LIFE IN THE LATE 19th CENTURY:
DOCUMENT-BASED QUESTIONS
Document A
The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbour that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
Emma Lazarus
Document B
“That first night we sat around in the house and they asked me, Well, why did you come? I told them about that
first night and what the ugly shoemaker said about life, liberty and the getting of happiness. They all leaned
back and laughed What you need is money, they said It was all right at home. You wanted nothing. You ate
your own meat and your own things on the farm. You made your own clothes and had your own leather. The
other things you got at the Jew man's store and paid him with sacks of rye. But here you want a hundred things.
Whenever you walk out you see new things you want, and you must have money to buy everything.. . . The
next morning my friends woke me up at five o'clock and said, Now, if you want life, liberty and happiness, they
laughed, you must push for yourself. You must get a job. Come with us.”
From Lithuania to the Chicago Stockyards -An Autobiography: Antanas Kaztauskis
Independent, LVII (Aug. 4 1904), 241-48.
Document C
“The opportunity to get rich, to attain great wealth is here…now within the reach of almost every man and
woman…. You have no right to be poor. It is your duty to be rich…. I sympathize with the poor, but the number
of poor who are to be sympathized with is very small… let us remember, there is not a poor person in the
United States who was not made poor by his own shortcomings…”
Russell Cornwell, Acres of Diamonds, 1900
Document D
Document E
URBAN – RURAL POPULATION AND NUMBER OF URBAN PLACES, 1850-1890
Year
1850
1860
1870
1880
1890
Source: Historical Statistics of the United States
NUMBER OF
TOTAL URBAN
TOTAL RURAL
URBAN PLACES POPULATION (IN
POPULATION (IN
MILLIONS)
MILLIONS)
236
3.5
19.6
392
6.2
25.2
663
9.9
28.7
939
14.1
36.0
1348
22.1
40.8
Document F
“Before 1895 the streets [of New York City] were almost universally in a filthy state. In wet weather they were
covered with slime, and in dry weather that air was filled with dust. Artificial sprinkling in summer converted
the dust to mud…Rubbish of all kinds, garbage, and ashes lay neglected in the streets, and in the hot weather
the city stank with the emanations of putrefying organic matter. It was not always possible to see the pavement,
because of the dirt that covered it…[Now]…New York is…clean…Few realize [the changes]…For example,
there is far less injury from dust to clothing, to furniture…children make free use as a playground of streets
which were formally impossible to them. “Scratches” a skin disease of the horses to mud and slush...is now
almost unknown…”
- NYC Commissioner George E. Waring, Jr. 1897,
Quoted in Hoogenboom and Hoogenboom [ed.], The Gilded Age
Document G
Document H
"There is one quarter, commonly called the Five Points, which in respect of filth and wretchedness, may be
safely backed against Seven Dials, or any other part of famed St. Giles ... [in]these narrow ways, diverging to
the right and left, and reeking everywhere with dirt and filth, such lives as are led here [and] bear the same fruits
here as elsewhere [i.e., Ireland]. Poverty and wretchedness are rife. The coarse and bloated faces at the door
have counterparts at home and all the wide world over. Debauchery has made the very houses prematurely old.
See how the rotten beams are tumbling down, and how the patched and broken windows seem to scowl dimly,
like eyes that have been hurt in drunken frays. Many of those pigs [mentioned in previous chapters] live here.
Do they ever wonder why their masters walk upright in lieu of going on all fours? And why they talk instead of
grunting?"
- Charles Dickens, American Notes (1843)
Document I
"The Mulberry Bend... That was the worst pigsty of all, and here again let me hark back to the murder I have
spoken of so often. I do not believe that there was a week in all the twenty years I had to do with the den, as a
police reporter, in which I was not called to record there a stabbing or shooting affair, some act of violence. It is
now five years since the Bend became a park and the police reporter has not had business there during that time;
not once has a shot been fired or a knife been drawn. That is what it means to let the sunlight in!"
