SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLARS- THE TRIANGLE FIRE

Good afternoon, America,

I am deathly afraid of fire. Ever since I was a young child, I have stayed away from flame and heat, having been burned several times. Mostly I stay safe, taking proper precautions when I cook and work around fire, but accidents do happen. What can you do, though, when the entire building is on fire, and you’re trapped by, in many people’s minds, greed and corruption?
March 25th, 1911, was closing up as a normal, quiet day at the Triangle Waist Factory in New York City. Then, fire began on the eighth level of the building, the factory being on the eighth, ninth, and tenth stories. It quickly spread, claming nearly 150 lives. Most of these souls were girls as young as fourteen, who had come from Europe in search of a better life. They had found work in the sweatshops of America’s largest city, working for a nominal wage and without any form of protection. Most of the workers were not members of a union, like the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, formed two years previous. The strange country in which they struggled to live often intimidated the immigrants, giving them little chance to make a stand against the terrible working conditions.
It was all over in a half-hour. It was impossible to get out of the inferno. It was common practice to lock doors in factories -owners said that it was to prevent employees from stealing materials. With the doors locked and the main exit blocked, there was only one way to escape the hell- jump. Many took this option, finding death by fall better than to be burned alive.
When it was all over, 147 were dead and a city was enraged. The owners of the Triangle Waist Factory, Isaac Harris and Max Blanck, clamed no responsibilities in the matter, saying that the building on Washington Place in Manhattan had been fireproof and recently certified. This did nothing to satisfy the growing anger of the people, who blamed the businessmen for the conflagration and resulting deaths. Criminal charges were brought against Blanck and Harris, but thanks to the brilliant defense attorney Max Steuer, were acquitted of the charges of manslaughter inthe first and second degrees. Three years later, twenty-three civil cases were brought against the two, who were widely seen as murderers. Blanck and Harris paid seventy-five dollars in reprisal for each casualty.
The Triangle Fire was a horrible example of the labor conditions at the beginning of the 20th century. Doors were locked, a basic breech of safety. The fire is believed to have started as a result of improperly disposed of scraps. Workers toiled in dangerous conditions and the employers acted as if everything was fine when it was not. The legal system attempted to do something about the crime, but little was achieved. There is next to nothing all the strongest, most moral jurisprudence can do when life is lost in such a nightmare. Seventy-five dollars were paid for each life lost, but that does not cover the loss of a loved one, a provider, and a human.

This year, remember humanity. Thanks.

Agriculture Rising

America was a primarily agricultural society until the mid 19th century, in which the Industrial Revolution, spurred by the Civil War, took hold. In the period spanning 1865-1900, American agriculture was greatly changed with the advent of new technology, the growing involvement of the government, and an ever-changing economy.
Farmers quite simply feed and supply their country. As America expanded, farmers faced a major logistics problem- shipping goods the rest of the country. The answer to this issue was the railroad. In its infancy before the Civil War, the rail system was growing at an alarming rate in the postbellum years, growing from its original home in the North and the East and reaching South and West. In 1870, there was only one east-west railway, the Union Pacific. By 1890, the West was crisscrossed with railways, five of which were made possible by major land grants. The agricultural industry soon hinged on the railway.
The cattle industry is a fine example of this use of the railroad. Cattle from Texas and the territories of Arizona and New Mexico were shipped, via rail, to Chicago’s slaughterhouses and packing plants. Twenty years earlier, circa 1870, the bovine death march was made by way of six major cattle trails out of Texas, leading to the railroad. By 1890, the journey was completely made by rail. The end of the line was Chicago’s packing industry, for companies such as Armour, serviced at the Union Stockyards.
An 1884 Harper’s New Monthly Magazine article describes the importance of the railway. “Let five great trunk lines which have their termini on the borders of Lake Michigan answer. Like the outstretched fingers of a hand, they meet in the central palm, Chicago… Ten thousand miles of rail at least are occupied in th[is] transit.”
Another change in agricultural technology was brought on by the push Westward. The climate grows more extreme to the west of the Mississippi, from deserts in the south to middle plains and freezing winters and rains to the north. Many of the strains of wheat brought to the west would not grow properly, causing farmers to lose harvests. To combat this, many farmers literally learned to work smarter, not harder, through importing wheat strains from Russia, which were genetically better for cold climates, and planting sorghum, which can withstand drought, a common danger of the West.
Agriculture also met a major change when the government applied itself to the farm. The West, with its wide spaces and promise of the American Dream, was in many people’s sights, and the government seemed to be practically paying people to go west, with the Homestead Act. However, government agents often did little to help their fellow Americans, instead swindling them. One crooked agent returned home with $50,000 after a four-year stint with a $1,500 a year salary. Mary E. Lease, the brilliant populist, pointed out the failure of the American Dream- “Money rules… The parties lie to us and the political speakers mislead us. We were told two years ago to go to work and raise a big crop that was all we needed. We went to work and plowed and planted… and we raised the big crop that they told us to; and what came of it?”
Obviously, the government’s involvement was not as much a boon as it was made out to be. One governmental mistake would have far-reaching consequences in agriculture and ecology- the government-sanctioned extinction of the bison. In 1874, after being urged on by the ASPCA, Congress passed a bill that would make it illegal for anyone that was not a Native American to hunt bison. However, after being worn down by his Secretary of the Interior, President Grant vetoed the measure. Secretary Columbus Delano said, “They eat the grass. They trample upon the plains. They are as uncivilized as the Indian.” The bison soon nearly went extinct. At that time, ecology was poorly understood. In truth, the bison was an extremely important part of the country. It stirred up and transplanted seeds, replacing what it consumed, and moved far more that the thousands of head of cattle that came to replace them. It could be argued that the destruction of the bison, with the goal of saving the settlers’ agriculture, actually endangered the land further.
Agriculture plays an important part in economics, and vise-versa. In the 19th century, prices for wheat, corn, and cotton fluctuated. America had to compete with other producers, such as Russia and Argentina. Wheat prices fell in 1880, 1885, rose in 1890, and dropped sharply in 1895. Inflated money, hinging on the undecided standard, would mean inflation in food prices- in other words, more production, less profit. This was a rather new threat, as the food industry grew domestically and internationally.
Agriculture went through a major stage of evolution in the 19th century, both aided and hindered by technology and politics. As America found its place in the world, the future of agriculture found its feet in America.

