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Advisor: John F. Kasson, National Humanities Center Fellow; Professor of History and American Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

How did the instant celebrity of Charles Lindbergh after his 1927 transatlantic flight reflect Americans’ values in the Twenties?

Understanding

Lindbergh’s daring flight—and his modest response to global fame—reassured Americans that their nation’s values remained strong despite what many feared were corrosive trends in the Roaring Twenties: wild youth, rampant consumerism, celebrity worship, and widespread disregard for the law (especially Prohibition).

Texts

1. Fitzhugh Green on “the Phenomenon of Lindbergh,” essay entitled “A Little of What the World Thought of Lindbergh,” appendix in Charles Lindbergh’s “We” (1927), excerpts
2. Optional introductory videos
   • Newsreels, 1927: “Lindbergh Home” (1:22); “America’s National Hero” (0.57) BRITISH PATHÉ NEWS
   • Animated cartoon: Disney Studios, Plane Crazy (Mickey Mouse), 1928 (6:00: view first 60 seconds) DISNEY STUDIOS / YOUTUBE

[Find more primary resources and discussion questions on the Twenties in the primary source collection Becoming Modern: America in the 1920s.]

Text Complexity

Grades 9 and 10 complexity band.
Informational text with a clearly stated purpose and moderately complex structure, language features, and knowledge demands.

Background

In an age of celebrity sensations and instant heroes, the fame of Charles Lindbergh was unique. His self-effacing response to public adulation—his modest presence amid cheering throngs—became celebrated in itself. He resisted offers for self-promotion and profit, shared credit for his achievement, and modeled what many championed as the true American character. By exhibiting lone courage and earnest humility, Lindbergh gave his countrymen a reassurance they craved—that their national values stood uncorrupted in the youth-obsessed and consumer-driven Twenties. To the elders who worried about the frivolousness and moral corruption of the young, Lindbergh was precisely what they thought a twenty-five-year-old should be—humble, virtuous, serious, and self-reliant. To the small town residents who resented the put-downs of urbanites, Lindbergh proved that solid rural values could triumph over big-city sophistication.

The author of this lesson’s text, Fitzhugh Green, was a naval officer and former Arctic explorer who served as Lindbergh’s aide during his celebratory tours in Europe and America. Green’s description of the wildly enthusiastic receptions for Lindbergh was published as an appendix in Lindbergh’s memoir “We,” which appeared two months after his flight. “Whatever the reason for it all,” wrote Green, “the fact remains that there was a definite ‘phenomenon of Lindbergh’ quite the like of which the world had never seen.” Defining and dramatizing this phenomenon would be Green’s goal in his essay. [Read the entirety of Green’s essay in “We” (Google Books).]

Teaching the Text

To introduce the text, ask students to review a recent headline-grabbing celebrity event. What made the person a celebrity? What made the event a celebrity event? How was it covered in the media? How long did it receive media focus? How did the celebrity respond to the attention?

Review Lindbergh’s flight of May 1927 and the overwhelming receptions that welcomed him in Europe and the United States. Remind students that distressing news had dominated the headlines in the weeks before his flight—French pilots lost over the Atlantic, school bombing victims in Michigan, mine explosion deaths in Virginia, slain Marines in Nicaragua, desperate survivors of the Mississippi River floods, and the convictions of Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray for the grisly murder of her husband. From the moment Lindbergh took off from California to fly to New York to commence his transatlantic attempt, the public followed his progress in 24/7 fervor.

To experience a bit of this fervor, and to begin visualizing the “phenomenon of Lindbergh,” view and discuss these brief online videos.

1. Silent newsreels by British Pathé News (1927)
   • “Lindbergh Home” (1:22): Lindbergh’s harbor welcome and ticker-tape parade in New York City.
   • “America’s National Hero” (0.57): conclusion in Philadelphia of Lindbergh’s three-month “aerial tour of every state.”
2. Plane Crazy (1928), animated cartoon by Disney Studios in which Mickey Mouse models himself after his hero Lindbergh and takes Minnie on a wild plane ride. (Focus on the first sixty seconds.)

Ask students to discuss what is meant by the word phenomenon in the phrase “the phenomenon of,” e.g., of a famous person, cultural fad, social innovation, political icon, etc. What is signified by the phrase? What makes a celebrity, trend, invention, etc., worthy of the heightened category “phenomenon”?

As the students begin the essay, have them skim for superlatives (greatest torrent of mass emotion, greatest welcome any man in history has ever received) and for adjective-noun phrases that describe Lindbergh (dauntless fellow, American boy, genuine exemplar). What immediate sense of the “phenomenon of Lindbergh” do students gain from this exercise? How do the illustrations in the text convey the unique and pervasive quality of the “phenomenon of Lindbergh”? (The illustrations were not published with Green’s essay in “We.”)

Several excerpts are presented below for close reading, with discussion questions that follow Common Core standards. Challenging words are briefly defined in pop-ups (and are listed at the bottom of this page).

In Excerpt #1, Green sets up a before-and-after scenario to introduce the “phenomenon of Lindbergh.” Before Lindbergh’s flight, one would expect the “first man to fly from New York to Paris” to be cheered and celebrated as had numerous celebrities in the past—such as Richard Byrd after flying over the North Pole and Gertrude Ederle after swimming the English Channel—and then dropped from national consciousness when the next celebrity, scandal, or crime usurped the front pages. But Lindbergh had a unique staying power. He galvanized the nation by who he was, not just what he did. As Green writes: “The reason Lindbergh’s story is different is that when his plane came to a halt on Le Bourget field that black night in Paris, Lindbergh the man kept on going.” Focus students’ attention on the phrase “Lindbergh the man kept on going.” If Lindbergh was unique because “the man kept on going,” what is Green implying about previous celebrity “heroes” of the 1920s? Ask students why Green begins three paragraphs with the phrase “the first man to fly from New York to Paris.” How does this repetition set the stage for Green’s introduction of the “phenomenon of Lindbergh”?

In Excerpt #2, Green contrasts Lindbergh with “past homecoming heroes.” To build his case factually and rhetorically, he constructs four distinct sections within the two paragraphs.

1. An analogy to differentiate Lindbergh from earlier military heroes like Caesar and Napoleon. These aging victors resembled Lindbergh no more than a hitching post resembles a green bay tree. A hitching post (as we are to envision it here) is a well-worn tree or log, while a green bay tree is young and still growing. In Psalm 37:35, a “green bay tree” refers to a young tree flourishing in the soil of its native land.
2. A list of “past homecoming heroes” delivered in a drumbeat cadence of names and adjectives: “Napoleon grim; Paul Jones defiant,” etc. The stomp-stomp march of the list connotes military precision, fervor, and, in some cases, grandiosity.
3. A short declarative sentence that halts the drumbeat list: Lindbergh was none of these. With “none of these,” Green stresses Lindbergh’s uniqueness. He wasn’t “different from these,” “better than these,” or “less grandiose than these.” He was “none of these.”
4. Three concluding sentences describing Lindbergh’s response in a steady easy-going flow of words that parallels Lindbergh’s unassuming demeanor during the celebratory tours. Unlike past heroes, Lindbergh is a “plain citizen” dressed like an “everyday man” and like “any normal man of his age.” Plain, everyday, normal—Lindbergh has elevated these qualities, Green suggests, to heroic status. The homespun frontier hero of American tradition, the triumphant common man, still exists among us.

In Excerpts #3-5, Green quotes from the remarks of three dignitaries at welcoming events for Lindbergh. Have students determine how each interprets “the phenomenon of Lindbergh” from his specific perspective (president, newspaperman, etc.).

After reading and discussing the essay, have students identify phrases that restate the “phenomenon of Lindbergh,” such as “the young fellow’s keeping his own head when millions hailed him as hero.” Challenge them to write their own definitions of the “phenomenon of Lindbergh.” Display the definitions and have students edit and adapt them to create a final definition.

For Discussion

Excerpt #1 from Green, “A Little of What the World Thought of Lindbergh,”
1927

Excerpt #2 from Green, “A Little of What the World Thought of Lindbergh,”
1927

Excerpts #3-5

1. [From the welcoming remarks of President Coolidge in Washington, DC; quoted by Fitzhugh Green]
 

2. [From the White House dinner remarks of New York Times correspondent Richard V. Oulahan; quoted by Fitzhugh Green]
 

3. [From the dinner remarks of former and future Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes, at the New York City welcome for Lindbergh; quoted by Fitzhugh Green]
 

Follow-Up Assignment

How is the “phenomenon of Lindbergh” exhibited in these newspaper selections published during Lindbergh’s homecoming tour? The selections are from three big city general circulation newspapers, two African American newspapers, a Midwest agrarian newspaper, and a business/finance journal.

Distribute the seven excerpts among student groups to analyze, using the questions below. Groups may present their analyses for class discussion.

• How is the “phenomenon of Lindbergh” displayed in the selection? That is, how does the writer exhibit the “phenomenon” even if he/she doesn’t restate or evaluate it?
• Does the writer present a different perspective on the “phenomenon of Lindbergh,” e.g., a different message, emphasis, or consequence? If so, summarize the writer’s perspective. Why did he or she find it important to offer the different perspective?

Finally, have students write brief essays explaining the “phenomenon of Lindbergh” for a modern audience, referring to Green’s essay and the newspaper selections. How did the young Charles Lindbergh assure the nation of its values and strengths in the Twenties?

• audacious: bold, daring
• fêted: celebrated; honored with parades, dinners, etc.
• ephemeral: short-lived
• dauntless: fearless
• ensuing: following
• torrent: flood, outburst
• composite: combination; a mixture of several elements
• deferential: respectful, dutiful
• imposing: commanding, striking
• exemplar: example, model
• endeared: captivated, charmed
• unsullied: spotless, pure, untarnished
• emulation: imitation
• potent: powerful, forceful
• petty: frivolous, unimportant, inconsequential
• sordid: degraded, corrupt
• vulgar: crude, coarse, offensive
• bunk: nonsense, “hogwash,” “baloney”
• debunk: disprove, expose as fraudulent

Images:
- Sheet music cover, “Lindbergh: The Hero of Our Heart,” song by W. J. Weidenhof and A. Koplovitz, 1927. National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution; Inventory No. D20040304043; SI-84-14740. Reproduced by permission.
- “San Diego Welcomes ‘Lindy,’ Sep’t. 21st, 1927,” commemorative postcard by Passmore Photo, 1927. San Diego Air and Space Museum. Reproduced by permission.

 

The post The “Phenomenon of Lindbergh” appeared first on America in Class.

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How did the debate over commercial radio reflect American attitudes toward technological change in the 1920s?

Understanding

Commercial radio broadcasting, a technological innovation in the 1920s, transformed American culture and politics. Whether those transformations were a boon or bane to society provoked as compelling a debate then as do the changes wrought by social media and the Internet today. The debate reflects the worry and hope with which Americans greeted new technologies in the 1920s.

Text

• The Radio: Blessing or Curse? Selections from The Forum, March and April 1929

[Find more primary resources on the Twenties in Becoming Modern: America in the 1920s from the National Humanities Center.]

Text Complexity

Grades 9-10 complexity band.
Informational text with a clear purpose, slightly complex structure, and moderately complex language features and knowledge demands.

Background

Accommodated as we are to mass media, we must work to imagine the impact of commercial radio broadcasting in its early years. From the late 1800s, new electronic devices had been expanding the realm of shared human experience — people conversed on telephones, sent news through telegrams, played records on phonographs, and enjoyed films in local theaters. But until the radio, nothing offered such widely shared simultaneous mass experience. By turning on your radio set, you could listen to a jazz band, baseball game, religious service, even a president’s speech, live, along with millions of fellow listeners. After the first commercial broadcast in November 1920¹ — when Pittsburgh’s KDKA reported election returns — commercial radio took off. Stations multiplied into the thousands and radio sales into the millions. Networks like CBS and NBC took the reins of nationwide broadcasting, and the federal government brought order to the airwaves by assigning broadcasting frequencies. It was revolutionary.

As with any technological revolution, the question of its long-term effects invited lively debate. Was radio “a blessing or a curse”? Would it enlighten or dull its audience? Would people stop reading and conversing, preferring to become passive recipients of whatever the broadcasters beamed out? How would radio affect politics and elections? How would it influence the nation’s youth—the “digital natives” of their day who were growing up with radio as a given? Sound familiar?

Teaching the Text

A monthly magazine of social and political commentary, the Forum (1886-1930) regularly invited pro and con essays on controversial topics from prominent writers and spokesmen. In 1929, as commercial radio neared a full decade of broadcasting, the Forum published two essays with opposing viewpoints of radio’s promise and consequence. “The transmission of intelligence has reached its height in radio,” hurrahed one. “New culture indeed. New nothing!” harrumphed the other. In the lesson text, the two essays are excerpted in side-by-side columns; presented below are selections from each essay with questions for analysis [full text online from unz.org].

Decidedly anti-radio, the first selection was penned by Jack Woodford (a pseudonym of Josiah Pitts Woolfolk), a writer of pulp fiction and caustic commentary on the times. “Though it may mark me as un-American and even impious,” he later stated, “I must say I do not share the general enthusiastic opinion of radio.”² In his Forum essay, Woodford lambasts radio as an innovation gone awry. Initially hailed as a boon to civilization, it delivers only pap—brainless diversions that erode listeners’ ability to think, inquire, and judge. His writing is laced with exaggerations couched in sarcastic wit, a style that amuses the reader while hammering home a point. To ridicule politicians’ boastful speechifying, for example, he writes “I heard Mr. Hoover calling himself the Messiah and Governor Smith calling himself the Redeemer.” He’s not accusing the 1928 presidential candidates of equating themselves with Jesus Christ; he’s mocking their bloviating rhetoric that promises undeliverable rewards for citizens’ votes.

But what if radio makes it easier for citizens to discern hollow oratory and partisan propaganda? This is the view proposed in the second selection by James Harbord, a retired army general who applied his wartime radio experience to his role as president of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) from 1922 to 1930. Radio isn’t weakening American democracy, Harbord insisted; it’s providing a modern guarantor of its health. No longer would frenzied political rallies stoke “mob feeling” to manipulate voters’ opinions. Now citizens could listen to politicians’ speeches in the calm of their living rooms and make personal dispassionate judgments. “To sum up the political effect of the radio, we may say that it is the greatest debunking influence that has come into American public life since the Declaration of Independence.” In contrast to Woodford’s style, Harbord proceeds with earnest and resolute prose, breaking into a final effusive tribute to radio’s promise of global harmony.

What is the basic disagreement between Woodford and Harbord about the social and political effects of commercial radio? What evidence do they offer for their positions, and how do they strive to persuade their readers? How does their commentary resemble today’s discussions about social media and the Internet?

For Discussion

Excerpt #1: Jack Woodford, “Radio: A Blessing or a Curse?” The Forum,
March 1929

Excerpt #2: James G. Harbord, “Radio and Democracy,” The Forum,
April 1929

Follow-Up Assignment

In the follow-up chart are four comments on radio offered by the American science writer Waldemar Kaempffert in a 1924 Forum article entitled “The Social Destiny of Radio.” [View the full text at unz.org.] Kaempffert applauded radio as a “powerful instrument of mass appeal” that offered enormous benefits to mankind. Direct your students to complete the chart by (1) hypothesizing the likely responses of Woodford and/or Harbord to Kaempffert’s statements and (2) comparing his comments with the current discussion about social media and the Internet.

• elation: great happiness and exhilaration
• medium: a mode of conveying something; in this case, a means of communication (plural: media)
• blatant: conspicuous, especially in an offensive way; in your face
• feint: pretense, fake
• gleaned: discovered or found out gradually, bit by bit
• loquacious: very talkative
• timber: person qualified for a particular position
• fodder: cattle feed, i.e., a worthless product
• oblivion: state of being forgotten, especially by the public (also, lack of awareness of what is happening)
• vehement: emphatic, forceful
• gesticulating: gesturing for emphasis, especially while speaking
• debunking: exposing the falseness of an idea or belief, or discrediting exaggerated claims for something

¹First commercial broadcast by a licensed station.
²Jack Woodford, “The Radio Racket,” The Forum, July 1929.

Images:
-Photograph entitled “The shut-in’s Sunday service,” Clark Music Co., March 28, 1923 (detail). Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-134575.
-Drawing by Julian de Mickey, in Jack Woodford, “Radio — A Blessing or a Curse?” Forum, March 1929. Current copyright holder, if any, unidentified in search.


 

The post The Radio as New Technology: Blessing or Curse? A 1929 Debate appeared first on America in Class.

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How did the airplane — with its marvel and mystery — symbolize modernism in the Twenties?

Aeroplane Synchromy in Yellow-Orange

Aeroplane

Understanding

The airplane offered a potent symbol of man’s innovative thrust into the future. In the 1920s, artists depicted the airplane in canvases that, while creating quite different visual impressions, reflected the shared drive to depict the modern.

Text

• The “Aeroplane” in Visual Art of the 1920s
  - Stanton Macdonald-Wright, Aeroplane Synchromy in Yellow-Orange, oil on canvas, 1920    METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
  - Elsie Driggs, Aeroplane, oil on canvas, 1928    MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, HOUSTON

[Find more primary resources on the Twenties in the collection Becoming Modern: America in the 1920s from the National Humanities Center.]

