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RR 2017/233Companion to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era Edited by Christopher McKnight Nichols and Nancy C. Unger Wiley Blackwell Malden, MA and Oxford 2017 x + 513 pp. ISBN 978 1 118 91396 3 (print); ISBN 978 1 118 91398 7 (e-book) £156 $195 (print); £140.99 $156.99 (e-book)Wiley-Blackwell Companions to American History
As a name for the past decades of the nineteenth century, "Gilded Age" is a definite misnomer. Mark Twain used the phrase in 1873 for a novel written to satirize the corruption and pretensions of the rich. He meant to say that their wealth provided a surface gilding to the ugly reality, which lay beneath it. But the gilt could not conceal the ugliness: there was too much exploitation, racial violence and industrial strife, and it was coupled with the extremes of poverty and squalor. Of course, similar comments could have been made about contemporary Britain, France and Germany, but the boastful words of the title, as it applies to the USA, need cutting down to size. The other phrase, Progressive Era, is easier to justify because after the turn of the century a raft of worthwhile reforms was passed. They were modest in scope but undeniably beneficial. Politicians were trying to make the big cities decent places to live in. But the fact remains that for many Americans, the "progress" was slow and the "gilding" was irrelevant. "Gilded Age" is a convenient title for textbooks and college courses but nothing more.
Broadly speaking, in the half century we are looking at, the years 1869 to 1900 can be identified as the "Gilded" years, and the Roosevelt, Taft and Wilson presidencies as the "Progressive" years taking us up to around 1920. It will be useful, briefly, to mention some of the main features of this period as a context for the book. On the economic side, there was declining farm revenue and widespread indebtedness, agrarian unrest and the growth of populism; by 1890 at the latest, the final "closure the frontier". There was also burgeoning industrial growth, the rise of big corporations and the parallel growth of labour unions. These years saw dazzling wealth for a few but sweatshops and cellar-dwelling for many others. On the social side, there was mass immigration,...