Journal Of The Gilded Age And Progressive Era
Volume 6, Number 4, October 2007
Essays
Finding Theodore Roosevelt: A Personal and Political Story
Kathleen Dalton
Editor’s Note, by Nancy C. Unger, Book Review Editor: I first
assigned Kathy Dalton’s “Why America Loved Theodore Roosevelt” to
represent the Gilded Age and Progressive Era in a course called “The
Individual in American History” in 1990. Excited by Dalton’s fresh
approach to deepening the understanding of this complex man who had too
often been reduced to caricature, I looked forward to her book-length
biography, which finally appeared in 2002. It was well worth the wait. In
this essay, Dalton generously responds to this journal’s request that she
detail aspects of her journey to Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life
with an eye to the contemporary challenges posed by biography. As I
learned from my own experience writing about Robert and Belle La
Follette, biography is a deceptively complicated genre. It becomes
positively volatile when the subject is as quintessential to a period as
Roosevelt is to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. In relating her
personal and political story, Dalton skillfully reveals the special
challenges of recasting a strenuous life that has been told many times
and about which many biographers and historians feel downright
proprietary. She also provides valuable insight into the rewards of
augmenting more traditional research methods with the many tools of
understanding (especially gender studies) available to today’s historian.
Dalton provides a thoughtful assessment of the many factors at work in
the larger community of scholars. Moreover, her incisiveness and
delightful writing style help to explain the phenomenal success of her
complex and compelling portrait of Theodore Roosevelt.
Connecting Alaska: The Washington-Alaska Military Cable and Telegraph System
David Eric Jessup
In response to the Klondike gold rush, the U.S. Army established isolated
forts throughout Alaska. Between 1900 and 1905, the Signal Corps
connected those posts with each other and with the contiguous United
States by means of the Washington-Alaska Military Cable and Telegraph
System (WAMCATS). A significant logistical and technological achievement,
the system of thousands of miles of suspended landlines and underwater
cable included the first successful long-distance radio operation in the
world. The first physical link between the United States and Alaska, the
telegraph was also the first major contribution to Alaskan infrastructure
provided by the federal government, marking the beginning of the
government’s central role in the development of Alaska.
“The Dictograph Hears All”: An Example of Surveillance Technology in the Progressive Era
Kathryn W. Kemp
During the first decade of the twentieth century, Kelley M. Turner of New
York invented a telephone apparatus of very high sound sensitivity, which
he called the “Dictograph.” (It should not be confused with the
Dictaphone, a device used to record dictation.) Although his original
idea was for a communications system with a great variety of
applications, the Dictograph ultimately became one of the earliest
electric eavesdropping devices, used by both police and private
investigators. As such, the Dictograph played a part in some notable
criminal prosecutions and was used in antiunion activity. It continued to
be used in this way until it was rendered obsolescent by other
technologies. The emergence of the preferred applications of the
Dictograph illuminates aspects of the sociology of technology, such as
the concept of “acoustic space.” It also raised issues related to the
ethics and law of clandestine listening.
“Enemy Aliens” and “Silk Stocking Girls”: The Class Politics of Internment in the Drive for Urban Order during World War I
Adam Hodges
This article focuses on the two national internment programs developed in
the United States during World War I from the vantage point of Portland,
Oregon, and argues that they unfolded locally. Both the male enemy aliens
at risk of internment and the girls and women who experienced confinement
due to sexual activity tended to be poor. Authorities deemed that they
were, or were likely to become, radicals or prostitutesbut that they
were not to be prosecuted as such. Officials could banish or track them
more easily as threats to the war effort, rather than as threats to urban
social stability and economic development. Scholars of the home front
have ignored the evolution of local-federal partnerships to track or
intern these two groups and have so far failed to establish how local
perceptions of the dangerous poor shaped cooperation with wartime federal
authority.
