The Good Old Days--They Were Terrible! Book

Yesterday, I picked up this book at The House of Seven Gables in Salem, Massachusetts. I really should have picked up a copy of The House of Seven Gables itself, but I figured I'd never get around to reading it since I'm terrible about reading the classics. This one I knew I would read.

It only took me a day to read, which is quite quick, even for me. But there are loads of illustrations, and the text is brief.

However, by the time I hit the middle of the book, I felt like I was being walloped over the head with pessimism. Yes, I know the system was broken throughout much of the 19th century, with crooked politicians and doctors unaware of germ theory and kids being forced to work long hours for meager pay and food being adulterated with horrible things. But while it's true that we shouldn't recall those more simple days with rose-colored glasses, I have a really hard time believing they were that horrible to everyone. While people didn't enjoy the terrible smells of the horse manure littering the busy city streets, it's what they knew and were used to. It's not like someone dropped a 21st century person down in the middle of the fetid streets of Victorian New York City, rancid with decaying meat and the aforementioned manure and the lack of proper sewage and any fresh air.

I was also surprised at the vitriol he aimed at the frontier lands. Yes, the Wild West was lawless, and probably quite ill-smelling and fetid in its own right. But I've also read Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series, and while I do realize she romanticized a lot of it, she did seem to have a rather happy childhood -- her father dragging her mother and sisters around when he gets bored with a place notwithstanding. They do without quite a lot, but they still had a childhood, not simply as farm drudges who worked from dusk to dawn without any way to broaden their minds. Bettmann writes that "farm children were notoriously immature not as the result of an evil design but because the rigors of family survival made adult demands on their bodies and left their minds undeveloped" (56). I have a feeling Wilder would take umbrage at such a statement, considering that her childhood on the prairies was definitely not privileged, yet she grew up to write a series of novels that are still in print and well-beloved by several generations of Americans.

Most of the illustrations are informative, but I find them a bit suspect in their origin. Most are political cartoons, which are usually exaggerated to make a point and to make their viewers think. Were conditions really that terrible, or were the cartoonists showing how dangerous things could get if something weren't done about the situation at hand?

Also, the nature of the way in which Bettmann chose to write his book gives very little detail to any particular ill of the time. He gives quick blurbs, a few well-chosen quotes (that are never explained; they are simply dropped in their entirety into the prose), and makes a sweeping generalization that is usually quite negative.

I understand that Bettmann's goal was to disillusion the American public a bit from their wishing for the "good old days," but I feel like he swung too far to the other side of things. They weren't the good old days, it's true, but neither were they truly that horrible.