- Jacob Riis, The Peril and Preservation of the Home, 1887
Document J
“By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, [the walking city, so named for the necessity of walking to work]
disappeared. Where once substantial houses, businesses, and small artisan dwellings had stood side by side,
central business districts emerged…Few people lived downtown, although many worked or shopped there.
Surrounding the business center were areas of light manufacturing and wholesale activity with housing for
workers. Beyond these working class neighborhoods stretched middle class residential areas. Then came the
suburbs…Scattered throughout the city [was] industrial activity surrounded by crowded working-class
housing…Better transportation increasingly allowed middle-and upper-class residents to live away from their
work and from the grimy industrial districts…”
Nash, et. al., The American People, 1998
Document K
“The main object and justification of Central Park is simply to produce a certain influence in the minds of
people and through this to make life in the city healthier and happier…through observation of which the mind
may be more or less lifted out of moods and habits.”
- Frederick Law Olmstead
Frederick Law Olmstead’s New York,1878
Document L
During the nineteenth century, Chicago suffered fearsome though sporadic epidemics of disease…. Cholera
killed 1,424 in 1854. Another 210 died in 1854 from “diarrhea” and 242 more from “dysentery,” either of which
might actually have been cholera. Diagnoses differed, but the symptoms were similar. No one knew exactly
what caused it, though personal and public cleanliness seemed to help, and impure water began to be identified
as the principal transmitter.
Chicagoans died from other contagions as well: dysentery killed 1,600 between 1854 and 1860; scarlet fever,
over 1,200 between 1858 and 1863; smallpox, 283 in 1864. The Great Fire of 1871 also contributed: high
mortality from exposure and low resistance to contagions struck down many burned-out survivors.
Cholera returned in the summer of 1873, killing 116. The Board of Health measured the duration of the disease,
from first symptoms to death, at about eleven hours. It “struck hardest where sanitary laws were not observed,”
the board's reports stated, particularly south of 37th Street and west of State Street, an area “densely populated,
principally by foreigners, consisting of Germans, Swedes and Poles.” Cleanliness, or lack of it, was the key:
“Those who observed sanitary laws, attended to the disinfection of stools, and who were prompt in calling a
physician, with few exceptions recovered, and the occurrence of a second case in such families was rare. On the
other hand, when the stools were not cared for, and the vomit permitted to remain on the floor, and the bedding
(principally feather beds) used without having been properly cleaned and where no attention was paid to
ventilation or personal cleanliness, several cases would generally occur, and as a rule, prove fatal.” Public
conditions were equally noxious and threatening. Odors, or “miasmas,” were widely believed to cause disease,
and in Chicago, the slaughterhouses were “diffusing the odors of animal putrefaction throughout the city,”
especially in summer. In the North Branch of the Chicago River, “the water remaining standing with the yearly
accretions is, during the hot months converted into a cess-pool, seething, boiling and reeking with filth, which
fills the north wards of the city with mephitic [noxious] gases.” The South Branch had become “fully as foul.”
But 1873 proved to be the low point. The aftermath of the Great Fire brought major, if gradual, improvements
in public health and, therefore, in the city's demographic stability. Miles of sewerage drained the city more
effectively, and residents were required to “connect dwellings with sewers.” Chicago's cholera days were over,
and its death rate fell below New York's and Boston's. By 1881 the Board of Health claimed that Chicago had
the third-lowest death rate in the world among cities over 500,000.
