industrial revolution research...

United States History and Geography SS0902Growth of Industrial and Urban America Lesson 1

Resource 1: US Industrialization Process in the Late 19th CenturyAdapted from: Acuña-Alfaro,Jairo. US Industrialization Process in the Late XIX Century.

The Natural Resource Endowment.

“At the beginning the combination of the land, a great natural resource to be exploited, together with a rapidly growing, able population, gave Americans a history of unprecedented overall economic growth”.--- Hughes, Jonathan & Cain, Louis P. (1998). American Economic History. Fifth Edition.

Addison-Wesley. United States. p.602.

INTRODUCTIONIn what ways did the available natural resource base influence American economic growth in the nineteenth century? . . . .

AMERICAN ECONOMIC GROWTH IN THE 19th CENTURYThe exceptional rate of growth of the United States in the XIX century, which leads it to catch-up with the Europeans leaders, especially the United Kingdom, and subsequently, to position as a world leader, may be related with the rapid assimilation of modern machines and tools of production. American economic growth was first devoted to the so-called ‘light industry’, as textiles, leather and foodstuff-producing. Later on, with the advancement of transportation and communication, came the development of ‘heavy industry’, with the construction of railroads, steam-boats, and the parallel coal, iron and steel-making industries. The distribution and commercialization of goods soon followed.

The direction of change in American manufacture is demonstrated by statistics. By 1913 the United States made 31.9 million metric tons of crude steel, compared with 35.5 for all Western Europe. The US also mined 517 million metric tons of coal, compared with Europe’s 493 million. And, by the 1880s businessmen and politicians in Britain were already acutely aware that the economic prosperity and political status the first industrial nation had enjoyed for almost a century was being challenged with steadily increasing effect.

In this case the United States was catching-up and forging ahead in the industrial lead, turning economic and political activities towards the new huge economy that emerged from the other side of the Atlantic. For example, Edison’s invention of the lamp was accompanied by the development and promotion of an entire system of generating, distributing, consuming and measuring electric power. In that sense, Edison “directed a team effort that produced a working lamp in one year and an entire commercial electric system in four”. It is an example of complete innovative process of research, development, manufacturing, finance, promotion, publicity and politics, to lay conduits in the first generating station in New York in 1882. Edison’s innovation was vital in the American and world-wide industrialization process. It provided a source of lighting and power that “altered urban living and transportation; changed the ways of the workplace; and gave rise to new industrial methods such as electrolytic processes for producing copper and other materials.”

Michigan Citizenship Collaborative Curriculum of 61www.micitizenshipcurriculum.org April 17, 2009

http://www.micitizenshipcurriculum.org/


INFLUENCE OF ABUNDANT NATURAL RESOURCES ON US GROWTHThere is no doubt the American economy had a privileged endowment of natural resources. If we compare the size of the country, it becomes clear. While the US territory covers 9,629,091 square kilometers, together, the UK, France, Sweden and Germany hold just 1,594,808 square kilometers. In addition, in comparing the US with other countries, relative to population, the US had a usually rich resource base. Indeed, it was short on labor and long on raw material. In that sense, the US industrialization process, especially, in the late 19th century, was confined mainly to its large access to natural resources and to the world’s largest domestic market.

Another fact that explains the growth of the US in late nineteenth century is what has been called ‘the logic of managerial enterprise’. The technologically advanced and capital-intensive American industries were characterized by a dual economic principle. They operated as economies of scale and economies of scope. Economies of scales refer to the economics principle that large plants can produce at a lower cost than smaller competitors, because the cost per unit falls as the volume of outputs rises. Meanwhile, economies of scope, refers when large plants can use many of the same raw and semi-finished materials and intermediate production processes to make a variety of different products.

The abundant natural resources of the country and the development of communication means, such as railroads, the telegraph and steamboats “made possible to speed goods and messages through an entire economy for the first time”. Furthermore, once precious metals were found they tended to dominate mineral extraction at the expense of everything else.

Finally, when thinking about American natural resource endowment, it is important to consider the ability of its citizens to innovate. Besides the large resources at their disposal, they chose industrial processes of scope, adding more value to the resources they inherited. For example, to make a technology like steel production work, Americans got useful insights into seeing exactly how Europeans did it, but successful steel production required that European methods be altered to fit local American conditions (e.g. the precise chemical composition of local ores and coal, etc.).

Early in the nineteenth century, Europeans knew what worked for their particular local resources, but did not know why. In contrast, by the end of the 19th century, the chemistry of steel making had been largely worked out and tacit knowledge of local conditions became less important. Thus Americans could know why things worked and could therefore tell what they could expect from any given inputs of coal and ore and how they could change production methods to suit what they had on hand. In addition, it is important to note that in the case of wood (particularly abundant compared with other materials, for example) it was widely used for houses, tools, furniture and transport equipment. As a matter of fact, “in 1860 American per capita wood consumption was five times that of England and Wales”. In 1860, the lumber industry was second only to cotton textiles in creation of value added and market value, as figure below shows.




Source: Adapted from: Acuña-Alfaro, Jairo. US Industrialization Process in the Late XIX Century. The Natural Resource Endowment. 12 Feb. 2009 <http://www.geocities.com/jaacun/USAIndustrialization.PDF> (citations to quotes omitted in adapted version).



http://www.geocities.com/jaacun/USAIndustrialization.PDF


Industrial Revolution Research Sheet

Topic of Research: ___________________________________________

Discoveries, Improvements, or Changes:

Impact on American Industrialization:




Research Websites

A) General (For All) The New Industrial Age. US History.com. 13 Feb. 2009 <http://www.u-s-

history.com/pages/h860.html>. “Industrialization and Reform.” History of the United States. The USA Online.com.

13 Feb. 2009 <http://www.theusaonline.com/history/industrialization.htm>.

B) Geography and Natural Resources “History of Steel.” Steel Manufacturing. Ball State University. 13 Feb. 2009

<http://www.bsu.edu/web/acmaassel/steel.html#History_of_Steel>. Introduction to Oil Industry. Oil Industry. 13 Feb. 2009

<http://www.petroleumhistory.org/OilHistory/pages/intro.html>. Textile Industry History. 13 Feb. 2009 <http://www.textilehistory.org/>.

C) Post-Reconstruction technological innovations or inventions Industrial Expansion 1865-1890. 13 Feb. 2009

<http://www.emayzine.com/lectures/indust~1.htm>. Carnegie and the Era of Steel. Outline of American History. From Revolution to

Reconstruction. 13 Feb. 2009 <http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/H/1994/ch7_p2.htm>. 19th Century Inventors. About.com. 13 Feb. 2009

<http://inventors.about.com/od/timelines/a/Nineteenth_3.htm>.

D) Changes in Transportation “Railroads in the Late 19th Century.” The Rise of Industrial America. The Learning

Page, Library of Congress. 13 Feb. 2009 <http://lcweb2.loc.gov/learn/features/timeline/riseind/railroad/rail.html>.

America on the Move. Smithsonian Institute. National Museum of American History. 13 Feb. 2009 <http://americanhistory.si.edu/onthemove/exhibition/>.

E) Immigration and Labor “Immigration to the United States.” The Rise of Industrial America. The Learning

Page, Library of Congress. 13 Feb. 2009 <http://lcweb2.loc.gov/learn/features/timeline/riseind/immgnts/immgrnts.html>

Eugene V. Debs, Union Leader. Debs Foundation. 2008. 13 Feb. 2009 <http://www.eugenevdebs.com/pages/union.html>.

The Triangle Factory Fire. Cornell University. 13 Feb. 2009 <http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/>.



http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/

http://www.eugenevdebs.com/pages/union.html

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/learn/features/timeline/riseind/immgnts/immgrnts.html

http://americanhistory.si.edu/onthemove/exhibition/

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/learn/features/timeline/riseind/railroad/rail.html

http://inventors.about.com/od/timelines/a/Nineteenth_3.htm

http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/H/1994/ch7_p2.htm

http://www.emayzine.com/lectures/indust~1.htm

http://www.textilehistory.org/

http://www.petroleumhistory.org/OilHistory/pages/intro.html

http://www.bsu.edu/web/acmaassel/steel.html#History_of_Steel

http://www.theusaonline.com/history/industrialization.htm

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h860.html

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h860.html


Industrial Revolution Graphic Organizer

Topic of Research Discoveries, Improvements, or Changes

Impact on American Industrialization

Geography and Natural Resources

Post-Reconstruction Technological Innovations or Inventions

Changes in Transportation

Immigration and Labor




Industrial Revolution Graphic OrganizerReference Guide

Topic of Research

Discoveries, Improvements,

or Changes


Geography and Natural

Resources

Iron ore

Coal

Oil

Lumber

Iron Ore: Used to create steel and pig iron. Also used for rails and spikes for the railroads, bridges, buildings, etc. Coal: Replaced wood in fueling the steam engine and machinery; Used in various industries including the steel industry.Oil: The ability to use a steam engine for oil drilling started an oil boom in the US. It also helped with the creation of the petroleum-refining industry. Transformed oil into kerosene and later gasoline for automobiles.Lumber: Used to fuel the steam engines that were used on trains, steamboats, and in industry for the new machines being invented that ran on steam. Impact: Created pollution in the atmosphere and the water system.

Post-Reconstruction Technological Innovations or

Inventions

Incandescent light bulb

Electrical Power Distribution

System

Telephone

Typewriter

Incandescent light bulb Perfected by Thomas Alva Edison in 1878 Electrical power distribution system in 1882This led to electric power to run machines in industry, community, and homes such as electric street cars, fans, and printing press Telephone - Invented by Alexander Graham Bell. It opened a new and more efficient form of communication that affected businesses and office work. Also created new jobs for women Typewriter - Developed by Christopher Sholes.


Transcontinental Railroad

Creation of the Transcontinental Railroad provided quick transportation from the east to the west coast. This allowed for expansion of farm land available due to the railroad being able to get goods to market in a reasonable time. It also lead to the creation of time zones so travel time would be uniform (adopted by Congress in 1918). It influenced business and industry because of the need for natural resources including iron, coal, steel, lumber, and glass. Government assisted in development of railroad system through a system of land grants to the railroads.




Industrial Revolution Graphic OrganizerReference Guide (continued)

Topic of Research

Discoveries, Improvements,

or Changes



(continued)Airplanes

Early Automobiles

Airplanes - Wright brothers, pioneers in flightEarly automobiles by Duryea brothersImpact - Changes in transportation stimulated growth of new businesses, created new markets, and resulted in the growth of towns. Food and manufactured goods could be distributed nationally. Railroads created new social, political, and economic ties among people spread across thousands of miles. To many Americans, a railroad connection promised new prosperity and new opportunities.

