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Kay Bradley

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - 0 views

www.amphigory.com/oz.htm

Wizard of Oz Baum Gilded Age literature WizardOfOz

shared by Kay Bradley on 13 Feb 13 - Cached
  • publication in 1900
  • The Wizard of Oz is an entity unto itself, however, and was not originally written with a sequel in mind
  • Born near Syracuse in 1856, Baum was brought up in a wealthy home and early became interested in the theater. He wrote some plays which enjoyed brief success and then, with his wife and two sons, journeyed to Aberdeen, South Dakota, in 1887. Aberdeen was a little prairie town and there Baum edited the local weekly until it failed in 1891
  • ...62 more annotations...
  • For many years Western farmers had been in a state of loud, though unsuccessful, revolt. While Baum was living in South Dakota not only was the frontier a thing of the past, but the Romantic view of benign nature had disappeared we well. The stark reality of the dry, open plains and the acceptance of man's Darwinian subservience to his environment served to crush Romantic idealism
  • prices
  • grasshoppers
  • drought
  • blizzards
  • juggling of freight rates
  • Baum's stay in South Dakota also covered the period of the formation of the Populist party, which Professor Nye likens to a fanatic "crusade".
  • Western farmers had for a long time sought governmental aid in the form of economic panaceas, but to no avail. The Populist movement symbolized a desperate attempt to use the power of the ballot[8].
  • Moreover, he took part in the pivotal election of 1896, marching in "torch-light parades for William Jennings Bryan"
  • could have been unaffected by Bryan's campaign. Putting all the farmers' hopes in a basket labeled "free coinage of silver," Bryan's platform rested mainly on the issue of adding silver to the nation's gold standard. Though he lost, he did at least bring the plight of the little man into national focus[11].
  • Nevertheless, Professor Nye quotes Baum as having a desire to write stories that would "bear the stamp of our times and depict the progressive fairies of today.
  • Yet the original Oz book conceals an unsuspected depth
  • children's story with a symbolic allegory implicit within its story line and characterizations
  • subtle parable, Baum delineated a Midwesterner's vibrant and ironic portrait of this country as it entered the twentieth century.
  • orothy, who was an orphan
  • Dorothy's house has come down on the Wicked Witch of the East, killing her
  • Notice that evil ruled in both the East and the West; after Dorothy's coming it rules only in the West.
  • The Wicked Witch of the East had kept the little Munchkin people "in bondage for many years, making them slave for her night and day.
  • In this way Eastern witchcraft dehumanized a simple laborer so that the faster and better he worked the more quickly he became a kind of machine. Here is a Populist view of evil Eastern influences on honest labor which could hardly be more pointed.
  • There is one thing seriously wrong with being made of tin; when it rains rust sets in.
  • Tin Woodman had been standing in the same position for a year without moving before Dorothy came along and oiled his joints
  • he Tin Woodman's situation has an obvious parallel in the condition of many Eastern workers after the depression of 1893
  • While Tin Woodman is standing still, rusted solid, he deludes himself into thinking he is no longer capable of that most human of sentiments, love
  • the country is divided in a very orderly fashion. In the North and South the people are ruled by good witches, who are not quite as powerful as the wicked ones of the East and West
  • Emerald City ruled by the Wizard of Oz
  • Dorothy is Baum's Miss Everyman
  • Dorothy sets out on the Yellow Brick Road wearing the Witch of the East's magic Silver Shoes
  • Silver shoes walking on a golden road
  • orothy becomes the innocent agent of Baum's ironic view of the Silver issue.
  • neither Dorothy, nor the good Witch of the North, nor the Munchkins understand the power of these shoes. The allegory is abundantly clear
  • William Allen White wrote an article in 1896 entitled "What's the Matter With Kansas?". In it he accused Kansas farmers of ignorance, irrationality and general muddle-headedness.
  • the Scarecrow displays a terrible sense of inferiority and self doubt, for he has determined that he needs real brains to replace the common straw in his head
  • the Cowardly Lion
  • As King of Beasts he explains, "I learned that if I roared very loudly every living thing was frightened and got out of my way."
  • Born a coward, he sobs, "Whenever there is danger my heart begins to beat fast
  • The Lion represents Bryan himself
  • In the election of 1896 Bryan lost the vote of Eastern Labor, though he tried hard to gain their support.
  • "struck at the Tin Woodman with his sharp claws." But, to his surprise, "he could make no impression on the tin, although the Woodman fell over in the road and lay still.
  • Baum here refers to the fact that in 1896 workers were often pressured into voting for McKinley and gold by their employers.
  • The magic Silver Shoes belong to Dorothy
  • ilver's potent charm, which had come to mean so much to so many in the Midwest, could not be entrusted to a political symbol
  • All together now the small party moves toward the Emerald City. Coxey's Army of tramps and indigents, marching to ask President Cleveland for work in 1894, appears no more naively innocent than this group of four characters going to see a humbug Wizard, to request favors that only the little girl among them deserves.
  • Those who enter the Emerald City must wear green glasses
  • The Wizard, a little bumbling old man, hiding behind a facade of paper mache and noise, might be any president from Grant to McKinley
  • he symbolizes the American criterion for leadership -- he is able to be everything to everybody.
  • the Wizard assumes different shapes, representing different views toward national leadership. To Dorothy he appears as an enormous head, "bigger than the head of the biggest giant
  • The Wizard has asked them all to kill the Witch of the West
  • he golden road does not go in that direction and so they must follow the sun, as have many pioneers in the past
  • The Witch of the West uses natural forces to achieve her ends; she is Baum's version of sentient and malign nature.
  • Baum makes these Winged Monkeys into an Oz substitute for the plains Indians.
  • Baum's monkeys are not inherently bad; their actions depend wholly upon the bidding of others. Under the control of an evil influence, they do evil. Under the control of goodness and innocence, as personified by Dorothy, the monkeys are helpful and kind, although unable to take her to Kansas. Says the Monkey King, "We belong to this country alone, and cannot leave it" (p. 213). The same could be said with equal truth of the first Americans.
  • The Witch assumes that proportions of a kind of western Mark Hanna or Banker Boss, who, through natural malevolence, manipulates the people and holds them prisoner by cynically taking advantage of their innate innocence.
  • Dorothy destroys the evil Witch by angrily dousing her with a bucket of water. Water, that precious commodity which the drought-ridden farmers on the great plains needed so badly, and which if correctly used could create an agricultural paradise, or at least dissolve a wicked witch.
  • What a wonderful lesson for youngsters of the decade when Benjamin Harrison, Grover Cleveland and William McKinley were hiding in the White House.
  • Formerly the Wizard was a mimic, a ventriloquist and a circus balloonist
  • our little Wizard comes from Omaha, Nebraska, a center of Populist agitation
  • Current historiography tends to criticize the Populist movement for its "delusions, myths and foibles
  • Their desires, as well as the Wizard's cleverness in answering them, are all self-delusion. Each of these characters carries within him the solution to his own problem, were he only to view himself objectively.
  • Like any good politician he gives the people what they want
  • hroughout the story Baum poses a central thought; the American desire for symbols of fulfillment is illusory. Real needs lie elsewhere.
  • In this way Baum tells us that the Silver crusade at least brought back Dorothy's lovely spirit to the disconsolate plains farmer. Her laughter, love and good will are no small addition to that gray land, although the magic of Silver has been lost forever as a result.
  • Thereby farm interests achieve national importance, industrialism moves West and Bryan commands only a forest full of lesser politicians.
Kay Bradley

