AMERICA 1900-1910 -- 'THE COCKSURE ERA' (Part 1)

SEIFERT

Posted By: David (email)
Date: 3/7/2004 at 20:57:12

'AMERICA 1900-1910'

'The Cocksure Era'

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At the outgoing of the old and the incoming of the new century you begin the last session of the Fifty-sixth Congress with evidences on every hand of individual and national prosperity and with proof of the growing strength and increasing power for good of Republican institutions.

-- President William McKinley

To the Congress, December 3, 1900.

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When President McKinley proudly addressed the Congress at the turn of the century, America was a country very different from the colossus it was to become.

'THE COCKSURE ERA'

The will to grow was everywhere written large, and to grow at no matter what or whose expense.

-- Henry James.

It was a splendid time, a wonderful country. Most Americans felt that way as they welcomed the 20th Century, and many of them said so, with great animation and grandiose references to Peace, Prosperity and Progress.

From Senator Chauncey Depew of New York: "There is not a man here who does not feel 400 per cent bigger in 1900 than he did in l896, bigger intellectually, bigger hopefully, bigger patriotically."

Depew's colleague, Mark Hanna of Ohio: "Furnaces are glowing, spindles are singing their song. Happiness comes to us all with prosperity."

The Reverend Newell Dwight Hillis of Brooklyn: "Laws are becoming more just, rulers humane; music is becoming sweeter and books wiser."

These statements set the mood for the first decade of the new century and won for the period several titles -- the Age of Optimism, the Age of Confidence, the Age of Innocence. But another tag might have seemed more appropriate to an objective visitor from abroad: the Cocksure Era. For this was a time when Americans were optimistic and self-confident to an extreme; they did not merely hope for the best, they fully expected it. A welter of practical and moral problems -- child labor, teeming slums, widespread offenses by corrupt politicians and ruthless corporations -- could not shake the faith of Americans in the inevitability of their progress as individuals and as a nation. Most people automatically assumed that all problems would be solved in the normal course of events; meanwhile, the important thing was for a man to get ahead, to earn maximum returns from bountiful opportunities.

There was ample reason for high hopes and general satisfaction. The housewife found the stores well stocked and prices low: she could buy eggs for l2 cents a dozen, sirloin steak for 24 cents a pound, a turkey dinner for 20 cents. The farmer was doing well after some hard times in the '90s. For the businessman, taxes were minimal and trade was brisk; indeed, conditions were almost good enough to justify the Boston Herald's verdict, "If one could not have made money this past year, his case is hopeless." Everyone was fascinated by the many useful devices coming to the fore: the telephone, the typewriter and the sewing machine, the self-binding harvester and even the automobile (fully 8,000 of these vehicles were registered by 1900). But to the thoughtful citizen, the surest portents of a brilliant future were the astonishing achievements of the recent American past.

In the l9th Century, American energy and individualism had written a national epic without historic parallel. A thin fringe of Eastern states with five million inhabitants had swelled into a continent-wide nation with a population of 76 million. In the 35 years since the Civil War, a predominantly agrarian country had vaulted from fourth place to first among the world's industrial powers; a loose collection of very different regions, permissively administered by the laissez-faire government, had been woven into a fairly homogenous and interdependent unit by expanding railroad networks, lengthening newspaper chains and burgeoning techniques of mass production and nationwide marketing. And in just the past few years, the United States had fought and won an exhilarating war with Spain, emerging as a major military power with possessions and protectorates that sprawled from the Caribbean to the China Seas. The facts and figures -- a veritable torrent of information on rich r!
esources and soaring growth rates -- promised that progress would continue at an accelerating speed.

To Be Continued. . .

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Copied by Nancee(McMurtrey)Seifert
February 20, 2004