Yet with germ theory still undeveloped, other contagions abounded. Deaths from diphtheria and whooping
cough soared in the late 1870s; scarlet fever accounted for over 10 percent of deaths in Chicago in 1877. These
so-called “childhood diseases” continued to kill, joined in summer months by “cholera infantum” and other
gastrointestinal infections resulting from spoiled food and impure water. Something diagnosed as “inanition”—
lethargy probably resulting from malnutrition—killed 314 in 1881. But most devastating was the smallpox
epidemic that killed 1,180 in late 1881 and 1,292 in early 1882. The population rose too fast for vaccination
programs to keep up with it. Each year from 1871 to 1881 the city removed the carcasses of 1,500 horses and
tens of thousands of dogs from the streets, while 70 teams tried to cope with “the garbage, ashes, and rubbish
daily accumulating.” But tugboats and railroads belched smoke, the stockyards still stank, and privy (bathroom)
vaults infected water wells in many a backyard. The Board of Health lamented that “the great and rapid influx
of population has caused a dangerous overcrowding in all the poorer districts. ... Thousands of small houses and
cottages arranged for one family are now packed with a family in each room,” especially in neighborhoods of
newly arrived Europeans. Chicago's doubling of population in the 1880s, much of it from Europe, had its
downside. Overcrowding produced deaths from tuberculosis as well as from sanitary-related contagions.
The city simply had to conquer disease or stop developing. In 1891, bronchitis and pneumonia killed 4,300,
typhoid fever 2,000. Every year in the early 1890s, 10,000–12,000 children under five died in Chicago. But the
close of the nineteenth century brought control of disease, in a series of steps. Voters overwhelmingly approved
the creation of the Sanitary District of Chicago in late 1889, and in January 1900 the city opened the Sanitary
and Ship Canal, permanently reversing the flow of the river, sending sewage and refuse away from Lake
Michigan and southwestward toward the Mississippi. Pasteurizing of milk began in 1909, and chlorinating of
the city's water supply, in 1912. Tens of thousands received diphtheria vaccination, slowly eliminating that
disease. Death rates from every contagious disease fell dramatically. The city's death rate—often above 20 per
1,000 in the years before 1894, seldom topped 15 thereafter. By 1930 it fell to 10.4.
Like the rest of the world, Chicago suffered from the influenza epidemic of 1918–19. In just one month,
October 1918, 10,249 Chicagoans died of flu, bronchitis, or pneumonia (different diagnoses but closely related
infections), which was four or five times higher than normal. About 20,000 perished in 1918 and 1919
combined. No one knew how to stop the virus, or indeed what a virus was, or that it caused the flu. After filling
many graveyards, it subsided.
In the late 1800s, farmers and small town residents were likely to treat illnesses with home remedies, passed
down through generations. Sometimes they used these remedies because no doctor was available, but there
were other reasons as well
Mrs. Albert Waybright, Ashland, Nebraska
Dog Fennel boiled with lard was used a great deal for sore throat. Elderberry blossom tea was thought to be the
best treatment for fever and peppermint, which grew along the [?] was dried and given when anyone got a
stomach-ache. People had a dread of being buried alive and a good many times bodies were kept for a week or
more just to be sure. People didn't altogether trust doctors to know and some of them didn't have a doctor.
Document M
“He had learned well the law of club and fang, and he never forewent an advantage or drew back from a foe he
had started on the way to Death. He had lessoned from Spitz, and from the chief fighting dogs of the police and
mail, and knew there was no middle course. He must master or be mastered; while to show mercy was a
weakness. mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings
made for death. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out of the depths of
Time, he obeyed.”
