Gilded Age – Page 2 – American Disasters

January 27, 2014December 16, 2020

The Benefits of Disaster

Warning: Undefined variable $num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 126

Warning: Undefined variable $posts_num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 127

The detrimental losses and challenges of homeowners, widows and politicians after a disaster often obscure the disaster’s economical, historical and geographical advantages. That is not to say that the human aspect of disasters should be removed, but rather that those who study disasters should do so using two analytical methods: one which recognizes the immediate impact and one which considers the historical legacy.

As Kevin Rozario points out in “What Comes Down Must Go Up” economic loss is the initial stage, but economic growth is the latter stage. Similar to Sarah’s post, I also, find this concept strange. However, redevelopment of cities, through reconstruction and urban planning can adapt cities to meet the current more modern needs while bringing in jobs. Following the fire in New York City in 1835 property prices increased from $93,000 to $765,000. Additionally, the San Francisco earthquake and fire destroyed about five acres worth of property and left hundreds of people dead, but allowed the city to recreate itself following the Parisian model of transformation (Rozario). Given that this era was abundant in disasters and therefore demanding of reconstruction, the argument James Connolly made in “Bringing the City Back in” about urban planning in the Gilded Age gains credibility.

But further than Eli’s point in “The perverse and often baffling economics of disaster,” I believe disasters have more than just an economic benefit. In year 79 Pompeian citizens lost their lives when Mount Vesuvius exploded. Over 1500 years later archaeologists and historians excavated the site and made discoveries that have contributed to the modern understanding of the Pax Romana time period. Similarly the King Manor Museum (KMM) in Jamaica, Queens experienced a fire in 1962 that “damaged the upper floors of the manor house” but left artifacts such as “bottles and jars, household ceramics, flower pot fragments, tin cans, buttons, nails, bricks, animal bones, plaster and foil” (Matthews, 737). Archaeologists were then able to interpret these remains to understand how the museum served as a “center for cultivating elite women’s agency” (734). Disaster as a means of preservation seems contradictory, especially when descriptions of disaster include: economic loss, damage, emergency, tragedy, victims, and mortality rate (Hewitt). Maybe in another 2000 years historians and archaeologists will make discoveries about our society and culture based on artifacts from Hurricane Sandy or the 2010 Haitian earthquake.

January 22, 2014December 16, 2020

Defining the “Gilded Age”

Although I like what the small amount of Urban History that I’ve studied, I think James Connolly has the weakest argument from the three readings. I didn’t see anything more than theories until he finally used the example of the role of the Irish-Catholics in the twin cities and how they affected the history of the two cities differently. I also come from the predisposition that Urban History tends to study more effect than cause.

Both Edwards and Schneirov, I believe, have stronger arguments than Connolly. I like that Schneirov combines the social, political, and capital effects on the history of the time, and I think he properly addresses areas of cause and affect that are essential to studying the time period, and he states that his opinion on what the period encompasses is just that, an opinion. I especially like how he emphasizes the importance of capitalism during this time; neither of the other two talk in as great of detail about it as he does. Unlike ajpignone, the jury is still out for me on whether or not Edwards ideas of including the Gilded Age with the Progressive Era. I will definitely have to research further on this specific argument to make my decision, but I think that she has a very strong argument. She gives multiple examples of progression during the Gilded Age. My predisposition to the time period is that it should be distinct from the Progressive Era, so the strength or weakness of the argument does not correlate with how I originally felt on the subject, unlike how I felt about Connolly’s essay.

January 22, 2014December 16, 2020

Bringing Space and Place to the Gilded Age

This past summer I went to Santiago, Chile with my family before the start of my semester abroad. My parents desired to leave the city because they felt Chile had more to offer than a large Western-feeling space. To my parents, cities could feel repetitive (having lived in New York for about 50 years). Parisians and Romans may disagree but I found this to be true of Dublin, Ireland as well. Upon arriving, my family immediately wanted to depart for the countryside because we felt like the city was not offering us anything we had not experienced before. “Bringing the City Back in: Space and Place in the Urban History of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era” by James Connolly challenged my views of cities by bringing to light variations in spacial arrangements and “the specific history of social, economic, political, and cultural interaction that creates identities” (271). Many of these variations are associated with the Gilded Age and are distinctions that you might not pick up on if you are a tourist visiting a city for only three days.