Cattle, Frontiers, and Farming - AP U.S. History Topic Outlines - Study Notes - 0 views

www.apstudynotes.org/...cattle-frontiers-and-farming

agriculture farmer Populist

shared by Kay Bradley on 13 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • During that same time, however, over two million families purchased land from the railroads, land companies, or state governments. Homesteading was difficult since 160 acres on the dry plains were often not enough to support a family. The land was cheap, but livestock, equipment, and seed were expensive.
  • Transportation to haul produce to market was expensive, and interest rates on loans and mortgages were high
  • Unscrupulous companies often acquired the best timber and mineral properties through fraudulent practices including using “dummy” homesteaders and fake improvements
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • Much of the public domain land passed quickly from the original homesteaders to promoters, not farmers.
  • Railroads had made it possible to sell crops at great distances, and farmers began to think in terms of a single cash crop rather than general farming to produce their families’ needs. Railroads benefited from this trade and sent agents to Europe to promote western settlement.
  • pecial steel plows were developed
  • sodbusters
  • fertile
  • barbed wire.
  • By 1883, Joseph Glidden’s company was making 600 miles of his patented wire each day.
  • In the late 1880s and early 1890s, a drought drove all but the most stubborn out.
  • “lifter” to cultivate rather than a plow to break up the soil
  • Dust Bowl years of the 1930s.
  • With the Homestead Act of 1862, a settler could claim as much as 160 acres (a quarter section) on the condition that he (occasionally she) lived on the land for five years, improved it, and paid a fee of $30. Alternatively, land could be bought after only six months’ residence at $1.25 per acre.
  • Special plows and new machinery such as threshers and hay mowers all allowed a farmer to produce more, but the expense of the devices often put him into debt.
Kay Bradley

