Customer Reviews

Standing at Armageddon: A Grassroots History of the Progressive Era

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Standing at Armageddon, by Nell Irvin Painter, covers American history from Reconstruction to the end of World War I, outlining American progress many fronts. At different times, it works as pieces of social, political, and economic history. Painter's attention to detail informs the reader with razor-sharp accuracy, but also at times provides too much information, revealing Painter's personal biases. In outlining this period of American history, Painter asserts that America was performing a tight-rope walk on the brink of destruction. America's omnipresent danger of collapse is portrayed through looks at social, economic, and political history, but the three are sometimes interconnected and some are presented more than others. In the mix, reform and inequality are paramount. Painter belabours the plight of women and blacks especially, devoting a chapter to each. Using many resources, Painter explores the aspects of social reform, including comprehensive reports of the working class, and the struggle for reform, this book is easily called social history, perhaps at the expense of political and economic history. Painter discusses the plight of women with especial detail, showing all sides of suffrage and oppression. Her female subjects range from Jane Addams to Emma Goldman, displaying convictions, goals, and accomplishments of each. Her thoughtfulness in this type of integration shows she has a flair for demonstrating societal matters. As a work of political history, SAA is fine. Important acts of legislation and politicians are not left out of the mix, and are integrated well with social aspects. With regard to legislation, no important bill is left out. The book nicely traces the rise and fall of the Civil Rights Act of 1975 and then follows up, discussing the "separate but equal" and Jim Crow laws that followed. Seamlessly, Painter follows up with the effects of said laws on society, furthering this book as a piece of social history. Economic history is present in this book, but is the servant of social and political history. For example, the bimetallism debates of the late 19th-century are explained with regards to society, such as farmers and rural citizens, and politics, such as the international effects of bimetallism, but the book does not speculate on bimetallism itself. The book also discusses economic factions such as the Greenbackers, but does so with regard to the groups themselves, instead of their economic principles. This book is not a work of economic history, but it does effectively integrate it with other subject matters. SAA covered a great many different topics within its time period, but concentrated most heavily on social history. Political history is also used, discussed, and mentioned. However, the economic history as a servant to the other two lessens its value as an independent topic, though it is nonetheless worthwhile. Though Painter tries mightily to cram a lot between the covers of this book, she doesn't spend as much time on some topics as one might expect. For example World War I is crammed into about 25 pages, whereas the 1890's depression, women's suffrage, and racial inequality are all discussed in more detail. This can be construed as a shortcoming, but considering the number of other books on World War I, and the relative scarcity of books combining information on suffrage, racial tension, and the 1890's depression, it is understandable. It is important that Painter's book is not a comprehensive report of 1877-1919, rather, a selection of various topics from that period. All subjects can be discussed in either more or less detail, and with only a few discrepancies, Painter strikes a nice balance. While reform is an omnipresent theme, especially in the era of SAR, Painter sometimes leaves gaps. Her treatment of the conservation movements of the early 20th century are interesting, but she leaves out looming subjects, including the Hetch-Hetchy debate. She also discusses strikes, but never puts them into perspective with eachother. That weakness is also evident in her handling of the topic of the International Workers of the World - it is often mentioned but little-discussed. However, the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union is revealed in great detail. Painter's feminine bias towards history, revealed in the way she attaches a feminine viewpoint to everything, is usually interesting, but rarely in perspective with larger issues. Perhaps the best thing about SAA is topic selection. While at certain moments they seem illogical and myopic (25 pages for WWI! ), they ultimately provide a clear view of SAA's time period and act as excellent intellectual springboards, informing you of a topic, telling you important details and piquing your curiosity should you choose to pursue a subject further. On any topic, SAA provides a fair idea of whatever the subject is, inasmuch as 30 or so pages will allow. Aside from that, there are no great shortcomings to SAR. As a whole, SAA is pretty optimistic. No matter what topic, one gets a sense of hope. Painter allows for a subjective look at history, although emphasizing the good over the bad. For instance, even the coverage of the depression of the 1890's quickly gives way to the hope and good fortune of "Coxey's Army," and sums up with the fact that Jacob Coxey died that the age of ninety-seven, completely vindicated. SAA is not a tragedy. It describes the hard times, scandals, and evils that accompanied this period, but never despairs for healthy resolution. SAA hopes for the best, and describes it. All in all, Standing at Armageddon is an impressive work. Tackling topics ranging from Bolshevism to the Spanish-American War is no small feat, and Painter succeeds. Aside from a few grievances (unequal coverage of topics, etc.,) SAA offers a sweeping view of 1877-1919 that is practically comprehensive. More information would make the book bulky and unwieldy, and less would be inadequate. Nell Irvin Painter should congratulate herself on writing a book deftly covering so much between covers that are so close together. In the end, Standing at Armageddon walks the same tight-rope that America did at the turn of the 20th century and rarely

