The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again

 

Robert Putnam, “The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again,” Simon and Schuster, 2020, 339 pp.

This very thorough educational book, by the author of Bowling Alone, describes the journey from the end of one Gilded Age (1890), through the upswing to a more equal society, culminating in the mid-60s, and then the descent into another Gilded Age:  this journey is viewed through four basic analytical lenses—economics, politics, society, and culture.  Until reading this book, I had believed that the New Deal and WWII together constituted the central pivot point of the ‘before’ and ‘after’ of the twentieth century.  However, from the perspective of this book, twentieth-century American history pivoted toward another Gilded Age in the 1960s.

The author additionally devotes a separate chapter to race and gender to show how these trends were experienced by traditionally excluded groups as we traveled from one “I” period (Gilded Age) through a “We” ascent and then a descent back to the current “I” era.

 In other words, the story of the American experiment in the twentieth century is one of a long upswing toward increasing solidarity, followed by a steep downturn into increasing individualism.  From “I” to “We,” and back again to “I.”  As I write this the 2020 election returns are predicting a narrow Biden win as president.  This means that over 70 million people have voted for Trump, providing a theme I believe fits well into this book.

My Notes:

Pg. 8:  The US in the late 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s was startlingly similar to today.  Inequality, political polarization, social dislocation, and cultural narcissism prevailed—all accompanied, as they are now, by unprecedented technological advances, prosperity, and material well-being.  (The 125-year journey from the Gilded Age to the present Gilded Age is described by an arc remarkably similar to a bell-curve, with the tails beginning in 1890 and ending in 2019 that trace Economic, Political, Social, and Cultural trends.  The apex is in 1970—then the arc begins to fall to the present day).

Pg. 10:   A great variety of measures shows that on the heels of the first American Gilded Age came more than six decades of imperfect but steady upward progress (until mid-1960s reversal) toward greater economic equality, more cooperation in the public square, a stronger social fabric, and a growing culture of solidarity.

Pg. 11:  In the mid-1960s the six-decade-long upswing in our shared economic, political, social, and cultural life abruptly reversed direction.  Between the mid-1960s and today—by scores of hard measures along multiple dimensions—we have been experiencing declining economic equality, the deterioration of compromise in the public square, a fraying social fabric, and a descent into cultural narcissism.  We have recreated the socioeconomic chaos of the last Gilded Age and replaced cooperation with political polarization.  We allowed our community and family ties to unravel to a marked extent.  Our culture became far more focused on individualism and less interested in the common good.  While we have made important progress in expanding individual rights, we have sharply regressed in terms of shared prosperity and community values.

Pg. 22f:  Economists have shown that economic prosperity has been remarkably constant at 2 percent per year since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution with the only deviation since 1871 occurring during the Great Depression when GDP per capita fell nearly 20 percent in four years.  The central factor for this steady trend appears to be technological and educational progress, fostered by both public and private investment.  The specific technologies and forms of education that have been most relevant have varied across this century—from high schools and telephones and automobiles in the first half of the period to universities and microchips and biotech in the second half.  The American economy chugged relentlessly upward, decade after decade, powered primarily by technology and education.  Also, within barely one century the lifespan of the average American lengthened by three decades.

Pg. 29:  As late as 1910 fewer than one in every ten young people received a high school degree, but within barely five decades that measure became seven in ten, as public high schools sprouted in communities across the land.  This led to a remarkable increase in the productivity of American workers, accounting for the lion’s share of overall economic growth in this period and to an increase in upward mobility, because universal high school education leveled the playing field.  Then America took its foot off the educational gas pedal in the mid-60s.  Only as the twenty-first century opened did the incidence of high school graduation begin once again to rise and is perhaps 5 percentage points higher than it was a half-century ago.

Pg. 31:  The attending-college-revolution occurred somewhat later in the twentieth century and at a more measured pace.  College graduation edged slowly upward from about 3 percent in 1910 to about 8 percent in 1950 to about 33 percent in 2010 (more women than men now graduate).  Among white men, college-going accelerated in earnest in the early 1960s and within a decade spread to women and nonwhites, as well. By the early 1980s, both the gender and the racial gaps had begun to narrow. 

Pg. 37:  No facet of the first Gilded Age had been more glaring than the extremes of wealth.    Even in 1913 the wealthiest 1 percent owned 45 percent of the country’s total wealth, rising to 48 percent during the Roaring Twenties.  In the following decades, however, their share was more than halved to 22 percent, in large part by financial regulation and progressive taxation on income and estates, though in part because of redistributive spending. 

Pg. 40:  Over the four decades between 1974 and 2014, inflation-adjusted annual market income fell $388 for those at the 20^th percentile (the bottom fifth), rose $5,232 for those at the national median, rose $75,053 for households in the top 5 percent, rose $929,108 for those in the top 1 percent, and rose $4,846,718 for those in the top 0.1 percent.

