Ohio History Journal

The OHIO HISTORICAL Quarterly

VOLUME 66 ?? NUMBER 3 ?? JULY 1957

 

 

 

 

Social History:

A Nation Announcing Itself

By PHILIP D. JORDAN*

 

 

 

Twenty-odd years ago, when the series entitled A History of

American Life seemed a shining new constellation in the heavens

of historiography, a caravan of wise men journeyed by day and by

night to Providence, Rhode Island, to stargaze. These priests of Clio,

ministering to a general session of the American Historical Associa-

tion, were carried away with adoration. They cast their eyes upward

to discern a "new" history--a history that was to broaden its base

by including social and cultural data, a history that stressed the

continuity of civilization, a history that extended the time concept

into the remote past, a history that "integrated the movements of

civilization with the problems of today."¹

Here, then, was a guiding light--an eternal beacon--which would

christianize the paganism of politics and bring a greater measure of

grace to Clio, for she would wear the mantle of humanism and

concern herself with seeking a better understanding of the relations

of man to man. Omens had long foretold the coming of the new

history. Signs were found in the entrails of Green's Short History

 

* Philip D. Jordan is professor of history at the University of Minnesota. Him-

self a social historian, he is the author of Ohio Comes of Age, 1873-1900 (which is

Volume V of The History of the State of Ohio, published by the Ohio Historical

Society in the early 1940's) and in the past a frequent contributor to the Quarterly.

This article is a slightly revised version of a paper read at the fiftieth annual

meeting of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association at Lincoln, Nebraska, May 3,

1957.

1 William E. Lingelbach, ed., Approaches to American Social History (New York,

1937), 2.

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230    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

of the English People and in McMaster's History of the People of

the United States. James Harvey Robinson and others predicted

the coming, and the faithful watched and waited. Indications were

apparent also on the continent.

By 1918 the general index of the publications of the American

Historical Association was listing contributions to both social

history and social conditions and making cross reference, for

example, to topics such as charity, crime, defectives, food, health,

and intellectual life. About the same time, Griffin's Writings on

American History--a slim listing, indeed, when compared with re-

cent volumes--devoted a section to social and economic history.

Under this catchall caption were included topics dealing with agri-

culture, forestry, commerce and industry, transportation, libraries,

population, printing and publishing, and life and manners. In this

last category only eight publications appeared. These ranged from

a social history of the American family and the eighteenth-century

theater to types of prairie schooners and historic needlework from

Mount Vernon. Not until rather recently--indeed, not until after

Grace Gardner Griffin's death--did the Writings separate social

and economic history. The present classification includes economic

history, social history, and cultural history. Intellectual history is

conspicuous by its absence, and this is rather cheering.

Almost overnight the new history became a vogue. And the

rapidity with which apostles of social history--the "new" history--

began to multiply and bring forth graduate students was amazing.

Those who were touched by the vision and who glimpsed the prom-

ised land, christened themselves, without benefit of clergy, social and

intellectual historians and diligently set themselves to investigating

the innumerable facets of American life. They also engaged in the

dissection of ideas, apparently in the faith that a library carrel

is a satisfactory substitute for a psychiatrist's couch. The patient

has been the American, and the areas under investigation and

analysis and scrutiny have been his mind and his intellect. No his-

torian, so far as I know, ever has been competent to conduct such

an analysis; and no social and/or intellectual historian has ever

made a satisfactory diagnosis.

Interpretation has been the yawning pitfall of the social historian.

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SOCIAL HISTORY          231

 

It is one thing, for example, to study the lyceum movement and

quite another to find its meaning to society; it is one thing to

examine the development of public health and quite another to

demonstrate its significance; it is one thing to attempt to appraise

the result of one individual's social philosophy upon another in-

dividual and something else again to demonstrate the impact of

the thought of either one upon society. The mere collection of

data without interpretation in social history is no more justifiable

than is the amassing of evidence without interpretation in political

history. The copywriter, perhaps influenced by Mr. Dooley, must

not have realized what he really said when he wrote the blurb for

one of the volumes in the American Life series: "Under the deft

hand of the author, the history of these seventy-three years ceases

to be an arid chronicle of constitutional development and political

controversy and becomes a living record of the life of the common

man."2

A living record is of slight value if the facts and trends and move-

ments can not be explained, are not explained, or lack meaning.

Students frequently complain that although social history is fascin-

ating and picturesque and lively, it also is akin to an Irish stew--

there are various odds and ends in it and it tastes good, but, they

inquire, what is it good for? What they really are saying, of

course, is that too much social history is too much like a descriptive

inventory or a bill of lading--individual items are listed, but why

are they there, what do they mean, what are they good for? What is

their relation to the whole of man's experience, including politics

and economics?

Let us take, for example, A Cultural and Social History of

Metropolis. This title obviously is fictitious. What do we find? There

are chapters given to the arrival of the first printing press, the

2 The quoted matter is taken from the copy on the dust jacket of James T. Adams,

Provincial Society (New York, 1927). The complete text of Mr. Dooley's (Finley

Peter Dunne's) comment upon history, found in any one of several standard editions,

is: "I know history isn't thrue because it ain't like I see ivry day in Halsted Sthreet.