Immigration and Labor

Increased Immigration

Growth of Labor Force

Increased Immigration - Many immigrants came to the US in search of economic opportunities, facing crop failure, land and job shortages, rising taxes, and famine in their country of origin. Others sought personal freedom or relief from political and religious persecution. Nearly 12 million immigrants arrived in the United States between 1870 and 1900. During the 1870s and 1880s, the vast majority of these people were from Germany, Ireland, and England. The last two decades of the 19th century, however, saw increasing numbers of people coming from Italy and eastern Europe. Some 70% of immigrants arriving from Europe entered America through the port of New York City alone. Asian immigrants, primarily from Japan and China, arrived through west coast ports. Many immigrants settled near the ports of entry but others moved farther inland. They frequently had difficulty finding jobs and usually worked for less money than most other Americans. Perceived as “different” they were often viewed with distrust if not outright resentment by their native born neighbors. Labor Force – Increased immigration greatly expanded the number of skilled and unskilled laborers available. Immigration also resulted in increased urbanization as these workers tended to cluster in cities where work was available.




Business Attitudes, Practices, and Governmental EffortsEnabling Industrialists to Thrive

Laissez-faire philosophy

Social Darwinism

Government assistance for railroads

New forms of business organization

Corporations

Trusts

Vertical Integration

Horizontal Integration

Economies of scale




U.S. Western Railway Land Grants

Source: Railroad Land Grants. American Memory. Library of Congress. 13 February 2009 <http://memory.loc.gov/award/mhsdalad/120000//120033v.jpg>.



http://memory.loc.gov/award/mhsdalad/120000//120033v.jpg


Millions of Acres

Source: Millions of Acres. American Memory. Library of Congress. 13 February 2009 <http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=rbpe&fileName=rbpe13/rbpe134/13401300/rbpe13401300page.db&recNum=0>.



http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=rbpe&fileName=rbpe13/rbpe134/13401300/rbpe13401300page.db&recNum=0

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=rbpe&fileName=rbpe13/rbpe134/13401300/rbpe13401300page.db&recNum=0

http://memory.loc.gov/rbc/rbpe/rbpe13/rbpe134/13401300/001dr.jpg


Dual Column Notes: Rockefeller and Carnegie

Information on Rockefeller What I Think About Rockefeller

Information on Carnegie What I Think About Carnegie




Ida Tarbell’s Writings on Standard Oil and Rockefeller

Below are a few excerpts from the nineteen installments published by "McClure’s Magazine":

Rockefeller’s rise:The strides the firm of Rockefeller & Andrews made after the former went into it were

attributed, for three or four years, mainly to [his] extraordinary capacity for bargaining and borrowing. Then its chief competitors began to suspect something. Rockefeller might get his oil cheaper now and then, they said, but he could not do it often. He might make close contracts for which they had neither the patience nor the stomach. He might have an unusual mechanical and practical genius in his partner. But these things could not explain all. They believed they bought, on the whole, almost as cheaply as he, and they knew they made as good oil and with as great, or nearly as great, economy. He could sell at no better price than they. Where was his advantage? There was but one place where it could be, and that was in transportation.

The South Improvement Company scheme:For several days an uneasy rumor had been running up and down the Oil Regions.

Freights were going up. Now an advance in a man's freight bill may ruin his business; more, it may mean the ruin of a region. …

On the morning of February 26, 1872, the oil men read in their morning papers that the rise which had been threatening had come; moreover, that all members of the South Improvement Company were exempt from the advance. At the news all Oildom rushed into the streets. Nobody waited to find out his neighbor's opinion. On every lip there was but one word, and that was "conspiracy."…

For weeks the whole body of oil men abandoned regular business and surged from town to town intent on destroying the "Monster," the "Forty Thieves," the "great Anaconda," as they called the mysterious South Improvement Company. Curiously enough, it was chiefly against the combination which had secured the discrimination from the railroads--not the railroads which had granted it--that their fury was directed. They expected nothing but robbery from the railroads, they said. They were used to that; but they would not endure it from men in their own business.

The aftermath of South Improvement Company scheme:No number of resolutions could wipe out the memory of the forty days of terrible

excitement and loss which the region had suffered. No triumph could stifle the suspicion and bitterness which had been sown broadcast through the region. Every particle of independent manhood in these men whose very life was independent action had been outraged. Their sense of fair play, the saving force of the region in the days before law and order had been established, had been violated. These were things which could not be forgotten. There henceforth could be no trust in those who had devised a scheme which, the producers believed, was intended to rob them of their business.




The oil boom:The oil men as a class had been brought up to enormous profits, and held an entirely

false standard of values. As the "Derrick" told them once in a sensible editorial, "their business was born in a balloon going up, and spent all its early years in the sky." They had seen nothing but the extreme of fortune. One hundred per cent per annum on an investment was in their judgment only a fair profit. If their oil property had not paid for itself entirely in six months, and begun to yield a good percentage, they were inclined to think it a failure. They were notoriously extravagant in the management of their business. Rarely did an oil man write a letter if he could help it. He used the telegraph instead. Whole sets of drilling tools were sometimes sent by express. It was no uncommon thing to see near a derrick broken tools which could easily have been mended, but which the owner had replaced by new ones. It was anything to save bother with him. Frequently wells were abandoned which might have been pumped on a small but sure profit. The simple fact was that the profits which men in trades all over the country were glad enough to get, the oil producers despised. The one great thing which the Oil Regions did not understand in 1872 was economy.

The hushing of the Oil Regions:The great human tragedies of the Oil Regions lie in the individual compromises which

followed the public settlement of 1880. For then it was that man after man, from hopelessness, from disgust, from ambition, from love of money, gave up the fight for principle which he had waged for seven years. "The Union has surrendered," they said, "why fight on?" This man took a position with the Standard and became henceforth active in its business; that man took a salary and dropped out of sight; this one went his independent way, but with closed lips; that one shook the dust of the Oil Regions from his feet and went out to seek ‘God’s Country,’ asking only that he should never again hear the word ‘oil.’ The newspapers bowed to the victor. A sudden hush came over the region, the hush of defeat, of cowardice, of hopelessness.

Rockefeller’s genius:With Mr. Rockefeller’s genius for detail there went a sense of the big and vital factors in

the oil business and a daring in laying hold of them which was very like military genius. He saw strategic points like a Napoleon and he swooped on them with the suddenness of a Napoleon. Mr. Rockefeller’s capture of the Cleveland refineries in 1872 was as dazzling an achievement as it was a hateful one. The campaign … viewed simply as a piece of brigandage, was admirable. The man saw what was necessary to his purpose and he never hesitated before it. His courage was steady--and his faith in his ideas unwavering. He simply knew what was the thing to do, and he went ahead with the serenity of the man who knows.

Source: A Journalistic Masterpiece. The Rockefellers. American Experience. PBS/WGBH. 13 February 2009 <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/rockefellers/sfeature/sf_7.html>.



http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/rockefellers/sfeature/sf_7.html


The Homestead Strike

One of the most difficult episodes Andrew Carnegie's life -- and one that revealed the steel magnate's conflicting beliefs regarding the rights of labor -- was the bitter conflict in 1892 at his steel plant in Homestead, Pennsylvania. Carnegie's involvement in the union-breaking action left many men dead or wounded and forever tarnished Carnegie's reputation as a benevolent employer and a champion of labor.

The conflict at Homestead arose at a time when the fast-changing American economy had stumbled and conflicts between labor and management had flared up all over the country. In 1892, labor declared a general strike in New Orleans. Coal miners struck in Tennessee, as did railroad switchmen in Buffalo, New York and copper miners in Idaho.

Carnegie's mighty steel industry was not immune to the downturn. In 1890, the price of rolled-steel products started to decline, dropping from $35 a gross ton to $22 early in 1892. In the face of depressed steel prices, Henry C. Frick, general manager of the Homestead plant that Carnegie largely owned, was determined to cut wages and break the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, one of the strongest craft unions in the country.

Behind the scenes, Carnegie supported Frick's plans. In the spring of 1892, Carnegie had Frick produce as much armor plate as possible before the union's contract expired at the end of June. If the union failed to accept Frick's terms, Carnegie instructed him to shut down the plant and wait until the workers buckled. "We... approve of anything you do," Carnegie wrote from England in words he would later come to regret. "We are with you to the end."

With Carnegie's carte blanche support, Frick moved to slash wages. Plant workers responded by hanging Frick in effigy. At the end of June, Frick began closing down his open hearth and armor-plate mills, locking out 1,100 men. On June 25th, Frick announced he would no longer




negotiate with the union; now he would only deal with workers individually. Leaders of Amalgamated were willing to concede on almost every level -- except on the dissolution of their union. Workers tried to reach the Carnegie who had strongly defended labor's right to unionize. He had departed on his annual and lengthy vacation, traveling to a remote Scottish castle on Loch Rannoch. He proved inaccessible to all -- including the press and to Homestead's workers -- except for Frick.

"This is your chance to re-organize the whole affair," Carnegie wrote his manager. "Far too many men required by Amalgamated rules." Carnegie believed workers would agree to relinquish their union to hold on to their jobs.

It was a severe miscalculation. Although only 750 of the 3,800 workers at Homestead belonged to the union, 3,000 of them met and voted overwhelmingly to strike. Frick responded by building a fence three miles long and 12 feet high around the steelworks plant, adding peepholes for rifles and topping it with barbed wire. Workers named the fence "Fort Frick."

Deputy sheriffs were sworn in to guard the property, but the workers ordered them out of town. Workers then took to guarding the plant that Frick had closed to keep them out. This action signified a very different attitude that labor and management shared toward the plant.

"Workers believed because they had worked in the mill, they had mixed their labor with the property in the mill," explains historian Paul Krause. "They believed that in some way the property had become theirs. Not that it wasn't Andrew Carnegie's, not that they were the sole proprietors of the mill, but that they had an entitlement in the mill. And I think in a fundamental way the conflict at Homestead in 1892 was about these two conflicting views of property."

Frick turned to the enforcers he had employed previously: the Pinkerton Detective Agency's private army, often used by industrialists of the era. At midnight on July 5, tugboats pulled barges carrying hundreds of Pinkerton detectives armed with Winchester rifles up the Monongahela River. But workers stationed along the river spotted the private army. A Pittsburgh journalist wrote that at about 3 A.M. a "horseman riding at breakneck speed dashed into the streets of Homestead giving the alarm as he sped along." Thousands of strikers and their sympathizers rose from their sleep and went down to the riverbank in Homestead.

When the private armies of business arrived, the crowd warned the Pinkertons not to step off the barge. But they did. No one knows which side shot first, but under a barrage of fire, the Pinkertons retreated back to their barges. For 14 hours, gunfire was exchanged. Strikers rolled a flaming freight train car at the barges. They tossed dynamite to sink the boats and pumped oil into the river and tried to set it on fire. By the time the Pinkertons surrendered in the afternoon three detectives and nine workers were dead or dying. The workers declared victory in the bloody battle, but it was a short-lived celebration.