The Granger Revolution - 0 views

www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/...dangers_grangers.html

railroad magnates monopoly agriculture farmer Populist

shared by Kay Bradley on 13 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • The Grangers, an organization of farmers formed in the late 1860s, were being oppressed by the dominance and ubiquitous influence of the railroads
  • Since there was no regulation of big business, and the nature of the economy necessitated high volume transportation of crops, these farmers had no choice but to give in to the whims of the railroad tycoons. When the burden became too great to endure, the Grangers organized a revolt, which eventually led to government regulation of the railroads and other monopolies.
  • The popularity of the Grangers was "less for its social and educational advantages than for the opportunity it presented for farmers to unite against the monopolistic practices of railroads and elevators and to institute for themselves cooperative methods of buying and selling.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • This meant that they had to rely on corporately owned railroads and grain elevators for the transport of their crops. To make matters worse, "elevators, often themselves owned by railroads, charged high prices for their services, weighed and graded grain without supervision, and used their influence with the railroads to ensure that cars were not available to farmers who sought to evade elevator service."
  • the Grangers read their Farmer's Declaration of Independence, which cited all of their grievances and in which they vowed to free themselves from the tyranny of monopoly
  • Munn v. Illinois
  • Following this ruling, several pieces of legislation,
  • were passed. Though they were soon repealed, they represented the first attempts at regulating a private monopoly
  • collectively known as the Granger
  • Laws,
Kay Bradley

United States presidential election, 1896 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...es_presidential_election,_1896

united states election Bryan Populist farmer

shared by Kay Bradley on 13 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • One month after McKinley's nomination, the silverites took control of the Democratic convention held in Chicago on July 7–11. Most of the Southern and Western delegates were committed to implementing the free silver ideas of the Populist Party.
  • An attorney, former congressman, and unsuccessful U.S. Senate candidate named William Jennings Bryan filled the void
  • Bryan hailed from Nebraska and spoke for the farmers who were suffering from the economic depression following the Panic of 1893.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Bryan delivered one of the greatest political speeches in American history, the "Cross of Gold" Speech
  • Bryan presented a passionate defense of farmers and factory workers struggling to survive the economic depression, and he attacked big-city business owners and leaders as the cause of much of the economic suffering.
  • He called for reform of the monetary system and an end to the gold standard, and promised government relief efforts for farmers and others hurt by the economic depression.
  • Several third parties were active in 1896. By far the most prominent was the Populist Party
  • Formed in 1892, the Populists represented agrarian interests in the South, West, and rural Midwest.
  • In the 1892 presidential election Populist candidate James B. Weaver had carried four states, and in 1894 the Populists had scored victories in congressional and state legislature races in a number of Southern and Western states.
  • By 1896 some Populists believed that they could replace the Democrats as the main opposition party to the Republicans.
  • At their national convention in 1896, the Populists chose Bryan as their presidential nominee.
  • With this election, the Populists began to be absorbed into the Democratic Party; within a few elections the party would disappear completely
Kay Bradley

History of American Agriculture - Farmers and the Land - 0 views

inventors.about.com/...blfarm4.htm

AgTechnology timeline inventions farmers land

shared by Kay Bradley on 13 Feb 13 - Cached
  • Total population: 31,443,321
  • Total population: 38,558,371
  • Total population: 50,155,783
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • Total population: 62,941,714
  • Total population: 75,994,26
  • Total population: 91,972,266
  • 31% of labor force
  • 8% of labor force
  • 43% of labor force
  • Farmers made up 49% of labor force
  • 53% of labor force
  • Drought reduced settlement on the Great Plains
  • 1887-97
  • The sharecropping system in the South replaced the old slave plantation system
  • Homestead Act granted 160 acres to settlers who had worked the land 5 years
  • Cattle boom
  • range wars
Kay Bradley

