(Roughly) Daily

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…

Historian of the period Richard White recommends “The best books on The Gilded Age.” His five choices are each and all eminently worthy of reading; but his explanations for his choices are an education in themselves.

* Mark Twain, The Gilded Age

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As we peer into the not-so-distant-mirror, we might recall that it was on this date in 1867, at the dawn of the Gilded Age, that U.S. Secretary of State William Seward and Russian minister Eduard de Stoeckl agreed to a treaty effecting the purchase of Alaska by the U.S.; it was briskly ratified by Congress.

The transaction added 586,412 square miles of new territory to the United States at a cost of $7.2 million 1867 dollars (2 cents per acre); in 2019 dollars, the price was $132 million (37 cents per acre).

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