The Gilded Age: The First Generation of Historians" by H. Wayne Morgan
University of Oklahoma, April 18, 1997.
A good many years have passed since I was in graduate school. I think that
Coolidge was president then. (I don't know about your students, but mine would
write that down, both because it is obviously true, and because it might be on the
next exam.) Two of my favorite professors were well outside the specialty I had
chosen, Douglass Adair at Claremont Graduate School, in the Federal period, and
Page Smith at UCLA, in the Colonial period. Both said in seminars something that
I have often remembered: Pay attention to the first people who wrote about your
subject. They lived through it, or remembered it. Their work usually set a
benchmark that subsequent historians either accepted or rejected, so they were
influential. They had a strong sense of what had seemed important, and what it had
been possible and impossible to do. In that spirit, I would like to discuss some of
the first people who wrote about the Gilded Age, which I take to be the period
from the 1870s to about 1900, a coverage I will discuss. My selection of titles is
purely personal. I have tried to analyze works that found a public as well as
professional audience. My guiding question is: What view of the period would an
interested reader gain from reading the interpretations of this first generation of
authors? Let us begin with the basic text, The Gilded Age, A Tale of Today, which
Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner wrote in three months in 1873. Mark
Twain was a noted western type and journalist. Warner wrote charming domestic
essays, and became a travel writer. Both thought they could cash in with a
sensational bestseller that allowed them to criticize the current American scene.
The book may be one of the worst ever written. The standard plot summary
takes twelve pages to explain its multitude of characters, plots and sub-plots. Mark
Twain wrote the first half, focused on the Hawkins family, a thinly disguised
substitute for his own relatives. Warner wrote the second half, which dealt with
lobbying for government favors in Washington, and a panoramic treatment of
political corruption. The politicians were easily identifiable to anyone who
followed public events. At a more serious level, Twain and Warner criticized the
American people's tolerance of corruption, and unwillingness to demand
competent officeholders.[1] In Mark Twain's portion of the book, the real estate
speculations and search for government subsidies for railroads, town sites, and
river improvements recall the expansive 1850s, when much of the nation's wealth
seemed up for grabs.[2] There is an interesting idea in this depiction of political
shenanigans, and individual venality: that industrialism began as just another
frontier, its fruits open for the taking to anyone who knew which strings to pull.
The central character, Colonel Beriah Sellers, modeled on one of Mark Twain's
1
cousins, embodied frontier optimism, and the hope for speculative wealth. "The old
flag and an appropriation" was his motto. He cheerfully described fictional
networks of railroads; cities replete with every modern convenience; and bustling
enterprises. He was a comic but sympathetic figure, who built castles in Spain and
lived in them, then built others to rent out! Of course it was all very American. The
Nation noted of the popular play made from the book that audiences laughed
because they saw themselves "reflected from the stage."[3] It is hard to gauge the
effect of a book upon readers, but The Gilded Age must have intensified
perceptions of political corruption that its readers gained from the press and
magazines. Just how and why the authors chose the book's title, and what they
intended it to convey, remains unclear. They presumably meant that the period's
gilt of prosperity and activity covered political corruption. The term originally
applied only to the first Grant administration, but later scholars extended it to
include the century's entire last generation. None of the authors I will discuss
employed it. Just who first used it to describe the entire period is unclear, but
barring an extensive search for suspects, I nominate Van Wyck Brooks, who used
the term in this sense as an aside in The Ordeal of Mark Twain (1920). It seems to
have been in general use in academic writing by the time of Charles Beard and
Vernon Parrington in the 1920s, who by and large used it to describe the bad taste
of the rich.[4] This use of the novel form to illuminate current events continued in
Democracy (1880), which somewhat resembled that of The Gilded Age. The scene
was Washington. One protagonist was a powerful senator, wise to the ways of
political dealing, modeled on James G. Blaine. The president, nicknamed "The
Hoosier Quarryman," was clearly U.S. Grant. And a shrewd attractive woman
character, Madelaine Lee, was intent on entering Washington society, and on
learning how the political system worked. As the title indicated, the subject was
American democracy, of which alliances between politicians and businessmen, and
the search for place and power were part. The anonymous author, of course, was
Henry Adams. He was already well known, in high minded circles because of his
family. He had also attained some notoriety for his analysis in Chapters of Erie
(1871) of major political issues such as the Gold Ring of 1869, the financing and
bankruptcy of the Erie Railroad, and other episodes that revealed the connections
between business and politics.
Adams's novel was more subtle, with a more serious purpose than Twain's, yet
it was bloodless. For much of the reading public, the point was to identify the
fictional characters and guess at the author's identity rather than to digest the
work's idea that any government was only as honest and effective as its citizens
desired. Perhaps the problem was popular democracy, which focused on the
scramble for success, with little time for the informed analyses of observers like
2
Adams. He went on to write a major multi-volume history of the Jefferson and
Madison administrations, and taught medieval history at Harvard. He left a
posthumous autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams (1918), whose
negative views of politics and the period greatly influenced scholars.[5] The novels
of Mark Twain and Henry Adams were efforts to reach a mass audience with
complex topical information in dramatic characters and plots. Gifted amateur
historians were also influential as writers of school textbooks. The eclectic
"readers" of William Holmes McGuffey, which aimed to instil in students a code
of ethical conduct within the framework of the success ethic, remained very
influential. But the country's need for a better educated citizenry and for trained
workers stimulated school enrollments, and required textbooks with fresh
understanding of American life and history, including the current era.[6] Edward
Eggleston was such a talented amateur. He was noted for children's stories and
Sunday school books before turning to American history. He also wrote novels set
in midwestern towns and based on historic facts that combined nostalgia with an
emerging literary realism. Eggleston hoped to avoid "kiln-dried facts," and to
depict people's lives amid great events in his texts. He was cautious about judging
contemporary events, and relied on the narrative to make his points. He and the
publisher were determined to produce books with a "modern" format. This meant
active writing, in short, labeled sections; colored maps; charts and graphs; and
illustrations of people and events. The narrative treated public affairs, but also
discussed science and technology in daily life. He covered population trends;
special developments in the South and West; and the symbolism of the varied
expositions that marked the nation's movement into a new industrial era.
All of this helped to show how complex the nation was becoming; how varied
its population was; and how difficult the new order would be in shaping public
policy.[7] The best known of these texts were probably those of David H.
Montgomery, who wrote about English and French, as well as American history.
His American text covered much more than public affairs, but emphasized the
development of transportation, communication, and education that enlarged
individual experience, and made the nation's parts interdependent. His texts
ultimately sold an amazing ten million copies.[8] These and other such texts
reflected the authors' understanding of both the benefits and dangers of
industrialism. Their message was: Yes, we have social problems, and yes,
industrialism has produced a new order that must develop with some antagonism to
existing ideas and systems. But science and technology, and the country's natural
and human resources would see the nation through. Self-help, social mobility, and
adaptation would manage temporary social and economic inequities. It would be
simplistic to say that school text authors overly accentuated the positive. They
3
were very conscious of the disaster of civil war, and hoped that unifying ideals and
commonsense would prevent another round of crises as industrialism developed.
The next generation of textbooks would come from trained historians with the
dual agenda of depicting history without sentiment, and using it in reforming
society. They would be more critical of recent American history, but no less
wedded to its importance as both story and lesson. Readers seeking detail and
broad narrative turned elsewhere, likely as not to one of several multi-volume
studies of American history. These ambitious works reflected the era's desire to
quantify and understand information. They were also an effort to give the country
an important and complex history equal to its self-image, and to those of peoples in
the Old World.
These multi-volume projects usually focused in detail on the nation's early
years, or at most went to the Civil War, but some treated the recent past.[9] Such
sets appealed to both a desire for information and for prestige among an expanding
professional and middle-class that included lawyers, doctors, educators,
clergymen, and many commercial and business persons. These were the people
who subscribed to quality magazines such as Century, Harpers's and Scribner's,
which covered foreign news, literature, poetry, the arts, and history. Of course, one
never knew what they read as contrasted to what they bought, or how information
of any kind affected their lives. But more than a search for status was involved;
and they considered history, including their own times, to be part of general
culture. These large series sold well and their authors became public figures.
