Showing papers in "The Journal of American History in 1983"
TL;DR: Identification is a new term and it came into use as a popular social science term only in the 1950s as mentioned in this paper, and it was used casually; they assume the reader will know what they mean.
Abstract: Today we could hardly do without the word identity in talking about immigration and ethnicity. Those who write on these matters use it casually; they assume the reader will know what they mean. And readers seem to feel that they do-at least there has been no clamor for clarification of the term. But if pinned down, most of us would find it difficult to explain just what we do mean by identity. Its very obviousness seems to defy elucidation: identity is what a thing is! How is one supposed to go beyond that in explaining it? But adding a modifier complicates matters, for how are we to understand identity in such expressions as "ethnic identity," "Jewish identity," or "American identity"? This is a question to which the existing writings on ethnicity do not provide a satisfactory answer. There are helpful discussions, to be sure, but none seems altogether adequate, at least not from the historian's viewpoint. The historically minded inquirer who gains familiarity with the literature, however, soon makes an arresting discovery-identity is a new term, as well as being an elusive and ubiquitous one. It came into use as a popular socialscience term only in the 1950s. The contrast between its handling in two standard reference works dramatizes its novelty. The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, published in 1968, carries a substantial article on "Identity, Psychosocial," and another on "Identification, Political." The original Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, published in the early 1930s, carries no entry at all for identity, and the entry headed "Identification" deals with fingerprinting and other techniques of criminal investigation. '
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TL;DR: Melosh et al. as mentioned in this paper recast nursing history and placed it in the context of women's history, labor history, medical history, and sociology, and found that nurses faced a fundamental reorganization of work that changed the content and experience of nursing, but unlike many others, they did not suffer a dilution of skill.
Abstract: This book recasts nursing history and places it in the context of women's history, labor history, medical history, and sociology. Removed from the limited framework of professionalization, nursing history can provide a fresh perspective on broader issues in social history. First, it offers an illuminating example of the ways in which gender informs work and, conversely. How work reproduces and transforms relationships of power and inequality. Second, the experience of nurses adds a new dimension to our understanding of work. More than a study of professionalization, nursing history is the story of women workers' experience in a rationalizing service industry. Like other workers, nurses faced a fundamental reorganization of work that changed the content and experience of nursing. But unlike many others, they did not suffer a dilution of skill.The book also explores the shifting configurations of social relations on the job and their implications for nurses' work. Third, nurses' history provides a useful standpoint for analyzing the possibilities and limitations of women's work. Finally, nursing history alerts us to the complexities of working women's consciousness, countering the common notion of women's passivity in the workplace."The Physician's Hand" traces nursing history from the twenties to the seventies. It begins just after World War I when the 'trained nurse' had gained a secure place in medical care but not yet found a niche in the hospital. Most worked in private duty. Chapter 1 outlines the theoretical framework of professionalization. Chapter 2 examines the history and culture of hospital schools, and the following chapters focus on the changing structure and experience of nursing in its three major settings: private duty nursing, public health care, and hospital work. The conclusion weighs the competing traditions of professionalization and occupational culture in nurses' history and their meaning for the current crisis in nursing. Author note: Barbara Melosh is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She has also worked as a nurse.
133 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a comprehensive history of the city of Philadelphia, and present a rich and colorful portrait of one of America's most vital, interesting, and illustrious cities.
Abstract: In this, the definitive comprehensive history of Philadelphia, the reader will discover a rich and colorful portrait of one of America's most vital, interesting, and illustrious cities.
92 citations
TL;DR: Schlesinger's rating of presidents has received considerable attention over the last few decades as mentioned in this paper, and it is a subject that has attracted considerable attention from the general public, particularly the lay public.
Abstract: The rating of presidents is certainly not one of the more crucial problems confronting American historians. Yet in recent years it is a matter that has received considerable attention. Whatever the historical profession as a whole may think of the exercise, the lay public, particularly the press, is intrigued by how the "experts" view the presidents, and it broadcasts widely any new listing. Rating the holders of this uniquely American office apparently helps remind us of which human qualitites we most admire, since we expect to find in presidents the best in our society. Perhaps, too, the American penchant for always wanting to know who is number one supports such interest. If number one can be determined in athletics, in rental car agencies, and in fast-food chains, why not in the presidency? Recent professional interest in rating the presidents dates from the Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., poll of 1948.1 Acting largely on a whim and allowing each respondent wide latitude to choose his own criteria for judging presidential greatness, Schlesinger solicited the opinions of fifty-five "experts," the majority of whom were professional historians. The findings were subsequently published in Life and were immediately embraced by the press as representing the collective judgment of historians everywhere.2 Fourteen years later, Schlesinger repeated the exercise, this time surveying seventy-five experts. Fifty-eight were historians (including most of those polled in 1948), with the remainder mainly being journalists and political scientists. Published in the New York Times Magazine, the findings of this poll generally reinforced those of the earlier one and even more firmly established the Schlesinger
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors recall the accomplishments of fifteen Black American men and women, including Martin Luther King, Mary McLeod Bethune, Adam Clayton Powell, and Booker T. Washington.
