The Incorporation of America: Culture & Society in the Gilded Age

by Alan Trachtenberg

Alan Trachtenberg presents an analysis of the expansion of capitalist power in the last third of the 19th century and the cultural changes it brought in its wake.

In America's westward expansion, labor unrest, newly powerful cities, and newly mechanized industries, the ideals and ideas by which Americans lived were reshaped, and American society became more structured, with an entrenched middle class and a powerful business elite.

"This book realizes an ideal often mentioned as the goal of American Studies but seldom achieved: it is a truly 'interdisciplinary' account of American culture at a turning point in our history.…

"He deals with such themes as the final stage of westward expansion, the mechanization of transportation, manufacturing, and communications, the confrontation of capital and labor, and the growth of the great cities.…[his] balanced emphasis on economic, political, social, and artistic activities reveals new meanings in events that have often been described but never before brought so clearly into relation with one another and with the whole movement of history."
-- Henry Nash Smith

"…one of those exceptional historical essays that not only illuminate their particular subject matter--in this case, American culture and society in the last half of the nineteenth century--but deepen as well our understanding of how we might think about the general question of 'culture' itself. Trachtenberg offers special insights wherever he looks, and his treatment of the Chicago World's Fair is a gem of cultural analysis and criticism."
-- Warren I. Susman

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Politics, The United States Of America, Grad School, United States

276 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1982

About the author

Alan Trachtenberg was Neil Gray, Jr., Professor Emeritus of English and American Studies at Yale University.

Reviews

[Michael Hattem · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alan Trachtenberg’s The Incorporation of America argues that the rise of corporatization— the hierarchical, managed structure of the corporate world—in the Gilded Age fundamentally restructured American culture in ways that were deeply antipodean to the nation’s cultural past causing cultural conflict on a number of fronts. The book begins by looking at a number of myths that arose in the wake of the rise of business. In the first chapter, Trachtenberg explores the myth of the West as “an emblem of national coherence” in a “time of disunity.” In this interpretation, The Dawes Act was an attempt to incorporate Native Americans, who did not fit into the myth of the West. This myth served to obscure the reality of the West as a feeding ground for corporate industrial expansion.
In the second chapter, Trachtenberg examines the rise of mechanization, which, when combined with the myth of the West, came to represent progress. The pace of technological innovation contributed to the sense of helplessness, uncertainty, and disquieting flux caused by the cyclical economy, primarily its downturn in the 1870s. Americans sought to come to grips with mechanization through organizing, but also through fiction and folklore. Myths about the virtue of productivity and progress and metaphorical relations with mechanization obscured the evils of the reality of rapid mechanization and incorporation, including such un-American features as increased social stratification and decreased individual autonomy. For Trachtenberg, the railroad, which established time zones without legislation, is the perfect example of the power of the combination of incorporation and mechanization. Incorporation also institutionalized knowledge and fragmented it through specialization. Yet, this was obscured by the myth of Edison, who, in reality, was not a throwback to Benjamin Franklin but the beginnings of modern industrial research. The end result was significant changes in the distribution of knowledge and mechanized mode of thought.
Chapter 3 interprets the struggle between labor and capital in these years as a cultural conflict and the result of fundamentally different views of the meaning of America and “American values.” The onset of consolidated wealth through incorporation and its attendant and unprecedented social stratification created opposing, class-specific conceptions of those values. Most importantly, in this fight over values, the state came down on the side of capital to the point of inflicting violence on its own citizens. This conflict gave rise to the idea of the collective voice; the corporation spoke as a voice which evaded liability in contrast with the unions, whose culture developed as a conscious alternative to the culture of competitive individualism, of acquisitiveness and segregation.
Chapter 4 explores the role of the city in further entrenching American incorporation. As the city grew, it began to swallow up the countryside, that repository of individualism and virtue, which became a “market colony” of the city, the seat of corporate cultural imperialism. The home, the workplace, and the marketplace became incorporated into the urban network designed for production and consumption. This design included strict class segregation and constant visibility of the symbols of the new corporate order, most notably, the department store. The department store and the urban marketplace in general, with the help of advertising, which sought to obfuscate the relationship between production and consumption. As the most visible social expression of the relations between capital and labor, the great city came to embody the reciprocal (Marxian) relations between production and consumption in their most acute form. Consumption emerged as the hidden purpose of cities.
In chapter 5, Trachtenberg explores the corporate class’s attempt to impose downward its cultural hegemony. Believing high culture could be mass-produced and refashioned for the middle class as the “official American version of reality,” it was seen as a means of control. At the same time, populism arose as a reaction to the corporate control of politics, but it was swallowed up in the deep swaths cut by ethnic and religious diversity. Again, Trachtenberg sees political conflict in this period as a struggle over the soul of the American Self. Chapter 6 explores the Realism movement in painting and literature and chapter 7 examines the cultural symbolism of the White City at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago.
This is an impressive work in many ways. First, not only is its conception of culture broad, so is its application. Trachtenberg examines everything from politics and business to painting and literature, from dime store novels to the World’s Fair, from urban planning to advertising. The book’s scope is, quite simply, impressive, as is Trachtenberg’s analysis. He shows how incorporation was a structural cultural phenomenon. Furthermore, he shows how despite its attempts at consolidation, it fostered cultural conflict in various political, economic, and cultural arenas, most fundamentally between labor and capital. Trachtenberg also illustrates how the broader uncertainty and upheaval of social, political, and economic relations manifested itself in popular culture. Finally, it demonstrates how incorporation and the rise of corporate culture changed the way Americans viewed themselves, their country, and their world.
But, in the end, this is a book about the death of the original American ideology. Though the political death of Jeffersonian republicanism, which was built on individualism, widespread property-holding, equality, and suspicion of concentrated wealth and unproductivity, had occurred decades earlier, its, perhaps more important, cultural death occurred in the Gilded Age at the hands of incorporation. This is both ironic and tragic in two ways. First, as Secretary of State in the early 1790s, Jefferson fought against the nation’s first significant act of incorporation, the first Bank of the United States, but then acquiesced to renewing its charter during his presidency. Second, in 1800, Jefferson had emerged the victor in the winner-take-all-sweepstakes that was a struggle over the identity and future vision of America with Federalist corporatist, Alexander Hamilton. But more than a half century after their deaths, the battle over the American identity and future would be fought again and this time Jefferson would lose by proxy. The first time around, Jefferson’s populism proved the key to his success, but the second time around it simply was not enough. This contrast draws out how by the end of the nineteenth century corporate culture displaced the republican culture of the founding and of Lincoln, perhaps the last major political figure representative of the Jeffersonian tradition, whose own Republican Party assisted in its downfall.

