> No matter how she argued with herself that, after all, government did not impinge much on real life — loving, bearing children, bringing them up, growing old and dying — she was still depressed and full of foreboding.
This hits hard. Considering the government we have now impinges a lot more on all those things, and this is largely the legacy of FDR.
"how well could you explain what was at stake in William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech? Could you explain it to a 7th grader? Do you even remember who William Jennings Bryan is?"
Having played it a while ago and without looking stuff up, here's my mental model of Bryan's platform: The gold standard (sound money) kept inflation low, since all new money created had to be backed by gold. Bryan wanted to introduce silver coinage, which would increase the money supply and therefore cause higher inflation. This would be good for farmers (their debts get reduced in real terms, they can sell their produce at a higher price while not caring as much about buying since they're somewhat self-sufficient), bad for factory owners and creditors (their money in the bank loses value) and a wash for workers (prices rise but their wages should keep pace). However, it's not clear that voters thought about it in these terms and not just in terms of vibes ("sound money" vs. "evil banks oppressing the common man"). Farmers and the West fanatically supported Bryan, and he had the support of the South, but he lost by alienating swing voters (mostly urban workers in states like Illinois and Ohio) by being seen as too radical and close to socialism, while also alienating German and Irish Democrats by being pro-temperance and perceptions that he was nativist.
The game makes the case that Bryan would likely have won had he toned down the pseudo-religious rhetoric, distanced himself from radical organized labor and kept hammering the silver issue.
Returning to the gold standard didn't just keep inflation low, it caused pretty significant deflation. Though, it was mostly a boom period, unlike the deflation during the Great Depression:
> In the decade following the Public Credit Act of 1869, which set a 10 year timetable for returning to the Gold standard, the price level declined gradually by 30 percent, while real output grew at a robust 4-5 percent per year. We argue that the highly transparent policy objective, the credible nature of the authorities' commitment, and gradual implementation of the policy helped minimize disruptive effects on the real economy. By contrast, while prices fell by a similar magnitude during the deflation that began in 1920, the price decline was very rapid, and accompanied by a sharp fall in real activity.
There were also regional differences. Manufacturing in the western US was especially hard-hit after the railroads, due to competition from eastern manufacturers.
I generally subscribe to letters like this one to supplement my at times woefully under-powered compass for great overlooked literature so it gives me huge pleasure that a) I got here ahead of this one and b) it's here at all.
It was the book that, after many frustrated attempts to engage with both the Victorian-expanded-cast-novel and the history-of-a-small-town-novel, finally gave me a way in to both formats. It was given to me by a very cunning friend who thought I'd be persuaded in spite of my past bad experiences by the fact that it has, as that review perceptively notes, that ethnographic character to it.
An amazing model of life and of a civilisation. What higher achievement really can a novel achieve?
I'm not familiar with this novel. I will have to check it out. If you add in My Antonia, An American Tragedy, and the Robber Barons you'd pretty much capture the era. And, of course, Randy Newman:
Sing a song of long ago
When things were green and movin' slow
And people stopped to say hello
Or they'd say hi to you
Would you like to come over for tea
With the missus and me?
It's a real nice way to spend the day in Dayton, Ohio
The first page of the Kindle sample has this sentence: “A brick wall led from the gate; it divided midway in its course, one branch leading straight to the dormitory, the other turning right to the classroom building.”
But I have trouble picturing it: shouldn’t it be “a brick *walk* led from the gate?” I wonder if this is a typo, and whether it’s also in the print version?
Edit after finishing the book: I saw quite a few more typos, probably due to bad OCR since the book was published in 1984. Up to you how to weigh the convenience of Kindle versus typos. Despite that, I still highly recommend it.
I wonder what it is that makes people generate stock images for some historical periods and not others? Easy to picture the Civil War or the Roaring 20s, not so much America in the Gilded Age.
Pynchon's Against The Day is sort of designed to pastiche this entire period, but it's Pynchon so it might not be super accessible. I was going to say Gangs Of New York but that's earlier. Devil In The White City might be useful - it's set around the Chicago World's Fair, which Pynchon uses as well. The Great Race (1965) is about an automobile race from New York to Paris in 1908 - it's one of my favourite films. The Red Dead Redemption games are set at the turn of the century, although I'm not totally sure why, as the whole Wild West thing was wrapping itself up by then.
Partly the issue is the late nineteenth century was the beginning of what we might think of as economic history. Industrialisation had matured to the point where historical events were being determined by inscrutable market forces, rather than by the decisions of political leaders. People found this very stressful, which is why they invented socialism - the aim of which was expressly to put market chaos on a more rational basis.
