The Search for Order, 1877-1920

"Republic for Which it Stands is partially in reaction to this book. The Search for Order is one of those history books that seemed to define a period so thoroughly that other historians avoided the topic for decades after its release. People use Wiebe from the 1960s through the early 21st century. According to Wiebe, the real story of this period is how the United States went from being loosely connected local communities to becoming one national community; it changed from the fragmented nation it had been before the Civil War into one modern nation with a new middle class. It’s a story with a simple overarching thesis and almost too much detail. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . But Wiebe didn’t have the evidence to sustain many of the assertions that fed his thesis. Many of the things which he said happened in the Gilded Age had happened earlier and other things didn’t happen at all. Nonetheless, it’s a great feat of storytelling to fit so many disparate details into a simple framework. Even though I disagree with Wiebe, I always keep my eye on The Search for Order as a model of historical writing. Wiebe argues that the growth of expertise and the breakup of island communities is the real beginning of the Progressive Era. I argue that the Progressive Era is quite distinct. During the late 19th century there is a belief that the whole country can be democratized, including the economy, and that if we fail to democratize the economy and the society, the United States is going to split apart at the seams. Wiebe and others project progressive beliefs about managing strife with only minor changes back onto the 19th century. I believe that the failure of 19th century reforms, wrecked on the shoals of xenophobia and white supremacy, prepared the way for the Progressive Era but that the Progressive movement only took root because more radical reforms failed. If you search United States history for a time when there were problems similar to ours, I can’t think of a better period than the Gilded Age. The Gilded Age is the beginning of the great era of immigration in the United States, which exploded following the Civil War. If you are looking for a time when fear of cultural changes threatened to tear the US apart, go back to the Gilded Age. Elites feared that the influx of Catholics was undermining American schools, the Protestant churches, and the principles of American governance. Reconstruction was launched with transformative intentions but failed. Similarly, if you want to look at a period when the US is adjusting to ethnic diversity and wrestling with historic injustices, look at the Gilded Age. I could go on and on and on in outlining the parallels between the present and the Gilded Age. If you think that our democracy cannot endure with the economic inequality that afflicts the 21st century, go back to the Gilded Age, when Americans worried that the nation could not stand with the economic inequality that arose in the late 19th century. If you think that the nature of work is changing dramatically, go back to the Gilded Age, when the economy was transformed. If you worry that changes in the environment are threatening health and humanity, go back to the Gilded Age when urbanization and industrialization gave birth to those worries. These parallels allow us to step back from the concerns we’re immersed in now and think about our world in new ways. The long lens of history shows us what we’re too myopic to see in the present."