The governor of Pennsylvania ordered state militia into Homestead. Armed with the latest in rifles and Gatling guns, they took over the plant. Strikebreakers who arrived on locked trains, often unaware of their destination or the presence of a strike, took over the steel mills. Four




months after the strike was declared, the men's resources were gone and they returned to work. Authorities charged the strike leaders with murder and 160 other strikers with lesser crimes. The workers' entire Strike Committee also was arrested for treason. However, sympathetic juries would convict none of the men.

All the strikers’ leaders were blacklisted. The Carnegie Company successfully swept unions out of Homestead and reduced it to a negligible factor in the steel mills throughout the Pittsburgh area.

Carnegie found the upheaval and its aftermath a devastating experience. When British statesman William E. Gladstone wrote him a sympathetic note, Carnegie replied:

This is the trial of my life (death's hand excepted). Such a foolish step -- contrary to my ideals, repugnant to every feeling of my nature. Our firm offered all it could offer, even generous terms. Our other men had gratefully accepted them. They went as far as I could have wished, but the false step was made in trying to run the Homestead Works with new men. It is a test to which workingmen should not be subjected. It is expecting too much of poor men to stand by and see their work taken by others. . . The pain I suffer increases daily. The Works are not worth one drop of human blood. I wish they had sunk.

Carnegie would come back to Homestead six years later to dedicate a building that would house a library, a concert hall, a swimming pool, bowling alleys, and a gymnasium. However, the man who saw himself as a progressive businessman would always carry pain regarding the incident. "Nothing. . . in all my life, before or since, wounded me so deeply," he wrote in his autobiography. "No pangs remain of any wound received in my business career save that of Homestead."

"It's easy to say that Carnegie was a hypocrite," states historian Joseph Frazier Wall. "And there is an element of hypocrisy clearly in between what he said and what was done. But it's a little too easy to simply dismiss the whole incident on Carnegie's part as an act of hypocrisy. There is this curious reason as to why Carnegie felt it necessary to even enunciate the rights of labor. Frick was the norm, not Carnegie, in management's relationship with labor at that time. And, one can only answer that, once again, it's being torn between wanting to pose as a great democrat and liberal and at the same time wanting to make sure Carnegie Steel came out on top."




Source: “The Homestead Strike.” American Experience. PBS/WGBH. 13 February 2009 <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carnegie/peopleevents/pande04.html>.



http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carnegie/peopleevents/pande04.html


Arrivals

There isn’t one immigrant story: famines, wars, persecution, but also economic opportunity and adventure encouraged individuals to leave their homeland. In Ireland, families fled the Great Famine of 1845-51, Jews escaped the Russian pogroms beginning in 1881, and Southern Italians came hoping to earn enough money to return to Italy and buy land. More recently, Haitians have left due to the political/economic collapse of their country. It should be remembered that Africans were forcibly take from their homelands and enslaved in the United States and the colonies that preceded it.

Those who made the journey were not the poorest of the poor, but the ones who could afford to leave, who often had greater job skills or education than those who remained behind. Whatever the reasons for leaving, immigrants came as part of networks of family and communities, whether Poles settling in Polish Hill in Pittsburgh in the late 19th century or Dominicans moving to Washington Heights today. The networks give people an address – a place to go and a friend or family to take them in for a while.

Immigration reached its peak at the turn of the 20th century and Ellis Island – organized in 1892 to replace Castle Garden in Manhattan – processed the largest number of immigrants. More than 12 million people came through its doors, most having traveled steerage in a not very sanitary ship. On arrival, they faced a physical examination to ensure they carried no communicable diseases and an interview to determine that they were not illegal contract laborers and would not become a public charge. Two percent of immigrants failed and were sent back.

The passage of the National Origins Act in 1924 slashed the number of immigrants, especially those from Southern and Eastern Europe. The Hart-Celler Act of 1965 changed that by allowing entrance from countries earlier excluded, especially in Asia. But the era of the steamship had ended. Immigrants from overseas now arrive in airports – still drawn by a network of family and community connected between the homeland and the United States.

Source: Arrival. A Nation of Immigrants. The City University of New York. 13 February 2009 <http://www1.cuny.edu/portal_ur/content/nationofimmigrants/arrival.php>.



http://www1.cuny.edu/portal_ur/content/nationofimmigrants/arrival.php


Data Packet

DEPARTURES AND ARRIVALS TO AMERICA FROM 1875-1919 (In thousands)

Years Arrivals Departures Departures/Arrivals1875-1879 956 431 0.45

1880-1884 3,201 327 0.10

1885-1889 2,341 638 0.27

1890-1894 2,590 838 0.32

1895-1899 1,493 766 0.51

1900-1904 3,575 1,454 0.41

1905-1909 5,533 2,653 0.48

1910-1914 6,075 2,759 0.45

1915-1919 1,613 1,180 0.73

DEPARTURES AND ARRIVALS BY ETHNIC GROUP FROM 1899-1924

Race or people Arrivals Departures Percent DeparturesHebrew (Jewish) 1,837,875 93,344 5.2Irish 808,762 100,108 12.4Mexican 447,065 71,074 15.9French 415,244 78,662 18.9German 1,316,614 257,938 19.6Czech 159,319 34,364 21.6Scandinavian 956,308 227,620 23.8English 1,067,659 261,295 24.5Japanese 260,462 85,415 32.8Polish 1,483,374 587,742 39.6Greek 500,465 241,923 48.3Italian, Northern 605,535 292,522 48.3Croatian, Slovenian 485,379 246,098 50.7Slovak 536,911 298,689 55.6Italian, Southern 3,215,451 1,812,943 56.4Hungarian 492,031 177,484 63.9Bulgarian, Serbian, Montenegrin

165,191 148,386 89.9

Chinese 59,079 76,332 129.2TOTALS 14,812,724 5,091,939 34.4%

Sources: Simon Kuznets and Ernest Rubin, Immigration and the Foreign Born (1954), p. 95, and Gavin Wright, Old South, New South: Revolutions in the Southern Economy Since the Civil War (1986), p. 73; Thernstrom, op. cit., p. 1036.




Immigration Handout: The Peopling of America, 1880-1930

By the 1880's, steam power had shortened the journey to America dramatically. Immigrants poured in from around the world: from the Middle East, the Mediterranean, Southern and Eastern Europe, and down from Canada.

The door was wide open for Europeans - In the 1880s alone, 9% of the total population of Norway emigrated to America. After 1892 nearly all immigrants came in through the newly opened Ellis Island.

One immigrant recalled arriving at Ellis Island: "The boat anchored at mid-bay and then they tendered us on the ship to Ellis Island… We got off the boat…you got your bag in your hand and went right into the building Ah, that day must have been about five to six thousand people. Jammed, I remember it was August. Hot as a pistol, and I'm wearing my long johns, and my heavy Irish tweed suit."

Families often immigrated together during this era, although young men frequently came first to find work. Some of these then sent for their wives, children, and siblings; others returned to their families in Europe with their saved wages.

The experience for Asian immigrants in this period was quite different. In 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, severely restricting immigration from China. Since earlier laws made it difficult for those Chinese immigrants who were already here to bring over their wives and families, most Chinese communities remained "bachelor societies."

The 1907 "Gentlemen's Agreement" with Japan extended the government's hostility towards Asian workers and families. For thousands, the Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco Bay would be as close as they would ever get to the American mainland.

For Mexicans victimized by the Revolution, Jews fleeing the pogroms in Eastern Europe and Russia, and Armenians escaping the massacres in Turkey, America provided refuge.

And for millions of immigrants, New York provided opportunity. In Lower New York, one could find the whole world in a single neighborhood.

Between 1880 and 1930 over 27 million people entered the United States - about 20 million through Ellis Island. But after outbreak of World War I in 1914, American attitudes toward immigration began to shift. Nationalism and suspicion of foreigners were on the rise, and immigrants' loyalties were often called into question. Through the early 20s, a series of laws was passed to limit the flow of immigrants.

Source: The Peopling of America. 1880-1930. Ellis Island Foundation, Inc. 13 February 2009 <http://www.ellisislandrecords.org/immexp/wseix_5_3.asp>.



http://www.ellisislandrecords.org/immexp/wseix_5_3.asp


Immigration Handout: Immigration to the United States: 1851 – 1900

In the late 1800s, people in many parts of the world decided to leave their homes and immigrate to the United States. Fleeing crop failure, land and job shortages, rising taxes, and famine, many came to the U. S. because it was perceived as the land of economic opportunity. Others came seeking personal freedom or relief from political and religious persecution. With hope for a brighter future, nearly 12 million immigrants arrived in the United States between 1870 and 1900. During the 1870s and 1880s, the vast majority of these people were from Germany, Ireland, and England--the principal sources of immigration before the Civil War. That would change drastically in the next three decades.

Immigrants entered the United States through several ports. Those from Europe generally came through East Coast facilities, while those from Asia generally entered through West Coast centers. More than 70 percent of all immigrants, however, entered through New York City, which came to be known as the "Golden Door." Throughout the late 1800s, most immigrants arriving in New York entered at the Castle Garden depot near the tip of Manhattan. In 1892, the federal government opened a new immigration processing center on Ellis Island in New York harbor.

Although immigrants often settled near ports of entry, a large number did find their way inland. Many states, especially those with sparse populations, actively sought to attract immigrants by offering jobs or land for farming. Many immigrants wanted to move to communities established by previous settlers from their homelands.

Once settled, immigrants looked for work. There were never enough jobs, and employers often took advantage of the immigrants. Men were generally paid less than other workers, and women less than men. Social tensions were also part of the immigrant experience. Often stereotyped and discriminated against, many immigrants suffered verbal and physical abuse because they were "different." While large-scale immigration created many social tensions, it also produced a new vitality in the cities and states in which the immigrants settled. The newcomers helped transform American society and culture, demonstrating that diversity, as well as unity, is a source of national strength.

Source: Overview: Immigration to the United States 1851-1900. Rise of Industrial America, 1876-1900. The Learning Page. Library of Congress. 13 February 2009 <http://lcweb2.loc.gov/learn/features/timeline/riseind/immgnts/immgrnts.html>.



http://lcweb2.loc.gov/learn/features/timeline/riseind/immgnts/immgrnts.html


Demographic Changes

Population Distribution by Age, Race, Nativity, and Sex Ratio, 1860–2005

The following table lists the U.S. population from 1860 to 2005 according to age, race, sex, and nativity.

