The Search for Order, 1877-1920 | Robert H. Wiebe | Excellent synthesis of this period

The Search for Order, 1877-1920 | Robert H. Wiebe | The Search for Order: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

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The Search for Ord...

	The Search for Order, 1877-1920 Robert H. Wiebe Hill and Wang, 1966 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 7 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

At the end of the Reconstruction, the spread of science and technology, industrialism, urbanization, immigration, and economic depressions eroded Americans' conventional beliefs in individualism and a divinely ordained social system. In The Search for Order, Robert Wiebe shows how, in subsequent years, during theProgressive Era of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, Americans sought the organizing principles around which a new viable social order could be constructed in the modern world. This subtle and sophisticated study combines the virtues of historical narrative, sociological analysis, and social criticism.

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Excellent synthesis of this period

This book provides an excellent, and now classic, synthesis of the cultural, intellectual, and political evolutions during this period of industrialization, urbanization, and economic change. Highly recommended to scholars and highly accessible to amateurs.

The Search for Order: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

In The Search for Order, Robert Wiebe examines the changing American society between the end of Reconstruction and the end of World War I, and the struggle of the emerging middle class to compartmentalize and understand the changes around them. America experienced a significant amount of change between 1877 and 1920. New states entered the union, the frontier closed (or so was accepted at the time), a rural to urban shift produced large and disorganized cities, and the country emerged from isolation to become a world power. Depending mainly on secondary sources, Wiebe successfully argues that progressive reformers were not simply seeking a cleaner government, nor were they merely a group of displaced elite seeking to regain power, but a middle class attempting to establish new values.

Robert Wiebe creates an interesting social and structural study of the United States during a dynamic period of growth and change. While the progressive period was not sustained into the 1920s, the lasting impact is in the programs and legislation that nurtured a sense of continuity and functionality, and provided an understandable structure that the middle class masses could understand and thrive in. The Search for Order is a very readable and in-depth study of an important time period, and although the structure and placement of the final two chapters are questionable, the book remains essential reading for one trying to understand this, and succeeding time periods.

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Interesting look at the growth of a giant

Historian Robert Wiebe examines the USA as it emerged from mostly rural society to an industrial giant during the years 1876-1920. The author shows that the USA grew from a series of largely independent, mostly Protestant, small-town communities at the end of Reconstruction, to a more interlocked, diverse, and urbanized society by the end of the First World War. As the USA grew into the world's foremost power, diffuse forces arose to both lead and to give the changing society a sense of order. Those forces included industrialization, professionalism, scientific management, progressive reform, bureaucracy, and urbanization. In short, most elements of modern society. Not that this melding process was perfect - much division, racism, and inequality remained - but the melding process was a powerful and successful one.

We studied this book in a college history class and it was one of the best we read; not as stiffly written as some histories and very informative.

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A "Revolution in Values" Thoroughly Explained

In "The Search for Order," Robert Wiebe provides perhaps the first unifying overview of the American Progressive period. Beginning with the Reconstruction era, Wiebe presents the United States as "a nation of loosely connected islands." The economic panic of 1873 began what Wiebe describes as as a "soul searching" period for these homogenous, stable, primarily Protestant "island communities." America was noticeably changing from simple, locally-oriented communities guided by small town ethics to complex, interdependent societies seemingly controlled by distant and impersonal forces. Wiebe explains the ways in which Americans sought to regain some sense of order as this rapidly changing nation rumbled through the first decades of the twentieth century.

A "revolution in values" took place during this "search for order." Wiebe traces a pattern of "bureaucratization" in such diverse areas as science, philosophy, business, education, journalism, law, medicine, and social work (although Wiebe neglects the influence of arts and technology). A new middle class emerged as certain occupations such as law, medicine, and teaching became professionalized. Journalism became more scientific. Social workers began to establish their distinct field. "Idealists" and "utopianists" advocated the idea of progress by stages. A "business unionism" developed establishing a set of values for organized labor and carrying "the obligation that union executives become experts in their particular industry" (125). Factories turned to scientific management. With the establishment of the American Farm Burea, even farmers allowed their former image as "the people" to fade in favor of an agricultural business image. Such bureaucratic solutions were also attempted on an international level with the League of Nations (curiously, foreign policy makers seemed quite confident of America's superior place in the world despite domestic confusion). In other words, when the new middle class joined the Progressive movement, reform had altered its meaning from results to procedures.

The success of this bureaucratic integration was made evident by the ability of the nation to mobilize for the First World War. However, as Wiebe maintains, the successes of the Progressive movement actually helped lead to its downfall. Achievements such as financial reform following the panic of 1907, workmen's compensation laws, and policies under Woodrow Wilson's New Freedom "dulled the reforming urge" (212). Former Progressives began to defend the status quo as the nation entered the 1920s. What is more, the Progressives had "constructed just an approach to reform, mistaking it for the finished product" (223). Although Wiebe does not fully explain the reasons Americans turned to bureaucratic trends in their "search for order" and is often guilty of over-generalizing, over-intellectualizing, and inundating his work with an excessive use of abstractions, he does make a strong case that there was a "revolution in values" during the Progressive era. These values of Progressivism are with us today, including an active executive begun during the administrations of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.

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