(considering imperialism, disfranchisement, and so forth).
A few grassroots "Age of Reform" movements that started well before
the 1880 boundary point:
Parks and urban beautification: Frederick Law Olmsted did much of
his most influential work in the 1860s and 1870s; Central Park was
completed in the 1860s and many other cities followed in the next
decade in establishing parks
Prohibitionism: the national WCTU coalesced in the early 1870s
Women's activism: the independent suffrage movement emerged around
1869 and War Relief work was a major launching point for female
organizing
Regulation of prostitution: the first experiments in this were
during the Civil War, I believe, in Knoxville and Memphis (under US
Army sponsorship)
Labor/Socialism: the first national labor unions emerged in the late
1860s and the first major national strike was 1877
Environmentalism: John Muir moved to Yosemite in 1869 and began
publishing in the 1870s; Congress founded the first national park,
Yellowstone, in the early 1870s.
The whole era from 1865 (or really 1861) all the way to 1920 seems to
have been characterized by innovative nationwide grassroots movements
and attempts at state-building. In comparison to the pre-Civil War
era it was a dramatic era in the expansion of government power, but
in comparison to the New Deal, ALL such attempts between 1865-1920
had limitations or could be considered "failures."
Perhaps that's too wishy-washy and other themes should be stressed
instead. The era 1861-1929 could, for example, be called "The Era of
Nationalizing Networks" (trade, government, reform) or maybe "The Era
of Republican Party Dominance."
(As a demoralized blue-stater, perhaps I should add, "The FIRST Era
of Republican Party Dominance....")
Rebecca Edwards
Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2006 15:21:43 -0600
From: Kimberly Porter
From: Lani Friend
I know, I now realize the limitations, but on the other hand it is SO
colorful and fun and silly and evocative and simple and
catchy. "Early Modern" is
not. Early Modern can apply to furniture, architecture, ceramics, appliances,
cars, etc...everything is early modern. Not distinctive
enough. Doesn't grab
me.
As a writer I try to seek out terms that say, "Hey! Drop that remote, toss
the pizza, and look at this! This is great history and you should read it
right now!"
I confess, I'm becoming attached to the musicality of "Gilded Age" in a way
that I never can with "Pro-gr-es-sive E-ra." (How ponderous and plodding and
tiresome. Prrrooogggrressivvve....all those consonants to climb over. Sounds
like you are accompanying a mule team across the Mojave. Don't wanna go
there.)
"Gilded"....ooh. What fun! Quick, and light and golden and not too serious.
Sparkling. Applies to jewelry and Christmas ornaments and picture frames.
No long term committment there. Just fun!
Most readers think of their high school history experience with Mr. Wrathburn
when they think of history at all or are confronted with a feature article
about history...a C minus on your paper about the Sherman Antitrust Act and a
scowl from Mr. W as he deposits the paper on your desk with two fingers and a
sigh of despair.
As a public historian, I have to counteract all that high school baggage by
offering up a buffet of tempting and delicious earthly delights that satisfy
but are not too "weighty."
Consider other terms like "Reconstruction." Though accurate, it is a term I
would eschew in any feature piece on the period in favor of something more
stimulating and verbally appealing. "Reconstruction" sounds like a
massive labor
project that involves sorting out someone else's disaster -- sort of like
rebuilding New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
Which reminds me. Look for my 2,500-word article on "Hurricanes that Blew
History off Course" in New Floridian's summer issue, not sure yet
what date. I
spent four months reading everything there is on historical hurricanes and
focused on the most spectacular killer storms between 1492 and 1848
that actually
determined the course of historical events and shaped culture in the
Caribbean. I tied into websites featuring state parks related to the
Spanish treasure
fleets and the early Spanish settlements in the peninsula. Also read many of
the journals and maritime logs of the early explorers including Columbus.
I know, I now realize the limitations, but on the other hand it is SO
Lani Friend
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 08:35:32 -0600
From: Kimberly Porter
From: "Andrew J. Furer"
Interesting points-- however, "all failures" seems too strong--
consider the effect of Sinclair's novel on reform with the
meatpackers, not to mention gains for women! --1890, the vote in
Wyoming; or Margaret Sanger's legal victory in 1918 suit in New York
allowing doctors to advise their married patients about birth control
for health purposes, and, of course, national suffrage in 1920!
Using the term Gilded Age for the pre-1880 period does not, in my
view, suggest that there was no reform in that era, merely that
perhaps its most striking feature was the economic explosion of
rampant land speculation, and its concurrent corruption.
Andrew J. Furer
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 08:37:13 -0600
From: Kimberly Porter
From: Bruce Cohen
I teach two graduate courses that address the period under
consideration: The first, The Gilded Age:1865-1901 addresses the
economic transformation/incorporation of America and the problems
created by this change. The second , The Age of Reform :1877-1920
addresses the attempts of Populism, Progessivism, and Socialism to
resolve these problems. Obviously the two courses overlap-particularly
when Populism , Progressivism and Socialism began to confront the Gilded
Age mentality in the 1890s. I use novels such as The Rise of Silas
Lapham and Looking Backward to show the shift from materialism to
reform in the late 19th century.