These problems arise when people are quick to lump things together. Sherwood’s post questions, “Is the generalized overview more illuminating than the examination of a specific instance, or vice versa?” Rebecca Edwards in “Politics, Social Movements, and the Periodization of U.S. History” jokes about herself being a “lumper extraordinaire,” and although I admire her fight to rename history, I don’t agree with her oversimplification of history. History does not always fit neatly into years, in the same way spaces are created by cities. There is a benefit to classifying eras by the main components that make them unique, or their identities, which is reaffirmed in Sherwood’s post: “for the average students of history, there is little wisdom to be gained from the study of broad, general trends.” Place and space are typically geographical terms, but their concepts can be applied to history as well.

January 22, 2014December 16, 2020

Historicization in historical study versus popular imagination

All three articles for Thursday’s reading examine the ways in which we think about history and the lenses through which we examine it. Rebecca Edwards, of New Spirits fame, continues the thoughtful discussion that we have been having as a class about whether the moniker of “Gilded Age” is appropriate for the time period we are discussing. Rightly, she argues, as we have discussed, that the most prominent Gilded Age stereotypes do not fully characterize the era. To wit, she raises the Grange movement, the Populist party, the American Farmer’s Alliance, the Interstate Commerce Act, the Sherman Antitrust Act, and muckraking journalism, among other items.

Edwards’ ardent argument regarding historicization of the Gilded Age clearly emerges from a depth of knowledge, and I don’t seek to reject her interpretation out of hand; yet, I think that her frustration with existing perspectives on the Gilded Age comes from teachers and students, not from historians. The dominant narrative of the Gilded Age, which Edwards’ glosses in her opening paragraphs, does not, I believe, dominate the historical literature inappropriately. Rather, the nuance with which Edwards would like students of history to examine the Gilded Age is lost in the shuffle of high school classes which cover American history from colonialism to the eve of World War 2. Unfortunately, that lost nuance drives popular perception of the Gilded Age as one of pure corruption, crony capitalism and Jim Crow. Yet, serious students of history still examine these issues with the perceptiveness and depth which Edwards desires. It is simply not reasonable to expect that the nation as a whole will embrace a complex vision of each era of history when eras themselves tend to get reduced down to their very essence by teachers who must move through them in a week.

I fully agree with Price’s perspective that the Supreme Court’s conservative decisions during this period eviscerated the ability of reformers to make serious legislative progress. His analysis is also apt in that he acknowledges the inadequacies of Edwards’ argument regarding the significance of reform in this period. I would like to reiterate my own perspective: the dominant narrative of this period does not eliminate the possibility of the existence of counter-narrative occurrences; rather, the dominant narrative exists because is most accurately summarizes the dominant trends in Gilded Age society.

January 20, 2014December 16, 2020

“Accidents” of the “Gilded Age”

In the beginning of the Edwards’ reading I found the description of the Gilded Age to be similar with my sentiments about the current era in America. To live in the United States of America right now is to experience an active, emotional, and dynamic time period. As a country we are divided over the issue of war, the organic food movement has made known the shortcuts and shortfalls of factory farming in a Sinclair-like manner, and multiple friends and students have found jobs and apartments in the rapidly expanding Charlotte. However, as I became more aware of the ugly reconstruction in the South after the Civil War and the national connectivity from the development of railroads I realize that now is quite distinct from then. Through the essays and arguments of Edwards and Calhoun, I have also learned that there is more to the “Gilded Age” than robber barons, greed and self-indulgence. Sarah’s blog post points out “there is probably no age that can be neatly classified negative or positive” and “historians will often have to revise their perspectives” both of which are accurate and sharp statements.

Defining and renaming the “Gilded Age” or “Early Progressive Era” sets the context for analyzing the disasters that occurred during this time. In some regards, I agree with Wells: I believe historians should study these disasters as important social events that changed the progressive course of the country, but additionally historians should recognize that the causes of disaster were directly related to poor infrastructure, or weak working codes. Understanding that many of the disasters during this era were preventable, I find I am unable to use the word “accident” to describe disasters that occurred during the “Gilded Age”/ “Early Progressive Era” and instead choose the words “intentional” or “unintentional”. Edwards provides the example of a group of female convicts in Georgia who set fire to the brickyard where they were ordered to work hard labor in protest of “sexual exploitation and abysmal living conditions” (Edwards, 2). The fire in Georgia started because someone had the hope of setting the institution ablaze and therefore the “disaster” was not accidental. This differs from the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which was an unintentional disaster, but still not an “accident”. If the escape doors were unlocked, the fire on the ninth floor might not have killed over one-fifth of the workers.

