A. Creating American English--Roosevelt's obsession with simplifying spelling had as much to do with creating a uniquely American style of English as it did with the idea of making spelling simpler and more phonically reasoned. Many in Congress complained that the President was overstepping the bounds of his oath of office when he directed the Government Printing Office to print this simplified speller, and "Rusevelt"--or should it be "Butt-in-sky"?-- became the object of some ridicule.
B. American Art
1. Frederick Remington--Remington's idealized western art found a ready patron in the White House
2. Literature-- The Roosevelts championed American literature, including Roosevelt's school chum Owen Wister, William Dean Howells, Henry James, Edith Wharton, and Mark Twain
3. Folk Music--encourage John Lomax to collect cowboy song as a form of folk music, and wrote the forward for the subsequent book. Roosevelt also championed Native American chants and African American spirituals as "authentic American music
4. History--Roosevelt, although not a trained historian in the modern sense, wrote numerous historical works himself, and served as an early president of the American Historical Association. Roosevelt also served as a regent on the board of trustees at the Smithsonian Institute, regularly supplying advice on how to improve the museum--but also taking an avid interest in promoting the museum to the public.
3. Arts and Crafts movement--found a fan in the White House. Roosevelt was in sympathy with the "democratization" impulse of much of the Arts and Crafts movement, and its emphasis and simplicity and natural beauty.
a. Elbert Hubbard--founded the Roycrofters, a firm the made "mission" style furniture and printed books on fine hand-made papers. Hubbard began this enterprise in imitation of British socialist William Morris, but quickly as the business became a success he became a defender of free enterprise
b. Gustav Stickley--founded the magazine called The Craftsman in 1901. In it, he advocated simplifying domestic architecture, and using materials and building plans that harmonized with its surroundings. Stickly employed an architect named Harvey Ellis to supply building plans for such a house, which Stickley then published in his magazine. Ellis went on to also design all of the furniture that Stickley sold in his magazine, and for which he is most famous today.
c. Frank Lloyd Wright--architect who created the best known variant of the "craftsman style" homes that Stickley advocated, which emphasized long horizontal lines, open interior spaces, and bands of windows grouped to allow the maximum amount of sunshine into the home
II. The Race Question
A. The Brownsville Affair--African American soldiers from companies B, C, and D of the 25th Regiment, United States Army, some recently returned from the Philippines, received a less than cordial reception from townspeople in Brownsville, Texas. After a fight broke out between a soldier and a local merchant, townspeople insisted the soldiers not be allowed in town.
1. Night of August 13-14 1906--a local bartender was killed and a police officer seriously wounded, and the local townspeople immediately accused the African American soldiers of instigating the assault. "Eyewitnesses" even produced spent shell casing, and claimed to have witnessed the shooting.
2. The Investigation--proved that the eyewitnesses actually saw nothing, and the shell casing could not be linked by ballistic evidence to any weapons at Fort Brown. The officers in charge (white officers) testified that the soldiers were confined to barracks that night, and all were accounted for and none could have been in town. All possible suspect soldiers were questioned, and none could identify any soldier involved in this affair.
3. The Verdict--despite the lack of conclusive evidence, Roosevelt upheld the decision to dismiss all 167 soldiers accused of being involved in this affair "without honor." This incident was re-examined in the early 1970s, and it was concluded that these soldiers were wrongly dismissed; Richard Nixon granted all 167 honorable discharges, and the sole living participant received a pension.
4. The Aftermath--after deciding not to run to run in 1908, when Roosevelt did run in 1912, he took the time to ask for African American votes, and to pledge to address African American concerns with segregation and its effects on their lives.
1. Divorce--Roosevelt was disturbed by the lack of marital commitment among he people of his class--the so-called "better" people, and the ease at which it had become possible to obtain a divorce.
a. Laura B. Corey--obtained a "quickie" Reno divorce (Nevada only had a six month residency requirement to obtain a divorce) because of her husband's infidelity; but her case touched off a great national debate about implementing stricter divorce laws.
2. Spousal abuse--Roosevelt advocated public flogging for husbands found guilty of spousal abuse or non-support of children. A number of states did institute such punishments, particularly those in the South, where African Americans disproportionately suffered these floggings. The result was not to decrease spousal abuse, but to make wives unwilling to file complaints
3. Race Suicide--Roosevelt argued that those people of his class were committing what he termed to be "race suicide" because the fertility rates among the upper class fell dramatically during the last quarter of the 19th Century, while other "races" continued having children at what Roosevelt considered an alarming rate.
a. Again, Roosevelt was not simply alarmed that African Americans were producing children at an alarming rate, but that all immigrant groups were producing children at a higher rate than the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, who Roosevelt saw as "real Americans."
