This CNBC News Report describes how, in late 19th-century America, J.P Morgan helped build the modern industrial economy and saved the financial markets from a panic in 1907.
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This CNBC News Report describes how the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Standard Oil a monopoly when it controlled 90 percent of the world's oil refining. However, John D. Rockefeller maintained control of the oil companies that splintered off from the monopoly, securing his historic fortune.
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In addition to looking to the past to understand our society, we also look to the future. In 1900, newspapers and magazines printed predictions for the turn of the 21st century. Decide, true or false, whether each of the following was predicted in 1900.
1. [The American] will live 50 years instead of 35 as at present—for he will reside in the suburbs. The city house will practically be no more. Building in blocks will be illegal. The trip from suburban home to office will require a few minutes only. A penny will pay the fare.
True. In the 20th century, transportation and sanitation 
advances led to the rise of developments around cities. Streetcars, trains, and, later, highways made it possible for workers to commute to urban centers for work and to travel outside of the city for their home life. Suburb development grew exponentially after World War II with the rapid spread of mass-produced housing such as Levittown.
2. Fleets of air-ships, hiding themselves with dense, smoky mists, thrown off by themselves as they move, will float over cities, fortifications, camps or fleets. They will surprise foes below by hurling upon them deadly thunderbolts. These aerial war-ships will necessitate bomb-proof forts, protected by great steel plates over their tops as well as at their sides.
True. Several aspects of this prediction came true, including the move to aircraft as a central defensive and offensive weapon. Later in the 20th century, the U.S. government spent significant resources on the research and development of a national missile defense system under the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO), established in 1984.
3. Persons and things of all kinds will be brought within focus of cameras connected electrically with screens at opposite ends of circuits, thousands of miles at a span. American audiences in their theatres will view upon huge curtains before them the coronations of kings in Europe or the progress of battles in the Orient although they will not hear the crowds cheer or the guns of a distant battle as they boom.
False. In its actual form, this prediction foresaw the ability to see "live" events across the globe and also predicted the ability to hear events as they happened: "The instrument bringing these distant scenes to the very doors of people will be connected with a giant telephone apparatus transmitting each incidental sound in its appropriate place. Thus the guns of a distant battle will be heard to boom when seen to blaze, and thus the lips of a remote actor or singer will be heard to utter words or music when seen to move".
4. The owner of a [flying] machine, or even the man who did not own one, by patronizing the express lines, could live 50 miles away and yet do business in the city day by day, going by air line to his home each night.
False. Theodore Waters of the New York Herald actually predicted that workers could easily commute 500 miles to work each day, flying home each night, a further visualization of transportation innovation as well as of the relationship between work and home as the notion of suburbs emerged.
5. Coal will not be used for heating or cooking. It will be scarce, but not entirely exhausted. The earth's hard coal will last until the year 2050 or 2100; its soft-coal mines until 2200 or 2300. Meanwhile both kinds of coal will have become more and more expensive. Man will have found electricity manufactured by waterpower to be much cheaper.
True. Well into the 1800s, 
Americans met their needs by harvesting energy and materials from plants, animals, rivers, and wind. By the 1830s, though, large-scale coal extraction had begun in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and beyond. By the 1910s, more than 750,000 coal miners dug and blasted upwards of 550 million tons of coal a year. Fossil fuels changed daily life in America, from travel to shopping, daily life to leisure. America's industrial ascendancy, however, caused problems for humans and the environment and in 2009, the threat of diminishing supplies is a serious concern.
6. Ready-cooked meals will be bought from establishments similar to our bakeries of today. They will purchase materials in tremendous wholesale quantities and sell the cooked foods at a price much lower than the cost of individual cooking. Food will be served hot or cold to private houses in pneumatic tubes or automobile wagons. The meal being over, the dishes used will be packed and returned to the cooking establishments where they will be washed.
