Anyone who thinks the government should get out of their lives should read this book. Anyone who thinks that business, free from the repressive strictures of government regulation, will do the right thing should read this book. Anyone who doesn't "believe in science" should read this book. Anyone who thinks that unions destroyed America should read this book. Anyone who thinks that the "Good Old Days" were all "Father Knows Best" and "Leave it to Beaver" should read this book.
This book is a nice little compendium of what life really was like before science, technology, unions, government intervention and equal rights movements made this country what it is today. Personally, I found little in it that I didn't already know. I've never had a hankering for the "Good Old Days" as I'm quite fond of things like running water, improved medical (especially maternal) care, vaccines, the 40 hour work week, the right to vote, livable wages, retirement benefits and social safety nets, not to mention luxuries such as cars and air conditioning. I've never particularly wanted to be fired by my employer after getting injured on the job and have no means of paying for medical care or supporting myself or my family. But perhaps that's just me.
Otto Bettmann uses numerous photos and drawings from his pictorial archives to illustrate each page showing the ills that beset Americans in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The book is organized into eleven chapters delineating broad areas of American life, including, for instance, "Work", "Health" and "Education". Within each chapter are subsections, usually only a full-page spread each, detailing aspects of each area. For instance, the "Health" chapter includes subsections on Doctors, Epidemics, Mental Health and Addictions. Each full-page spread is roughly 50% pictures and 50% text on average.
By necessity, each topic is covered only briefly and Bettmann touches only the surface of each. Each topic could easily encompass a full book in its own right, so the information in this book is naturally sketchy and somewhat cherry-picked. This at times leads to some hyperbole that makes old-time life seem even worse than it was. For instance, I highly doubt that every school, or even the majority of schools, fit the profile that Bettmann portrays: underpaid, unprofessional teachers who brutally managed their classrooms of ill-behaved urchins while failing to actually teach them anything. If that were the case, this country could never have made so many of the advances in science, health and international relations that it has. But it is not Bettmann's purpose to present an in-depth and unbiased account of Victorian American life, but rather to counter the prevailing idea that life in the "Good Old Days" was superior in most or all respects to modern life.
This book should give pause to anyone who thinks that the solution to modern problems lies in reducing or eliminating "the government" or "unions" or "the media" or "public education" or even "liberals". Bettmann documents how old-time businessmen viewed workers are mere cogs in their machines - resources to be "exploited" like any other. Landlords viewed tenants as simply a source of money with no obligations due in return. Reforms that we now take for granted were hard fought for by unions and other social groups and enacted by the force of law - legislative as well as judicial.
Not that unions or government were a panacea or that either was exempt from its own corruption, of course. Bettmann returns again and again to the issue of government and police corruption, especially Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall, although he also mentions similar corruption in Chicago, Philadelphia, New Orleans and other cities. To the extent that such abuses have ended, it has been largely through the force of "public outcry". Bettmann doesn't really explore this idea, but if you think about it, what fuels public outcry? How does the average citizen know about what is going on in order to cry out about it? The answer is, of course, the media. Before the advent of television news, the way most Americans got any news was through the newspaper (and later, radio). Reporters had to ferret out those stories and report them to the public in order for the public to get involved in the governing process. News media, of course, are subject to their own biases and corruption, which is why strengthening, rather than weakening public education is so important. Each group - business, government, labor, and the media, are all intertwined and interdependent. No one group is inherently good or inherently bad, but each needs constant supervision and checks and balances from the others. Our country doesn't grow from weakening any one or favoring one over the other, but from strengthening them all equally.
I recommend this book to any teenagers before they embark on adulthood, and to those already in adulthood who may not be fully aware of the warnings of history.
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