Background

The Airplane. In 1920, the airplane was only seventeen years old—a modern wonder that most people witnessed from the sidelines in theater newsreels and barnstorming air shows. By the end of the decade, however, the airplane had become a phenomenon that one could experience firsthand. Brave souls could travel by passenger airline service, buy their own “Ford flivver of the skies,” or compete to set a flight record like Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart. The airplane had moved front and center in the American imagination. As such, it offered artists a compelling image for interpreting modernity in the postwar world.

Modernism in American Art. While European modernism was thriving in the early 1900s through avant-garde movements like Cubism and Expressionism, “American modernism” was a term in search of a definition. After World War One, writes art historian Sarah Lowe, American artists “embarked on a search for an authentic modern American idiom. How, precisely, to forge a distinctly American art form, or what it might look like was still unknown.”¹ Their search produced an extraordinary range of imagery, marking a distinct break from the prewar Ashcan School and the turn-of-the century American Impressionists. The two paintings highlighted in this lesson reflect different schools of American modernist art — SYNCHROMISM, an abstract form emphasizing dynamic movement and color, and PRECISIONISM, a more realistic genre interpreting modern industrial landscapes through “precision” and ultra-clarity.

Teaching the Paintings

The manmade object—from eggbeater to bridge truss—was a favored subject of modern American artists in the 1920s, e.g., see Razor by Gerald Murphy, Skyscrapers by Charles Sheeler, Machinery by Charles Demuth, and Egg Beater #4 by Stuart Davis.

The object that dominates the two paintings in this lesson is the “aeroplane,” and dominate it does. In Aeroplane Synchromy in Yellow-Orange, you may need to “find” the airplane at first but, as with a visual illusion, once you see it you can’t not see it. In Aeroplane the aircraft is the painting. It captures and holds your attention; your eye can go nowhere else. You fixate on the hovering image, which will be there into infinity, it seems. What makes the paintings modernist interpretations of the Machine Age?

Consider these questions before analyzing the paintings closely.

• On first look, what impression of the “aeroplane” do you get from each painting?
• What do you see in each painting? What do you hear in your head? What movement do you feel?
• Would you fly in the airplane?
• How would you rename each painting to reflect your answers to these questions?

To continue your initial study, you might follow the four-step process in Discussing Art, developed by Dr. Joy Kasson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Aeroplane Synchromy in Yellow-Orange, 1920 | enlarge

Curtiss JN-4, the “Jenny” | enlarge;
2012 photograph by Linda W. Bell

Painting #1

Stanton Macdonald-Wright, Aeroplane Synchromy in Yellow-Orange, 1920
oil on canvas, 24¼ x 24 in. (61.6 x 60.8 cm)
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART Reproduced by permission.

The Painting and the Artist. The canvas is a whir of movement and color. An airplane whizzes above us shortly after takeoff, but we do not perceive it as a coherent object. Instead we’re engulfed by a dynamic array of impressions that almost startles us—the bold spinning propeller, the solid uplifting wings that break through the canvas edge, the blinding flashes of reflected sunlight, the brief glimpses of rooftops. Within the abstract blur are two more realistically portrayed objects—the open engine that shoots orange flames out the exhaust, and the helmeted pilot who seems to catch our glance. Through the immediacy of close-range flight, we are offered a fleeting yet galvanizing image of the modern. All that is solid is moving too fast to assemble in one’s sight. All is in constant flux. The modern is an ephemeral, ever-changing, and exciting reality. Above all, it is now.

Stanton Macdonald-Wright was raised in Virginia and California and pursued his art studies in Paris. In 1912 he developed with artist Morgan Russell the color-saturated abstract style they titled SYNCHROMISM. Blending color and music theory with Cubist influences, they created vivid rhythmic “chords of color” in their paintings which they called synchromies (“with color”). As Macdonald-Wright explained, synchromy “is to color what symphony is to sound,”¹ i.e., a synchromist selects colors from the color wheel as a composer selects a chord structure, the “key” of a piece. As a tonic chord consists of the first, third, and fifth intervals of the tonic musical scale, for example, the “scale of red” would be composed of those intervals on the color wheel—red, yellow, and blue-green.² With this technique, Macdonald-Wright created dazzlingly alive canvases that burst beyond their edges to envelop the viewer. View these synchromist paintings by Macdonald-Wright from 1917: Street Synchromy, and Synchromy #3. What are the core visual elements in these works? What effect is Macdonald-Wright working to achieve in the viewer?

“Stanton was a dreamer,” writes art historian Will South. “He unashamedly, unabashedly looked for transcendence in painting. He wanted to create images that would take you physically, emotionally, spiritually outside of yourself—create some other state of mind, bigger than what you would normally experience in your day-to-day life.”³ In few of his works did he explore an object as he does in Aeroplane Synchromy. Aviation held a unique interest for him, as South explains: “Aviation, a metaphor for Macdonald-Wright for an expanded consciousness, also suggests a change—from ignorance to awareness.”⁴ In what way does Aeroplane Synchromy portray this change? [Consult an extended overview of Macdonald-Wright’s work from Art & Antiques.]

The Airplane. The Curtiss “Jenny” (JN-4) was a single-engine open-cockpit biplane familiar to all onlookers in its day. Developed as a pilot training airplane during World War One by the Curtiss Aeroplane Company, it maintained a vigorous postwar life in civil aviation (Lindbergh made his first solo flight in a Jenny). Familiarizing yourself with the Jenny will aid your interpretation of the painting; see

• an overview with photographs    AVIATION HISTORY ONLINE MUSEUM
• photographs of the Jenny on exhibit and of Bessie Coleman with her Jenny in 1924    NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM
• a video of the takeoff, flight, and landing of a Jenny    YOUTUBE
• a video of the engine startup of a Jenny (note closeups of the engine at 0:43-0:50, 1:40-1:56, and 3:40-3:45).    YOUTUBE

Questions [See comparison questions below.]

1. What impression of the airplane do you think Macdonald-Wright intended to convey in Aeroplane Synchromy? what impression of flight in the year 1920? Cite specific aspects of the painting to support your view.
2. How did he convey the marvel of the airplane?
3. How did he convey the mystery of the airplane?
4. How does Aeroplane Synchromy reflect synchromism? How does it use color and abstraction to portray the airplane as a symbol of the modern?

Aeroplane, 1928 | enlarge

Ford Tri-Motor, the “Tin Goose” | enlarge

Painting #2

Elsie Driggs, Aeroplane, 1928
oil on canvas, 44 x 38 in. (111.8 x 96.5 cm)
MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, HOUSTON
Reproduced by permission of Merriman Glatch (daughter of Elsie Driggs).

The Painting and the Artist. The shiny metal airplane appears suspended in air, as though frozen in flight. Only the blur of the propeller and the wirelike lines that crisscross the canvas inject a sense of movement. While technically “realistic,” the painting goes beyond mere illustration to evoke the allure and mystery of flight. With no pilot or passengers visible, with the sky and ground defined only by darkening greys at top and bottom, with the plane closely bounded on the sides and surrounded with a natural halo of light, the airplane is an artifact of modern man’s transcendence of his earthbound limits—but not an icon to be worshipped. “Oblique and puzzling,” wrote art curator Constance Kimmerle, “Aeroplane exudes a sense of haunting loneliness while suggesting the eeriness of a dreamlike experience.”⁵ Here the modern is a concrete reality that we recognize and admire, yet the future it heads toward is undefined and beyond the canvas. Above all, it is entrancing.

Raised in the industrial Pittsburgh area, Elsie Driggs was a member of the PRECISIONIST art movement that came to define American modernism. Claiming the machine age as their realm, the Precisionists created streamlined (“precise”) depictions of urban and industrial settings with boldly defined geometric shapes, commanding lines, unambiguous light and dark contrast, little detail, no texture, and rarely a human being. Driggs painted Aeroplane shortly after she experienced her first plane flight in a Ford Tri-Motor, the “Tin Goose.” “I took a plane for the first time in my life,” she later related. “ . . . I loved the flying. That was a new sensation . . . the captain sent back a message, “Would I like to sit with him for awhile? . . . and I can tell you, you do get a wonderful feeling of flying right out on the nose of one of those planes.”⁶ How does Aeroplane convey the wonder of flying in a precisionist mode? Compare Aeroplane with Driggs’s 1927 precisionist paintings Pittsburgh and Queensborough Bridge (scroll down). [For more background, consult the overview and teacher’s guide for Driggs’s work from the Michener Art Museum in Pennsylvania.]

The Airplane. Nicknamed the “Tin Goose,” the Ford Tri-Motor (three engine) with its corrugated aluminum body was one of the first all-metal airplanes. Produced by the Ford Motor Company from 1925 to 1933, it carried a crew of three and up to nine or ten passengers. Familiarizing yourself with the “Tin Goose” will aid your interpretation of the painting; see

• a photograph of the Ford Tri-Motor “Tin Goose” (2004)    TREKEARTH
• a Ford Tri-Motor on exhibit (enlarge photo)    NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM
• videos of a Ford Tri-Motor (2007): Part One: pilot walk-around and interior tour; Part Two: takeoff, flight, and landing    CHUCK DERER / YOUTUBE
• a brief overview.    FORD MOTOR COMPANY

Questions [See comparison questions below.]

1. What impression of the airplane do you think Driggs intended to convey in Aeroplane? What impression of flight in the year 1928?
2. How did she convey the marvel of the airplane?
3. How did she convey the mystery of the airplane?
4. How does Aeroplane reflect precisionism? How does it use simplicity and clarity to portray the airplane as a symbol of the modern?

1. Both artists depict a single airplane as the dominant image in their paintings. How do they differ in presenting the airplane as a symbol of modernity, human daring, and the unknown future?
2. How can images as abstract as Macdonald-Wright’s and as realistic as Driggs’s both reflect modernism?
3. Why might the artists have used the word Aeroplane instead of Airplane?
4. Both artists depict an airplane in the moment. Why might Macdonald-Wright have emphasized movement through air while Driggs emphasized stillness in air?
5. Both airplanes are truncated in the paintings, i.e., they are cut off and not depicted in their entirety. Why might the artists have done this?
6. What “role” does the pilot play in each painting?
7. What “role” does the airplane play in each?
8. How does the surrounding environment support these roles?
9. How does each painting convey awe? In each, how are we to respond to our awe?
10. If each painting were a frame in a video, what would one see in the next ten frames?
11. If you placed the two paintings side-by-side in a museum exhibition, what might you title the pairing?
12. The paintings are shown below in proportional size; Aeroplane is approximately three times bigger in area than Aeroplane Synchromy. How does the size of a painting influence the viewer’s response?
    [At 3.67 x 3.2 feet, Aeroplane is approximately 12 square feet in area. At 2.04 x 2 ft., Aeroplane Synchromy is approximately four square feet in area.]
         
13. What machine or object might be similarly depicted and interpreted to capture the spirit of today?
14. How did Synchromism and Precisionism reflect American modernists’ aspirations to drive and define the modern?
15. What different options do abstraction and realism offer an artist for interpreting modernity?
16. Judging from your analysis of these paintings, how were the marvel and mystery of aviation interpreted by American modernist painters in the 1920s?

Airplane, 1931 | zoomable image

Follow-Up Assignment

Howard Norton Cook, Airplane, 1931
wood engraving on paper, 11 5/8 x 8 7/8 in. (29.5 x 22.7 cm)
SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM. Permission request in process.

By 1931 the exuberance of the 1920s had ended in the Great Depression. Have students compare the two Aeroplane paintings with this woodcut from 1931 and write an essay or create a Power Point presentation in response to this question: How does Cook interpret the airplane and the modern in the new circumstances of the 1930s?

In Airplane, Cook depicts a biplane flying over the countryside sculpted with roads and well-tended farms. But we are not sharing a sunny afternoon flight with an amateur pilot. We are hovering above an unmarked airplane with a featureless pilot, flying over stylized farmland with no human presence. We run ahead of the shadows toward the sunset . . . and what is that ahead? A gaping abyss? Does its edge suggest sneering lips? How do the roads become a foreboding fence, delineating the darkness? Or wait, is our imagination getting ahead of us?

A Massachusetts native, Howard Cook studied printmaking in New York City and throughout the 1920s created woodblock prints for national magazines including the Forum, Harper’s, and Atlantic Monthly. His work became increasingly abstract in the 1930s and 1940s, a transition that may be evident in Airplane. Study the zoomable image; be sure to zoom in close to study the airplane, pilot, farm landscape, country roads, the “fence,” and the upper right corner that is starkly separated from the storybook farmland by the illuminated airplane. How might you retitle the work to convey its tone? As you proceed, you might consult overviews of Cook’s work from the Terra Foundation for American Art and The Old Print Shop.

---

1. So Why Is This Art? Nine Questions about the Nature of Art (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2004), at schools.walkerart.org/swita/all2.html?ref=all:17.
2. Henry Adams, Tom and Jack: The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollack (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009), in Part Three: The Formula (unnumbered pages), citing original research by curator Will South.
3. “Stanton Macdonald-Wright: Discover the Man and His Art,” interview with curator Will South, Carolina Arts, March 2001, at www.carolinaarts.com/301ncmus.south.html.
4. Will South, “Macdonald-Wright in California,” ch. four of Color, Myth, and Magic: Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Synchromism, ed. Will South (Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Museum of Art, 2001), p. 72.
5. Constance Kimmerle, et al., Elsie Driggs: The Quick and the Classical (James A. Michener Art Museum and the University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), p. 35.
6. Ibid., p. 34, citing audiotaped and transcribed interview with Elsie Driggs by Francine Tyler, Oct. 30-Dec. 5, 1985, for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Images:
– Linda M. Bell, photograph of a Curtiss JN-4H “Jenny” in an airshow, Flabob Flying Circus, Riverside, California, Sept. 29, 2012. Reproduced by permission of Linda M. Bell.
– Howard Cook, Airplane, wood engraving on paper, 1931. Smithsonian American Art Museum, gift of Barbara Latham, 1980.122.123. Permission request in process.
– Elsie Driggs, Aeroplane, oil on canvas, 1928. Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Reproduced by permission of Merriman Glatch.
–Stanton Macdonald-Wright, Aeroplane Synchromy in Yellow-Orange, oil on canvas, 1920. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949, accession no. 49.70.52. Reproduced by permission of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
– Photograph of a 1929 Ford Tri-Motor “Tin Goose” in flight, ca. 2012; airplane restored by the Experimental Aircraft Association, Oshkosh, Wisconsin; photographer unidentified. Permission request in process.


 

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]]> http://americainclass.org/the-aeroplane-as-a-symbol-of-modernism/feed/ 0 http://americainclass.org/progressivism-in-the-home/ http://americainclass.org/progressivism-in-the-home/#comments Sun, 20 Jan 2013 19:19:12 +0000 Kendra http://americainclass.org/?p=4852 How did Progressive reforms affect the domestic lives of Americans?

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]]> Lesson prepared by National Humanities Center staff.

How did Progressive reforms affect the domestic lives of Americans?



Understanding

During the Progressive Era, from the 1890s through the 1920s, the idea of progress manifested itself in a variety of ways from cleaning up slums to eliminating government corruption to Americanizing immigrants to standardizing industrial practices. Such initiatives often sought to improve life by applying insights derived from the newly emerging social sciences—disciplines like sociology, psychology, economics, and statistics. Relying on extensive data gathering, professional expertise, and careful management, this scientific strand of Progressivism sought to bring rationality and efficiency to legislative chambers, factory floors, even household kitchens.

Text

Excerpts from Christine Frederick, The New Housekeeping: Efficiency Studies in Home Management, 1913, in The Gilded and the Gritty: America 1870-1920 from the National Humanities Center.

Text Complexity

Grades 6 to 8 complexity band.
Informational text with slightly complex meaning, text structure, language features. Knowledge demands addressed in background note.

Background

Progressivism drew its inspiration from two sources—evangelical Protestantism and the sciences, both the natural and social sciences. In the early nineteenth century evangelical Protestants undertook reforms out of a desire to purge sin from a rural agricultural nation. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries they aimed their fervor at the vices of an urban industrial America. The reforming spirit of Protestantism inspired many who did not embrace the doctrines of Protestantism or its often dark and pessimistic world view. Among these were many social scientists, specialists in such disciplines as psychology, economics, sociology, and statistics. These scientific Progressives conducted experiments and gathered data in an effort to discover the underlying laws that governed human behavior. Armed with such knowledge and with faith in its uplifting and improving power, they optimistically believed they could devise solutions to problems ranging from labor unrest to unsanitary living conditions to inefficient manufacturing. Their interventions were generally characterized by a desire to control natural forces and impose a degree of order on them.

When applied to tasks performed with “the head and hands working in cooperation,” efforts to bring about control and order were supposed to result in greater efficiency. In The Principles of Scientific Management (1910), one of the most influential books of the twentieth century, engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor described how to apply efficiency-promoting practices to large manufacturing operations. So powerful were his ideas that they quickly migrated to other areas of life, including the kitchens of middle-class housewives.