Questions I would like to ask the class are: How are methods historians use to define the “Gilded Age” similar to methods we use to define disasters? How do these definitions set the stage for disasters we will analyze?

January 20, 2014December 16, 2020

A Crucible of Fire: Interpreting the “Gilded Age” and Characterizing Its Disasters

Just as last week’s readings approached disasters, our readings for Tuesday’s class examine the “Gilded Age” and approach it generally, attempting to characterize the period and, in doing so, look beyond its materialism and superficiality. As Sarah addressed in her post, Charles Calhoun adopts this approach in his analysis of the period and suggests that in the context of US history it was a time of “substantial accomplishment,” when advancements in politics and pop culture coincided with urbanization and economic development (3). Indeed, as Sarah writes, the period was “not as gilded as it seems.” But perhaps even more boldly than Calhoun, Rebecca Edwards advocates for the period’s significance and, one might say, preeminence in New Spirits. The “Gilded Age,” she insists, was not merely a time of greed, inequality, and other ills of so-called unfettered capitalism, but an “Early Progressive Era,” the “starting point for modern America” (5). She notes, like Calhoun, that alongside the emergence of globalism and development of capitalism, the United States underwent a period of immense change, evolving into a more egalitarian democracy and fostering a democratic culture. But for Edwards, the period was not just one of progress. As she writes, the United States emerged from a “crucible of fire” in early twentieth century, fraught as much with greed and corruption as with disaster (1).

So, how might these affirmative views of the “Gilded Age” influence our interpretation of its disasters?

As our reading last week noted, disasters serve as “daily reminders of the limitations . . . of modernity” (Hewitt 2). Just as they exploit weaknesses in infrastructure and society, they can and often do illicit positive change to mend those weaknesses. And it would seem that this is especially the case in an evolving society, where progress might not begin with disaster—it’s already begun—but instead simply alters its course. Now, if Edwards’ and Calhoun’s assessments of the “Gilded Age” are accurate and the period truly was one of immense progress, I think we ought to evaluate the period’s disasters with its progressive ends in mind, analyzing the way in which disasters challenged the progressive course of the United States. The pitfall of this type of interpretation, of course, would be stooping to a teleological history, in which we interpret disasters as merely the causes of events, not as important events in and of themselves. But I would like to pose the question to the class: Should we interpret disasters in the “Gilded Age” as causes of the Progressive Era or as the results of a progressing era?

In his post last week, Price addressed and critiqued what Bergman described as the “utility” of disaster, suggesting that Bergman perhaps “jumps the gun” in considering disasters useful. And while I agree with him to some extent—it’s critical to recognize the deadly tolls of disaster—I think that we ought to study disasters with intention of uncovering their useful results. Not only does this approach attempt to understand disasters in their context, but recognizes both the momentary and long-lasting effects of those disasters. I think Edwards would agree with this approach as well. After all, she admits that even in this “Early Progressive Era,” it was the “fires” of the age that forged the tools of progress.

January 19, 2014December 16, 2020

It’s Not as Gilded as it Seems: Calhoun Revises the Gilded Age

Charles W. Calhoun, in Moving Beyond the Stereotypes of the Gilded Age, introduces a multi-faceted view of the Gilded Age. Calhoun thinks the Gilded Age gets largely swept aside in teaching; the period is just stuck between seemingly more important events in America’s history, such as the Civil War and the Progressive Era. What attention the Gilded Age does get is largely negative. Even the name of the age conjures negative images of an overwrought superficial time. Twentieth-century scholars named the period after a novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner. Calhoun argues that, while some of the stereotypical corruption of the Gilded Age is accurate, the Gilded Age is a period of “substantial accomplishment.” Calhoun suggests he is not the only holder of this view. Scholars after those who labeled the Gilded Age work to reconsider the Gilded Age. There has been a general shift among scholars to reexamine the Gilded Age. They do not reject the period’s problems, but they also point to the growth of the country’s infrastructure such as public transportation, railroads, factories, the advent of federal regulation like the Sherman Anti-trust Act, and cultural figures such as Mark Twain and John Singer Sergeant.