It needs to be understood as the first "liberal" period IMO, a sort of precursor to the current "neoliberal" one. FDR won and maintained power through promising to make the economy into something that could once again be understood and controlled by the ordinary American man - though he totally failed to do this, as it is in fact impossible to achieve.
(Obviously that's a simplification which you can dispute, I'm not saying I've 100% solved the riddle of history.)
Anyway I think of the late nineteenth century as a time of booms and busts, extravagant wealth, mass immigration, millionaires and conmen. J. P. Morgan and Nikola Tesla. It's quite a funny time period in many ways, it lends itself to comedy. I think there's a "classic Americana" vibe as well - strong period for parading to Sousa marches and waving the flag around. There's no real definitive set of images for it though - it's a bit more of a pastiche.
I tried to make a game once based on The Great Race where you'd choose your path across 19th-century America and have different comedy encounters based on where you went, so I've thought a bit about this.
Well you've pursuaded me to read it when I can find the time! I'll submit for recommendation another masterpiece of the Progressive era that doesn't get much attention, although it's not a novel: Independent Intellectuals In The United States, 1910 – 1945 by Steven Biel. A captivating look at that era through the lense of writers grappling with the rapidly changing understanding of what the country was and would become.
"But that’s good! Teaching about empire would be way easier if my students played more Civilization."
There's a new book out about a video game I've never played called RED DEAD REDEMPTION, by a historian who uses it in his classes. Author's name is Tore Olsson.
Ironically, I remember coming over this exact book somewhere in the library twenty years ago and thinking, "this is a towering achievement I will probably have no interest in ever reading." (As a big-city white-adjacent boy I was almost an exact photographic negative of the people in the book.)
Maybe I'll read it now. I'd get it on Kindle but I've heard they bowdlerize the books without telling you. So, another tome...
Loved the review! I think Amanda should have a substack so that we could read more of her reviews :)
> No matter how she argued with herself that, after all, government did not impinge much on real life — loving, bearing children, bringing them up, growing old and dying — she was still depressed and full of foreboding.
This hits hard. Considering the government we have now impinges a lot more on all those things, and this is largely the legacy of FDR.
"how well could you explain what was at stake in William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech? Could you explain it to a 7th grader? Do you even remember who William Jennings Bryan is?"
There's a cool browser game about Bryan's 1896 presidential campaign (among others): https://www.newcampaigntrail.com/campaign-trail/index.html
Having played it a while ago and without looking stuff up, here's my mental model of Bryan's platform: The gold standard (sound money) kept inflation low, since all new money created had to be backed by gold. Bryan wanted to introduce silver coinage, which would increase the money supply and therefore cause higher inflation. This would be good for farmers (their debts get reduced in real terms, they can sell their produce at a higher price while not caring as much about buying since they're somewhat self-sufficient), bad for factory owners and creditors (their money in the bank loses value) and a wash for workers (prices rise but their wages should keep pace). However, it's not clear that voters thought about it in these terms and not just in terms of vibes ("sound money" vs. "evil banks oppressing the common man"). Farmers and the West fanatically supported Bryan, and he had the support of the South, but he lost by alienating swing voters (mostly urban workers in states like Illinois and Ohio) by being seen as too radical and close to socialism, while also alienating German and Irish Democrats by being pro-temperance and perceptions that he was nativist.
The game makes the case that Bryan would likely have won had he toned down the pseudo-religious rhetoric, distanced himself from radical organized labor and kept hammering the silver issue.
Having said that, go play it!
Returning to the gold standard didn't just keep inflation low, it caused pretty significant deflation. Though, it was mostly a boom period, unlike the deflation during the Great Depression:
> In the decade following the Public Credit Act of 1869, which set a 10 year timetable for returning to the Gold standard, the price level declined gradually by 30 percent, while real output grew at a robust 4-5 percent per year. We argue that the highly transparent policy objective, the credible nature of the authorities' commitment, and gradual implementation of the policy helped minimize disruptive effects on the real economy. By contrast, while prices fell by a similar magnitude during the deflation that began in 1920, the price decline was very rapid, and accompanied by a sharp fall in real activity.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/ifdp/2007/898/ifdp898.htm
There were also regional differences. Manufacturing in the western US was especially hard-hit after the railroads, due to competition from eastern manufacturers.
Novels like this are why I read
I generally subscribe to letters like this one to supplement my at times woefully under-powered compass for great overlooked literature so it gives me huge pleasure that a) I got here ahead of this one and b) it's here at all.
It was the book that, after many frustrated attempts to engage with both the Victorian-expanded-cast-novel and the history-of-a-small-town-novel, finally gave me a way in to both formats. It was given to me by a very cunning friend who thought I'd be persuaded in spite of my past bad experiences by the fact that it has, as that review perceptively notes, that ethnographic character to it.