Review Forum
Reinventing “The People”: The Progressive Movement, the Class Problem,
and the Origins of Modern Liberalism by Shelton Stromquist
Reviewed by Nancy Cohen and James J. Connolly
Response by Shelton Stromquist
Editor’s note: The following forum reveals how two historians with
different intellectual perspectives approach a book relevant to both of
them. The first review of Shelton Stromquist’s ambitious, recent book on
progressivism is by Nancy Cohen, whose writing so far focuses on
political economy and economic thought. A second review of the book is by
James Connolly, whose best-known work concerns urban politics and
political culture. Then Shelton Stromquist concludes the forum with his
response.
Book Reviews
Righteous Indignation: Religion and the Populist Revolution by Joe
Creech
Reviewed by Justin Nordstrom
Picturing the City: Urban Vision and the Ashcan School by Rebecca
Zurier
Reviewed by Kevin R. McNamara
Journal Of The Gilded Age And Progressive Era
Volume 6, Number 3, July 2007
Essays
Joseph E. Davies: The Wisconsin Idea and the Origins of the Federal Trade Commission
Elizabeth Kimball MacLean
In response to an enormous growth of trusts in the late nineteenth century, demands for reform among a wide spectrum of interest groups culminated in the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1915. Playing an influential, though little-recognized role in framing this legislation was Wisconsin progressive Democrat Joseph E. Davies. As Commissioner of Corporations, Davies served in a unique, dual capacity as both politician and regulator, giving him access to President Woodrow Wilson and influence on the antitrust legislation. Davies used his position to promote a vision of administrative regulation based on the nationally recognized "Wisconsin Idea." In so doing, he intensified conflicts among Wilson's policy advisers that, in turn, had a critical impact on the antitrust legislation and on the potential effectiveness of the first commission. In the long run, however, Davies' approach to regulatory policy, based on the Wisconsin Idea, would become standard operating procedure for successful regulatory commissions of the twentieth century.
"The Most Beautiful Suffragette": Inez Milholland and the Political Currency of Beauty
Ann Marie Nicolosi
This article examines the role of beauty and image in the U.S. suffrage movement. It focuses specifically on Inez Milholland and on how she and the movement capitalized on her extraordinary beauty and used her image and media popularity to present an icon for the movement, thereby softening and making acceptable the spectacle of women in public spaces and political matters. Milholland provided the movement with a representation that undermined the association of female political participation with masculine women and gender transgression. She provided a constructed model of acceptable white femininity, one that answered the anti-suffrage movement's accusations that suffragists were masculine women, inverts, and "abnormal" women whose lobbying for the vote was proof of their wretched state. Milholland thereby helped to bring women into the movement who might fear the taint of masculinity and gender transgression.
Philadelphia's Lords of the Docks: Interracial Unionism Wobbly-Style
Peter Cole
In the early twentieth century, several thousand Philadelphia longshoremen organized themselves into a powerful, durable, and effective labor union. These men, who proudly belonged to the Industrial Workers of the World, proved willing and able to employ the Wobblies' direct action tactics to improve their lives. Perhaps even more impressive is that Local 8 was one of the most, perhaps the most, racially inclusive union of its era. Few institutions of any sort at that time in America could claim to be more committed to interracial, multiethnic unionism than Local 8. For ideological and pragmatic reasons, Local 8 stood for racial and ethnic integration on the waterfront. Uniting a diverse workforce was essential to the union's success. Indeed, the union collapsed when Local 8 was split along racial lines. This article looks at the rise and fall of the Progressive Era's most integrated union.
Book Reviews
Sundown Towns: Hidden Dimension of American Racism by James W. Loewen
Rough Justice: Lynching and American Society, 1874-1947 by Michael J.