― Jack London, The Call of the Wild
Document N
Carrie at last could scarcely sit still. Her legs began to tire and she wanted to get up and stretch. Would noon
never come? It seemed as if she had worked an entire day. She was not hungry at all, but weak, and her eyes
were tired, straining at the one point where the eye-punch came down. The girl at the right noticed her
squirming and felt sorry for her. She was concentrating herself too thoroughly—what she did really required
less mental and physical strain. There was nothing to be done, however. The halves of the uppers came piling
steadily down. Her hands began to ache at the wrists and then in the fingers, and towards the last she seemed
one mass of dull, complaining muscles, fixed in an eternal position and performing a single mechanical
movement which became more and more distasteful, until as last it was absolutely nauseating. …
The place smelled of the oil of the machines and the new leather—a combination which, added to the stale
odours of the building, was not pleasant even in cold weather. The floor, though regularly swept every evening,
presented a littered surface. Not the slightest provision had been made for the comfort of the employees, the
idea being that something was gained by giving them as little and making the work as hard and unremunerative
as possible. What we know of foot-rests, swivel-back chairs, dining-rooms for the girls, clean aprons and
curling irons supplied free, and a decent cloak room, were unthought of. The washrooms were disagreeable,
crude, if not foul places, and the whole atmosphere was sordid. …
Carrie said nothing, but bent over her work. She felt as though she could hardly endure such a life. Her idea of
work had been so entirely different. All during the long afternoon she thought of the city outside and its
imposing show, crowds, and fine buildings. Columbia City and the better side of her home life came back. By
three o'clock she was sure it must be six, and by four it seemed as if they had forgotten to note the hour and
were letting all work overtime. The foreman became a true ogre, prowling constantly about, keeping her tied
down to her miserable task. What she heard of the conversation about her only made her feel sure that she did
not want to make friends with any of these. When six o'clock came she hurried eagerly away, her arms aching
and her limbs stiff from sitting in one position.
- Excerpt from Sister Carrie, a novel by Theodore Dreiser, 1900
Document O
“The sheer size of cities helped create a new form of politics…Many city problems were handled by local
political bosses who traded in patronage favors and graft. Big city political machines were not altogether
sinister [threatening] in their effects; they provided food and money for the poor, fixed problems at city hall,
and generally helped immigrants in their adjustment to a new life…”
- Tindall and Shi, “City Politics” America, A Narrative History, 1999
Document P
“There are now forty-seven evening classes meeting at the House weekly, twenty-five evening clubs for adults,
seventeen afternoon clubs for children, the Hull-House Music School, a choral society for adults, a children's
chorus, a children's sewing school, a training school for kindergartners, a trades union for young women. In
daily use are the nursery, the kindergarten, the playground, the penny provident bank, an employment bureau, a
sub-station of the Chicago post office. A trained nurse reports to the house every morning and noon, to take
charge of the sick-calls for the neighborhood; a kindergartner visits daily sick and crippled children. The
coffeehouse serves an average of 250 meals daily, and furnishes noonday lunches to a number of women's
clubs; soups and broths and wholesome food are bought by neighbors from its kitchen, and bread from its
bakery, adorned with the label of the bakers' unions, goes out to the Lewis Institute, to grocery stores, to
neighbors' tables.”
A.P. Stevens, Self-Culture
Document Q
“…By 1900 [urban Americans] found themselves living in a communal setting…they now turned toward the
impersonal government or corporation to provide them with water and heat, sewerage and light, elevators and
elevateds, machine-made clothes and factory-canned goods. It was a life of interdependence accentuated by
technology, rather than a life of independence assured by [rural] distance…”
Robert H. Walker, “The Changing Community”
The Age of Enterprise, 1865-1900, 1971
“…It used to be a matter of pride with the better sort of our country people that they could raise on their own
land or manufacture within their own households almost everything needed for domestic consumption. But now
if you leave the rail, at whatever remote station…and make your way to the house of any long-settled and
prosperous farmer, and the intimacy of his family with the town will constantly appear, in dress, furniture,
viands [food], in all conversation… [For example:]…If the baby has outgrown its shoes, the measure [size] is to
be sent to town….”
- Frederick Law Olmstead, 1871
Quoted in Hoogenboom and Hoogenboom [ed.], The Gilded Age
Document R
"The Five Points Mission and the Five Points House of Industry have accomplished what no
machinery of government has availed to do. Sixty thousand children have been rescued by
them from the streets... their work still goes on... gathering in the waifs, instructing and
feeding them, and helping their parents with advice and more substantial aid... The House of
Industry is an enormous nursery school with an average of more than four hundred day scholars
and constant boarders... It is one of the most touching sights in the world to see a score of babies,
rescued from homes of brutality and desolation... saying their prayers in the nursery at
bedtime. Too often their white night-gowns hide tortured little bodies and limbs cruelly
bruised by inhuman hands. In the shelter of this fold they re safe, and a happier little group
one may seek long and far in vain..."
- Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives, 1890
Document S
The ideal of the school is to develop individuals who will be competent to change their environment to greater
conformity with moral ideals.
[The purpose of the Workingman's School is] to give the best to the poorest; to utilize the very highest results of
educational theory and practice for the benefit of those who stood most in need of such aid, in order that in their
upward struggle laboring people might be thoroughly equipped with knowledge and rights standards of
conduct….
The end set up is a social, an ethical one. The means taken to attain this end are:
First, the inculcation of the democratic spirit. The School is not and will not be permitted to
become a class school. The education of the rich apart and the poor apart is an evil and an
injury to both. Children of the rich and poor and of different nationalities and races t o meet
together and learn to respect one another, both in their work and in their play."
Secondly, the awakening of serious intellectual interests and enthusiasms in order to counterbalance the
pleasure loving and self-indulgent tendencies which are fostered by the life of a great commercial city....
A class school, whether for the poor or the rich, is a mistake. In a democracy, children of the wealthy should
learn respect for human qualities irrespective of externals [and] the children of the poor should gain refinement
by association with the more advantaged.
-
Felix Adler, founder of the Workingman's School (today, the Ethical Culture
Schools)
Document T
Resources Invested in Education
Spending on
Spending Per
Education
Child 15-19
1860
$60
$ 5.33
1900
$503
$20.53
Percentage of
GNP
1.4
2.9
Improvements in Education
% Illiteracy 10 or older
Total
High
College Enrollment
School
Graduates
White Black
1870
20 %
11
80
2.0
1.7
1900
11 %
6
45
6.4
4.0
1870
1890
1910
1930
1950
1870
1890
1910
1930
1950
Proportion
of Young
Attending
School
57
69
74
81
82
Proportion of
Average
17 Year Olds
Days Attended
Graduating High
By Pupils
School
78
2
86
3.5
113
8.8
143
29
158
59
Percent of 18-21 Year
Percent of Adult
Olds Attending
Population Illiterate
College
1.7 %
20 %
3.0 %
13 %
5.1 %
8%
12.4 %
4%
29.9 %
3%
Document U
“The duty and the opportunity of the National Government and of the local community with regard to the
immigrants who have been coming to the United States is clear. It is twofold: (I) to protect the immigrants
against fraud and exploitation so that such traditions as they cherish with regard to America will not be lost in
their first contact with us; (2) to give them an opportunity to learn the English language and to secure such a
working knowledge of our laws and institutions as will enable them to join with us in the work of making the
United States a really effective democracy. To do this does not mean that a new kind of service unknown to
American traditions should be undertaken in behalf of the immigrant. It does mean, however, that community
organizations and institutions shall be established and maintained, not for an imaginary homogeneous AngloSaxon population, but for the population as it is.”
- Grace Abbott, The Immigrant and the Community
Document V
Every American boy, a hundred years ago, lived either on a farm or in such close touch with farm life that he
reaped its benefits. He had all the practical knowledge that comes from country surroundings; that is, he could
ride, shoot, skate, run, swim; he was handy with tools; he knew the woods; he was physically strong, selfreliant, resourceful, well-developed in body and brain. In addition to which, he had a good moral training at
home. He was respectful to his superiors, obedient to his parents, and altogether the best material of which a
nation could be made.
We have lived to see an unfortunate change....It is the exception when we see a boy respectful to his superiors
and obedient to his parents. It is the rare exception, now, when we see a boy that is handy with tools and
capable of taking care of himself under all circumstances. It is the very, very rare exception when we see a boy
whose life is absolutely governed by the safe old moral standards....Degeneracy is the word. To combat the
system that has turned such a large proportion of our robust, manly, self-reliant boyhood into a lot of flatchested cigarette-smokers, with shaky nerves and doubtful vitality...[we need to substitute] the better, cleaner,
saner pursuits of woodcraft and scouting.
