Showing papers in "Journal of Social History in 1971"

Progress and Flight: An Interpretation of the American Cycle Craze of the 1890s

Abstract: A s the nineteenth century neared its close, Americans had I X good reason to celebrate the technological accomplishments of the past several generations. Conveyor belts and interchangeable parts had sharply altered the system of production; the reaper and other farm machines had expanded enormously the output of food; the steam engine had revolutionized long distance transportation on water and land; and the utilization of electricity was transforming methods of communication, lighting and local travel. For a people who tended to measure progress in quantitative terms, especially by an improvement in physical well-being, an increase in utility, or a growth in power and speed, the mechanical advances of the nineteenth century were truly dazzling.l There was another side to the story, though, for the material progress wrought by machines had been costly. Within a brief span, as history measures time, technology had changed the United States from a rustic primitive land to an industrial giant.2 That shift, involving as it did great social and economic dislocations, required extensive and often wrenching adjustments on the part of the populace. During the 1 890s the process of adjustment became particularly painful. It was no coincidence that the bicycle rose to popularity at this time. Some years before, because it had been difficult and even

Privileged Bondsmen and the Process of Accommodation: The Role of Houseservants and Drivers as Seen in Their Own Letters

Abstract: A generation ago, W. E. B. DuBois chided historians for writing \"the record of kings and gentlemen ad nauseam and in stupid detail.... Of the common run of human beings ... and particularly of the . . . working group,\" he noted, \"the world has saved all too little of authentic record and tried to forget or ignore even the little saved.\" A few years earlier, scholars were reminded that \"any history of slavery must be written in large part from the standpoint of the slave.\" However, despite these longstanding pleas for an approach to black history from the point of view of the blacks, histonans have only just begun to develop the sources, methods, and perspectives that will enable them to write black history from a new