[Illiterate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Incorporation is a metaphor resting on reductionist foundations, but it supports well-worked details.

[Lauren Hiebner · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an intellectual history of the Gilded Age examining the influences that changed the culture of American society in the post Civil War era. The economic shift from self-employed businessmen to large corporations took place during this time period leading to visible and invisible changes in society. Also a change from an agriculture based economy to manufacturing fostered the rise of the city as the center of production and distribution of goods, pitting workers against corporations. While the general standard of living rose, there was an increasing gap between poor and wealthy. A middle class was yet to emerge. The author’s main interest is in exploring the “way of life” and how values of people were impacted, as seen via cultural changes. All aspects of life were impacted and covered in the book; politics, education, family life, literature, and the arts. The values of early America were challenged, changed leading to contradictions and conflict. Changing uses of land and natural resources emerged. Conflicts between labor and capital characterized this time period as well. Probably the most fascinating example of this change in society and culture is the building of the “White City” in Chicago for the World’s Exposition of 1892. This demonstrated, according to the author “the real meaning of America as the victory of elites in business, politics, and culture over dissidents but divided voices of labor, farmers, immigrants, blacks, and women.” A result of the defeat of Populism and its alternative culture. The real power in America was in the hands of property and wealth. This group also controlled what they deemed to be culture in society and what a “cultured” person was. They built parks, museums, skyscrapers, department stores where the “proper and cultured” people of society visited, shopped, dwelt, and worked. This became a society of consumption whose consequences we still are dealing with today. To quote the author, “A wider diffusion of comfort and the goods of culture seems to have overshadowed the vista of a solidarity grounded not in consumption but in equality, the dignity of labor, and the sympathy of common need.” A good read.