Boy Scout Handbook, 1910
Out of School Activities of 14,683 Children
Cleveland, June 23, 1913
Where they were seen:
On streets
In yards
In vacant lots
In playgrounds
In alleys
7,799
3,581
883
1,869
551
Doing nothing
Playing
Working
5,961
7,358
1,354
Baseball
Kites
Sand piles
Tag
Jackstones
Dolls
Sewing
Housekeeping
Horse and wagon
Bicycle riding
Minding baby
Reading
Roller-skating
Gardening
1,638
531
471
153
325
282
144
244
113
92
60
52
47
27
What they were doing:
What games they were playing:
Caddy
Marbles
Playing in other ways, Mostly
just fooling
6
2
3,171
Document W
“Inside the caisson everything wore an unreal, weird appearance. There was a confused sensation in the
head…with the flaming lights, the deep shadows, they confusing noise of hammers, drills, chains…one might
get a realizing sense of Dante’s inferno.”
- E. F. Farrington
The Great Bridge
Document X
Document Y
Document Z
Document AA
Chicago World’s Fair, 1893.
The World’s Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago in 1893, was the last and the greatest of the nineteenth
century’s World’s Fairs – a showcase for technology, progress, consumer culture and life in modern America.
The Fair was immensely popular and drew over 27 million visitors.
The Ferris Wheel was an engineering marvel and Chicago’s answer to the Eiffel Tower, built a few years
earlier.
Pittsburgh bridge builder George W. Ferris created the wheel. Its 45 foot axle was the largest single piece of
forged steel at the time in the world. The wheel had a diameter of 250 feel and 36 wooden cars that could each
hold 60 people.
For 50 cents, people were treated to a 20-minute ride and spectacular view of the fair and Chicago.
View of the Fair from top of Ferris Wheel
Document BB
Ben Dickstein grew up on Concord Avenue in New York City in the early 1900s. In the following excerpt, he
recounts the kinds of games he and his friends used to play in the streets.
. . . Well at night especially in the summer time all the kid came down after supper and we'd get up a game of
something. Sometimes we'd play basketball near the light. Oh yeah we played Ringo Leavio and Johnny on the
Pony and Hop Scotch… One of the things we used to do before Chase the White Horse was Elephants in a
Row. The first guy would hollar "elephants in a row!" Then he would jump over the back of the guy who was
"It" and he would get down next to him so the next guy had to jump over two guys' backs. And then three and
then four and so on. So sometimes depending on how many guys were playing, you had to jump over ten backs
and if you missed and landed on the pile you were automatically "it".
Document CC
In the late 1800s, urban immigrants had a large impact on city politics. In the ethnic neighborhoods, party
bosses played a major role. It was the responsibility of the party boss to see that voters in the neighborhood got
out to vote for party candidates. In return, the party boss would provide certain favors to the neighborhood
residents. In the following excerpt, some of the activities that took place in a neighborhood candy store in New
York City are described.
The Ginsbergs used to own a candy store at 169th St. and Grant Avenue which is two blocks east and downhill
from the Grand Concourse. 169th Street is a sort of secondary business section to such main shopping streets as
170th and 167th Streets, where the subway stations are. The street had only the essential stores, such as grocery,
fruit, meat, two hardware stores, two delicatessens, two bakeries and on this corner there were two candy stores,
one of which was "Ginsy's". Ginsy's was the hangout for the unemployed, the number runners and for the
gambling men who used to come around after work to pick up a game. Late at night when business was slow
Ginsy himself would sit down for a game of pinochle with some of his customers and one of the boys would
stand behind the counter to take care of any legitimate trade. For a long time the Tauckamuck Democratic Club
was able to give this neighborhood some patronage mostly through its connection with Eddie Flynn, Bronx
Political Boss, who had an 'in' with the Post Office. Then the talk about jobs was optimistic. All you had to do
was to get one of the Block Captains to introduce you to somebody who would introduce you or get you an
interview with a certain notorious politician in the Bronx, whose name I don't care to mention. Each
introduction cost you five dollars a handshake. All negotiations were carried on in or around Ginsy's corner
candy store, where the block captains, or peanut politicians as they were called, hung around to keep in touch
with the people and get up a game of cards now and then. Two of the number runners had their posts in Ginsy's
and many times if they thought the cop on the beat had orders to pick them up or if they spied the precinct
detectives headed their way, you could see them duck into the phone booth and gulp down the paper slips.