If you think that the present era is bad, all you need to do is read about the Reconstruction to see America at its absolute worst. This book covers the close of Reconstruction, into what has long been portrayed as an era of explosive "progressivism", but it is a kind of people's history as well as covering the leaders. The result is a brilliant and dense tableau by a first rate historian and writer.

At the beginning of the era, the government has been thoroughly corrupted by the "robber barons", who have essentially turned the Republicans into defenders of capital over labor: they essentially made it illegal, in some cases even treasonous, to strike or even speak out, followed by executions on trumped up charges after violent confrontations. To the 1880s, as the industrial revolution was gaining momentum and resulting in vast fortunes and power, the conditions of work were often of an unimaginable brutality: 7-day work weeks, child labor, virtual imprisonment of laborers in shabby industrial complexes at dirt-low pay, etc. Unions were not recognized as legitimate representatives of labor and hence not allowed to negotiate collectively, workers could not feed their families, and education was largely unavailable. With all three branches of the government completely in the pocket of the "capitalists", the working class felt as if it was disenfranchised and without any means of effecting change. Then there were terrible economic downturns that thrown millions into the streets without any government social safety net.

The result was a build-up of anger that reached revolutionary proportions, ready to burst forth in the most violent confrontations - industrial, racially motivated, etc. - that America had seen since the Civil War. While there were many anarchists (later tainted by terrorism association) and socialists, many of their demands were pragmatic, including an 8-hour work day, the end of child labor, the legalization of union representation, and higher pay. The author tells all of the principal stories associated with these incidents, such as the Haymarket bombing or the Railroad Strike of 1877.

Add to this the emergence of a cadre of reformers - suffragettes, muckraking journalists, union and social activists engaging in fundamental experiments, even some politicians - and the mix became extremely volatile. What is so interesting about this book is the modest assessment of the end results that the author portrays. In other words, beyond some pretty basic accomplishments, the progressive era's political momentum in her view was dissipated first by the Great War and then by the prosperity that followed until the Great Depression. This was a great surprise to me, though it was apparently enough to ward off violent revolution as the middle class expanded to enjoy the fruits of the American dream.

The book is written in a beautifully fluid and elegant style, honing in on details and mini-biographies. At times, it is a bit pedantic at an undergraduate level (I did not need to be informed, for example, that the Ottomans were Turks!), but this is a minor criticism. This is a splendid introduction with a strong point of view and many delightful surprises. Personally, I was fascinated by Frances Willard, who gave the name to a nearby school in my conservative home town: a suffragette and advocate of prohibition (they were intimately linked), she was also a lover of women at a time when such things were never discussed and even lacked an adequate vocabulary to describe it.

Warmly recommended, This is a masterpiece.

I am an historian of modern US history, and I find this one of the best history books I have ever read. It makes so many things that even I did not completely understand extremely readable and understandable, and is not afraid to get into banking history and taxation history and political history and military history. The focus, of course, is working people (black and white, Northern and Southern).

Really really amazing.

This is a good general history of a deliberately overlooked period in American history. It is an era of economic turmoil, the failure of reconstruction, social ferment and political corruption. This is mostly not a happy political era, but its an important era to understand in terms of the history of the country. The history of the period is especially important in terms to understanding the reality of American history and the fact that there was no golden age of business-led prosperty at any point in the past.

The only flaw of the book is its reach. 1919 is too far. The book should have stopped at the election of Teddy Roosevelt or even the spanish American war breaking out. The progressive era and the world war one era are too much for a book like this to cover. It would have been better with the scope cut back. But all in all a decent book of history.