Pfeifer
Reviewed by Stewart E. Tolnay
Frank Norris: A Life by Joseph R. McElrath, Jr., and Jesse S. Crisler
Reviewed by Forrest B. Robinson
The Triangle Fire, the Protocols of Peace, and Industrial Democracy in
Progressive Era New York by Richard A. Greenwald
Reviewed by Peter Cole
Science in the Service of Children, 1893-1935 by Alice Boardman Smuts
Reviewed by A. Scott Henderson
Journal Of The Gilded Age And Progressive Era
Volume 6, Number 2, April 2007
Forum
Richard Hofstadter's The Age of Reform After Fifty Years
The Age of Reform: A Defense of Richard Hofstadter Fifty Years On
Robert D. Johnston
Hofstadter’s The Age of Reform and the Crucible of the Fifties
Gillis Harp
These two essays are revised versions of presentations made by Robert Johnston and Gillis Harp at the annual meeting of the British American Nineteenth Century Historians (BrANCH) in Cambridge, England, in October 2005. BrANCH invited SHGAPE to help organize the conference. Based on a suggestion by Robert Johnston, SHGAPE contributed a session commemorating Richard Hofstadter’s book on the Populist and Progressive movements, first published in 1955 and much-acclaimed and much-criticized since. While Professor Johnston had the assignment of assessing The Age of Reform in retrospect, Gillis Harp attempted to put the book within its contemporary intellectual context. Beyond evaluating this noteworthy book, the session had the intention as well of prompting memories from a few people in attendance who knew Hofstadter as a friend and colleague. In this, the session succeeded, reminding those present that The Age of Reform reflected the personality of its author and is more than a historiographic interpretation against which one measures one’s own views.
Essays
From the Dance Floor to the Rifle Range: The Evolution of Manliness in the National Guards, 1870-1917
Eleanor L. Hannah
From 1870 through 1900, the National Guard attracted tens of thousands of new members by offering men the opportunity to demonstrate that they were manly men who held dramatic civic roles that put them at the center of community social and patriotic life. Time, modernization, strike service, changes in technology, and warfare all worked to alter the environment in which Guardsmen made themselves men. Guardsmen of the early twentieth century no longer found their definition of manhood and citizenship in performances for the local community. By 1917, the elements of manhood National Guardsmen shared had evolved from the focus on style and sociability they celebrated the 1880s and 1890s into an individual focus on a concept of self-discipline, self-improvement, and national patriotism. The National Guard offers historians the opportunity to see how an organization that emphasized making men manly was able to shift what that meant as definitions of manhood evolved and as the Guard worked to keep its appeal current and fresh to each new batch of recruits.
Basepaths to Empire: Race and the Spalding World Baseball Tour
Thomas W. Zeiler
During the Gilded Age, transnational American agents carried national values abroad, including defense of the “civilizing mission” of the white race toward people of color. This article explores race within the context of the Spalding world baseball tour of 1888-89, a transnational enterprise that marketed the national pastime abroad and, in so doing, indicated the latent, private power behind the official policies of the United States. A rather unusual segment of society to be considered for such scholarly treatment, professional baseball elites nonetheless helped generate a racist imperial ideology and thus added to the voices that set racial parameters for the American empire when it was attained in 1898. By tracing the racial attitudes of the baseball tourists, this article contributes to recent scholarly enterprises that examine foreign relations from a cultural perspective and integrate overlooked actors into the study of diplomatic history.
Hibernians Versus Hebrews? A New Look at the 1902 Jacob Joseph Funeral Riot
Edward T. O’Donnell
On July 29, 1902 a massive funeral procession for Jacob Joseph, the esteemed Chief Rabbi of the Orthodox community, wound its way through the streets of New York's Lower East Side. The solemn occasion was marred, however, when the procession was attacked by a group of factory workers. As the melee blossomed into a full-scale riot, a contingent of New York City policemen arrived and proceeded to pummel and arrest the mourners rather than the instigators. Historians have consistently cited this ugly incident as a vivid example of Irish Catholic antisemitism, noting that both the workers and policemen were "predominantly Irish." Indeed, it was a quest to learn more about the roots of Irish Catholic antisemitism that drew this historian to the subject. And yet, a thorough examination of the incident produced a startling result: a dearth of Irish defendants and a flawed historiography that ultimately call into question the validity of the Jacob Joseph Funeral Riot as an example of Irish Catholic antisemitism.
Book Reviews
Robber Baron: The Life of Charles Tyson Yerkes by John Franch
Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, King
of the Robber Barons by Edward J. Renehan, Jr.