James Ford Rhodes was foremost among the authors who treated the recent
past. A native of Cleveland, he attended college briefly, but was a self-trained
historian. He entered his father's prosperous coal and iron business in 1874, and
retired in 1885 wealthy enough to study and write full-time, and to afford research
assistants. Rhodes aimed to tell the story of the Civil War generation and its heirs
with drama and sweep, supported with lavish details. He gathered basic
information from official documents, reference works, reports of congressional
debates and party conventions, memoirs, and especially from newspapers. He also
knew many of the actors in his drama; Mark Hanna was his brother-in-law.
Between 1892 and 1906 he produced seven large volumes covering the period
from 1850 to 1877, which appeared as a set in 1910. He added an eighth volume
dealing with the years 1877 to 1896 in 1919, and a final one for the Mckinley and
Roosevelt administrations, 1897-1909, in 1922. A special edition of the nine
volumes appeared in 1928, bound in blue and gold, standing on library shelves like
a squad of Union soldiers demanding the password.[10] The necessary phrase was
something like "the Union and abolition of slavery," themes that unified the first
volumes. The narrative slackened somewhat once the Union triumphed, but
4
Rhodes's panorama of events unrolled through Reconstruction, of which he
disapproved, and the following decades. He generally favored tariff reduction,
sound finance and civil service reform, which all seemed to be good business
practices in government. Rhodes understood how difficult it was for politicians to
work through the complex political system. He remained a good Republican, but
admired many of Grover Cleveland's actions. He also treated social and labor
troubles, population changes and immigration, and warned against disorder in
meeting new industrial issues. He made at least an occasional obeisance toward
developments in science, technology and culture, but the focus on public events
was remorseless. The books sold well and with other publications helped make
Rhodes a national cultural icon.
Of course, no author escapes the reviewers' quills. Both popular and academic
critics praised Rhodes's detail and viewpoint, as well as "the quality of heavy
awkward strength" in the early volumes. But the chorus thinned as the series
progressed. By the time the last volumes appeared, the total work seemed dated in
its emphasis on politics and its lack of analysis. Trained historians were now much
more likely than the old fashioned newspaper or magazine writer to review
historical works. They expected attention to human motivation, cause and effect,
and history's applicability to current issues. Many late reviewers criticized
Rhodes's lack of coverage of the West and frontiers, a bow to the growing impact
of Frederick Jackson Turner's ideas. Others noted his elitist viewpoint. Frederick
Logan Paxson, a rising star at the University of Michigan, thought that Rhodes
failed to see how muc h the country had changed in the mid-eighties, when Civil
War issues yielded to those of the new industrial order. Charles Beard sharply
criticized Rhodes for depicting social and economic issues only in terms of
violence, and for not understanding how the country had changed.[11]
Readers desiring a livelier approach than Rhodes's had other options. One was
the work of E. Benjamin Andrews, chancellor of the University of Nebraska.
Andrews was another gifted amateur historian who brought some unusual
experience to his studies. Born in 1844, he fought in the Union army and was
wounded. He became a pastor, taught at Brown and Cornell, was president of
Dennison University and of Brown, and was superintendent of Chicago's schools
before moving to Nebraska. He had thus dealt with a variety of people, and knew
something about public taste. He believed that education and history should mold
citizenship as well as instruct the young. These views all made him an effective
popularizer. Andrews's principal work was a four volume history of the United
States published in 1896, aimed at the general reader and student. The publisher
took full advantage of the revolution in printing to produce handsome books,
lavishily illustrated with photographs, colored maps, line drawings, and tables.
5
Andrews treated popular culture and daily life as well as public events, and tried to
be national in scope, with attention to the West and South. He realized that
industrialism had produced new ways of perceiving everything. He knew the facts
of economic development, but also understood the emotions involved that would
fuel demands for reform and regulation. Prosperous business was all very well, for
example, but "corporations instead of [being] individuals, more and more became
the employers of labor, [and] not only did the old-time kindliness between help and
hirers die out, but men the most cool and intelligent feared the new [corporate]
power as a menace to democracy." The work was popular, and revised editions
remained in print until the late 1920s. Andrews expanded his coverage of the latenineteenth century in a two volume work of 1896, and then in a large volume of
1903, The United States in Our Own Time. One hesitates to call a 900 page book a
summary, but it was easy to read, again lavishly illustrated, and made the period
lively and important. The text rested on a narrative of public events, but it was also
a kind of scrapbook or photo album of national life that appealed to a generation of
readers beginning to respond to images and terse writing (we might say sight bites)
rather than to detailed factual accounts. He covered natural disasters, polar
exploration (the space exploration of the day), the Oklahoma land runs,
expositions, foreign events, and movements for women's rights and temperance.
His judgments were cautious, but the depictions were vivid. The book's broad
message was familiar: the recent era was special, a period of scientific and
technological revolution, of new and sometimes fearsome human problems a nd
possibilities, which the country's commonsense and vitality would manage.[12]
Professor Woodrow Wilson offered another treatment of American history.
He had received a PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 1886, after publishing
Congressional Government, a widely noted treatise that counselled closer
cooperation between the legislative and executive branches. By 1900, Wilson was
something of a legend in academic circles, and had developed a popular audience
through magazine articles, books and lectures. Wilson spoke and wrote in a lofty
manner. The opposite of Rhodes, he eschewed confining details in favor of telling
generalizations. He summarized American history from the 1820s to the 1880s in
Division and Reunion (1893), where he hoped to make sense of the events of his
own maturity in a last chapter labelled "The New Union, 1876-1889." In this brief
text, Wilson emphasized the finality of the Civil War. As a southerner, he believed
that the South might have been right about the compact theory in 1861, but history
had settled the argument in favor of central authority and national development. He
now sensed a fresh beginning in industrial issues. In one of many insightful points
in the last brief chapter, he noted the basic change: every society had inequities of
wealth and power, but the scale of this old problem now affected every aspect of
6
life. An alarmed public would demand as yet unclear action, which should reflect
at least a sense of historical development, in order to create viable public
policy.[13]
Division and Reunion was successful, and Wilson decided to write a multivolume history of the United States. Most of the chapters appeared first as articles
for Harper's Magazine in 1901 and 1902. Harper Bros. expanded these to five
substantial volumes with documents, illustrations, maps, charts and bibliographies.
The set appeared in 1902 as A History of the American People.[14] The work's
focus was in its title, and the smooth, elevated narrative involved the people as
well as leading individuals. Of course, all acted out a set of ideals that finally
created a nation, however complex its population. Wilson treated events since the
Civil War in the final volume. As with Rhodes, a narrative of political events
carried the story, but he really organized the material into several large categories.
He saw the mid-eighties as a moment of shift from residual Civil War issues to
industrial problems, as typified in the tariff, currency, and civil service reform
issues, which represented a new interdependence among the country's interest
groups. Like other authors, he recognized the force of new social issues, but did
not prescribe solutions beyond reliance on existing law and procedures. He thought
that the outcome of the election of 1896 certified the country's passage from an
agrarian society to an industrial one. He saw overseas expansion as logical, given
the nation's history of growth and because of concern for foreign markets and
fulfilling a new, prestigious role in international affairs. He treated advances in
science and technology, and noted changes in population and in the people's daily
lives.[15] Wilson's general view of the period was conservative in treating most
specific issues, even as he recognized the wholesale change the country had passed
through. He saw no chance to improve the freed Negro's lot. The troubles of labor
and agriculture were real, but he opposed suggested remedies such as tinkering
with the currency. The economy and business needed regulation, but not outside
accepted legal and legislative procedures. He sharply criticized the "new
immigration" from central and eastern Europe. The country could not absorb this
new wave, and many if not most of these immigrants were untalented and unsuited
to the American system. Spokespersons for these groups later challenged these
views when he entered politics. Candidate Wilson repeatedly explained that he had
referred only to "undesirable elements," and to individuals, not to their countries or
cultures.[16] Other kinds of criticism came from fellow academics. Wilson, of
course, had studied history but was not a trained historian. He was interested in
political science, or more exactly political economy as then defined. He had never
enjoyed research, even as a graduate student at Johns Hopkins. Imagination and
creativity in writing mattered more to him that fidelity to facts. He was candid with
7
the author-editor Richard Watson Gilder who caught him in a major error. "I am
not a historian," he wrote. "I am only a writer of history, and these little faults must
be overlooked in a fellow who tries to tell a story and is not infallible on
dates."[17] The critical reception was mixed. Some scholars noted the work's hasty
coverage in some spots. Others appreciated its breadth, clarity, and occasional
provocative insights. A Princeton colleague, doubtless a jealous one, called the
work "a gilt-edged potboiler." This was unfair, for whatever its academic
shortcomings, the History satisfied the popular market for which Wilson wrote it.