The person responsible for bringing scientific management to the home was Christine Frederick (1883-1970). Upon graduating from Northwestern University in 1906, she became a teacher, an acceptable occupation for a woman because it addressed the welfare of children and thus fell into what the age considered the domestic sphere. After a year in the classroom, she married J. George Frederick, a business executive, and began life as a homemaker in New York. In time she became bored with housework and sought another outlet for her energy. From her husband’s associates she learned about the new scientific management practices that were revolutionizing American industry. (See “The Idea of Progress I” in America in Class® Lessons.) In 1912 she wrote a series of articles that showed the middle-class readers of Ladies Home Journal how to apply the new management techniques to the running of their homes. A year later she published the collected series under the title The New Housekeeping: Efficiency Studies in Home Management, in which she offered women a great deal more than new ways to clean and cook. By transferring the principles of scientific management from the factory floor to the kitchen, Frederick not only brought the domestic sphere into the industrial system but also gave housewives a new way of thinking of themselves.

Teaching the Text

Contextualizing Questions

1. What kind of text are we dealing with?
2. When was it written?
3. Who wrote it?
4. For what audience was it intended?
5. For what purpose was it written?

In the opening paragraph Frederick seeks to win the confidence of her housewife readers by assuring them that she began her quest to master scientific management from precisely the same place in which they now find themselves, deeply embedded in the traditional domestic sphere, performing the traditional tasks expected of the traditional housewife. She then lays out the terms she plans to define and, through repetition of “interest,” signals to her readers that they should pay attention to the ideas she will explore. Before launching into that exploration, she again assures her readers that as they are now, ignorant of these new concepts, she once was. Note that she is not participating in the conversations of the men but is rather on the periphery, where she can only overhear what they are saying. The rather pleading and almost childlike tone of her questions in paragraph 3 further highlights her subordinate position. In the full text from which this passage is excerpted, she moves from the position of outsider, so unknowing that everything must be explained to her, to that of an insider, so expert that can explain new phenomena to others.

In paragraph 4 Frederick begins her definitions, which she finds so enthralling that in paragraph 5 she puts aside her sewing. If students want to find symbolic meaning in that action, do not discourage them. She develops paragraph 6 through example and suggests the research, measurement, and observation on which scientific management is based with an authoritative display of numbers.

In paragraphs 9 and 10 she transitions the conversation to the domestic sphere, and, once there—in paragraphs 11, 12, and 13—the tone of her remarks becomes authoritative because she is now focusing on her area of expertise. This display of expertise establishes her, and by implication her readers who possess the same domestic experience, as the intellectual equal of the expert Mr. Watson. In so doing, she assures her readers that they, too, have the intelligence to master scientific management. Paragraph 14 suggests that she has indeed laid aside her sewing, for through scientific management she and her readers will be able to step out of traditional roles and join men in doing “great and noble things.”

For Discussion

Analysis

What image of herself does Frederick present in paragraphs 1, 2, and 3? Considering her audience, why would she choose to present herself as she does?

1. I was sitting by the library table, mending, while my husband and a business friend were talking, one evening about a year ago. I heard them use several new words and phrases so often that I stopped to listen.
What purpose does paragraph 2 serve in the article?
2. “Efficiency,” I heard our caller say a dozen times; “standard practice,” “motion study,” and “scientific management,” he repeated over and over again. The words suggested interesting things, and as I listened I grew absorbed and amazed.
Why does Frederick repeat the word “interest”?
3. “What are you men talking about?” I interrupted. “I can’t help being interested. Won’t you please tell me what ‘efficiency’ is, Mr. Watson? What were you saying about bricklaying?”
How does Frederick define “efficiency”? How does she argue for its value? Why might Frederick have chosen to present these definitions in the form of a dialogue rather than in a more straightforward manner?
4. “Your husband and I were just discussing this new idea developed in business, called ‘efficiency,’ or ‘scientific management’,” Mr. Watson replied. “A group of men, Emerson and Taylor among others, have come to be known in the business and manufacturing world as ‘efficiency engineers.’ These men are able to go into a shop or factory, watch the men at work, make observations and studies of motions, and from these observations show where waste and false movements occur and why the men lose time. Then they go to work to build up the ‘efficiency’ of that shop, so that the men do more work in less time, with less waste and greater output or gain to the owners, while the workers have shorter hours, higher pay, and better working conditions.”
What is the effect of Frederick’s use of “this” in the phrase “this efficiency”?
5. “Just how do they find out what is wrong?” I asked, laying my sewing on the table, and listening eagerly, “and how do they actually increase this ‘efficiency’?”
What method does Frederick use to develop paragraph 6? What word signals her method? What does Frederick’s use of numbers in paragraph 6 suggest about scientific management?
6. “Well, for instance,” answered Mr. Watson, “this is how they improved the method of laying bricks: Formerly a workman stood before a wall, and when he wanted to lay a brick he had to stoop, pick a brick weighing four and a half pounds from a mixed pile at his feet, and carry it to the wall. Suppose he weighed one hundred and eighty pounds; that worker would have to lower his one hundred and eighty pounds four feet every time he picked up each of the two thousand bricks he laid in a day! Now an efficiency expert, after watching bricklayers at work, devised a simple little table which holds the bricks in an orderly pile at the workman’s side. They are brought to him in orderly piles, proper side up. Because he doesn’t need to stoop or sort, the same man who formerly could lay only one hundred and twenty bricks an hour can now lay three hundred and fifty bricks, and he uses only five motions, where formerly it required eighteen.”
7. “That sounds like a fairy tale,” I laughed skeptically. “What else wonderful can they do with this magic wand of ‘efficiency’?”
Frederick’s article could be described as an extended definition. Identify the words she defines, and cite the passages in which she defines them. Bring the passages together and write your own definitions.
8. “It does sound like magic,” Mr. Watson replied, “but it is only common sense. There is just one best way, one shortest way to perform any task involving work done with the hands, or the hands and head working in coöperation. These efficiency men merely study to find that one best and shortest way, and when they have found it they call that task ‘standardized.’ Very often the efficiency is increased because the task is done with fewer motions, with better tools, because of even such a simple thing as changing the height of a work-bench, or the position of the worker.” . . .
In what sense can paragraphs 9 and 10 be called transitional? What are the connotations of the word “bantered”? What effect does it have on the tone of the sentence and on our impression of the speaker? How would the sentence change if Frederick had used “said” or “asked”? What is the effect of the italicized “we”?
9. “Why, I suppose you smart men and efficiency experts will soon try to tell me and all the other women that washing dishes can be ‘standardized,”’ I bantered, “or that we could save a million dollars if we would run our homes on ‘scientific management’!”

10. “Now, Mrs. Frederick,” replied Mr. Watson seriously, “that is really not too much to imagine. There is no older saying than ‘woman’s work is never done.’ If the principles of efficiency can be successfully carried out in every kind of shop, factory, and business, why couldn’t they be carried out equally well in the home?”

Compare the language of paragraphs 11 and 12 to that of paragraphs 1, 2, and 3. How does it differ? How has the speaker changed? Why? How might the change affect the reader’s perception of Frederick?
11. “Because,” I answered, “in a factory the workers do just one thing, like sewing shoes, or cutting envelopes, and it is easy to standardize one set of operations. But in a home there are dozens, yes, hundreds, of tasks requiring totally different knowledge and movements. There is ironing, dusting, cooking, sewing, baking, and care of children. No two tasks are alike. Instead of working as she would in a factory, at one task, the home-worker peels potatoes, washes dishes, and darns stockings all in the same hour. Yes, and right in the midst of peeling the potatoes she has to drop her knife, and see why the baby is crying.”

12. “You men simply don’t understand anything about work in a home,” I continued, heatedly. “One day a woman sweeps and dusts, and the next she irons, and the next she bakes, and in-between-times she cares for babies, and sews, answers call bells and ’phones, and markets, and mends the lining of her husband’s coat, and makes a cocoanut cake for Sunday!…”

Why does Mr. Watson shift in his chair? How has Frederick established herself as the intellectual equal of Mr. Watson?
13. Mr. Watson shifted his chair with a realization that he had been put up against no simple problem, nor one in which he had experience. Then he answered, “Well, I hadn’t considered the idea before, but I believe so strongly in the principles of efficiency and have seen them work out so satisfactorily in every kind of shop where there are different kinds of work and where the owners have said just what you say, that I absolutely know that these principles must have application to any kind of work, and that they could be carried out successfully in the home if you women would only faithfully apply them.
How does Frederick suggest that the “efficiency gospel” may empower women? How does Frederick recast the housewife as an industrial worker?
14. After Mr. Watson had gone, I turned eagerly to my husband. “George,” I said, “that efficiency gospel is going to mean a great deal to modern housekeeping, in spite of some doubts I have. Do you know that I am going to work out those principles here in our home! I won’t have you men doing all the great and noble things! I’m going to find out how these experts conduct investigations, and all about it, and then apply it to my factory, my business, my home.” . . .

Follow-Up Assignment

Examine the diagram below, which comes from The New Housekeeping. Based on what you can infer from your analysis of Frederick’s writing, determine which kitchen arrangement Frederick would endorse and explain why. Cite specific details of the kitchen and the task represented to support your conclusion.



 
Images:
- Photograph captioned “Mrs. Christine Frederick at the preparing table in the kitchen of the Applecroft Experiment Station, Greenlawn, Long Island,” ca. 1913 (detail), frontispiece of Christine Frederick, The New Housekeeping: Efficiency Studies in Home Management, 1913. Digital image courtesy of Google Books.
- Illustrations titled “Diagram Showing Badly Arranged Equipment” and “Diagram Showing Proper Arrangement of Equipment,”in Frederick, The New Housekeeping, 1913, p. 52 of 1918 edition. Courtesy of Google Books.

 

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]]> http://americainclass.org/progressivism-in-the-home/feed/ 0 http://americainclass.org/progressivism-in-the-factory/ http://americainclass.org/progressivism-in-the-factory/#comments Thu, 10 Jan 2013 18:34:54 +0000 Kendra http://americainclass.org/?p=4862 How did Americans define progress during the Progressive Era?

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]]> Lesson prepared by National Humanities Center staff.

Advisor: Henry Binford, National Humanities Center Fellow; Associate Professor of History, Northwestern University

How did Americans define progress during the Progressive Era?



Understanding

During the Progressive Era, from the 1890s through the 1920s, the idea of progress manifested itself in a variety of ways from cleaning up slums to eliminating government corruption to Americanizing immigrants to standardizing industrial practices. Such initiatives often sought to improve life by applying insights derived from the newly emerging social sciences—disciplines like sociology, psychology, economics, and statistics. Relying on extensive data gathering, professional expertise, and careful management, this scientific strand of Progressivism sought to bring rationality and efficiency to legislative chambers, factory floors, even household kitchens.

Text

Excerpt (1,700 words) from Frederick Winslow Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management, 1910, in The Gilded and the Gritty: America 1870-1920 from the National Humanities Center.

Text Complexity

Grades 11 and 12 complexity band.
Informational text with moderately complex meaning, text structure, and language features. Knowledge demands addressed in background note.

Background

Progressivism drew its inspiration from two sources—evangelical Protestantism and the sciences, both the natural and social sciences. In the early nineteenth century evangelical Protestants undertook reforms out of a desire to purge the world of sin. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries they directed their efforts to the ills they found in America’s growing cities. The reforming spirit of Protestantism inspired many who did not embrace the doctrines of Protestantism or its often dark and pessimistic world view. Among these were many social scientists, specialists in such disciplines as psychology, economics, sociology, and statistics. These scientific Progressives conducted experiments and gathered data in an effort to discover the underlying laws that governed human behavior. Armed with such knowledge and with faith in its uplifting and improving power, they optimistically believed they could devise solutions to problems ranging from labor unrest to unsanitary living conditions to inefficient manufacturing. Their interventions were generally characterized by a desire to control natural forces and impose a degree of order on them.

For consulting engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor (1865-1915) the object of control was business efficiency, and he explained how to achieve that goal in The Principles of Scientific Management (1910), one of the most influential books of the twentieth century. His meticulous time and motion studies helped transform the United States from a country of small workshops plying local trades to a country of huge factories supporting national industries. He promoted the development of large efficient manufacturing organizations by structuring work according to strict rules of reason, determined through the systematic study of interactions among job requirements, tools, methods, and human skills. His most important client was Bethlehem Iron Company, later Bethlehem Steel. In the excerpt presented here, his goal is to bring a pig iron handler to his highest efficiency, which means increasing the amount of iron he hauls from 28,000 pounds per day to 106,400 pounds.

Teaching the Text

Contextualizing Questions

1. What kind of text are we dealing with?
2. When was it written?
3. Who wrote it?
4. For what audience was it intended?
5. For what purpose was it written?

The text opens with an example of a paragraph developed, at least partially, through comparison and contrast. It also shows students how a term can be parenthetically defined. Moreover, it illuminates scientific management by suggesting Taylor’s confidence in his method and illustrating the extent to which its goals are as much psychological as industrial. Before managers and workers can take on new duties, they must first think of themselves in new ways. Managers must transform themselves from supervisors to experts in command of detailed knowledge of manufacturing processes, while workers must yield their “initiative” to their jobs with “absolute uniformity,” which we will later see means absolute obedience.

Paragraph 5 and the footnote illustrate the importance of research and data gathering in scientific management and, indeed, in the social sciences that fueled many Progressive reforms. Through research and data gathering, Taylor and his associates decide what workers should do. Note how “top-down” this method is; workers are never consulted about how best to do their jobs. In paragraph 6 we see that Taylor also relies on data gathering and research to select the “little Pennsylvania Dutchman” as his first subject. He always begins with the best worker and uses him to set the rate for everyone else. Remind students that while Taylor is illustrating how scientific management works, he is also arguing to potential clients, like the Bethlehem Iron Company, that it does, in fact, work and that they should hire him to implement it in their operations. Thus to the extent that Taylor is making an argument, the footnote, which is almost a parody of measurement and data gathering, answers skeptics who might challenge his method’s goals and effectiveness.

The first sentence of paragraph 7 is pivotal in the text. Everything that precedes it contextualizes it, and everything that follows illustrates it.

Taylor’s exchange with Schmidt, the “little Pennsylvania Dutchman,” is the heart of the text. It provides an excellent opportunity to explore tone and strategies of persuasion. Taylor adopts an authoritative, intimidating tone that clearly puts him in charge. He isolates Schmidt from his co-workers so that Schmidt has no allies should he decide to resist Taylor’s offer. Note how Taylor manipulates Schmidt by appealing to character traits he has discovered by observing him. The “little” man has middle-class aspirations—he is building a home—and he is close with money—to him a penny looks like a cart wheel. Thus Taylor knows he would be especially susceptible to a proposition, however daunting, that promises to raise his status and bring him more income. Pay particular attention to the way in which Taylor subtly reels out the definition of a “high-priced man” and wins Schmidt’s assent to each new element of the definition before introducing the next. The logic of Taylor’s argument can be summarized as follows: a “high-priced man” behaves in this way; you are a “high-priced man”; therefore, you will behave in this way. Once Schmidt agrees that a “high-priced man” is someone who wants to make more money and that because he wants to make more, he is a “high-priced man,” Taylor knocks him off balance by saying that money has little to do with being a “high-priced man.” He then introduces a second element into the definition: a “high-priced man” loads more pig iron. When Schmidt agrees to load more, Taylor adds yet another element, complete obedience to the manager. He ends the exchange by motivating Schmidt to prove that he is a “high-priced man.” At this point students can explore Taylor’s idea of motivation. For Schmidt the primary motivation seems to be higher wages; he probably would have been willing to accept more work simply for a raise. But Taylor believes that money is not enough, that stimulating pride and individualistic competition is also necessary. Taylor, we discover, is not simply trying to get Schmidt to haul more pig iron; he is trying to get him to buy into a system, scientific management, that, relying as much on psychology as on economics, requires him to recast his image of himself from a worker to a “high-priced man.”

With the final discussion questions—How scientific is scientific management? Did scientific management improve Schmidt’s life?—you can end the lesson with debates about larger issues in Progressivism. Taylor tells us that his method worked: through measurement, data gathering, and psychological manipulation, he enhanced the company’s efficiency and provided Schmidt a way to increase his income. These results cost the Bethlehem Iron Company very little. We are left to speculate how much they cost Schmidt.

For Discussion

Analysis

What technique of paragraph development does Taylor use in paragraph 1? What is the effect of Taylor’s use of parallelism: “Under the old type of management . . . ,” “Under scientific management . . .”? How does Taylor define “initiative”? What is the effect of the word “absolute”? Read the sentence without it. Does it change the meaning, the tone? Why might Taylor have used it?

What are the psychological goals of scientific management? How does scientific management affect workers? Under scientific management how does the role of the manager change? List the words in paragraphs 1 and 2 that characterize scientific management.

1. Under the old type of management success depends almost entirely upon getting the “initiative” of the workmen, and it is indeed a rare case in which this initiative is really attained. Under scientific management the “initiative” of the workmen (that is, their hard work, their goodwill, and their ingenuity) is obtained with absolute uniformity and to a greater extent than is possible under the old system; and in addition to this improvement on the part of the men, the managers assume new burdens, new duties, and responsibilities never dreamed of in the past. The managers assume, for instance, the burden of gathering together all of the traditional knowledge which in the past has been possessed by the workmen and then of classifying, tabulating, and reducing this knowledge to rules, laws, and formulæ which are immensely helpful to the workmen in doing their daily work. . . .

2. It is this combination of the initiative of the workmen, coupled with the new types of work done by the management, that makes scientific management so much more efficient than the old plan. . . .

