It may be perilous for a member of the Society of Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era to propose, in the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, that we cease using the term “Gilded Age” as a label for the late nineteenth century. Since I admire Mark Twain, who famously coined the term in a novel that he cowrote with Charles Dudley Warner, such a suggestion feels disloyal if not downright un-American. But in struggling recently to write a synthesis of the United States between 1865 and 1905 (cutoff dates that I chose with considerable doubt), it became apparent to me that “Gilded Age” is not a very useful or accurate term. Intended as an indictment of the elite, it captures none of the era's grassroots ferment and little of its social and intellectual complexity. A review of recent literature suggests that periodizing schemes are now in flux, and a reconsideration may be in order.

Historians of the United States have for many decades termed the late nineteenth century the “Gilded Age.” No consensus exists as to when this period began and ended, or how it might best be characterized. Most textbook authors place the origins of the Gilded Age around 1877 and its demise around 1900. Few would deny that this period witnessed a host of epochal innovations that included the rise of the modern industrial corporation, the building of large-scale technical systems, including the electric power grid, and the creation of governmental institutions that were conducive to rapid industrialization. Yet the significance of these innovations remained a matter of dispute.

Before engaging the critiques and recommendations that Rebecca Edwards and Richard John have so forcefully and provocatively offered us, we should remind ourselves of what is at stake in this debate. And what is at stake is simultaneously “a little” and “a lot.” And that is because periodization schemes are as much a creature of academic sociology as they are intellectual and analytic constructs. As the several references to "textbook chapters" in these essays indicate, nothing is more central to the construction of American history as an intellectual and academic community than the textbook used in undergraduate survey classes.

In 1895, an elderly, tired, and creatively challenged Samuel Clemens embarked upon a worldwide lecture tour whose primary purpose was to retire the debt which had driven him into bankruptcy. His personal woes were largely ignored by enthusiastic New Zealand audiences, which packed the halls and reveled in Clemens as Mark Twain. Some of Twain's novels preceded him, but his success in New Zealand owed more to his stage presence than to his literary prowess. This essay shows how Clemens performed Mark Twain to bridge cultural gaps halfway around the globe. In doing so, it highlights reading differences in English-speaking lands and between social classes. It also casts light on Twain's underappreciated skill in live performance, shows him as a flexible figure responding to particular audiences, and underscores the ways in which aspects of his stage show anticipate the shift to a celebrity-based culture.

In January 1911, Senator Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin announced the creation of the National Progressive Republican League (NPRL). Historians have dismissed this organization as a vehicle for La Follette's challenge to William Howard Taft for the Republican presidential nomination in 1912. This article asserts that a primary purpose of the NPRL was to offer progressives around the country a set of principles that would provide the progressive movement with greater cohesion while allowing for continued diversity in local reform agendas. The NPRL's president, Oregon senator Jonathan Bourne, was renowned as a spokesman for the series of direct democratic reforms known as the Oregon System, which La Follette and Bourne placed at the center of the NPRL platform. Bourne argued that these reforms, focused on altering the way in which candidates were nominated or elected to office, campaigns were funded, and legislation was produced, would provide progressives with a national “foundation” upon which various state and local reform agendas could be constructed. During the campaign of 1912, the league became a casualty of the political and personal conflict between Theodore Roosevelt and La Follette, but Roosevelt's Progressive Party later endorsed most of its agenda, and all elements of the NPRL platform found some political expression before or after 1912.

Thomas H. Ince (1882–1924) was a popular motion-picture producer and director in the 1910s. He built his reputation and fortune by making feature films that appealed to middle-class tastes. In addition to his westerns and the epics for which he is best known, Ince made a number of social-problem films. Three of his films—The Italian (1914), Dangerous Hours (1920), and The Dark Mirror (1920)—are particularly interesting for how they illuminate the relationship between the American cinema and Progressive Era reform. A close analysis of these three films suggests ways that popular culture reflected the concerns of mainstream progressives and how these concerns shifted during the course of the decade.