He could certainly afford to ignore critics. He received $12,000 for the magazine
articles, and the set produced $40,000 in royalties before 1910. (Multiply this by
ten to get today's values, with no income tax.) The work remained in print until the
late 1920s, and a two volume French edition appeared in 1919, just in time for the
Versailles Conference.[18]
The first generation of trained historians was now established in higher
education, determined to mold the study of history for both the public and students.
Two groups of scholars urged the American Historical Association to sponsor a
large cooperative work covering all of American history. After discussion in 1899
and 1900, the association decided not to do so. Albert Bushnell Hart of Harvard
then quickly organized a group of eminent experts dedicated to producing brief,
readable, accurate studies of the most important aspects of the country's history. He
adopted the general title "The American Nation Series."[19] Hart was well suited
to the formidable task of enrolling authors, dealing with the publisher, Harper
Bros., and ensuring some coherence in the books. Hart wanted trained scholars to
summarize and analyze events and tendencies in non-technical language. "The
subject is the >American Nation,' the people combined into a mighty political
organization, with a national purpose, and a national character." He established an
advisory board of noted scholars from Massachusetts, Virginia, Wisconsin and
Texas, but was clearly the editor-in-chief. He must have been a combination slavedriver and charmer, for he oversaw the production of 27 volumes, including his
own, between 1904 and 1908. He grouped the titles around major issues. That for
the late nineteenth century was "National Expansion."[20]
The result was impressive. Each volume was about 350 pages. The modern
visual aids were striking. There were excellent maps, charts and figures, dealing
not only with transportation routes, economic production, demographic changes,
but also with regional voting on major legislation, and election returns. The authors
organized narratives around large problems such as social and economic events,
rather than presenting a progression of details. This approach intensified and
highlighted the importance of ongoing issues. William Archibald Dunning, of
Columbia, treated the first of these great issues in a study of Reconstruction.
8
Dunning, an expert on political theory, was pro-Southern and the mentor of a cadre
of graduate students who examined the alleged faults of Reconstruction in detailed
state studies. Dunning's contribution in the series was to combine northern and
southern developments in the 1870s into what he thought was a logical whole, with
varying kinds of corruption as the binder between sections. In the North he saw
unbridled economic growth at the expense of social order, and political corruption
at all levels. He was enthusiastic in treating the West. He hoped that the rising New
South could avoid the worst industrial evils, now that the race question had been
settled in favor of separation.[21]
Dunning ended his story in 1877, now an established breakpoint in the
narrative of American history. The series' next coverage, of domestic events in the
1880s and 1890s, required two volumes, which attested both to interest in the
recent past, and to the new complexities of the story. Edwin Earle Sparks of the
University of Chicago focused on both public events and deeper social forces in
the years 1877-1885. He used the Centennial Exposition of 1876, with its emphasis
on culture, as well as machinery, to symbolize the new world industrial order. He
covered changes in both the composition and the work of the population; the
growth of science and technology; and the education system that prepared citizens
and workers for the industrial order. He treated the dissatisfactions of workers and
farmers as well as the successes of businessmen and managers. He concluded with
Grover Cleveland's first election, which he thought indicated a final shift from
residual civil war issues to those derived from the new economy and society.[22]
Davis Rich Dewey continued this story for the years 1885-1897. Dewey, a Johns
Hopkins PhD, then a statistician and economist at MIT, was well known for his
knowledge of the labor force, demography and production. He thought that more
intense social change had registered in these few years than in any other period in
American history, which indicated the power of industrialism not only to change
the landscape, but also to alter human relationships. He dealt with many familiar
subjects, but saw them in this light of development and conflict. The railroads, for
instance, obviously helped develop the country, but also seemed to produce
discrimination and unsavory politics. He generally sympathized with labor, but
disliked violence. Farmers had their points to make, but solutions such as currency
tinkering were dangerous to the nation. He spent a lifetime with statistics, but
recognized the real emotional feelings about big business that would fuel public
action. "The company lived in an air of mystery, and this, apart from any economic
evils which might be ascribed to the monoply, did much to intensify public
resentment." For Dewey, the great issue no w was how to accomodate both people
who had not benefitted from industrialism, and those who had, but feared its
direction.[23]
9
The last volume in this group covered the story of the United States in world
afairs at the turn of the century. Its author, John Holladay Latanâ, a Johns Hopkins
PhD, was an expert on relations with Spanish America. He had a gift for analyzing
and simplifying complex foreign affairs, and led in developing international studies
in higher education. He also became a strong proponent of the League of Nations
and its ancillary bodies. Latanâ's book in the series treated America's emergence
into the world as a logical if sometimes unpredictable process. He began with a
wonderful reminder to statesmen and their publics: "A nation seldom achieves in
war precisely what it has in mind to achieve when the appeal to arms is made."
Given geography, economics and emotion, he thought it inevitable that the United
States would regulate Cuban affairs. Little about the Spanish-American War
surprised him. The Philippines were another matter. Latanâ understood the appeals
of pride, commercialism, and world politics in this issue, but placed responsibility
for acquiring the islands squarely on President William McKinley. "He professed,
it is true, to follow public opinion," he noted, "but he had no right to evade
responsibility when he had it in his power to bring about an entirely different
result." He perceived clearly that McKinley could have said no at any point in the
peace process, but had immediately claimed at least part of the islands, then
dispatched a military force to create a presence , before that process started.
McKinley clearly saw the islands as a way of exerting influence in Asia in the
future, without the dangers of occupying a treaty port. These were major and
thoughtful insights, especially given the lack of confidential documents at the time.
Latanâ devoted about half the book to less dramatic subjects, such as the Alaska
boundary dispute, the isthmian canal, civil government in the Philippines, and
postwar relations with Cuba. He also considered immigration an international
question, and wrote thoughtfully of the intense current debate about it. He
understood the appeals of immigration to provide labor, but recognized validity in
public apprehension about accommodating new peoples. "This accumulation of
colonies in the great cities is the principal obstacle to the assimilation of
immigrants, which is the desideratum."[24]
On the whole, like other scholars, Latanâ was more concerned with the ability
and willingness of new people to accommodate to existing institutions than he was
critical of their background or intrinsic merit. The reception of the completed series
in 1908 was mixed. The work of so many minds was bound to be uneven. And the
new generation of historians had already decided, in the best Germanic tradition,
that an ounce of scholarly monograph was worth pounds of analysis and summary.
Even so, reviewers praised the attempt at scope, and at producing readable accurate
works. Max Farrand of Yale University thought that with some exceptions, the
books represented "the end of the old and not the beginning of the new history that
10
is being studied and written." He was both right and wrong. His new history would
appeal chiefly to specialists.
Another "New History," identified with such spokesmen as Charles Beard and
James Harvey Robinson, would call for a history usable in the public arena, for the
public as well as specialists. The series authors themselves doubtless had
reservations. They understood the limitations and special demands they faced in
trying to please both colleagues and non-experts. But the critics were shortsighted.