If an wan comes along with a histry iv Greece or Rome that'll show me th' people

fightin', gettin' dhrunk, makin' love, gettin' married, owin' th' grocery man an' bein'

without hard-coal, I'll believe they was a Greece or Rome, but not before." He also

wrote: "Historyans is like doctors. They are always lookin' f'r symptoms. Those iv

them that writes about their own times examines th' tongue an' feels th' pulse an'

makes a wrong diagnosis."

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coming of minstrel and theatrical troupes, the wars between allopaths

and homeopaths, the manifestations of the religious spirit, the

descriptions of a variety of local lore and customs. We do not find

an explanation showing the impact of the press upon the com-

munity, we are not told of the relative merits of the conflicting

medical philosophies, we do not see how religious denominations

altered patterns of life, we are not informed of the significance

of the social customs. It is an imperative that social historians seek,

as best they may with what they have, to interpret, to give depth.

Lack of interpretation characterized the American Life series and

dimmed its brilliance. It has laid a palsied hand upon innumerable

authors since the faithful gathered to do homage to the new con-

stellation. It is still working its evil.

Among the chains which have shackled the social historian,

hindering him from  fresh approaches and interpretations, is the

nefarious "cult of the common man." Emphasis upon the common

man, not as a political entity but as a social being, it is interesting

to note, increased after World War I, an era which generally wit-

nessed a developing preoccupation with the American scene, not

only in history, but in other fields as well. A cultural nationalism

and a self-consciousness seemed to be working its will, expressing

itself in a self-centered search for our own folk-worth in arts

and letters and crafts and even in such vulgar and counterfeit

heroes as Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill.

This period of isolation and self-gratification, when we were

more concerned with collecting pressed glass than in assuming re-

sponsibilities in world affairs, provided a fascinating playground,

complete with antique toys and merry-go-rounds, for the social

historian. Like the nation which had turned its back upon the

League of Nations, the historian of social history began to ignore

European backgrounds and roots. A hundred-percent American,

seemingly caring little, if anything, for the Old World or for

Canada to the north of him or South America to the south, the

social historian frequently became so chauvinistic that he failed to

stress the continuity of civilization or to integrate peculiaristic more.

with the experiences of other people in other lands. It is not too

difficult to recall volumes that completely fail to make adequate

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SOCIAL HISTORY       233

 

reference to European roots and traditions. The American heritage,

in short, was bounded by the United States, and even today a picture

magazine which calls itself American Heritage is sometimes so

provincial and egocentric as to be discomforting. The pond has be-

come bigger than the sea.

The cult of the common man, in addition to overemphasizing

social trivia, stimulated the outpouring of "popular" history. No

one, I am sure, objects to history being well written. Indeed, one

of the characteristics of historians seems to be their inability to

write fluent, graceful prose. But well-written substantial history is

different from--and superior to--well-written diluted history. For

some reason or other, much of the new social history degenerated

through the years into popular history in the worst sense. This does

not imply, by any means, that all or even most social historians are

inept at communication or that they popularize trivia. It does mean

that all too frequently bone and sinew are sacrificed to froth and

foam. Sound social history is as much to be desired as sound

political or economic history.

With its emphasis upon the integration of the movements of

civilization with today's problems and its elevation of the common

man, the "new" history had an impact upon the nation's schools

that is revealing and startling. Schools of education were quick to

seize upon the new history. Here was an opportunity to subordinate

political history, to escape the discipline necessary to comprehend

parties, and to take the easy approach to understanding pioneer pan-

cakes. Educators discerned in the new history what has become

known as integration. They saw in this integrated concept what

some institutions of higher learning are approving today in so-

called "American Studies" curricula and departments. In short, the

"whole" of the American experience was to be comprehended.

Students were to integrate into a harmonious oneness history,

sociology, literature, economics, geography, political science, and

heaven knows what else. Here was another grand experiment in

isolationism. The social sciences, reported the Commission on the

Social Studies in 1934, "take as their province the entire range of

human history, from the earliest times down to the latest moment,

and the widest reaches of contemporary society, from the life and

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234    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

customs of the most remote peoples to the social practices and cul-

tural possessions of the immediate neighborhood."³

Perhaps this declaration, plus encouragement offered by the new

history, helps to explain why, in succession, history has become

social studies and social studies have become integrated studies, and

integrated studies have become no history. Perhaps this helps to

explain why pupils enrolled in a twelfth-grade course entitled

American History faced in a single semester the following units:

folk art, the communist menace, sewage disposal plants, the de-

pression of 1929, the tales of Bret Harte, social changes occasioned

by the automobile and hard roads, and abnormal psychology, in-

cluding a section on why parents do not understand their children.

This, I suppose, might be termed grass-roots culture because it deals

with the life and problems of the common man at the local level.

The new social history, manifested in such a fictional title as

Thought and Society in the Union, seems to have run away with

itself. It stampedes across the plains of thought like maddened

mavericks in a thunder storm. Racing uncontrolled in every

direction, it frequently tumbles to destruction over the cliff of chaos.

