About Connections: Love it or hate it, history is a map. Those who hate history think it irrelevant; many who love history think it escapism. In truth, history is the clearest road map to how we got here: America in the twenty-first century
What happened when the primary source of power changed radically? It happened in the 52 years from the close of the Civil War in 1865 to America’s entrance into World War I in 1917. Known as the Gilded Age, it was driven by a new economy fueled by new forms of energy. Petroleum drove America into the modern age, and electricity lit the way. Oil, gasoline, and electricity changed our lives, our lifestyle, our experience of the natural world, and our expectations. Simply put: new energy ushered in the age into which we all were born: wealthy, powerful, and cultured America
The former agrarian-based economy – the Arcadia and New Eden of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson — became a manufacturing economy. Employment created discretionary income. Discretionary income created a consumer economy. Vast wealth was created as was a vast middle class living longer, healthier, and richer lives.
A new source of energy plowed the land, built a house, lit a city and delivered us to work and to church. Telephone, telegraph, and transatlantic cable sped communication. Travel was faster, and became discretionary; individuals became drivers not passengers. They were able to decide where they wanted to go and when. It was no longer necessary to live within horseback or walking distance of work, food, or water; people ceased living in urban ant hills. The population sprawled and multiplied.
The definition of democracy, of American freedom, became going where you liked, when you liked; buying what you wanted when you wanted it. The new definition promised an enhanced lifestyle: the accumulation of things became a civil right; the definition of political success was an ever expanding economy; he who had the most stuff in the end won. In that way, economics drove politics.
Not the least among the changes was the shift from what my Granny called “home spun” to what she called “store bought.” Granny was born in 1895; the goods in her house were equally divided between what she made and what she bought – if not tilted toward what she made. When we became a manufacturing nation that changed; when individual wealth rested upon gross sales of goods, the population of the United States was valued more as consumers than citizens. From there it was a short step to our leaders becoming salesman not statesmen. Moreover, and just as important, there were economic strategies developed to maximize economic returns for the owners. America did not have an industrial revolution until long after the British; what America had first was the ability to understand how to maximize the profit from the industrial revolution in Britain. The processor of raw materials bought the natural resource; the manufacturer bought the transportation line to market and bought outlets in the marketplace; the investor cornered the market and controlled the price; these and other strategies made profits skyrocket. There is, however, a breaking point at which individual greed becomes contrary to the common good.
To understand a society, understand the source of its energy. If a society’s power force is man, animal, or machine, that society will organize differently, pass different laws, prize different sorts of education, and go to war for different reasons.
Prior to the Gilded Age when energy was manpower, there was social acceptance of slave labor, indentured labor, and there were wars to conquer and increase the population of forced labor. The strategies to increase the number of work-hardy individuals were as energetic as those we employed throughout the twentieth century to increase the availability of cheap oil. The rejection of slavery was concomitant with the rise of industrialization.
One hundred and eleven years after oil was discovered in Pennsylvania, in 1970, American oil supply peaked. Thirty years later, in 2000, foreign oil peaked. Oil, as all natural resources, was finite. America was not a country accustomed to limitations and was unprepared for that simple reality. It took decades to accept the inevitable. The country now accepts that new forms of energy are mandatory (or actually increased use of the oldest forms).
So today America stands on the precipice about to step into a new age just as America did at the beginning of the Gilded Age. How will it change us? What if anything can we learn from the last seismic change in the primary source of energy?
During the Gilded Age, the country trembled on the brink of economic ruin more than once: financial crises punctuated the overall move upward in the wealth of the country. In our brightest moments early depressions were solved by invention, civic improvements, and enhanced infrastructure that in turn created new wealth and more jobs. The Great Depression forced legislative changes that controlled the moneyed-class and bolstered the middle class. The Gilded Age is more than a romantic period or a sepia photograph. It may offer a guide post to what will happen next and how to cope.