The public and teachers kept the set in print until a New American Nation Series
developed in the late 1950s.[25] Amid all of this interest in both academic history,
and in broad analytical series, there was a swansong for the lovingly detailed
account. The swan was Harry Thurston Peck, and the song was Twenty Years of
the Republic 1885-1905 (1906). Peck took a B.A. at Columbia in 1881, a PhD at
Cumberland University in Tennessee in 1884, and was professor of classical and
semitic languages at Columbia from 1888 to 1910. He was also a journalist, and
edited the influential Bookman from 1895 to 1907. Apart from his scholarly
specialty, Peck had an intense interest in current events, especially national
politics, and knew many leading figures. He believed in the vitality and importance
of the closing era, and saw it as a dramatic play, teeming with unusual events and
personalities. He dealt with politics in detail; he could have argued with Rhodes
about any tariff measure. But his eye was always on the actors, their style,
purposes, and effects on both the story and the reader. He added to the coverage of
party battles a keen sense of social change as registered in the disaffections of
farmers, workers, and the broader public. He disliked the new corporation, whose
owners were no longer the florid Jim Fiske, or the shadowy Jay Gould, but sober
and respectable members of silent boards of directors. The silk hat and frock coat
had replaced the gaudy vest; the raider had yielded to the consolidator. This meant
to Peck that a new power had arisen, and influenced every sector of life. And yet,
he could not embrace the obvious alternatives of labor unions and farmers'
cooperatives, which promised to be quite as intractable as business. He also feared
social turmoil, "this new jacquerie." The heart of the book was a detailed account
of the troubles of Cleveland 's second administration, 1893-97. Few writers have
captured so well the sense of foreboding around these events--the bond sales that
narrowly averted default on the currency; Coxey's Army; the Pullman Strike; the
rage in Populism; and the Battle of the Standards in 1896. The reader saw in effect
a brilliant play--today we would say a blockbuster movie. Of course, Peck went
through these rapids to safer water. The story had a happy ending, for the moment
at least, since the American people abided by their political rules and then seemed
ready to establish oversight of the economic forces that stood backstage. At 811
pages, one hesitates to call Twenty Year an overview. But it is a fine treatment of
11
the events, with thoughtful analysis in a vivid narrative. A French edition appeared
in 1921 and the book was reprinted regularly until 1932.
The work's reception indicated that there was still an audience for such
detailed narrative, when well told. Paul Leland Haworth, a journalist and historian,
later noted for a study of the election of 1876, niggled over details, but thought the
book was a tour-de-force, superior to the "scientific historians, who are so anxious
not to create a wrong impression that they frequently succeed in creating no
impression at all."[26] Let us return to the original question: What view of the
period might a reader gain from such contemporary works? The caveats are
obvious. Sources and perspective both were thin. And these authors were white,
middle-class males, unlikely to vote Populist or join Coxey's Army, however much
they sympathized with elements alienated from industrialism. But they represented
informed and influential opinion, and believed in the ability of people and the
existing system to affect large forces, hence their focus on public events. I suggest
these observations on specific categories: Reconstruction. There has been so much
revision of this program that we forget how adverse contemporary opinion was
towards its end. At worst, this historical wisdom held that it was designed to
punish the South and gain Republican political advantage; at best that it had been
an honest experiment with the freed slaves that went wrong. Most authors regretted
that the policy had diverted attention from the new industrial issues for so long. In
any event, the loser was the freed negro, a classic case of blaming the victim. Party
politics. The authors saw national politics as the basic arena for expressing popular
fears, aspirations, and demands. The balance of parties in Congress, and between
Congress and president, meant that the electorate was changing, and that the era
was a transition from an agrarian/mercantile society to an industrial one. In the
meantime, people expected compromise on great issues for the national good, and
opposed what they considered dangerous solutions or violence. The presidency.
These authors did not depict a period of weak presidents, which seems to be a
construct of writers in the 1930s and after. These presidents appeared to be in the
basic tradition of the office. After all, only an extraordinary emergency had
allowed Lincoln to exercise extraordinary power. Now, however strident the
divisions in and between parties and interests, there was no accepted emergency to
support unusual presidential actions. These authors saw congressional government
as normal, and while they increasingly thought that executive leadership was
critical to meeting new problems, they did not automatically embrace expanded
federal power. Of course, these presidents enjoyed varying degrees of approval
among the historians. Grant represented the idea of a non-politician taming the
politicians. When he failed to do so, under the burden of increasingly unpopular
Reconstruction policies, a rowdy finance capitalism, and a sensationalist press (as
12
well as his mistakes), people theen condemned his alleged lack of political skill.
Hayes won high marks, chiefly for ending Reconstruction, but also for favoring
civil service reform, and for opposing unsavory elements in his own party as well
as among Democrats. Garfield's brief term did not figure in the calculations, but
Arthur seemed much better than expected, chiefly for supporting civil service
reform. Cleveland was the transitional leader. These authors praised his candor and
independence, and liked him better than his party. If there was a single determining
political event for them in this period, it was his tariff message of 1887, which
forced people to think about n ew industrial issues. Benjamin Harrison seemed to
be a lost figure. His term produced much significant legislation, which these
authors credited to congressional leaders. McKinley puzzled these authors most. In
1896, he seemed to be a typical Ohio politician, suited to combining industrial
issues with traditional values. Four years later he had settled major domestic
issues, waged a successful war, and set the country on the road to a world role.
These writers praised his skill at leading without divisive boldness, and at
managing public opinion. But just where his responses to major events came from,
and just why he altered the presidency so much remained puzzling.[27] Foreign
affairs. Much of this enhanced presidential authority derived from the country's
new world roles. If the new industrial society was a natural product of world
history, the country's new role was logical, if not always attractive, to these
authors. They covered this evolution in detail, treating Grant's proposals to buy
Caribbean territory, the Samoan problem of the 1880s, the isthmian canal issue, the
Chilean and Venezuelan crises of the 1890s, and the War with Spain as a logical
complex of events. They saw in expansion the search for overseas markets,
national pride, and the desire for future authority. Woodrow Wilson treated this
issue with his usual breadth. The country's acceptable borders were in place; the
public had supported continental expansion, and going overseas seemed logical, if
unexpected; entering world affairs was another frontier process; and Asia was the
future. "The United States could not easily have dispensed with that foothold in the
East which the possession of the Philippines so unexpectedly afforded them."[28]
Industrial issues. These authors realized that the nation had changed dramatically
in the preceding generation. The hotly debated public issues of the 1870s now
seemed antique when compared to the complicated human problems that
accompanied industrialization after that decade. They were more likely to discuss
these changes as "economic conditions," than as mere aspects of "capitalism," or
"industrialism." They understood that these and similar issues symbolized not just
a change in ways of making a living, but in human relations. Issues such as the
tariff, the currency, and civil service reform were very real and important, and
marked divisions of opinion about the country's development. They were also steps
13
on the path toward governmental regulation of the agreed-upon ills involved.
These authors expected the political, social and legal systems to accommodate to
these problems. But their greatest concern was how to regulate new and
unwelcome economic activity without affecting familiar economic activities, and
how to develop legal rules within the strict interpretaton of the Constitution that
reigned. Science and technology. Few generations had seen so much new science
and invention, as symbolized in the elaborate expositions which these authors
treated in detail as both concentrations of progressive facts and as symbols of
emotional changes for the better. Science and technology, were aspects of
industrialism that seemed humane, its smiling face. They were impressed with the
waves of invention and discovery that produced whole new industries, improved
the home and workplace, and enlarged life experience. Advances in medicine, in
delivery of services to the new cities, in safety, whether in drinking water or train
travel, all promised to alleviate human discomfort that might otherwise find outlets
in divisive protests. Science and technology would unify society as well as develop
the economy. And what large view of the period did these scholars give a new
generation that had not lived through these events? They presented an enormous
body of facts and interpretation that made the issues of industrialization seem
understandable. They also showed how complex American society and
government were, how slowly thought and action adapted to new challenges. And,
perhaps most important, these authors realized that only an understanding of how
and why recent events had happened could make change acceptable to the public.