This book is a commendable look at a very contentious period in US history. At the start of this period, the nation, even so-called radical Republicans, had lost tolerance for Reconstruction, essentially turning the South over to the Redeemers, that is, the old oligarchy, which essentially restored ante-bellum race relations. The story of this period involves far more than simply the dramatic rise of large enterprises and super-rich entrepreneurs. Of concern to this author are the social divides in the nation that revolved around agrarian vs. industrial interests, economic class, political effectiveness, religion, mode of production, reform vs. standpattism, native born vs. immigrants, ethnicity, and race. Farmers, artisans, and laborers usually found themselves on the wrong side of many of those divisions; attempts at amelioration were often inadequate and fleeting. The US joined the Europeans in carving up the world through imperialistic ventures based on an ideology of Anglo-Saxon racial superiority. The US certainly emerged after WWI as the world's dominate power, but most of the cracks in the foundation of American society remained.

The author's principal focus is on the so-called "labor issue," as the elites of the times referred to it, that is, workers and their jobs and actions in the context of the larger society. The nature of work underwent vast changes in the decades after the Civil War. Much of independent artisanship was swallowed up by the de-skilled, corporate machine-tending mode of production. Easily replaced and therefore essentially powerless, workers found it extremely difficult to counter the squeezing of their wages to subsistence levels in a time of over all deflation with significant economic downturns occurring at least once a decade. Given the levels of desperation and anger, it is not surprising that the era was filled with numerous, prolonged employer-employee confrontations. Denying the legitimacy of such worker actions, conservatives maintained that all Americans had an "identity of interests" in an hierarchical economic order controlled from the top by business elites.

All manner of movements and actions were untaken to counter various aspects of the undemocratic control of status-quo elites. Third-party movements such as the Greenback Party, Henry George followers, the Populists, and the Socialists advocated for such changes as relaxed monetary policies and silver coinage, governmental regulation or ownership of utilities and railroads, reduced tariffs, restrictions on child and female labor and maximum hours, direct election of Senators, etc. Labor organizations from the National Labor Union, the Knights of Labor, the American Federation of Labor (AFL), to the International Workers of the World (IWW) ranged widely in their approaches to effect reform from increased political participation, forming producer and consumer cooperatives, only bargaining for wages and worker conditions, to forming one big Union to run US factories in the interest of the working class. Notable violent confrontations of the era were the Great Railway Strike of 1877, the 1886 Haymarket Square bombing, the Carnegie Homestead Strike of 1892, and the Pullman Strike of 1894, all of which started as strikes or worker protests but were quickly escalated to the level of being national panics through the actions of employers and authorities.

Successes in these various approaches, especially in the 19th century, were quite limited and impermanent. As the author notes, fear of even greater reactions from the working class induced elite-controlled legislatures and Congress to offer such palliatives as workplace regulations or the toothless Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. Of course, the conservative judiciary either invalidated the legislation or used it against working people, such as using Sherman antitrust to declare labor organizations as illegal conspiracies, prohibited from actions by judge-issued injunctions. As the author indicates, the "red scare" phenomenon, that is, demonizing individuals or groups as communists, anarchists, syndicalists, etc, began in earnest with the Haymarket affair, well before the Bolshevik revolution in 1917. With such characterizations, all manner of suppression is then justified from the use of armed force, both private and governmental, even the use of federal troops, to using the judicial system as a means of giving legitimacy to harsh retaliations, such as the hanging of several anarchists indirectly associated with Haymarket.

The working class and labor organizations hardly represented a uniform front, much of the split being on a personal level. Native-born Brits and some German and Irish, many of whom were craftsmen, regarded themselves as superior to the flood of immigrants from Italy, Eastern Europe, and Russia who found work in factories. Not only did their place in the work order define them, but religion - Protestant vs. Catholic, political affiliation - Republican vs. Democrat, and personal habits - drinking for one, separated them. Moreover, labor organizations operated from different sets of principles. The AFL was exclusionary, permitting only unions of tradesmen, while the Knights were an inclusive, industrial union, accepting all workers. Peculiarly, Terrence Powderly, head of the Knights, eschewed both strikes and political action, while Samuel Gompers, head of the AFL, preferred direct bargaining with companies with no outside aid or interference. These ethnic differences dovetailed with endemic racial biases to justify American interventions in Central America, the Philippines, and the Caribbean beginning with the Spanish-American conflict in 1898, but continuing through the period.

