Current Event (Thanksgiving):
A retelling of the Christian Origins of Thanksgiving.
Movies in your home presents a 1940s view of Thanksgiving.
Dining Together - 1950 - Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving 1960 Grandma and Grampa Wombacher, John, Claire, Ann, Johnny & Sandy, Karl, Mary, Carol, Tipper & Jeff.
This is a selection of clips from an episode of America's most popular TV show of the 1970's - All in the Family. The episode was in Season 6 and was titled 'The Little Atheist'. In this episode, Mike Stivic (an atheist) and his wife Gloria are expecting a baby and they are adamant about letting the child decide for itself whether it will follow a religion or not. Gloria's father, Archie Bunker, has other ideas, and at Thanksgiving dinner an argument ensues.
Enjoy.
Johnny Cash - Thanksgiving Prayer on an episode of Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman (3:47).
Unit 3 An Era of European Imperialism 1800-1914
Industrialization
Enclosure Increases Output but Causes Migration
This bar graph is titled “Land Enclosures in England, 1500 to 1914.” The following dates appear left to right horizontally along the bottom of the graph: 1500, 1600, 1700, 1760, 1800, and 1914. The word “Year” appears below. Numbers appear vertically along the left side of the graph. These are as follows, from bottom to top: 0, 20, 40, 60, 80, and 100. The text “Percentage of Land Enclosed” appears to the left of the numbers. A blue vertical bar appears above each date. Each bar’s height represents the percentage of land enclosed for that year. This number can be measured by the bar’s height on the vertical scale. The percentage also appears above each bar. Percentages are as follows: 1500: 45 percent 1600: 47 percent 1700: 71 percent 1760: 75 percent 1800: 84 percent 1914: 95 percent SOURCE: Oxford Atlas of World History, 1999
Meanwhile, rich landowners pushed ahead with enclosure, the process of taking over and consolidating land formerly shared by peasant farmers. In the 1500s, landowners had enclosed land to gain more pastures for sheep to increase wool output. By the 1700s, they wanted to create larger fields that could be cultivated more efficiently. The British Parliament facilitated enclosures through legislation.
As millions of acres were enclosed, farm output rose. Profits also rose because large fields needed fewer workers. But such progress had a large human cost. Many farm laborers were thrown out of work, and small farmers were forced off their land because they could not compete with large landholders. Villages shrank as cottagers left in search of work. In time, jobless farm workers migrated to towns and cities. There, they formed a growing labor force that would soon tend the machines of the Industrial Revolution.
Why did this population increase occur? First, the agricultural revolution reduced the risk of death from famine because it created a surplus of food. Since people ate better, they were healthier. Also, better hygiene and sanitation, along with improved medical care, further slowed deaths from disease.
Checkpoint
How did an agricultural revolution contribute to population growth?
The Industrial Middle Class
The Industrial Revolution created a new middle class along with the working class. Those in the middle class owned and operated the new factories, mines, and railroads, among other industries. Their lifestyle was much more comfortable than that of the industrial working class.
When farm families moved to the new industrial cities, they became workers in mines or factories. Many felt lost and bewildered. They faced tough working conditions in uncomfortable environments. In time, though, factory and mine workers developed their own sense of community despite the terrible working conditions.
The Industrial Middle Class
Those who benefited most from the Industrial Revolution were the entrepreneurs who set it in motion. The Industrial Revolution created this new middle class, or bourgeoisie (boor zhwah zee), whose members came from a variety of backgrounds. Some were merchants who invested their growing profits in factories. Others were inventors or skilled artisans who developed new technologies. Some rose from “rags to riches,” a pattern that the age greatly admired.
Middle-class families lived in well-furnished, spacious homes on paved streets and had a ready supply of water. They wore fancy clothing and ate well. The new middle class took pride in their hard work and their determination to “get ahead.” Only a few had sympathy for the poor. Women of the middle class did not leave the home to work but instead focused their energy on raising their children. This contrasted with the wealthy, who had maidservants to look after their children, and the working class, whose children were a part of the workforce.
The Industrial Working Class
As more and more people moved to the cities to work, they had little choice about where to live. There was no public water supply, waste lined the unpaved streets, and disease spread rapidly in these unsanitary conditions. Dr. Southwood-Smith worked in two districts of London and wrote:
“Uncovered sewers, stagnant ditches and ponds, gutters always full of putrefying matter . . . It is not possible for any language to convey an adequate conception of the poisonous condition in which large portions of both these districts always remain, . . . from the masses of putrefying matter which are allowed to accumulate.”Learn
Focus Question
What were the social effects of the Industrial Revolution?