Leading Up to Secession…

It was December of 1860 and the people of South Carolina had had it.

The general election returns were in, and Abraham Lincoln of Illinois had been elected President, a move that broke the South’s patience. Fire-eaters pressed for secession now that this “black Republican” was going to Washington. South Carolina had been seething for years with states’ rights fury, from the Nullification Crisis of 1832-33 to the 1860 election. Lincoln had not even appeared on the ballot in the South, testimony to the South’s hatred of Lincoln even before the delegates met in Charleston.

The flag of South Carolina

Abraham Lincoln had brought up a major problem in his debate at Freeport with Stephen A. Douglas. Lincoln asked what if the people of a territory should vote down slavery? The Supreme Court had ruled in Scott vs. Sandford (1857) that territories could not vote down slavery.

The Little Giant- Stephen A Douglas

Douglas replied that slavery could be voted down when territories proposed slave laws for voting, as these would not be passed if popular opinion were not behind them. His logic was based on the precedent that federal law cannot remain in place when popular opinion is against it.
The South, and South Carolina in particular, thought they knew where this was heading. Douglas essentially was denying the authority of the Supreme Court. The Dred Scott Decision was a major victory for the South, which was reassured that the Fifth Amendment forbade the government from taking their property, in this case slaves. While Douglas’s understanding of the consent of the government was in a way an acknowledgement of States’ Rights, the South saw this as an attack on one of the few clear victories in the War of Compromises. The Democratic Party was already falling apart, and the South was even more determined to let the party, and country, fall apart rather than lose their rights.

Then came the four-way election of 1860. John Bell’s Constitutional Union Party, John C. Breckenridge’s Southern Democrat Party, Stephen A. Douglas and the Northern Democrats, and Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate crowded the field. The South hated Lincoln, sure that he was going to rob them of their slaves. The future President did not receive a single electoral vote from the South.

South Carolina had decided that if Lincoln came in to office, they were out of the deal. The election sealed it. On December 20th, South Carolina seceded, even before Lincoln’s inauguration. The people of the Palmetto State took another step towards war.

What Is a Puritan, Really?

Good evening, America.

Saving America, One History Lesson at a Time is back today. I’m sorry that the blog has been neglected for about three months. Today I’d like to ask my fine readers a question. What does it mean to be Puritan? I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, from reading Sarah Vowell’s The Wordy Shipmates to studying early American history and literature.

The words “Puritan” and “Puritanical” are often misused in today’s English. When we think of the Puritans, we think of stodgy old predecessors to the religious right that killed Indians, dissenters, and random people accused of being witches. We see the hard, unflinching nerve of the early colonists and their devotion to religion and work only and their zero tolerance policy regarding dissenting voices and conclude that Puritanism is a primitive, bigotry-filled way of life, Archie Bunker meets Jerry Falwell. We apply the adjectives to overly conservative ideas and people. Being Puritan today means having no tolerance and no fun.
Reading the works of Puritans themselves, however, from William Bradford to Jonathan Edwards, gives us another picture. While Bradford’s style certainly is Spartan and Edwards’ sermons full of heel and damnation, their writings reveal what it truly means to be Puritan.