II. Sex
A. Prostitution--immigration at this point in history was largely populated by single males--or, at least, males unaccompanied by female relatives, which meant that there was a great deal of business for prostitutes.
1. Garden-variety prostitution--the world's oldest profession did a booming trade around the turn of the century because of the conditions mentioned above.
2. White slavery--holding women against their will to serve as prostitutes is known as white slavery. While this certainly was a despicable practice, it was a very small problem that was sensationalized well beyond its importance in American life.
a. Mann Act--made it a federal crime to transport women across state lines for "illicit purposes." Two of the most famous "violators" of this act were the African American boxer Jack Johnson and the African American musician Chuck Berry
B. Pornography
1. Anthony Comstock--was the leading anti-pornography force in the United States, eventually gaining an appointment as a special postal inspector, where he could work against the dissemination of pornography--as well as information on birth control, venereal disease, or anything else that Comstock defined as obscene.
2. French postcards--pictures of naked women that we would recognize today as pornography (if of a rather mild sort).
3. Sensationalized news--the rise of the "yellow press" led some news outlets to play up lurid stories that involved sex.
a. National Police Gazette--began publishing in 1845, ostensibly publishing news of interest to police--but in fact regularly ran stories about sensational murders (particularly if they involved torture), as well as engravings of pictures of prostitutes, burlesque dancers, or any other women they could find scantily clad.
b. "The Trial of the Century"--publications like the National Police Gazette had little trouble finding sensational news to print, as the Stanford White/Evelyn Nesbit/Harry K. Thaw love triangle proved. White, the most prominent architect of his day, and the man the Roosevelt's hired to remodel the White House, seduced the then 15-year-old Nesbit by plying her with champagne and asking if she would like to go to his apartment to see his etchings (yes--really. That's his creation). White then moved on to seduce other young virgins, while Nesbit agreed to marry railroad heir Harry K. Thaw of Pittsburgh, Nesbit's hometown. Thaw became obsessed by what he viewed as White's theft of his wife's virginity (denying him of that treasure), and this obsession eventually drove Thaw to shoot White three times in the face after shouting at him "You've ruined my wife! (according to witnesses--the police report claimed he shouted "You've ruined my life!). Thaw's family used their considerable resources--and promises to Nesbit of a quiet divorce (which she got) and a million dollar settlement (which she didn't) to testify on Thaw's behalf. Thaw plead not guilty by reason of temporary insanity, and was sent to an asylum from which he escaped several times, before he was "rehabilitated."
III. Building American Pride
A. Creating American English--Roosevelt's obsession with simplifying spelling had as much to do with creating a uniquely American style of English as it did with the idea of making spelling simpler and more phonically reasoned.
B. American Art
1. Frederick Remington--Remington's idealized western art found a ready patron in the White House
2. Folk Music--encourage John Lomax to collect cowboy song as a form of folk music, and wrote the forward for the subsequent book.
3. Arts and Crafts movement--found a fan in the White House. Roosevelt was in sympathy with the "democratization" impulse of much of the Arts and Crafts movement, and its emphasis and simplicity and natural beauty.
A. Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)--English philosopher who attempted to reconcile philosophy and ethics in light of the scientific discoveries--principally Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution--being made during his adult life. Spencer applied Darwin's theory--or at least his understanding of it--not only to biology, but also to psychology and sociology, as well as to other fields.
B. Spencer and Biology--Spencer argued that the development of life from its lowest form to its highest--human beings--was guided by what he called "The Great Law of Nature"--namely, that the constant interaction of forces tended to change all forms of life from simple to more complex.
C. Spencer and Race
1.Knowledge--Spencer argued that there were two kinds of knowledge--the knowledge gained by an individual through their own experience, and knowledge gained by "the race" as intuition.
2. Race--Spencer's arguements about knowledge and race were twisted by his supporters (slightly) into a hierarchy of racial intelligence, with "Anglo-Saxons" or "Teutons" at the top, and "less intelligent" races falling beneath them.
a. Spencer's "thought" on race and knowledge, because it appealed to the prejudices of whites and appeared to be based in science, was extremely popular.
II. Addams and Tolstoyism
A. Tolstoy and Self-Sufficiency--Tolstoy's commitment to being as self-sufficient as possible had great appeal to those who felt that the events of their own age was making them more distant from the land and time they were familiar with.