True. In the early 20th century, new household technology was both accomplished and inspired by the tremendous increase in American industrial production. As in industry, mechanization and scientific management were part of a larger reorganization of work. And as in industry, efficient housekeeping was partially a response to labor unrest—both the "servant problem" and the growing disquiet of middle-class wives. A major proponent of the new housekeeping, Christine Frederick published books, articles, and pamphlets on scientific management in the home with a focus on greater efficiency, from cooking to washing dishes. This plan, in some ways predictive of the late 20th-century shift to pre-cooked meals in stores and restaurants, likely drew on this emerging ideology.
7. The living body will to all medical purposes be transparent. Not only will it be possible for a physician to actually see a living, throbbing heart inside the chest, but he will be able to magnify and photograph any part of it.
True. X-rays were first identified in the late 19th century, but were not widely used for medical research and treatment in 1900 when this prediction was written. Since 2005, X-rays were listed as a carcinogenic by the U.S. government. The author likely would not have envisioned the 21st-century field of endoscopy that allows medical professionals to see and photograph many parts of the body through a small tube.
Contemporary understandings, issues, and conflicts lay behind the predictions of the past, as they do behind today's.
Learn about one of the first planned suburban communities—Levittown, NY—at Levittown: Documents of an Ideal American Suburb, or try the website of the Levittown Historical Society and Museum.
For more on the development and strife in the coal industry as it grew, try Thomas G. Andrews's Killing for Coal: America's Deadliest Labor War, from Harvard University Press. Though it focuses on the 1914 Ludlow Massacre, it looks at coal as a coming-together point for industry, class, nature, and the human manufactured world; for more on the Massacre, try the Colorado Coal Field War Project, which provides an overview, photographs, lesson plans, and other materials on the Massacre and the Colorado Coal Strike of 1913 through 1914.
Read a 1912 article by Ladies Home Journal editor Christine Frederick on the efficient, scientific method for washing dishes or an excerpt from her 1913 guide The New Housekeeping, at History Matters. Cornell University's Home Economics Archive also provides a collection of books and journals on the reimagining of domestic life between 1850 and 1950.
And do you have any eager readers in your classes? The young-adult-level memoir Cheaper by the Dozen lets students (and casual readers) into life growing up with Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr. (1868-1924), advocate of scientific household management and motion study in the same years as Christine Frederick. Warm, humorous, and personal, the book, written by two of Gilbreth's children, memorializes a time period and a very unique family.
As the work of another school year begins, Labor Day reminds us to honor the nation's workers. Since the rise of industry, workers have used strikes and other forms of protest to demand change and recognition. Select the correct answer for each of the labor-related questions below.
1. What U.S. census data does this map portray?
a. The 1930 relative concentration of "totally unemployed persons registered" in each state.
b. The 1870 relative amount of "total capital invested (in dollars) in manufacturing" in each state.
c. The 1920 relative concentration of "manufacturing establishments" in each state.
d. The 1950 relative concentration of "employed females" in each state.
By 1920, industry had established itself as a fixture of the American economy and way of life, though its hubs remained in the Mid-Atlantic. New York continued to be a center of industry, and Illinois, with the continuing rise of Chicago as an urban industrial center, had become one, as well.
2. On May 4, 1886, a peaceful workers' rally in Chicago's Haymarket Square ended in death and confusion when a dynamite bomb was thrown into a line of approaching police officers. The Haymarket Affair received nationwide media attention and the trials of the alleged guilty parties went all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. Four of the accused were hung and a fifth committed suicide.
What reform was the rally supporting?
a. The removal of hazardous parts-manufacturing machinery from a McCormick Harvesting Machine Company plant.
b. The passing of a minimum-wage law in the state of Illinois.
c. The paying of compensation to workers who suffered debilitating injuries from repetitive factory work.
d. The institution of the eight-hour workday.
The speakers at the Haymarket Affair supported strikers who had engaged in a May 1 nationwide walkout to support an eight-hour workday. On May 3, the first workday after the walkout, police killed two workers outside a McCormick plant during a confrontation between scabs (temporary workers hired to replace strikers) and strikers. This event provided an impetus for the Haymarket rally.
