The Good Old Days: They Were Terrible!

Anyone who thinks the government should get out of their lives should read this book. Anyone who thinks that business, free from the repressive strictures of government regulation, will do the right thing should read this book. Anyone who doesn't "believe in science" should read this book. Anyone who thinks that unions destroyed America should read this book. Anyone who thinks that the "Good Old Days" were all "Father Knows Best" and "Leave it to Beaver" should read this book.This book is a nice little compendium of what life really was like before science, technology, unions, government intervention and equal rights movements made this country what it is today. Personally, I found little in it that I didn't already know. I've never had a hankering for the "Good Old Days" as I'm quite fond of things like running water, improved medical (especially maternal) care, vaccines, the 40 hour work week, the right to vote, livable wages, retirement benefits and social safety nets, not to mention luxuries such as cars and air conditioning. I've never particularly wanted to be fired by my employer after getting injured on the job and have no means of paying for medical care or supporting myself or my family. But perhaps that's just me.Otto Bettmann uses numerous photos and drawings from his pictorial archives to illustrate each page showing the ills that beset Americans in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The book is organized into eleven chapters delineating broad areas of American life, including, for instance, "Work", "Health" and "Education". Within each chapter are subsections, usually only a full-page spread each, detailing aspects of each area. For instance, the "Health" chapter includes subsections on Doctors, Epidemics, Mental Health and Addictions. Each full-page spread is roughly 50% pictures and 50% text on average.By necessity, each topic is covered only briefly and Bettmann touches only the surface of each. Each topic could easily encompass a full book in its own right, so the information in this book is naturally sketchy and somewhat cherry-picked. This at times leads to some hyperbole that makes old-time life seem even worse than it was. For instance, I highly doubt that every school, or even the majority of schools, fit the profile that Bettmann portrays: underpaid, unprofessional teachers who brutally managed their classrooms of ill-behaved urchins while failing to actually teach them anything. If that were the case, this country could never have made so many of the advances in science, health and international relations that it has. But it is not Bettmann's purpose to present an in-depth and unbiased account of Victorian American life, but rather to counter the prevailing idea that life in the "Good Old Days" was superior in most or all respects to modern life.This book should give pause to anyone who thinks that the solution to modern problems lies in reducing or eliminating "the government" or "unions" or "the media" or "public education" or even "liberals". Bettmann documents how old-time businessmen viewed workers are mere cogs in their machines - resources to be "exploited" like any other. Landlords viewed tenants as simply a source of money with no obligations due in return. Reforms that we now take for granted were hard fought for by unions and other social groups and enacted by the force of law - legislative as well as judicial.Not that unions or government were a panacea or that either was exempt from its own corruption, of course. Bettmann returns again and again to the issue of government and police corruption, especially Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall, although he also mentions similar corruption in Chicago, Philadelphia, New Orleans and other cities. To the extent that such abuses have ended, it has been largely through the force of "public outcry". Bettmann doesn't really explore this idea, but if you think about it, what fuels public outcry? How does the average citizen know about what is going on in order to cry out about it? The answer is, of course, the media. Before the advent of television news, the way most Americans got any news was through the newspaper (and later, radio). Reporters had to ferret out those stories and report them to the public in order for the public to get involved in the governing process. News media, of course, are subject to their own biases and corruption, which is why strengthening, rather than weakening public education is so important. Each group - business, government, labor, and the media, are all intertwined and interdependent. No one group is inherently good or inherently bad, but each needs constant supervision and checks and balances from the others. Our country doesn't grow from weakening any one or favoring one over the other, but from strengthening them all equally.I recommend this book to any teenagers before they embark on adulthood, and to those already in adulthood who may not be fully aware of the warnings of history.

The narrative here would be Charles Dickens than Jane Austen. Back up ... it's even more of a crapsack world in all it's filth & disease. The Victorian Era (1840 - 1900) was far from romantic for the "great unwashed". If this book stays in print, I hope it attracts more people who want progress over MAGAt values

This is a look at what life was really like before the current level of engineering and technology. Are you concerned about the emissions from cars and trucks, and wish that we could return to horses and buggies? Then think about crossing streets covered in a thick layer of manure! And it wasn't just horse manure: "The pig in the city was a paradox---an element of rural culture transposed to urban life. Pigs roamed the streets rooting for food, the stink from their wastes poisoning the air. Because they ate garbage, the pigs were tolerated to a degree in the absence of adequate sanitation facilities. ..."Don't think that by just staying off the streets you could avoid it : "During dry spells the pounding traffic refined the manure to dust, which blew 'from the pavement as a sharp, piercing powder, to cover our clothes, ruin our furniture and blow up our nostrils.'"But perhaps you feel that this was mitigated by the availability of wonderful "organic" meat and produce; after all, chemical fertilizers and pesticides were virtually unknown in those days. "In the absence of electric refrigeration, perishable goods were subject to the whims of the weather. Meat and fowl for sale were simply hung on racks or placed on market counters. The New York Council of Hygiene reported in 1869 tha the foods thus displayed 'undergo spontaneous deterioration...becoming absolutely poisonous..."Nor were folks in the country spared from the misery, as the book illustrates. Get a copy and read about this and a lot more. You will be glad that you are living now and not then, our current problems notwithstanding.

I have to laugh at those reviews who seem so defensive about the merits of 19th century America. Being a younger nation with vast areas of wilderness and rough frontier, Americans have always felt culturally defensive with what was viewed as the "mother country" as well as the rest of "snobby" Western Europe. The Industrial Revolution had a head start in Europe/Britain - Problems generated with more people in a smaller area sometimes occur there first but lead to solving problems that Americans take longer to feel the effects of. European cities faced some of the same squalor and not all immigrants found the promised land here. Today, we continue that defensive attitude..example Because we generally have had cheaper gas, we have neglected public transport, conservation, and energy smarts until recently.. In some ways Europe is ahead of us in many aspects of those issues. Unpatriotic NO.. Hoping the US would wake up and stay cutting edge. YESYes we are a nation of immigrants but we also have a long history of those already here looking down on the newest wave of citizens, especially if they are culturally different. The US has always had a confict between ideals and reality. We aren't perfect, never were and are still looking to perfect the system. This book is NOT meant to be a scholarly read but many of the sources are primary ones from US publications and give one pause. Critics with blinders on prove that we continue to repeat the past in some ways as some issues in the book are nothing new they just reappear in different ways. One critic referred to "polluted beaches" we have them now!!! I used this book in my classroom as most US History general texts have minimal space to present the full story. Their surface survey leaves little room to explore the richness of the human condition and the stories of ordinary people which is always the most interesting and easiest to relate to .

Ein sehr polemischer Report über die Zeit nach 1990. Leider wurde es nichts mit einem besseren Sozialismus- wohl auch Dank Gorbatschows Verrat an der Idee. Was danach kam ist leidvoll bekannt. Erstaunlicherweise merken die sog. bürgerl. Medien nichts davon und delegitimieren die DDR nach 30 Jahren immer noch, so als wäre von dieser Krieg, Massenarbeitslosigkeit, totale Überwachung (s. NSA und Helfershelfer vom BND), Berufsverbote usw. ausgegangen.

Good read. True colors you dont see on masterpiece theatre.