No place on the face of the Earth, in the history of the world had ever changed
as fast as 19th century America. And I think Americans felt the whole floor
underneath them had given way. It's a period of cyclonic growth and tremendous
industrial and technological change. Every year there's a whole plethora of
inventions coming on line that dramatically changed the very nature and quality
of life -- the telephone, the telegraph, all of Edison's inventions,
culminating in the phonograph and the movies and I mean it's all happening at
the same time. There's just an explosion of growth and a lot of people felt
they had lost their moorings literally.
The turn of the century is a time of crisis as well as opportunity, and the
country's just been rocked by a series of major industrial conflagrations --
the Pullman Strike, the Homestead Strike. There's massive agitation that's
beginning against large corporations. They're starting to come under the eye
of muckrakers and reformers, and a lot of the sores and scars of
industrialization are being exposed. And it's a time of great searching. I
think it's a wonderful moment in the time of the country because we're, for the
first time, I think, getting to the second and third layer of what we really
are, you know, what's the undergirding of this country.
What all this change bred I think, more than anything, is a sense of anxiety,
and the anxiety translated into the question, "Can we bring these forces under
control?" "Can we continue to shape our social lives?" The economy is taking
care of itself, it seems. Technology seems almost a spontaneous force with a
power and life of its own. But can you build real human communities in this
fast-changing industrial and technological world? Can you preserve the best of
the past in terms of our laws, our social, customs, our mores, our sense of
neighborhood and community? Can these things be kept alive and given a new
sense of resurgence in an age of tremendous technological and social change?
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