3. One of the first pieces of work undertaken by us, when the writer started to introduce scientific management into the Bethlehem Steel Company, was to handle pig iron on task work. . . .

4. The Bethlehem Steel Company had five blast furnaces, the product of which had been handled by a pig-iron gang for many years. This gang, at this time, consisted of about 75 men. They were good, average pig-iron handlers, were under an excellent foreman who himself had been a pig-iron handler, and the work was done, on the whole, about as fast and as cheaply as it was anywhere else at that time. . . .

What aspects of science are illustrated in paragraph 5 and the footnote? How would you describe the scientific management approach to work? Cite evidence from the text to support your description. Whose interests is Taylor serving, those of the management or those of the workers? Cite evidence from the text to support your answer.
5. We found that this gang were loading on the average about 12½ long tons [one ton = 2,240 pounds] per man per day. We were surprised to find, after studying the matter, that a first-class pig-iron handler ought to handle between 47* and 48 long tons per day, instead of 12½ tons. . . . It was our duty to see that the 80,000 tons of pig iron was loaded on to the [railroad] cars at the rate of 47 tons per man per day, in place of 12½ tons, at which rate the work was then being done. And it was further our duty to see that this work was done without bringing on a strike among the men, without any quarrel with the men, and to see that the men were happier and better contented when loading at the new rate of 47 tons than they were when loading at the old rate of 12½ tons.
What does Taylor mean by “scientific selection”? In what ways is the selection of the “little Pennsylvania Dutchman” “scientific”? What qualities did Schmidt possess that led Taylor to choose him? Cite evidence from the text to support your answer.
6. Our first step was the scientific selection of the workman. In dealing with workmen under this type of management, it is an inflexible rule to talk to and deal with only one man at a time, since each workman has his own special abilities and limitations, and since we are not dealing with men in masses, but are trying to develop each individual man to his highest state of efficiency and prosperity. . . . [W]e selected . . . a little Pennsylvania Dutchman who had been observed to trot back home for a mile or so after his work in the evening about as fresh as he was when he came trotting down to work in the morning. We found that upon wages of $1.15 a day he had succeeded in buying a small plot of ground, and that he was engaged in putting up the walls of a little house for himself in the morning before starting to work and at night after leaving. He also had the reputation of being exceedingly “close,” that is, of placing a very high value on a dollar. As one man whom we talked to about him said, “A penny looks about the size of a cartwheel to him.” This man we will call Schmidt.
Could the first sentence of paragraph 7 serve as the thesis sentence of this entire text? Support your answer with evidence from the text. Why is it important to separate Schmidt from his fellow workers? Characterize the tone with which Taylor addresses Schmidt. Cite language from the text to support your characterization. Why does he adopt this tone? What does it suggest about his attitude toward Schmidt?
7. The task before us, then, narrowed itself down to getting Schmidt to handle 47 tons of pig iron per day and making him glad to do it. This was done as follows. Schmidt was called out from among the gang of pig-iron handlers and talked to somewhat in this way:

“Schmidt, are you a high-priced man?”
“Vell, I don’t know vat you mean.”
“Oh yes, you do. What I want to know is whether you are a high-priced man or not.”
“Vell, I don’t know vat you mean.”

Why does Taylor insist that Schmidt knows what a “high-priced man” is? Why does Taylor compare Schmidt to “cheap fellows”? What image of Schmidt does Taylor construct? How does he do it?
8. “Oh, come now, you answer my questions. What I want to find out is whether you are a high-priced man or one of these cheap fellows here. What I want to find out is whether you want to earn $1.85 a day or whether you are satisfied with $1.15, just the same as all those cheap fellows are getting.”
What does the contrast between Schmidt’s language and Taylor’s suggest?
9. “Did I vant $1.85 a day? Vas dot a high-priced man? Vell, yes, I vas a high-priced man.”
Why does Taylor claim to be aggravated when Schmidt answers his question?
10. “Oh, you’re aggravating me. Of course you want $1.85 a day—every one wants it! You know perfectly well that that has very little to do with your being a high-priced man. For goodness’ sake answer my questions, and don’t waste any more of my time. Now come over here. You see that pile of pig iron?”

“Yes.”
“You see that [railroad] car?”
“Yes.”

Why does Taylor keep asking Schmidt if he is a “high-priced man”?
11. “Well, if you are a high-priced man, you will load that pig iron on that car tomorrow for $1.85. Now do wake up and answer my question. Tell me whether you are a high-priced man or not.”

“Vell—did I got $1.85 for loading dot pig iron on dot car tomorrow?”

Note where Taylor uses phrases like “You know perfectly well” and “You know it just as well as I do.” Why does he use them? What effect would they have on Schmidt?
12. “Yes, of course you do, and you get $1.85 for loading a pile like that every day right through the year. That is what a high-priced man does, and you know it just as well as I do.”

13. “Vell, dot’s all right. I could load dot pig iron on the car tomorrow for $1.85, and I get it every day, don’t I?”

“Certainly you do—certainly you do.”
“Vell, den, I vas a high-priced man.”

14. “Now, hold on, hold on. You know just as well as I do that a high-priced man has to do exactly as he’s told from morning till night. You have seen this man here before, haven’t you?”

“No, I never saw him.”

Taylor uses the “if-then” construction in paragraphs 11 and 15: “if you are a high-priced man, [“then” implied], you will . . .” Why does he use it? How does it maneuver Schmidt to agree with him? How does Taylor challenge Schmidt to prove that he is a “high-priced man”? Citing language from the text, show how Taylor gradually defines what it means to be a “high-priced man.” Why does he define the term in steps? What finally does it mean to be a “high-priced man”? Summarize the logic of the argument Taylor presents to get Schmidt to agree to his new workload.
15. “Well, if you are a high-priced man, you will do exactly as this man tells you tomorrow, from morning till night. When he tells you to pick up a pig and walk, you pick it up and you walk, and when he tells you to sit down and rest, you sit down. You do that right straight through the day. And what’s more, no back talk. Now a high-priced man does just what he’s told to do, and no back talk. Do you understand that? When this man tells you to walk, you walk; when he tells you to sit down, you sit down, and you don’t talk back at him. Now you come on to work here tomorrow morning and I’ll know before night whether you are really a high-priced man or not.”
What is Taylor’s idea of motivation? Why does he not simply offer Schmidt a raise for taking on more work? How does scientific management embody the values of Progressivism? How does Taylor’s exchange with Schmidt reveal class differences in the goals of Progressivism? Support your answer with evidence from the text.
16. This seems to be rather rough talk. And indeed it would be if applied to an educated mechanic, or even an intelligent laborer. With a man of the mentally sluggish type of Schmidt it is appropriate and not unkind, since it is effective in fixing his attention on the high wages which he wants and away from what, if it were called to his attention, he probably would consider impossibly hard work. . . .
How scientific is scientific management? Did scientific management improve Schmidt’s life? Support your answer with evidence from the text.
17. Schmidt started to work, and all day long, and at regular intervals, was told by the man who stood over him with a watch, “Now pick up a pig and walk. Now sit down and rest. Now walk — now rest,” etc. He worked when he was told to work, and rested when he was told to rest, and at half-past five in the afternoon had his 47½ tons loaded on the car. And he practically never failed to work at this pace and do the task that was set him during the three years that the writer was at Bethlehem. And throughout this time he averaged a little more than $1.85 per day, whereas before he had never received over $1.15 per day, which was the ruling rate of wages at that time in Bethlehem. . . .
What role does the footnote play in convincing Taylor’s readers that scientific management works?

---

*Many people have questioned the accuracy of the statement that first-class workmen can load 47½ tons of pig iron from the ground on to a car in a day. For those who are skeptical, therefore, the following data relating to this work are given:

First. That our experiments indicated the existence of the following law: that a first-class laborer, suited to such work as handling pig iron, could be under load only 42 percent of the day and must be free from load 58 percent of the day.

Second. That a man in loading pig iron from piles placed on the ground in an open field on to a car which stood on a track adjoining these piles, ought to handle (and that they did handle regularly) 47½ long tons (2240 pounds per ton) per day. . . .

A pig-iron handler walks on the level at the rate of one foot in 0.006 minutes. The average distance of the piles of pig iron from the car was 36 feet. It is a fact, however, that many of the pig-iron handlers ran with their pig as soon as they reached the inclined plank. Many of them also would run down the plank after loading the car. So that when the actual loading went on, many of them moved at a faster rate than is indicated by the above figures. . . .

If anyone who is interested in these figures will multiply them and divide them, one into the other, in various ways, he will find that all of the facts stated check up exactly. [Footnote in original] Return to text.

Follow-Up Assignment

Write an essay explaining how and why, if at all, the following passage might be labeled “Progressive.” [From Household Engineering: Scientific Management in the Home by Christine Frederick, 1920.]

Time Studies of Dishwashing

When we say “dishwashing,” we commonly think of a single household task. But when closely analyzed and made the subject of a time or motion study, we see that it is composed of several parts or steps, each with different motions, and generally performed with different tools, as follows:

1. Scraping waste from surface of china, agate or other kind of dish or utensil.
2. Stacking or arranging dishes on surface adjacent to [next to] sink, preparatory to washing.
3. Actual washing with water, soap or other cleanser, with aid of cloth, mop or other mechanical means.
4. Rinsing dishes with clear water.
5. Wiping dishes with towel or equivalent drying.
6. Laying away dishes on or in respective shelves and cupboards.

The efficiency of the whole process of “dishwashing” can be improved only by increasing the efficiency of each step. From careful experiments made with dishwashing over a period of two months and analysis of each of the six steps in the dishwashing process, the following results were obtained:

	Test A	Test B
Number of dishes	50	50
Scraping and stacking	7 minutes	7 minutes
Washing and rinsing	11 minutes	10 minutes
Wiping	13 minutes	2 minutes
Laying away	8 minutes	4 minutes
Total Time	41 minutes [sic]	23 minutes

 

---

VOCABULARY pop-ups
• tabulating: organizing or arranging
• formulae: plural of formula

Image:
- Photograph captioned “Carrying away and loading the pigs (pig iron), blast furnace, Pittsburg, Pa,” stereograph card by the Keystone View Co., ca. 1905 (detail). Courtesy of the Lbrary of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-69682.

 

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]]> http://americainclass.org/progressivism-in-the-factory/feed/ 0 http://americainclass.org/women-temperance-reform-and-the-cult-of-domesticity/ http://americainclass.org/women-temperance-reform-and-the-cult-of-domesticity/#comments Mon, 20 Jun 2011 16:23:15 +0000 Jason http://nhc.staging.pruvop.com/?p=787 How does women’s role in the campaign against alcohol consumption in antebellum America reflect the strengths and limitations of the cult of domesticity?

The post Women, Temperance Reform, and the Cult of Domesticity appeared first on America in Class.

]]> Lesson prepared by National Humanities Center staff.

Advisors: Robert H. Abzug, Director, Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies; Audre and Bernard Rapoport Regents Chair of Jewish Studies, University of Texas. Lucinda MacKethan, National Humanities Center Fellow, Professor Emerita, Department of English, 
North Carolina State University.

How did women’s role in the campaign against alcohol consumption in antebellum America reflect the strengths and limitations of the cult of domesticity?

Understanding



Full page engraved illustration for an article from Godey’s Lady’s Book, Vol. 40 (March 1850). Clifton Waller Barrett Collection, University of Virginia.

In the nineteenth century middle class American women saw their behavior regulated by a social system known today as the cult of domesticity, which limited their sphere of influence to home and family. Within that space they developed networks and modes of expression that allowed them to speak out on major moral questions facing the nation. However, those indirect and subtle avenues of influence proved ineffectual against the issue of alcohol abuse, which struck at the heart of family. Finding themselves virtually powerless to combat alcoholism and the spread of the saloon from within the domestic sphere, some women took the radical step of engaging in public protest and in so doing mobilized the moral authority of domesticity. Ironically, in the end, the very family life they sought to defend frustrated their efforts at reform.

Texts

1. “A Nation of Drunkards” (6:04) excerpt from Prohibition, a Film by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick.
2. “Night the Seventh. Sowing the Wind” excerpt from Ten Nights in a Barroom by T. S. Arthur, 1854.
3. “Eliza Jane Thompson” (7:12) excerpt from Prohibition, a Film by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick.

Secondary Resources

From the National Humanities Center, Divining America: Religion in American History.
1.  “Evangelicalism, Revivalism, and the Second Great Awakening.”
2.  “Evangelicalism as a Social Movement.”

Background

The period from 1820 to 1860 saw the rise in America of an ideology of feminine behavior and an ideal of womanliness that has come to be known as the “cult of true womanhood” or “cult of domesticity.” The features of this code, which provided socially determined regulations for middle class families with newly acquired wealth and leisure, were defined by historian Barbara Welter in an influential 1966 article, “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820–1860.” According to Welter, “true womanhood” held that women were designed exclusively for the roles of wife and mother and were expected to cultivate piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity in all their relations. Also exclusive was their “sphere,” or domain of influence, which was confined completely to the home. Thus the cult of domesticity “privatized” women’s options for work, for education, for voicing opinions, or for supporting reform. Arguments of biological inferiority led to pronouncements that women were incapable of effectively participating in the realms of politics, commerce, or public service. In return for a husband’s provision of security and protection, which by physical nature she required, the true woman would take on the obligations of housekeeping, raising good children, and making her family’s home a haven of health, happiness, and virtue. All society would benefit from her performance of these sacred domestic duties.

While the cult of domesticity subordinated women, it enhanced their authority in certain areas. As Catherine Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s sister, wrote in her Treatise on Domestic Economy (1842), “In matters pertaining to the education of their children… in all benevolent enterprises, and in all questions relating to morals or manners, they have a superior influence.” The way middle class women responded to the problem of alcohol abuse in antebellum America illustrates how the cult of domesticity both limited and empowered them.

In the early nineteenth-century alcohol abuse became a serious problem among American men. Interpreted largely as a moral failing, it inflicted grave damage on family life. Thus, within the strictures of the cult of domesticity, it was an issue on which women could legitimately speak out, for in doing so they were defending the family. Furthermore, responsibility for combating alcoholism fell largely to them in their capacity as mothers: raise temperate boys, they were told, and they will become temperate men. Yet, as women discovered, they could not deal with this problem from within the confines of the home. Acting upon this realization, some middle class women stepped outside the sphere of domesticity to try to end the sale of alcohol. As radical a move as this was, it was still rooted in the cult of domesticity: the techniques they employed in their protest—prayer, hymn singing, and moral suasion tempered with modesty—mobilized in public the virtues they were expected to exemplify in private. The effort failed largely because the very family life they were defending called them back to the home. Nonetheless, while their foray into the public sphere demonstrated the limits of their influence, it also caused some middle class women to question the subordination imposed by the cult of domesticity.

Teaching the Texts

Begin the lesson by showing the segment “A Nation of Drunkards” from the documentary Prohibition. Provide your students the discussion questions below as a viewing guide, and raise them after the screening. This segment shows how ingrained the consumption of alcohol was in American life from the very beginning of the nation, how serious a problem alcoholism had become by the 1800s, and how vulnerable family life was to its depredations. At its conclusion, historian Catherine Gilbert Murdock illuminates some of the darker aspects of women’s lives at this time. If women suffered at the hands of abusive husbands, she tells us, they could not speak about it directly. Yet, she notes, they could speak about it indirectly by raising their voices against “alcoholism and what alcohol does to men.” Keep this point in mind. It will come up again when discussing the symbolic meaning of the Women’s Crusade in the “Eliza Jane Thompson” segment of Prohibition.

After discussing “A Nation of Drunkards,” turn your attention to the excerpt from the novel Ten Nights in a Barroom. You might want to ask two students to read it as a dialogue. The novel’s author, T. S. Arthur (1809-1885), was a crusading journalist who wrote against drink, gambling, smoking, corrupt business practices, even hypnotism. His work appeared in a variety of popular magazines, many of which, like Godley’s Ladies Book, were aimed chiefly at women. When Ten Nights in a Barroom appeared in 1854, it encountered a lukewarm reception, but by 1858 it had found enough of an audience that a stage adaptation met with nationwide success. In 1909 it was turned into a film, featured in the “Anti-Saloon League” segment of Prohibition.

Narrated by an unnamed businessman, the novel recounts the gradual degradation of various inhabitants of the fictitious town of Cedarville. The cause of their downfall is the Sickle and Sheaf, an upscale bar opened by gristmill owner turned tavern keeper Simon Slade, who desperately wants to win acceptance among the town’s elite. The narrator visits Cedarville annually over a period of ten years and with each stay notices increasing decay in the town, the tavern, and the men who frequent it. Eventually, the bar becomes the scene of two murders. In this novel there is no such thing as a harmless drink. The author attributes almost diabolical power to alcohol; one drink and a person is ruined.

In the excerpt below the narrator and an unnamed gentleman discuss the plight of Willy Hammond and his mother. The Hammonds are a leading family in Cedarville, and Mrs. Hammond is an ideal exemplar of the cult of domesticity. She has devoted her full attention to raising Willy and, it would seem, has turned out an upstanding, promising young man. However, once Willy ventures forth into the world, his genial personality leads him to seek the conviviality of the Sickle and Sheaf. In a short time he is on a downward path to ruin. Mrs. Hammond and Judge Hammond, his father, try to save him, but they are no match for the alcohol. In the end all his mother can do is grieve until Willy’s decline drives her insane.

