America’s Third Great Awakening — Part I
1886 to 1928
Joseph F. McCormick and David A. Palmer, Ph.D.
The corporatization of America
The sophisticated and ingenious financial and legal systems that had created the massive British East India Company (EIC) — indeed “the mother of all modern corporations” — migrated to America in the early 19th century.
The EIC with its private army and navy of over 60,000 mercenaries and privateers had been held in check for 250 years by the British crown and parliament who held its charter. Parliament finally dissolved the EIC in 1874 stemming from its abuses of power leading to the 1857 Indian Rebellion which not only cost as many as 150,000 Indian and 40,000 English lives, but shook the very foundations of the Imperial order (which, to that date, had been de facto administered by the EIC.)
The American “corporate children” of the EIC began to mature and consolidate with the U.S. Civil War, in particular, with the opportunity presented by the massive 1862 and ’63 Railroad Land Grants (128 million acres freely given to six railroad corporations by 1871), the 1863 National Banking Act which created a centralized system of nationally and state chartered banks all issuing a centralized “greenback” for the first time, as well as congressional approval for consolidated mining (Mining Act passed in 1872) and timber extraction operations on public lands.
In 1886 through a headnote on a supreme court ruling, penned by a railroad president serving double duty as a supreme court clerk, “corporate persons” alongside natural persons were granted full rights of citizenship under the 14th Amendment, intended to give “equal protection” under the law to former slaves. With this seemly innocuous event, the utopian “City on the Hill” dream of the “ideal commonwealth” was nearly, and may still prove to be, checkmated. With this act the dream of generations of investors in the EIC was finally achieved: legal protection from control and effective oversight by the national sovereign.
This little noticed ruling gave any individual the opportunity to create a ficticious legal “person” that could survive its founders; grow to nearly any size through merger and acquisition even larger than a country; possess no heart, soul, nor conscience, motivated only by growth in profitabliity regardless of ethics; yet be “endowed” with the same rights and “equal protection” under the law as a natural human being. These unnatural “entities” have the potential to become ungovernable, unkillable “beasts” depending on the jurisdiction that issues their charter.
At a governable scale and when under the firm authority of the jurisdictions that charter them, corporations play a valuable civilization building role. Investors are conservative by nature and want assurances their investments will produce a return. For this reason they don’t generally give money to natural persons, they prefer to invest in or loan money to corporate persons supported by a system of legal and financial protection. This was the model that proved so successful in the founding in the late 1500’s of the “joint stock company” around which the Imperial Project was built (see our previous essay on this topic.)
The corporate person is not dependent on the fragile life, intelligence, or moral character of a single charismatic leader. Even though corporate founders are often bright innovators who organize then build a company with “sweat equity,” investors know that stable growth is achieved over time through professional management. Under this stable investment model complex, prosperous public/private economic, financial, legal ecosystems could be created.
The uniquely American economic ecosystem of the 19th century, centered primarily in the industrial mid-west and north eastern states, became the development model for the rest of the world in the 20th century (just as Silicon Valley was to become the high growth model for the 21st century.)
Resurgence of women’s movement, rise of populism
As America began to un-freeze from the shock and trauma of the Civil War and the massive transfer of wealth — 128 million acre railroad land grants and National Banking Act, examples both begun in 1862/3 in depths of war distraction — populist social movements burst forth.
Their aim became to offset the power of the rapidly consolidating railroad, steel, newspaper, and mining corporate monopolies many of whom were tied back to and intermarried with the American WASP and English noble families whose interests were inextricably tied to the success of the, by now, American Imperial Project (see our essay introducing this concept.)
Along with this great period of industrial development with its inestimable public value and benefit came abuses. These abuses of centralized power were met with massive opposition from decentralized populist organizations like the Farmers Alliance (Northern, Southern, and Colored), the Grange, the Greenback Party, and Chautauqua populist movement. The Knights of Labor became the largest and most extensive association of workers in 19th century America.
“Organized in 1869, the movement grew slowly in the 1870s, then surged in the 1880s, reaching a peak membership approaching one million in 1886–1887 with Local Assemblies spread across the country in more than 5,600 cities and towns.”
Groups began organizing themselves by whatever means were available and engaging in strikes, like the Pullman’s strikes, in industrial sabotage, and in massive public education campaigns to engage millions in an effort to re-balance power.