Abstract: Recounts the accomplishments of fifteen Black American men and women, including Martin Luther King, Mary McLeod Bethune, Adam Clayton Powell, and Booker T. Washington.
43 citations
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TL;DR: In this paper, Hines explores the efforts of modernists to find new forms and meaning for their work in the twentieth century, through his study of Richard Neutra, the most distinguished architect to have worked on the west coast from the 1920s to the 1960s.
Abstract: The story of Richard Neutra's life is, in many ways, the story of modern architecture. In his lifetime, Neutra experienced the buoyant struggles of the movement's early years, the heady excesses of its mid-century ascendancy, and the strains of its slow demise. Through his study of Richard Neutra, the most distinguished architect to have worked on the west coast from the 1920s to the 1960s, Thomas Hines explores the efforts of the modernists to find new forms and meaning for their work in the twentieth century.
TL;DR: This article examines the promises of the new physician-directed obstetrics beginning in the 1760s, when physicians entered Obstetrics, and ending in the 1940s, after they dominated the field-and evaluates the extent to which those promises were kept.
Abstract: At the end of the eighteenth century, Dr. William Shippen, Jr., of Philadelphia attended all the childbearing women in the well-established Drinker family. The family members chose Shippen instead of a woman midwife, in spite of their ambivalence about having a man in the traditionally all-female birthing room, because they believed the physician offered the best hope for a successful outcome. The Drinkers, and many others like them, considered themselves fortunate to be living at a time when male physicians began replacing female midwives in the birthing rooms of the American urban elite. The families expected-and believed that they received-better care at the hands of physicians than they thought possible with traditional female attendants. This article examines the promises of the new physician-directed obstetricsbeginning in the 1760s, when physicians entered obstetrics, and ending in the 1940s, after they dominated the field-and evaluates the extent to which those promises were kept. 1 Before 1760 birth was a women's affair in the British colonies of North America. When a woman went into labor, she "called her women together" and left her husband and other male family members outside. "I went to bed about 10 o'clock," wrote William Byrd of Virginia, "and left the women full of expectation with my wife. " Only in cases where women were not available did men participate in labor and delivery, and only in cases where labor did not
TL;DR: The first sustained campaign against proprietary infant foods is surveyed, describing the factors that created a growing market for these products, the companies that sought to satisfy and stimulate that market, and the diverse groups who criticized this method of infant feeding, ranging from pediatricians to clean-milk and public-health reformers and child-welfare workers.
Abstract: The multinational manufacturers of infant foods and feeding devices are being accused of promoting artificial infant feeding in Third World countries that should shun it. Critics charge that it adds unnecessary strain on meager family budgets and is a direct contributor to high rates of infant mortality and morbidity. A number of governments are attempting to restrict these corporations' activities; the World Health Organization has condemned them; and schemes are afoot to limit their activities in the Third World. Throughout the controversy, the assumption has been that this is a relatively new problem, arising from the expansion of the marketing tentacles of the industrialized world's giant corporations into the nonindustrialized countries. Yet the widespread use of artificial feeding and proprietary infant foods first became a source of controversy in the United States over one hundred years ago, when similar charges were leveled, some against the same corporations, in the years from 1880 to 1920. But this first campaign was, ultimately, a rather abject failure. The trend toward artificial infant feeding continued, with only minor setbacks, until the 1960s, when the rediscovery of the connection between poverty, high infant mortality, and artificial feeding led to a renewed campaign to encourage breast feeding among the poor, the thrust of which has now spilled over into the Third World. This article surveys the first sustained campaign against proprietary infant foods, describing the factors that created a growing market for these products, the companies that sought to satisfy and stimulate that market, and the diverse groups who criticized this method of infant feeding, ranging from pediatricians to clean-milk and public-health reformers and child-welfare workers.
TL;DR: For example, this article pointed out that the Social Security Act was an astonishingly inept and conservative piece of legislation and pointed out the fact that "in no other welfare system in the world did the state shirk all responsibility for old-age indigency and insist that funds be taken out of the current earnings of workers."