[Carlos · Rating 4 out of 5]

I accepted this book with slight reservations, fearing it to be a dense historical account of an era all too easy to depict boring. Thankfully, the author’s selection/organization of material created a rather compelling account of Gilded Age culture and society. From the politics, to literature, to visual arts, and (of course) the economy; Tractenberg really takes you to the late 1800s for Americans of all white stripes (and here, he is rather acknowledging of the inadequacy in addressing the experience for racial minorities).

He really ties together well different aspects of the era, otherwise taught in separate units/courses, a division that does a disservice to anyone seeking a broader systematic understanding. Though at times this does leave some chapters with stronger grasp of the material than others (and regrettably it’s the first two chapters (particularly that first one on the Indian wars) that are his weakest).

The prose is decent, lending itself to a slow reading, necessary for such a book that requires slow digestion of the material to really understand everything. The 200 page length is dense, but doable, though some of the literary synopses get rather excessive. I really wish he included pictures in the work, doing quick image searches on the side is a must for anyone really wishing to understand what’s going on. However, for only doing word descriptions, they are quite good.

Overall, this is a great book to give readers an intermediate level understanding of several aspects of Gilded Age society/culture. While some stuff has been regrettably omitted or excessively covered, the writing is good enough and the material is interesting enough to justify a recommendation. Particularly since a regrettable amount of the material (which even 40 years ago, the authors notes) is rather pertinent to the contemporary scene.

[DoctorM · Rating 4 out of 5]

A classic look at the changes in American society during the 1870s--- the years of Twain's "Gilded Age", the the years of railway expansion and labour violence and the emergence of the corporation as a key feature of the American economy. Trachtenberg looks at the shifting of meaning within the American view of labour--- the ways in which the pre-1865 Republican ideal of "free labour", the ideal of the autonomous skilled labourer who would one day be a proprietor and a property owner was replaced by a view of "labour" as wage work, done by an unskilled and often foreign (i.e., menacing) lower class. Trachtenberg also looks at the ways in which the old, Emersonian sense of American promise was replaced by the fear amongst older elites that "republican virtue" and Protestant ascendancy would be replaced by a "European" world of urban class conflict. The book was pertinent enough in the early 1980s, and it's all the more worth reading now.

[Ernie · Rating 3 out of 5]

While a touch dry at moments, and oddly organized, Trachtenberg gives a nuanced, in-depth look at the culture and ideas of the early decades of 20th century America. A classic of cultural history.

[Grub Street Hack · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Incorporation of America is a book that explores how the incorporation of America has changed the hierarchal structures of America, as well as the understanding of what it is to be American, during the Gilded Age. Author Alan Trachtenberg illustrates the conflict over the term “America” and how the meaning over what it meant to be American shifted. The idea of progress became center to American corporate identity, and “factories, railroads, and telegraph wires seemed the very engines of a democratic future.” At the heart of this notion of progress lay an “ideology of free labor that promised independence and mobility for all honest, diligent laborers had developed into a justification of big business, and further, an implied insult to the cultural status of manual laborers.” Although now ingrained in American culture, Trachtenberg reveals that the presence of these market-based identities did not develop until the late nineteenth century, and for a time capitalist ideas on what it meant to be American were in conflict with more communal visions of America that advocated for the equal rights of workers, such as unions or the Populist movement described by Lawrence Goodwyn. Trachtenberg finishes his monograph by using the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair—or White City—as a symbol of the victory of “the alliance and incorporation of business, politics, industry, and culture.” Trachtenberg backs up his arguments by using a variety of secondary sources, folktales and other contemporary fictional stories to try and highlight cultural characteristics. Although there are no in-text citations, Trachtenberg includes a historiographical essay regarding his sources at the end of the book.

Charles Calhoun attempts to set the record of the Gilded Age by pointing to more recent scholarship that portrays the period as being less influenced by the popular narrative of political corruption and more affected by public policy and partisan affiliation.