B. Life Among the Peasants
1. Tolstoy--lived among the peasants who still resided on his family's estate, working in the fields and growing much of the food that he consumed in common with them.
a. Addams recalls in Twenty Years at Hull House meeting a daughter of Tolstoy's at 5:00 tea when she returned from the fields after working 12 hours.
b. Tolstoy's library, where he did much of his writing, had not just a battered desk and musty old books, but a scythe and hoe leaning against a wall, as well.
2. Addams--lived among former peasants in Chicago who were in the process of shedding their peasant identity, or were at least altering that identity by adding to it the identity of industrial worker, small business owner, and city dweller.
a. Addams and bread making--the appeal of Tolstoy's commitment was such that upon returning to Chicago, Addams determined that to contribute to her own sustenance, she would spend two hours a day making bread--but soon found out that her other tasks required those two hours, and she became convinced that she had to seek from within herself her own path in this matter of conscience.
b. Labor Museum--displayed various tools and demonstrated their use to show the connection between the simpler tools used by peasants to make goods for their own use, and the tools they (and their children) used to make similar goods for mass consumption in factories. Ostensibly this was done to show the younger generation the connection between their parents' "old ways" and their new work--but it also served to connect visitors to Hull House to "authentic" work, done before the advent of machines.
III. Theodore Roosevelt and Authenticity
A. The Life of the Cowboy--Roosevelt's life-long obsession with matching himself against the forces of nature (whether living the life of a cowboy, hunting, or another aspect of the "strenuous life") was not only a reflection of his own insecurities and obsessions, but also those of his generation and, in particular, his class.
1. The Importance of Physicality--particularly for males, this was a means of proving their masculinity, since most of Roosevelt's class could no longer do so through their work. This was also meant to prove (mainly to themselves) of their fitness to continue as the leaders of society.
B. Growth of Sports--for the generation after Roosevelt (including his sons), participation in vigorous sport--especially football--was also a signifier of manhood.
1. Football--grew in popularity during Roosevelt's years in the White House, despite the growing danger of that participation--or perhaps because of it.
2. Ivy League--the "best" and most physical football was played among the old established colleges on the east coast, known as the Ivy League.
3. Detractors--pointed out that much of the play focused upon the deliberate intent of participants to maim or cripple opponents--and that even the play that did not intend to do this often had that as a result.
a. Harry Bennett and the Ford Service Department--in the 1920s and 1930s, Bennett hired thugs, boxers, and football players for the Ford Service Department to keep Ford workers in line and to prevent labor unions from making any inroads into Ford facilities.
4. Dangerous play--killed a number of players each years, and resulted in Roosevelt in 1905 calling in a number of representatives from these schools to make up new rules to limit dangerous play--a group that grew into the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).
a. Despite the danger, Roosevelt encouraged his own sons to play the game, despite their suffering serious injuries as a result.
1. Russian aristocracy--Tolstoy's family was part of the Russian aristocracy; his family owned an estate located about 120 miles south of Moscow, near the town of Tula, called Yasnaya Polyana. Until 1861, the work on this estate would have been completed by serfs, since they were freed by czarist decree that year.
2. Death of parents--Tolstoy's parents died when he was quite young (he was the fourth of five children), and after their deaths he was raised by relatives.
3. Indifferent student--Tolstoy's resisted most of the efforts to educate him in the traditional Russian fashion, his teachers believed him "unwilling and incapable" of learning much of anything.
4. Boredom--Tolstoy spent much of his early manhood among the Russian high society in Moscow and St. Petersburg, but professed to be bored by that kind of life.
B. Tolstoy the Soldier
1. Gambling debts--like many young, dissolute, and bored male Russian aristocrats, Tolstoy spent a good part of his idle time gambling, and managed to run up a substantial gambling debt. He fled with one of his brothers to the Caucasus, and there joined the Russian army in time for the Crimean War.
2. Crimean War--considered by many the first "modern" war, for participants like Tolstoy it was remembered as a bloodbath. Tolstoy used much of the horror he experienced in this war in his great novel War and Peace, but his experiences here did much to later make him into a pacifist.
3. Retired--at the end of the Crimean War in 1856, Tolstoy resigned from the military. During the years between 1857 and 1861, Tolstoy took two trips to western Europe. During these trips, he became very interested in Western educational methods, and brought back some of these methods and established schools on his estate for the children of the peasants living there.
C. Tolstoy the Writer--Tolstoy first made his reputation as a writer of "realist" fiction; his first three novels, Childhood (1852), Boyhood (1854) andYouth (1857) were thinly disguised autobiography.
1. Marriage--in 1862 Tolstoy married Sonya Behrs. At first, the couple seemed to be quite in love, and his wife edited his early novels and acted as Tolstoy's literary agent. The couple had 13 children together, but 5 died in childhood.
