Comparative Perspectives on the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

2002 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 154-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ballard Campbell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
American History ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Perspective ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Comparative History ◽  
Business Politics

Thanks to Richard Jensen, Kriste Lindenmeyer, Alan Lessoff and William G. Shade for helpful comments on this essay.Comparative perspectives on the United States have received increased attention in recent years, stimulated apparently by the rise in world history's popularity. David Thelen's sponsorship of transnational history as a subject of three special issues of the Journal of American History no doubt has contributed to the trend. The reprinting of C. Vann Woodward's The Comparative Approach to American History in 1997, the publication of George Fredrickson's essays on comparative history, and the report of the La Pietra Project reflect recent efforts to put United States history in an international perspective. While comparative history hardly has gained equal footing with nationally-centered studies, enough work on the Gilded Age and Progressive Era has appeared over the last decade and a half to warrant an assessment. This essay takes note of scholarship on economics, business, politics and governance that has examined the United States within an international context during the 1870s–1914 era. My objective is to discern trends in the literature and suggest opportunities for future research rather than to provide a comprehensive bibliographical survey.

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

2009 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 461-473 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Edwards
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Mark Twain ◽  
The United States ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Considerable Doubt

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.

The Multiple and Material Legacies of Stephen Skowronek

2003 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 465-474 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel P. Carpenter
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
The United States ◽  
Test Theory ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Books ◽  
Distinct Period

Stephen Skowronek’sBuilding aNew American Stateremains one of the most influential books in political science and history of the past two decades. In political science,Buildingengendered a set of deep disciplinary transformations that simultaneously sent scholars sprinting into the history books for new cases with which to ply and test theory, goaded them into rethinking what it meant for the United States to possess a “state,” and welcomed them in embracing the study of institutions as a worthwhile endeavor in political science. In history, Skowronek’s book challenged scholars to reconceive the Gilded Age and Progressive Era as a fundamentally distinct period of governance, a peculiar challenge to the institutional forms that had dominated nineteenth-century American politics. Two decades later, historians and political scientists are still laboring to answer Skowronek’s call.

scholarly journals Democratic Decline and the Politics of the Upswing: How the United States May Have Come Together a Century Ago but Can It Do It Again?

2021 ◽  
pp. 147892992110318
Author(s):  
Matthew Flinders
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Progress ◽  
The Core ◽  
Political Economic

Robert Putman’s The Upswing (written with Shaylyn Romney Garrett) provides a powerful meta-analysis of American social, political, economic and cultural change throughout the twentieth century. What this analysis reveals is the existence of an almost perfect arc of social progress which begins from a low position around the Gilded Age at the beginning of the twentieth century and then climbs across all variables until reaching a highpoint around 1960. The Progressive Era, Putnam argues, engineered an ‘upswing’ against inequality, polarisation, social disarray and a culture of self-centredness. Since then, however, the data suggest that a severe downswing has occurred which explains the existence of deep divisions and polarised politics in the United States. Putnam’s core argument is simple: The United States has pulled itself out of a trough before and it can do it again. In a post-Trump context, this argument could hardly be more welcome which may explain the rave reviews this book has generally received. Nevertheless, the core weakness of The Upswing is that it arguably tells us far more about how the United States ‘came together a century ago’ but far less about how it ‘can do it again’ in the future.

The Encounter between Jews and America in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hasia Diner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
Party System ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
Basic Characteristics ◽  
American Society

The period after 1870 through the middle of the 1920s, the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, coincided with the mass migration of Jews to the United States. Nearly three million Jews, primarily from eastern Europe, overwhelmed the numerically small Jewish community already resident in America. Of the Jews who left Europe in those years, approximately 85 percent opted for the United States, a society that took some of its basic characteristics from the particular developments of this transitional historical period. This essay focuses on five aspects of Gilded Age and Progressive Era America and their impact on the Jews. These features of American society both stimulated the mass migration and made possible a relatively harmonious, although complicated, integration. Those forces included the broader contours of immigration, the nation's obsession with race, its vast industrial and economic expansion, its valorization of religion, and its two-party system in which neither the Democrats or the Republicans had any stake in demonizing the growing number of Jewish voters.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
James C. Nicholson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
World War I ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
American History ◽  
Political Corruption ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Teapot Dome ◽  
Thoroughbred Racing

On October 20, 1923, at Belmont Park in New York, Kentucky Derby champion Zev toed the starting line alongside Epsom Derby winner Papyrus, England's top three-year-old colt. Few happenings had ever been covered so closely by American newspapers as the spectacle officially dubbed the International Race. The extraordinary hype surrounding the event was even more notable considering that only a few years earlier Thoroughbred racing had been on the brink of Progressive-era extinction in the United States. But following a post-World War I political sea change in the United States, in what would later be remembered as a "golden age" of sport, Americans rallied around the horse that was, in the words of its owner Harry F. Sinclair, "racing for America," while Sinclair was engaged in a scheme to defraud the United States of millions of barrels of publicly owned oil in one of the most notorious instances of political corruption in American history -- the Teapot Dome scandal. America First examines the postwar revival of American horseracing, culminating in the intercontinental showdown between Zev and Papyrus, that captured some of the incongruity and contradiction of 1920s America.

