For Wednesday, February 17 (This is when Monday happens at RWU Next Week
For Thursday, February 18
Pauper labor steals the bread out of the mouths of an honest American working family, in this anti-immigrant cartoon from Judge.
Anti-immigrant propaganda focused on "The New Emigration" from Southern and Eastern Europe, especially Italians and Jews. Click on the image to the right to read more about the 19th century Jewish experience.
The complaint about immigrant labor depressing wages is still heard from time to time.
Chinese immigrants arrived largely through the ports of California, first recruited to work on the building of the transcontinental railroad and later to work in agriculture. The Chinese were subjected to intense interest on the one hand and intense prejudice upon the other. They seemed very exotic, even alien, to those whose families had migrated from Europe. The picture at the top left links to information about ongoing efforts to exclude Chinese altogether.
The image above is curious for its demonstration of American interest in technology, as well as the intense anti-Chinese feeling it displays. The washing machine will chase the Chinese from San Francisco to back to China. The picture links to a photo book interspersed with short vignettes about life in "Chinatown" It isn't long and is worth a read, so read it. The "Great Disaster" of which the book speaks is shown in the last photograph. For the curious, and I hope that includes many of you, it will be an interesting exercise to look the the streets mentioned on one of the panoramic maps, or on one of the tools we have available to ourselves today: Google Earth or Google Maps.
Finally, humor can be a wicked and vicious weapon as some of us have discovered from time to time. "Polite Society" in the gilded age was not very politically correct, as is witnessed by attempts from time to time to either edit books like Huckleberry Finn or exclude them from libraries altogether.
Stage Humor thrived on making fun of African Americans and immigrants. Choice Dialect is a book chock full of examples. Reach it by clicking on the image. to the right.
ASSIGNMENT: I want each of you to read or tell an ethnic story or joke from the book. I'll circulate a table of contents in class Friday and ask people to initial two or three which seem of special interest to them. Read them, and let me know which is your final choice. Extra credit for trying a "Choice Dialect"
Many of you have been aware of the controversies surrounding immigration policy and "controlling our borders" which have flooded the news in the last several years. Nativism of one kind or another has been part of the American political and social scene for well over 160 years. It tends to be particularly vigorous during times of economic uncertainty.
All our resources for this class are on the Internet, and the variety is immense. By exploring this page you should find five links, four behind pictures and one in the text. Two of them are short summaries -- read all of each.
One is a book of gilded age pictures. Read as much as you can of the interspersed vignettes, but do look at all the pictures. If they don't move you check your pulse. Read all of the document linked by text, and as far as the jokes go, the instructions should be self-explanatory. I'll do show and tell to help explain all of this.
Read,in Schlereth:
Chapter 2: Working, to sub-head Office Work and Service Jobs
pp. 33-66
Most of the mobility we discussed so far was not related to recreational touring. Whether people commuted or migrated, they did so in relation to work. We begin a study of working in the Gilded Age by taking a closer look at the factory at the turn of the century, especially the newer heavy industries organized on mammoth scales. Factories like these gave reason for the development of trolley systems to move laborers from home to work site. A bit later we'll look at recreational mobility, perhaps.
Visit it, and investigate the years prior to World War I. Devote some time to studying the photographs. Note how raw the new town looks. Consider, too, what local photographers considered worthy subject matter, and why. (Farrell becomes home to one of the large steel mills which were part of the Andrew Carnegie empire.) We’ll return to this part of the country when we look at labor unrest in greater detail.
The new industrialism also meant the creation of new towns. Workers need shelter and institutions through which to raise, nurture, and educate their children. Local History of the type fostered by organizations such as the American Association for State and Local History recounts the stories of places like Farrell, Pennsylvania in minute detail. The coming of the modern industrial plant to South Sharon (later, Farrell) is recounted at the page reached by clicking the image below.
With the new industrialization came instances of massive labor unrest. One of the most famous was the strike at the Homestead Mills. In a day when labor had no protection or rights, the army was frequently used to put down unrest. Click on the illustration to the left to read about it inThe Illustrated American. There's much else to enjoy in that popular magazine.