[Dan Gorman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent collection of essays on the Gilded Age and the United States's transition from a regional to a national, industrialized economy. Trachtenberg captures the effects of incorporation throughout society. In rough sequence, industrialization led to the need for more raw materials, the rise of private corporations with shareholders, the proliferation of such corporations, the standardization of time, the government's favorable business connections under successive Republican presidents, the shift from Americans laboring at home to consuming goods from stores, and the first efficiency experts. A variety of cultural responses ensued. Bourgeois Americans championed their corporations while still clinging to some Victorian beliefs, particularly edifying entertainments and the patriarchal family. Wealthy women became active in museums, but their talk of spreading art to the working and middle classes belied the elite standards of taste encoded within museums. Others flocked to the Chautauqua movement, which mixed lectures and rustic activities to forge a middlebrow and middle-class identity, linking republicanism and industrial progress. Still other Americans, upset with the trend of industrialization, withdrew into antimodern art and spiritualism. Workers joined the Knights of Labor, American Federation of Labor, the Farmers' Alliances, and the People's Party, pursuing varied reform (or revolutionary approaches). Overall, Trachtenberg makes the persuasive claim that incorporation dominated the Gilded Age, but the transformation of the economy provoked strong pushback. This book illuminates the major cultural cleavages of a tumultuous age. Good for classroom use, general introduction to the Gilded Age, and Ph.D. studies (when read in concert with the works of Jackson Lears, Richard Bensel, and Warren Susman, to name a few historians).

[Alan Kolok · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I first started to read this book, I was disappointed. The print face was bad and hard to read and the style of the writing was dense, formal and a little stuffy. There were references to people and events of the day in the book that if you did not know ahead of time would be completely confounding. Knowing a bit about the era, I decided to read it anyway, and pledged to read 10 pages per day with the intent of finishing the book in three to four weeks.

I finished in 10 days.

Once I got into it, I found gem after gem embedded within. There would be three or four pages that were quite academic and stiff, then a piece that was so informational or thought provoking that I had to put the book down for a second and think about for a few minutes. That was a very pleasant surprise.

The chapters on western expansion, on labor and on mechanization were eye-opening and the parallels with much of the book and our current history is interesting.

As others have said in their reviews I thought the first four chapters told a nice story, the last three less so. If you have the patience to read this book, (I almost did not) then it will reward you with some very interesting and insightful material. You also just might find yourself looking at our modern society through a different lens.

[Laura Houlette · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written in 1982, this book gives an interesting overview of US social and cultural history from the end of the Civil War through the beginning of the 20th century. The ills of the Gilded Age seem familiar: a new relationship to labor and a resulting struggle for economic security, increasingly large divides in wealth and class, the impact of new communications technologies and forms of discourse, and governmental corruption to name a few. My favorite chapters (if you want to cherry-pick, and I think you should) were the ones on the railroad and westward expansion and the chapter on the politics of culture.

As far as reading for pleasure goes, I found it hard to get through; the American Studies style tested my attention span (how long can one paragraph be? what is the topic sentence here? the main idea?), but the information I gathered was interesting and, perhaps also useful as we navigate our current times?

[Martin Herbordt · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title and summary are completely misleading. Has nothing to do with the business aspects of the incorporation of America. Rather, it’s about art and writing related to this period. For example, the first chapter describes “the West” – but from the point of view of books written about it. The author is clearly clueless about much of economics and business. After the second of five sections I only skimmed the rest.

[Enrico · Rating 3 out of 5]

"More like the Incorporation of WHITE America." - Literary critic Paul Schmitt

[anonymousreader]