The Industrial Revolution brought great riches to most of the entrepreneurs who helped set it in motion. For the millions of workers who crowded into the new factories, however, the industrial age brought poverty and harsh living conditions.
In time, reforms would curb many of the worst abuses of the early industrial age in Europe and the Americas. As standards of living increased, people at all levels of society would benefit from industrialization. Until then, working people would suffer with dangerous working conditions; unsafe, unsanitary, and overcrowded housing; and unrelenting poverty.
People Move to New Industrial Cities
The Industrial Revolution brought rapid urbanization, or the movement of people to cities. Changes in farming, soaring population growth, and an ever-increasing demand for workers led masses of people to migrate from farms to cities. Almost overnight, small towns around coal or iron mines mushroomed into cities. Other cities grew up around the factories that entrepreneurs built in once-quiet market towns.
The British market town of Manchester numbered 17,000 people in the 1750s. Within a few years, it exploded into a center of the textile industry. Its population soared to 40,000 by 1780 and 70,000 by 1801. Visitors described the “cloud of coal vapor” that polluted the air, the pounding noise of steam engines, and the filthy stench of its river. This growth of industry and rapid population growth dramatically changed the location and distribution of two resources—labor and people.
Checkpoint
What led to the massive migration of people from farms to cities?
While the wealthy and the middle class lived in pleasant neighborhoods, vast numbers of poor struggled to survive in foul-smelling slums. They packed into tiny rooms in tenements, or multistory buildings divided into apartments. These tenements had no running water, only community pumps. There was no sewage or sanitation system, so wastes and garbage rotted in the streets. Sewage was also dumped into rivers, which created an overwhelming stench and contaminated drinking water. This led to the spread of diseases such as cholera.
Vocabulary Builder
contaminated—(kun tam uh nayt id) adj. unclean and impure; polluted
Workers Stage Futile Protests
Although labor unions, or workers’ organizations, were illegal at this time, secret unions did exist among frustrated British workers. They wished to initiate worker reforms, such as increases in pay, but had no political power to effect change. Sometimes their frustration led to violence. The first instances of industrial riots occurred in England from 1811 to 1813. Groups of textile workers known as the Luddites (lud yts) resisted the labor-saving machines that were costing them their jobs. Some of them smashed textile machines with sledgehammers and burned factories. They usually wore masks and operated at night. There was widespread support among the working class for these Luddite groups.
Workers Find Comfort in Religion
Many working-class people found comfort in a religious movement called Methodism. This movement was influenced by the Industrial Revolution as people moved to cities and lost connections with their old churches. John Wesley had founded the Methodist movement in the mid-1700s. Wesley stressed the need for a personal sense of faith. He encouraged his followers to improve themselves by adopting sober, moral ways.
Vocabulary Builder
stressed—(stresd) vt. emphasized
Methodist meetings featured hymns and sermons promising forgiveness of sin and a better life to come. Methodist preachers took this message of salvation into the slums. There, they tried to rekindle hope among the working poor. They set up Sunday schools where followers not only studied the Bible but also learned to read and write. Methodists helped channel workers’ anger away from revolution and toward reform.
Checkpoint
How did members of the working class react to their new experiences in industrial cities?
Life in the Factories and Mines
The heart of the new industrial city was the factory. There, the technology of the machine age and the rapid pace of industrialization imposed a harsh new way of life on workers.
Discovery School Channel
Watch In Old New York on the Witness History Discovery School™ video program to learn about life during the Industrial Age.
Factory Workers Face Harsh Conditions
Working in a factory system differed greatly from working on a farm. In rural villages, people worked hard, but their work varied according to the season. Life was also hard for poor rural workers who were part of the putting-out system, but at least they worked at their own pace. In the grim factories of industrial towns, workers faced a rigid schedule set by the factory whistle.
Working hours were long, with shifts lasting from 12 to 16 hours, six or seven days a week. Workers could only take breaks when the factory owners gave permission. Exhausted workers suffered accidents from machines that had no safety devices. They might lose a finger, a limb, or even their lives. In textile mills, workers constantly breathed air filled with lint, which damaged their lungs. Those workers who became sick or injured lost their jobs.
The majority of early factory workers were women rather than men. Employers often preferred to hire women workers because they thought women could adapt more easily to machines and were easier to manage. In addition, employers generally paid women half what they paid men.
Factory work created a double burden for women. Their new jobs took them out of their homes for 12 hours or more a day. They then returned to their tenements, which might consist of one damp room with a single bed. They had to feed and clothe their families, clean, and cope with such problems as sickness and injury.