2. War and Peace (1869)--Tolstoy's first great masterpiece, is at heart a novel of family, and the first demonstration of Tolstoy's belief in the unimportance of the lives of "great" people on the course of world events.
3. Anna Karenina (1875-1877--it was published in installments)--on a superficial level, it is the story of a Russian princess, Anna Karenina, and her lover Count Vronsky, who are both married to other people. But on a deeper level it is also an indictment of the hypocrisy of Russian royal society.
D. Christian Anarchist--during the time Tolstoy was writing Anna Karenina, he also experienced a spiritual awakening. He renounced the authority of the Russian Orthodox Church, and instead proselytized that people were able to know and affirm the good within themselves if they just engaged in self-examination and willingly reformed themselves.
1."My Confession" (1882)--the description of his spiritual quest
2. "The Kingdom of God is Within You" (1894)--described his version of Christianity, and it was principally this essay that drew Jane Addams to him.
II. The 3rd European Trip
A. England--with Mary Rozet Smith and her parents; Addams purpose was to visit with Edward Caird, professor at Oxford University and author of Evolution of Religion
B. Russian--accompanied by Smith and her parents to France and Germany, but Smith and Addams went by themselves to Russia to visit Tolstoy.
1. Yasnaya Polyana--Addams and Smith--like hundreds of others each year--visited Tolstoy at his former estate. By this time in his life, he had relinquished claim to his estate to his family, and renounced copyright to all of his work written before his conversion (his wife had acquired those copyrights).
2. Tolstoy the peasant--Tolstoy was 68 when he met Addams, but continued to work in the fields and dress in peasant garb. He had by this time not only renounced most of his wealth, but also given up sex.
3. Grilling Addams--Tolstoy sharply questioned Addams attire (she was wearing a fashionable traveling ensemble), and denounced her for living as an absentee landlord. Despite her admiration for Tolstoy (particularly his pacifism and renouncement of all kinds of violence), she stood her ground against his sharp questioning.
a. The visit to Tolstoy did result in Addams attempting to spend two hours every day baking bread in the Hull House Coffee Shop; but she soon realized that she did not have two hours every day to spare to devote to this project.
The initial idea behind the Hull House settlement was to assist those people in the neighborhood in leading better lives--by having an example of upstanding white Protestants in their midst, the immigrant Roman Catholic and Jews would be able to see how "real" Americans lived their lives, and then follow that example. What Addams and the residents of Hull House quickly found out, however, was that they had much to learn from their neighbors.
What else became readily apparent to the residents of Hull House was that although many of their neighbors were very poor, they were not without intelligence and culture--indeed, these recent immigrants from Europe were much more cognizant with European culture than many wealthy native Americans.
Addams also discovered that many of the Hull House neighbors did not need to be "Americanized," but rather when given the opportunity they were more than willing to take classes about American government and a willingness to learn English. But Addams also came to the realization that this rush to "Americanize" led many of the offspring of these immigrants to reject their parent's cultural practices.
Roosevelt was elected to his own term in office in 1904, when he overwhelmed the Democratic nominee. In his exuberance in being nominated at the 1904 Republican convention, Roosevelt had pledged to only serve one full term--a pledge he regretted even before that term was completed.
The early part of Roosevelt's term was quite successful. He returned to trust-busting, and some of the more "progressive" political stands that he had made during his first term. Roosevelt also scored a foreign policy success, helping to arbitrate the end to the Russo-Japanese war in 1905--a feat that won him the Nobel Prize for peace in 1905. Roosevelt achieved this breakthrough by secretly negotiating with the Japanese to allow them to invade Korea in return for assurances that the Japanese had no interest in the Philippines.
In 1907, however, the Panic (caused by the failed attempt on the part of some banks to "corner" the market in copper ) caused a run on banks nationwide, which was only stopped by J.P. Morgan and his willingness to use his own money to shore up a number of banks in New York City. This event, and the resultant recession, undermined Roosevelt's relationship with Congress, and he found it increasingly difficult to get legislation passed there. Despite Roosevelt's weakened political position, he did get to name his successor, William Howard Taft, who beat this Democratic challenger nearly as handily as Roosevelt had four years before.
1. Railroads--coal provided the fuel for locomotives--but it was also instrumental in the manufacture of most railroad-related material, including the manufacture of the locomotives it powered, the rolling stock these locomotives pulled, and the rails that the trains ran on.
2. Skyscrapers--coal was instrumental in making the structural steel that allowed for the transformation of architecture, and the creation of the urban landscape as we know it.
