Gilded Age Research Articles

Just not cricket: Baseball, youth and national identity in late nineteenth-century children’s magazines

In the late nineteenth century, baseball became enshrined as America’s national sport. Across American culture, the game became imbued with a series of values and characteristics that seemed redolent of life in the Gilded Age and beyond. This article explores the ways in which this process played out in the pages of popular magazines directed at the children of the nation’s elite. These neglected resources provide us with an extraordinary lens through which to chart both the changing place of the national game within the lives of American children and the changing meaning of baseball within the life of the nation. In poems, stories, illustrations, editorials and even reader’s letters, children were newly acculturated into the sporting life in ways that had profound implications for wider questions of childhood, gender, race, class and national identity.

Minding your manners in the Gilded Age

ABSTRACT Etiquette manuals may be used as a tool in which to investigate the intricacies associated with dining during the Gilded Age. An exploration of these dining habits, using historic etiquette manuals as primary sources, enhanced by the analysis of secondary sources, deepens understanding of a complicated age in American history. These sources reveal that food could be a curse, particularly to those not tutored in the table manners of a wealthy and hypercritical social climate. Newcomers to the volatile landscape of late 1800s society strived to increase their rank in the social hierarchy. Those with upper class lineage were alarmed by the upheaval of the system that once deemed them superior. Unnerved by this threat to their authority, the established elite encouraged systems of behavior which judged and classified newcomers. The minutiae associated with dinner parties, menus and eating, was one way to sort unwelcome new arrivals. Etiquette manuals cautioned insecure readers that the dinner table was a dangerous arena, one which could expose “imposters,” who now had money, but not pedigree. These guides advised on all aspects of social interaction, with special detail given to the act of eating; arming anxious readers with the particulars needed to negotiate the treacherous rules of dining in the Gilded Age.

Communicating through Grief: The Effects of Writing in Victorian and Gilded Ages

Grief is a complex emotional response to loss, often associated with the death of a loved one. However, there were many ways that it was expressed. Mourning stationery, mourning cigarettes, hair wreaths, and mourning rings, on the more expensive end, were objects used to signal a public display of grief, but writing had a profound influence on the Victorian and Gilded Ages, but even in death, there was money to be made in death during the Victorian and Gilded Ages. The world of commerce was quick to recognize the money to be made from this unexpected and unprecedented run on all things funeral. This economic foresight triggered a surge in British manufacturing. As the production of mourning tea sets reveals, taking tea and thinking about death were two cultural practices that could be done simultaneously. An important legacy that remained in mourning was letter writing and stationery during the Victorian and Gilded Ages, which was based on the writer and recipient of expressive papers, and has been maintained as a tradition through modern times as a form of expression and healing. As mourning became more expressive, handwritten notes and letters reached peak popularity during the second half of the 19th century and became fashionable for people as being characterized by having an elegant simplicity.

A Pint-Sized Public Sphere: Compensatory Colonialism in Literature by Elite Children During the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

AbstractDuring the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, thousands of middle-class youths published their own amateur newspapers. These periodicals were printed using the so-called toy (or “novelty”) press, a portable tabletop device that helped democratize word processing. Children often used their presses to compose miniature novels and short stories. They then shared their prose with a national community of fellow juvenile writers collectively known as “Amateurdom.” Adolescent fiction explored an array of subjects, but the frontier, territorial expansion, and empire in the West became some of its particular fixations. All that imperial storytelling, however, possessed a rich subtext. Boys and girls, reacting to late-nineteenth-century changes in the lived experience of childhood, used their printing presses to challenge various constraints imposed upon them. But in so doing, they both perpetuated and reinforced a pernicious culture of settler colonialism that celebrated the subjugation of American Indians. Ultimately, the amateur publications of children remind us that fiction is not exclusively an adult enterprise. The creative output of young people provides important insight into an underexplored realm of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era’s literary world.

The Slump: Infamous United States Supreme Court Decisions From the Gilded Age And Explanations About What Happened

The Slump: Infamous United States Supreme Court Decisions From the Gilded Age And Explanations About What Happened

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: Betty Smith’s Bestselling Introduction to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

AbstractAn analysis of Betty Smith’s bestselling coming-of-age novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn reveals how popular literature can serve as an important introduction to signature issues of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Industrialization, urbanization, and immigration are highlighted in the novel—as well as attendant problems including poverty, machine politics, child labor, and prejudice and discrimination. Profound ignorance about sexuality and conception abound in a religious culture that made premarital sex and birth control sinful and shameful, with unhappy marriages and unwanted children the result. As poverty and deviant sexuality abound, eugenics is touted as a sensible solution. The novel helps to explain why there was no organized rebellion or revolution when the struggling poor found that the promise of upward mobility was elusive. Characters have differing definitions of the American Dream. Some seek respite in religion, leisure activities, or alcohol. Others find hope in a variety of reform measures, including public health and education, settlement houses, and unions. The novel ends as the technology that made the nation’s industrialization and urbanization possible continues to produce new marvels that will transform the lives of the urban poor, bringing the Gilded Age and Progressive Era to a close.