Pg. 53:  Studies suggest that one-quarter of the post 1970s decline in income equality could be explained by the fall in unionization.  Unions are another important example, like the high school movement, of a “we” social innovation from the early 1900s whose development of the ensuing six decades contributed to the Great Convergence (equality) and whose decline after mid-century contributed to the ensuing Great Divergence (inequality).

 Pg. 59:  Up to about 1980 government actions on both taxation and spending tended to enhance equality, whereas after 1980 tax changes tended to increase inequality, but spending changes tended to decrease inequality so that in total, taxes and spending since 1980 have modestly reduced income inequality, buffering the decline in equality that would otherwise have been even steeper.  Importantly, however, most of this expanded spending represents the growth of middle-class entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare: these are mostly older Americans in the middle 40 percent of the income distribution, not the bottom 50 percent.

Pg. 62:  Deregulation of financial markets began in the 1970s, under the influence of free-market economists.  It is estimated that this deregulation alone accounts for 15-25 percent of the total increase in income inequality during the Great Divergence.  In the past Gilded Age,  then as now, the issue was clearest in the most technologically advanced sectors—railroads, telephones, iron and steel then; the internet and pharmaceutical giants today.

Pg. 71:  In recent decades polarization has largely occurred along the familiar left-right, liberal-conservative ideological dimension.  On the other hand, party conflict in the late nineteenth century was rooted in the Civil War and in regional economic differences—the agricultural South and West vs. the industrial Midwest and Northeast.  Prohibition was a major dividing line in American politics until the 1930s, when it was effectively removed from the national agenda by repeal.

Pg. 77:  On average, the nine major New Deal reforms—the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the National Industrial Recovery Act, the National Housing Act, the Works Progress Administration, Social Security, the National Labor Relations Act, and the Fair Labor Standards Act—were supported by 81 percent of congressional Democrats, but also by nearly half of congressional Republicans.  This degree of bipartisan collaboration contrasts sharply with party politics today.

Pg. 83:  The 1960s and early 1970s was a period of flux in party politics.  The Democrats’ move to the left on civil rights, gender rights, and social rights coupled with the Republicans’ incitement and exploitation of the white backlash, to the civil rights victories produced ever-greater social, cultural, and political polarization.  Southern Democrats left the Democratic Party over civil rights legislation, just as liberal Republicans were marginalized by their party’s shift to the right on those same issues.  Both parties' centrist members were weakened, racial conflict was the cause.

Pg. 84f:  In the aftermath of Watergate, Vietnam, and the myriad other conflicts of the late 1960s and early 1970s, polarization had more issues than racial conflict to divide the country: Big government; abortion and religion; the environment; education; charter vs public schools.  These numerous issues provided vehicles for increased polarization.  It has recently been argued that the most significant fault line in the second decade of the twenty-first century in America is not race, religion, or economic status but political party affiliation.  The increasing affective polarization has influenced even attitudes to intermarriage.  Between 1960 and 2010 opposition to one’s offspring marrying an out-partisan rose from 4 percent to 33 percent among Democrats and from 5 percent to 49 percent among Republicans.  People are increasingly choosing their partners based on political affiliation, even more than on the basis of education or religious orientation.

Pg. 103:  Trust in government plummeted from 77 percent of Americans in 1964 to 29 percent in 1978 and today oscillates between 15 and 20 percent.

Pg. 110:  Social solidarity (membership in civic associations, churches, unions, and even family formation) was at a relatively low point during the first Gilded Age, began to rise during the Progressive Era toward a high point in the 1960s, and then declined steadily into the second Gilded Age.

Pg. 112f:  Between 1870 and 1920 civic inventiveness reached a crescendo unmatched in American history.  Half of all the largest mass membership organizations in American history—the fifty-eight national voluntary organizations that ever enrolled at least 1 percent of the adult male or female population—were founded in this period.  However few were added after 1910,  but the organizational seeds planted from the Gilded Age into the Progressive Era proved exceptionally hardy throughout the next six decades.  Some of these organizations include from the Red Cross to the NAACP, from the Knights of Columbus to Hadassah, from Boy Scouts to the Rotary Club, from the PTA to the Sierra Club, from the Gideon Society to the Audubon Society, from the American Bar Association to the Farm Bureau Federation, from Big Brothers to the League of Women Voters, from the Teamsters Union to the Campfire Girls.  It’s hard to name one not founded during this period.

Pg. 120:  By 1950, civic engagement as measured by membership and involvement in a wide variety of groups—religious organizations, sports groups, charitable groups, unions and professional groups, neighborhood associations, hobby groups, parent groups, book clubs, youth groups fraternal organizations, veterans organizations—was very high by any standard.  However, membership began to fall and by 1970 was behind the population growth.  By 2000 the results of the massive postwar boom in joining had been entirely erased.  By 2016 more than a century’s worth of civic creativity had vanished.  (Many of these organizations today involve writing a check, not attending or participating in functions.)

Pg. 127:  Religious institutions have long been the single most important source of community connectedness and social solidarity in America.  Even today, roughly half of all group memberships are religious in nature and roughly half of all philanthropy and volunteering is carried out in a religious context. 