The excerpt illustrates the limits of the cult of domesticity. Mrs. Hammond was a good mother, but the larger culture overwhelmed her conscientious work in the domestic sphere. In the final paragraph the speaker acknowledges this and in a cry of frustration that includes an indictment of capitalism calls upon the law to enforce the morality taught in the home.

Discuss the excerpt from Ten Nights in a Barroom with the questions provided.

Finally, run the “Eliza Jane Thompson” segment of Prohibition. Again use the discussion questions as a viewing guide. Up to a point Thompson’s story parallels Mrs. Hammond’s. Thompson, an elderly housewife in Hillsboro, Ohio, and a temperance worker, lost a son to alcohol. Like Mrs. Hammond, all she could do was grieve until a temperance speaker inspired her to act. She and other women of Hillsboro blocked the doors of bars in what we might today call a “pray in.” Indeed, the importance of praying and hymn singing to the women’s protest invites linking this lesson to lessons on the Second Great Awakening and its role in nineteenth-century reform. Drawing moral authority from the values of the cult of domesticity and evangelical Protestantism, the women managed to shut down one bar after another. Here a teacher might explore the meaning of the confrontations in symbolic terms. At the tavern door the values of the home, the domain of women, clashed with the values of the saloon, the exclusive domain of men. Recalling historian Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s comments at the end of “A Nation of Drunkards,” a teacher might ask if the protests were at some level about something more than drinking. The Hillsboro agitation grew into a national movement, the Women’s Crusade, then faltered, drained of energy by the demands of the very home life it sought to defend. Yet the Crusade convinced some women that, even deployed in the public sphere, such domestic values as piety, good example, and moral argument will prove just as ineffectual in the war against alcohol as careful child-rearing. They, like the gentleman in Ten Nights in a Barroom, came to see the need to enforce morality through law. What implications does this insight hold for women and the cult of domesticity?

For Discussion

Text 1: “A Nation of Drunkards”, excerpt from ‘Prohibition’

Analysis

1. Why had alcohol consumption become a growing problem in America in the early 1800s?

2. How was alcohol consumption “a sign of masculinity that took away masculinity”?

3. What was “the degradation of Saturday night”?

4. Why were American children and women especially vulnerable in the early 1800s?

5. How did the issue of alcohol abuse give women a way to talk about other issues?



Inebriates, New York City. Brooklyn Public Library, permission pending.

Text 2: excerpt from “Ten Nights in a Barroom“

6. For what audience did Arthur write Ten Nights in a Barroom?

7. What did he hope the novel would achieve?

8. In the excerpt we learn that before the Sickle and Sheaf opened, there was a bar in Cedarville that catered to the “lowest classes.” Why might Arthur have chosen not to set his story there?

9. What does the excerpt suggest about the economic consequences of alcohol consumption?

10. Why did the economic consequences matter to Arthur’s intended audience?

11. What are some of the characteristics of the cult of domesticity that Mrs. Hammond exemplifies? Provide a few examples.

12. How does this passage illustrate the limits of the cult of domesticity?

13. Why does the Sickle and Sheaf pose a special threat to Cedarville?

14. In what way can it be said that the middle class of Cedarville, the upholders of the cult of domesticity, undermine it?

15. What opposing values are represented by the opening of the Sickle and Sheaf?

16. What are some key words in the excerpt that describe Mrs. Hammond’s temperament and judgment?

17. How does the portrayal of Mrs. Hammond justify limiting the lives of middle class women to the home?

18. In the final paragraph how does the speaker characterize the harm done by alcohol?

19. According to the speaker, how does society characterize those who want to outlaw the consumption of alcohol?

20. How do his remarks in the final paragraph constitute a criticism of the cult of domesticity?

21. How do they constitute a criticism of capitalism?

The case of young Hammond had, from the first, awakened concern; and now a new element was added in the unlooked-for appearance of his mother on the stage, in a state that seemed one of partial derangement [insanity]. The gentleman at whose office I met Mr. Harrison on the day before—the reader will remember Mr. H. as having come to the “Sickle and Sheath” in search of his son—was thoroughly conversant [familiar] with the affairs of the village, and I called upon him early in the day in order to make some inquiries about Mrs. Hammond. My first question, as to whether he knew the lady, was answered by the remark:

“Oh, yes. She is one of my earliest friends.”

The allusion [reference] to her did not seem to awaken agreeable states of mind [did not bring pleasure]. A slight shade obscured [darkened] his face, and I noticed that he sighed involuntarily.

“Is Willy her only child?”

“Her only living child. She had four; another son, and two daughters; but she lost all but Willy when they were quite young. And,” he added, after a pause, “it would have been better for her, and for Willy, too, if he had gone to a better land with them.”

“His course of life must be to her a terrible affliction [source of pain],” said I.

“It is destroying her reason,” he replied, with emphasis. “He was her idol. No mother ever loved a son with more self-devotion than Mrs. Hammond loved her beautiful, fine-spirited, intelligent, affectionate boy. To say that she was proud of him is but a tame expression. Intense love—almost idolatry [worship]—was the strong passion of her heart. How tender, how watchful was her love! Except when at school, he was scarcely ever separated from her. In order to keep him by her side, she gave up her thoughts to the suggestion and maturing of plans for keeping his mind active and interested in her society [she devoted her thoughts to coming up with ways to keep him close to her]—and her success was perfect. Up to the age of sixteen or seventeen, I do not think he had a desire for other companionship than that of his mother. But this, you know, could not last. The boy’s maturing thought must go beyond the home and social circle. The great world, that he was soon to enter, was before him; and through loopholes that opened here and there he obtained partial glimpses of what was beyond. To step forth into this world, where he was soon to be a busy actor and worker, and to step forth alone, next came in the natural order of progress. How his mother trembled with anxiety [worry], as she saw him leave her side! Of the dangers that would surround his path, she knew too well; and these were magnified by her fears—at least so I often said to her. Alas! how far the sad reality has outrun her most fearful anticipations [predictions].

“When Willy was eighteen—he was then reading law [studying to be a lawyer]—I think I never saw a young man of fairer promise. As I have often heard it remarked of him, he did not appear to have a single fault. But he had a dangerous gift—rare conversational powers, united with great urbanity [charm] of manner. Every one who made his acquaintance became charmed with his society [friendliness]; and he soon found himself surrounded by a circle of young men, some of whom were not the best companions he might have chosen. Still, his own pure instincts and honorable principles were his safeguard; and I never have believed that any social allurements [attractions] would have drawn him away from the right path, if this accursed tavern had not been opened by Slade [the owner of the Sickle and Sheaf].”

“There was a tavern here before the ‘Sickle and Sheaf’ was opened?” said I.

“Oh, yes. But it was badly kept, and the bar-room visitors were of the lowest class. No respectable young man in Cedarville would have been seen there. It offered no temptations to one moving in Willy’s circle. But the opening of the ‘Sickle and Sheaf’ formed a new era. Judge Hammond—himself not the purest man in the world, I’m afraid—gave his countenance [approval] to the establishment, and talked of Simon Slade as an enterprising man who ought to be encouraged. Judge Lyman and other men of position in Cedarville followed his bad example; and the bar-room of the ‘Sickle and Sheaf’ was at once voted respectable. At all times of the day and evening you could see the flower of our young men going in and out, sitting in front of the bar-room, or talking hand-and-glove with the landlord, who, from a worthy miller [Simon Slade, the owner of the tavern, had once owned a gristmill], regarded as well enough in his place, was suddenly elevated into a man of importance, whom the best in the village were delighted to honor.

“In the beginning, Willy went with the tide, and, in an incredibly short period, was acquiring a fondness for drink that startled and alarmed his friends. In going in through Slade’s open door, he entered the downward way, and has been moving onward with fleet [quick] footsteps ever since. The fiery poison inflamed his mind, at the same time that it dimmed his noble perceptions [judgments]. Fondness for mere pleasure followed, and this led him into various sensual [lacking moral, spiritual, or intellectual value] indulgences, and exciting modes of passing the time. Every one liked him—he was so free, so companionable [friendly], and so generous—and almost every one encouraged, rather than repressed, his dangerous proclivities [tendencies]. Even his father, for a time, treated the matter lightly, as only the first flush of young life. ‘I commenced sowing my wild oats at quite as early an age,’ I have heard him say. ‘He’ll cool off, and do well enough. Never fear.’ But his mother was in a state of painful alarm from the beginning. Her truer instincts, made doubly acute by her yearning love, perceived the imminent [ready to happen] danger, and in all possible ways did she seek to lure him from the path in which he was moving at so rapid a pace. Willy was always very much attached to his mother, and her influence over him was strong; but in this case he regarded her fears as chimerical [imaginary]. The way in which he walked was, to him, so pleasant, and the companions of his journey so delightful, that he could not believe in the prophesied evil; and when his mother talked to him in her warning voice, and with a sad countenance [look on her face], he smiled at her concern, and made light of [joked about] her fears.

“And so it went on, month after month, and year after year, until the young man’s sad declensions [declining morals] were the town talk. In order to throw his mind into a new channel—to awaken, if possible, a new and better interest in life—his father ventured upon the doubtful experiment we spoke of yesterday; that of placing capital [money] in his hands, and making him an equal partner in the business of distilling and cotton-spinning. The disastrous—I might say disgraceful—result you know. The young man squandered his own capital and heavily embarrassed his father [caused his father to lose a lot of money].

“The effect of all this upon Mrs. Hammond has been painful in the extreme. We can only dimly imagine the terrible suffering through which she has passed. Her present aberration [abnormal condition] was first visible after a long period of sleeplessness, occasioned by distress of mind. During the whole of two weeks, I am told, she did not close her eyes; the most of that time walking the floor of her chamber, and weeping. Powerful anodynes [medicines], frequently repeated, at length brought relief. But, when she awoke from a prolonged period of unconsciousness, the brightness of her reason was gone. Since then, she has never been clearly conscious of what was passing around her, and well for her, I have sometimes thought it was, for even obscurity of intellect is a blessing in her case. Ah, me! I always get the heart-ache, when I think of her.”

“Did not this event startle the young man from his fatal dream, if I may so call his mad infatuation [object of desire or admiration]?” I asked.

“No. He loved his mother, and was deeply afflicted [hurt] by the calamity [disaster]; but it seemed as if he could not stop. Some terrible necessity appeared to be impelling [driving] him onward. If he formed good resolutions [if he tried to improve]—and I doubt not that he did—they were blown away like threads of gossamer [film of cobwebs], the moment he came within the sphere of old associations [friends and acquaintances]. His way to the mill was by the ‘Sickle and Sheaf’; and it was not easy for him to pass there without being drawn into the bar, either by his own desire for drink, or through the invitation of some pleasant companion, who was lounging in front of the tavern.”

. . .

“Thus it is,” he continued; “and we who see the whole extent, origin, and downward rushing force of a widely sweeping desolation, lift our voices of warning almost in vain. Men who have everything at stake—sons to be corrupted, and daughters to become the wives of young men exposed to corrupting influences—stand aloof [aside], questioning and doubting as to the expediency [usefulness] of protecting the innocent from the wolfish designs of bad men; who, to compass [bring about, achieve] their own selfish ends, would destroy them body and soul. We are called fanatics, ultraists [extremists], designing [plotting], and all that, because we ask our law-makers to stay the fiery ruin. Oh, no! we must not touch the traffic [sale of alcohol]. All the dearest and best interests of society may suffer; but the rum-seller must be protected. He must be allowed to get gain [profit, money], if the jails and poorhouses are filled, and the graveyards made fat with the bodies of young men stricken down in the flower of their years, and of wives and mothers who have died of broken hearts. Reform, we are told, must commence [begin] at home. We must rear temperate children, and then we shall have temperate men. That when there are none to desire liquor, the rum-seller’s traffic will cease. And all the while society’s true benefactors [reformers] are engaged in doing this [arguing that temperance begins at home], the weak, the unsuspecting, and the erring must be left an easy prey, even if the work requires for its accomplishment a hundred years. Sir! a human soul destroyed through the rum-seller’s infernal agency [evil actions], is a sacrifice priceless in value. No considerations of worldly gain can, for an instant, be placed in comparison therewith. And yet souls are destroyed by thousands every year; and they will fall by tens of thousands ere [before] society awakens from its fatal indifference [lack of concern], and lays its strong hand of power on the corrupt men who are scattering disease, ruin, and death, broadcast over the land!

Text 3: “Eliza Jane Thompson”, excerpt from ‘Prohibition’

22. How does Thompson’s husband express the values of the cult of domesticity?

23. How does Thompson justify her movement beyond the cult of domesticity?

24. How is the action of Thompson and the other Hillsboro protestors at once “an act of radical civil disobedience” and “completely within the parameters [bounds] of accepted female behavior”?

25. What values confront each other at the tavern door? What are the values of the home? The values of the saloon?

26. What role does religion play in the Hillsboro protests?

27. Why might the Women’s Crusade have “taken off like wildfire”? In what ways might it have been a response to something more than opposition to saloons and drinking?

28. What techniques does Eliza Hackett recommend for “conquering a man”? How do they represent a way in which the cult of domesticity empowered women?

29. What eventually causes the Women’s Crusade to fade?

30. What limitations did it encounter?

31. How did it give some women a different perspective on the cult of domesticity?



Temperance parade, 1906, Bowling Green, Kentucky. Western Kentucky University, permission pending.

Follow-Up

Drawing evidence from the texts in this lesson, write an essay in support of or in opposition to the following assertion: influence does not equal power.

Related Lessons

The Cult of Domesticity in America in Class® Lessons from the National Humanities Center
The Religious Roots of Abolition in America in Class® Lessons from the National Humanities Center

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]]> http://americainclass.org/women-temperance-reform-and-the-cult-of-domesticity/feed/ 0 http://americainclass.org/the-cult-of-domesticity/ http://americainclass.org/the-cult-of-domesticity/#comments Fri, 10 Jun 2011 19:00:01 +0000 Jason http://jdking.nfshost.com/nhc/?p=460 How did the cult of domesticity oppress and empower women?

The post The Cult of Domesticity appeared first on America in Class.

]]> Lesson prepared by Lucinda MacKethan, National Humanities Center Fellow, Professor Emerita, Department of English, 
North Carolina State University with assistance from the National Humanities Center staff.

How did the cult of domesticity oppress and empower women?

Understanding



Full page engraved illustration for an article from Godey’s Lady’s Book, Vol. 40 (March 1850). Clifton Waller Barrett Collection, University of Virginia.

Nineteenth century, middle-class American women saw their behavior regulated by a social system known today as the cult of domesticity, which was designed to limit their sphere of influence to home and family. Yet within this space, they developed networks and modes of expression that allowed them to speak out on the major moral questions facing the nation.

Texts

1. Fanny Fern, “How Husbands May Rule”.
2. Catherine Beecher, from Chapter One from Treatise on the Domestic Economy.
3. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Chapter Nine from Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
4. Harriet Jacobs, Chapter Ten from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.

Background

The period of 1820 to 1860 saw the rise in America of an ideology of feminine behavior and an ideal of womanliness that has come to be known as the “Cult of True Womanhood” or “Cult of Domesticity.” The features of this code, which provided social regulations for middle class families with newly acquired wealth and leisure, were defined by historian Barbara Welter in an influential 1966 article, “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820–1860.” According to Welter, “true womanhood” held that women were designed exclusively for the roles of wife and mother and were expected to cultivate Piety, Purity, Submissiveness, and Domesticity in all their relations. Also exclusive was their “sphere,” or domain of influence, which was confined completely to the home. Thus the Cult of Domesticity “privatized” women’s options for work, for education, for voicing opinions, or for supporting reform. Arguments of biological inferiority led to pronouncements that women were incapable of effectively participating in the realms of politics, commerce, or public service. In return for a husband’s provision of security and protection, which by physical nature she required, the true woman would take on the obligations of housekeeping, raising good children, and making her family’s home a haven of health, happiness, and virtue. All society would benefit from her performance of these sacred domestic duties.

Barbara Welter drew on the methodology that social historian Betty Friedan developed for her influential study of American women’s lives in the 1930s through the 1950s. The Feminine Mystique (1963) analyzed popular fiction and women’s magazines, housekeeping manuals, and advertisements to decry messages that encouraged mid-twentieth century American women to stay home while men took care of business. Welter drew on similar sources for her article on the social constraints placed on women’s lives a century earlier. Both Friedan and Welter’s use of such materials demonstrates how the “Cult” or “Mystique” that sought to regulate women’s behavior were spread by powerful marketing strategies. By the mid-nineteenth century, a vision of women’s high, holy, and only position — in the home — was promoted in the pages of women’s magazines such as Godey’s Lady’s Book (started 1830), the advice of “good housekeeping” handbooks, the texts of sermons, and lectures, and even speeches in legislatures.

The Cult of Domesticity was designed for the wives and daughters of the men who made up America’s white, middle and upper class power structure. Men in this position, with stable incomes, came to rank one another according to the quality of their homes and family life, noticeable mostly in urban areas where proper, well-schooled wives became essential status symbols. During the same period, however, many women, married and unmarried, did not have the means to make a home, nor the kind of protection that would permit them to be sexually “pure.” Free women forced into “unseemly” work to provide necessities and, of course, enslaved women throughout the South, were consigned to the status of “fallen” and were often discounted as immoral, undeserving, fatally flawed.

