In the Preface to a new edition of her book highlighting the grassroots struggles during the Progressive Era, Standing at Armageddon: The United States 1877-1919 (1987) Nell Irwin Painter draws some striking comparisons to the United States then and the United States now. While she does concentrate a little too much on war in this Preface written in 2008, I think that most of what she has to say bears repeating here. And since the war in Afghanistan is still dragging on, maybe she was correct to spend so much time and space on it.
In our present-day return to the Gilded Age, we realize the issues of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries never really died. The old issues, in fact, are with us still. As Henry George said way back in 1879, the “unequal distribution of wealth” is the curse of our times.
More than a century ago, thoughtful Americans pondered the meaning of wealth generated by a modern economy. They asked how it could be that the people who worked the hardest were the poorest but the people seemed not to work at all rolled in dough. How could it be that political power served the people with the most but did so little for the people with the least? What is—what should be—the relation between the power of money and the power of the people?
In the last generation, Americans (among other people) have faced old and new crisis. An energy crisis remains with us as we grapple with global warming. We now call hard times recessions, but their toll in human suffering remains. We used to be able to grow out of every crisis at home and send in friendly GIs to help out the people overseas, but wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq have divided the American people, without producing the victorious finale of the “good war” of the 1940s. Today, as when the war in question was the Philippine insurrection, Americans argue over the wisdom of trying to improve another country by occupying it. William Jennings Bryan’s question from 1890 bears repeating: Is the United States a democracy or an empire?
Wars are with us still and their costs in money and blood remain staggering. As Americans asked in 1917, they wonder now: Who should pay and how? Who should serve in the battlefield? Who are the enemy at home and abroad? These pressing issues of the First World War remain pressing issues today. The enemies though, have changed, and the threat of terrorism seems to be everywhere. We no longer trade in “red scares” because the Soviet Union no longer exists and the Cold War is over. But we still question the trade-offs between freedom and security. Is the loss of American freedom the cost of vigilance, and who decides who will pay?
As the end of the First World War and in the midst of the Great Unrest, a Chicago journal predicted that “unless the issue is decided once and for all now, through the firmness and courage of the American people, Americanism for a time at least will perish from the face of the earth and the war will have been fought in vain.” Whether the challenge is economic hard times, religious antagonism, or the gap between the rich and the poor, this warning from nearly a century ago still rings in our ears.
So the question is: Have we actually entered a new Gilded Age and what can we do about it if we have, given what I already posted this morning from Piven’s text about the possibility of a popular uprising or anything resembling a general strike in today’s political and cultural environment.
It is certainly hard to believe anything will ever be accomplished to change anything given the current consciousness and the current failure of people to act on what they know is an intractable situation.
Enter at your own risk, unlike the faint of heart I ban no one, nor do I block or delete my threads!
In our present-day return to the Gilded Age, we realize the issues of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries never really died. The old issues, in fact, are with us still. As Henry George said way back in 1879, the “unequal distribution of wealth” is the curse of our times.
More than a century ago, thoughtful Americans pondered the meaning of wealth generated by a modern economy. They asked how it could be that the people who worked the hardest were the poorest but the people seemed not to work at all rolled in dough. How could it be that political power served the people with the most but did so little for the people with the least? What is—what should be—the relation between the power of money and the power of the people?
In the last generation, Americans (among other people) have faced old and new crisis. An energy crisis remains with us as we grapple with global warming. We now call hard times recessions, but their toll in human suffering remains. We used to be able to grow out of every crisis at home and send in friendly GIs to help out the people overseas, but wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq have divided the American people, without producing the victorious finale of the “good war” of the 1940s. Today, as when the war in question was the Philippine insurrection, Americans argue over the wisdom of trying to improve another country by occupying it. William Jennings Bryan’s question from 1890 bears repeating: Is the United States a democracy or an empire?
Wars are with us still and their costs in money and blood remain staggering. As Americans asked in 1917, they wonder now: Who should pay and how? Who should serve in the battlefield? Who are the enemy at home and abroad? These pressing issues of the First World War remain pressing issues today. The enemies though, have changed, and the threat of terrorism seems to be everywhere. We no longer trade in “red scares” because the Soviet Union no longer exists and the Cold War is over. But we still question the trade-offs between freedom and security. Is the loss of American freedom the cost of vigilance, and who decides who will pay?
As the end of the First World War and in the midst of the Great Unrest, a Chicago journal predicted that “unless the issue is decided once and for all now, through the firmness and courage of the American people, Americanism for a time at least will perish from the face of the earth and the war will have been fought in vain.” Whether the challenge is economic hard times, religious antagonism, or the gap between the rich and the poor, this warning from nearly a century ago still rings in our ears.
So the question is: Have we actually entered a new Gilded Age and what can we do about it if we have, given what I already posted this morning from Piven’s text about the possibility of a popular uprising or anything resembling a general strike in today’s political and cultural environment.
It is certainly hard to believe anything will ever be accomplished to change anything given the current consciousness and the current failure of people to act on what they know is an intractable situation.
Enter at your own risk, unlike the faint of heart I ban no one, nor do I block or delete my threads!