Race and nativity

Age White1

Year Total Under 5 5–19 20–44 45–64

65 andover Total

Nativeborn

Foreignborn Black

Otherraces1

Percent distribution

18602 100.0% 15.4% 35.8% 35.7% 10.4% 2.7% 85.6% 72.6% 13.0% 14.1% 0.3%

18702 100.0 14.3 35.4 35.4 11.9 3.0 87.1 72.9 14.2 12.7 0.2

18802 100.0 13.8 34.3 35.9 12.6 3.4 86.5 73.4 13.1 13.1 0.3

18903 100.0 12.2 33.9 36.9 13.1 3.9 87.5 73.0 14.5 11.9 0.3

1900 100.0 12.1 32.3 37.7 13.7 4.1 87.9 74.5 13.4 11.6 0.5

1910 100.0 11.6 30.4 39.0 14.6 4.3 88.9 74.4 14.5 10.7 0.4

1920 100.0 10.9 29.8 38.4 16.1 4.7 89.7 76.7 13.0 9.9 0.4

1930 100.0 9.3 29.5 38.3 17.4 5.4 89.8 78.4 11.4 9.7 0.5

1940 100.0 8.0 26.4 38.9 19.8 6.8 89.8 81.1 8.7 9.8 0.4

1950 100.0 10.7 23.2 37.6 20.3 8.1 89.5 82.8 6.7 10.0 0.5

1960 100.0 11.3 27.1 32.2 20.1 9.2 88.6 83.4 5.2 10.5 0.9

19702 100.0 8.4 29.5 31.7 20.6 9.8 87.6 83.4 4.3 11.1 1.4

1980 100.0 7.2 24.8 37.1 19.6 11.3 83.1 — — 11.7 5.2

1990 100.0 7.6 21.3 40.1 18.6 12.5 83.9 — — 12.3 3.8

2000 100.0 6.8 21.8 37.0 22.0 12.4 75.14 — — 12.34 10.15

20056 100.0 6.8 20.7 35.4 24.6 12.4 80.2 — — 12.84 7.05

Source: Population Distribution by Age, Race, Nativity, and Sex Ratio, 1860–2005InfoPlease.com. 13 February 2009 <http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0110384.html>, citing the US Census Bureau.



http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0110384.html


Ethnic and Class Groupings in Milwaukee, 1850-1890

Source: McGraw Hill PowerPoint , slide 5, 2004. <http://www.vbhssocialstudies.com/apus/powerpoint/chapter18.ppt>.



http://www.vbhssocialstudies.com/apus/powerpoint/chapter18.ppt


Industrial Revolution Inventors

Person Invention DateJames Watt First reliable Steam Engine 1775Eli Whitney Cotton Gin, Interchangeable parts for muskets 1793, 1798

Robert Fulton Regular Steamboat service on the Hudson River 1807Samuel F. B. Morse Telegraph 1836

Elias Howe Sewing Machine 1844Isaac Singer Improves and markets Howe's Sewing Machine 1851Cyrus Field Transatlantic Cable 1866

Alexander Graham Bell Telephone 1876Thomas Edison Phonograph, Incandescant Light Bulb 1877, 1879

Nikola Tesla Induction Electric Motor 1888Rudolf Diesel Diesel Engine 1892

Orville and Wilbur Wright First Airplane 1903Henry Ford Model T Ford, Assembly Line 1908, 1913

Source: Industrial Revolution Inventors. About.com. 13 February 2009 <http://americanhistory.about.com/library/charts/blchartindrev.htm>.



http://americanhistory.about.com/library/charts/blchartindrev.htm


Timed Reading (ACT Prep)

DIRECTIONS: The passage in this test is followed by several questions. After reading the passage, choose the best answer to each question and fill in the corresponding oval on your answer document. You may refer to the passage as often as necessary.

Cities have always placed demands on their sites and their hinterlands. In order to extend their usable territory, urban developers often reshaped natural landscapes, leveling hills, filling valleys and wetlands, and creating huge areas of made land. On this new land, they constructed a built environment of paved streets, malls, houses, factories, office buildings, and churches. In the process they altered urban biological ecosystems for their own purposes, killing off animal populations, eliminating native species of flora and fauna, and introducing new and foreign species. Thus urbanites, as Ann Spirin has written, constructed a built environment that replaced the natural environment and created a local micro-climate, with different temperature gradients and rainfall and wind patterns than those of the surrounding countryside.

City populations require food, water, fuel, and construction materials, while urban industries need natural materials for production purposes. In order to fulfill these needs, as William Cronon has brilliantly shown in Nature's Metropolis, urbanites increasingly had to reach far beyond their boundaries. In the nineteenth century, for instance, the demands of city dwellers for food produced rings of garden farms around cities and drove the transformation of distant prairies into cattle ranches and wheat farms. The many horses quartered in cities required feed, consuming the products produced by thousands of acres. In the twentieth century, as urban population increased, the demand for food drove the rise of large factory farms.

Cities also require fresh water supplies in order to exist -- engineers, acting at the behest of urban elites and politicians, built waterworks, thrust water intake pipes ever further into neighboring lakes, dug wells deeper and deeper into the earth looking for groundwater, and dammed and diverted rivers and streams to obtain water supplies for domestic and industrial uses and for fire-fighting. In the process of obtaining water from distant locales, cities often transformed them, making deserts where there had been fertile agricultural areas..

City entrepreneurs and industrialists were actively involved in the commodification of natural systems, putting them to use for purposes of urban consumption. The exploitation of water power from rivers and streams in New England, for instance, provided power for manufacturing cities. . . It also sharply altered river dynamics, destroying fish populations and depriving downstream users of adequate and unpolluted supplies. For materials to build and to heat the city, loggers stripped millions of acres of forests, quarrymen tore granite and other stone from the earth, and miners dug coal to provide fuel for commercial, industrial and domestic uses.

Urbanites had to seek locations to dispose of the wastes produced by their construction, manufacturing, and consumption. . . .Initially, they placed wastes on sites within the city, polluting the air, land, and water with industrial and domestic [pollutants] and modifying and


1

2

4

5

3



even destroying natural biological systems. In the post-Civil War period, as cities grew larger, they disposed of their wastes by transporting them to more distant locations.

Thus, cities constructed sewerage systems for domestic wastes to replace cesspools and privy vaults and to improve local health conditions. They usually discharged the sewage into neighboring waterways, often polluting the water supply of downstream cities. In order to avoid epidemics of waterborne disease such as typhoid and cholera, downstream cities sought new sources of supply or used technological fixes, such as water filtration (1890s) or chlorination (1912), but the choices were not simple. Industrial wastes also added to stream and lake pollution, and urban rivers often became little more than open sewers.

. . . . In the late-nineteenth century, bituminous (or soft) coal became the preferred fuel for industrial, transportation, and domestic use in cities such as Chicago, Pittsburgh and St. Louis. But while providing an inexpensive and plentiful energy supply, bituminous coal was also very dirty. The cities that used it suffered from air contamination and reduced sunlight, while the cleaning tasks of householders were greatly increased. . . . Industry also used land surfaces for disposal of domestic and industrial wastes. Open areas in and around cities were marked with heaps of garbage, horse manure, ashes, and industrial byproducts such as slag from iron and steel-making or copper smelting. Such materials were often used to fill-in "swamps" (wetlands) along waterfronts.

In the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, reformers began campaigning for urban environmental cleanups and public health improvements. Women's groups . . . often took the lead in agitating for clean air, clean water, and improved urban "housekeeping," showing a greater concern than men with such quality of life and health-related issues. Many progressive reformers. . . believed that the moral qualities of good citizenship were related to environmental improvements and to exposure to nature.


6

7

8



Questions for Timed Reading (ACT Prep)

1. The author’s primary aim in the first paragraph is to:a. make a case for replacing urban based societies with rural based onesb. demonstrate the interconnectedness of all thingsc. summarize the nature and extent of the impact of cities on the environmentd. demonstrate the need for a new science

2. In paragraph 4 the word “entrepreneur” most nearly means:a. communal leaderb. chiefc. politiciand. businessman or women

3. The 4th paragraph primarily asserts that:a. of all resources water is most importantb. cities have a varied and destructive impact on the environmentc. adversity promotes the development of problem solving skills d. city life was in harmony with the environment

4. It can be reasonably inferred from paragraph 5 that:a. as cities grew larger people traveled farther to dispose of wasteb. human capability improved over timec. the antebellum period in America was a Golden Aged. there is no such thing as progress

5. The author’s primary aim in paragraph 6 is to:a. illustrate how people solve problemsb. focus on the interdependence of citiesc. summarize the impact of cities on water systemsd. list diseases associated with water pollution

6. The 7th paragraph implies that:a. coal was an environmentally-friendly source of energyb. coal was cheap, plentiful and a major contaminantc. fuel sources should be based solely on cost and availability d. clean coal technology was widely available

7. As it is used on paragraph 8, the word “agitating” most nearly means: a. organizingb. protestingc. votingd. providing

8. The best title for this piece is:a. No Place Like Homeb. Rugged Individualismc. Benefits of Capitalism




d. The City and the Natural Environment

Answers for Timed Reading (ACT Prep)

1. c

2. d

3. b

4. a

5. c

6. b

7. b

8. d

Source: Tarr, Joel A. The City and the Natural Environment. Carnegie Mellon University. 13 February 2009 <http://www.gdrc.org/uem/doc-tarr.html>.



http://www.gdrc.org/uem/doc-tarr.html


Excerpt from: ETHNIC AND RACE RELATIONS IN THE CITY OF CLEVELAND

Between the 1850s and 1930, a constant, shifting struggle emerged as the city's Anglo-American middle- and upper-classes struggled to enforce and maintain moral and social discipline in a city populated by growing numbers of European immigrants, many of whom were Catholics and Jews. Religion and ethnicity were thus tied together, and anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism were important aspects of nativism in Cleveland and the rest of America. For example, EDWIN W. COWLES, Cleveland's most notorious anti-Catholic during the last half of the 19th century, railed against both the church and the drunken Irish from his position as editor of the CLEVELAND LEADER. Tensions within and between ethnic groups also intensified as communities developed and as older immigrants sought to influence the behavior and facilitate the assimilation of more recent arrivals.

Education was the first tool that Anglo-Americans used to try to inculcate the habits of "proper" behavior and good citizenship. In 1870, for example, bilingual education was adopted in the public schools in the hopes that offering some classes in German would attract into the schools the 2,000 German students who attended private schools. This policy, the superintendent explained, did "not tend to Germanize America as it [did] to Americanize the Germans." Within a decade, the number of German children attending private schools had dropped to 200. By 1887 the evening adult education program was attracting 2,000 immigrants to its classes in English and in civics in preparation for the naturalization exam. Public school programs for both immigrant children and adults were expanded repeatedly between 1870 and 1920, but the number of parochial schools also increased, making it possible for large numbers of ethnic students to escape the Americanizing influence of the public schools. The development of settlement houses such as HIRAM HOUSE provided new avenues for Americanization and educational efforts, as well as for other urban social reform work.