An amazing model of life and of a civilisation. What higher achievement really can a novel achieve?
I'm not familiar with this novel. I will have to check it out. If you add in My Antonia, An American Tragedy, and the Robber Barons you'd pretty much capture the era. And, of course, Randy Newman:
Sing a song of long ago
When things were green and movin' slow
And people stopped to say hello
Or they'd say hi to you
Would you like to come over for tea
With the missus and me?
It's a real nice way to spend the day in Dayton, Ohio
On a lazy Sunday afternoon in 1903
The first page of the Kindle sample has this sentence: “A brick wall led from the gate; it divided midway in its course, one branch leading straight to the dormitory, the other turning right to the classroom building.”
But I have trouble picturing it: shouldn’t it be “a brick *walk* led from the gate?” I wonder if this is a typo, and whether it’s also in the print version?
Edit after finishing the book: I saw quite a few more typos, probably due to bad OCR since the book was published in 1984. Up to you how to weigh the convenience of Kindle versus typos. Despite that, I still highly recommend it.
I've been calling this period The Age of Ohio.
I wonder what it is that makes people generate stock images for some historical periods and not others? Easy to picture the Civil War or the Roaring 20s, not so much America in the Gilded Age.
Pynchon's Against The Day is sort of designed to pastiche this entire period, but it's Pynchon so it might not be super accessible. I was going to say Gangs Of New York but that's earlier. Devil In The White City might be useful - it's set around the Chicago World's Fair, which Pynchon uses as well. The Great Race (1965) is about an automobile race from New York to Paris in 1908 - it's one of my favourite films. The Red Dead Redemption games are set at the turn of the century, although I'm not totally sure why, as the whole Wild West thing was wrapping itself up by then.
Partly the issue is the late nineteenth century was the beginning of what we might think of as economic history. Industrialisation had matured to the point where historical events were being determined by inscrutable market forces, rather than by the decisions of political leaders. People found this very stressful, which is why they invented socialism - the aim of which was expressly to put market chaos on a more rational basis.
It needs to be understood as the first "liberal" period IMO, a sort of precursor to the current "neoliberal" one. FDR won and maintained power through promising to make the economy into something that could once again be understood and controlled by the ordinary American man - though he totally failed to do this, as it is in fact impossible to achieve.
(Obviously that's a simplification which you can dispute, I'm not saying I've 100% solved the riddle of history.)
Anyway I think of the late nineteenth century as a time of booms and busts, extravagant wealth, mass immigration, millionaires and conmen. J. P. Morgan and Nikola Tesla. It's quite a funny time period in many ways, it lends itself to comedy. I think there's a "classic Americana" vibe as well - strong period for parading to Sousa marches and waving the flag around. There's no real definitive set of images for it though - it's a bit more of a pastiche.
I tried to make a game once based on The Great Race where you'd choose your path across 19th-century America and have different comedy encounters based on where you went, so I've thought a bit about this.
Well you've pursuaded me to read it when I can find the time! I'll submit for recommendation another masterpiece of the Progressive era that doesn't get much attention, although it's not a novel: Independent Intellectuals In The United States, 1910 – 1945 by Steven Biel. A captivating look at that era through the lense of writers grappling with the rapidly changing understanding of what the country was and would become.
"But that’s good! Teaching about empire would be way easier if my students played more Civilization."
There's a new book out about a video game I've never played called RED DEAD REDEMPTION, by a historian who uses it in his classes. Author's name is Tore Olsson.
William Jennings Bryan...
Isn't he the one from the evolution trial?
Also, something something McKinley, I think.
Yes. I have no idea what was happening then.
Cross of gold! Christian socialism! Death to the money power!
OK, maybe I should read this.
This sounds like the American "Lark Rise to Candleford" trilogy. Which I recommend, by the way.
First link in FN1 is missing an "h" on the "https" https://www.nytimes.com/1984/01/12/arts/happy-end-for-novelist-s-50-year-effort.html
I doubt that many boys will want to read a long novel about housewives.
Anyway, as a girl, I enjoyed Edith Wharton as a capsule of the upper class in the gilded age.
But, my friend who was a boy, asked me why boys had to read Jane Austin and other girl's books.
Thank God, my middle school was all girls.
Ironically, I remember coming over this exact book somewhere in the library twenty years ago and thinking, "this is a towering achievement I will probably have no interest in ever reading." (As a big-city white-adjacent boy I was almost an exact photographic negative of the people in the book.)
Maybe I'll read it now. I'd get it on Kindle but I've heard they bowdlerize the books without telling you. So, another tome...
May I suggest the Internet Archive, then?
I think about this book often; read it in the nineties.