Thread by @AdroitlyAbsurd

*cracks knuckles*

My time has come

Hang on to your hats; we’re going on a cartoon history 🧵 (content warning ⚠️), courtesy of Puck, Harper’s Weekly, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated, & other period papers:
/1

https://twitter.com/varsha_venkat_/status/1233118108128137216

Honesty, we’re in a period which closely mirrors it; it just doesn’t feel that way b/c people are futsal shuffling, twerking, & dabbing instead of twirling to a Viennese waltz or early ragtime

It’s... a *different* vibe, to be sure

/2

The 1870s to mid 1890s saw an explosion of innovation, business booms, financial panics, increasing wealth stratification, social upheaval, widespread political corruption & polarization, immigration bans, racism, a rural/urban divide... I could go on

Sound familiar?

/3

Not to mention a consumer culture & an explosion of art, fashion, & pop culture that birthed juggernauts of societal pressure...

“But Bernard,” I hear you cry (or don’t; if you don’t know my name), “you said there’d be cartoons!”

Patience, I say.

Let’s being:

/4

Before we get going we have to establish one important fact: the political parties of today are not the same as in the past.

Dems, Republicans, etc. will appear here, but their positions are usually flipped. The Gilded Age is the era when their mascots, however, were encoded. /5

Of course, I know NO ONE would DARE take any of these images out of context for modern usage, right? Right?

🙄

Anyway, donkeys & elephants:

/6

Take these Thomas Nast images from 1874 & 1879:

This first is the first time Republicans were pictured as an elephant. By contrast, the Democratic PRESS is the donkey, while the party itself is the fox at the bottom.

By the second image the trope was encoded in society.

/7

The fact that these cartoons exist at all are thanks to the massive explosion of print media during the period.

As w/ today, there was plenty of concern about the ways media could be vapid, crude, politically motivated or just an overwhelming tide of Bad News:

/8

Gilded Age papers were full of the hot topic issues of the day, like gun control, military spending, & “draining the swamp”

So... nothing like today 🙄

And oooooh the politics...

/9

Gilded age politics? Just like today: a cavalcade of two-faces politicians, trapped by their own lies & often considered to be picked by the various news outlets.

The parties rode high & fell hard, unless you were a populist (in which case it was always a rocky road)

/10

The Guilded Age saw unprecedented political corruption & turmoil; powerful figures could threaten to “crush” cities or states that didn’t bend to their will

Political favors? Chains of corruption tied to business & political allies? They had it in spades

Sounds familiar... /11

bend to their will.

The 1876 election was particularly bad, heavily contested between Tilden & Hayes w/ cries of a “stolen election” /12

1876 was the election w/ the highest turnout to date in the US; Tilden got the popular vote but lost the election in the electoral by a SINGLE VOTE (185-184), the narrowest in history.

This lead to a lot of argument about the Electoral College.

Just like today.

/13

This election was “solved” w/ the Compromise of 1877, which is defectively ended Reconstruction & handed the South to Jim Crow. Voting restrictions & literacy tests became hot-button issues as ways to disenfranchise minorities. Not that this was particularly new...

/14

Speaking of which... immigration! The hot topic of the era! The hot topic of EVERY ERA!

Americans were torn on immigration; some saw it as the lifeblood of America while others were increasingly concerned, particularly as the latest immigrants weren’t as... white as the last /15

The climax of this Gilded Age intolerance was the Chinese Exclusion Act. This & other acts effectively ended immigration of an entire minority during a period of outright hostility & brutal violance towards them.

They essentially built a legislative wall.

/16

It is no coincidence that this period also saw the resurgence of the KKK & white nationalism. Attacks on minorities of all kinds, including a rise in anti-semetism & the Jews who supposedly “ran New York”

Again, today eerily echoes this rise

/17

Of course, you know what those “dirty Europeans” & second-wave immigrants were, right?

COMMUNISTS!!

*gasp*

That’s right, here comes the socialism boogie-man!!!

...

Perhaps you’re sensing a theme here. We’re living in a modern Gilded Age. Which means we gotta talk about.../18

BIG BUSINESS

It was booming like never before; a wave of unprecedented growth.

Huge interlocking companies, robber barons, & lavish wealth all propped up by an impoverished working class that they were swallowing up... along w/ the country, its government, & its politicians /19

Initially it was the railroads that took over. They lobbied! They chewed up the land & its resources! They even changed time itself (time zones)!

The monster could be oil, steel, coal... either way, workers were crushed, as was most opposition.

/20

The only thing that slowed them were massive “Panics” that threw millions out of work & into the streets, homeless & itinerant

Somehow big business always came out bigger & more powerful than before

/21

Meanwhile, WHAT WAS WITH THOSE WOMEN?!

2020 marks the 100th anniversary of Women’s Sufferage in America; the Gilded Age saw women fighting (sometimes amongst themselves along class lines) for equal rights.

The opposition was aghast. Women acting like men?!? THE HORROR!!

/22

The now tired sexist claims were made over & over. Women advocating for themselves were just ugly. Unloved. Shrill.

They should know their place & be quiet. Back in their sphere!!

Over a century later, the same crass claims, “jokes,” & assaults on women are still made.

/23

Other women were accused of using their “feminine wiles”

And of course, what would come next? Women in uniform, such as police? Why, they couldn’t handle the job! Too weak!

There’s a reason these are tired cliches today. They’re over 100 years old & sexist as hell.

/24

Despite this, women in the Gilded Age pushed for equal rights, hammering away at the “women’s sphere.”

Like so many others, for them this period was a hard-fought battle. Their efforts paced the way for the rights of others today!

/25

The similarities continue. People knocking important scientific & infrastructural advances? They had that.

Environmentalism? Pollution was a concern, particularly in urban areas where success was measured in chimneys spewing toxic clouds. /26

I could go on. Music, art, literature, labor activism, technological innovation & concerns about their ramifications, international strife...

If you want to know what the Gilded Age was like, look around.

We’re living in its sequel.

They’d recognize so much of our world... /27

What would really astonish them would be aircraft; heavier than air flight was thought impossible.

They’d marvel at our control of disease, & be astonished that we take it for granted or ignore it. I mean, we’re setting up the Coronavirus to be the next 1918 flu pandemic. /28

Internet? They had that; the telegraph & telephone. They’d be more amazed that we hadn’t ended all war or hunger.

They’d probably be surprised that we haven’t colonized the solar system yet.

/29

So. That’s the Gilded Age. A time not really different from ours. Just dressed in different trappings.

The question is this: will we learn from it? Will we make a better world?

I hope so. As a historian, it’s tiring, seeing the same stuff all over again & again & again... /30

Welp. That went far longer than I thought (typing in captioning for blind users took most of the time, but it’s WELL worth it).

Questions?

“two faced” 🤦🏻‍♂️

Well, if that’s the only error in this monstrously long 🧵 I’ll be damned pleased

“Which EFFECTIVELY” ended”

Damn you autocorrect