I just finished reading The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power, by Steve Fraser. The spine stopped me in my tracks at a library book sale and it’s been in my Must Read pile since.

It seems particularly timely, given [waving arms all around wildly] everything.

Let’s keep this between the two of us, but holy crap. I can’t remember the last time my vocabulary seemed as insufficient. Each sentence is packed with words I’ve never encountered, lacking the requisite context clues for me to figure them out without a dictionary.

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Flip through my sketchbook.

And keep scrolling for some stuff that jumped out at me, in no particular order.

The Gilded Ages are over!

According to this book from a decade ago, and I can only assume is still accurate, there were two Gilded Ages:

Mark Twain’s
The one that started during Ronnie’s presidency

GOOD NEWS! That “political system of, by, and for the moneyed” ended in 2013 or 2014. Maybe 2008. I can’t find it in the book anymore. The point is… it’s over! Hooray!!

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“A device of Satan”

The railroad was met with some… skepticism. Obviously. Because railroads are a “device of Satan to lead immortals down to Hell.”

In the mid-1840s, a Lancaster, Ohio School Board believed telegraphs and railroads were examples of “rank infidelity” and didn’t think God that meant “His intelligent creatures should travel at the frightful speed of 15 miles per hour.”

Prior to the Civil War, traveling from the east coast to the Ohio Valley took 50 days by stage coach or 25 days by steamship. Three decades later, the same trip would take just a week.

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“Few millionaires… clear of the sin of having made beggars.”

Cornelius Vanderbilt, E.R. Harriman, Andrew Carnegie, and John D. Rockefeller are all here. No surprise there. Philip D. Armour, a big meatpacking guy I didn’t know about, and Henry Clay Frick also show up.

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Hey, I know that guy!

I first encountered Thorstein Veblen reading The Portable Veblen: A Novel, by Elizabeth McKenzie. Delightful. The book. Not Veblen.

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Vocabulary

As I mentioned, this book was full of unfamiliar with. I added these to my sketchbook, though I can’t imagine any scenarios where I’d ever be able to use them:

Apparatchk
Can mean a government official who just, you know, blindly follows orders and stuff. Super devoted. Without thinking.
Diktat
Oxford languages says it’s “ an order or decree imposed by someone in power without popular consent.” I’m unclear whether the decree is without popular consent or the “someone in power”. In any case, seems like the example in my doodle fits.
Suzerainty
Overlordship

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Leonine & lugubrious!

Two more words I didn’t know. Imagine my delight when I was able to use in a sentence while watching Paradise! “Did you see that leonine scientist? He was the speech writer on Madam Secretary.” Turns out the speechwriter was also lugubrious. I just didn’t realize it yet.

The lion I happened to draw below (unplanned!) was also leonine and lugubrious. This book mentioned a butcher who sold things like bears, llamas, possums, hippos, lions, yaks, cape buffalo, mountain sheep, and more.

The gross convict lease system

I knew about this system from reading Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America, by Nancy MacLean a few years ago. But I did not realize (or perhaps did not remember) how wide spread it was (is?). New York actually “led the way.” I didn’t know that J.P. Morgan and his intimidating eyebrows profited from it tremendously. In the South, Black men could be arrested for just being unemployed or talking to a white woman…. more free labor!

Barbed wire was a game-changer.

Not in a good way.

Big cattle companies (frequently financed by foreign countries) fenced off millions of acres, cutting common water and grazing areas from smaller farmers.

In the South, something similar happened, but with laws passed by the planter oligarchy. Previously self-sufficient farmers were blocked from water and pastures once shared.

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Debt

Benjamin Franklin cautioned that “he that goes a borrowing goes a sorrowing.”

Humorist Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary proclaimed that debt was “an ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slave-driver.”

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“Our barbarians come from above.”

Journalist Henry Demarest Lloyd reflected that “If our civilization is destroyed… it will not be by … barbarians from below. Our barbarians come from above.”

Gulp.

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Here’s a doodle of Grover Cleveland

This book is very heavy, what with all the thought of the destruction of civilization and whatnot. Here’s a doodle of Grover! Nothing interesting to say about him, per se, but hey! It was President’s Day when I drew this!

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“Are we a plutocracy?”

William Dean Howells asked this rhetorically during the first Gilded Age.

Are we though?

I don’t know. Email me your thoughts by the end of the day Monday. Include approximately five reasons supporting your claim. CC your manager. Do not include any classified info.

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I can’t spell “guilded”

During the Gilded Age, newly-rich people would just make up a fake coat of arms and pretend that they had a long, fancy linage and I find that so very laughable and ridiculous.

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William and Mary showed up!

Their story is bonkers.

Are you sure you mean “Tramps”?

When I did an image search on “Tramp’s Terror” my computer was like “are you sure that’s the vowel you meant to type in that first word?”

“Tramps’ Terror” was a “primitive machine gun” to be used on the unemployed during a particularly shitty economic time. It’s “specially adapted for the pocket” because who doesn’t want a “primitive machine gun” in their pocket?

The product is gross. But the advertisement (and how it fits on the page) is pretty spectacular.

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Should I read Moby Dick?

Herman Melville and Moby Dick keep popping into my books. Is that a sign?

Melville observed that the “class of wealthy people are, in aggregate, such a mob of gilded dunces, that not to be wealthy carries with it a certain distinction and nobility.”

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Benevolent feudalism

George Pullman had his beautifully-designed model company town… where workers felt no ownership, as if they were just “camping out.” A visitor once commented that it was as if a “dependent servile people” lived in a “benevolent well-wishing feudalism.”

In company towns, the company owned everything:

Stores, homes, transportation, you name it
They controlled the costs of those things…
Leases could be cancelled for no reason and with less than two weeks notice
Oh! And the town was full of Pullman spies, ready to snitch on anyhow who said anything negative

Then Pullman laid of a bunch of workers. He also cut pay and reduced hours for workers he kept… all while keeping rent the same.

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Alrighty then…

We all know that FDR said “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Fraser suggests the only thing we have to fear nowadays is not being afraid enough.”

I can’t end on that bummer of a note, so instead I’m making two TV recommendations:

Paradise, which as I mentioned above includes a very leonine and lugubrious scientist. He’s not the main character, so if you have something against leonine and lugubrious scientists, don’t let that deter you. I haven’t caught up yet, but it’s fabulous. Are you watching it? I can’t get enough.
Gilded Age, because… it’s all about the Gilded Age. And it’s amazing.