This book is about the United States in the later years of the nineteenth century. I beg reviewers not to use the phrase “gilded age” except to record my rejection of a meretricious label that has done much to obscure the true character of a period to which we owe so much. For good or ill, it is not an age apart but the beginning of the epoch in which we now live.

Much scholarly energy has been expended upon “the best men,” but I have tried to discover what some of the good men were doing. The men and women who worked so hard, with poor rewards and little recognition, to raise the standards of civilized life deserve some memorial. Or rather, the record which they made for themselves in the voluminous reports of state agencies merit reappraisal. Any historian will be aware of the danger of relying upon this kind of source material; men who are called upon to justify their own work are not likely to represent themselves as ignorant, idle, corrupt or untrustworthy, or to write charitably of those whom they find obstructive or wrong-headed. We are however dealing with an enormous body of evidence – the annual or biennial reports of the major agencies flourishing over many years in a great number of states – and it is therefore possible to achieve a balanced assessment of their assumptions, merits, or limitations.