The Grange movement began in 1868 as a fraternal organization and spread to nearly a million members in communities across the entire 48 states. Because of its membership and leadership structure which allowed women, it was the one of the effective balances to the railroad monopolies who controlled transportation corridors. Grangers not only got legislation passed to regulate railroad fees, but supported temperance, women’s suffrage and the direct election of Senators, too many of whom were appointed by railroad interests.
The Chautauqua movement was a similarly widespread community based organization that relied on a family friendly format of weekend meetings with entertainment and “speechifying” to educate and organize. They generated the “Populist Party Platform” of 1892 and served as the host for politicians from all parties up through the 1920’s.
The populist movements were entwined with the women’s suffrage, temperance and child labor movements. Women as a strong moral compass for the family saw the consequences of the rising social injustice, concentrations of wealth, and centralization of systems. Women began to get involved in greater and greater numbers, particularly in the more independent minded north and the pioneering west. They took on issues that were not only different from those that interested men, but in very different ways from men. They were “includers” by nature and tended to create spaces for conversation.
This was the success of the Farmers Alliance, Grange and especially the Chautauqua movements. They applied the principle of attraction. They created festive atmospheres where the whole family could participate and those not interested in discussing politics had plenty to do. Music, educational speeches, children’s activities, crafts and fairs. At the same time real politics was going on. Women tended to listen more than speak and sought to hear from as many points of view as possible. They were very concerned about issues that affected “the mothers’ economy.”
Democracy and decentralization
The right to vote became a cause that swept the minds and hearts of women. They were ready to be included and demanded to be heard, not by shouting, but through persistent organizing and skillful, patient targeting of decision makers. Women understood democracy in a way men didn’t. They knew, in its essence, it was about wisdom, the wisdom of crowds.
One practitioner and a leading researcher of this deeply American, deep democracy process was Mary Parker Follett who along with many in the populist movement saw democracy in terms of collective will and intelligence, quite distinct from the narrow, electoral terms it has been redefined as today.
“If many people have defined democracy as liberty and equal rights, others have defined it as “the ascendancy of numbers,” as “majority rule.” Both these definitions are particularistic. Democracy means the will of the whole, but the will of the whole is not necessarily represented by the majority, nor by a two-thirds or three-quarters vote, nor even by a unanimous vote; majority rule is democratic when it is approaching not a unanimous but an integrated will. We have seen that the adding of similarities does not produce the social consciousness; in the same way the adding of similar votes does not give us political will. We have seen that society is not an aggregation of units, of men considered one by one; therefore we understand that the will of the state is not discovered by counting [1]. 1. This view of democracy was well satirized by some one, I think Lord Morley, who said, “I do not care who does the voting as long as I do the counting.” This means a new conception of politics: it means that the organization of men in small groups must be the next form which democracy takes. Here the need and will of every man and woman can appear and mingle with the needs and wills of all to produce an all- will. Thus will be abolished the reign of numbers.”
Democracy had ancient roots in the matriarchal past when the method of governance was collective. In a matriarchy the community decides where to go, what to do. In a patriarchal hierarchy the strong, smart men, or even, man decides “who benefits.”
American women were eloquent advocates for the emergence of this method for decision making. Not to supplant male leadership and methods of efficient decision making, especially in times of crisis, but to compliment it by catalyzing an inclusive, creative dialogue about the issues most on peoples minds that would broaden the range of policy options available to the deciders.
Democracy, in their mind, like a good marriage, doesn’t compete with the hierarchical republican process for power. The republican and democratic processes are two aspects of a whole, the inner/domestic and the outer/international. The opening up of policy options then the narrowing down toward policy de-cision (de-cide originally meaning “to cut away.”) Women knew that like a good household, there is the need for both and it takes each sides respect for the other to govern in a sustainable way.
The standard Republican criticism of democratic governance — like the misogynistic criticism of women — however, is that it is chaotic, inefficient and can tend toward wallowing in feelings or analysis paralysis. The counter criticism of patriarchal republican governance — like the misandristic criticism of men — is it harsh, rankist/racist, hyper-rational, and excludes all the intelligence and wisdom of everyone that can’t fit around the small decision making table of the “good ole boys” (often, nowadays, including token women and minorities required to act like men to rise in rank and status.)