Did Tariffs Make American Manufacturing Great? New Evidence from the Gilded Age

Did Tariffs Make American Manufacturing Great? New Evidence from the Gilded Age

When Bad Men Combine: The Star Route Scandal and the Twilight of Gilded Age Politics by Shawn Francis Peters (review)

When Bad Men Combine: The Star Route Scandal and the Twilight of Gilded Age Politics by Shawn Francis Peters (review)

Socio-cultural (re) presentations of Wall Street in Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987) and Michael Lewis’s Liar’s Poker (1989)

Wall Street's historical journey, from the Buttonwood Agreement to the Great Depression and the latter half of the 20th century, unfolds as a dynamic tale of growth and challenges. The Agreement of 1792 beneath a buttonwood tree marked a transformative moment, laying the foundation for organized trading and shaping Wall Street into a global financial hub. The 19th century saw the rise of diverse financial institutions, solidifying Wall Street's role in the American financial system. Despite facing challenges like the Panic of 1873, Wall Street demonstrated resilience, becoming instrumental in financing the nation's industrial expansion. The Gilded Age propelled Wall Street to global prominence, with the emergence of the New York Stock Exchange contributing to the myth of the "Master of the Universe." The Roaring Twenties brought both prosperity and societal flaws, as the pursuit of material wealth and excess sowed the seeds for moral decay. Understanding this historical context is crucial for exploring evolving cultural representations. Focusing on literature from the 1980s, specifically Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987) and Michael Lewis's Liar's Poker (1989), this study adopts a structuralist approach. Through evaluating symbols, archetypes, and cultural codes, the analysis contributes to a nuanced understanding of the intricate relationship between finance and broader societal and cultural contexts.

Dilemmas of 21st century land value capture: Examining Henry George’s legacy in a new Gilded Age

This essay reviews 20th century applications of Henry George’s thought by local and national policy makers in the Anglo-American context with the goal of better interpreting contemporary debates about land value capture (LVC). Proponents of LVC mechanisms argue that incentive zoning, planning obligations/exactions, special assessments, transfers of development rights, density bonusing, and tax increment financing can rebalance public and private wealth and promote economically redistributive development where direct government spending on social goods is not politically possible. Critical scholars question this stance, arguing that interventions pursued under the LVC banner often deliver publicly generated wealth to already-affluent parties while contributing to price escalation that harms low-income and middle-class citizens. An examination of Henry George’s foundational ideas sheds light on the challenges policy makers have faced in attempting to recover the “unearned increment” for the public. This analysis provides useful context for present-day debates about the advisability and practical effects of land value capture mechanisms.

A Full Measure of Citizenship: Black Grassroots Activism in Reconstruction and Gilded Age Oneida County, New York

A Full Measure of Citizenship: Black Grassroots Activism in Reconstruction and Gilded Age Oneida County, New York

Histories with Sound: Using Noise and Music to Teach (and Research) the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

AbstractIn recent years, the history of sound has developed into a rich body of interdisciplinary scholarship. This article explores the benefits of considering sonic evidence alongside a host of other material; teaching and writing histories with—rather than of—sound. In the classroom, this kind of “history with sound” is particularly useful for its ability to cut across lines of scholarly inquiry. This makes sound an especially potent resource when teaching the history of the United States during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. During these years, American society underwent a many-sided process of development difficult to adequately narrativize. The study of sound, with its ability to link numerous trends and dynamics within densely layered events, can help address this issue. Providing insight into the practices and problems of everyday life, such sonic history can reveal the interplay of change and continuity that defined the social experience of the turn-of-the-century United States. Focused on sound in New York, this article provides an overview of the topic’s historiography before examining a series of distinct case studies for classroom use.