Miners Face Worse Conditions
The Industrial Revolution increased the demand for iron and coal, which in turn increased the need for miners. Although miners were paid more, working conditions in the mines were even worse than in the factories. They worked in darkness, and the coal dust destroyed their lungs. There were always the dangers of explosions, flooding, and collapsing tunnels. Women and children carted heavy loads of coal, sometimes on all fours in low passages. They also climbed ladders carrying heavy baskets of coal several times a day.
Even children as young as five years old worked in the mines. James Kay-Shuttleworth worked as a physician among the different classes of the Industrial Revolution in Manchester. His profession allowed him to see the working conditions of poor in the cities. How was work in factories and mines different from work on the farm?
Children were accustomed to work on a farm: the money earned by children was vital to most working class families during the early 20th century and before.
Primary Source
“Whilst the engine runs, people must work—men, women, and children are yoked together with iron and steam. The animal machine is chained fast to the iron machine, which knows no suffering and weariness.”
—James Kay-Shuttleworth, 1832
Children Have Dangerous Jobs
Factories and mines also hired many boys and girls. These children often started working at age seven or eight, a few as young as five. Nimble-fingered and quick-moving, they changed spools in the hot and humid textile mills where sometimes they could not see because of all the dust. They also crawled under machinery to repair broken threads in the mills. Conditions were even worse for children who worked in the mines. Some sat all day in the dark, opening and closing air vents. Others hauled coal carts in the extreme heat. Because children had helped with work on the farm, parents accepted the idea of child labor. The wages the children earned were needed to keep their families from starving.
Child labor reform laws called “factory acts” were passed in the early 1800s. These laws were passed to reduce a child’s workday to twelve hours and also to remove children under the age of eight or nine from the cotton mills. Because the laws were generally not enforced, British lawmakers formed teams of inspectors to ensure that factories and mines obeyed the laws in the 1830s and 1840s. More laws were then passed to shorten the workday for women and require that child workers be educated.
Families could afford to take trips to such places as the zoo as wages increased.
Checkpoint
How did the Industrial Revolution affect the lives of men, women, and children?
Early Socialism
While the champions of laissez-faire economics praised individual rights, other thinkers focused on the good of society in general. They condemned the evils of industrial capitalism, which they believed had created a gulf between rich and poor. To end poverty and injustice, they offered a radical solution—socialism. Under socialism, the people as a whole rather than private individuals would own and operate the means of production—the farms, factories, railways, and other large businesses that produced and distributed goods. Socialism grew out of the Enlightenment faith in progress, its belief in the basic goodness of human nature, and its concern for social justice.
Are Utopians Dreamers?
A number of early socialists established communities in which all work was shared and all property was owned in common. When there was no difference between rich and poor, they said, fighting between people would disappear. These early socialists were called Utopians. The name implied that they were impractical dreamers. The Utopian Robert Owen set up a model community in New Lanark, Scotland, to put his own ideas into practice.
Infographic
Owen’s Utopia
For: Interactive Village
Visit: PHSchool.com
Web Code: nap-1941
Owen Establishes a Utopia
A poor Welsh boy, Owen became a successful mill owner. Unlike most industrialists at the time, he refused to use child labor. He campaigned vigorously for laws that limited child labor and encouraged the organization of labor unions.
Checkpoint
What did early socialists believe?
Reading Check
Describing
What type of working conditions did the industrial workers face?
References and Resources
Rise of the Working Class by Jurgen Kuczynski
Making of the English Working Class by E.P. Thompson
Cultural Foundations of Industrial Civilization by John U. Nef
Sign entering the village. Graphic source: The Next Generation
A living museum can be viewed at Old Sturbridge Village. At the village visitors can ride the stagecoach, interact with the farm animals, talk with costumed historians, and watch the blacksmith, cooper, potter, and farmers at work. In the village visitors can experience life in the 1830s--with 40 antique homes, buildings, and water-powered mills. The village is well worth exploring in some detail.
The flag is central to village life. Graphic source: The Next Generation
Our relationship to God is of paramount importance. Graphic source: The Next Generation
Defense is always a concern for a nation. Graphic source: The Next Generation
Jack Larkin is the Chief Historian and Museum Scholar at the Village, where he has worked since 1971. He is also Affiliate Professor of History at Clark University in Worcester, MA, and consults for many museums and historical organizations. His latest book, Where We Lived: Exploring the Places We Once Called Home. The American Home from 1790 to 1840, was published in 2006.
To feel more at home in the village you will need to know the tools of the trade. A number of fun and educational links are available for the OSV. Old Sturbridge Village Feature Shown on Al Jazeera Television winter 2008
Laura Linney and Ken Burns on the importance of Old Sturbridge Village
4th of July at OSV.