As the author points out, the first decade of the 1900s was fairly prosperous pushing remnants of the turmoil of the last decade to the side, though labor unions had gained no greater standing, still being subjected to adverse reactions from all quarters. In some cases, more notice was being taken of the economic excesses that continued from the last decade. An active press reported on the most flagrant abuses of giant trusts, leading to selective enforcement of the Sherman Antitrust Act. For example, both J. P. Morgan's holding company of railroads, Northern Securities Company, and John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, among others, were forced to disband into smaller units. In addition, the IWW and the socialists were gaining a significant following among workers and the AFL was emerging from political indifference. Given this persistent level of agitation, another downturn in 1907 forced many social and political elites, including Pres. Theodore Roosevelt, to realize that more vigorous reform efforts were needed if American society was not to come apart.

The Progressive era driven by the impetus of middle-class professionals was actually rather short-lived. Pres. Woodrow Wilson, surpassing his conservative, Southern roots sponsored some legislation favorable to workers, including the Clayton Act that supposedly exempted labor unions from being considered anti-competitive combinations. The conservative side of the labor movement, that is, the AFL, supported the War effort and was likewise granted recognition in the nation's places of work. But, as so often happens in America, when the unions attempted to extend their gains after the WWI, in particular by organizing US Steel, the forces of reaction rose in vigorous opposition. IWW offices were raided with members being beaten or killed and all unions were painted with the red brush of communism. The convenient accommodations necessitated by wartime were quickly forgotten. Complete corporate hegemony had been reestablished by the early 1920s.

This book is a clear repudiation of any notion that the rise of the US to world prominence in the early 20th century was one long progressive, glorious rise that as a matter of course benefitted all citizens. More realistically, this book demonstrates that in so many areas of American society that the industrialism that emerged in the decades after the Civil War resulted in intense struggles for broad swaths of the American population depending on what side of the class, race, etc divides one was located. While significant modifications have been made to the capitalistic order over ensuing decades, what is remarkable is how much remains the same.

In the year 2010, laissez-faire ideas regarding business are in ascendance. The ability of financial and corporate elites to largely control the economy has hardly diminished. Worker organizations have been under assault for decades, resulting in the kind of inequality found in the era of the robber barons. If anything, the corporate regime is even more consolidated and integrated into society now than in the early 1900s. The use of the media and other institutions of "information" are so much more sophisticated than before resulting in scarcely noticeable "persuasion." Evidence for the widespread acceptance of the corporate order is that the sizeable, focused alternative movements in the early decades of industrialism, like the Knights, the Populists, the Socialists, etc, have not been replicated since WWII, except for the college kids' protests of the 60s which was more scattered and spontaneous than coherent - more stylish than substantive. Those earlier generations would have never accepted so passively the undermining of their well-being from the totality of such corporate acts as reckless financial dealings, gratuitous downsizing, shipping jobs overseas, allowing in millions on visa programs, and the like. In fact, the corporate-political order that perpetrates such is validated time and again in national elections. This book is well worth reading to get a more complete picture of what underlay the rise of what a recent author referred to as the American "super-economy."

This book is perfect for the college professor or 3rd year history major that went through the context and significance of what happened from Reconstruction through 1920.

The problem is if you don't have prior knowledge, you would need to cross refference to another source to understand a great deal of the author's commentary or you will end up confused. This text reads in a conversational style with wit and sarcasm only understandable if you have prior knowledge of the historical facts as the text often goes light on specific background info and heavy into criticism of specific organizations,people, and events.

If you have to read this book for school don't fret. It is quick and interesting reading!

This book is written with a flair and urgency that is so fast moving one needs a rest after reading it. It is enervating in the extreme, and thus is not for the faint of heart. In short, this is a breathtakingly sweeping glimpse of U.S. foreign, domestic and social policies, leaving no stones unturned, at one of the most pivotal junctures in the history of the nation's development. In a rapidly moving if not razor-sharp, staccato-like fashion -- but yet surprisingly dense prose -- the author lives in her material, letting it all "hang out" and the reader feels and benefits from her verve and enthusiasm.

Although it covers legislative Bills quite well, it is long on critical details, but short on meaty explanations, specific policies decisions and motives. For the latter the author relies mostly on her own rather contrived explanation that America was on some kind of precipice, reluctant to lose its viginity. Yet despite this as her crowning organizing idea, coupled with the implied over-structure of Manifest Destiny, she seems to have had as a backup, mostly strategic comments by key officials, observers and commentators, and especially those of the landed gentry of the times. Except for this (and this actually is no small matter), the book is difficult to criticize. After reading it, one has a full understanding of from whence contemporary American attitudes across a broad range of issues, have come, even if one does not fully understand why.

