Civic Passions
ISBN: 9781469605388
Platform/Publisher: Project MUSE / The University of North Carolina Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Chapters; Download: Chapters
Subjects: Social problems; Social problems; Leadership; Social reformers; Political activists; Progressivism (United States politics);

Social historian Tichi makes the case that there are widespread parallels between the excesses and inequities of the country's first Gilded Age over a century ago and the lopsided social and economic landscape of our day. In a lively spur to reform-minded discussion, Tichi offers profiles of seven Victorian-era reformers-including an industrial health advocate (Alice Hamilton), antilynching crusader (Ida B. Wells-Barnett), consumer advocate (Florence Kelley), jurist (Louis Brandeis) and child welfare advocate (Julia Lathrop)-selected for how they typified a generational commitment to "fresh thinking and action." And their deeds-eloquently channeled here-do resound with renewed import now. Often from the privileged middle classes themselves-Wells-Barnett being a notable exception-these men and women fought tirelessly to better the lives of working people in a country revamped by sprawling corporate might, industrial organization, endemic prejudice and the concomitant intellectual rationales of Social Darwinism. Many lives were saved and improved as a result, though the system arguably remained fundamentally unchanged. Hamilton, at the end of her long and distinguished life-a few months shy of the passage of OSHA-nevertheless pessimistically bemoaned an "instinctive American lawlessness." (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved


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