Source: Ethnic and Race Relations. The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. 13 February 2009 <http://ech.cwru.edu/ech-cgi/article.pl?id=EARR>.



http://ech.cwru.edu/ech-cgi/article.pl?id=EARR


What is Populism?

1. What caused the Populist Movement? (Why were people unhappy?)

From Reading From Lesson

2. What did Populists want? (What did they try to accomplish?)





3. What did Populists achieve?


4. What brought about the demise of the Populist Party?


5. Was the Populist Movement ultimately successful? Explain.




Views on PopulismI say it fearlessly, and it can not be denied, that reforms for which the masses have been clamoring for years--whether it be silver or labor or income tax or popular rights or resistance to government by injunction--had never been written, and might never have been written, into a Democratic platform, until the Populist party, 1,800,000 strong, thundered in the ears of Democratic leaders the announcement that a mighty multitude demanded these reforms.

--John Temple Graves (Democrat), Atlanta Constitution, 27 August 1896.

The Populist gathering of this year lacked the drill and distinction and wealth of the Republican convention held the month before in the same building. It had not the ebullient aggressiveness of the revolutionary Democratic assembly at Chicago, nor the brilliant drivers who rode the storm there. Every one commented on the number of gray heads--heads many of them grown white in previous independent party movements. The delegates were poor men.... Cases are well known of delegates who walked because too poor to pay their railroad fare. It was one day discovered that certain members of one of the most important delegations were actually suffering for food. They had no regular sleeping place, having had to save what money they had for their nickel meals at the lunch counter.

--Henry Demorest Lloyd, Review of Reviews, September 1896

The Populist platform is almost too absurd to merit serious discussion.

--The Detroit Tribune, in Public Opinion, 6 August 1896

Source: “The Populist Party.” 1896. Vassar College. 17 February 2009 <http://projects.vassar.edu/1896/populists.html>.



http://projects.vassar.edu/1896/populists.html


Populist Party Platform, 1892 (July 4, 1892) PREAMBLE

The conditions which surround us best justify our co-operation; we meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political and material ruin. Corruption dominates the ballot-box.... The people are demoralized;... public opinion silenced.... homes covered with mortgages, labor impoverished, and the land concentrating in the hands of capitalists. The urban workman are denied the right to organize for self-protection, imported pauperized labor beats down their wages... and [we] are rapidly degenerating into European conditions. The fruits of the toils of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few, unprecedented in the history of mankind.... From the same prolific womb of governmental injustice we breed the two great classes tramps and millionaires.

The national power to create money is appropriated to enrich bond-holders....

Silver, which has been accepted as coin since the dawn of history, has been demonitized to add to the purchasing power of gold.... the supply of currency is purposely [limited] to fatten [creditors].... A vast conspiracy against mankind has been organized... if not met and overthrown at once it forebodes terrible social convulsions, the destruction of civilization....

Controlling influences dominating both... parties have permitted the existing dreadful conditions to develop without serious effort to prevent or restrain them. Neither do they now promise any substantial reform.... They propose to sacrifice our homes, lives, and children on the alter of mammon; to destroy the multitude in order to secure corruption funds from the millionaires....

We seek to restore the government of the Republic to the hands of the "plain people."

Our country finds itself confronted by conditions for which there is no precedence in the history of the world; our annual agricultural productions amount to billions of dollars in value, which must, within a few weeks or months, be exchanged for billions of dollars worth of commodities consumed in their production; the existing currency supply is wholly inadequate to make this exchange; the results are falling prices, the formation of combines and rings, the impoverishment of the producing class. We pledge ourselves that if given power we will labor to correct these evils....

We believe that the power of government in other words, of the people should be expanded... to the end that oppression, injustice, and poverty shall eventually cease in the land.

[We] will never cease to move forward until every wrong is righted and equal rights and equal privileges securely established for all the men and women of this country....




PLATFORMWe declare, therefore

First: That the union of the labor forces of the United States... shall be permanent and perpetual....

Second: Wealth belongs to him who creates it, and every dollar taken from industry without an equivalent is robbery.... The interests of rural and civil labor are the same; their enemies identical....

Third: We believe the time has come when the railroad corporations will either own the people or the people must own the railroads.... The government [should] enter upon the work of owning and managing all the railroads.... FINANCE: We demand a national currency, safe, sound, and flexible issued by the general government....

1. We demand free and unlimited coinage of silver and gold at the present legal ratio of 16 to 1. 2. We demand that the amount of circulating medium be speedily increased....

3. We demand a graduated income tax.

4. We believe that the money of the country should be kept as much as possible in the hands of the people, and hence we believe that all State and national revenues shall be limited to the necessary expenses of the government, economically and honestly administered....

5. We demand that postal savings banks be established by the government for the safe deposit of the earnings of the people and to facilitate exchange.... TRANSPORTATION: Transportation being a means of exchange and a public necessity, the government should own and operate the railroads in the interest of the people. The telegraph and telephone... should be owned and operated by the government in the interest of the people. LAND: The land, including all the natural sources of wealth, is the heritage of the people, and should not be monopolized for speculative purposes, and alien ownership of land should be prohibited. All land now held by railroads and other corporations in excess of their actual needs, and all lands now owned by aliens should be reclaimed by the government and held for actual settlers only.




EXPRESSION OF SENTIMENTS1. Resolved, That we demand a free ballot, and a fair count in all elections... without Federal intervention, through the adoption by the states of the... secret ballot system.

2. Resolved, That the revenue derived from a graduated income tax should be applied to the reduction of the burden of taxation now levied upon the domestic industries of this country.

3. Resolved, That we pledge our support to fair and liberal pensions to ex-Union soldiers and sailors.

4. Resolved, That we condemn the fallacy of protecting American labor under the present system which opens our ports to [immigrants including] the pauper and the criminal classes of the world and crowds out our [American] wage-earners... and [we] demand the further restriction of undesirable immigration

5. Resolved, That we cordially sympathize with the efforts of organized workingmen to shorten the hours of labor....

6. Resolved, That we regard the maintenance of a large standing army of mercenaries, known as the Pinkerton system as a menace to our liberties and we demand its abolition....

7. Resolved, That we commend to the favorable consideration of the people... the initiative and referendum.

8. Resolved, That we favor a constitutional provision limiting the office of President and Vice President to one term, and providing for the election of Senators of the United States by a direct vote of the people.

9. Resolved, That we oppose any subsidy or national aid to any private corporation for any purpose.

Source: Populist Party Platform, 1892. 17 February 2009 <http://www.pinzler.com/ushistory/popparplatsupp.html>.



http://www.pinzler.com/ushistory/popparplatsupp.html


Strategies for Doing History

1. Sourcing Strategy : This is the practice of identifying important characteristics of the document and the context in which it was written so that you can examine it critically. To think about the author and the document’s creation, historians ask questions such as: Who wrote it? When? Why did they write it? This helps to establish the time and place in which the primary source was created. It also helps to identify the author’s motivation and biases. Remember – All sources are written from a particular point of view!

2. Contextualizing Strategy: This requires the reader to situate the primary source in the time and place of its creation. To do this, one might ask questions such as: Where was this created? What was happening there at that time? What else was happening in the region, country or the world? This allows one to put the source in “context.”

3. Close Reading: This requires the reader to carefully read the document and consider exactly what it is saying and the particular words and phrases used, even when they might be unfamiliar to you.

4. Corroboration Strategy : This is the practice of using multiple sources to compare where they agree and disagree about a particular event. It is through the use of multiple sources of evidence that historians draw conclusions about what happened in the past.

References:Drake, Frederick D. and Sarah Drake Brown. A Systematic Approach to Improve Students’ Historical Thinking. The

History Teacher. 3 Feb. 2009 <http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/36.4/drake.html>.

Wineburg, Sam. Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001.



http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/36.4/drake.html


Cross of Gold Speech -- By William Jennings Bryan

I would be presumptuous, indeed, to present myself against the distinguished gentlemen to whom you have listened if this were but a measuring of ability; but this is not a contest among persons. The humblest citizen in all the land when clad in the armor of a righteous cause is stronger than all the whole hosts of error that they can bring. I come to speak to you in defense of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty—the cause of humanity. When this debate is concluded, a motion will be made to lay upon the table the resolution offered in commendation of the administration and also the resolution in condemnation of the administration. I shall object to bringing this question down to a level of persons. The individual is but an atom; he is born, he acts, he dies; but principles are eternal; and this has been a contest of principle.

Never before in the history of this country has there been witnessed such a contest as that through which we have passed. Never before in the history of American politics has a great issue been fought out as this issue has been by the voters themselves. On the 4th of March, 1895, a few Democrats, most of them members of Congress, issued an address to the Democrats of the nation asserting that the money question was the paramount issue of the hour; asserting also the right of a majority of the Democratic Party to control the position of the party on this paramount issue; concluding with the request that all believers in free coinage of silver in the Democratic Party should organize and take charge of and control the policy of the Democratic Party. Three months later, at Memphis, an organization was perfected, and the silver Democrats went forth openly and boldly and courageously proclaiming their belief and declaring that if successful they would crystallize in a platform the declaration which they had made; and then began the conflict with a zeal approaching the zeal which inspired the crusaders who followed Peter the Hermit. Our silver Democrats went forth from victory unto victory, until they are assembled now, not to discuss, not to debate, but to enter up the judgment rendered by the plain people of this country.

But in this contest, brother has been arrayed against brother, and father against son. The warmest ties of love and acquaintance and association have been disregarded. Old leaders have been cast aside when they refused to give expression to the sentiments of those whom they would lead, and new leaders have sprung up to give direction to this cause of freedom. Thus has the contest been waged, and we have assembled here under as binding and solemn instructions as were ever fastened upon the representatives of a people. We do not come as individuals. Why, as individuals we might have been glad to compliment the gentleman from New York [Senator Hill], but we knew that the people for




whom we speak would never be willing to put him in a position where he could thwart the will of the Democratic Party. I say it was not a question of persons; it was a question of principle; and it is not with gladness, my friends, that we find ourselves brought into conflict with those who are now arrayed on the other side. The gentleman who just preceded me [Governor Russell] spoke of the old state of Massachusetts. Let me assure him that not one person in all this convention entertains the least hostility to the people of the state of Massachusetts.