Their general view of the period was positive. They scored its weaknesses, but
underscored its achievements. They realized that the country had changed
dramatically in every sector of life, and did not expect this process to slow, let
alone stop. As scholars, these historians were well grounded in interpretation, and
more thoughtful about meanings in history than were many predecessors.
Professionalization was taking command. Interestingly enough, many of the
revisionist interpretations that have dominated our own time, are explicit or
implicit in this body of writing. True to my old professors' suggestion, these writers
understood the limitations as well as the possibilities of coping with such rapid and
new changes. They were concerned to expand human dignity as well as human
comforts or wealth; they hoped to expand social regulation, but were apprehensive
about enlarging governmental power. On the whole, they thought that regulatory
laws such as the ICC Act, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and others were about as far
as a complex society and electorate could then go in seeking to control
industrialism. At the same time each such step outlined and consolidated the
public's power and ability to affect controls. This generally positive image of the
period soon yielded because the nature of the historical profession changed. The
14
scholars just following these writers were much more critical of every aspect of
historic life. They were more certain that historical knowledge could shape public
policy and educate the electorate to require more of themselves as well as of
government. Time passed, perspective lengthened, values and expectations
changed, as with any historical issue. The period's achievements were always
evident. But judgements on its general activities often became ahistorical as a
tradition of government intervention in life developed and became the norm in
historical judgments for each oncoming generation of scholars. Perhaps we would
do well to adopt an eclectic stance in studying this period, and all others for that
matter. Judge it by possibilities available at the time; measure its success or failure
in its own context; beware of retrospective judgements about matters that were
impossible to attain; and pay more attention to establishing its total place in the
stream of world as well as American history. A stanza from Walt Whitman would
be a good guide to judging the period, and to studying all of the American story:
Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself (I am large, I contain
multitudes.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------Endnotes-----------------------------------------------------------------------1.The best late edition,
with introduction, is The Gilded Age: a Tale of Today (Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 1968). The plot summary is in Robert L. Gale, Plots and
Characters in the Works of Mark Twain, 2 vols. (Hamden, CT: Archon Books,
1973), I:224-35. The entry on Warner in Dictionary of American Biography (New
York: Scribners, 1918 --), X:462-63 (hereafter DA(B) is useful. Bryant Morey
French, Mark Twain and "The Gilded Age," the Book that Named an Era (Dallas:
SMU Press, 1965), 192-94 has more information. The background to the book's
composition is in Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain, A Biography, 3 vols. (New
York: Harper Bros., 1912), I:473-79. There is a good analysis of the book's social
importance and of its role in Mark Twain's work in Justin Kaplan, Mr. Clemens
and Mark Twain (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966), 159-81; and in French,
Mark Twain and "The Gilded Age", 238-41. 2.For the continuity between the
alleged political corruption from earlier periods into the Gilded Age, see Mark W.
Summers, The Plundering Generation: Corruption and the Crisis of the Union
1849-1861 (New York: Oxford, 1987). 3.Mark Twain denied that he had invented
Sellers, or had embellished his character, noting that most of the scenes involving
the Colonel were straight out of his childhood observations of his mother's cousin,
James Lampton. All in all, "he was not a person who could be exaggerated." See
Albert Bigelow Paine, ed., Mark Twain's Autobiography, 2 vols (New York:
Harper Bros., 1924), I:89-90. The drama review is in "Colonel Mulberry Sellers,"
Nation, 10 (February 25, 1875), 138-39. French, Mark Twain and 'The Gilded
Age', 242-55 deals with the play, which focused on Sellers rather than on political
15
or social issues. 4.Van Wyck Brooks, The Ordeal of Mark Twain (New York:
Meridian Books, 1955), 64: "It was the epoch of industrial pioneering, the Gilded
Age, as Mark Twain called it in the title of his only novel..." It would probably be
impossible to discover the original use of the term, or to trace its adoption among
writers, but there are some interesting beginnings. Charles and Mary Beard used
the term to head chapter XXV of their The Rise of American Civilization, 2 vols.
(New York: Macmillan, 1927), II, 383-479, chiefly to characterize the period's
alleged bad taste in art and culture. Vernon Parrington used the term in The
Beginnings of Critical Realism in America 1860-1920 (New York: Harcourt Brace,
1930), 8, and often thereafter, in a larger sense for the period as a whole. Samuel
Eliot Morrison did not use it in The Oxford History of the United States, 2 vols.
(New York: Oxford, 1928), but did use it in the successor book he coauthored with
Henry Steele Commager, The Growth of the American Republic, 2 vols. (New
York: Oxford, 1930) II, 736, as a subheading for chapter XLII, "Arts and Letters."
By 1934 when Matthew Josephson used it in The Robber Barons (New York:
Harcourt Brace, 1934), 149, the term seems to have been familiar. 5.See his
Chapters of Erie and Other Essays (Boston: J.R. Osgood, 1871); Democracy, an
American Novel (New York: Henry Holt, 1880); and The History of the United
States During the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison, 9 vols. (New York:
Charles Scribner's, 1889-91). Adams wrote another novel, Esther, a Novel (New
York: Henry Holt, 1884), under the pen name Frances Compton Snow, which dealt
with forbidden relationships between men and women, the social setting, and crises
of doubt rather than current events. The best recent work on Adams as a public
figure rather than as an intellectual influence or cultural symbol is Brooks D.
Simpson, The Political Education of Henry Adams (Columbia: University of South
Carolina Press, 1996). 6.See Richard D. Mosier, Making the American Mind:
Social and Moral Ideas in the McGuffey Readers (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1947), 99-165; Dolores P. Sullivan, William Holmes McGuffey:
Schoolmaster to the Nation (Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press,
1994), 140-63, 214; Frances Fitzgerald, Revising America (New York: Random
House, 1980). 7.See the entry in DAB, III: 52-54; William Randel, Edward
Eggleston (New York: Twayne, 1963), 122-44; and two typical editions of the
texts, A History of the United States and Its People (New York: D. Appleton and
Co., 1888), and The New Century History of the United States (New York:
American Book Co., 1899). It is worth noting that during this period and for
decades afterwards, many publishers issued two editions of school texts, one for
the South, and another for the rest of the country. The best known of these early
texts for the South was probably Susan Pendleton Lee, Lee's Advanced School
History of the United States (Richmond: B.F. Johnson Pub. Co., 1899). Lee was
16
highly critical of President Lincoln, took the southern side on Reconstruction, and
in general tried to emphasize the revival of the region's economy and culture after
the Civil War. She was also sympathetic to the labor movement, though like most
other authors of all kinds, did not endorse violence. 8.See the entry in DAB,
VII:94-95; and a typical edition of his basic text, The Student's American History
(Boston: Ginn and Co., 1899). 9.The number of these works is impressive, and
included: George Bancroft, History of the United States of America from the
Discovery of the Continent, 6 vols. (New York: D. Appleton), which began
appearing in 1834 and ended in 1882, with the first of many full editions issued in
1885, and which covered the subject through adoption of the Constitution; Edward
Channing, History of the United States, 6 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1905-25),
which ended with the Civil War; Richard Hildreth, History of the United States of
America, 6 vols. (New York: Harper Bros., 1850-52), which covered the period
from discovery to 1821; John Bach McMaster, History of the People of the United
States From the Revolution to the Civil War, 8 vols. (New York: D. Appleton,
1883-1913), which focused on popular life as well as public events; James
Schouler, History of the United States Under the Constitution, 7 vols. (New York:
Dodd, Mead Co., 1880-1913), for the years 1783-1877; and Herman Eduard von
Holst, Constitutional and Political History of the United States, 8 vols. (Chicago:
Callaghan and Co., 1876-1892), which treated the period from the government's
beginnings to the Civil War. 10.See Robert Cruden, James Ford Rhodes: The Man,
the Historian, and His Work (Cleveland: Western Reserve University Press, 1961),
35-36, and 278-83, for a full list of Rhodes's publications. Peter Novick, That
Noble Dream: The 'Objectivity Question' and the American Historical Profession
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 49. 11.Sales are mentioned in
Cruden, James Ford Rhodes, 119. The quotation about style is from William
Garrott Brown's review of Vols. VI and VII in American Historical Review, 12
(April, 1907), 680-84. William Archibald Dunning notes what he thought was
steady flagging of authorial interest once Rhodes got through the Civil War, in
"Rhodes's History of the United States," Educational Review, 34 (September,
1907), 109-15. Paxson's review of Vol. VIII is in American Historical Review, 25
(April, 1920), 525-27, and of Vol. IX, Ibid., 28 (April, 1923), 565-66, with the
quotation. David Y. Thomas, a historian of the South at the University of
Arkansas, sharply criticized the coverage and tone of Vol. VIII in Mississippi
Valley Historical Review, 7 (June, 1920), 84-85. The Beard quotation is in his
"James Ford Rhodes, History of the United States, 1877-1896," New Republic, 21
(December 17, 1919), 82-83. Lester B. Shippee, of the University of Minnesota,
criticized the lack of wester n coverage in particular, and non-political issues in
general, in a review of the eight volume set, "Rhodes's History of the United
17
States," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 8 (June-September, 1921), 133-48.