On the point about explanations and motives, although it was somewhat annoying for the reader to be left hanging (with only the author's impressionistic assertion of a barely credible impending doom for the nation) to draw his own conclusions about the kinds of motives driving such momentous events as: colonial expansion into far off places such as the Philippines; its reasons for pressuring Cuba to liberate Cuban slaves yet continuing slavery in the U.S. and thus only placing Cuba under the further subjugation of a new set of American instead of Spanish colonial masters; why it took an avowedly backward turn in the aftermath of Reconstruction and with regard to women's sufferage -- deciding to leave the issue of race in the hands of the "wealth and intelligence of the South," and its general lack of a grand plan for its burning expansionist desire for more power, more markets, more class distinctions, more freedom for the business classes, more racial and sexual privileges for the white man, and more respect on the world stage. Altogether, this does not seem much like a nation on a precipice, but one lurching back and forth to find its place in the world?

Thus, somewhat in relief, the reader understands what happened even though he does not get even a hint from the author (beyond the barely credible appeal to Armageddon) as to why. At the end of the book, I had a hundred "why" questions.

For a country that up until the 1877-1919 time period, had been an isolated backwater of a nation, the reader basically gets to see how sausage of the nation-building variety is made in a vibrant, rural, racially tense culture seeking to modernize itself and to find its destiny on the world stage. Beyond the avowedly racist worldview of Manifest Destiny, there was little rhyme or reason for the nation's lurching from one self-made crisis to another. That is to say, until somehow, despite itself, it had evolved into a world power. To say that the U.S. was on the edge of an armageddon like implosion is to give more order to its willy-nilly development than perhaps it deserves. Pure and simply, it was hubris, chest-beating, racial, sexual and cultural hegemony, all the way down into the 20th century.

As an important afterthought, if nothing else, this book certainly helps the reader understand why it is that even though Bush I was a very different kind of political animal than his son, Bush Jr., each is a separate prototype of a strain of American history that can be mapped one-to-one back into earlier periods of our nation's evolution: The father represents the stability, single-mindedness and refined if not staid nature of the "landed class;" the son the buccaneer, rough and tumble wildcat cowboy nature of the frontier. Some good political and social history, here but not the best. Four stars

Historians write with a slant. Sometimes it's hard to detect, but in this book it screams out from the page. The writer is a Leftie. Nothing wrong with that, so long as it's either disclosed or obvious, and it's obvious here. We read about the rotten politics of the Gilded Age from the point of view of the Blacks excluded from society and the ballot. We read about the Progressive Era from the point of view of the labor unions. All their struggles were immensely harrowing, with most of the country opposed to their interests, and armed men of all descriptions eager to kill them. We also read about the economic status of the country, heavily emphasizing the Panic and depression of the 1870s and 1890s, the arrogance of the wealthy "captains of industry" who refused to set an 8-hour day, eliminate child labor, or recognize unions, and how big corporations "owned" legislatures before U.S. senators were elected by the people. For every amelioration wrought by an administration, such as Teddy Roosevelt's against the "trusts" or Woodrow Wilson's provision of a progressive income tax, there were offsetting events, riots, lynchings, segregation, and cries of disloyalty from the Right.

A more current edition would no doubt take note of Wilson's stroke, his instability, stubbornness, and mental incapacity years after he came down with the flu during the pandemic, because these factors gravely influenced the defeat of the League of Nations portion of the Versailles Treaty. We know now that impairments showed up in many people long after they recovered from the acute state of the disease. Finally, the book, it seems to me, too heavily stresses upheavals, crashes, and widespread distress. Isn't this the era that the Reaganites and the Disneys wanted us to revive and return to? A personal note: as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, I took a course in International Relations taught by a Professor Russell, who as a young man had attended the Versailles Peace Conference. Guess I'm getting old!

I am an academic, but US history is not my field. I wanted to read a good general history of the US from the end of reconstruction to the end of WWI and so I picked up this book. I can't say I much cared for it. It is hard to turn issues like bimetalism and greenbackism into a compelling story, so it is not surprising that Painter falls short. But his obviously leftist account struck me as too biased -- despite the fact that I share his political beliefs. The book attempts to cover a little bit of everything that happened in this period, but ends up feeling more scattered than comprehensive, with very brief one and two page sections on various subjects crowded together in chapters with very little to hold them together. The prose is clear and readable, but hardly elegant and engaging. If you want an engaging general history of this period, I would advise you to look elsewhere.