Revising The Response to Industrialism:  Changes in Perspective over Forty Years,  1955-1995

Samuel P. Hays

When I retired in 1991 my first project was to revise The Response to Industrialism, which covered the years from 1877 to 1914. These, of course, are the years we call the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era. When the University of Chicago Press asked if I would undertake a revision as part of their desire to update several books in the History of American Civilization Series, I readily agreed.  I did so with some instinctive understanding that much about the book would undergo revision, but just what I did not have clearly in mind.  Much had changed in the profession, and much had changed in the way I thought about that period in American history.  As I worked my way through the first edition  the details of those changes became more clear.  And so I prepared an introduction to the revision that outlined for the reader just what had changed in my thinking over those forty years.	1
The Press, however, balked at the result. They said that my introduction was more a matter of historiography that would appeal to an audience of professional historians rather than to the students to whom they intended to market the book. And so my statement went into the files.  When Walter Nugent wrote me a year ago about accepting this honor and suggested among the possible topics those of autobiography and reflections on how the field had changed over the course of my career, the audience which the Press had rejected earlier was now at hand. And so today I propose to bring those two suggestions of Walter's together around the theme of changes in both my own thinking and in the profession as I revised The Response to Industrialism. Here was an opportunity to present the perspective on the revision that I had sought to do a decade ago.	2
I did not embark on the task  without some preparation, for on several occasions I had tried my hand at syntheses like the Response for different venues. One arose from the fact that I had taught the second half of the survey course on several occasions. At the University of Pittsburgh we had the practice of the senior faculty trading off in teaching the survey for several years, and I had had two stints at this, the most recent one during the last half dozen years of my tenure there. Hence, although I had not focused especially on the years from l877 to l9l4 which was the time period of the Response, I had given considerable thought to the details and the themes that such a large synthesis would require. So I did not come to the revision out of the blue as an entirely new venture.	3
My strategy in undertaking the revision was to tear apart the first edition, page by page, place it on the stand and, with hands on the computer keyboard, follow each page with my reaction as to what should survive the test, what should be discarded and what should be changed. Piece by piece revision took place. My talk today is a description of just what went through my mind as this process unfolded.	4
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