Content area
Full Text
Who, except for the historians, should care about the era of John D. Rockefeller Sr., J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie today? After all, how could that time (and they) be anything but dimly relevant to our own?
History, to be important, must be relevant, and we face, a full century later, what is a vastly different world on the eve of a new millennium--one no longer defined by the horse and buggy or the belching factories of America's early industrial era or, more mundanely, by daily encounters with men wearing top hats and walrus mustaches or women in corsets and bustles and twirling parasols.
Our America, at the dusk of the 20th century, is unlike America at its dawn: We are being reshaped by a new global economy, unprecedented technological change, a communications revolution, the need to redefine a government we no longer trust, a reckless and sensational press, the disease of money-corrupting politics, a workaday world of endless hours and searing corporate competitiveness and, of course, a wildly expansive stock market offering riches to those willing to ride a Wall Street they once feared or ignored.
Of course, this is all rank nonsense and bloviation. The very idea that the era of Rockefeller, Morgan and Carnegie is so deeply dissimilar from ours--and therefore has nothing to teach us--denies our history. Almost every single attribute and crisis we call our own, whether we ascribe it to late modernity or early post-modernity, was vibrantly alive and present--and profoundly recognized and debated--at the dawn of this century.
Look at the the impact of our newly global economy. A century ago, the share of foreign trade in U.S. GNP was as large as it is today--and was as relentlessly remaking the American economy. Our incredible technological change? Who among us, outside Silicon Valley, considers electricity, the lightbulb, the telephone, the aircraft, the automobile, the X-ray, organic chemistry, and the discovery of microorganisms and the theory of relativity all minor (or somehow less awesomely miraculous) compared to the "unprecedented" technological era we call our own?
One could proceed down the checklist--our distrust of government and the corrupting role of money in politics; immigration, race, wealth inequality; an appalling education system; ruthless competition; and a relentless pageant of reform movements...