3. On February 6, 1919, more than 60,000 Seattle workers refused to work, marking the high point of a series of strikes and unrest that started in January 1919. The first labor action to effectively shut down an entire city, this strike hoped to secure what result?
a. The reinstatement of workers ousted by returning soldiers.
b. A pay raise for the city's shipyard workers.
c. The cessation of all U.S. hostilities against the Bolshevik Red Army in Russia and of any support for forces opposing the Red Army.
d. A stop to the installation of new machinery that would reduce the work force necessary in the shipyards.
During World War I, the government imposed wage controls, keeping the wages of Seattle shipyard workers down even as the shipyards expanded through war production contracts. Following the war, the workers expected a raise in their wages; when denied, approximately 25,000 members of the Metal Trades Council union alliance went on strike. A general citywide strike followed, with about 35,000 other workers striking in support of the shipyard protest. The strike officially ended on February 11—though not before touching off a widespread "Red Scare."
4. On December 30, 1936, the workers at Flint, Michigan's General Motors automobile plant began a six-week long strike to press for better working conditions. Organized by the United Auto Workers, the strike used what relatively unusual technique to make its point?
a. Strikers not only stopped working during the strike, but left town entirely, taking their families with them.
b. Strikers remained entirely silent during the strike.
c. Strikers, instead of picketing outside of the factory, occupied the factory, preventing upper management and law enforcement from entering.
d. Strikers sabotaged the factory's power supply, re-sabotaging it whenever plant management repaired it.
Known as the Flint Sit-down Strike, this strike used techniques later adapted by the civil rights movement. On December 30, workers sat down at their places and refused to leave the factory for six weeks. Provided food and supplies by supporters, the workers repelled attempts by the police to drive them out and even initiated the surprise takeover of another plant in the last two weeks of the strike.
The map of the 1920 concentration of manufacturing establishments was generated by the University of Virginia Library's Historical Census Browser. The browser provides searchable census data for 1790 through 1960, with the option to visualize any data selections in maps such as the one above; all of the categories mentioned in Question One are categories available on the website. For Teachinghistory.org's review of the Historical Census Browser, go here.
Teachinghistory.org's reviews the Library of Congress's American Memory collection Chicago Anarchists on Trial: Evidence from the Haymarket Affair, 1886-1887 here.
The Seattle General Strike Project looks at the 1919 general strike through primary sources, including photographs, video clips, newspaper articles, and oral histories. The website is part of the University of Washington's larger Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, collecting primary sources on civil rights and labor movements throughout the city's history. NHEC reviews the Project here.
Historical Voices provides a website on the Flint Sit-down Strike: Remembering the Flint Sit-down Strike: 1936-1937. The website provides close to 100 oral history interviews with strikers, as well as essays on the events of the strike. NHEC's review of the website can be found here.
From the Lincoln and New York website:
"This course introduces teachers to the scholarship behind the groundbreaking exhibitions Slavery in New York and New York Divided: Slavery and the Civil War. Beginning with a survey of Dutch, British and American practices of slavery, teachers will explore the varied experiences of the enslaved men and women who built New York. In Part II of the course, teachers will examine key themes of the exhibition New York Divided, including New York City's economic and social connections to Southern slavery; the co-existence of anti-black and abolitionist sentiment in New York; and major events in New York during the Civil War, including the Draft Riots and the raising of African-American regiments."
"Teachers wishing to receive professional credit must register online with the New York After-School Professional Development Program; visit their website: https://pci.nycenet.edu/aspdp/. Teachers who do not wish to receive credit may register on Ed-Net, available at http://www.nyhseducationdb.org/login.aspx."
NOTE: The dates for this program are not yet set. It will take place in Spring 2010.
Thomas Jefferson described the system of growing tobacco that prevailed in Tidewater Virginia and Maryland as "a culture of infinite wretchedness." What do you know about tobacco and the tobacco farming of his time?
1. The first English colonists who landed in Jamestown learned about tobacco from the Native Americans in the area, who taught them to grow it. The colonists, in turn, sent some of their harvest back to England, introducing it as a novelty there.
A. True.
B. False.
2. If a tobacco plantation was a thousand acres, how much of it might typically be under tobacco cultivation at any one time?