Bruce Cohen
Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2006 08:12:09 -0600
From: Kimberly Porter
From: Allen Lessoff
Everyone:
As Rebecca Edwards said a few days ago, I've been following the recent revival
of debate over the term "Gilded Age" from Ankara, where I've been settling into
a semester as a guest professor teaching, among other things, the Gilded Age.
About four years ago, I began researching the origins of the use of
"Gilded Age"
as a period term. My original motive was to set the record straight, but I've
become fascinated by what is clearly an involved episode in the intellectual
history of the 1920s and in the intellectual history of United States history.
As soon as possible I will fill the gaps in my research and put it in article
form. In brief, here's what I've found so far: from the publication of the
Twain-Warner novel in 1873 through World War I, the term "Gilded Age" appears
rarely except in direct reference to the novel or the play derived from it.
The Twain-Warner novel and the resulting play were indeed understood as
satirizing contemporary mores, but they had an ambivalent literary reputation
which may have inhibited adoption of the term. While surely I will find more
as I work on this, I can count on one hand the number of published American
uses of "Gilded Age" I have found so far from 1873 to 1917 that are not an
obvious, direct reference to the novel or play. On several occasions over
about a half-dozen years, I have publicly offered a reward of $5 per reference
for uses of "Gilded Age" that date from 1873-1917 and are NOT a reference to
the novel or play. So far, this challenge has cost me a total of $5.
It is easy to demonstrate that use of "Gilded Age" as a period term took hold
among literary and cultural critics in the 1920s and spread to historians in
the late 1920s and the 1930s through works such as the Beards' _Rise of
American Civilization_ and Parrington's _Main Currents_. The original
popularizers of the term are almost certainly Van Wyck Brooks and the young
Lewis Mumford, who began his career as a cultural critic and protege of Brooks,
among others. In his 1920 critique, _Ordeal of Mark Twain_, Brooks has a
chapter called, "The Gilded Age," in which he divorces the phrase from the
novel and turns it into a motif or trope for the stifling materialism and
vulgarity that Brooks saw as characterizing the late 1800s. In widely read
works such as _The Golden Day_, Mumford picked up on this term and employed it
with familiar, dismissive connotations that Mumford would himself repudiate in
_The Brown Decades_ (1931), an innovate and unusually appreciate cultural
history and analysis of the Gilded Age. Brooks also repudiated his earlier
denigration of the Gilded Age in works such as _New England: Indian Summer_,
one of the most readable of his inconsistent "Makers and Finders" series. Both
Mumford and Brooks discuss the Gilded Age and their changing attitudes towards
it in their various memoirs.
I am emphatically not arguing that a dismissive evaluation of
late-nineteenth-century culture was not widespread among cultural critics at
the time, only that "Gilded Age" did not take hold in the form with which we
are familiar -- for better or worse -- until the 1920s and that decades's
lively debates over useful and oppressive historical tendencies in American
culture.
As for the term itself and whether the profession should continue using it, I
profess to being an agnostic. Usually, debates over periodization are more
interesting than their results. It would be a nuisance to have to change the
name of SHGAPE's journal. Since the 1950s and 1960s, there have been a number
of attempts to drain "Gilded Age" of dismissive connotations and turn it into
an analytical term. The best known and perhaps most ambitious were the efforts
in the 1960s by historians such as H. Wayne Morgan to identify
"Gilded Age" with
modernization, which turned the Progressive Era into, as Samuel Hays put it in
the late 1950s, a "response to industrialism." Almost all readers of this list
would agree that no efforts to define "Gilded Age" so that it doesn't carry
unfortunate connotations have worked so far. As he noted a few days ago,
Richard Schneirov will bravely offer his own analytical definition of the
Gilded Age in a forum in our journal in July. I hope that everyone will read
this and that his article sparks more debate on this list.
Alan Lessoff
Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2006 09:28:08 -0600
From: Kimberly Porter
From: Lani Friend
As a lay person just becoming interested in this topic because of a recent
writing gig, I continue to learn ever more about this subject which gets ever
more intriguing with each new posting! I am so glad I found this website.
In my research of this term for my article, I found the whole thing so
confusing because "gilded" seemed to apply just to one segment of the
period/population, just one brief snapshot if you will, excluding
most of the important
movements and events that had been happening since the Civil War, according to
most of your colleagues who have discussed this in the last dozen postings.
I could never tie it to anything specific outside of Twain except as a
reference to lavish lifestyles of 19th century captains of industry and
architectural styles of early Florida hotels. On top of that,
"gilded" has the
connotation of gold and rich which many readers assign a positive
interpretation --
gilded meaning the glittering mansions and lifestyles of the upper
crust being a
wonderful thing -- even though it really meant the opposite.
I'm wondering if the connotation is changing as the years go by? I'm
thinking that most people now know so little about what really went
on at this time
that "gilded" is almost becoming a positive term in the popular press and
periodical literature because few people are informed about what went
on back then.