to-read

[Greg Akins · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little rambling and encompassed a lot of peripheral topics. But exhaustive and detailed.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alan Trachtenberg's The Incorporation of America is a fascinating cultural analysis of Gilded Age America. The work is fully deserving of the praise and recognition it has gained over the years. Trachtenberg weaves the concept of incorporation throughout the diverse topics of Westward movement, violence against Native Americans, mechanization, capital and labor, urban development, the growth of middle class cultural values, realism, and the 1893 Columbian Exposition. It is densely analytical but remains an impressively readable narrative through its logical organization and smooth transitions. I found the book more useful for the insights it provides into the specific topics of each chapter and for how much it reveals about why the United States is the way it is today. The overall idea of "the incorporation of America" is brilliantly conceived and effectively binds together the book's broad scope into a digestible argument, but at times the connections between the topic at hand and the word "incorporation" and between the varied uses of the word "incorporation" felt tenuous. I will undoubtedly return to this book for a closer reading, as it draws connections between so many historical trends and events toward which my interest gravitates. Perhaps upon closer reading I will more fully understand the multifaceted meaning of "incorporation" that Trachtenberg employs and constructs. If I ever research or write about any of the topics Trachtenberg addresses, the extensive and updated bibliographic essay at the back of the book will be an excellent source for discovering secondary literature.

Favorite quotes:

"If the Southern system of chattel slavery had obstructed industrial progress, provoking a civil war, so the Indian system of communal ownership had inspired resistance to Western expansion; it, too, required destruction, and then a policy of 'reconstruction' of the defeated natives into an image of their victors: their languages and costumes, their names and religion, their laws regarding work and property. By the 1890's, then, the Indian had been incorporated into America no longer simply as 'savage,' a fantasy object of ambivalent romantic identification or racial hatred, but as 'lowest order,' outcast and pariah who represented the fate of all those who do not work, do not own, do not prefer the benefits of legal status within the hierarchies of modern institutions to the prerogatives of freedom and cultural autonomy" (34).

"Just as the private home emerged as a pervasive image of freedom, of refuge, so that freedom seemed more and more linked to goods produced elsewhere: goods representing... that market from which the home seemed a refuge" (129-130).

The department store as "a pedagogy of modernity" that "present[ed] goods as if they represented something more than themselves" and "sold along with goods lessons in modern living" (131-132).

"What may strike us as ironies are instead contradictions held in momentary balance- not a confusion of values, as historians have suggested, but an effort to incorporate contrary and diverse values under the unity of a system of culture in support of a system of society" (216).

"The final message of the Fair concerned the method of making such a future: through a corporate alliance of business, culture, and the state. But another part of the message was precisely to keep that alliance aloof, not so much hidden and disguised but above reproach, beyond criticism. And, for this function, art and culture served simply to dazzle the senses..." (217-218).

"In the glow of the White City, Populism looked as grotesque as the notion of direct rule by 'the people' seemed now a nonsensity" (220).

"In sum, White City seemed to have settled on the question of the true and real meaning of America. It seemed the victory of elites in business, politics, and culture over dissident but divided voices of labor, farmers, immigrants, blacks, and women" (231).

[Cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an early (well, mid year) front runner for best book I've read all year. It is also one of the first books I've read that I purchased solely based on an Amazon.com recommendation. Kudos to you Amazon.com, faceless computer program you may be, but you DO recommend good books. I'm quite sure I could have lived the entire rest of my life and never had any one recommend this book to me in causal (or non-casual) conversation.
Trachtenburg, a Professor of American Studies, picks up where authors like Leo Marx and Henry Nash Smith left off: Trying to analyze the ways in which America became the nation it is today. Like Smith in "Virgin Land" and Marx in "The Machine in the Garden", Trachtenberg ranges across disciplines (literature, economics, sociology, etc.) to develop a nuanced thesis. Although he approaches his thesis ellipitcally (in true American Studies fashion), it is hard to deny the power of his observations. In its simplest terms, Trachtenberg attempts to show the way in which the corporation became the dominant force in shaping American identity.

Importantly, he does not treat this development as a foregone conclusion. THrought the book, he develops the idea of a counter definition of America, one that draws on the tradition of Indian culture and American Populism, to show how much the corporation had to overcome in order to dominate America's definition of itself.

Along the way, he tackles not only the history of the corporation itself, but the way business took over the political system and the way corporate america co-opted the artistic elite. It is this last observation, which Trachtenberg describes via his incredible analysis of the "White City" at the Chicago World's Fair, that I found most revelatory.

