By Stephen L. Hall
I should like to revisit a bit of history this post, particularly a bit of economic history pertaining to the post-war era. Not that war, before that. No, before that. I mean the post-Civil War era, that time in history when America was building its infrastructure which would push it to the very forefront of the world.
Probably the single most interesting era in American history. While the south suffered through money grubbing Yankee carpetbaggers trying to buy up every business in sight for pennies on the dollar, New England industrial magnates furthered their financial expansion across the Midwest and into the South. The investments in the Erie Canal and railroads crossing the Appalachian mountains were finally starting to generate huge returns on their investments.
On the scientific side of the commercial front, this was a time of incredible inventiveness and creativity, probably one of the greatest periods of significant utilitarian scientific advancement in the history of the world. Sure more patents have been filed since them, but most all of them, with a few exceptions, are merely refinements and improvements on what was actually created in the reconstruction.
The frontier was now settled, but it needed to be developed. It was the old northwest territory, from Ohio to Iowa which as being developed as the South was being rebuilt. Coal and ore were being mined, factories being built to turn those raw materials into steel, that steel into more railroads, factories, and those new awe inspiring buildings which could be said to scrape the sky, they were so tall.
I know this was the era of the cowboys and cavalry out on the great plains with the iron horse coming through, what we often refer to as the wild west. But the Indian nations had already been defeated and were in decline, had been moved far out west. The west coast had already been settled and developed, and those railroads were just connecting the two civilized coasts.
It was the invention of communication, in a significant way. All of this instant communication we think the essence of our lives, began in this era with the telegraph, then the telephone, then the wireless, also called the Marconi. Before this there was sending a letter carried by a man on horseback the way it had been done for thousands of years.
This was the era when man invented a way to surpass the horse itself, with the development of the steam driven contraptions. On steel rails, it was the steam driven “iron horse”, which had been invented before this era, but the rails on which it ran were vastly expanded. Then someone had the idea to get rid of the restrictions of the rails, to have a true horseless carriage, like the Stanley Steamer.
The internal combustion engine and railroads were invented before this era, but this is the era when these inventions would be refined, developed, and put to practical use. On this one example, just look at not the number of developments, but the nature of the developments from 1860 to 1920. In this time frame, we went from the horse and buggy to essentially the car we know and recognize today.
Culturally, these industrialists were still social creatures, they did not spend their entire lives just making themselves wealthy. After attaining wealth, they continued their competitions with each other in the fields of philanthropy. So called Robber Barons tried to outdo each other building libraries, museums, theaters, and parks, making sure to put their name on them, much like the Roman families of old.
Unfortunately, people tend to talk about the commercial era, the political era, and the cultural era as if they existed in a vacuum. Globally, this was the second half of the Victorian era, where elegance, and decorum were paramount. People aspired to move up in class, not merely to cynically attain wealth, but to refine their manners, their speech and eloquence, their morals and reputation.
That culture of civility, inventiveness, and partying, lead to such innovations as the invention of anesthesia, when a young lady under the influence of the party drug ether cut her forehead but continued laughing because she didn’t feel the pain, but the young doctor observing this thought it might be useful.
Medically, they developed the first understandings of germs, inoculation, and vaccines. From this increased understanding developed antibiotics, pain medication, sterilization and other medical advancements of all sorts. Of course, there were many mis-steps along the way, as is natural with such widespread inventiveness.
This was truly the American age of optimism, one could argue the high point of American culture, industry, art, commerce, science, invention, law, philosophy, and of society. It was asked by the owner of this blog in one of her posts, what era the readers would like to live if they had the option. I think this is the era I would have liked the most, for those reasons I have described.
It was during this era that Karl Marx published his Das Kapital, from 1867 to 1894, and the idea of a global socialist workers’ movement began to spread across the world. Global unions and workers movements began, and strikes and economic turmoil followed this global socialist movement. In America, they called themselves progressives at that time, found in both political parties proclaiming socialism as the way of the future.
It was the wealth created in this era which funded the advent of the very concept of public education and the creation of state ran schools and compulsory education. Education advocates keep telling people that education creates economic prosperity, but the public education came after the economic prosperity. Education is the luxury good purchased by our prosperity, but an impatient public demanded the government provide it for everyone, influenced by the socialists.
Other social reform movements began during this time only to see their ultimate fruition at the very end of this era. The temperance movement was growing throughout this era, only to take effect in 1919 with the passage of the 18th Amendment to kick off the progressive / prohibition era.
One of the big figures of the temperance movement was better known for her involvement in another social reform, women’s suffrage, one Susan B. Anthony. The women’s suffrage movement would not begin the feminization of politics until after 1920 when the 19th Amendment was passed.
Together with the national income tax and turning the Senate into a second House of representatives with the 16th and 17th Amendments which took effect in 1913, the progressive movement which had taken hold with Republicans Teddy Roosevelt and William Taft came to fruition under the equally progressive Woodrow Wilson. The progressive movement in both parties had brought an end to the capitalist philosophy of the United States.
The Victorian era came to an end replaced with the socialist progressive era. America would never be the same again. The industrialists of the Victorian era who built America, created wonderful creative innovations and inventions, would give way to people more concerned with Europe than America, get our nation involved in European wars, redistributing the wealth of America, rack up huge amounts of debts with the newly created Federal Reserve system created in 1913.
The size of government on all levels would start to grow until it consumed five to six times as much of the average person’s income as it did back at the end of the Victorian era. In many respects, it was the society and civilization of the Victorian era that the conservatives were really trying to conserve: the golden age of American culture.