Certainly many privileged women chafed against the restrictions placed on them by the Cult of Domesticity, while others found within its boundaries some outlets for action and confidence-building, particularly through its emphasis on their duty to educate children and serve others. Women who were becoming successful in writing for the ladies’ markets discovered not only their own personal voices but sometimes a platform for views on public issues. While the women’s suffrage movement did not gain sufficient traction for many more decades, women who wrote in sanctioned publications or joined acceptable women’s and church societies began to make a difference — in the abolition movement, in the fight for property rights, and in women’s education.

The four women whose works are represented in the following lessons benefitted, in some ways ironically, from the domestic ideology that put them into a separate sphere from men. Communities of women, exalted in the home, used the superiority granted them in kitchen and drawing room to call for moral courage from men in the public realm. As opportunities for expression increased, even within their limited space, women developed a language, a kind of domesticated vocabulary of reform, through which they could reach and support one another. Catherine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, sisters whose father and brothers were influential churchmen and public leaders, taught together in a school for girls, and through writing made their way into public debates over slavery and women’s place. Sara Payton Willis, who wrote popular newspaper columns as “Fanny Fern,” knew the fugitive slave writer Harriet Jacobs well, and Jacobs, who also wrote letters to newspapers and ran an abolitionist reading room, corresponded with Harriet Beecher Stowe. What we call today the power of “networking” was augmented by the Cult of Domesticity, resulting in unforeseen challenges to the system’s restrictions. From inside their separate sphere, these four, as well as many other women writers of antebellum America, became a force to be reckoned with in the nation’s largest moral debates.

Teaching the Text

In each of the passage presented here, at least two of the four principles of the cult of domesticity (piety, purity, submissiveness, domesticity) are illustrated, either positively or negatively, and these illustrations can be compared and contrasted. While the four passages have other features in common, they also voice distinctive, even opposing views. One theme to note is the emphasis on the kinds of trade-off that take place within this cult, meaning that women might very well willingly choose to accept the “rule” of wise husbands and political leaders in return for security, material comfort, and protection. “How Husbands May Rule” and “Treatise on Domestic Economy” stress what women gain by acquiescing to men’s authority. The stories of Fanny Fern and Harriet Beecher Stowe demonstrate differences in how men and women use language and also some interesting patterns in how they shift ground in dialogue with one another. Harriet Jacobs offers a particularly astute use of pious, “domestic” language operating in stark contrast to other statements where she adopts a much more strident emphasis that can be compared to Mrs. Bird’s shifts in tone.

For Discussion

Passage 1 — from Fanny Fern, “How Husbands May Rule”

Analysis

1. What principles of the Cult of Domesticity does this story illustrate?

2. What benefits does Mary gain from Mrs. May as opposed to the benefits she receives from Harry’s “rule”?

3. Why does Harry disapprove of Mrs. May? Consider the adjectives that both he and Mary use to describe her, in comparison to the way Harry describes his wife. What threat does Mrs. May pose to his family life?

4. Consider Fanny Fern’s title for the story. Do you think she is more concerned with women’s need to submit or with demonstrating to men the way that they should treat their wives?

“Dear Mary,” said Harry — to his little wife, “I have a favor to ask of you. You have a friend whom I dislike very much, and who I am quite sure will make trouble between us. Will you give up Mrs. May for my sake, Mary?” A slight shade of vexation crossed Mary’s pretty face, as she said, “You are unreasonable, Harry. She is lady-like, refined, intellectual, and fascinating, is she not?”

“Yes, all of that; and, for that very reason, her influence over one so yielding and impulsive as yourself is more to be dreaded, if unfavorable. I’m quite in earnest, Mary. I could wish never to see you together again.”…

“Well,” said the little wife, turning away, and patting her foot nervously, “I don’t see how I can break with her, Harry, for a whim of yours; besides, I’ve promised to go there this very evening.”…

Mary stood behind the curtain, and looked after him as he went down the street. There was an uncomfortable, stifling sensation in her throat, and something very like a tear glittering in her eye. Harry was vexed,— she was sure of that.… And so she wandered, restless and unhappy, into her little sleeping-room.…

Turn where she would, some proof of his devotion met her eye. But Mrs. May! She was so smart and satirical! She would make so much sport of her, for being “ruled” so by Harry!… No, no, it wouldn’t do for her to yield.…

Yes, she would go; she had quite made up her mind to that. Then she opened her jewel-case; a little note fell at her feet. She knew the contents very well. It was from Harry, —slipped slyly into her hand on her birthday, with that pretty bracelet. It couldn’t do any harm to read it again. It was very lover-like for a year old husband; but she liked it!… Perhaps, after all, Harry was right about Mrs. May; and if he wasn’t, one hair of his head was worth more to her than all the women in the world. He had never said one unkind word to her, —never! He had anticipated every wish. He had been so attentive and solicitous when she was ill. How could she grieve him? Love conquered! The pretty robe was folded away, the jewels returned to their case, and, with a light heart, Mary sat down to await her husband’s return.…

Passage 2 — from Catherine Beecher, “Treatise on the Domestic Economy”

5. When Beecher speaks of women’s “best interests” and their “true position in society,” what does she mean?

6. According to Beecher, what trade-offs must American women make to obtain their “lofty and fortunate position” in society? In your view, is it a fair exchange?

7. According to Beecher, in what realms do women naturally and legitimately exercise power?

8. On what grounds does Beecher base her faith that American women can attain anything they “reasonably” ask, and how does she explain any “remnants” of bad treatment that might remain in the present?

It appears, then, that it is in America, alone, that women are raised to equality with the other sex; and that, both in theory and practice, their interests are regarded as of equal value. They are made subordinate in station, only where a regard to their best interests demands it, while, as if in compensation for this, by custom and courtesy, they are always treated as superiors.Universally in this country, through every class of society, precedence is given to woman, in all the comforts, conveniences, and courtesies, of life.

In civil and political affairs, American women take no interest or concern, except so far as they sympathize with their family and personal friends; but in all cases, in which they do feel a concern, their opinions and feelings have a consideration, equal, or even superior, to that of the other sex.

In matters pertaining to the education of their children, in the selection and support of a clergyman; in all benevolent enterprises, and in all questions relating to morals or manners, they have a superior influence. In such concerns, it would be impossible to carry a point, contrary to their judgement and feelings; while an enterprise, sustained by them, will seldom fail of success.

If those who are bewailing themselves over the fancied wrongs and injuries of woman in this Nation, could only see things as they are, they would know, that, whatever remnants of a barbarous or aristocratic age may remain in our civil institutions, in reference to the interests of women, it is only because they are ignorant of them, or do not use their influence to have them rectified; for it is very certain that there is nothing reasonable, which American women would unite in asking, that would not readily be bestowed.

The preceding remarks, then, illustrate the position, that the democratic institutions of this Country are in reality no other than the principles of Christianity carried into operation, and that they tend to place woman in her true position in society, as having equal rights with the other sex; and that, in fact they have secured to American women a lofty and fortunate position, which, as yet, has been attained by the women of no other nation.

Passage 3 — from Harriet Beecher Stowe, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”

9. How does the opening paragraph’s description of Mrs. Bird set her up as an exemplar of the values of the Cult of Domesticity?

10. How does this passage both support and contradict the argument Catherine Beecher makes in “Treatise on the Domestic Economy”?

11. In what ways does the fugitive slave law the Birds are discussing fall inside of and outside of the domestic sphere?

12. What arguments from within the domestic sphere does Mrs. Bird marshal to influence issues beyond the domestic sphere?

13. What arguments does Mr. Bird marshal against his wife? How do they reflect the view of women upon which the Cult of Domesticity is based?

Mrs. Bird was a timid, blushing little woman, of about four feet in height, and with mild blue eyes, and a peach-blow complexion, and the gentlest, sweetest voice in the world; —as for courage, a moderate-sized cock-turkey had been known to put her to rout at the very first gobble, and a stout house-dog, of moderate capacity, would bring her into subjection merely by a show of his teeth. Her husband and children were her entire world, and in these she ruled more by entreaty and persuasion than by command or argument. There was only one thing that was capable of arousing her, and that provocation came in on the side of her unusually gentle and sympathetic nature; —anything in the shape of cruelty would throw her into a passion, which was the more alarming and inexplicable in proportion to the general softness of her nature.…On the present occasion, Mrs. Bird rose quickly, with very red cheeks, which quite improved her general appearance, and walked up to her husband, with quite a resolute air, and said, in a determined tone, “Now, John, I want to know if you think such a law as that is right and Christian?”

“You won’t shoot me, now, Mary, if I say I do!”

“I never could have thought it of you, John; you didn’t vote for it?”

“Even so, my fair politician.”

“No, nonsense! I wouldn’t give a flip for all your politics, generally, but I think this is something downright cruel and unchristian. I hope, my dear, no such law has been passed.”

“There has been a law passed forbidding people to help off the slaves that come over from Kentucky, my dear; so much of that thing has been done by these reckless Abolitionists, that our brethren in Kentucky are very strongly excited, and it seems necessary, and no more than Christian and kind, that something should be done by our state to quiet the excitement.”

“And what is the law? It don’t forbid us to shelter those poor creatures a night, does it, and to give ’em something comfortable to eat, and a few old clothes, and send them quietly about their business?”

“Why, yes, my dear; that would be aiding and abetting, you know.”

“You ought to be ashamed, John! Poor, homeless, houseless creatures! It’s a shameful, wicked, abominable law, and I’ll break it, for one, the first time I get a chance; and I hope I shall have a chance, I do! Things have got to a pretty pass, if a woman can’t give a warm supper and a bed to poor, starving creatures, just because they are slaves, and have been abused and oppressed all their lives, poor things!”

“But, Mary, just listen to me. Your feelings are all quite right, dear, and interesting, and I love you for them; but, then, dear, we mustn’t suffer our feelings to run away with our judgment; you must consider it’s a matter of private feeling, — there are great public interests involved, — there is such a state of public agitation rising, that we must put aside our private feelings.”

“Now, John, I don’t know anything about politics, but I can read my Bible; and there I see that I must feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and comfort the desolate; and that Bible I mean to follow.”

“But in cases where your doing so would involve a great public evil — ”

“Obeying God never brings on public evils. I know it can’t. It’s always safest, all round, to do as He bids us.”

“Now, listen to me, Mary, and I can state to you a very clear argument, to show — ”

“O, nonsense, John! — you can talk all night, but you wouldn’t do it. I put it to you, John, —would you now turn away a poor, shivering, hungry creature from your door, because he was a runaway? Would you, now?”

Now, if the truth must be told, our senator had the misfortune to be a man who had a particularly humane and accessible nature, and turning away anybody that was in trouble never had been his forte; and what was worse for him in this particular pinch of the argument was, that his wife knew it, and, of course was making an assault on rather an indefensible point. So he had recourse to the usual means of gaining time for such cases made and provided; he said “ahem,” and coughed several times, took out his pocket-handkerchief, and began to wipe his glasses. Mrs. Bird, seeing the defenceless condition of the enemy’s territory, had no more conscience than to push her advantage.

“I should like to see you doing that, John — I really should! Turning a woman out of doors in a snowstorm, for instance; or may be you’d take her up and put her in jail, wouldn’t you? You would make a great hand at that!”

Passage 4 — from Harriet Jacobs, “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”

14. How does the plight of Harriet Jacobs illustrate the role that class played in the Cult of Domesticity?

15. What principles of the Cult of Domesticity does Jacobs acknowledge in this passage?

16. How does this passage illustrate the role men played in the Cult of Domesticity?

17. How might Jacobs’s audience view her decision to become the mistress of an unmarried man? How does she try to shape their judgment of her?

18. Through changes of tone, how does Jacobs try to both appeal to and challenge her audience’s preference for women to be submissive?

X. A Perilous Passage In The Slave Girl’s Life When my master [Dr. Flint] said he was going to build a house for me, and that he could do it with little trouble and expense, I was in hopes something would happen to frustrate his scheme; but I soon heard that the house was actually begun. I vowed before my Maker that I would never enter it.… I was determined that the master, whom I so hated and loathed, who had blighted the prospects of my youth, and made my life a desert, should not, after my long struggle with him, succeed at last in trampling his victim under his feet. I would do any thing, every thing, for the sake of defeating him.…

And now, reader, I come to a period in my unhappy life, which I would gladly forget if I could. The remembrance fills me with sorrow and shame.… I will not try to screen myself behind the plea of compulsion from a master; for it was not so.… I knew what I did, and I did it with deliberate calculation.

But, O, ye happy women, whose purity has been sheltered from childhood, who have been free to choose the objects of your affection, whose homes are protected by law, do not judge the poor desolate slave girl too severely!… I wanted to keep myself pure; and, under the most adverse circumstances, I tried hard to preserve my self-respect; but I was struggling alone in the powerful grasp of the demon Slavery; and the monster proved too strong for me. I felt as if I was forsaken by God and man; as if all my efforts must be frustrated; and I became reckless in my despair.

[I]t chanced that a white unmarried gentleman … expressed a great deal of sympathy, and a wish to aid me. He constantly sought opportunities to see me, and wrote to me frequently. I was a poor slave girl, only fifteen years old.… He was an educated and eloquent gentleman; too eloquent, alas, for the poor slave girl who trusted in him. Of course I saw whither all this was tending. I knew the impassable gulf between us; but to be an object of interest to a man who is not married, and who is not her master, is agreeable to the pride and feelings of a slave, if her miserable situation has left her any pride or sentiment. It seems less degrading to give one’s self, than to submit to compulsion. There is something akin to freedom in having a lover who has no control over you, except that which he gains by kindness and attachment.

When I found that my master had actually begun to build the lonely cottage, other feelings mixed with those I have described. Revenge, and calculations of interest, were added to flattered vanity and sincere gratitude for kindness. I knew nothing would enrage Dr. Flint so much as to know that I favored another; and it was something to triumph over my tyrant even in that small way.… I made a headlong plunge. Pity me, and pardon me, O virtuous reader! You never knew what it is to be a slave; to be entirely unprotected by law or custom; to have the laws reduce you to the condition of a chattel, entirely subject to the will of another. You never exhausted your ingenuity in avoiding the snares, and eluding the power of a hated tyrant; you never shuddered at the sound of his footsteps, and trembled within hearing of his voice. I know I did wrong. No one can feel it more sensibly than I do. The painful and humiliating memory will haunt me to my dying day. Still, in looking back, calmly, on the events of my life, I feel that the slave woman ought not to be judged by the same standard as others.

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]]> http://americainclass.org/the-cult-of-domesticity/feed/ 0 http://americainclass.org/the-enslaved-and-the-civil-war/ http://americainclass.org/the-enslaved-and-the-civil-war/#comments Fri, 20 May 2011 18:18:41 +0000 Kendra http://americainclass.org/?p=4321 How did African Americans enslaved in the Confederacy undermine the Southern cause during the Civil War?

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]]> How did African Americans enslaved in the Confederacy undermine the Southern cause during the Civil War?

Understanding

Slaves held in the Confederacy weakened the Southern war effort in a variety of ways and in so doing played a vital role in obtaining their own freedom and in expanding the aims of the War to include not only restoring the Union but also abolishing slavery.

Text

Excerpt from the testimony of Alonzo Jackson before the Southern Claims Commission, Georgetown, SC. March 17, 1873.

Text Complexity

Grades 11 and 12 complexity band.
Informational text with a clear purpose and moderately complex sentence structure, language features, and unconventional punctuation. Knowledge demands addressed in background note below.

Background

When we think of ways in which African Americans contributed to the defeat of the Confederacy, we typically think of the military service they rendered. Indeed, between 180,000 and 200,000 African Americans served in the Union Army and Navy. They included escaped slaves like those in the First South Carolina Volunteers, which in 1864 became the 33rd United States Colored Infantry Regiment, and free African Americans like those in the 54th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. While many African Americans met the enemy directly in combat, those held in bondage in the Confederacy also managed to mount their own subtle, indirect, and surreptitious offensives. Their actions and their desire for freedom not only weakened the Confederacy but also helped redefine the purpose of the War from restoring the Union to abolishing slavery.

For instructional purposes, you might summarize their contributions to the Union victory as follows:

• They fled the South, denying the Confederacy valuable economic resources, including chiefly their labor.
• They “stole” other slaves and encouraged still others to run away.
• Because slaves knew their territory, they made excellent guides for Union troops in the South.
• For the same reason, they made excellent spies.
• They aided Union prisoners of war and Confederate deserters.

No single text encompasses all these activities, but the testimony of Alonzo Jackson before the Southern Claims Commission offers an excellent opportunity to illustrate many of them, while documenting the courage and ingenuity the enslaved brought to the challenge of weakening the Confederacy from within.

In 1871 President Ulysses S. Grant established the Southern Claims Commission to reimburse Union sympathizers who remained in the South during the War for property either given voluntarily to the Union Army or confiscated by it. Claimants had to prove that they had lost property and that they had been loyal to the Union. Commissioners were surprised when hundreds of former slaves applied for funds. Among them was Alonzo Jackson, who had been enslaved in the tidewater town of Georgetown, South Carolina. From other sources we know that he submitted a claim of $1,925 to compensate for property taken by Union soldiers, including two mules, a gun, and $1,500 worth of rice. The Commission rejected the rice claim entirely and awarded him only $250 for the rest. In his testimony Jackson recalls three instances in which he guided Union soldiers who had escaped from the Confederate stockade in Florence, seventy miles west of Georgetown, to the safety of Union outposts.