But we stand here representing people who are the equals before the law of the largest cities in the state of Massachusetts. When you come before us and tell us that we shall disturb your business interests, we reply that you have disturbed our business interests by your action. We say to you that you have made too limited in its application the definition of a businessman. The man who is employed for wages is as much a businessman as his employer. The attorney in a country town is as much a businessman as the corporation counsel in a great metropolis. The merchant at the crossroads store is as much a businessman as the merchant of New York. The farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils all day, begins in the spring and toils all summer, and by the application of brain and muscle to the natural resources of this country creates wealth, is as much a businessman as the man who goes upon the Board of Trade and bets upon the price of grain. The miners who go 1,000 feet into the earth or climb 2,000 feet upon the cliffs and bring forth from their hiding places the precious metals to be poured in the channels of trade are as much businessmen as the few financial magnates who in a backroom corner the money of the world.

We come to speak for this broader class of businessmen. Ah. my friends, we say not one word against those who live upon the Atlantic Coast; but those hardy pioneers who braved all the dangers of the wilderness, who have made the desert to blossom as the rose—those pioneers away out there, rearing their children near to nature’s heart, where they can mingle their voices with the voices of the birds—out there where they have erected schoolhouses for the education of their children and churches where they praise their Creator, and the cemeteries where sleep the ashes of their dead—are as deserving of the consideration of this party as any people in this country. It is for these that we speak. We do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of conquest. We are fighting in the defense of our homes, our families, and posterity. We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned. We have entreated, and our entreaties have been disregarded. We have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came.

We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them!




The gentleman from Wisconsin has said he fears a Robespierre. My friend, in this land of the free you need fear no tyrant who will spring up from among the people. What we need is an Andrew Jackson to stand as Jackson stood, against the encroachments of aggregated wealth.

They tell us that this platform was made to catch votes. We reply to them that changing conditions make new issues; that the principles upon which rest Democracy are as everlasting as the hills; but that they must be applied to new conditions as they arise. Conditions have arisen and we are attempting to meet those conditions. They tell us that the income tax ought not to be brought in here; that is not a new idea. They criticize us for our criticism of the Supreme Court of the United States. My friends, we have made no criticism. We have simply called attention to what you know. If you want criticisms, read the dissenting opinions of the Court. That will give you criticisms.

They say we passed an unconstitutional law. I deny it. The income tax was not unconstitutional when it was passed. It was not unconstitutional when it went before the Supreme Court for the first time. It did not become unconstitutional until one judge changed his mind; and we cannot be expected to know when a judge will change his mind.

The income tax is a just law. It simply intends to put the burdens of government justly upon the backs of the people. I am in favor of an income tax. When I find a man who is not willing to pay his share of the burden of the government which protects him, I find a man who is unworthy to enjoy the blessings of a government like ours. He says that we are opposing the national bank currency. It is true. If you will read what Thomas Benton said, you will find that he said that in searching history he could find but one parallel to Andrew Jackson. That was Cicero, who destroyed the conspiracies of Cataline and saved Rome. He did for Rome what Jackson did when he destroyed the bank conspiracy and saved America.

We say in our platform that we believe that the right to coin money and issue money is a function of government. We believe it. We believe it is a part of sovereignty and can no more with safety be delegated to private individuals than can the power to make penal statutes or levy laws for taxation.

Mr. Jefferson, who was once regarded as good Democratic authority, seems to have a different opinion from the gentleman who has addressed us on the part of the minority. Those who are opposed to this proposition tell us that the issue of paper money is a function of the bank and that the government ought to go out of the banking business. I




stand with Jefferson rather than with them, and tell them, as he did, that the issue of money is a function of the government and that the banks should go out of the governing business.

They complain about the plank which declares against the life tenure in office. They have tried to strain it to mean that which it does not mean. What we oppose in that plank is the life tenure that is being built up in Washington which establishes an office-holding class and excludes from participation in the benefits the humbler members of our society. . . . Let me call attention to two or three great things. The gentleman from New York says that he will propose an amendment providing that this change in our law shall not affect contracts which, according to the present laws, are made payable in gold. But if he means to say that we cannot change our monetary system without protecting those who have loaned money before the change was made, I want to ask him where, in law or in morals, he can find authority for not protecting the debtors when the act of 1873 was passed when he now insists that we must protect the creditor. He says he also wants to amend this platform so as to provide that if we fail to maintain the parity within a year that we will then suspend the coinage of silver. We reply that when we advocate a thing which we believe will be successful we are not compelled to raise a doubt as to our own sincerity by trying to show what we will do if we are wrong.

I ask him, if he will apply his logic to us, why he does not apply it to himself. He says that he wants this country to try to secure an international agreement. Why doesn’t he tell us what he is going to do if they fail to secure an international agreement. There is more reason for him to do that than for us to expect to fail to maintain the parity. They have tried for thirty years—thirty years—to secure an international agreement, and those are waiting for it most patiently who don’t want it at all.

Now, my friends, let me come to the great paramount issue. If they ask us here why it is we say more on the money question than we say upon the tariff question, I reply that if protection has slain its thousands the gold standard has slain its tens of thousands. If they ask us why we did not embody all these things in our platform which we believe, we reply to them that when we have restored the money of the Constitution, all other necessary reforms will be possible, and that until that is done there is no reform that can be accomplished.

Why is it that within three months such a change has come over the sentiments of the country? Three months ago, when it was confidently asserted that those who believed in the gold standard would frame our platforms and nominate our candidates, even the advocates of the gold standard did not think that we could elect a President; but they had




good reasons for the suspicion, because there is scarcely a state here today asking for the gold standard that is not within the absolute control of the Republican Party. But note the change. Mr. McKinley was nominated at St. Louis upon a platform that declared for the maintenance of the gold standard until it should be changed into bimetallism by an international agreement. Mr. McKinley was the most popular man among the Republicans; and everybody three months ago in the Republican Party prophesied his election. How is it today? Why, that man who used to boast that he looked like Napoleon, that man shudders today when he thinks that he was nominated on the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. Not only that, but as he listens he can hear with ever increasing distinctness the sound of the waves as they beat upon the lonely shores of St. Helena.

Why this change? Ah, my friends. is not the change evident to anyone who will look at the matter? It is because no private character, however pure, no personal popularity, however great, can protect from the avenging wrath of an indignant people the man who will either declare that he is in favor of fastening the gold standard upon this people, or who is willing to surrender the right of self-government and place legislative control in the hands of foreign potentates and powers. . . .

We go forth confident that we shall win. Why? Because upon the paramount issue in this campaign there is not a spot of ground upon which the enemy will dare to challenge battle. Why, if they tell us that the gold standard is a good thing, we point to their platform and tell them that their platform pledges the party to get rid of a gold standard and substitute bimetallism. If the gold standard is a good thing, why try to get rid of it? If the gold standard, and I might call your attention to the fact that some of the very people who are in this convention today and who tell you that we ought to declare in favor of international bimetallism and thereby declare that the gold standard is wrong and that the principles of bimetallism are better—these very people four months ago were open and avowed advocates of the gold standard and telling us that we could not legislate two metals together even with all the world.

I want to suggest this truth, that if the gold standard is a good thing we ought to declare in favor of its retention and not in favor of abandoning it; and if the gold standard is a bad thing, why should we wait until some other nations are willing to help us to let it go? Here is the line of battle. We care not upon which issue they force the fight. We are prepared to meet them on either issue or on both. If they tell us that the gold standard is the standard of civilization, we reply to them that this, the most enlightened of all nations of the earth, has never declared for a gold standard, and both the parties this year are declaring against it. If the gold standard is the standard of civilization, why, my friends,




should we not have it? So if they come to meet us on that, we can present the history of our nation. More than that, we can tell them this, that they will search the pages of history in vain to find a single instance in which the common people of any land ever declared themselves in favor of a gold standard. They can find where the holders of fixed investments have.

Mr. Carlisle said in 1878 that this was a struggle between the idle holders of idle capital and the struggling masses who produce the wealth and pay the taxes of the country; and my friends, it is simply a question that we shall decide upon which side shall the Democratic Party fight. Upon the side of the idle holders of idle capital, or upon the side of the struggling masses? That is the question that the party must answer first; and then it must be answered by each individual hereafter. The sympathies of the Democratic Party, as described by the platform, are on the side of the struggling masses, who have ever been the foundation of the Democratic Party.

There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it. You come to us and tell us that the great cities are in favor of the gold standard. I tell you that the great cities rest upon these broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic. But destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.

My friends, we shall declare that this nation is able to legislate for its own people on every question without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation on earth, and upon that issue we expect to carry every single state in the Union.

I shall not slander the fair state of Massachusetts nor the state of New York by saying that when citizens are confronted with the proposition, “Is this nation able to attend to its own business?”—I will not slander either one by saying that the people of those states will declare our helpless impotency as a nation to attend to our own business. It is the issue of 1776 over again. Our ancestors, when but 3 million, had the courage to declare their political independence of every other nation upon earth. Shall we, their descendants, when we have grown to 70 million, declare that we are less independent than our forefathers? No, my friends, it will never be the judgment of this people. Therefore, we care not upon what lines the battle is fought. If they say bimetallism is good but we cannot have it till some nation helps us, we reply that, instead of having a gold standard because England




has, we shall restore bimetallism, and then let England have bimetallism because the United States have.

If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we shall fight them to the uttermost, having behind us the producing masses of the nation and the world. Having behind us the commercial interests and the laboring interests and all the toiling masses, we shall answer their demands for a gold standard by saying to them, you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.




Source: Official Proceedings of the Democratic National Convention Held in Chicago, Illinois, July 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11, 1896, (Logansport, Indiana, 1896), 226–234. Reprinted in The Annals of America, Vol. 12, 1895–1904: Populism, Imperialism, and Reform (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1968), 100–105.




The 19th Century Context for Workers’ Struggles and the Rise of Organized Labor

Some historians have characterized the outcome of the Civil War as a victory as much for northern capitalists as for anti-slavery forces. Whether or not this was the essence of the Union’s triumph, the last quarter of the nineteenth century--the Gilded Age as it is generally known--was a period of social and economic turmoil, caused largely by the growth of big business in the nation’s life. The forces of urbanization and industrialization expanded under the idea of a laissez faire philosophy. Since Congress and the court system were sympathetic to business, the economy grew to unprecedented proportions. But American society paid a painful price as farmers, the middle class, and urban workers were exploited. From the 1870s onward, there were several intense reformist responses to the abuses of the new industrial system. These included Grange Movement and populism in the agrarian sector. The urban middle class responded with Progressivism and the development of a vigorous labor movement in the nation’s urban centers and on its industrial frontier. In short, workers were part of a pervasive dissatisfaction with the development of the society and economy, which was marked by low wages, long hours, unsafe conditions, and harsh measures to keep workers in line.

The American labor movement which arose in reaction to the harsh realities of industrialism, came directly out of the experience of the European immigrants who flooded the nation’s cities at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century. In contrast to American workers who believed that social mobility was their birthright and resisted the idea that they would be workers forever, immigrant laborers reared in rigidly classed societies. Thus immigrant laborers felt their class and economic status was permanent and wished to improve it through collective action. Their determination to advance their position in life led them to form a number of national unions and a key labor central organization (an alliance of individual unions) called the American Federation of Labor.