Most Americans are in some way familiar with William Bradford’s account of the settlers of the Mayflower, Of Plymouth Plantation. This book details the crossing of the Atlantic and the beginnings of the Plymouth colony. His spare style and attention to detail make Of Plymouth Plantation a good introduction to the Puritans. He humbly tells of the colony’s triumphs and misfortunes, and points to God when Squanto assists them, calling him “a special instrument of God.” The Puritans believed everything that happened, good or bad, was God’s doing and for his glory. To the Puritans, the hardships, hard work, and cooperation of the first two years of the colony were for His glory. From this, we learn of the Puritan work ethic and devotion.

One of the later Puritan writers was the leader of the Great Awakening. Jonathan Edwards is as famous today in American church history as he was in his time for fire and brimstone sermons. His most famous Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God is a description of what Edwards saw awaiting those out of God’s grace.

Puritans did not know if they were saved or not, because they believed in the elect and the non-elect. How can you know if you’re chosen? The Puritans responded by endeavoring to do what is right. Work hard, study, love God, stay humble. The word “Puritan” means someone set out to purify something. The nonconformists now known as puritans wanted to clean out the Catholicism in the Church of England. They worked to build a city upon a hill, as outlined in John Winthrop’s Model of Christian Charity.

Today, anyone with the goal of restoring society to rightness could be called a Puritan. Working hard for the glory of God is a Puritan ideal. In short, you don’t have to write long, erudite essays and hunt witches to be a puritan, just reach for the best within you and do what is right.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, a decedent of the Puritans said that we should be thankful for our ancestors the Puritans, and thankful for every generation separating us.

So thanks to the Puritans for giving us a legacy of reading, writing, and thinking.

 

A Tribute to a Historian

Good Morning America,

It is with a heavy heart that I announce the passing of a prominent citizen in my hometown in Indiana. Last week, John Martin Smith, attorney and historian, passed away. He was the county historian- he knew everything about deKalb County. His law practice was across the street from the public library. He lived in a house that was once a station for the Underground Railroad. Mr. Smith was one of those people that everyone knew and loved. I myself only got to meet him a few times, but I always came away with the impression that this man was a hero. Historians are heroes. I just want to ask my readers to take the moment to thank the historians who volunteer their time for their communities. Thanks to John Martin Smith, deKalb will never forget its history. And deKalb will never forget Mr. Smith.

 

Saving America Remembers- 9.11.01

Good evening America,

This week is the tenth anniversary of 9/11, the defining moment in 21st century history. I don’t know what I can say.  I will recount what I remember of the attack and the time after. I was still pretty young when I was sitting on my mother’s bed, watching the television. I was too young, I guess, to realize that the country had just been attacked, and that the world was a big, dangerous place. Seven year olds don’t understand evil.

As time went on, I heard a lot of names. Osama bin Ladin. Abu Ar-Zarkowi. I knew who bin Ladin was, but I never figured out who “Palestinian Leader Abu Ar-Zarkowi” was. Then Anthrax, Enron. I put two and two together and got 5, thinking that 9/11, Anthrax, and Enron were somehow linked. Thank you mainstream media for just firing snippets of news. My father watched The News Hour With Jim Lehrer, where I saw images coming back from the war in countries I had never heard of. I was under the impression that battles still had Civil War style casualties. I also wondered why President Bush wasn’t leading troops into battle “like George Washington.”

Time marched on. The government managed to destroy Napster and convict Martha Stewart, while they couldn’t get a grasp on Osama bin Ladin. They kept conducting a “War on terror” in seemingly random countries, meanwhile nothing got done- there were no more attacks, and that is what you call a result. Then more names- Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld. Abu Garib. Then the world watched Saddam Hussein be sentenced to death and his statues toppled. In January of this year, a lone madman in Tuscon killed six people, including a girl named Christina Taylor Green, who was born on 9/11. She had the goal of being a stateswoman.

Finally there was the morning that my dad said to me “Guess who they just caught!” That was May 3rd of this year. I wasn’t up at 10 when the President came on and announced that US Navy SEALs had after ten years found the most wanted man in the world. I guess that was when it all came into perspective.

