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Politics, Social Movements, and the Periodization of U.S. History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2010

Rebecca Edwards
Rebecca Edwards
Affiliation:
Vassar College
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Extract

It may be perilous for a member of the Society of Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era to propose, in the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, that we cease using the term “Gilded Age” as a label for the late nineteenth century. Since I admire Mark Twain, who famously coined the term in a novel that he cowrote with Charles Dudley Warner, such a suggestion feels disloyal if not downright un-American. But in struggling recently to write a synthesis of the United States between 1865 and 1905 (cutoff dates that I chose with considerable doubt), it became apparent to me that “Gilded Age” is not a very useful or accurate term. Intended as an indictment of the elite, it captures none of the era's grassroots ferment and little of its social and intellectual complexity. A review of recent literature suggests that periodizing schemes are now in flux, and a reconsideration may be in order.

Type
Forum: Should We Abolish the “Gilded Age”?
Information
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , October 2009 , pp. 461 - 473
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2009

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References

2 Calhoun, Charles W., ed., introduction to The GildedAge: Perspectives on the Origins of Modern America, 2nd ed. (Lanham, MD, 2007), 1Google Scholar. The fine essays in this volume generally date the era from 1870 to 1900 or 1901, though some begin at 1877. Gould, Lewis L. defines the era as “the quarter century between the end of Reconstruction and Theodore Roosevelt's accession to the presidency” in The Oxford Companion to United States History, ed. Boyer, Paul S. (New York, 2001), 308Google Scholar.

3 Henry Morrison Flagler Museum, “America's Gilded Age,” http://flaglermuseum.us/html/gilded_age.html. For a judicious scholarly view of uses and misuses of the term “Gilded Age,” see Calhoun's introduction to The GildedAge, cited above.

4 Wiebe, Robert, The Searchfor Order, 1877-1920 (New York, 1967), 166Google Scholar.

5 The textbooks surveyed include Ayers, Edward L. et al., American Passages (Fort Worth, TX, 2000)Google Scholar; Berkin, Carol et al., Making America, 4th ed. (Boston, 2006)Google Scholar; Faragher, John Mack et al., Out of Many, 4th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2000)Google Scholar; Gillon, Steven M. et al., The American Experiment, 2nd ed. (Boston, 2006)Google Scholar; Henretta, James A. et al., America's History, 6th ed. (Boston, 2008)Google Scholar; Limerick, Patricia Nelsonet al., This Land (Maplecrest, NY, 2003)Google Scholar; Murrin, John et al., Liberty, Equality, Power, 5th ed. (Belmont, CA, 2007)Google Scholar; Norton, Mary Beth et al., A People and a Nation, 6th ed. (Boston, 2001)Google Scholar; and Roark, James L. et al., The American Promise, 3rd ed. (Boston, 2005)Google Scholar. The Gillon and Roark textbooks suggest a possible emerging trend to date the beginning of the Progressive Era to around 1890, though they are still in the minority.

6 Grantham, Dewey W., Southern Progressivism (Knoxville, 1983)Google Scholar; Link, William A., The Paradox of Southern Progressivism, 1880-1930 (Chapel Hill, 1992)Google Scholar.

7 LaFeber, Walter, The American Search for Opportunity (New York, 1993)Google Scholar, and Shoonover, Thomas, Uncle Sam's War of 1898 and the Origins of Globalisation (Lexington, KY, 2003)Google Scholar.

8 One strain of Progressive Era historiography emphasizes social control, and by this argument segregation, disfranchisement, and imperialism may all be defined as “progressive” initiatives. By going this route, however, historians of progressivism have created a narrative muddle. If people who worked for racial justice, disfranchisement and segregation, immigrant restriction, immigrant assimilation, imperialism, and anti-imperialism were all progressives, then we are simply saying that American politics was lively in the first two decades of the twentieth century, involving many competing interests and visions. That was true, but equally or perhaps even more true of the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s. See footnote 22, below, for more on this debate.

9 For overviews, see Daniels, Roger, Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life (New York, 1990), pt. 2Google Scholar; Nugent, Walter T. K., Crossings (Bloomington, IN, 1992)Google Scholar; Takaki, Ronald, Strangers from a Different Shore (Boston, 1989)Google Scholar; Lee, Erika, At America's Gates (Chapel Hill, 2003)Google Scholar; and Chan, Sucheng, ed., Entry Denied (Philadelphia, 1991)Google Scholar.

10 Bensel, Richard, Yankee Leviathan (New York, 1990)Google Scholar and The Political Economy of American Industrialisation, 1877-1900 (New York, 2000)Google Scholar; John, Richard R., “Recasting the Information Infrastructure for the Industrial Age” in A Nation Transformed by Information, ed. Chandler, Alfred D. Jr and Cortada, James W. (New York, 2000), 55–105Google Scholar; Brock, William R., Investigation and Responsibility: Public Responsibility in the United States, 1865-1900 (New York, 1983)Google Scholar. Brock writes in his preface, “I beg reviewers not to use the phrase ‘gilded age’ except to record my rejection of a meretricious label that has done much to obscure the true character of a period to which we owe so much” (vii).