The Recent Unpleasantness

2020 ◽  
pp. 3-11
Author(s):  
Jack M. Balkin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Party System ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
The United States ◽  
Institutional History ◽  
Political Regimes ◽  
The Us ◽  
Difficult Transition

American politics appears dysfunctional because the country is going through a very difficult transition. Understanding politics in terms of recurring cycles can offer some hope in troubled times. There are three cycles at work: a cycle of the rise and fall of political regimes; a cycle of polarization and depolarization; and a cycle of constitutional rot and renewal. The United States is facing similar challenges as other constitutional democracies, but the US party system, institutional history, and constitutional structures affect the way that our politics processes these challenges. Hence there is reason for a guarded optimism. We are at the end of our Second Gilded Age, which will give way to a Second Progressive Era. Even in our bitterly polarized world, we can already see signs of how American politics will eventually depolarize, creating new opportunities for cross-party collaboration.

Fragments of the American Dream: Immigration, Race, and Medical Care in the Segregated South, 1929

Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
John R Phillips
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Dream ◽  
Black Population ◽  
The United States ◽  
Single Woman ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Legal Doctrine ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sunflower County

The cover photograph for this issue of Public Voices was taken sometime in the summer of 1929 (probably June) somewhere in Sunflower County, Mississippi. Very probably the photo was taken in Indianola but, perhaps, it was Ruleville. It is one of three such photos, one of which does have the annotation on the reverse “Ruleville Midwives Club 1929.” The young woman wearing a tie in this and in one of the other photos was Ann Reid Brown, R.N., then a single woman having only arrived in the United States from Scotland a few years before, in 1923. Full disclosure: This commentary on the photo combines professional research interests in public administration and public policy with personal interests—family interests—for that young nurse later married and became the author’s mother. From the scholarly perspective, such photographs have been seen as “instrumental in establishing midwives’ credentials and cultural identity at a key transitional moment in the history of the midwife and of public health” (Keith, Brennan, & Reynolds 2012). There is also deep irony if we see these photographs as being a fragment of the American dream, of a recent immigrant’s hope for and success at achieving that dream; but that fragment of the vision is understood quite differently when we see that she began a hopeful career working with a Black population forcibly segregated by law under the incongruously named “separate but equal” legal doctrine. That doctrine, derived from the United States Supreme Court’s 1896 decision, Plessy v. Ferguson, would remain the foundation for legally enforced segregation throughout the South for another quarter century. The options open to the young, white, immigrant nurse were almost entirely closed off for the population with which she then worked. The remaining parts of this overview are meant to provide the following: (1) some biographical information on the nurse; (2) a description, in so far as we know it, of why she was in Mississippi; and (3) some indication of areas for future research on this and related topics.

Questions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James L. Gibson ◽  
Michael J. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Public Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
Future Research ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
The U.S

We have investigated the differences in support for the U.S. Supreme Court among black, Hispanic, and white Americans, catalogued the variation in African Americans’ group attachments and experiences with legal authorities, and examined how those latter two factors shape individuals’ support for the U.S. Supreme Court, that Court’s decisions, and for their local legal system. We take this opportunity to weave our findings together, taking stock of what we have learned from our analyses and what seem like fruitful paths for future research. In the process, we revisit Positivity Theory. We present a modified version of the theory that we hope will guide future inquiry on public support for courts, both in the United States and abroad.

Failure to Accelerate

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Scott
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Perspective ◽  
Production Costs ◽  
Car Ownership ◽  
Success Story ◽  
Car Industry ◽  
Fundamental Reason ◽  
European Standards ◽  
Market Diffusion

From an international perspective, the inter-war car industry was a British success story. Britain ranked only second to the United States as the world’s leading producer of, and market for, automobiles, owing to a relatively strong domestic market by European standards. However, while consumers’ expenditure was high, it was not deep—car ownership per capita in 1938 being around a third of US levels. This chapter examines why the British automobile sector failed to take off into mass market diffusion. A number of important factors are highlighted, including lower British wages relative to the United States; punitive vehicle and petrol taxation; and the high unit production costs incurred in serving a market too small to justify Fordist mass production. However, a more fundamental reason was the low priority given to car ownership in a relatively small, densely populated, and highly urbanized island nation with well-developed public transport networks.

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