There was once a time in the not too recent past when scholarly discussion and debate over periodization was central to the task of writing and thinking about the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Scholars such as Richard Hofstadter, Robert Wiebe, and Samuel P. Hays applied versions of modernization theory to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to produce what came to be known as the “organizational synthesis.” A competing periodization centered on the rise of the large business corporation appeared in works by Martin Sklar, James Weinstein, and James Livingston. Since the 1970s, however, the new social and cultural history has introduced a multitude of new fields and perspectives. By the 1980s, the perceived fragmentation of history had generated an appeal for “synthesis.” In 1986 Thomas Bender called for new and intelligible narrative plots that would transcend “recent scholarship with its intensive specialization, fragmentation, and preoccupation with groups.” Yet, since then, occasional attempts to synthesize have been stillborn, and for the Gilded Age as well as for the Progressive Era the search for synthesis seems to have reached a cul-de-sac with no exit in sight.

I wish to thank the editors of the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era for giving me a chance to react to Richard Schneirov's engaging article on periodizing the Gilded Age. I tend to agree with his generalizations and approach to the subject, having only some small qualifications to offer, largely concerning the quest for periodization, the timing of the break from one type of society to another, and the role of the Civil War. It seems that modern historians have revised somewhat the comment of George III to Edward Gibbons, “Scribble, scribble, scribble, eh, Mr. Gibbons?” Now it has become, “Quibble, quibble, quibble, eh, Mr. Historian?” Well, such seems to be our fate. However, on one interpretation there is no quibbling at all: somewhere in the years called the Gilded Age came the mightiest transition that the society of the United States has ever experienced. The quote in the title of this short piece attests to the realization that such was the case: it is from the Brahmin historian, James Ford Rhodes writing about the Great Railroad Strike of 1877: “For we had hugged the delusion that such social uprisings belonged to Europe and had no reason of being in a free republic where there was plenty of room and an equal chance for all.” The political economy inherited from the Revolution had failed, and it was beginning to be recognized that a new political economy was emerging.

Richard Schneirov's call for rethinking the post-Reconstruction era is long overdue and most welcome. For reasons he lays out with admirable clarity and insight, recent approaches have not offered a satisfactory synthesis. A new narrative offers considerable benefits to historians of the era and the broader publics we serve.

I would like to thank Rebecca Edwards and James L. Huston for their thoughtful and challenging responses to my essay. Both these authors have thought deeply about periodization and synthesis, and for that reason it occurred to me to allow their responses to stand alone and go unanswered. But in the interests of sparking further discussion I would like to offer a few clarifications and additional thoughts with regard to periodization. Due to considerations of space I will not try to answer all the reservations and criticisms expressed and alternative views advanced but will focus only on a few points that bear on the thrust of my essay.

For all its typically Progressive Era characteristics and national scope, the “honest weight movement” has long been hidden in plain sight. Seemingly ubiquitous and mundane, the common grocery scale was the intersecting borderland of industry, government, marketplace, and consumer. On the one hand, the regulation of weights and measures, being one of the first forms of governmental regulation of the marketplace dating back to the ancient world, seems so unobjectionable and commonplace that the Progressive Era movement for its more rigorous and efficient administration does not seem like it could have been a very controversial proposal. Who, after all, could object to clear and consistent standards of measurement and their universal application? Thus, the appearance of a movement to reform the ubiquitous and the mundane has not elicited the same historical attention that novel forms of government regulation have.