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Incorporation of America," indeed anything by Alan Trachtenberg, is a classic text in American Studies. That said, today it feels a bit dated and myopic-- particularly on questions of race and class. Trachtenberg defines incorporation broadly to include many kinds of social change and corporate organization. Interested more in the level of meaning and understanding, Trachtenberg performs rhetorical analysis of the era's texts (including visual art) to discern how historical actors understood events. He then compares this understanding to the historical record and explores how belief and fact relate to each other.

The book is Organized by theme, Trachtenberg examines the dominant myths/symbols/conflicts of Gilded Age America: labor and capital; the West; Realism; the 1893 World's Fair; machines and mechanization; high v. popular culture; and urban life. In each of these chapters, he identifies how signs of progress also included their opposite. The chapters also expand the bounds of the theme. For example, in the chapter on urban life, Trachtenberg also talks extensively about the role of newspapers in creating a sense of alienation from the real by presenting contemporary events as spectacle.

The book includes a variety of interesting and valuable insights. His use of novels, poetry, popular journalism, and other sources is particularly inspired. However, "The Incorporation of America" ignores race and almost completely ignores gender. This oversight is particularly strong in the sections on department stores and labor culture. Likewise, he brushes over the role of science and medicine in creating a class of socially-oriented professionals.

[Ann Mcelligott · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age" was published in 1982 and reissued in 2007 with a new introduction and a revised bibliographic essay. Trachtenberg explores how the industrial revolution and the expansion of the capitalist system influenced culture in the United States. Each chapter explores a theme of social history in light of the changing images and myths shaping the changing culture: Westward expansion, mechanization, the separation of labor and capital and the emergence of three classes - working, middle, and elite; the rise of the metropolis; political change and the emergence of parties of reform and protest; and the literature and the evolution of realism in fiction. The final chapter is the White City about the World's Columbian Exposition as the "symbolic terminus change from a community based on equality to one based on consumption. Professionalism provided a new form of identity. Top-down hierarchies dominated many various aspects of common life. Agrarian and mercantile society became and industrial metropolitan society. Election campaigns became sales campaigns, and politics became a business, and candidates were subordinate to the party bosses and money. I found the book fascinating and well written. The changes during Gilded Age are the foundation of the present era. Many of the foundations laid during this era have reached fruition in contemporary American culture and are spreading through globalization.

[B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Trachtenberg gets kind of lost here. He's really interested in discussing a lot of culture and a little bit of politics, but using the culture to make a point about politics. It doesn't come across as related as he thinks it is, both because it's too cursory and because of some other reasons that I'll never take the time to ascertain. Like there's a lot of mentioning of the fight over who's going to the architect of the Chicago World's Fair. So what?

There's definitely has a lot material here if you wanted to figure out what part of the 1870s interested you the most.

[Vicki · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting argument. Analyzes the development of corporate America and the conflict of cultural values that emerge. I particularly like the last chapter on the White City which is used as a culminating case study to tie the author's argument together. The Colombian Exposition in Chicago is a fascinating event to research. Even if you aren't interested in reading this book a search online for it will reveal the world of conflict that existed during the Gilded Age.

[Alison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. It looks at the Industrial Revolution in the United States through the lenses of culture. Provides really interesting insight into the use of spectacle to cover up the darker side of industrialization. A little wordy and lacks foot notes which is frustrating for a history student but a good read none the less.

[Kristin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating look at the role that incorporation has had on the politics and culture of America. A "classic" book (first came out in 1982), _The Incorporation of America_ deftly traces the roots of what Ike later called "the military industrial complex" and the ways in which "democracy"/"culture" shifted as terms to mean "power"/"hierarchy." An engaging read.

[Alexandro Guillen · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting study of the factors which contributes to the transformation of the United States during the latter part of the 19th century. This book examine the origin of the conflict between individualism and corporation; a conflict which "still persists".

[Humphrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A classic of cultural history, I was surprised at times at this book's nuance: the power of incorporation (and the corporation) as a framework lies precisely in Trachtenberg's repeated claim that its language informs both sides of major postbellum debates in politics, economics, and culture.

[matt Sandler · Rating 5 out of 5]

thoroughly good, lightning fast read, and an ample perspective couldn't recommend a better story of 'the great barbecue.'

[Cliff Lorick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book. Easy to read and informative.