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JournalISSN: 1537-7814

The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 

Cambridge University Press
About: The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era is an academic journal published by Cambridge University Press. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Gilded Age & Politics. It has an ISSN identifier of 1537-7814. Over the lifetime, 662 publications have been published receiving 2909 citations. The journal is also known as: Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.


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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In the emerging history of capitalism, a number of scholars are bringing the insights of social and cultural history to business history's traditional actors and topics, providing thick descriptions of the complex social worlds of firms, investors, and bankers, while resisting rationalist, functionalist and economistic analyses.
Abstract: One of the chief promises of the emerging history of capitalism is its capacity to problematize and historicize relationships between economic inequality and capital's social, political, and ecological domain. At their best, the new works creatively integrate multiple historiographic approaches. Scholars are bringing the insights of social and cultural history to business history's traditional actors and topics, providing thick descriptions of the complex social worlds of firms, investors, and bankers, while resisting rationalist, functionalist, and economistic analyses. They are also proceeding from the assumption that capitalism is not reducible to the people that historians have typically designated as capitalists. As they've shown, the fact that slaves, women, sharecroppers, clerks, and industrial laborers were, to different degrees, denied power in the building of American capitalism did not mean that they were absent from its web, or that their actions did not decisively shape its particular contours.

69 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: When historians fight about Progressivism, they are not just arguing about events of a century ago, but they are also struggling over the basic meanings of American democracy as mentioned in this paper, and they need to face this fact more directly, and begin to come to grips with the stakes involved.
Abstract: When historians fight about Progressivism — and fight they do — they are not just arguing about events of a century ago. They are also struggling over the basic meanings of American democracy. If we could face this fact more directly, and begin to come to grips with the stakes involved, we would not only advance the study of the past but, even in some small and indirect ways, we might improve the practice of our current politics as well. Politicians standing at the center of our nation's democratic dramas recognize, even if often without nuance, the value of reclaiming the Progressive Era. Cheerfully blurring historical distinctions, Bill Clinton announced as he left office, “I always felt that the work we did the last eight years made us the heir of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.” In turn, Al Gore's communications director saw his candidate's “message more in the tradition of progressives such as Theodore Roosevelt, who confronted powerful trusts, rather than the populists who railed broadly against elites of all stripes.” Several years earlier the vice-president's main Democratic opponent, Bill Bradley, wrote, “I've always admired the progressives, such as Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, who enabled the private sector to flourish but in a way more responsive to national purpose.”

48 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In the early 1970s, the perceived fragmentation of history had generated an appeal for “synthesis.” In 1986 Thomas Bender called for new and intelligible narrative plots that would transcend the intensive specialization, fragmentation, and preoccupation with groups as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: There was once a time in the not too recent past when scholarly discussion and debate over periodization was central to the task of writing and thinking about the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Scholars such as Richard Hofstadter, Robert Wiebe, and Samuel P. Hays applied versions of modernization theory to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to produce what came to be known as the “organizational synthesis.” A competing periodization centered on the rise of the large business corporation appeared in works by Martin Sklar, James Weinstein, and James Livingston. Since the 1970s, however, the new social and cultural history has introduced a multitude of new fields and perspectives. By the 1980s, the perceived fragmentation of history had generated an appeal for “synthesis.” In 1986 Thomas Bender called for new and intelligible narrative plots that would transcend “recent scholarship with its intensive specialization, fragmentation, and preoccupation with groups.” Yet, since then, occasional attempts to synthesize have been stillborn, and for the Gilded Age as well as for the Progressive Era the search for synthesis seems to have reached a cul-de-sac with no exit in sight.

47 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In the 1880s and 1990s, Waco, Texas, served as a trading center for the cotton districts of central Texas whose farmers gave rise to the Farmers' Alliance and turned the region into a Populist hotbed as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: In the 1880s and ‘90s, Waco, Texas, served as a trading center for the cotton districts of central Texas whose farmers gave rise to the Farmers’ Alliance and turned the region into a Populist hotbed. Waco was also known as the “City of Churches,” as it was the site of Baylor University and other efforts of evangelical churches to build up their institutions. What is less well known is that Waco and its rural environs were also hotbeds of religious heterodoxy. Waco's Iconoclast magazine became a lightning rod of conflict between the Baptists and their skeptical and liberal critics, a conflict that played out to a murderous conclusion. Historians have taken due note of the evangelical environment in which the Populist movement emerged in late nineteenth-century rural America. But in the process the notion of evangelical belief has been too often rendered static and total. The Baptist-Iconoclast conflict in Waco provides an entry point for a better understanding of the dynamic and conflicted nature of the religious context, and the influence of liberal and heterodox ideas within the communities that sustained the Populist cause.

46 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors propose an explanation of how an economic crisis transformed into a pivotal political event, by closely following the ramifications of the 1873 panic, and they propose a new political landscape that would last for twenty years: high instability in power at the national level and what has been described as the politics of inertia.
Abstract: On September 18, 1873, the announcement of Jay Cooke and Company's bankruptcy sent Wall Street to a panic, and the country to a long, harsh depression. Americans interpreted this economic crisis in the light of the acrimonious financial debates born of the Civil War—the money question chief among them. The consequences transformed American politics. Ideologically ill-equipped to devise cohesive economic policies, political parties split dangerously along sectional lines (between the Northeast and the Midwest). Particularly divided over President U.S. Grant's veto of the 1874 Inflation Bill, the Republican Party decisively lost the 1874 congressional elections. As a Democratic majority in the House spelled the doom of Reconstruction, the ongoing divisions of both parties on economic issues triggered a political realignment. The dramatic 1876 elections epitomized a new political landscape that would last for twenty years: high instability in power at the national level and what has been described as the “politics of inertia.” Therefore, by closely following the ramifications of the 1873 panic, this article proposes an explanation of how an economic crisis transformed into a pivotal political event.

42 citations

Performance
Metrics
No. of papers from the Journal in previous years
YearPapers
202369
202278
202151
202049
201934
201835