Especially in view of the present obsession with superficiality in our
culture -- the emphasis on image to the exclusion of everything else,
the obsession
with make overs and plastic surgery and having all TV shows hosted and starred
in only by people under 25, the role of TV in shaping public views of the
Presidency, etc. etc. The lifestyles of the "American aristocracy"
reflected in
the GA term are what the public thinks of, not anything else. So that's what
the term is coming to mean?
Having a background in literature from decades ago, I, too, feel that the
term is very close to its literary origins, and it almost seems like
a term some
freelance writer would invent to label a very complicated period of American
history.
May I suggest that SHGAPE develops its own GA website to inform the public
and other researchers of your findings and various other analyses of the issue
that have appeared on this discussion log. It sure would have helped me!
There is nothing out there now except for a PBS website that is very limited
in its offerings! (See www.pbs.org, "Gilded Age.")
Someone please put a good educational site up to teach people about this
period of time.
Lani Friend
Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2006 08:17:04 -0600
From: Kimberly Porter
From: Catherine Cocks
Thanks to Alan for illuminating the historiographical origins of "Gilded
Age." In brief, the term is parochial--referring only to the US and
then only to
select groups and/or events within the nation--when the period itself
was anything but. I agree
that changing the name would be a nuisance in all kinds of practical ways,
but I think our use of the name for this listserv, the society, and the
journal tends to isolate it and us from a broad and exciting realm of work
on the turn of the twentieth century (the admittedly clumsy term that I
prefer to use). Donna Gabaccia reported a few newsletters ago that many of
us urged her and the SHGAPE board to make the society and its journal more
international and/or transnational. One way to do that might be to try to
reflect in our self-designation a more cosmopolitan understanding of this
era and the US' place in the world.
Catherine Cocks
Greensprings1@cs.com=20
Greensprings1@cs.com
Assistant Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies
Salem State College
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Interdisciplinary Studies
Salem State College
978/542-7210
educlosorsello@salemstate.edu
Constance M. Bradford
History Ph.D. Candidate
Southern Methodist University
NIU
cklemus@yahoo.com
Worcester State Colege
BCohen@WORCESTER.EDU
Dr. Kriste Lindenmeyer, Chair
Department of History, UMBC
Baltimore, Maryland USA 21250
410-455-2047
lindenme@UMBC.EDU
Department of History, UMBC
Baltimore, Maryland USA 21250
410-455-2047
preagan@tntech.edu
H-SHGAPE web site editor
http://www.h-net.org/~shgape/
Professor of History
Tennessee Tech University
------------------------------
Greensprings1@cs.com
Lani Friend (feature writer, student of humanities)
Greensprings1@cs.com
University of Western Ontario
www.robmacdougall.org
rmacdou@uwo.ca
UCLA
linus@MOLLY.COM
------------------------------
Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi
larry.wilson@SJCD.EDU
------------------------------
Greensprings1@CS.COM
------------------------------
Director, Auburn Women's Studies Program
3227 Haley Center
Auburn University
Auburn, Alabama 36849
phone: 334 844-1974
phone: 334 844-6647
fax: 334 844-6673
crockrc@auburn.edu
------------------------------
American Revolution
Early Republic
Antebellum Period
Civil War
Gilded Age (some people treat Reconstruction separately)
Progressive Era
(the 1920s - not usually identified with Progressive Era or New Deal,
but hardly a period in themselves)
New Deal
World War II
Postwar America
Director of Digital Projects
Northern Illinois University Libraries
DeKalb, IL 60115
(815) 753-7179
C60DEV1@WPO.CSO.NIU.EDU
related text, Jack London, John Barleycorn (1913)
Populism and Progressivism as political parties/movements
Settlement House Movement (Jane Addams)
Regulationism (tries to regulate prostitution; over two hundred of
the largest cities closed
their red-light districts between 1912 and 1920); Crane,
Maggie (1893); Theodore Dreiser,
Sister Carrie (1900); David Graham Phillips, The Fall & Rise
of SusanLenox (1917).
Hygiene reform, incl. pure food + birth control (Margaret Sanger) +
dress reform + public health reform generally
Urban Reform/ Professionalization of govt. (Lincoln Steffens, The
Shame of the Cities [1904])
Socialism (Eugene V. Debs); London, The Iron Heel (1908)
Women's Suffrage & Women's Rights (Carrie Chapman Catt, Victoria
Woodhull); Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The Yellow
Wallpaper" (1892); Herland (1915)
Anti-Trust agitation (Pres. Roosevel
Anti-Imperialism (William Jennings Bryan, William James)
Anti-lynching (Ida B. Wells)
Slum reform (Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives [1890])
Labor reform (reduction of work week, + child labor reform); London,
"The Apostate" (1906)
Conservation movement
City Beautiful Movement
Physical Culture movement (Bernarr Macfadden)
Department of History
Indiana State University
rschneirov@ISUGW.INDSTATE.EDU
Vassar College
Visiting Assistant Professor
Department of English
Fordham University
113 W 60 Street, New York, NY 10023
Phone: (212) 930-8819
Fax: (212) 636-7153
Worcester State College
Professor of History
Illinois State University
Co-Director and Editor, SAR Press
www.press.sarweb.org
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