From our first history lessons in grade school, we are told that parallels from past events are a warning sign for the future and that, unless we use the past as a guiding light, we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes as those who came before us. This is usually expressed as some version of Winston Churchill’s quote “Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it.” Mark Twain has been credited with a twist on this saying: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” I could find no evidence of him having actually said this, but the phrasing seems more accurate to me. If history did, in fact, repeat word-for-word, we would surely know the signs early enough to avoid catastrophe. Instead, when little bits and pieces of the past come into our consciousness, we are forced to draw our own conclusions about whether these “rhymes” are indicative of future troubles, or simply coincidence. This makes it much more difficult to react quickly enough when the alarm bells are ringing.
We can give full credit to Twain for a different phrase that is relevant for the times we are in. In 1873 he wrote a book (with Charles Dudley Warner) titled “The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today” in which he satirized the greed and corruption in a post-Civil War America. He used “gilded” to describe this time in American history because, from a certain viewpoint, it appeared to be beautiful, but when a thin layer was chipped away, it was quickly revealed to be a facade. I often think about this time when I hear “Make America Great Again.” Is this the era they want us to return to? Maybe the answer to that depends on the “they” in question, but applying the logic that history often “rhymes”, it appears likely that the Gilded Age is at least an inspiration for the wealthiest among us, who look to the robber barons and see a goal to be achieved, and many politicians who might see the levels of government corruption as evidence that not playing by the rules can work in their favor.
Major wars are often followed by significant technological and social advances, and the period after the Civil War was no exception. Working class citizens flooded into cities to take low-skilled labor positions in factories as the railroad stretched across the continent, bringing with it a wave of economic changes. The pace of life increased, and the laissez-faire style of government could not combat the rapid decline in quality of life for anyone not lucky enough to be white, male, and rich. It was a dog-eat-dog economy, and anyone who couldn’t keep up simply didn’t deserve a slice of the pie. Wealth had begun to take on new forms, such as stocks and bonds rather than land and slaves. Even though these new millionaires constituted less than 0.33% of the population in 1900, they owned about 1/6 of the country’s private wealth. Meanwhile, Americans were witnessing signs of great poverty and economic desperation, and even starvation. Many people at this time argued that the government had no right to intervene on behalf of its citizens, claiming that any restrictions on business would be harmful to the economy. Of course, the people who most vehemently argued this case were also the ones who stood to benefit the most from this system.
At the end of the Mexican American War the United States ceded land from Mexico, expanding the territory further west. The newly acquired land included present-day California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and parts of Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming. With the end of the Civil War, larger numbers of Americans began moving westward to settle, only to find that much of the land was still occupied by Latino families and farmers. Many of the white ranchers and developers resorted to violence when the land was not handed over. The Mexican communities were strong, and many of them fought back to protect themselves, their families, and their farms, but as the Westward expansion continued, more and more people were forced off of their land.
Women began to enter the workforce in large numbers during the reconstruction era. Immigrant and Black women did much of the lowest wage work, and often the most difficult. Employers were keenly aware that they could pay women much less than men due, in part, to their social standing as well as the outdated opinion that women needed money only for unnecessary purposes. Despite this popular assertion, statistics show that nearly all working women were key breadwinners in their home, and if they were unmarried or, as was often the case, had lost their spouse in the war or to an accident, their income was not enough to keep them above the poverty line. This was all fueled further by the extreme misogyny, which was common at the time, with medical professionals condemning schools for educating women and warning of the “decline of the race” if women were allowed to pursue an education equal to that of a man. Domestic laborers were often the victims of sexual abuse, particularly in the South, and abuse within a marriage was far too common.
This period saw the American citizens wrestling with the question of how much responsibility we should take for how others are treated and what role the government should play in that. With little-to-no regulations, factory owners were free to pay poverty wages, and laborers who were injured on the job, or even killed, were given no safety net to keep their families from starving in the absence of a regular income. In the South, the end of the Civil War was a short-lived victory for former slaves. While the racist ex-confederate soldiers tortured, terrorized, and murdered humans for the sin of being Black, the racist ex-confederate politicians worked to keep African Americans from achieving any kind of success. Segregation, the criminalization of interracial marriage, and the introduction of Black Codes, were all justified by elected officials insisting that this mistreatment was for the protection of the Black population, placing the “need” for these laws squarely on the shoulders of the Federal government who, in their opinions, forced the emancipation of slaves on to the states. The Southern politicians used these corrupt policies to force their way into powerful positions and maintain their influence, playing on the prejudices of their white constituents to gain votes through promises of maintaining “traditional” American values.
Today, it is inconceivable to most of us that the government would not take up the job of protecting its citizens, at least on paper. We cling tight to the guarantees we have fought so hard for, perhaps sometimes forgetting what it was like before that fight was won. As we look around today and see billionaires flaunting power and influence over our elected officials while the most vulnerable among us freeze in the streets, we can look to the labor movements of the late 19th century, where they fought and won through organization. When we see our neighbors react with hatred and anger toward those who do not look or act like them, we can remember the courage it took for formerly enslaved Americans to stand up for themselves and their families in the face of horrific violence. While we watch as women’s rights are stripped away bit-by-bit and we are told to “stop overreacting”, we can find encouragement in the lives and stories of the women who came before us. As we witness white supremacists attempt to dismantle every institution we have built, we can find some solace in knowing that the Gilded Age was followed by the Progressive Era.
What we are experiencing is not history repeating itself. We are not doomed to the same fate as Germany in the 1930’s and 1940’s and we are also not immune from it being much worse. We are rhyming with many parts of history, some American, some European, some ancient, and some within this century. In the Gilded Age we saw uprisings from laborers, women, immigrants, Black communities, and Indigenous Americans. These efforts were made with great personal sacrifice, but because of them we have many protections and institutions that have made our lives better. The feminist movement laid the groundwork for the 19th amendment, as well as laws addressing domestic violence, sexual harassment protections, and access to birth control. The Civil Rights movement of the mid-20th century had roots in the work that former slaves were doing in this period, and the 15th amendment was ratified during the Gilded Age. The first laws prohibiting monopolies helped reign in the growing wealth disparities and states began to regulate labor conditions, which would eventually lead to safer work environments, better pay, compensation for on-the-job injuries, child labor laws, and more.
The question we are now faced with is this: When do we decide, collectively, that the time to act is now? Can we use the lessons learned during the Gilded Age to recognize the patterns, and refuse to allow greed, intolerance, and corruption to define another generation? The alarms are blaring, are you willing to hear them?
For more information on the Gilded Age, I encourage you to read:
The Edge of Anarchy: The Railroad Barons, the Gilded Age, and the Greatest Labor Uprising in America By Jack Kelly and New Spirits: Americans in the Gilded Age: 1865-1905 by Rebecca Edwards, which were the primary sources for the information in this article.
Thank you to Cara House for helping me with the research and giving feedback