Selected reviews for the final two volumes, which critics faulted for a sense of
tiredness, as well as for being dated, are in Book Review Digest 1920 (New York:
H.W. Wilson, 1920), 448, and the same for 1923, p. 452. 12.See the entry on
Andrews in DAB, I:286-9; and E. Benjamin Andrews, The History of the United
States from the Earliest Discovery of America to the Present Time, 6 vols. (New
York: Scribners, 1926), with the quotation in IV:329-30. His first coverage of
recent events was The History of the Last Quarter-century in the United States, 2
vols. (New York: Scribners, 1896), and the next was The United States in Our
Own Time (New York: Scribners, 1903). Examples of unusual photographs are on
pp. 250, 328, 361, 412, 512, 586-87, and 709; some special paintings are on pp.
300, 482, 522, 374. 13.Woodrow Wilson, Division and Reunion 1829-1889 (New
York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1893), esp. 297-99; and Henry Wilkinson
Bragdon, Woodrow Wilson: The Academic Years (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1967), 235-40. 14.See Bragdon, Woodrow Wilson, 246-51. 15.A History of
the American People, 5 vols. (New York: Harper Bros., 1902), V:131, 197-99,26062, 266, 296-300. See also Wilson's thoughtful remarks on popular democracy,
equality, and social equilibrium in "The Real Idea of Democracy: A Talk, August
31, 1901," reprinted in Auther S. Link, ed, The Papers of Woodrow Wilson
(Princeton University Press, 1966-94), XII:79, and his essay about regulation,
leadership, and participation, "Politics (1857-1907)," Atlantic Monthly, 100
(November, 1907), 635-46. Two important interpretations are John Milton Cooper,
The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt
(Rutherford, N.J.: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1988), 152-71; and David
H. Burton, The Learned Presidency: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft,
Woodrow Wilson (Rutherford, N. J., Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1988),
152-71. 16.See the correspondence dealing with complaints from Poles,
Hungarians and Italians in 1912 in The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, XXIV:131-36.
The basic passage is in History, V:212-13. 17.Wilson to Ellen Axson, October 17,
1883, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, II:479-80, reports on his weariness with
seminar research in dusty documents, "which seemed very tiresome in comparison
with the grand excursions amongst imperial policies which I had planned for
myself." Wilson to Axson, February 24, 1885, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, IV:287
is another report of exasperation at most historical research. "I have no patience for
the tedious toil of what is known as >research'; I have a passion for interpreting
great thoughts to the world; I should be complete if I could inspire a great
movement of opinion, if I could read the experience of the past into the practical
life of the men of today and so communicate the thought to the minds of the great
mass of people as to impel them to great political achievements." He praised
18
imagination and evocative style in "The Truth of the Matter," Mere Literature and
Other Essays (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1896), 185-86. The Gilder quotation,
and other information,is in Bragdon, Woodrow Wilson, 247. 18.See Mulder,
Woodrow Wilson, 153-57 for the sales. The "gilt-edged" quotation is in Bragdon,
Woodrow Wilson, 246-51. Bliss Perry, "Woodrow Wilson as a Man of Letters,"
Century Magazines, 85 (March 1913), 753-67 is a good statement of Wilson's
perceived qualities as a stylist and popularizer. 19.The second of these series,
though now forgotten, was interesting. The History of North America, in 20
volumes, appeared between 1903 and 1907, from the publisher George Barrie and
Sons in London and Philadelphia. The background and rationale for it are in Guy
Carleton Lee, "Editor's Introduction," in the first volume of the series, Alfred
Brittain, Discovery and Exploration (Philadelphia: Barrie, 1903), v-xiii. Lee, a
historian of England with a PhD from Johns Hopkins University, and some
background in journalism, edited volumes 1-14. Francis N. Thorpe, an expert on
constitutional issues, with a PhD from Syracuse University, then teaching at the
University of Pennsylvania, edited volumes 15 to 20. Their aim was to produce a
series that had both variety in viewpoints, and cohesion founded on the new
literature the historical profession had produced in recent years. The books were
syntheses, aimed at the literate reader, and were about twice as long as those in the
American Nation Series, but the coverage differed. This series covered the North
American continent, with volumes on Mexico and Central America, Canada and
Alaska, the native Indians, and prehistoric North America, as well as period
treatments of United States history. The books were illustrated with photographs,
had bibliographies and chronologies, and were clearly written. Hart's series was in
better format, and easier to read. On Lee, see the entry in Who Was Who In
America 1897-1942 (1942), 716; for Thorpe, see National Cyclopedia of American
Biography (New York: James T. White Co., 1848--), X (1900), 509-10, hearafter
NCAB. In deference to residual sentiments, there were two volumes on the Civil
War: William Robertson Garrett, of Peabody Normal College, The Civil War from
a Southern Standpoint, vol. XIV (1905), and Francis N. Thorpe, The Civil War
From a Northern Viewpoint, vol. XV (1906). The volumes dealing with the Gilded
Age began with Peter Joseph Hamilton, The Reconstruction Period, vol. XVI
(1905). Hamilton Studied at Princeton and Leipzig, and practiced law in Alabama.
He developed a legal and constitutional approach, and agreed that while states'
rights might have been valid before 1861, facts and history had made the federal
government supreme by 1865. He accepted the view that Reconstruction was
punitive, corrupt, and doomed to failure, but with some thoughtfulness. The end of
Reconstruction in 1877 struck him as a basic change: "A compromise of vaster
importance [in 1877] than that of 1850 had been reached, not the less valid because
19
tacit. The negro was assured liberty and civil equality, and the crusade for
fraternity was abandoned." (P. 556). Philip Alexander Bruce continued the
coverage in The Rise of the New South, vol. XVII (1905). Bruce, was a BA from
the University of Virginia, with a law degree from Harvard, who had studied
Virginia history, and was associated with the University of Virginia and the
Virginia Historical Society. He focu sed on economic development and
diversification in the New South, predicting that transportation systems, industry,
and science and technology would at last integrate the region with the world
economy. He favored ending Negro suffrage, relied on education to improve the
black's lot, and in general thought that the South would settle its own problems.
Joseph Morgan Rogers covered the other part of the story in The Development of
the North Since the Civil War, vol. XVIII (1906). Rogers was a Philadelphia
newspaper editor, who wrote biographies of Thomas Hart Benton and Henry Clay.