Redcoats to Rebels at OSV.
Mystic Seaport -- The Museum of America and the Sea is the nation's leading maritime museum. In it, you can explore American maritime history first-hand as you climb aboard historic tall ships, stroll through a re-created 19th-century coastal village, or watch a working preservation shipyard in action.
Traditional American Music performed live at Mystic Seaport, CT: Part 1
Traditional American Music performed live at Mystic Seaport, CT: Part 3
The Charles W. Morgan embarks on a voyage of restoration at the Henry B. DuPont Preservation Shipyard at Mystic Seaport. Shipyard Director, Quentin Snediker explains what is done to prepare the ship for the historic journey.
The Charles W. Morgan is the last surviving wooden whaling ship from the great days of sail. Built in 1841 in New Bedford, MA, the Morgan had a successful 80-year whaling career. She made 37 voyages before retiring in 1921, and was preserved as an exhibit through the efforts of a number of dedicated citizens. After being on display in South Dartmouth, MA, until 1941, she came to Mystic Seaport, where each year thousands of visitors walk her decks and hear the fascinating story of her career as a whaling vessel, historic exhibit, film and media star, and a porthole into America's rich history.
Over the last three decades, the Charles W. Morgan has undergone two regimes of partial restoration along with annual maintenance. Despite these efforts, the inevitable effects of time on the wooden fabric of the vessel's structure demand additional extensive restoration. If left unchecked, these deficiencies will threaten the structural integrity of the Morgan and her use as a primary artifact in Mystic Seaport's interpretive programs.
Mystic Seaport, 1960 (No, this is not Dr. Smith as a boy), from family home movies.
Whaling in popular culture: Mountain, "Nantucket Sleighride"
The cold hard steel of the harpoon's point
Struck deep into its side.
We played out line and backed the oars
And took the cruel sleighride.
The term "Nantucket Sleighride" was coined by the whalers to explain what happened after they harpooned a whale. (Nantucket Island was considered the whaling capital of the world during the 19th century.) The first strike of the harpoon was not intended to kill the whale but only to attach it to the whale boat. The whale would take off pulling the whale boat along at speeds of up to 23 mph (37 kmh). The whale would eventually tire itself out, the leading officer in the boat would then use a penetrating lance to kill the whale.
Nantucket Sleighride is Dedicated to Owen Coffin who was cabin boy aboard the whaler Essex, which was destroyed by a sperm whale in 1819. Owen ended up in the lifeboat with Captain Pollard, his uncle. Two other lifeboats also put out. During the next 3 - 4 months, the lifeboats separated. One was never seen again, but some of those on the remaining two boats were eventually rescued.
During those long months at sea (and on desert islands), many of the men died. The remainder eventually had to resort to cannibalism to survive. After the dead of natural causes were consumed, the men determined to draw lots to see who would sacrifice his life for the others. Owen Coffin ``won'' the lottery. The Captain tried to take Owen's place, but the youth insisted on his ``right''. The executioner was also drawn by lot. That ``winner'', another young man named Charles Ramsdell, also tried vainly to swap places with Owen. Again he refused. Owen's body kept the others alive for ten days (Captain Pollard refused to eat his nephew). Another man died, and his body kept Pollard and Ramsdell alive a few more days until they were rescued.
Lyrics
Goodbye, little Robin-Marie
Don't try following me
Don't cry, little Robin-Marie
'Cause you know I'm coming home soon
My ships' leaving on a three-year tour
The next tide will take us from shore
Windlaced, gather in sail and spray
On a search for the mighty sperm whale
Fly your willow branches
Wrap your body round my soul
Lay down your reeds and drums on my soft sheets
There are years behind us reaching
To the place where hearts are beating
And I know you're the last true love I'll ever meet
Starbuck's sharpening his harpoon
The black man's playing his tune
An old salt's sleeping his watch away
He'll be drunk again before noon
Three years sailing on bended knee
We found no whales in the sea
Don't cry, little Robin-Marie
'Cause we'll be in sight of land soon
Agriculture
Farming and everyday life during the past 250 years
Children who lived in the English countryside
The Agricultural Revolution
Transportation, Industrial Revolution
Stephenson's Rocket Animation
The Spinning Mill Animation
Britain at the time of the Great Exhibition
Who Wants to Be a Cotton Millionaire?
Iron Bridge Virtual Tour
New machines that brought changes in America
Review changes of the 18th and 19th centuries
The Industrial Revolution
The everyday life of children in Victorian Britain (including the cities)
Online game about life in an industrial Victorian city
Take a tour of a workhouse
HW email to gmsmith@shanahan.org
1. Enjoy break; eat turkey.