Pg. 133: Church membership rose gradually but steadily during the first half of the twentieth century from about 45 percent of the adult population in 1890 to about 60 percent on the eve of WWII and back to 50 percent by 2016.  (Today, only about 28 percent actually attend services.)

Pg. 162:  In summary, the broad trend in social solidarity over the last 125 years, combining the trends for civic engagement, religion, unions, family, and social trust, shows that except for a pause in the 1920s and early 1930s, Americans became steadily more connected socially from the 1890s to the 1960s, but then virtually all measures show a steady decline in social connectedness over the last half century.  The last half-century of social solidarity decline follows a virtually uninterrupted boom and ever-increasing prosperity in the quarter-century after WWII.

Pg. 201:  By the end of the nineteenth century the hope that Reconstruction would bring about racial equality was little more than a bitter memory.  Under the banner of Southern Redemption, violent oppression of Blacks raged in the South.  Some four hundred blacks were lynched between 1868 and 1871 alone.  White dominance was augmented after 1870 by restrictive measures such as the Black Codes and the disenfranchisement of Blacks through poll taxes, literacy tests, and election fraud.  Plessy v. Ferguson (1896, ‘separate but equal’) dealt a final blow to hopes of genuine equal rights.

Pg. 216:  Smith v. Allwright, (1944), overturned the Texas state law that authorized parties to set their internal rules, including the use of white-only primaries. The court ruled that it was unconstitutional for the state to delegate its authority over elections to parties in order to allow discrimination to be practiced. The Democratic Party had effectively excluded minority voter participation by this means, another device for legal disenfranchisement of blacks across the South beginning in the late 19th century.  (Note: the fifteenth amendment in 1870 legally gave the vote to black males (but not to women, white or black).

Pg. 221:  The Great Migration:  Beginning around 1915 and continuing until roughly 1970, some six million black Americans—a large fraction of all black Americans—fled the violent oppression of the Jim Crow South to the Northern industrial cities and the West.  By 1970 47 percent of Blacks lived outside the South.  In 1915 it had been only 10 percent.

Pg. 238f:  In 1968, just months after Dr. King was killed, Alabama governor George Wallace ran for president and captured 13.5 percent of the popular vote (nearly 10 million votes).  Both parties now understood the emerging dynamic that henceforth grasping the critical balance of power meant appealing to a growing white-backlash.  As the 1970s wore on, politicians increasingly understood that while Americans could abide the slow, steady, and separate progress of black Americans; but when progress demanded a reorganization of power structures, reallocation of resources, reformation of cultural norms, and genuine integration, backlash would ensue.  Since the early 1970s white support for policies that ban discrimination and legal segregation in the realms of schools, public accommodations, and employment has trended down (fitting into the switch from “We” to an “I” society.)

Pg. 252:  By 2017 women received 57 percent of bachelor’s degrees, 59 percent of master’s degrees, and 53 percent of PhDs.  Women now vote at a rate 4 percent higher than men.

Pg. 278:  In 1960 a woman could not open a line of credit if unmarried, or without her husband’s signature, if married.  In many states, women were excluded from jury services, and in still others they could not obtain a no-fault divorce or legally access contraception.  

Pg. 287:  The I-we-I curve (the journey from one Gilded Age to another) does not appear to be driven by economic inequality: rather, economic inequality, especially wealth inequality, seems to be a lagging indicator of social change.  In fact, all four indicators seem to have moved in unison, none serving as a first cause.  (P. 293:  Big government is also a lagging indicator, not a cause.  Also, globalization does not appear to be the cause).

Pg. 299:  The changes in America between roughly 1960 and 1975 were so head-spinning as to be palpable to most people living through them.  In such diverse realms as popular music, fashion, the arts, race relations, sexual norms, gender roles, drug use, political institutions, religious practice, and consumption habits, rapid and highly visible transformations took place in this period. 

Pg. 317:  The ‘Progressives’ ultimately put in place reforms and innovations that form the basis of American society we know today.  The secret ballot, the direct primary system; the poplar election of senators; the initiative, referendum, and recall; women’s suffrage; new forms of municipal administration; the federal income tax, the Federal Reserve System; protective labor laws; the minimum wage; antitrust statutes; protected public lands and resources; food and drug regulation; sanitation infrastructure; public utilities; a vast proliferation of civic and voluntary societies; new advocacy organizations such as labor unions, the ACLU, and the NAACP; the widespread provision of free public high schools; and even the spread of public parks, libraries, and playgrounds all owe their origins to the efforts of a diverse array of Progressive reformers.

Pg. 335:  Today “Progressive” proposals may seem as radical to many as did the Progressive proposals that were adopted in the early part of the twentieth century: universal health insurance; safety nets for the elderly, the jobless, and the disabled; progressive income and estate taxation; environmental regulation; labor reform; curtailing the overreach of big business monopolies; gender equality; and campaign finance reform are being promoted.    

Addenda:  My personal experience attributes much of the loss of community to the 1960s consolidation of school systems. Once a community loses its schools, that community dies.