Not surprisingly, he favored internal improvements as the key to economic
development. His text treated the usual political, economic and social events, and
closed with a discussion of science and technology, which he thought would help
unify both the nation's interests and emotions. He assumed that the existing system
could manage the new social and industrial issues. Albert Edward McKinley
concluded the coverage of the period with Island Possessions of the United States,
vol. XX (1907). McKinley had received a PhD from the University of
Pennsylvania and taught at Temple University. He had published works on the
colonial period, and was an expert on suffrage. He was also a leading spokesman
for improved teaching methods and materials at all levels of education. His
treatment of expansion and the insular possessions covered legal and constitutional
issues, as well as politics and diplomacy. He was skeptical about overseas
expansion, and of the elastic interpretations of constitutional law that followed it.
These volumes covered the Gilded Age as thoroughly as, if not more-so than, the
American Nation series titles, but were somehow less appealing and more formal.
Nevertheless, they represented a conscientious effort to explain the events involved
with a balance and fairness that did not preclude disagreement, and that gave the
era its proper due in the stream of recent American history. On Hamilton, see
NCAB, XIII:397-97; on Bruce, see Ibid., (1958), XXXXII:175-76; on Rogers, see
Who Was Who 1897-1942 (1942), 1052; on McKinley, see DAB, Suppl. II:211819. 20.On Hart, see DAB, Suppl. III:335-38; NCAB, XXXXVII:146-47; and his
"Editor's Introduction to the Series," in volume 1, Edward Potts Cheyney,
European Background of American History (New York: Harper Bros., 1904), xvxix. A final volume, number 28, came out in 1918, Frederic Austin Ogg, National
Progress 1907-1917. 21.William Archibald Dunning, Reconstruction, Political and
Economic 1865-1877 (New York: Harper Bros., 1907), xv-xvi, 220-37. On
20
Dunning, see DAB, III:523-24; NCAB, XIX:2728; Philip R. Mulwer, "Look Back
Without Anger: A Reappraisal of William A. Dunning," Journal of American
History, 51 (September, 1974), 325-38; Novick, That Noble Dream, 77-80. 22.On
Sparks, see DAB, IX:430; NCAB, XX:350-51; Edwin Earle Sparks, National
Development 1877-1885 (New York: Harper Bros., 1907), 3-50, 68-84, 265-81,
521-64. 23.See NCAB, XIII:371. Dewey had written many specialized studies and
reports for governments. His best known work was probably Financial History of
the United States (New York: Longmans, 1902). See his National Problems 18851897 (New York: Harper Bros., 1907), xii-xiv, 40-56, 91-111, 188-202 (with
quotation on 192), 314-28. 24.On Latanâ, see DAB, Suppl. I, 483-84. His book
was titled America as a World Power 1897-1907 (New York: Harper Bros., 1907).
The warning quotation is on p. 3; that about McKinley on pp. 78-79; that on
immigration, on p. 290. 25.Max Farrand, "The American Nation: A History,"
American Historical Review, 13 (April, 1908), 591-95; St. George L. Sioussat,
"The American Nation: 1865-1907," Dial, 44 (May 16, 1908), 309-12; "The
American Nation," Independent, 64 (February 13, 1908), 368-69. 26.On Peck, see
DAB, VII:377-79. The quotation is on p. 373 of his book. Reviews include:
Nation, 84 (January 3, 1907), 15; New York Times Book Review, December 1,
1906, 824, with a well stated phrase: "Such a history is of particular value to put on
record in a country which is passing through a transitory stage of eager endeavor
and unattained ideals."; Independent, (June 20, 1907) 1469-70; Paul Leland
Haworth, in Political Science Quarterly, 22 (June 1907), 331-32; Arthur Reed
Kimball, "Professor Peck's >Twenty Years of the Republic'," Bookman, 24
(January, 1907), 473-77. 27.See Andrews, History, IV:202. James Ford Rhodes,
"The Presidential Office," Scribner's Magazine, 33 (February, 1903), 157-73,
summarizes his views. Sparks, National Development, 87-88, 327-29, 339,
comments on Hayes, Arthur and Cleveland. See Andrews, The United States in
Our Own Times, 347 on Cleveland in 1884. Dewey, National Problems, 138. See
also Harry Thurston Peck, "President Cleveland," Bookman, 5 (April, 1897), 11019. His "President McKinley," ibid., 14 (November, 1901), 275-80 rather
summarizes the ambivalence about the president. Andrews has an extensive
obituary-judgment of McKinley in History, V:286-94. 28.Rhodes opposed the war
with Spain and expansion, and thought that McKinley could have avoided both. At
the same time, he admired the president's use of public opinion, and thought that
"his deductions from the meetings only confirmed what he had already
determined."; see History, IX:102-03. Latanâ covered foreign affairs more closely
than other authors; see his America as World Power, 3-81, 100 on markets.
Wilson's quote is in History, V:296-300. 36 For Discussion 1. Ask students to
explore the site and come to class ready to explain how they would have voted in
21
the 1896 presidential race. You might divide the class into two groups, proMcKinley and pro-Bryan, for debate. Would the students have been 100-percent
satisfied with their presidential choice? If not, what sorts of compromises would
they have had to make?2. Give each student a character to play: for example, a
Nebraska farmer, an Irish-American Catholic priest in Cleveland, a Jewish
shopkeeper in Philadelphia, a middle-class woman reformer in Colorado. Ask them
to come to class prepared to explain how they would have voted and why. 3. Ask
each student to pick one cartoon which explains why McKinley won the election-either because it is persuasive (Republican) or unpersuasive (Silver), and for
whom. Ask them to come to class prepared to show the cartoons (by printout, or by
URL if your classroom connects to the we(B) and defend their choices.4. "Free
silver" was the central issue of the 1896 presidential campaign, but today the
debates surrounding it may seem technical and obscure. Ask students to explore
the site and explain why they think Americans cared so passionately about "honest
money" and "free silver." What were the deeper meanings of these slogans?5. In
the First Amendment, the U.S. Constitution declares that "Congress shall make no
law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof." This clause prevents government from interfering with religion, but it has
never prevented religious leaders from expressing their views respecting
government. Use the site to explore: Why were prohibition of liquor, immigration,
and "free silver" considered religious issues? By whom, and what were the
opposing views? 6. Use the cartoons to consider the prevailing views, in 1896, of:
women; African-Americans; non-Christian religious minorities within the United
States; non-Christians overseas (for example, in Turkey). (For an analysis of the
uses of gender in political campaigns, see the book by one of this site's creators':
Angels in the Machinery: Gender in American Party Politics from the Civil War to
the Progressive Era.) 7. Ask students to look closely at the circulation figures on
the Journals page. How did the circulations of pro-McKinley and pro-Bryan
journals compare? Which had more color pictures? Which, in your opinion, had
more talented cartoonists? What might account for these discrepancies, and how
might it have affected the outcome of the campaign? (You may wish to explore the
changing nature of the newspaper industry in the 1890s, starting with the
information on Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst.)For Writing1.
Building on discussion question #1 and #2, above: ask students to write letters to
the editor, in their own voices or in the voices of their 1896 characters, seeking to
persuade others to vote for the presidential candidate they have chosen.2. Ask
students to write a sermon, to deliver on November 1, 3. Building on discussion
question #6, above: ask students to generate a list of viewpoints that are not well
represented on the site, especially in the cartoons. (Some examples might be:
22
Southern African-American men, Chinese-American immigrants, industrial
laborers, women of many ethnicities and religions). Ask them to write a letter to
the editor representing an opinion from one of these
groups.******************from "The Strength and Weakness of the People's
Movement" (1892)Eva McDonald-Valesh The emergence of the People's party
generated great interest within social and politcal reform circles across the country.