Abstract: Franklin D. Roosevelt considered social security to be "the cornerstone of his administration." Today, in the midst of the widely bruited social security "crisis," he might be less quick to take credit. That the payroll tax in particular is Roosevelt's prime contribution to the modern tax system seems a terrible mistake, an affront to the progressive reputation of the New Deal. It is a classic regressive tax, letting the rich off more cheaply than wage earners. The prominence of this levy in our tax system-the payroll tax for old age insurance garners several times as much revenue as the corporate income tax is not the New Deal's proudest legacy. But it is an appropriate one to explore if we are to understand either the New Deal or the nature of the modern social security crisis. 1 For New Deal historians, finding fault with the social security systemparticularly its old age insurance component-has all the challenge of shooting fish in a barrel. William E. Leuchtenburg, though seeing the Social Security Act as landmark legislation that "established the proposition that the individual has clear-cut social rights," comes close to offering a consensus position in his critique of the statute. "In many respects," he writes, "the law was an astonishingly inept and conservative piece of legislation. In no other welfare system in the world did the state shirk all responsibility for old-age indigency and insist that funds be taken out of the current earnings of workers." 2 The disparagement of the financing provisions of old age insurance does not stop there. No critical assessment of the New Deal is complete without parading payroll taxes as the clinching evidence against the progressivity of the New Deal tax system. To be sure, the initial payroll-tax rate for the old age insurance system was low; at the close of the 1930s its yield was only one-half
TL;DR: In the 1970s, a huge outpouring of revisionist works drastically altered our understanding of antebellum slavery in the Unites States South as discussed by the authors, focusing on the slaves' folklore, religion, family lives, community organization, and resistance.
Abstract: During the 1970s a huge outpouring of revisionist works drastically altered our understanding of antebellum slavery in the Unites States South. Despite differences in approach and emphasis, most of these works shared a common thrust: the accentuation of slave culture and community. Beginning at least in part as an effort to refute Stanley M. Elkins's thesis that southern slavery left its victims depersonalized, docile "Samboes," slavery revisionism soon widened its focus to deal with the slaves' folklore, religion, family lives, community organization, and resistance. ' Relying heavily on previously little-used black sources such as slave autobiographies, interviews, folktales, and songs, historians came to see southern blacks as subjects in their own right rather than simply as objects of white oppression.2 A common recognition spread that the slaves' lives were by no means entirely prescribed by their masters. As George P. Rawick puts it, "While from sunup to sundown the American slave worked for another and was harshly exploited, from sundown to sunup he lived for himelf and created the behavioral and institutional -basis which prevented him from becoming the absolute victim. ' 3
TL;DR: The South's most unexpected adversary in the Civil War, and most deadly, proved to be the South itself as discussed by the authors, for the Confederacy would not divert enough other resources to that war, for commercial goals continued to dominate the Southern economy.
Abstract: The South's most unexpected adversary in the Civil War, and most deadly, proved to be the South itself. While lavishly offering up its young men, the Confederacy would not divert enough other resources to that war, for commercial goals continued to dominate the Southern economy. Those goals have been obscured by the agony and heroism of the war, by the cavalier braggadocio that marked its outbreak. And by the belief that Northern industrialism triumphed over a "gallant and chivalric" society oriented to high ideals, blood sports, and sadism.2 The reasons why the North won have been noted a thousand times. In William Faulkner's summary, "Who else would have declared a war against a power with ten times the area, and a hundred times the men, and a thousand times the resources?"3 Yet a generation that saw a tiny Asian country defeat the world's most powerful nation should not lightly assume that resources or
TL;DR: In the early decades of the twentieth century, progressive firms gradually assumed more responsibility for the well-being of their employees, initiating a movement that came to be known as welfare capitalism as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The rapid rise of a huge and impersonal industrial order in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the often violent reactions that it engendered challenged Americans' facile adherence to laissez faire ideology. Responding to rising labor violence, social critics, theologians, and enlightened industrialists called for a reevaluation of prevailing economic theory and practice, particularly of those elements that contributed to the widening gulf between labor and capital. Corporate leaders raised on Sumnerian concepts of industrial relations questioned the social and economic viability of labor policies founded on principles of conflict and competition. They began experimenting with industrial reforms that aimed at alleviating labor conflict, improving worker morale, and cultivating employee loyalty. In the early decades of the twentieth century, progressive firms gradually assumed more responsibility for the well-being of their employees, initiating a movement that came to be known as welfare capitalism. Welfare advocates asserted that labor was not a mere commodity but a partner, albeit junior, that deserved fair treatment and consideration from capital. They emphasized that labor and capital shared a common goal-increasing production. Both partners would reap the bountiful harvest produced by cooperation. In translating these ideas into concrete reforms-such as company-provided housing, health services, and profit sharing-progressive business leaders hoped to forge between
TL;DR: The authors argue that the experience of working-class women in the Gilded Age labor movement allowed them to use the language of domesticity to criticize the competitive capitalist system that they saw encroaching upon their traditional rights, dignity, and comforts.