11 Brock, Investigation and Responsibility; Campbell, Ballard C., The Growth of American Government (Bloomington, IN, 1995)Google Scholar; Teaford, Jon C., The Unheralded Triumph: City Government in America, 1870-1900 (Baltimore, 1984)Google Scholar; Sylla, Richard, “Experimental Federalism: The Economics of American Government, 1789-1914” in Cambridge Economic History of the United States, ed. Engerman, Stanley L. and Gallman, Robert E. (New York, 2000), 2:526–41Google Scholar. It is worth noting that Hazen Pingree, the quintessentially progressive mayor of Detroit, served from 1889 to 1896, and Illinois governorJohn P. Altgeld, who clearly fit the progressive mold, had come and gone by 1897.

12 For coverage of many of these figures, see Shi, David E., Facing Facts: Realism in American Thought and Culture, 1850-1920 (New York, 1995)Google Scholar.

13 Fink, Leon, Workingmen's Democracy: The Knights of Eabor and American Politics (Urbana, 1983)Google Scholar. On temperance and suffrage, a very partial list includes Bordin, Ruth, Woman and Temperance: The Questfor Power and Liberty, 1873-1900 (Philadelphia, 1981)Google Scholar; Gullett, Gayle, Becoming Citizens: The Emergence and Development of the California Women's Movement, 1880-1911 (Urbana, 2000)Google Scholar; Graham, Sara Hunter, Woman Suffrage and the New Democracy (New Haven, 1996)Google Scholar; Hewitt, Nancy, Southern Discomfort: Women's Activism in Tampa, Florida, 1880s-1920s (Urbana, 2001)Google Scholar; on environmentalism, see Fox, Stephen, The American Conservation Movement (Madison, 1981)Google Scholar, and Steinberg, Ted, Down to Earth (New York, 2002)Google Scholar.

14 Maureen Flanagan, for example, dates the start of the Progressive Era to the 1890s but argues that the Knights of Labor, Farmers Alliances, and Populists were not progressives for these reasons: They were backward- rather than forward-looking; they focused on “one group or issue,” while progressives “worked to develop a comprehensive reform program”; and the period after their demise was characterized by a larger “variety of reform groups … and numbers of people involved.” This seems to me to get it backwards. Perhaps more middle-class Americans became politically engaged after 1900, but the Populists were a cross-regional, mass-based political movement with a broad-based platform. Progressive reform groups that worked for such reforms as the direct election of U.S. senators, abolition of child labor, and preservation of wildlife were no less “single-issue” than the Populists, and probably more so. Flanagan, Maureen A., America Reformed: Progressives and Progressivisms, 1890s--1920s (New York, 2007), 9–10Google Scholar. On the “decade in the doldrums,” see Edwards, Rebecca, Angels in the Machinery: Gender in American Party Politicsfrom the Civil War to the Progressive Era (New York, 1996), chs. 7-8Google Scholar.

15 Martis, Kenneth C., Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress (New York, 1989)Google Scholar.

16 For example, Rauchway, Eric, “William McKinley and Us,” journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive En 4 (July 2005): 235–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar, argues against McKinley as a progressive figure. I n his book Murdering McKinley (New York, 2003)Google Scholar, Rauchway joins others in depicting Theodore Roosevelt as the key figure whose ascendance marks the start of the Progressive Era.

17 Papke, David Ray, The Pullman Case (Lawrence, KS, 1999)Google Scholar.

18 Sanders, Elizabeth, Roots of Reform: Farmers, Workers, and the American State, 1877-1917 (Chicago, 1999)Google Scholar; Gilmore, Glenda, ed., Who Were the Progressives? (Boston, 2002), 20Google Scholar.

19 Kazin, Michael, A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan (New York, 2006)Google Scholar; Lester, Connie, Up From the Mudsills of Hell: The Farmers' Alliance, Populism, and Progressive Agriculture in Tennessee, 1870-1915 (Athens, GA, 2006)Google Scholar; Postel, Charles, The Populist Vision (New York, 2006), 21Google Scholar.

20 McGerr, Michael, A Fierce Discontent: The Base and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920 (New York, 2003), xiv, 29Google Scholar.

21 Brodhead, Michael J., Persevering Populist: The Life of Frank Doster (Reno, NV, 1969), 143Google Scholar.

22 Harrison, Robert, Congress, Progressive Reform, and the New American State (New York, 2004), 11CrossRefGoogle Scholar; , Flanagan, America Reformed, viiiGoogle Scholar. Textbooks cited are , Ayers et al., American Passages, 631, 693Google Scholar; , Murrin et al., Liberty, Equality, Power, 658Google Scholar; and , Limerick et al., This Land, 594–96Google Scholar. On this debate, see also Gordon, Linda, “If the Progressives Were Advising Us Today, Should We Listen?” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 1 (Apr. 2002): 109–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Filene, Peter, “An Obituary for the ‘Progressive Movement,’” American Quarterly 22 (Spring 1970): 20–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Rodgers, Daniel T., “In Search of Progressivism,” Reviews in American History 10 (Dec. 1982): 113–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar. These debates, including various obituaries and requiems, have not in fact displaced usage o f the terms “progressivism” and “Progressive Era.”

23 See Perry, “Men Are from the Gilded Age,” which cites recent work on progressive continuities in the 1920s, and Muncy, Robyn, Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890-1935 (New York, 1991)Google Scholar, which suggests an end date of 1935, with the passage of Social Security.