Teaching the Text

Contextualizing Questions

1. What kind of text are we dealing with?
2. When was it written?
3. Who wrote it?
4. For what audience was it intended?
5. For what purpose was it written?

A Southern Claims Commission clerk recorded Jackson’s testimony in 1873, twelve years after the events narrated. It is reasonably safe to assume that it is an accurate transcription of Jackson’s statement.

Jackson is narrating events, but he is also trying to persuade the Claims Commission to award him cash. With this purpose in mind, ask your students why Jackson includes the details he does.

Focus, too, on the way he presents himself. A skilled slave blessed with considerable business acumen, he was apparently worth more to his master working independently for pay in town and on the rivers than working for whatever his efforts might fetch on the plantation. His master accorded him freedom to choose his occupations and to range unsupervised throughout the region. What does this suggest about his relationship with his master and perhaps with the white residents of Georgetown? How does his position in the slave community and the broader community make him a particularly effective enemy of the Confederacy?

For Discussion

Excerpts from the testimony of Alonzo Jackson before the Southern Claims
Commission, March 17, 1873

Analysis

1. From the information Jackson provides, what inferences can we make about his status as a slave and his place in Georgetown? Cite specific evidence from the text to support your inferences.

2. What do you think his relationship with his master was like?

3. Why would his master allow him the relatively high degree of independence and mobility he seems to enjoy?

4. Why might he be especially well positioned to help Union escapees?

5. Why is it important for Jackson to note that the soldiers did not order him to help them?

6. What in this and other paragraphs suggests that Jackson knew the territory? Cite specific evidence.

7. Why is it important for Jackson to note that he received no pay for the help he rendered the escapees?

8. What does Jackson’s testimony suggest about communications among the enslaved and whites loyal to the Union?

9. Would Jackson have made a good spy? If so, why?

1. “My name is Alonzo Jackson– I was born a slave, in the state of Virginia–and am 64 years of age–I reside at Georgetown state of South Carolina and am a Livery stable keeper by occupation . . . I have lived all the time at Georgetown since 1823–and from that time was a slave until made free by the war when the US. forces came to Georgetown in February 1865–When the war began in 1861, I belonged to Mr Joseph B. Pyatt who lived on his own plantation about 2 miles from Georgetown (he lives there now). For 18. years just before the war I hired all my time from my master and continued to do so all the time I was a slave–When the war began I was employed as “hostler” (in the same livery stable which I now keep on my own account) . . . I remained, employed as stated, until February 1864–when I hired a flat boat at Georgetown and did freighting business on the “SamPitt” “Black” “Pee dee” & “Waccamaw” rivers . . . About 8 months before Georgetown was occupied by Union soldiers–while I was in the freighting business on my flat boat on “Mingo creek” (up “Black river”) about 30 or 40 miles from Georgetown by water, 3 white men came near the boat which was at the bank of the river–I was on the boat with only one person a colored man (in my employ named “Henry”). As soon as the 3 white men saw we were colored men they came to the boat and said “we are Yankee soldiers, and have escaped from the rebel “stockade” at Florence, we are your friends can’t you do something for us we are nearly perished.” As soon as I saw them, before they spoke, I knew they were Yankee soldiers–by their clothing. They were all private soldiers–so they told me–I invited them to come on the boat and told them I would hurry and cook food for them, which I did and gave it to them in my boat–As soon as they entered the boat I shoved off from land and anchored in the creek about 60. ft from shore–I was loading cord wood in my boat when the soldiers came and had completed my load within about 4. cords–I did not wait to take it all–fearing that, some one else might come and catch the Yankees–Neither of the 3 soldiers ordered me to take them in the boat, or made any threats–They did not go in the boat or secure it in any way so that I could not leave in it–They only entered the boat after they had told me who they were (as stated) and when I invited them–They were very weak–and had no weapons–They had no shoes on–It was then winter weather, and cold–The 3 Yankees did not suggest anything for me to do for them except to feed them–and wanted to get to the gun boats–They did not know where the gun boats were–I did–and I told them I would take them where they could get to the gun boats unmolested. The soldiers did not pay or give me anything–or promise anything to me at any time–and I have never received anything for any service rendered to any Union soldiers–They did not threaten me or use any violence–they were very friendly and glad to get into such good hands–They showed that they felt very grateful–I hid the 3 soldiers in my flat boat and started at once down the river towards Georgetown as soon as the tide allowed–In about 3 days time we came to “North Island” (about 12 miles from Georgetown) which I then knew was in possession of the Union forces–I did not pass Georgetown by day light for fear of being stopped by the rebels who had “pickets” all along the shore to stop all boats from going below–In the night I floated with the ebb tide (without being seen) to “North Island”–I got there in the night and landed the 3 soldiers in my small boat–I showed them the direction to cross the Island so as to get to the gun boats–I knew there were many of the gun boat people on the shore there at that time–I saw the 3 soldiers go as I directed–I never saw or heard from any of the 3 soldiers afterwards–but through a colored man named “Miller” (who was on the shore near the gunboats) learned that the 3 soldiers had got to the fleet–“Miller” told me this about 2 weeks after I took the 3 soldiers–he saw them and described them so that I was certain he had seen the same 3 soldiers safe in the protection of the gun boats–About 2 Months after this occurrence–I brought 2 other Yankee soldiers (one a corporal) to “North Island” from the same place in “Mingo creek.” The circumstances were nearly the same except that when I saw the soldiers I called to them saying there was “no danger”–for they were running away in a swamp–They came nearer and asked me if I was a friend to them that, they were Yankee soldiers who had escaped from rebel prison–I replied that “I was as good a friend as ever they had in their lives”! Then they came on my boat where I fed and delivered them (as before described) on “North Island.” In February 1865 while I was at “Mingo creek” as before I found 4. other Yankee soldiers there who also said they had escaped from Florence–I fed and took them towards “North Island” but told them it might not be necessary as the Yankees were then probably at Georgetown–When we came near Georgetown I found out that this was true–and landed the 4 soldiers there–I never asked or received anything or the promise of anything for what I gave or did for any Yankee soldiers during the war–While they were in my boat I kept them hidden away–I know I would have been killed if the rebels had found out that I had Yankees on my boat–I cannot remember that I ever did anything else to aid any Union soldiers–I never had a chance to do anything else–or I would have done it!

10. Why does Jackson include this information in his testimony?

2. I sympathized with the Union cause–“I knew what I needed most and looked that way certain”! I wanted to be free–and wanted my race to be free–I knew this could not be if the rebels had a government of their own–All the time during, and before the war, I felt as I do now that, the Union people were the best friends of the colored people–I always rejoiced over Union victories–I talked with a few white men at Georgetown and with such colored men as I could trust, in favor of the Union all the time during the war, but I knew my life would be taken if it was known how I really felt about the war . . . I was all the time anxious for the success of the Yankees– I never did or said anything to help the rebels and never wished for the success of any rebel soldiers–I did what I could for the Yankees and wanted to do more! I was always ready and willing to do what I could even at the risk of my own life–I could every time have avoided bringing the Yankee soldiers to “North Island” and could have caused their arrest if I had wished to do so, on my way to “North Island.”

Follow-Up Assignment

Ask your students to put themselves in the position of the commissioners hearing Jackson’s testimony. How do you corroborate it? In other words, how do you determine that he is telling the truth? Is it plausible to ask the soldiers he claims to have helped or Henry, his employee? A student might suggest examining other testimony from roughly the same time and place to see if it describes incidents of slaves helping Union soldiers. Indeed, such testimony exists, and we offer a sample below in the form of a report about escaped Union prisoners who, with the aid of African Americans, found refuge in Charleston, South Carolina, sixty-one miles south of Georgetown and still in 1864 a hotbed of anti-Union sentiment. Have your students compare and contrast this excerpt with Jackson’s testimony using the chart provided. Note that the chart asks them to distinguish between what they can know from the texts and what they must infer. Require them to support their know/infer choices by citing evidence from the texts. After they have done the exercise, ask them how the report relates to Jackson’s testimony.

Escaped Union Prisoners of War to the Provost Marshal General of the Department of the South

Hilton Head S.C. December 7th 1864

On the 5th October [1864], the officers confined in Roper Hospital Charleston S.C. received orders to prepare for a removal, we, together with Lieut Millward A.D.C [aide de camp] to Gen. Scammon, having provided ourselves with rebel uniforms, while in route to the depot, walked deliberately out of the ranks. Knowing no one in the city, we relied upon the negroes & the same day, we related to one Tho[mas] Brown (Col’d Barber [a colored barber]) who we were, & asked assistance–Said Brown, who seemed proud of speaking of his being a Black Republican–placed us in charge of his son who the same night procured for us a hiding place among some friends of his (colored) where we remained at least one month. We, a short time after our escape, heard of one Mr. Riels (German) who was hiding away the other officers–This gentleman provided us with money & used all endeavors to get us away. Having procured 5 negroes and about on the 2[7] Oct. we made the attempt to run out of the harbor, from the foot of Hazel St. As we were about starting, a Lieut with 7 men–suddenly appeared and without speaking fired at the men collected on the wharf wounding the Lieut. in charge and capturing the negroes– We, in the obscurity of the night, crawled away and hid in an empty building–Being compelled to leave our quarters, we got separated from Lt. Milward, who we have since learned was recaptured on Sullivan’s Island.

. . .

We stayed in Charleston two months, relying all that time on the negroes for safety–who we found remarkably intelligent, thoroughly comprehending their own Status in the Rebellion.

Very Respectfully Your Obdt. Servant
(Signed) Alured Larke
(Signed) R. H. Day

Capt. Alured Larke and Capt. R. H. Day to the Provost Marshal, 7 Dec. 1864, vol. 238 DS, pp. 103–6, Statements of Escaped Union Prisoners, Refugees, & Confederate Deserters, ser. 4294, Provost Marshal General, Department of the South, U.S. Army Continental Commands, Record Group 393 Pt. 1, National Archives.

Published in The Destruction of Slavery, pp. 809–10, and in Free at Last, pp. 161–64. [Full text]

Points of Comparison & Contrast

The Testimony of Alonzo Jackson, March 17, 1873, Georgetown, SC
Report on Escaped Union Prisoners, December 7, 1864, Charleston, SC

	Charleston (Thomas Brown)	Georgetown (Alonzo Jackson)
Conditions in Charleston and Georgetown in 1864-65, as suggested in these texts Know ( ) Infer ( )
The ways in which conditions in Charleston and Georgetown affected the enslaved population Know ( ) Infer ( )
The ways conditions in Charleston and Georgetown might have helped or hindered efforts to aid Union escapees Know ( ) Infer ( )
Challenges confronting Union escapees in Charleston and Georgetown Know ( ) Infer ( )
The place of Thomas Brown and Alonzo Jackson in their respective communities Know ( ) Infer ( )
The help the locals provided the Union escapees Know ( ) Infer ( )
“Underground” communication networks Know ( ) Infer ( )
Evidence indicating that the African American populations of the cities were aware of their role in the War Know ( ) Infer ( )

 

 

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]]> http://americainclass.org/the-enslaved-and-the-civil-war/feed/ 0 http://americainclass.org/family-life-of-the-enslaved/ http://americainclass.org/family-life-of-the-enslaved/#comments Tue, 10 May 2011 22:22:40 +0000 Jason http://jdking.nfshost.com/nhc/?p=134 How did slavery shape the family life of the enslaved in the American South?

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]]> Lesson prepared by Heather Williams, National Humanities Center Fellow, Professor of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with assistance from the National Humanities Center staff.

How did slavery shape the family life of the enslaved in the American South?



"Eliza comes to tell Uncle Tom that he is sold and that she is running away to save her baby." From Uncle Tom

Understanding

The slave family did all the things families normally do, but the fact that other human beings owned its members made it vulnerable to unique constrictions, disruptions, frustrations, and pain.

Text

Selections from WPA interviews of formerly enslaved African Americans, 1936–38 Slave Narratives in The Making of African American Identity: Vol.1, 1500–1865 from the National Humanities Center

Secondary Source

“How Slavery Affected African American Families” by Heather Andrea Williams in Freedom’s Story from the National Humanities Center

Background

Between 1936 and 1938 the Federal Writers Project of the Works Project Administration, a New Deal agency, sent field workers, most of whom were white, into seventeen states to interview former slaves about their lives in bondage. They compiled over 2,000 accounts, which now reside in the Library of Congress. For many years scholars discounted their reliability as historical evidence. They were, of course, subject to the lapses and biases that distort all memories. Moreover, scholars suspected that the particular circumstances of their collection made them especially susceptible to concealments and evasions. Would elderly African Americans, who passed from slavery to Jim Crow, be completely forthright with white strangers asking probing questions about a painful subject?

Despite such concerns, contemporary scholars have come to realize the value of the interviews. When using them, teachers and students should keep three considerations in mind. First, they are, in the words of the Library of Congress’s website, “highly impressionistic.” Second, they yield insight into only certain aspects of the slave experience. As the Library of Congress notes, “if one wishes to understand the nature of the ‘peculiar institution’ from the perspective of the slave, to reconstruct the cultural and social milieu of the slave community, or to analyze the social dynamics of the slave system,” then the WPA narratives “are not only relevant; they are essential.” Third, the interviewers transcribed oral testimony and used words and punctuation that sometimes seem to reflect their own expectations rather than the way people actually spoke. In some cases the spelling and punctuation reveal more about the interviewer than the interviewed.

In volumes 1 and 2 of the teaching anthologies The Making of African American Identity, the National Humanities Center has made the WPA Slave Narratives highly teachable by excerpting brief key passages and organizing them thematically. Click on the links below to explore the listed themes.

Capture | Accounts of enslavement
 | Being sold
 | Plantation life | Plantation labor
 | Sexual abuse of slaves
 | Slaves’ resistance | 
Running away
 | The enslaved family
 | The plantation community
 | Slaves’ religious practice | 
Running away | 
Transition to freedom | 
Pursuit of learning 
| Suicide as freedom
 | Slaves in the Civil War
 | Fighting in the Civil War | 
Emancipation, 1864–1865
 | Reflections on Slavery
 | The moment of freedom

Teaching the Text

To prepare to teach the WPA narratives on family life under slavery, first read Professor Heather Andrea Williams’ essay “How Slavery Affected African American Families” in Freedom’s Story from the National Humanities Center. Professor Williams notes that although most enslaved men and women formed families, these families were always vulnerable. Explore with your students the nature of this vulnerability. Parents and children could be the property of different owners. Separation was always a threat as family members could be sold or sent away according to the needs and wishes of the slaveholder. However, when teaching this material, it is important to keep in mind the first part of this lesson’s understanding: “The slave family did all the things families normally do.” Like all families, those of the enslaved created a private world in which individuals could be mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, grandparents, etc. Slave families provided love and companionship, taught values, offered solace, imposed discipline, constructed histories, bestowed identities, and generally gave the enslaved a space in which they could they could assert themselves. Emphasizing this “normality” will help students overcome the stereotype of slaves as helpless, passive victims.

While the first discussion passage, Malindy Maxwell’s reminiscence of her wedding, does not address all of the nurturing aspects of family life, it does offer insight into the terms upon which a degree of stability and even a modicum of happiness could be established under slavery. Nonetheless, it also illustrates the extent to which enslaved families existed at the sufferance of owners. That the members of a slave family were owned by others gave people outside the family the absolute right to intrude upon the family’s private world and profoundly disrupt it at will.

In the second passage, the testimony of Sarah Frances Shaw Graves illustrates the threat of separation under which slave families lived. It also highlights the master’s ability to force slaves into marriages, to isolate them, and to control their knowledge of and access to the wider world. At the same time, though, it illustrates how slaves could subtly turn the conditions of their bondage into resistance.

The final passage, Robert Glenn’s account of his separation from his family, offers additional insights into slave life. While the institution enabled some highly skilled slaves to earn money—their owners hired them out and allowed them to retain some of the money their work brought in—it curtailed what they could do with their savings. They could not, for one thing, own slaves. Hence, they could not keep their families intact by purchasing kin. The passage illustrates how the vagaries of the slave system abetted by prejudice shattered the family lives of even privileged slaves.

For Discussion

Excerpts from the WPA Slave Narratives, 1936-1938

Analysis

1. From this passage what can you surmise about Malindy Maxwell’s status on the Shans plantation? What evidence leads you to this conjecture?

2. What evidence in this passage suggests that Mrs. Maxwell and her husband achieved a degree of stability in their family life?

3. On what conditions did that stability depend?

4. How does this passage suggest the precariousness of family life for the enslaved?

1. I was born close to Como and Sardis, Mississippi. My master and mistress was Same Shans and Miss Cornelia Shans. I was born a slave. They owned mama and Master Rube Sanders owned pa. Neither owner wouldn’t sell but they agreed to let ma and pa marry. They had a white preacher and they married out in the yard and had a big table full of weddin’ supper, and the white folks et in the house. They had a big supper too. Ma said they had a big crowd. The preacher read the ceremony. Miss Cornelia give her a white dress and white shoes and Miss Cloe Wilburn give her a veil. Miss Cloe was some connection of Rube Sanders. They had seven children. I’m the oldest — three of us living.