A. 30 acres.
B. 100 acres.
C. 300 acres.
D. 600 acres.
3. How large an acreage of tobacco plants could each laborer tend?
A. A half an acre.
B. 1 acre.
C. 2-3 acres.
D. 10 acres.
4. A Tidewater tobacco plantation owner in 1725 might typically have what percentage of his total wealth in the value of his slaves (as opposed to his land, livestock, tools, buildings, and household possessions)?
A. 10 %
B. 30 %
C. 50 %
D. 75 %
5. By 1750, what percentage of the Chesapeake region's population were slaves?
A. 2 %
B. 7 %
C. 15 %
D. 35 %
6. In 1619, the first ship arrived in Jamestown carrying women who intended to marry some of the colonists and embark on new lives. The men had to pay the passage of their brides-to-be, and payment was assessed in tobacco, rather than in gold or silver. How much did each man pay for his chosen woman?
A. 10 pounds of tobacco and 2 hams.
B. 120 pounds of tobacco.
C. 500 pounds (one hogshead) of tobacco.
D. 1000 pounds (two hogsheads) of tobacco and three cheers for His Majesty.
[Question 1] Tobacco was well known in England before the colonization of Virginia. The Spanish had introduced tobacco to Europe after their earliest voyages to the Caribbean and South America. It had reached England by 1565, when Sir Walter Raleigh acquired the habit of pipe smoking and introduced the English to tobacco. At that time, Spain dominated the new tobacco trade. When the Jamestown colonists arrived in Virginia, there was already a robust British and European demand for tobacco.
The Jamestown colonists first attempted to cultivate the variety of tobacco that was native to Virginia, Nicotiana rustica. But this was harsher and therefore inferior to Nicotiana tabacum, the Caribbean variety that the Spanish had made popular in Europe. In 1612 Englishman John Rolfe brought to the Virginia colony seeds of the milder, "sweet-scented" variety from the West Indies. In the Virginia soil, the seed produced a highly pleasant tobacco whose smoking qualities exceeded that which was grown elsewhere.
[Question 2] 30 acres out of 1000 was not unusual. The growing of tobacco enforced a complicated and stringent regimen on the grower. Weather, geography, and soil conditions had to be just right in order to achieve a good crop. All of these factors were present in the Tidewater region, which had fertile, loamy soil that suited the tobacco plant. The region had a relatively temperate climate and, in most years, received an ideal amount of rainfall. The land was also largely flat and most of it was accessible to the many waterways and tributaries that flowed into the Chesapeake Bay, ensuring relatively easy transport of the crop to the ships that would take it to England. For these reasons, the colonists found it "easy" to grow tobacco. Only seven years after John Rolfe shipped the first crop of Virginia-grown tobacco to England, it had become the colony's main export.
The tobacco plant, however, is quite temperamental and demanding. Even within a single field, the plant would be influenced by the amount of sunlight, minerals, water, and wind. Not all of the field would yield the best tobacco, even in years where there was neither too little rain nor too much. Also, growing tobacco rapidly exhausted the soil's nutrients. Without the addition of fertilizer, three years of growing tobacco was all it took to deplete the soil. The easiest solution was to have available large areas of cheap land so that the grower could shift his fields onto virgin soil when his original plot could no longer sustain his crop. At least in the first decades of the colonial settlements in the area, large tracts of cheap land were precisely what the colonists had, so this, too, made it "easy" for them to cultivate tobacco.
The tobacco planter also needed to have some portion of his land in forest because a large amount of lumber went into making the large barrels or hogsheads in which the tobacco crop was shipped, as well as for constructing his drying barns, cold frames, and drying rods, and for fueling the carefully kept fires in the barns that cured the harvested leaves.
Finally, besides the other factors already mentioned that limited the suitable acreage, the larger the plantation was, the larger was the labor force that was needed, and so additional acres of the plantation also had to be devoted to growing the food that the laborers would eat.