Politics and economics are subordinated or ignored, so that no

adequate frame of reference limits and gives meaning to social

and cultural factors. It is perfectly apparent that every man can

not be his own historian.

Despite the faults inherent in social history and despite the sins

of its advocates, social history has made contributions and has

demonstrated its worth. Not to mention its positive values would

be most unfair. The mere fact that the authors of the American Life

series sought to escape the bondage of purely political history and

to investigate cultural and social and intellectual facets of the life

of the people is of significance. They, to their everlasting credit,

did realize the need for a new history; they did recognize that man

is not exclusively a political animal; they did know that he was not

wholly an economic animal; they did see him as a person who

operated within a complex cultural web; and they did know that

 

3 American Historical Association, Commission on the Social Studies in the Schools,

Conclusions and Recommendations of the Commission (New York, 1934), 6.

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SOCIAL HISTORY       235

 

man is also a spiritual being. They did comprehend the influence of

the arts, and they did strive most diligently for originality of treat-

ment and freshness of material.

Perhaps one of the major beneficial results of the new history, with

its emphasis on more than politics, has been the stimulation of inter-

est in local history. I am only too well aware of the contempt held

in some quarters of history on the local level. Sometimes it is charged

that the scholar working in local history sees his subject only from

the center--whatever the center is--and not from the periphery,

whatever that is. If this means that the local historian does not

raise his sights above and beyond the near-at-hand, it is an unjust

criticism. Local history, it is true, may be so localized as to de-

generate into no history at all. No community is isolated politically,

socially, culturally, economically from other communities. The local

always is part of something large. An excursion through local history

is not necessarily a voyage to Lilliput.

If the dimensions of social history--however we define the term--

seem sprawling, vexing, and unmanageable, it is only because the

historian has broadened his vision, has quite properly become more

catholic in interest, has recognized the complexities of a fast-moving,

rapidly-shifting national culture. He is well aware that his field is

no longer divided into tight and isolated compartments. He knows

that no adequate political history can be written without reference

to the economic and the social and the intellectual. The integrated

fibre of even simple cultural patterns demands that the interpreter

observe both the part and the whole. This, of course, is no new or

startling view. It was put succinctly some years ago: "Despite in-

creasing division and subdivision in the areas and emphases of

historical knowledge in the last half century, the over-all inclusive

concept has survived."⁴

The concept, indeed, may have survived, but the difficulty has

been in translating the concept and transferring it to the written

page. The social historian frequently is overwhelmed and awed by

the amount of data in his chosen field. He knows what he would like

to do with his materials, but he is confused as to how he should do it.

4 American Historical Association, Annual Report, 1944 (Washington, 1945), I, 67.

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Perhaps this explains in part why no adequate social history of the

United States has yet been written. Publishers are clamoring for such

a volume. Yet how can it be produced?

It may be brought into print when historians realize once and for

all that in the United States there is no sharp division between an

aristocratic, intellectualized culture and a popular culture. There

have been in this nation no rigid and systematic schools of thought

so common in the intellectual structure of the Old World. American

culture is, and has been, radically different, for it possesses a unique

homogeneity. There has been a certain unification in the American

experience. Always we have striven toward a single culture, not

one of fragmentations. It is equally important to keep in mind, as

has been pointed out recently, that institutions have played a more

significant role than have ideologies.⁵ The social historian must not

forget or ignore Freud's statement that a society develops only from

inhibitions. And man will not curtail himself unless he feels the

sacrifice will bring success--a practical, materialistic reward.

Perhaps, then, social historians should place emphasis upon the

high-lowness of the nation's culture, upon institutional development

rather than upon isolated data, upon the practicability of success.

This is not the same as the inane studies which center about theories

of social progress. Once again, we are brought to the problem of

interpretation. Such a view suggests a pattern of approach which is

systematic and which focuses upon definite objectives.

Up to now social history, like Topsy, has "just growed." But its

gangling, awkward adolescence is about over. The pert and nimble

spirit of youth, to quote the Duke in Midsummer Night's Dream,

must face the discipline and responsibilities of maturity. It must

assume obligations if it is to attain a happy and successful old age.

Individual research, in many instances, must give way to cooperative

efforts. The social historian must comprehend that his segment

is a part of all history, that it does not stand divorced from economic

and political history. Big as social history is--and it seems destined

to grow ever larger--it does not warrant the assumption that it is

of worth merely because of size.

 

5 See, for example, Daniel J. Boorstin, "The Place of Thought in American Life,"

The American Scholar, XXV (1956), 137-150.

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SOCIAL HISTORY     237

 

Social history must organize itself and most assuredly spend as

much time, if not more, in interpretation as it does in collecting.

Indeed, I am not sure but that the result would be salutary if a

moratorium were declared on all new research and the time thus

saved be devoted to understanding and bringing together what has

already been written.

When we know what has been accomplished and what this means,

then perhaps we will be in a position to know what should be done.

We cannot announce ourselves if we do not know what we wish

to say.

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