The first of these unions was the National Labor Union (founded in 1866) under the leadership of William Sylvis. The NLU was short lived because it was indistinguishable from the social reform impulse taking shape in America. The next important union was the Knights of Labor founded in 1869 by Philadelphia tailors under Uriah Stevens, and later led by Terrence V. Powderly. The Knights were not effective because they did not want to use the strike as a weapon, which weakened their bargaining position in negotiations with employers, and failed to focus exclusively on labor issues. Instead, they campaigned for women’s suffrage and temperance. These ideals were consistent with the moral values of employers in the factory system of the first industrial age, but they were out of phase with the pressing need for workplace reform that characterized the last quarter of the century.

The ultimate ineffectiveness of the NLU and the Knights, growing abuses in factories, and the daily struggle of working class families caused workers to continue to push for change through collective action. The 1870s, 80s, and 90s saw the rise of a number of major unions, including the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, founded in 1881, along with the labor central organization, the AFL. Many of the newly formed unions were by independent craftsmen like the carpenters who considered themselves skilled craftsmen. The unions they formed were exclusive to members of the craft and operated in some sense as guilds in that




they restricted membership to a few. These unions were called craft unions and followed a philosophy of “business unionism,” in which the main issue was higher pay for the special commodity the members sold, their skill in the trade.

The AFL unions embraced the strike as a tool of bargaining, but they were basically pragmatic and conservative. They had lofty goals that they pressed for relentlessly. Samuel Gompers, the cigar maker who was the AFL leader for nearly 40 years, put it eloquently: "What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails [sic], more books and less arsenals, more learning and less vice, more constant work and less crime, more leisure and less greed, more justice and less revenge.” In practice, AFL unions remained pragmatic. As Gompers’ chief lieutenant Adolph Strasser said, “We are all practical men, we go from day to day.”

This pragmatism meant that rather than pursue aggressive tactics to produce immediate and revolutionary results, progress would be slow. In fact, AFL unions settled for modestly higher wages, somewhat shorter hours (for most trades, the 8-hour day didn’t take effect until the 20th century), and safer working conditions, which they gained only after waging rigorous campaigns in their respective trades. They militated also for limitations on woman, child, and convict labor, not from altruistic motives, but as a way to protect their own wage scales and jobs. They were, ironically, anti-immigrant for the same reason, especially if the immigrant competitors were Asians, who tended to work tirelessly for low pay. Indeed, the threat of Asian labor on the West Coast in the 1880s and 90s was so serious that up and down its length, the Knights of Labor enjoyed a serious, if brief, revival, based on the organization’s intense, often violent, and certainly racist, challenge to the employment of Chinese and Japanese.

Adapted from: Historical Topic: A New Industrial America: Freedom and the Rights of Workers. TAHPDX: Great Decisions in U.S. History. 27 Dec. 2008 <http://www.upa.pdx.edu/IMS/currentprojects/TAHv3/TAH2_Content/Industrial_America.html>.



http://www.upa.pdx.edu/IMS/currentprojects/TAHv3/TAH2_Content/Industrial_America.html


Labor Movements of the Late 19th and Early 20th Century

ORGANIZATION GOALS METHODS OBSTACLES SUCCESSES AND FAILURES

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Source: “The Homestead Strike.” American Experience. PBS/WGBH. 24 November 2008 <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carnegie/peopleevents/pande04.html>.



http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carnegie/peopleevents/pande04.html


Historian Eric Foner on Freedom – Industrial AmericaFrom The Story of American Freedom, pages 118-126

Among economists, social scientists, and captains of industry, ideas like the worker’s right to the fruit of his labor increasingly seemed quaint anachronisms, irrelevant at a time when the modern corporation had replaced the independent producer as the driving force of economic change. . . . By the turn of the century, advanced economics taught that wages were determined by the iron law of supply and demand, and that wealth rightly flowed not to those who labored hardest, but to those with entrepreneurial skills, especially the ability to satisfy consumer needs in a mass market. The close link between freedom and equality forged in the Revolution and reinforced during the Civil War, appeared increasingly out of date. The task of social science, wrote iron manufacturer Abram Hewitt, was to devise ways of making “men who are equal in liberty” content with the “inequality in . . . distribution” inevitable in modern society.________________________________________________________

Just as the idea of the natural superiority of some races to others had earlier been invoked to justify slavery in a free society, social theorists in the Gilded Age called upon science to explain the success and failure of individuals and social classes. Analogies to the natural world pervaded the era’s thinking. The growing use of language borrowed from Charles Darwin . . . , such as “natural selection,” “the struggle for existence,” and “the survival of the fittest,” became part . . . of the era’s laissez-faire outlook. . . . [W]hat came to be called Social Darwinism offered a powerful critique of all forms of state interference with “natural” workings of society. . . . [Social Darwinists believed] history was a narrative of progress in which . . . simpler forms evolved into more complex ones. The corporation was one of these more advanced forms, more efficient because better adapted to its environment than earlier modes of production. To restrict its operations by legislation would reduce society to an earlier, more primitive level.




Historian Eric Foner on Freedom – Industrial America (continued)

From The Story of American Freedom, pages 118-126

According to William Graham Sumner, cries of “wage slavery,” and the misguided equation of liberty with a share in political power reflected a dangerous belief that individuals were entitled to a certain standard of living provided, if necessary, by the government. For Sumner, freedom … meant the “abnegation of state power” and a frank acceptance of inequality. Society faced two and only two alternatives “liberty, inequality, survival of the fittest; not-liberty, equality, and survival of the unfittest”. Government, Sumner believed, existed only to protect “the property of men and the honor of women,” not to upset social arrangements decreed by nature.________________________________________________________

Most profoundly, labor raised the question whether meaningful freedom could exist in a situation of extreme economic inequality. On July 4, 1886, the Federated Trades of the Pacific Coast rewrote Jefferson’s Declaration to list that among mankind’s inalienable rights “life and the means of living, Liberty and the conditions essential to liberty.” Freedom required certain kinds of social arrangements, not simply liberty of contract. No one was more effective at appropriating the language of American freedom for labor’s cause than Eugene V. Debs, the head of the American Railway Union, whose jailing in 1894 as a result of a strike against the Pullman Company made him a symbol of how concentrated economic power now aligned with federal authority, was undermining traditional notions of freedom. . . . [Upon his release from prison], Debs went on to offer a discourse on how corporate control of politics and the economy endangered “American liberty.”




Writing History

Historians may talk—they may lecture and debate—but they also write. They write textbooks summing up the most recent scholarship in a particular field, but good historians also contribute to that scholarship by analyzing the work of other scholars, establishing new questions that need to be answered, and attempting to supply answers to these questions through their own research and their insights into research performed by others. Historical understanding of a subject progresses only through joint effort, with each historian building upon the work of predecessors and, however thorough the work might be, leaving some things unanswered—perhaps as yet unasked—for those who come along later. When you take courses in history, we expect you, as students, to share in this process. We ask you to undertake a kind of apprenticeship in historical thinking. Learning to think like a historian means learning to write like one as well.

From: “Writing Guide.” Boston University, Department of History. 17 February 2009 <http://www.bu.edu/history/writing_guide.html>.

What is an Historical Narrative?Narratives are fundamentally about grouping events into a sequence (or “chain”).

Historians do not try to record the entire history of the world either in its breadth or depth. For instance, they don’t begin with the first appearance of humans and work their way up through today. Nor do historians try to describe everything that went on in a given period of time. Rather, when writing narrative history, historians select some events as belonging together as part of a coherent sequence. They then arrange those events so that their coherence is clear – whether that sequence is about the Industrial Revolution, the spread of Islam, or the life of Helen Keller. A narrative of the women’s suffrage movement in the United States, for example, will not mention the building of pyramids in ancient Egypt.

Leaving out the pyramids, of course, is an easy call – but there are other events that require more judgment. For example, when does the story of women’s suffrage in the United States start - the Colonial era, the antebellum era, or the early 20th century? When does it end – with the ratification of the 19th amendment, with gender-related changes in voting patterns in the 1990s, or has the end of the story not yet arrived?

In answering each of these questions, historians impose order on the infinite variety of facts from which they could draw. In narrative history, this ordering consists specifically of arranging the selected facts into a sequence. Historians decide when the story begins, when it ends, and the order of events in between.

However a narrative is not a random listing of events, no matter how carefully selected and arranged. Narratives aim at causal explanation – they attempt to lay out how one event caused another, as well as factors that influenced those links.

From: Barton, Keith C. and Linda S. Levstik. Teaching History for the Common Good. Routledge Publishing, 2004. pp. 131.



http://www.bu.edu/history/writing_guide.html


Strategies for Constructing an Historical Narrative

What is Narrative? The Telling of a Story. Simple. You do it everyday. In fact, this is one of those things on

which you can try too hard. Don't make it harder than it is. Narrative is not a chronicle. Sometimes budding historians think of narrative history as

a sequenced listing of things that happen. Nope. That is a chronicle. That is different than narrative. Much more boring. Narrative does not list events, it tells their story.

Narratives are accounts. Giving accounts of events is standard communicative behavior and narratives are nothing but accounts refined and designed.

How to write a narrative?

Some recommended steps:

1. Just sit down and put the story on paper. Let it flow. You give accounts all the time. Don't worry about sophistication or scholarliness. Just tell the story.

2. Go back over your notes and knowledge of the events. See what you have left out that you think needs to be part of the story. Rewrite your narrative to include these things. Notice that there is a sequence between 1 and 2. Don't let your need to include the right things or everything distract from your narrative flow in 1. Do it in 2.

3. Work to achieve artistic quality in your narrative. Now it is time to use the advice below. Rewrite your narrative to the specifications below.

Locating the Narrator Whose voice will perform the narrative? Normally in a rhetorical study of narrative, the

voice will be yours, using the 3rd person to describe the events leading up to and through the communication event.

What will you let him/her see? The author is always in control of the narrator. You will determine what the narrator sees. All that happens will not be in the narrator's account. That is because as a scholar you are always seeing from multiple perspectives and performing sophisticated reasoning that places some elements of observation in context and dismissing others as errors. So, you need to think about what you will let the narrator report and how you will let him/her craft the story.

The Plot Basically the sequence of events and/or choices that make up the action of the

narrative. The plot is more than a chronicle or list of the events, however. It asserts connections. It provides structure to the unfolding of the events.

A plot has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Decisions must be made about where to begin telling the story and where to end the telling.




What to include in the story. Decisions about which choices and events are important to telling the story are important decisions in constructing the plot. They should be driven not by their sheer occurrence, but by their importance to the unfolding storyline.