Introduction: New Approaches to Music and Sound

AbstractThis introduction to the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era’s special issue, “New Approaches to Music and Sound,” provides a historical sketch of American music and the American soundscape at the turn of the twentieth century. It also offers a discussion of relevant historiography, taking stock of recent work in sound studies and its influence on research on music and sound of the period. Finally, it introduces the four research articles featured in this special issue and marks their contributions to our understandings of listening practices, normative understandings of audition and speech, and the sonic dimensions of politics and capitalism, race and national identity, imaginings of the past and visions for the future in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

FINNEGAN, Diarmid A. The voice of science: British scientists of the lecture circuit in Gilded Age America

FINNEGAN, Diarmid A. <i>The voice of science</i>: <i>British scientists of the lecture circuit in Gilded Age America</i>

Reinterpretation of Colonel Sellers in Twain and Warner’s The Gilded Age through Edward Eggleston’s The Mystery of Metropolisville

Reinterpretation of Colonel Sellers in Twain and Warner’s The Gilded Age through Edward Eggleston’s The Mystery of Metropolisville

Winter Wonderlands: Outdoor Adventure and the Reinvention of Christmas, 1870–1900

ABSTRACT For many Americans, Christmas became inextricably linked to a celebration of the outdoor life in the latter decades of the nineteenth century. Earlier generations of genteel folk in New York had taken the festival indoors, setting a fashion for many of the customs recognised to this day, and shaping a celebration of family and piety, home and consumption. But Christmas did not stay indoors forever. Appealing to a growing, broad middle-class interest in outdoor sports during the Gilded Age of the 1870s-1890s, a proliferating range of magazines shaped new ideas about leisure and recreation, and in festive special issues, about Christmas too. Sitting by the fire in dark and chilly December, readers of magazines like Forest and Stream or Outing could find encouragement to enjoy an active, outdoor Christmas Day, to venture into the winter landscape on skate or sled perhaps, or equally to lose themselves in stories of sport and adventure that could take them on imagined escapes, to the icy forests and mountains of the North, to sunny Florida and California, or to faraway lands, overseas. In these ways outdoor-sports magazines brought to mind wonderlands of thrill and enchantment. In the process, they reimagined Christmas for the twentieth century and the age of individualism and play, leisure and consumption.

Response to “Katrina Trask: The Gilded Age of Philanthropy,” by Khristeena Lute

A Response to “Katrina Trask: The Gilded Age of Philanthropy,” by Khristeena Lute

Katrina Trask: The Gilded Age of Philanthropy

Katrina Trask (1853-1922) is best known for founding—both financially and idealistically—Yaddo, the artist retreat located in Saratoga Springs, New York. Spencer and Katrina Trask’s sense of service and philanthropy was informed by her love for Arthurian legends and the medieval notion of patronage, wherein the wealthy fund and support artists and writers. Trask devoted her life to serving, so much so that her own literary career has become a footnote to her charity. She began her writing career after the loss of her four young children, and over the span of her lifetime wrote essays, plays, poetry, and novels—in addition to being a prolific chronicler of events. Historical and scholarly attention on Trask should be extended beyond references to her wealth to include her literary accomplishments, not as a mere footnote but rather as an independent aspect of her life worthy of its own critical attention. In this essay, I argue that the legends of King Arthur and Faust and the ethics associated therewith directly inform Katrina Trask’s literary works and the larger notion of service throughout her lifetime.

The Market Power of Technology: Understanding the Second Gilded Age

Abhinav Gupta of Kenan-Flagler Business School, UNC Chapel Hill reviews “The Market Power of Technology: Understanding the Second Gilded Age” by Mordecai Kurz. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Examines the relationship between economic inequality and the technological market power of firms, considering its policy implications in light of the history of income and wealth inequality since 1889.”

Twain and Tourgée on Gilded Age Voting Rights and Election Laws

Abstract: This essay examines Gilded Age voter fraud and voter suppression through the lenses of Mark Twain and Albion W. Tourgée. Twain is the most famous commentator on the Gilded Age. Less well known, Tourgée wrote best-selling Reconstruction fiction and became Homer Plessy's lawyer. Both were personally committed to the welfare of people of color. But Twain supported the Fifteenth Amendment as a color-blind standard to reduce voting fraud while Tourgée criticized the amendment for inadequately protecting freedmen from disfranchisement. The essay starts with Reconstruction's failure to reform the undemocratic system of presidential elections linked to the Electoral College. It ends with Twain's and Tourgée's reactions to laws enacted in the 1890s designed to block both fraud and African American suffrage. In between there is a section comparing fictional scenes dramatizing Twain's and Tourgée's views on literacy and voting; one highlighting how Twain's celebration of political independence and Tourgée's defense of political partisanship affected their understanding of the franchise; and one on the 1887 Law of the Electoral Count. Despite Twain's canonical status, Tourgée more poignantly exposes why the US continues to allow voter suppression and a minority to elect presidents.