Response to Industrialism, 1885-1914

by Samuel P. Hays

Book Overview

In this new edition, Samuel P. Hays expands the scope of his pioneering account of the ways in which Americans reacted to industrialism during its early years from 1885 to 1914. Hays now deepens his... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226321622
• ISBN13: 9780226321622
• Release Date: January 1957
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 221 Pages
• Weight: 0.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.3" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

They couldn't keep 'em down on the farm

One reason, perhaps, that recent presidential and congressional campaigns have been so rancorous is the same reason condo politics are so vicious: The stakes are so small. If self-government through responsible institutions really is a superior way to organize society, then it follows that over time many problems would be permanently solved. And so it is. We no longer argue whether to have slavery, reserve banks or child labor laws. Two of those three issues were, however, unsettled during the period covered by Samuel Hays' extended essay "The Response to Industrialism." This is not a history but a rumination on other histories. In his summation, Hays remarks that "For many years historians, considering the events of American history between 1885 and 1914, have interpreted them in terms of a popular attack on corporate wealth." Later, he says, historians reinterpreted the period as an attempt by elites to control the masses. Both views are, he says, "myopic." Which does not mean either was incorrect, although now that we are four and five generations removed from those days, it may surprise younger American Democrats to learn that organized labor gave its votes to the Republican Party for many years starting in the 1890s. The parties were not stoutly ideological in those days, as they had been in the 1850s and would be again. Younger American Republicans, on the other hand, will likely be appalled to learn that "judge-made law" was the norm in this (and earlier) periods, and that, contrary to current mythology, the legislatures were comparatively unimportant in this crucially formative period. Hays emphasizes, of course, industrialism, which means cities, and he casts the fundamental divide in public concern between city and country. This could take odd forms. Farmers originally opposed the extension of all-weather roads from the cities, because early automobiles were playthings of the rich, who brought outlandish notions into the stable countryside and interrupted the farmer's day by requiring horse teams to haul their machines out of the mud. Henry Ford changed the farmers' minds about roads. Although Hays does not mention it, in the middle of his period H.L. Mencken observed that it was becoming difficult to find anyone willing to fight to the death over the doctrine of infant damnation. Hays is much more measured in tone than the Sage of Baltimore but makes the same point. This was the period when religion stopped being important in public and social affairs and retreated to personal contemplation. Ministers no longer were made heads of colleges and public boards, and newspaper reporters stopped turning to them first for comments on issues of the day. The country deeply resented this, as it did attempts to educate it. The country was deeply attached to the one-room schoolhouse. The conversion of the nation from a country of independent primary producers and craftsmen had been an issue for at least 60 years by 1885 (as related by Sea