So far as the economic condition of society and the general mode of living and thinking were concerned, I might claim to have lived in the time of the American Revolution.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Much of what we consider the American way of life is rooted in the period of remarkably broad, shared economic growth, from around 1900 to about 1978.
I grew up in austerity in the 1940s and 1950s.
From an early period, I had the happiness to rank among the foremost in the American Revolution. In the affection and confidence of the people, I am proud to say, I have a great share.
For the better part of my life, I was always trying to manufacture somehow what I would consider 'living.' Because I grew up sort of upper-middle class and I didn't relate so much to that as a life, and I wanted to really find 'living.'
Well, I certainly wouldn't want to live in the 18th century myself, or the 19th either, for that matter.
Since the middle of the twentieth century, our understanding of the American past has been revolutionized, in no small part because of our altered conceptions of the place of race in the nation's history.
I'm not an historian and I'm not wanting to write about how I perceive the social change over the century as a historian, but as somebody who's walked through it and whose life has been dictated by it too, as all our lives are.
We live in this era that has benefited from the Industrial Revolution, and we live with a kind of luxury and plenty that even all but the poorest of Americans live with a kind of sensuousness that was unimagined by medieval kings. But in order to get to this point, a lot of people had to suffer in really terrible ways.
Living with my grandmother in Bath, I sort of thought I was living in the 19th century. My grandmother was someone who, in a way, was rather defiantly trying to live a pre-World War I existence.
In 1900 Americans on average lived for only 49 years and most working people died still on the job.