The Cold War- Society, Politics. World History Essay

A major shift in world politics occurred after World War Two. Instead of several countries dominating the world order, two countries were in the forefront- the United States of America and the Soviet Union. These countries became the first two superpowers, entering an age of fear. The Cold War was the result of this shift. America and its allies dominated the Western bloc of Europe and sent aid to the blockaded West Germans, while the Soviet Union wasted no time in taking control of the Eastern countries and almost a fourth of Germany.

The Cold War effected life severely. In the early 1950s, Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy was intent on exposing the people on his list of “known Communists.” This period marked by much concern that the Communists were going to infiltrate America was called the Red Scare. People built bomb shelters in their back yards and practiced “duck and cover” in schools as a way to be protected from bombings. In 1956, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev said “Mii vas pokhoronim!” literally, We will dig you in, although usually translated as “bury you.” The West watched as the Russians stockpiled more weaponry and suppressed uprisings like in Hungary. The world was divided into three blocs- the Free World (America and its allies), the Communist Bloc (the Soviet Union and its allies) and the Third World (supporting both the USSR and America).

The social effects were also of an incredible magnitude. In the West, Russians were increasingly portrayed as evil. The Red Scare may have worn off, but nuclear war did seem on the horizon as the Soviets stationed missiles on Cuba, and for nearly a month, the world was on the brink of World War Three. After Khrushchev agreed to take down the missiles, there were other problems related to the Cold War looming. American President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 and soon America became embroiled in the Vietnam War, an offshoot of the Cold War. It was in this time that the American people lost faith in their government.

The Cold War affected everything, from politics to culture. One of the greatest examples of how the Cold War affected America was the publication of MAD Magazine’s comic, Spy Vs. Spy by Antonio Prohías, a Cuban refugee. The comic portrays two spies, identical except for the color of their clothes, fighting over a briefcase. These two figures represent the Communists and Free World, fighting passively over nothing and oftentimes giving into paranoia. The Cold War never became an active war, and effectively ended in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The spies in the comic never truly triumph over each other, and it was so with the two blocs. The Cold War, if anything, showed what people become in fear.

The Fourth of July- Part Three- July 3rd- America

Good Evening America!

I don’t have all that much to say to you tonight, just a song, so I’ll just let Neil Diamond do the talking.

Where does your family come from? Neil’s is Russian and Polish. Mine is British, German, Dutch, and Native American. Post a comment about your ancestry. Part of Independence Day is remembering where our families come from.

Thanks to Neil Diamond and our ancestors. May we never forget what the “Independence” in Independence means. That started with those who came to America in search of the ultimate freedom- that of our posterity. We can never thank these people enough.

The Fourth of July, Part Two, July 2nd- The Idea

Good evening, America,

Today is the second day of July, 2011. Has it really been so long since America was founded? Could the Civil War really have been only one-hundred and fifty years ago? What has made America last? What founded it in the first place?

It all started with an idea.

The idea was there at the very beginning, well before Thomas Jefferson put it into words–and the idea rang the call.
    Jefferson himself could not have imagined the reach of his call across the world in time to come when he wrote:
    “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”
    But over the next two centuries the call would reach the potato patches of Ireland, the ghettoes of Europe, the paddyfields of China, stirring farmers to leave their lands and townsmen their trades and thus unsettling all traditional civilizations.
    It is the call from Thomas Jefferson, embodied in the great statue that looks down the Narrows of New York Harbor, and in the immigrants who answered the call, that we now celebrate.

That is the beginning of Theodore H. White’s essay, “The American Idea.”  White is probably best-known for the Making of the President series. This essay was one of the better things I was assigned this school year. I don’t really have much to say about this. I could not find a full text on the internet, except for this excerpt. Reading this essay, even a part of it, makes you think about the ideas that made America. What do you think the idea was? That’s what being American is all about- living up to those ideas.

Thanks to everyone through history who has made the idea a reality.

The Fourth of July, Part One, July 1st- The Americans

Good evening, America!

We find ourselves at the beginning of July. Today is the beginning of the three day Battle of Gettysburg, the High Tide of the Confederacy. Tonight I’d like to lead up to the Fourth of July with a question- What does it mean to be American? In a world where we can get by without even thinking that we are Americans, what makes us American? Do we believe in the American Idea? Do we remember where we came from? And how does the rest of the world view America? These questions will be asked in the forthcoming articles.

Tonight I would like to leave you with a monologue on America, simply entitled “The Americans.” Broadcast on June 5th, 1973, Gordon Sinclair’s commentary asks what America does… and what other people say… all from the perspective of a Canadian.

 

And here is a transcript of this great speech.

Thank you to Gordon Sinclair, Canada, and the Americans.