After ’mancipation pa went to see about marrying ma over agen and they told him that marriage would stand long as ever he lived. —Malindy Maxwell, enslaved in Mississippi

5. How does this passage illustrate a slaveowner’s power to disrupt the family life of slaves?

6. How does it illustrate a master’s power to isolate and control their knowledge of and access to the wider world?

7. How does Sarah transform her family life into an act of resistance?

2. I was born March 23, 1850 in Kentucky, somewhere near Louisville. I am goin’ on 88 years right now. I was brought to Missouri when I was six months old, along with my mama, who was a slave owned by a man named Shaw, who had allotted her to a man named Jimmie Graves, who came to Missouri to live with his daughter Emily Graves Crowdes…. We left my papa in Kentucky, ‘cause he was allotted to another man. My papa never knew where my mama went, an’ my mama never knew where papa went… They never wanted mama to know, ’cause they knowed she would never marry so long she knew where he was. Our master wanted her to marry again and raise more children to be slaves. They never wanted mama to know where papa was an’ she never did…

Mama said she would never marry again to have children,… so she married my step-father, Tattle Barber, ’cause he was sick an’ could never be a father. He was so sick he couldn’t work, so me and mama had to work hard. We lived in a kitchen, a room in a log house joined on to the master’s house. My mama worked in the field, even when I was a little baby. She would lay me down on a pallet near the fence while she plowed the corn or worked in the field. —Sarah Frances Shaw Graves, enslaved in Missouri

8. What evidence suggests that Glenn’s family enjoyed a degree of stability?

9. What does the passage suggest about the status of Glenn’s father? Cite specific evidence to support your conjecture.

10. What forces prevent Glenn’s father from keeping his family intact?

3. [My owner] died when I was eight years old [1858] and I was put on the block to be sold . . . I was bought by a Negro speculator* by the name of Henry Long who lived not far from Hurdles Mill in Person County. I was not allowed to tell my mother and father goodbye. I was bought and sold three times in one day.My father’s time was hired out and as he knew a trade he had, by working overtime, saved up a considerable amount of money. After the speculator, Henry Long, bought me, mother went to father and pled with him to buy me from him and let the white folks hire me out. No slave could own a slave. Father got the consent and help of his owners to buy me and they asked Long to put me on the block again. Long did so and named his price but when he learned who had bid me off he backed down. Later in the day he put me on the block and named another price much higher than the price formerly set. He was asked by the white folks to name his price for his bargain and he did so. I was again put on the auction block and father bought me in, putting up the cash.

Long then flew into a rage and cursed my father saying, “You damn black son of a bitch, you think you are white do you? Now just to show you are black, I will not let you have your son at any price.” Father knew it was all off, mother was frantic but there was nothing they could do about it. They had to stand and see the speculator put me on his horse behind him and ride away without allowing either of them to tell me goodbye. I figure I was sold three times in one day, as the price asked was offered in each instance. Mother was told under threat of a whupping not to make any outcry when I was carried away.
—Robert Glenn, enslaved in North Carolina and Kentucky

* Editor’s note: Long is a white man who speculated in the buying and selling of Negroes.

Follow-Up Assignment

Have your students extend the list of things that families normally do, then send them to the collection of WPA Slave Narrative excerpts on family life found in The Making of African American Identity, Vol. 1 and have them identify ways in which slave families did those things.

Using the same collection of slave narrative excerpts, have your students identify specific sources of the chronic instability that plagued slave families.

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]]> http://americainclass.org/family-life-of-the-enslaved/feed/ 0 http://americainclass.org/a-pro-slavery-argument/ http://americainclass.org/a-pro-slavery-argument/#comments Fri, 15 Apr 2011 18:07:08 +0000 Kendra http://americainclass.org/?p=3175 How did proponents of slavery in antebellum America defend it as a positive good?

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]]> Lesson prepared by National Humanities Center staff.

Advisor: Peter A. Coclanis, National Humanities Center Fellow; Albert Ray Newsome Distinguished Professor of History and Director of the Global Research Institute, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

How did proponents of slavery in antebellum America defend it as a positive good?

Understanding

With an argument that was as much a critique of industrialism as it was a defense of slavery, Southern spokesmen contended that chattel slavery, as it was practiced in the American South, was more humane than the system of “wage slavery” that prevailed in the Industrial North and Great Britain.

Text

Excerpt from George Fitzhugh’s Cannibals All! Or Slaves Without Masters. (1857)

Background

As they fired back at their critics, defenders of slavery in antebellum America often maintained that slavery, as practiced in the South, was more humane than the system of “wage slavery” under which, they claimed, Northern and British industrial workers suffered. One of the most vehement proponents of this argument was George Fitzhugh (1806–1881), a Virginia lawyer, writer, and slaveowner. He believed that civilization depended upon the exploitation of labor. This led him to ask which system — slavery or free labor — exploited workers less. He concluded that slavery did, and made his case in Cannibals All! Or Slaves Without Masters.

In the book Fitzhugh unapologetically acknowledges that the South is a slave society, but he claims that the North is, too. In both, capitalists seek to live off the muscle of others as much as any “Fiji chieftain” seeks to dine “on human flesh.” Hence, all capitalists — Northern and Southern — are cannibals. The central question is what form of society most effectively curbs their appetites.

Fitzhugh draws the distinction between the North and the South on the principle of capital’s obligation to labor. The problem, as he sees it, is that in the “free” Northern economy — he uses the words “free” and “respectable” with sneering irony — capital and labor are separate. Thus capitalists in the North endeavor to make “respectable” livings by squeezing the greatest amount of work out of laborers for the least amount of pay, only to abandon them when they cease to be useful. In the Southern slave economy, on the other hand, “labor is capital.” Slaves, of course, do the work of the plantation, but they also represent a substantial capital investment. Owners pay dearly for them and thus it is in their best interest to “protect…not oppress them.” “When slaves are worth near a thousand dollars a head,” Fitzhugh writes, “they will be carefully and well provided for,” even when their working days are over. Unlike the Northern “slaves to capital,” “the negro slaves of the South are,” in his view, “the happiest and, in some sense, the freest people in the world.”

Teaching the Text

Contextualizing Questions

1. What kind of text are we dealing with?
2. When was it written?
3. Who wrote it?
4. For what audience was it intended?
5. For what purpose was it written?

While under the Common Core Standards Cannibals All! qualifies as an informational text, it is first and foremost a passionately argued piece of persuasive writing. Published in Richmond, Virginia, in 1857 and aimed at both Northern and Southern readers, it sought to claim for the South the moral high ground in the increasingly fierce national debate over slavery.

To help students grasp Fitzhugh’s argument that we take care of things that belong to us, you might note that, according to him, capitalists only rent their labor, while slavemasters own theirs. You can then make Fitzhugh’s point with two questions. How many students would wash a rental car? How many wash (and wax) their own (or pay good money to have it done)?

To prepare students to judge Fitzhugh’s argument, assign three essays in Freedom’s Story from the National Humanities Center’s TeacherServe®: “The Varities of Slave Labor”, “How Slavery Affected African American Families”, and “Slave Resistance”. (These essays are designed for teachers, but they are useful to students. You might divide the class into three groups and assign each an essay, then have each group respond to Fitzhugh in the light of their reading.) From these essays a series of questions emerge. How different in their response to the demand to make a profit were Southern plantations from Northern factories? How free were people whose family lives could be disrupted at the whim of a master? If the slave system was so good for slaves, why did they spend considerable time and energy trying to undermine and escape it?

Encourage students to challenge Fitzhugh’s definition of freedom. Have them come at it inductively. Why, according to Fitzhugh, are capitalists and slaves free? Why are slaveowners and laborers not free? Fitzhugh sees humans solely as economic entities. His definition of freedom is based entirely on the exchange of labor for reward. While it does include a sense of one person’s responsibility to another, that responsibility is based on the extent of one’s financial investment in the other person. Essentially, he thinks a person is free to the extent that he or she is not responsible for the economic well-being of others and to the extent that one’s economic needs are addressed by the efforts of others. Is that an adequate basis for a moral order? Does Fitzhugh’s idea of freedom have room for such concepts as equality, personal choice, or mobility?

For Discussion

Excerpt

Analysis

1. Fitzhugh uses the word “boast” twice in this paragraph. How might that word affect his pro-slavery readers? His anti-slavery readers? Test its impact by substituting other verbs: “maintain,” “contend,” “claim.” How do those verbs change the tone of the paragraph?

1. [W]e not only boast that the White Slave Trade [Northern free labor] is more exacting and fraudulent (in fact, though not in intention) than Black Slavery; but we also boast that it is more cruel, in leaving the laborer to take care of himself and family out of the pittance [small amount] which skill or capital have allowed him to retain. When the day’s labor is ended, he is free, but is overburdened with the cares of family and household, which make his freedom an empty and delusive mockery.

2. In the light of the Freedom’s Story essay on the slave family, how might you respond to Fitzhugh’s assertion that “cares of the family and household” deprive laborers of their freedom?

3. What is the most important word in this paragraph?  Why?  How might it shape a reader’s response to Fitzhugh’s argument?

4. According to Fitzhugh, why is the workingman not free? Why is his employer free? Why is a slave free? Is the slaveowner free? Why or why not?

2. But his employer is really free, and may enjoy the profits made by others’ labor, without a care or a trouble, as to their well-being. The negro slave is free, too, when the labors of the day are over, and free in mind as well as body; for the master provides food, raiment [clothing], house, fuel, and everything else necessary to the physical well-being of himself and family. The master’s labors commence just when the slave’s end. No wonder men should prefer white slavery to capital, to negro slavery, since it is more profitable, and is free from all the cares and labors of black slave-holding.

5. Throughout this excerpt, Fitzhugh directly addresses the reader. What effect does this direct address have on his argument?

6. What does his characterization of his readers as lawyers, merchants, and doctors suggest about his conception of his audience? How does he manipulate their class pretensions? Cite specific words and phrases to support your answer.

7. How would you describe the tone of this paragraph? Based on your response, would you say this paragraph is designed to convince anti-slavery readers or inspire pro-slavery readers? Cite specific words and phrases to support your answer.

8. According to Fitzhugh, what distinguishes the capitalist from the slaveowner?

9. In what ways does the slaveowner allow the slave to retain a larger portion of his earnings than the free laborer retains of his?

10. What does Fitzhugh mean by “the rights of slaves”?

3. Probably, you are a lawyer, or a merchant, or a doctor, who has made by your business fifty thousand dollars, and retired to live on your capital. But, mark! Not to spend your capital. That would be vulgar, disreputable, criminal. That would be, to live by your own labor; for your capital is your amassed labor. That would be to do as common working men do; for they take the pittance which their employers leave them to live on. They live by labor; for they exchange the results of their own labor for the products of other people’s labor. It is, no doubt, an honest, vulgar way of living, but not at all a respectable way. The respectable way of living is to make other people work for you, and to pay them nothing for so doing – and to have no concern about them after their work is done. Hence, white slave-holding is much more respectable than negro slavery – for the master works nearly as hard for the negro as he for the master. But you, my virtuous, respectable reader, exact three thousand dollars per annum [year] from white labor (for your income is the product of white labor) and make not one cent of return in any form. You retain your capital, and never labor; but the master permits the slave to retain a larger allowance from the proceeds of his own labor, and hence “free labor is cheaper than slave labor.” You, with the command over labor which your capital gives you, are a slave owner – a master, without the obligations of a master. They who work for you, who create your income, are slaves, without the rights of slaves. Slaves without a master! Whilst you were engaged in amassing your capital, in seeking to become independent, you were in the White Slave Trade. To become independent is to be able to make other people support you, without being obliged to labor for them. Now, what man in society is not seeking to attain this situation? He who attains it is a slave owner, in the worst sense. He who is in pursuit of it is engaged in the slave trade. You, reader, belong to the one or other class. The men without property, in free society, are theoretically in a worse condition than slaves. Practically, their condition corresponds with this theory, as history and statistics everywhere demonstrate. The capitalists, in free society, live in ten times the luxury and show that Southern masters do, because the slaves to capital work harder and cost less than negro slaves.

11. What image of slavery does Fitzhugh create in this paragraph? Cite specific words from the text to support your answer.

12. How does he portray capitalists? Cite specific words from the text to support your answer.

13. In light of the Freedom’s Story essays on slave labor and slave resistance, how might you respond to Fitzhugh’s claim that “negroes luxuriate in corporeal and mental repose”?

14. Compare his portrayal of slaves with that of free laborers.

4. The negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and, in some sense, the freest people in the world. Their children and aged and infirm work not at all, and yet have all the comforts and necessaries of life provided for them. They enjoy liberty, because they are oppressed neither by care nor labor. The women do little hard work, and are protected from the despotism [unjust and cruel authority] of their husbands by their masters. The negro men and stout boys work, on the average, in good weather, not more than nine hours a day. The balance of their time is spent in perfect abandon. Besides, they have their Sabbaths and holidays. White men, with so much of license and liberty, would die of ennui [boredom]; but negroes luxuriate in corporeal [bodily] and mental repose. With their faces upturned to the sun, they can sleep at any hour; and quiet sleep is the greatest of human enjoyments. “Blessed be the man who invented sleep.” ‘Tis happiness in itself – and results from contentment with the present, and confident assurance of the future. We do not know whether free laborers ever sleep. They are fools to do so; for, whilst they sleep, the wily and watchful capitalist is devising means to ensnare and exploit hem. The free laborer must work or starve. He is more of a slave than the negro, because he works longer and harder for less allowance than the slave, and has no holiday, because the cares of life with him begin when its labors end. He has no liberty, and not a single right.

15. According to Fitzhugh, in what ways are capitalists dependent on labor?

16. According to Fitzhugh, why does the purchase of labor turn a capitalist into a slaveowner?

5. But, reader, well may you follow the slave trade. It is the only trade worth following, and slaves the only property worth owning. All other is worthless, a mere caput mortuum [worthless remains], except in so far as it vests [gives] the owner with the power to command the labors of others — to enslave them. Give you a palace, ten thousand acres of land, sumptuous [luxurious] clothes, equipage [horse and carriage], and every other luxury; and with your artificial wants you are poorer than Robinson Crusoe, or the lowest working man, if you have no slaves to capital, or domestic slaves. Your capital will not bring you an income of a cent, nor supply one of your wants, without Labor. Labor is indispensable to give value to property, and if you owned every thing else, and did not own labor, you would be poor. But fifty thousand dollars means, and is, fifty thousand dollars worth of slaves. You can command, without touching on that capital, three thousand dollars’ worth of labor per annum. [You can invest that fifty thousand and get a return of three thousand dollars.] You could do no more were you to buy slaves with it, and then you would be cumbered [burdened] with the cares of governing and providing for them. You are a slaveholder now, to the amount of fifty thousand dollars, with all the advantages, and none of the cares and responsibilities of a master.

15. From prior knowledge of slavery in the American South, what protections did the law accord the enslaved? Do they support Fitzhugh’s claim that law protects the slave?

16. According to Fitzhugh, why is the system of free labor more cruel than slave labor?

17. How, according to Fitzhugh, would the slave system of the South curb “the selfishness of man’s nature”?

6. Public opinion unites with self-interest, domestic affection, and municipal law to protect the slave. The man who maltreats the weak and dependent, who abuses his authority over wife, children, or slaves is universally detested. That same public opinion which shields and protects the slave encourages the oppression of free laborers — for it is considered more honorable and praiseworthy to obtain large fees than small ones, to make good bargains than bad ones (and all fees and profits come ultimately from common laborers) — to live without work, by the exactions [necessity to invest] of accumulated capital, than to labor at the plough or the spade for one’s living. It is the interest of the capitalist and the skillful to allow free laborers the least possible portion of the fruits of their own labor; for all capital is created by labor, and the smaller the allowance of the free laborer, the greater the gains of his employer. To treat free laborers badly and unfairly, is universally inculcated [promoted] as a moral duty, and the selfishness of man’s nature prompts him to the most rigorous performance of this cannibalish duty.

Follow-Up Assignment

The following passage comes from The Cotton Kingdom, an 1861 volume in which journalist Frederick Law Olmsted compiled the dispatches he sent back to New York newspapers as he travelled through the South in the 1850s.

Have your students read the passage and write a brief essay in response to this question: Would Olmsted agree or disagree with the argument Fitzhugh makes in Cannibals All! ? Have them support their argument with specific evidence from the text.

As a general rule, the larger the body of negroes on a plantation or estate, the more completely are they treated as mere property, and in accordance with a policy calculated to insure the largest pecuniary returns [profits]…. It may be true, that among the wealthier slave-owners there is oftener a humane disposition, a better judgment, and a greater ability to deal with their dependents indulgently and bountifully, but the effects of this disposition are chiefly felt, even on those plantations where the proprietor resides permanently, among the slaves employed about the house and stables, and perhaps a few old favourites in the quarters. It is more than balanced by the difficulty of acquiring a personal interest in the units of a large body of slaves, and an acquaintance with the individual characteristics of each. The treatment of the mass must be reduced to a system, the ruling idea of which will be, to enable one man to force into the same channel of labour the muscles of a large number of men of various and often conflicting wills.

Frederick Law Olmstead,The Cotton Kingdom: A Traveller’s Observations on Cotton and Slavery in the American Slave States, 1853–1861 (New York: Mason Brothers, 1861), p. 192.

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