Calhoun attempts to reevaluate the Gilded Age. He tries to paint a more complex and hopefully more accurate picture of the era, which seems to be an admirable goal. I would say there is probably no age that can be neatly classified negative or positive. For instance, Calhoun uses the example of Gilded Age politics. The stereotypical view held there were two corrupt parties that barely differed in their views. In actuality, many politicians of the Gilded Age “were sincere, dedicated, hardworking public servants.” The main point of the study of history seems to be bringing out the character of the past, without passing judgment. The character of any era will necessarily be complex.

The section of Molly’s post that laid out Calhoun’s implied questions helped illuminate Calhoun’s though process for me. She writes, “What are the stereotypes, why do they exist, to what extent are they accurate, and why should the nuances matter?” This seems to fit the format of Calhoun’s article. He talks about the origin of the term “Gilded Age” and some of the negativity around the era. Then he shows some areas where the stereotypes are not quite accurate. Molly is correct that Calhoun does not quite state why the nuances matter, but I think he implies that a historian’s role is to create as accurate a picture of history as possible; this means historians will often have to revise their perspectives.

January 17, 2014December 16, 2020

Gilded Age Myths Versus Realities: A Matter of Perspective

In “Moving Beyond Stereotype of the Gilded Age,” Charles W. Calhoun takes issue with the lack of acknowledgement that the Gilded Age receives in the classroom, where he believes it is written off as a time of corruption and speculation, among other atrocities. Rather, he makes the case, it was a time of intense urbanization, industrialization, cultural broadening, and increases in regulation.

The “Introduction” to The Gilded Age and Progressive Era : A Student Companion offers a more conventional interpretation of the Gilded Age, though the factual differences between this and Calhoun’s interpretations are minimal.

Calhoun is not incorrect: the Gilded Age was not a cultural wasteland (though I admit, Twain is the only name I recognize from the list Calhoun unspools, not that I am particularly cultured), nor was it a time in which no attempts were made to address contemporary problems. The ICC and the Sherman Anti-Trust Act are good examples, though the latter was weak enough that it was strengthened in 1914.

The Gilded Age is not overlooked because nothing occurred, but rather because many teachers likely believe that there is more to learn from other periods. Indeed, the rampant capitalism of the Gilded Age seems most relevant in counterpoint to the regulatory expansion of the Progressive Era, since the level of government involvement currently exercised across American life more resembles the reformed than the laissez-faire. On the other side of the Gilded Age, Calhoun can hardly disagree that the Civil War was likely more significant than the Gilded Age.

Likewise, Calhoun takes issue with the ways in which the Gilded Age is perceived. I doubt historians and teachers would disagree with his characterization of the Age, and yet the views of the past are always shaped by the present. The Gilded Age surfaces in our collective memory because of the ways in which it was different from the present and recent past, not the ways in which it was similar. Modern American consumers may have gained tremendously in buying power during the Gilded Age, but they benefitted more during the 1950s; there was no dearth of exceptional artists during the Gilded Age, but since we have had Hemingway, Steinbeck, the Beats, the Harlem Renaissance, Elvis, and cinema, to name a few; Republicans and Democrats may have had substantial political differences during the Gilded Age, but so do they today, and frequently we do not see those difference play out in terms of policy. On the contrary, we do not have the monopolies, the child labor, as much urban squalor (though still significant amounts), and as brutal a form of capitalism as the Gilded Age held. Therefore, those are the elements for which the Gilded Age is remembered, though that suggests more about 2014 than 1884.

With regard to Thursday’s readings, I strongly agree with Price’s assertion that Bergman “jumps the gun” on calling disasters useful. They certainly reveal the problems in society, and allow for compelling debate on the issues of the day. Yet, nothing useful comes with so high a cost that, given the choice, one would never use it. To call it useful is to approach a disaster in a completely academic way, without humanity. And, maybe that is a useful exercise. All the better that we study the disasters of the Gilded Age, for I could explain a Katrina victim the ways in which his or her suffering was ‘useful.’