The following article in the Boston-based Arena magazine focused on the need for
the agrarian-based organization to make common cause with the urban working
class. Its insights and warnings proved to be quite astute. -----------------------------------------------------------------------The rapid growth and popularity of the political
movement known as the People's Party invest it with an importance that leads the
general public to scan it closely for those indices which mark all truly great
industrial movements. If it has not certain characteristics, it may excite those
momentary outbursts of discontent emanating from a single class, only to die of
inanition or be buried under a storm of well-directed ridicule. A political
movement, to be an instrument of real industrial progress, ought to be general
enough in its scope to embrace all classes of workers whose conditions are affected
by the same general causes. Today there is the agricultural population, on one
hand, producing more than enough to feed the world; on the other, the city
workmen; producing, in their many occupations, more than enough to clothe and
supply all other civilized needs of the race. The two classes are quite distinct, so far
as environment is concerned; yet consuming each other's products and supplying
both necessities and luxuries to all other classes, there is between them a bond of
common interest, stronger than either realizes. Both classes, while conceding the
immeasurable superiority of their present condition over that of their ancestors of
any time, still feel that many differences are yet to be adjusted before industry
attains the dignity warranted by the achievements and progress of the nineteenth
century. Each division of the industrial body has various grades of expressed
discontent with the present and hope for the future. . . . The two great bodies of
organized discontent1 are working independently and by different methods on the
same problemÑthe distribution of wealth. In the past, having observed so little
their relations to each other, or the local conditions seeming to form a barrier
between them, they now appear to have but faint sympathy or community of
interest. It is of vast significance that the two organizations have the same reason
for existing, and are trying to solve the same problem. Some combination of
circumstances must soon reveal its community of purpose, and from that moment
the workers of the farm and the factory will be bound by that strongest of ties, selfinterest. The industrial world is becoming convinced that the People's Party will be
this agent. The recent conference at St. Louis showed that a surprisingly large
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number of reform elements already agree on the general principles, leaving details
to the future. . . . Still, to those familiar with industrial organization in cities, this
conference revealed that the mass of city workers was unrepresented. Did this
silence mean antagonism, even indifference, it might prove fatal to the success of
the new movement. For if the People's Party, in its ultimate development, only
represents a class, no matter how large that class, its work must necessarily partake
of a sectional character, and from a lack of breadth and depth, fail to accomplish
those great reforms which mark epochs of civilization. . . . A promising field of
work open to view, although it still needs cultivation. Workingmen understand the
value of the right of suffrage and its importance in securing industrial reform. They
cannot fail to be keenly dissatisfied with the prospect held out by existing parties.2
The agricultural classes equally need just the elements that the cities could
contribute. Each organization would be the gainer from close contact and
interchange of views with the other. There is still an element wanting to insure
harmonious action. It is a peculiarity of the People's movement that it has not yet
produced a leader. It has teachersÑearnest, thoughtful, and progressive. It has
statesmen of good parts. But a leader, in the true sense, is yet wanting. . . . A true
leader can unite them in so irresistible a force that by a peaceful revolution of
ballots, great abuses will be swept away and replaced by more equitable conditions
inuring to the benefit of all society. Nor should such a coalition of the forces of
farm and factory be feared by the most conservative. The world will advance, in
spite of the remonstrances from those who are perfectly satisfied with the existing
order. Reforms, working in peaceful and legitimate channels, are a sure guarantee
against the violence which, in preceding eras, has so often accompanied popular
movements. ------------------------------------------------------------------------1. Farmers
and laborers.2. I. e., national political parties. -----------------------------------------------------------------------[From Eva McDonald-Valesh, ''The Strength and Weakness
of the People's Movement,'' Arena 5 (May 1892):726-31.] [From F. B. Tracy,
"Why the Farmers Revolted," Forum 16 (October 1893): 242Ð43.] Farmers are
passing through the "valley and shadow of death"; farming as a business is
profitless; values of farm products have fallen 50 per cent since the great war, and
farm values have depreciated 25 to 50 per cent during the last ten years; farmers
are overwhelmed with debts secured by mortgages on their homes, unable in many
instances to pay even the interest as it falls due, and unable to renew the loans
because securities are weakening by reason of the general depression; many
farmers are losing their homes under this dreadful blight, and the mortgage mill
still grinds. We are in the hands of a merciless power; the people's homes are at
stake. . . . The American farmer of today is altogether a different sort of a man
from his ancestor of fifty or a hundred years ago. . . . All over the West, . . . the
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farmer thrashes his wheat all at one time, he disposes of it all at one time, and in a
great many instances the straw is wasted. He sells his hogs, and buys bacon and
pork; he sells his cattle, and buys fresh beef and canned beef or corned beef, as the
case may be; he sells his fruit, and buys it back in cans. . . . Not more than one
farmer in fifty now keeps sheep at all; he relies upon the large sheep farmer for the
wool, which is put into cloth or clothing ready for his use. Instead of having
clothing made up on the farm in his own house or by a neighbor woman or country
tailor a mile away, he either purchases his clothing ready made at the nearest town,
or he buys the cloth and has a city tailor make it up for him. Instead of making
implements which he uses about the farmÑforks, rakes, etc., he goes to town to
purchase even a handle for his axe or his mallet; . . . indeed, he buys nearly
everything now that he produced at one time himself, and these things all cost
money. Besides all this, and what seems stranger than anything else, whereas in the
earlier time the American home was a free home, unencumbered, . . . and whereas
but a small amount of money was then needed for actual use in conducting the
business of farming, there was always enough of it among the farmers to supply
the demand, now, when at least ten times as much is needed, there is little or none
to be obtained. . . . The railroad builder, the banker, the money changer, and the
manufacturer undermined the farmer. . . . The manufacturer came with his woolen
mill, his carding mill, his broom factory, his rope factory, his wooden-ware
factory, his cotton factory, his pork-packing establishment, his canning factory and
fruit-preserving houses; the little shop on the farm has given place to the large shop
in town; the wagon-maker's shop in the neighborhood has given way to the large
establishment in the city where men by the thousand work and where a hundred or
two hundred wagons are made in a week; the shoemaker's shop has given way to
large establishments in the cities where most of the work is done by machines; the
old smoke house has given way to the packing house, and the fruit cellars have
been displaced by preserving factories. The farmer now is compelled to go to town
for nearly everything that he wants. . . . And what is worse than all, if he needs a
little more money than he has about him, he is compelled to go to town to borrow
it. But he does not find the money there; in place of it he finds an agent who will
"negotiate" a loan for him. The money is in the East . . . five thousand miles away.
He pays the agent his commission, pays all the expenses of looking through the
records and furnishing abstracts, pays for every postage stamp used in the
transaction, and finally receives a draft for the amount of money required, minus
these expenses. In this way the farmers of the country today are maintaining an
army of middlemen, loan agents, bankers, and others, who are absolutely worthless
for all good purposes in the community. . . . These things, however, are on only the
mechanical side of the farmer. His domain has been invaded by men of his own
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calling, who have taken up large tracts of land and farmed upon the plan of the
manufacturers who employ a great many persons to perform the work under one
management. This is "bonanza" farming. . . . The aim of some of the great
"bonanza farms" of Dakota has been to apply machinery so effectually that the
cultivation of one full section, or six hundred and forty acres, shall represent one
year's work of only one man. This has not yet been reached, but so far as the
production of the grain of wheat is concerned, one man's work will now give to
each of one thousand persons enough for a barrel of flour a year, which is the
average ration. . . . The manufacture of oleomargarine came into active
competition with farm butter. And about the same time a process was discovered
by which a substitute for lard was producedÑan article so very like the genuine
lard taken from the fat of swine that the farmer himself was deceived by it. . . .
From this array of testimony the reader need have no difficulty in determining for
himself "how we got here." The hand of the money changer is upon us. Money
dictates our financial policy; money controls the business of the country; money is
despoiling the people. . . . These men of Wall Street . . . hold the bonds of nearly
every state, county, city and township in the Union; every railroad owes them more
than it is worth. Corners in grain and other products of toil are the legitimate fruits
of Wall Street methods. Every trust and combine made to rob the people had its
origin in the example of Wall Street dealers. . . . This dangerous power which
money gives is fast undermining the liberties of the people. It now has control of
nearly half their homes, and is reaching out its clutching hands for the rest. This is
the power we have to deal with.
. A. Peffer, The Farmer's Side (New York, 1891), pp. 42, 56, 58Ð63, 121Ð23.]
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