Republican hierarchy also tends to thrive in a crisis, the condition that calls forth heroism — the ideal virtue of the mythopoetic man, the immature “boy king” who views crisis, real or manufactured, as a narcissistic “opportunity to shine.” Hierarchy, therefore, creates self-justifying crises, even to the extent of starting or at least not avoiding avoidable fires/wars. The unspoken, unconscious reasoning goes: “You see, to navigate this crisis requires strong, tough minded, heroic, male leadership…everyone else, get out of the way.”
Democracy, on the other hand, if not balanced, can indeed tend toward what many men of order — and industrialized women — are terrified of, “mob rule”: a swelling, pulsating, even hysterical mass of ephemeral emotion lacking all reason and logic that moves large numbers in dangerous, destructive directions that seem to satisfy a short term need.
But this is only the case when the feminine — creative, intuitive, inclusive, communitarian — side of our political nature lacks the protection and support of the masculine — reason, order, righteousness, individualistic. Lacking healthy support from either “side” (inside actually) each will tend towards its survival strategy. Rebellion, anarchy, chaos on the one hand or tyranny, “everyone sit down and shut-up…let me think” on the other.
Women’s values entering politics en masse also meant that the election process had to change. Up through the 1890’s the field of acceptable candidates was selected by male party bosses at all levels. It was a closed, clubby system — managed informally by the gentlemans’ clubs of America — that ensured that those who got their name on the ballot had already been pre-screened for their support of major party positions.
Late 19th century women were not invited into “smoke filled rooms” (decode the psychology: cigars, like tall buildings, having a phallic quailty; smoke emanating from masculine fire; and “puffing” a substitute for infantile nipple sucking) where candidates were chosen. Women therefore advocated for the creation of a more open primary process for selecting candidates where the wider body of registered party members could select the field of general election candidates.
One of the earliest efforts was made by progressive reformer, with strong suffragette backing and encouragement, Wisconsin Governor Robert La Follette. Follette drafted the first legislation to allow Wisconsin voters more say over convention delegate selection. The ‘bosses” allowed this concession because it still left all power in the hands of the two major parties which could be played against each other.
Parties like the anti-gold standard Greenback Party and the larger more effective Populist Party came the closest to disrupting two party control but both were effectively defeated through the old strategy of manufactured divide and conquer that has plagued our politics since just after the Washington administration.
“The Populists [were] split into two factions: ‘fusionists,’ who thought the party should merge with the Democrats, and Populists, who preferred independence. The fusionists prevailed, rallying behind 1896 Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan…” Source: A Brief History of Populism.
Byran, the lightning rod of the populists, not through an open primary process but through the power of his fiery, charismatic, scathing criticism of the aristocracy, gained the party nomination. Over the next twenty years as the movement’s “annoitned leader” he proceeded to suck the life and hopes out of it. He lost the 1896 election to Republican William McKinley and went on to lose two more in 1900 and 1904.” He was the Populist’s greatest “hope” — an election theme still used effectively today. He spoke all the right words, but he never had any hope of winning. He was always a false hope and the industrialists knew it. (It’s even conceivable he was kept alive by the newspapers and men of wealth as a sort of strawman, destined to disappoint.)
In addition to the decentralizing effect of the party primary process, women focused their efforts on a constitutional amendment to ensure U.S. Senators would be elected rather than appointed.
The U.S. Senate after the Civil War had become known as a “millionaires club” appointed by state legislatures through a corrupted back room process of nomination by men of wealth and party bosses. The 17th Amendment was passed in 1912 requiring popular election of senators. Once this happened there were strong elected advocates in Washington for progressive reform, a major victory for the progressive movement.
By 1900 the populist decentralization movement, one of the largest in the world, included: the International Workers of the World Union, the Progressive Party, the Populist Party, the National Women’s Party, the NAACP and the Socialist Party as well as smaller parties like the Greenback Party. This so alarmed those committed to the Imperial Project they overreacted with a range of “defensive” measures and with yet more aggressive centralization (see 1886 to 1928, Part II.)
Unity movement
At the same time as the division between insiders and outsiders, business interests and the progressives, capitalists and socialists was sharpening in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a discernible unity movement was emerging.
The mid-1840’s had witnessed the birth of a higher, more inclusive definition of unity, Joachim de Fiore’s unity of the Holy Spirit that transcended the earlier, more limited stages of the father and of the son (see our essay on this topic.) The “Second Great Awakening” of fifty years earlier, dormant during the drama and trauma of Civil War, reconstruction and recovery, gave rise to a full bloom “Third Great Awakening” not only in the form of a range of groups and parties supporting women’s rights, civil rights, labor rights, self-governance and democracy, but also a blossoming of fraternal organizations — many associated with the entrance of women into public life — “free thought” societies, esoteric spirituality groups, and “avant garde” art communities.
