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This article examines turn-of-the-twentieth-century US world’s fairs and the postage stamps that were issued in their honor. The fairs celebrated the progress of industrial civilization, in part by anchoring themselves to a historical origin point (such as Columbus’ voyages), and the post office designed the accompanying stamps to commemorate a historical story deemed to be nationally significant. Both the origin point and the history associated with it were located within a time-space matrix defined by prior processes of mapping the national territory and standardizing time reckoning within it. The commemorative stamps were sold on the fairgrounds, where they could be postmarked to locate them precisely in time and space as souvenirs of what would become past events that would have value in the future. These overlain commemorative practices reveal how the raw materials of history—time and space—have to be manipulated before the history-making practices of modern societies can even begin.

Max Lerner argues that America is a new and distinctive civilization rather than merely an offshoot of the West, but he fails to use the term "civilization" in the same way as other scholars; his own usage is not consistently adhered to, and he unjustifiably equates America with the United States. Nor does he succeed in isolating a style of civilization genuinely peculiar to the United States. The spread of industrialism portends a world-wide industrial civilization and outdates both cyclical theories of history, such as Toynbee's and Spengler's and the very concept of individual civilizations.

Studies in the nature of fatigue led to similar inquiry in regard to monotony and to the question of morale, more specifically industrial morale. What is needed to sustain morale is a body of industrial folkways. The modern factory is not a society. Industrial fatigue and lack of morale are due to some interference or failure to preserve the organic and social balance. What is true with regard to industry applies also to industrial civilization generally. Increasing mobility and industrial expansion have broken up the traditional order and have not permitted the establishing of a new one. The ills of modern industrial civilization are cultural, not political, and are incident to the existing industrial regime.