People, Groups, Organizations A good narrative also takes its quality from the character of the people who inhabit the

plotline. Because communication is a human action, the character of the communicator is often a central element of the accounts of communicative events.

Identify the people that are central to your plotline. Decide how the character of each will be communicated in your narrative.

Set character in relationship to the times. The tensions between the person and his/her times is a major component of character. How does the person fulfill the character of his/her times and how does s/he resist?

Narrative and Proof Narrative is not merely a writing form, but in history must respond to questions of veracity.

You have an obligation to seek out the factual implications of your account and do the historical work to check them against facts.

A final checklist of key qualities in good narrative Concentrate on the becoming, not on what it became. That is, what is interesting in

narrative is the unfolding of the events. So put your emphasis on development of the events.

Provide dynamism. Choices are paths taken, and paths not taken. Communicate the implications of choice. Let the reader see the implications of the choice.

Resist clocks and calendars and geography. Do not be bound by the pacing of the clock or the calendar. You will create time and space as you write a narrative. You will control time through pacing and geography through scope and circumference. Manage these in the service of your narrative.

Leave your reader with the experience, not just understanding. In reading your narrative, the reader should be able to be there, to experience the time and place.

Develop vivid characters. Be sure that you have enough moments of choice to communicate the character of the people communicating in your account.

Source: Klumpp, James F. University of Maryland. 9 Jan. 2009 <http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~jklumpp/spch711/narrative.htm>.

Essay Guide



http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~jklumpp/spch711/narrative.htm


Arguments are everywhere

[M]aking an argument—expressing a point of view on a subject and supporting it with evidence—is often the aim of academic writing. . . . [I]f your writing assignment asks you to respond to readings and class discussion, your instructor likely expects you to produce an argument in your paper.Most material you [read or hear] has been debated by someone, somewhere, at some time. Even when the material you read or hear is presented as simple "fact," it may actually be one person's interpretation of a set of information. In your writing, instructors may call on you to question that interpretation and defend it, refute it, or offer some new view of your own. In writing assignments, you will almost always need to do more than just present information that you have gathered or regurgitate facts that were discussed in class. You will need to select a point of view and provide evidence (in other words, use "argument") to shape the material and offer your interpretation of the material.

If you think that "fact," not argument, rules intelligent thinking, consider these examples. At one point, the great minds of Western Europe firmly believed the Earth was flat. They assumed this was simply an uncontroversial fact. You are able to disagree now because people who saw that argument as faulty set out to make a better argument and proved it. Differences of opinion are how human knowledge develops, and scholars spend their lives engaged in debate over what may be counted as "true," "real," or "right" in their fields.

. . . . We all use argumentation on a daily basis, and you probably already have some skill at crafting an argument. The more you improve your skills in this area, the better you will be at thinking critically, reasoning, making choices, and weighing evidence.

Making a claim

What is an argument? An argument is usually a main idea, often called a "claim" or "thesis statement," backed up with evidence that supports the idea. In [your] papers, you will need to make some sort of claim and use evidence to support it. In other words, gone are the happy days of being given a "topic" about which you can write anything. It is time to stake out a position and prove why it is a good position for a thinking person to hold.

Claims can be as simple as "Protons are positively charged and electrons are negatively charged," with evidence such as, "In this experiment, protons and electrons acted in such and such a way." Claims can also be as complex as "The end of the South African system of apartheid was inevitable," using reasoning and evidence such as, "Every successful revolution in the modern era has come about after the government in power has given and then removed small concessions to the uprising group." In either case, the rest of your paper will detail the reasoning and evidence that have led you to believe that your position is best.

When beginning to write a paper, ask yourself, "What is my point?" For example, the point of this handout is to help you become a better writer, and we are arguing that an important step in the




process of writing effective arguments is understanding the concept of argumentation. If your papers do not have a main point, they cannot be arguing for anything. Asking yourself what your point is can help you avoid a mere "information dump." Consider this: your instructors probably know a lot more than you do about your subject matter. Why, then, would you want to provide them with material they already know? Instructors are usually looking for two things:

Proof that you understand the material, AND A demonstration of your ability to use or apply the material in ways that go beyond what

you have read or heard.

This second part can be done in many ways: you can critique the material, apply it to something else, or even just explain it in a different way. In order to succeed at this second step, though, you must have a particular point to argue.

Arguments in academic writing are usually complex and take time to develop. Your argument will need to be more than a simple or obvious statement such as "Frank Lloyd Wright was a great architect." Such a statement might capture your initial impressions of Wright as you have studied him in class; however, you need to look deeper and express specifically what caused that "greatness." Your instructor will probably expect something more complicated, such as "Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture combines elements of European modernism, Asian aesthetic form, and locally found materials to create a unique new style," or "There are many strong similarities between Wright's building designs and those of his mother, which suggests that he may have borrowed some of her ideas." To develop your argument, you would then define your terms and prove your claim with evidence from Wright's drawings and buildings and those of the other architects you mentioned.

Evidence

Do not stop with having a point. You have to back up your point with evidence. The strength of your evidence, and your use of it, can make or break your argument. You already have the natural inclination for this type of thinking, if not in an academic setting. Think about how you talked your parents into letting you do [something you wanted]. Did you present them with lots of instances of your past trustworthiness? Did you make them feel guilty because your friends' parents allow your friends to do this? Did you whine until they just wanted you to shut up? Did you look up evidence such as your grades to show how responsible you are? These are all types of argumentation, and they exist in [school] in similar forms.

Every field has slightly different requirements for acceptable evidence, so familiarize yourself with some arguments from within that field instead of just applying whatever evidence you like best. Pay attention to your textbooks and your instructor's lectures. What types of argument and evidence are they using? The type of evidence that sways an English teacher may not work to convince a history teacher. Find out what counts as proof that something is true in that field. Is it statistics, a logical development of points, something from the object being discussed (art work, text, culture, or atom), the way something works, or some combination of more than one of these things?




Be consistent with your evidence. Unlike negotiating with your parents for something you want, a paper is not the place for an all-out blitz of every type of argument. You can often use more than one type of evidence within a paper, but make sure that within each section you are providing the reader with evidence appropriate to each claim. . . . You cannot convince a confused person, so keep things tidy and ordered.

Counterargument

One way to strengthen your argument and show that you have a deep understanding of the issue you are discussing is to anticipate and address counterarguments or objections. By considering what someone who disagrees with your position might have to say about your argument, you show that you have thought things through, and you dispose of some of the reasons your audience might have for not accepting your argument. You can generate counterarguments by asking yourself how someone who disagrees with you might respond to each of the points you've made or your position as a whole. If you can't immediately imagine another position, here are some strategies to try:

Do some research. It may seem to you that no one could possibly disagree with the position you are arguing, but someone probably has. For example, some people argue that the American Civil War never ended. If you are making an argument concerning, for example, the outcomes of the Civil War, you might wish to see what some of these people have to say.

Talk with a friend or with your teacher. Another person may be able to imagine counterarguments that haven't occurred to you.

Once you have thought up some counterarguments, consider how you will respond to them—will you concede that your opponent has a point but explain why your audience should nonetheless accept your argument? Will you reject the counterargument and explain why it is mistaken? Either way, you will want to leave your reader with a sense that your argument is stronger than opposing arguments.

When you are summarizing opposing arguments, present each argument fairly and objectively, rather than trying to make it look foolish. You want to show that you have seriously considered the many sides of the issue and that you are not simply attacking your opponents. It is usually better to consider one or two serious counterarguments in some depth, rather than to give a long but superficial list of many different counterarguments and replies. Be sure that your reply is consistent with your original argument. If considering a counterargument changes your position, you will need to go back and revise your original argument accordingly.

Adapted from: Argument. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina. 17 February 2009 <http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/argument.html>.



http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/argument.html


Industrialization Sources

Source #1

“Young Driver in Mine. Has been driving one year. 7 A.M. to 5:30 P.M daily Brown Mine, Brown W. VA.” photograph and caption by Lewis Hine, 1908.

Source #2

Jacob Riis, Five Cents Lodging, Bayard Street, c. 1889



http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/eyewitness/assets/html/html-zoom.php?image=0.1&keepThis=true&TB_iframe=true&height=350&width=720

http://historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/photos/question3.html#!%23!


Source #3

Examination of immigrants at Ellis Island

Source #4

Union Organization Flyer, 1886




Source #5




Narrative RubricCriteria 4 3 2 1Topic

IdentificationIdentifies a particular topic of historical significance with clarity and sufficient depth to develop a narrative. The topic is clearly based upon more than one of the sources provided.

Identifies a particular topic specific enough to conduct research and broad enough to develop a narrative.The topic is based upon one of the sources provided.

Identifies a particular topic, but it is either too specific or too broad to develop a well-constructed narrative. The topic is related to one of the sources provided.

Does not identify a particular topic. The narrative includes several different topics which are not connected. The topic is tangentially related to one of the sources provided.

People, Groups, or

Organizations

Two or more characters, groups, or organizations are well-developed in the narrative. Tensions between the person and his/her times are well-developed.

Two or more characters are clearly developed in the narrative. Tensions between the person and his/her times are described.

At least one character clearly developed in the narrative. Tensions between the person and his/her times are identified but not described.

At least one character is introduced in the narrative but not clearly developed. Tensions between the person and his/her times are not addressed.

Sequence of Events (Plot)

The narrative provides an analysis of a causal relationship with a beginning, middle and end.

The narrative clearly describes a causal relationship with a beginning, middle and end.

The narrative identifies a causal relationship, but the beginning, middle, and end of the narrative are not readily distinguishable.

The narrative contains a plotline that is difficult to follow and does not contain a recognizable beginning, middle and end. No causal relationship is addressed.

Accuracy The narrative reflects an accurate description of the events under consideration. Resources cited support the narrative

The narrative reflects a predominately accurate description of the events under consideration. Resources cited mostly support the narrative.

The narrative reflects a description of the events under consideration but about 50% of the narrative is inaccurate.

The narrative reflects a mostly inaccurate description of the events under consideration.

Fluency and Grammar

The language used is clear and inviting to the reader. Proper use of grammar and spelling.

The language used is consistently clear to the reader. Minor errors in grammar and spelling do not distract the reader.

The language used is inconsistent and at times interferes with understanding the narrative. Errors in grammar and spelling distract the reader.

The language used is unclear and interferes greatly with understanding the narrative. Errors in grammar and spelling significantly distract the reader.

Sources Writer identifies more than three sources and provided accurate citations for all. All resources support the narrative.

Used three sources and provided accurate citations for all. Most resources support the narrative.

Used at least two sources and provided citations for all, although not all citations are accurate. Some of the resources support the narrative.

Attempted to cite resources, but citations are not accurately recorded and do not support the narrative.



industrial revolution research...

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