A wave of spiritualism arose in the late 19th century among groups like the Swedenborgians, Rosicrucians, Theosophists, Anthroposophists, Christian Scientists and many, many others. These tended to attract predominantly women who believed that direct, unmediated access to the universal Holy Spirit was possible and natural (capacities traditional suppressed by the church and denounced as witchcraft and occultism). Their spiritual experience gave them the commitment to the equality of men and women as “two wings of one bird.” Many felt science and religion could be reconciled through a proper understanding of “the reality beneath reality” and many found that emerging free thought fields resonated with their personal experience.
The link between the women’s rights movement and the spiritual movements was clear. Women are more sensitive, less ego-invested spiritual channels than men and tended to dominate the mediumship field. The messages and intuitions they received spoke in a higher language. They communicated with the Holy Spirit through spiritual practices that left many uninitiated into these “mysteries” skeptical as to their veracity.
Women led retreats and pilgrimages for people at all levels of society, including the aristocracy. People like Phoebe Hearst, the wife of Senator George Hearst, and mother of newspaper mogul Randolph Hearst, was an example of spiritually aware women who used their materially motivated husbands’ money to support spiritual exploration.
Included in this unity movement to bring forth a more holistic spirituality must also be considered the emergence of the new “relational” fields of social science scholarship. Fields of study like anthropology (emerging from the American Ethnological Society in 1842 and the work of pioneers like Lewis Morgan) and psychology (emerging in America from pioneers like William James writing in the 1890's) were brought forward by, primarily men, who seemed to have been inspired to more deeply and broadly understand individual and collective behavior, traditionally taboo topics restricted to interpretation by clergy.
One could also include the rise of avant-garde, modernist artistic expression that focused on nature, women and children as its main themes with its vibrant colors and etheric tones was an expression of the “Third Great Awakening.”
The French school of Impressionism, for example, spread to America in the late 19th century with artists like Mary Cassatt and Theodore Robinson. This “school” was rebellious toward industrialism and artistically critical of traditional social structures, which rejected and suppressed it (before seeking to coopt it decades later). It introduced often controvesial images of a more etheric reality beyond physical reality that left many critics mystified and judgmental. Its artistic explorations opened the door in the early 20th century for more abstract forms of art that reached deeper into the unconscious, individual and collective, to depict a more archetypal “reality.”
A final, unmistakable manifestation of the awakening of a broad-based, broad-definition unity movement at all levels of society was the visit of Abdul-Baha for 239 days in 1912.
Abdu’l-Bahá (1844–1921), the son of the Persian prophet and founder of the Baha’i Faith, Baha’u’llah (1817–1892), had only recently been released by the Ottoman Empire from a lifetime of captivity in the prison city of Akka in the Holy Land and exile from his native Iran.
The faith his father founded held as central to its teachings that resonated deeply with those held by the founders of the American “City on a Hill” and gave rise to the First, Second, and Third Great Awakenings: a future world commonwealth based on the Oneness of mankind; the equality of men and women; the reconciliation of science and religion; the progressive nature of Revelation; and the independent investigation of truth, among others.
The reception Abdul-Baha received, the range and diversity of speaking opportunities afforded, the seriousness of the press coverage, the dignitaries, statesmen, industrialists, and men of science that befriended him, the Christian and Jewish congregations that hosted him, can only be interpreted as an indication of the growing receptivity in the culture at large to the message he carried.
At the same time as this spiritual unity movement with close relationship to the other social movements — maybe even the source of inspiration for them — the wisest industrialists took careful notice.
As visions and dreams of international cooperation and universal peace among nations began to be expressed and gain audience in popular and elite circles (example: Lake Mohonk Conferences beginning 1895 leading to Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague), some heavily invested in the “business of war” — war in all its passive and active forms — were inevitably threatened. Such a world would no longer operate on the type of power they had been used to. The social control strategy of “manufactured disunity” would loose its leverage.
The Imperial Project’s reaction to the groundswell of awakening and the defensive strategies it generated will be the subject of our next essay, America’s Third Great Awakening, 1886–1928 Part II.