Pre civil war south 2/5 - 0 views

www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook_print.cfm

shared by Kay Bradley on 07 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • It was widely mistakenly believed, however, that the North and South had originally been settled by two distinct groups of immigrants, each with its own ethos. Northerners were said to be the descendants of 17th century English Puritans, while Southerners were the descendants of England's country gentry.
  • two distinct kinds of Americans: the aggressive, individualistic, money-grubbing Yankee and the southern cavalier.
  • described the South as a land of aristocratic planters, beautiful southern belles, poor white trash, faithful household slaves, and superstitious fieldhands
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • The Plantation Legend
  • the South was, in reality, a diverse and complex region
  • large parts of the South were unsuitable for plantation life
  • Unlike the slave societies of the Caribbean, which produced crops exclusively for export, the South devoted much of its energy to raising food and livestoc
  • Piedmont, Tidewater, coastal plain, piney woods, Delta, Appalachian Mountains, upcountry, and a fertile black belt--regions that clashed repeatedly over such political questions as debt relief, taxes, apportionment of representation, and internal improvements.
  • Large slaveholders were extremely rare. In 1860 only 11,000 Southerners, three-quarters of one percent of the white population owned more than 50 slaves; a mere 2,358 owned as many as 100 slaves. However, although large slaveholders were few in number, they owned most of the South’s slaves. Over half of all slaves lived on plantations with 20 or more slaves and a quarter lived on plantations with more than 50 slaves.
  • These slaveowners were a diverse lot. A few were African American, mulatto, or Native American; one-tenth were women; and more than one in ten worked as artisans, businesspeople, or merchants rather than as farmers or planters. Few led lives of leisure or refinement.
  • The average slaveowner lived in a log cabin rather than a mansion and was a farmer rather than a planter. The average holding varied between four and six slaves, and most slaveholders possessed no more than five.
  • The southern economy generated enormous wealth and was critical to the economic growth of the entire United States. Well over half of the richest 1 percent of Americans in 1860 lived in the South. Even more important, southern agriculture helped finance early 19th century American economic growth. Before the Civil War, the South grew 60 percent of the world’s cotton, provided over half of all U.S. export earnings, and furnished 70 percent of the cotton consumed by the British textile industry. Cotton exports paid for a substantial share of the capital and technology that laid the basis for America’s industrial revolution.
Kay Bradley

History of Agriculture and Farm Machinery - 0 views

inventors.about.com/...blfarm.htm

history agriculture farm machinery AgTechnology timeline inventions farmers land

shared by Kay Bradley on 13 Feb 13 - Cached
  • In 1879, Anna Baldwin patented a milking machine that replaced hand milking
  • Cyrus H. McCormick
  • reaper
Alex Sommer

New Deal Findings: Agriculture (problems, programs) - 2 views

-Terrible weather and extreme temperatures exacerbated the conditions of agriculture -After WWI, France had relied on America for crops, but now could sustain themselves -US had a surplus of cr...

started by Kay Bradley on 24 Mar 11 1 follow-up, last by Alex Sommer on 29 Mar 11
Kay Bradley