Abstract: The language of domesticity with its sentimental attachment to hearth and home and its strict and limiting definition of the feminine sphere was a dominant feature of nineteenth-century American culture. But we must look more closely at the rhetoric of domesticity in the context of nineteenthcentury women's lives to see just what the words meant to particular groups of women, especially those outside the middle class. In what way did the cult of domesticity enter the lives of working-class women? Did it simply trickle down into their consciousness making their lives a never ending struggle for middle-class respectability? Or did working-class women take up the rhetoric of domesticity on their own terms? It seems likely that the language of home, family, and femininity had special meanings for working-class women, particularly those whose experiences were shaped by the labor and reform movements of the Gilded Age. For an earlier era Ellen DuBois has convincingly related the very emergence of the women's rights movement to the development of a distinct woman's sphere. Recent work on the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) likewise demonstrates that Frances Willard harnessed contemporary domestic imagery to build a broad-based reform movement that ultimately challenged the assumptions of the domestic ideology itself. Domesticity, family, and womanhood are therefore not static, universal, or unchanging categories. This paper argues that the experience of working-class women in the Gilded Age labor movement allowed them to use the language of domesticity to criticize the competitive capitalist system that they saw encroaching upon their traditional rights, dignity, and comforts. Ideologically as far removed from modern-day feminism as from the Victorian cult of ladyhood, these late-nineteenth century women discovered a source of cultural support and political opportunity in the labor movement of their day. 1
TL;DR: In 1743, Davenport and his followers gathered around a bonfire and cast into it a veritable library of Puritan classics, including works by such celebrated divines as Matthew Henry, Richard Sibbes, Increase Mather, and Benjamin Colman.
Abstract: By 1743, readers of colonial newspapers had grown accustomed to reports of the religious revivals inaugurated by the English itinerant George Whitefield. But few were prepared for accounts of the bizarre and sensational events that took place in the port city of New London, Connecticut, in March of that year. According to the Boston Evening Post, the central character in the affair was the ailing and fanatical native-born itinerant James Davenport, whose "theatrical" preaching style and wild accusations against his fellow ministers had led to his arrest earlier in both Hartford and Boston. His chief accomplices were a devoted group of radical "New Lights" who, with Davenport's encouragement, had separated themselves from the Congregational church fifteen months earlier and formed their own church and an evangelical seminary known as the "Shepherd's Tent." Under the impression of messages "received from the Spirit in Dreams," Davenport carried his band of Separates into an orgy of religious enthusiasm that exceeded all bounds of decency and good order. By Sabbath afternoon, March 6, he had worked the people into such a frenzy that townsmen "ran to see if Murder or some other Mischief was not about to be done." Instead they witnessed the most remarkable event of the Great Awakening in New England. There, at Christophers's town wharf, Davenport and his followers gathered around a bonfire and cast into it a veritable library of Puritan classics. The catalogue of burned books was said to include works by such celebrated divines as Matthew Henry, Richard Sibbes, Increase Mather, and Benjamin Colman. The Post's writer heard the bookburners "sing Hallehuahs and Gloria Patri over the Pile, and I heard them with a loud voice declare, That the smoak of the Torments of such of the Authors of the above said Books as died in the same Belief as when they set them out, was now ascending in Hell in like manner as they saw the smoak of them books rise."-
TL;DR: Goodwyn's Democratic Promise and The Populist Moment have been popular and influential works among American historians as mentioned in this paper, and several recent texts have either adopted Goodwyn's interpretation or listed it as the new standard history of Populism.
Abstract: Lawrence Goodwyn's Democratic Promise and The Populist Moment have been popular and influential works among American historians.' Reviewers have been favorable to Goodwyn's imaginative interpretation and comprehensive coverage of the American farmers greatest political protest movement, and several recent texts have either adopted Goodwyn's interpretation or listed it as the new standard history of Populism.2 After two decades of scholarly reactions to Richard Hofstadter's charges of anti-Semitism and paranoia, it is useful to have an interpretation that focuses on a broader view of Populism and contains important insights into the nature of radical movements in general. Goodwyn's interpretation is a strong statement that will provide topics for revisionist studies for years to come. This is one of the first. Both Democratic Promise and its somewhat more explicit paperback version, Populist Moment, offer a new interpretation of Populism that pictures