3. Automobiles--coal was also instrumental in producing the main product that was responsible for effecting the emergence of another fossil fuel that dominated American life during most of the 20th century.
B. Growth of Coal Mining in the 19th Century
1. 1840--7,000 men were employed in mining coal in the United States, who mined 2 million tons
2. 1870--186,000 coal miners mined 37 million tons.
3. 1900--677,000 coal miners mined 350 million tons
C. Transformation of American life--coal powered the technological change the transformed American life in the second half of the 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th.
D. Capitalist enterprise in coal
1. Intensification of capital--at the beginning of the 20th, the coal industry began a period of consolidation. In Colorado, for example, two companies, Victor Coal Company and Colorado Fuel and Iron (owned by the Rockefellers) mined most of the coal in that state.
2. Early stage of consolidation--in 1900, no one company owned more than 3% of the national market; but of America's 100 largest companies, a dozen were mining companies.
II. Life of Mother Jones
A. Mary Harris
1. Discrepancies in her life story
a. Birth date--According to Autobiography of Mother Jones, she was born May 1, 1830. According to her baptismal certificate in Cork, she was baptized in August of 1837. Her parents were not married until 1835. What explains this discrepancy? Although she was not as old as she claimed, she was advanced in years at the time this book was written, which may have effected her memory. As May 1 became identified with the labor movement, what could be more appropriate than the mother of the labor movement claiming that day as the one of her birth, as well? Her advanced age rendered her activities more weight, and allowed her to transcend the limitations that most women had to operate under during this time period.
2. Immigration
a. Potato Famine – it is likely that Mother Jones’ father and older brother left during the Potato Famine (1845-1847); between 1845 and 1853, over 200,000 people a year left Ireland for another country.
b. Immigration to Canada – it is likely that her father immigrated directly to Canada from Ireland—passage was less expensive the year he most likely left; in the 1850 US Federal Census he is listed in Vermont, but the family resided in Toronto, Canada.
3. Education – she attended a normal (teaching) college, but did not finish.
4. Pre-marriage work--Teacher at convent school in Monroe, Michigan. She also worked as a seamstress in Chicago. Before the outbreak of the Civil War, Jones moved and became a school teacher in Memphis, TN
B. Mary Harris Jones
1. Married George Jones – in 1861, shortly after moving to Memphis, Mother Jones met and married iron molder and union member George Jones.
2. Raising a family – the Jones’ shortly had four children in their brief marriage, three girls and a boy
3. 1867 Yellow Fever Epidemic--Mary Jones lost all four children and her husband to the epidemic
4. Move back to Chicago--and worked as seamstress
5. Great Chicago Fire 1871
6. Period between 1871-1894 – the mystery period in the life of Mother Jones
7. 1877 Great Upheaval – may have been in Chicago, put she was not a leading figure in the strikes in Chicago as she claimed (probably a part of her persona).
8. 1886 Haymarket Square – although she disdains the politics of the Chicago anarchists, she upholds them as men of ideals, to be emulated
9. 1894 Coxey’s Army – her first real appearance as Mother Jones; she is part of an advance party for a western band of unemployed who are marching east to join up with Jacob Coxey for his march on Washington.
C. The Emergence of Mother Jones-- Mother Jones is able to use her age and gender to her advantage; because of her age she is able to act in ways that other women are restricted from.
1. Appeal to Reason – socialist newspaper which Mother Jones helped get off the ground; eventually had 750,000 subscribers, and often reached many more readers.
2. Radical political ideas appealed to a great number of people during this time period.
III. United Mine Workers
A. Founded-- January 1890, struggled to remain in existence during that decade, having to overcome a disastrous strike in 1894.
B. 1897 Central Competitive Field Strike--the Central Competitive Field stretched from western Pennsylvania to central Illinois. The strike began July 4, 1897 in response to attempts to implement a wage cut. The strike lasted until January 1898, but ended in a union victory--a pay raise, 8-hour day, dues check-off, and union recognition. The settlement also benefited operators, because the settlement helped end the cutthroat competition.
C. 1897 Eastern Pennsylvania Anthracite Strike--miners in the anthracite district, not members of the UMW, went on strike because of wage cuts. A group of 200 marched to a mine in Lattimer, Pennsylvania to call miners there to join the strike; mine guards shot into the group, killing 19 miners.
D. John Mitchell--the UMW president, believed that the National Civic Federation was key for settling labor disputes--which is why he accepted the deal brokered by President Roosevelt that ended the strike without the anthracite operators recognizing the union as sole bargaining agent for the miners. Jones, on the other hand, argued that workers could only rely upon themselves, and the power they could claim by withholding their labor.