16. Capital and Labor | THE AMERICAN YAWP - 2 views

www.americanyawp.com/...16-capital-and-labor

labor US History economics GildedAge

shared by Kay Bradley on 21 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 heralded a new era of labor conflict
  • it was federal troops that finally defeated them
  • American soldiers were deployed all across northern rail lines
  • ...59 more annotations...
  • Nearly 100 Americans died in “The Great Upheaval.” Workers destroyed nearly $40 million worth of property.
  • galvanized the country
  • It convinced laborers of the need for institutionalized unions, persuaded businesses of the need for even greater political influence and government aid, and foretold a half century of labor conflict in the United States
  • II. The March of Capital
  • John Pierpont Morgan
  • Long hours, dangerous working conditions, and the difficulty of supporting a family on meager and unpredictable wages compelled armies of labor to organize and battle against the power of capital.
  • revolutions in American industry
  • Technological innovations
  • national investments
  • slashed the costs of production and distribution
  • New administrative frameworks sustained the weight of vast firms
  • National credit agencies
  • Plummeting transportation and communication costs opened new national media, which advertising agencies used to nationalize various products.
  • Taylorism
  • Frederick Taylor
  • Taylorism increased the scale and scope of manufacturing and allowed for the flowering of mass production.
  • use of interchangeable parts in Civil War–era weapons manufacturing
  • sewing machines
  • packers’ “disassembly” lines
  • grain reapers
  • Duke cigarette rollers
  • Henry Ford made the assembly line famous
  • Cyrus McCormick
  • Industrialization and mass production pushed the United States into the forefront of the world
  • by 1900 the United States was the world’s leading manufacturing nation
  • massive economies of scale
  • New industrial companies therefore hungered for markets to keep their high-volume production facilities operating
  • A new class of managers—comprising what one prominent economic historian called the “visible hand”—operated between the worlds of workers and owners
  • legal creations used to protect investors and sustain the power of massed capital
  • After the Civil War, however, the corporation, using new state incorporation laws passed during the Market Revolution of the early nineteenth century, became a legal mechanism for nearly any enterprise to marshal vast amounts of capital while limiting the liability of shareholders. By washing their hands of legal and financial obligations while still retaining the right to profit massively, investors flooded corporations with the capital needed to industrialize.
  • But a competitive marketplace threatened the promise of investments
  • between 1898 and 1902, a wave of mergers rocked the American economy
  • Competition melted away in what is known as “the great merger movement.”
  • Monopoly had arrived
  • Industrial capitalism realized the greatest advances in efficiency and productivity
  • But it also created millions of low-paid, unskilled, unreliable jobs with long hours and dangerous working conditions
  • new ideas arose to bestow moral legitimacy upon them
  • One of Darwin’s greatest popularizers, the British sociologist and biologist Herbert Spencer, applied Darwin’s theories to society and popularized the phrase survival of the fittest.
  • The fittest, Spencer said, would demonstrate their superiority through economic success, while state welfare and private charity would lead to social degeneration—it would encourage the survival of the weak.10
  • H. L. Mencken wrote in 1907. “All growth must occur at the top. The strong must grow stronger, and that they may do so, they must waste no strength in the vain task of trying to uplift the weak.”11
  • By the time Mencken wrote those words, the ideas of social Darwinism had spread among wealthy Americans and their defenders
  • American workers toiled in difficult jobs for long hours and little pay. Mechanization and mass production threw skilled laborers into unskilled positions
  • The typical industrial laborer could expect to be unemployed one month out of the year. They labored sixty hours a week and could still expect their annual income to fall below the poverty line.
  • skyrocketing rents trapped families in crowded slums.
  • Strikes ruptured American industry throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
  • The failure of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 convinced workers of the need to organize
  • The Knights of Labor enjoyed considerable success in the early 1880s
  • It welcomed all laborers,
  • In the summer of 1886, the campaign for an eight-hour day,
  • culminated in a national strike on May 1, 1886.
  • The deaths of the Chicago policemen sparked outrage across the nation, and the sensationalization of the Haymarket Riot helped many Americans to associate unionism with radicalism
  • Labor leaders and radicals called for a protest at Haymarket Square
  • The American Federation of Labor (AFL) emerged as a conservative alternative to the vision of the Knights of Labor. An alliance of craft unions (unions composed of skilled workers), the AFL rejected the Knights’ expansive vision of a “producerist” economy and advocated “pure and simple trade unionism,” a program that aimed for practical gains (higher wages, fewer hours, and safer conditions) through a conservative approach that tried to avoid strikes.
  • Homestead, Pennsylvania.
  • Henry Clay Frick
  • Pinkerton detectives,
  • Still, despite repeated failure, strikes continued to roll across the industrial landscape.
  • 1894, workers in George Pullman’s Pullman car factories struck when he cut wages by a quarter but kept rents and utilities in his company town constant. The American Railway Union (ARU), led by Eugene Debs, launched a sympathy strike: the ARU would refuse to handle any Pullman cars on any rail line anywhere in the country.
  • workers were not the only ones struggling to stay afloat in industrial America. American farmers also lashed out against the inequalities of the Gilded Age and denounced political corruption for enabling economic theft.
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