[Question 3] About 2 acres of cleared land, with each acre producing about 5,000 plants. This would require bending over about 50,000 times per growing season. One peculiarity of growing tobacco was the extraordinary amount of labor that was required. Unlike other crops, tobacco requires steps in its cultivation that stretch throughout almost the entire year. And many of these steps require intensive, but delicate, and incessant attention by the grower—preparing the beds, sowing the seeds in cold frames, transplanting the seedlings to hilled rows (all this, it was said, was a process as elaborate as making a lace pillow-case), making almost daily passes through the field to carefully pinch off suckers, pinch back the tops, pick off tobacco hornworms by hand, and harvest the leaves as they matured. The leaves then had to be strung on poles and put in drying barns to cure, where ventilation had to be constantly adjusted and small drying fires constantly watched. Afterwards, the leaves had to be taken down, sorted by size and quality, allowed to become slightly moist to make them pliable again, and packed into hogsheads for shipping out.
[Question 4] 50% or a little more of his wealth was typically in the value of his slaves. By 1700, Virginians were importing huge numbers of slaves to work the tobacco fields (it had begun eighty years before), creating what was for some a lucrative "subsidiary" trade, apart from trade in tobacco itself. As large landholdings became rarer, the nature of tobacco cultivation encouraged the increasing numbers of white farmers who could now only rent land to invest in slaves rather than land: Because the soil would be depleted in just a few years, it made sense to the farmer to invest his capital in the labor he could move to the next plot of rented land that he occupied, rather than in the soon-to-be exhausted land itself.
[Question 5] In some areas slave populations grew from 7% (in 1690) to 35% of the region's population in 1750. It rose to about 40% by the eve of the Civil War.
[Question 6] The colonists couldn't do anything with tobacco (beyond what they smoked themselves) except sell it—they couldn't eat it or feed it to livestock or use it in construction. It was only good for converting into cash, which seemed like a very good thing when they could essentially grow "cash" in their back yards and use it to purchase other things they needed, or to pay taxes or fines. Because there was almost nothing else that the colonists could export to England that the mother country could not produce itself (and of better quality), tobacco was doubly useful to the colonists. Very early on, tobacco became fixed as the stable value of other goods, replacing gold or silver in a culture where they were scarce.
With the very rapid growth of tobacco cultivation in the colonies, however, in just a few years there was too much tobacco being grown and prices for tobacco began to drop. Disruptions in the market in Europe, such as caused by the Thirty Years' War, also contributed to a glut and, consequently, much lower prices. One such price fluctuation in 1660 drove many Tidewater tobacco growers close to bankruptcy. The colonists responded with attempts to limit tobacco production and to ensure the high quality of all the tobacco that was shipped with public warehouses, inspectors, and licensed agents.
Nevertheless, all these measures amplified the amount of control exercised over the tobacco trade. This was a colonial, "mercantile" system, whereby the colonists were required to sell their crop only to England. In return, the growers were "protected" in some ways, but only as long as they continued to supply the crop. Many growers, by the beginning of the 18th century, felt trapped by the system, and looked for ways out of it, such as trying to diversify their crops, or to free their slaves, or to develop trade in other goods, or to develop manufacturing. Yet they needed capital in order to do this, which they could only get by selling tobacco. The dilemma they faced in all this suggested to many of them that the colonies would be better off if they were independent from England.
We see the past through the filter of the present. How does that filter change perceptions as the distance between past and present widens? Date the following textbook excerpts—two on the women's movement in the later 20th century and two on Ronald Reagan's presidency—and consider the change in how writers interpret the present as it becomes the past.
1. A steadily growing number [of women] were entering the professions of medicine, law, education, religion, and the various fields of science and engineering. More and more were occupying positions of leadership in business and government formerly held only by men.
The above textbook excerpt on feminism and the post-World-Wars women's movement dates from:
a. 1966
This excerpt comes from Harcourt and Brace's Rise of the American Nation, by Lewis Paul Todd and Merle Curti. The excerpt has a tone of optimism—more and more women, the text says, were and are entering male-dominated fields. This excerpt also reveals which career fields the 1966 authors considered previously barred to women.