Ginsy's also kept a pin ball machine which drew the nickels and attention of everybody at one time or another.
Small betting was carried on at the side. Ginsy's was the gossip exchange. You could find out the color of your
neighbor's underwear in Ginsy's.
Document DD
Harry Reece grew up on a farm in Illinois during the late 1800s. In the following, he recalls a trip to the city of
Chicago - "big town" - and his first experience with the electric trolley.
"I was born in the middle west. Out in the state of Illinois...and it was quite a while before the Chicago World's Fair of
1893. Measured by the things that have happened since then it seems like a long, long time indeed.
We lived on a farm, and even telephones were curiosities to myself and the country boys of my age. Electric lights were
something to marvel at...the old Edison phonograph with its wax cylinder records and earphones was positively
ghostly...and trolley cars, well they too were past understanding!
"Speaking of trolley cars reminds me of a trip to the 'city' once when I was about a dozen years old. My father and a
neighbor, Old Uncle Bill Brandon, had to go up to the Big Town, which was Chicago, on some sort of business...and I
suppose I'd been extra diligent at doing chores, weeding potatoes, killing worms on the tomato plants, or something...and
Father rewarded me by taking me along.
| "A country boy in a large city for the first time isn't any more curious to the city than the city is to the country boy! They
are both something to look at...and marvel about.
"You can imagine what a time I had seeing things I'd never seen before, in fact had only dreamed about or heard about.
Curiosity wasn't the name for it. Speechless incredulity came nearer describing my emotions. (After twenty years down
here in New York...and all the intervening years in the cities of the world, American and European, my reactions are
different. Nothing surprises or excites me any more.)
"But when I saw my first trolley car slipping along Cottage Grove Avenue in Chicago...slipping along without horses or
engine or apparent motive power...well it was just too darned much for me. I didn't know what to think.
"Uncle Bill Brandon was almost as much in doubt about the reality of the darned thing as I was myself--and Uncle Bill
Brandon was, locally, that is out on the farm, considered a very, very wise and sophisticated person. And he was wise,
too. He had seen a lot of life...Too much, he sometimes said--especially during the four years of the 1860's when he was
fighting in the Union Army.
"Uncle Bill could understand horses, hogs and cattle, steam engines, army mules and row boats, and such thing--but that
trolley car, with the little spinning wheel at the end of the pole, spinning along against the electric wire above it; was too
much for him. Still, he didn't want to confess 'that there was any doggone thing on earth that he couldn't figure out!' And
he didn't want to show his 'ignorance' and especially to my Father or to myself, a twelve year old edition of young
Americana, species rusticana.
"I wasn't so anxious to conceal my own ignorance, so with legitimate curiosity asked my Father and Uncle Bill what made
the thing go.
"My Father was a thoughtful man, and before answering studied for a moment. Uncle Bill was more spontaneous.
"'Gosh a'mighty, can't you see what makes her go?' he exclaimed, 'It's that danged rod stickin' up out of the top of her.
People's gettin' so cussed smart these days all they need to do to run a street car is to got a fish-pole and stick it up out of
the roof of her!"
"Father let Uncle Bill's explanation ride. And I've never forgotten it, but since then, when I've heard variations of the same
theme, I've wondered if Uncle Bill's rather [Doubting?] Thomas definition of the motive power of trolley cars was entirely
original.
Document EE: Ragtime
Go to the following link and listen to the song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9gzZJ344Co
Document FF: Movies
Go to the following link and watch the movie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuto7qWrplc