Reviewed by Edwin J. Perkins
Childhood on the Farm: Work, Play, and Coming of Age in the Midwest
by Pamela Riney-Kehrberg
Reviewed by David Macleod
The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States and the
Philippines by Paul A. Kramer
Reviewed by Stephen Henry S. Totanes
Crusader Nation: The United States in Peace and the Great War,
1898-1920 by David Traxel
Reviewed by Edward C. Rafferty
Journal Of The Gilded Age And Progressive Era
Volume 6, Number 1, January 2007
Essays
2006 SHGAPE Presidential Address
Donna R. Gabaccia
Digitized texts open new methodologies for explorations of the history of ideas. This paper locates the invention of the term “Little Italy” in New York in the 1880s and explores its rapid spread through print and popular culture from police reporting to fictional portraits of slumming and then into adolescent dime novels and early film representations. New Yorkers invented “Little Italy” but they long disagreed with urban tourists about its exact location. Still, from the moment of its origin, both visitors and natives of New York associated Little Italy with entertainment, spectacle, and the search for “safe danger.” While the location of Little Italy changed over time, such associations with pleasure and crime have persisted, even as the neighborhood emptied of its immigrant residents.
“The Child Is Born a Naturalist”: Nature Study, Woodcraft Indians, and the Theory of Recapitulation
Kevin C. Armitage
Beginning in the 1890s, the nature study movement advocated direct contact with the natural world to develop in children an appreciation for natural history, the beginnings of scientific inquiry, aesthetic and spiritual interests as well as the motivation to conserve nature. Defense of nature study pedagogy came from the theory of recapitulation. Recapitulation held that as humans developed they repeated the evolutionary history of the human race. Children were thus thought to be like Indians: primitive people with an innate closeness to nature. The most popular proponent of these ideas was Ernest Thompson Seton, widely read author, illustrator, and founder of the nature study boys club, the Woodcraft Indians. Nature study advocates hoped that the theory of recapitulation would allow them to bridge the modern and romantic, antimodern tendencies in their movement. Despite an intense focus on premodern virtues, nature study and the Woodcraft Indians mostly served to ease the tensions and incongruities of modern life.
The Origin of Indiana’s Dry Leader: The Reverend Edward S. Shumaker and Midwestern Dry Culture
Jason S. Lantzer
This article examines the dry crusade that brought Prohibition to the nation by tracing the early life and career of one of its chief state-level leaders. Born in Ohio and raised in Illinois, Edward S. Shumaker made a career for himself in Indiana, where he led the Indiana branch of the Anti Saloon League from the early 1900s until his death in 1929. His story demonstrates how religious and cultural influences merged in the American heartland into a moral reform movement that combined elements of traditional religion and politics with the Social Gospel and progressivism. As Shumaker saw it, the prohibition movement rested upon a fundamental argument about what it meant to be an American during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A powerful force in Shumaker's life as in the nation overall, the dry reform transformed Shumaker from a young man seemingly destined to hold a conventional Methodist pastorate into a political activist who helped make the nation dry.
Book Reviews
First in Violence, Deepest in Dirt: Homicide in Chicago, 1875-1920 by Jeffrey S. Adler
Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age America by
James Green
Reviewed by Jack S. Blocker, Jr.
Widows and Orphans First: The Family Economy and Social Welfare Policy, 1880-1939 by S. J. Kleinberg
Delivering Aid: Implementing Progressive Era Welfare in theAmerican West by Thomas A. Krainz
Reviewed by Alison M. Parker
New Spirits: Americans in the Gilded Age, 1865-1905 by Rebecca Edwards
Reviewed by Richard R. John
Sweated Work, Weak Bodies: Anti-Sweatshop Campaigns and Languages of Labor by Daniel E. Bender
Reviewed by Wendy Gamber
Index to Volume 5 Table of Contents
Index to Volume 4 Table of Contents
Index to Volume 3 Table of Contents
Index to Volume 2 Table of Contents
Index to Volume 1 Table of Contents