2. In some ways, the position of women in American society was worse in the 1960s than it had been in the 1920s. After forty years, there was a lower percentage of women enrolled in the nation's colleges and professional schools. Women were still relegated to stereotyped occupations like nursing and teaching; there were few female lawyers and even fewer women doctors.
This textbook excerpt on feminism and the women's movement dates from:
c. 1995
This excerpt comes from HarperCollins' America Past and Present, by Robert A. Divine et al. Contrast this excerpt with that in Question 1. By 1995, HarperCollins' textbook authors see the 1960s not as a period of "steady growth" in women's rights, but instead as a time in which such opportunities decreased. What changed? Certainly not events themselves. Perhaps contrast between conditions for women in 1995 and in the 1960s made the 1960s seem backward by comparison. Perhaps the different authors interpreted the same cultural trends differently. Or perhaps authors drew upon different data to create the narratives.
3. With his great popularity and shrewd handling of Congress, Reagan soon got much of his economic program passed. The final bill included $39 billion in tax cuts and a 25 percent cut in income taxes. The results of Reaganomics, however, were not quite what the President had hoped. Spending cuts, together with high interest rates, brought inflation down, but at first the cure was painful.
This textbook excerpt on Ronald Reagan's presidency dates from:
b. 1999
This excerpt comes from Glencoe McGraw-Hill's American History: The Modern Era Since 1865, by Donald A Ritchie. Contrast this excerpt with the excerpt in Question 4. In 1999, a decade after Reagan's presidency ended, this textbook's author could look back over the whole of Reagan's term and draw conclusions about the success or failure of Reagan's policies.
4. [Reagan] promised economy in government and a balanced budget, and he committed himself to "supply-side" economics, or tax reductions to businesses to encourage capital investment. But while he planned to slash federal spending, Reagan also pledged to cut income taxes and boost the defense budget—a feat John Anderson said could only be done with mirrors.
This textbook excerpt on Ronald Reagan's presidency dates from:
b. 1982
This excerpt comes from Houghton Mifflin's A People and a Nation: A History of the United States, by Mary Beth Norton et al. Contrast this excerpt with the excerpt in Question 3. In 1982, Reagan's presidency was in its early years, and textbook writers could not yet address his term in office as a neat whole. While it needed to be described—as the inevitable conclusion of the textbook's historical narrative—the recent past resisted easy integration into the text.
(Illinois Congressman John Anderson ran against Ronald Reagan in the 1980 Republican primary.)
Interested in guiding your students in examination of their own textbooks? Explore teachinghistory.org's Beyond the Textbook feature. In this series of articles, historians look at what textbooks choose to leave out or miscontextualize when dealing with a number of subjects. Current articles address slavery, causes of the Civil War, and the industrial revolution.
Articles in our Teaching with Textbooks series also offer ideas and models for opening up textbooks to inquiry and analysis.
From the Foundation for Teaching Economics website:
"These widely acclaimed, cross-curricular programs help teachers incorporate economic reasoning into their high school American history courses. Program instructors provide economic explanations of pivotal historical events.
Participants learn interactive teaching strategies that incorporate the actual circumstances of historical periods of study. With EFIAH lesson plans, teachers can help their students learn by re-living history rather than just reading or hearing about it. A 'must take' course for any teacher of American history."
From the Foundation for Teaching Economics website:
"These widely acclaimed, cross-curricular programs help teachers incorporate economic reasoning into their high school American history courses. Program instructors provide economic explanations of pivotal historical events.
Participants learn interactive teaching strategies that incorporate the actual circumstances of historical periods of study. With EFIAH lesson plans, teachers can help their students learn by re-living history rather than just reading or hearing about it. A 'must take' course for any teacher of American history."
From the Foundation for Teaching Economics website:
"These widely acclaimed, cross-curricular programs help teachers incorporate economic reasoning into their high school American history courses. Program instructors provide economic explanations of pivotal historical events.
Participants learn interactive teaching strategies that incorporate the actual circumstances of historical periods of study. With EFIAH lesson plans, teachers can help their students learn by re-living history rather than just reading or hearing about it. A 'must take' course for any teacher of American history."