Showing papers in "Journal of Social History in 1969"

The Italians and the Development of Organized Labor in Argentina, Brazil, and the United States 1880–1914

Abstract: Argentina, Brazil, and the United States each received more than a million working-class Italians at the turn of the past century, but the immigrants' level of participation in the respective labor movements varied greatly.l In Argentina and Brazil they were among the dominant elements in the organization and development of the major labor unions and federations, while in the United States they were almost completely excluded from such organizations.2 The question to which this article addresses itself, therefore, is what caused this difference in the level of participation in organized labor? What variables in the Argentine, Brazilian, and North American situations explain this different experience ?

BIRTH CONTROL AND THE LUTHERANS The Missouri Synod as a Case Study

Abstract: Despite the familiarity with which Americans now speak of The Pill (nobody has to inquire which pill), general public acceptance of contraception is of comparatively recent origin, and its endorsement by some Protestant groups more recent still. Ironically, while in the present ecumenical age Protestant disenchantment with papal intransigence on contraception strikes a discordant note, in earlier decades of bitter interdenominational polemic much of Protestantism wholeheartedly agreed with Rome in denouncing birth control as contrary to God's will. Most Protestants of course subsequently reversed their position. Since religious afflliation is essential in explaining current fertility differentials, the Protestant reversal is of considerable importance and desenes scrutiny. How the shift was accomplished bears study also because it illustrates the interplay between church and society in the definition of religious attitudes on social questions. The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, most conservative and homogeneous of the three major Lutheran bodies in this country, serves admirably here as a case study.l Through its eventual acceptance of contraception it ALAN GRABBNER is in the department of history of the College of St. Catherine, St. Paul, Minnesota. Preparation of this paper was aided in part by a research grant from Concordia College, Moorehead, Minnesota. 1 In this case, continuity seems to hold more fasciIlation than change. Perhaps attracted by the problem of explaining that church's continued opposition, historians have focused Ox1 Roman Catholic attitudes, most notably in John T. Noonan, Jr.'s monumental Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by the Catholzc Theologians and Canonists (Cambridge, 1965). But what is to the contemporary mind so sensible, the Protestant reappraisal of birth control, has received short shrift by historians. The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, despite its name a national denomination, is the nineth largest religious body in the United States. Of nineteenth-century German immigrant origin (Die Deutsche Evangelisch-Lutherische Synode von Missouri, Ohio und anderen Staafen), it was founded in 1847. Its headquarters, main seminary, and publishing house are located in St. Louis. Especially since World War II, it has gained considerable notice for its conservatism, isolationism, and rapid growth. IEe best general introduction to the Synod's history presently

The History of Education in Nineteenth-Century France: A Survey of Recent Writings

Abstract: tn the last five years few fields of social history have grown as 1 rapidly as that of the history of education. If the writing of history stays faithful to its own past, moreover, the current crisis of educational systems throughout the world will generate an even greater output of books and articles as scholars seek to understand the origins of student unrest and institutional change. A survey of some of the most important recent writings on the history of French secondary and higher education may thus serve to summarize the contributions already made and to indicate some of the problems still in need of study. Two recent general histories of the subject are of special value. The first to appear, Felix Ponteil's Histoire de l'Enseignement: 1789-1965 (Paris: Sirey, 1966), is a solid, if uninspired, narrative history of all levels of the French system: higher, secondary, primary, and "technical." Ponteil emphasizes the legal, administrative, and political history of education, especially the long campaign for freedom of teaching (liberte de l'enseignement) that began soon after Napoleon established the State monopoly over secondary and higher education and ended shortly before World War I when the Radicals abandoned their attempt to re-establish that monopo]y.l His concluding bibliographical essay contains valuable references to widely scattered books and articles published during the last hundred years. Whereas Ponteil fails to present much information, especially of the statistical sort, concerning the relationship between educational developments and other social changes, Antoine Prost's Histoire de I'Enseignement: 1800-1967 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1968) makes full