Things Were Not As You Thought They Were

Past Imperfect

• Molly Worthen
• May 13, 2010 | 12:00 am

Courtesy of Library of Congress

Made in America: A Social History of American Culture and Character

by Claude S. Fischer

MOLLY WORTHEN on CLAUDE FISCHER'S NEW STUDY OF AMERICAN HISTORY AND CULTURE

Americans have certain ideas about the good old days, especially in this nostalgia-inducing era of mortgage foreclosure, Wall Street meltdown, and healthcare crisis. Sure, between the advance of civil rights and modern technology and medicine, most would agree that life has generally become easier, longer, and more just. But wasn’t there a time when Americans lived debt-free? When our needs were simple and our luxuries few, and Christmas was about loved ones instead of a capitalist carnival of consumption? When families cared for an ill grandma themselves, instead of abandoning her to public welfare or a nursing home? Back then—it is never clear when, exactly—weren’t Americans more devoted to their kin, more faithful, less violent?

The answer, Claude Fischer says, is no. His masterful and rewarding book covers three and a half centuries of values, needs, ambitions, and feelings, and debunks a host of common misconceptions about American history. Personal debt has actually decreased over the decades: many of the earliest white settlers came to the American colonies as indentured (and deeply indebted) servants. In the nineteenth century the average American owed twice his annual income, 25 percent more than Americans owed one hundred years later. And early Americans were not terribly good at caring for the aged, needy, and ill. Eighteenth-century magistrates “warned out” abandoned slaves, single pregnant girls, the blind, mentally ill, and the neglected elderly, deporting them to wherever they came from—as long as it was someplace else.

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