WOMAN SUFFRAGE

“Suffering for the Vote”

I. Introduction:

            Why be against Woman Suffrage?

II. Suffering for the Vote

A. The Seneca Falls Convention

B. Women’s Christian Temperance Union

C. National American Woman Suffrage Assoc.

                        (Carrie Catt and Florence Kelley)

D. The Great War and the Vote

E. The National Women’s Party

                                    (Alice Paul)

F. Impact of The Nineteenth Amendment

                                    1. Sheppard-Towner

                                    2. Birth Control

III. Conclusion/Significance:

THE GREAT WAR

I. Origins of War:
Progressivism Abroad

Wilson

II. A European Affair

--Bloody Alliances—
Triple Alliance(France, GB, Russia)
Triple Entente (GR, Austro-Hungary, Italy)

III. The Great War:
A. The Trenches: 

B. Trenches in the Sea (Lusitania, Sussex)
C. Peace and Preparedness
D. WAR

IV. The End of War:
A. Wilson's 14 Points:
B. Versailles:
C. Spanish Flu of 1918

V. Significance:

EXCERPT FROM THE JUNGLE

Excerpt From The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

Section 1-Let a man so much as scrape his finger pushing a truck in the pickle rooms, and he might have a sore that would put him out of the world; all the joints in his fingers might be eaten by the acid, one by one. Of the butchers and floorsmen, the beef-boners and trimmers, and all those who used knives, you could scarcely find a person who had the use of his thumb; time and time again the base of it had been slashed, till it was a mere lump of flesh against which the man pressed the knife to hold it. The hands of these men would be criss- crossed with cuts, until you could no longer pretend to count them or to trace them. They would have no nails, – they had worn them off pulling hides; their knuckles were swollen so that their fingers spread out like a fan. There were men who worked in the cooking rooms, in the midst of steam and sickening odors, by artificial light; in these rooms the germs of tuberculosis might live for two years, but the supply was renewed every hour. There were the beef-luggers, who carried two-hundred-pound quarters into the refrigerator-cars; a fearful kind of work, that began at four o'clock in the morning, and that wore out the most powerful men in a few years. There were those who worked in the chilling rooms, and whose special disease was rheumatism; the time limit that a man could work in the chilling rooms was said to be five years. There were the wool-pluckers, whose hands went to pieces even sooner than the hands of the pickle men; for the pelts of the sheep had to be painted with acid to loosen the wool, and then the pluckers had to pull out this wool with their bare hands, till the acid had eaten their fingers off. There were those who made the tins for the canned meat; and their hands, too, were a maze of cuts, and each cut represented a chance for blood poisoning. Some worked at the stamping machines, and it was very seldom that one could work long there at the pace that was set, and not give out and forget himself and have a part of his hand chopped off. There were the "hoisters," as they were called, whose task it was to press the lever which lifted the dead cattle off the floor. They ran along upon a rafter, peering down through the damp and the steam; and as old Durham's architects had not built the killing room for the convenience of the hoisters, at every few feet they would have to stoop under a beam, say four feet above the one they ran on; which got them into the habit of stooping, so that in a few years they would be walking like chimpanzees. Worst of any, however, were the fertilizer men, and those who served in the cooking rooms. These people could not be shown to the visitor, – for the odor of a fertilizer man would scare any ordinary visitor at a hundred yards, and as for the other men, who worked in tank rooms full of steam, and in some of which there were open vats near the level of the floor, their peculiar trouble was that they fell into the vats; and when they were fished out, there was never enough of them left to be worth exhibiting, – sometimes they would be overlooked for days, till all but the bones of them had gone out to the world as Durham's Pure Leaf Lard!

Section 2-There was meat that was taken out of pickle and would often be found sour, and  they would rub it up with soda to take away the smell, and sell it to be eaten on free-lunch counters; also of all the miracles of chemistry which they performed, giving to any sort of meat, fresh or salted, whole or chopped, any color and any flavor and any odor they chose. In the pickling of hams they had an ingenious apparatus, by which they saved time and increased the capacity of the plant – a machine consisting of a hollow needle attached to

a pump; by plunging this needle into the meat and working with his foot, a man could fill a ham with pickle in a few seconds. And yet, in spite of this, there would be hams found spoiled, some of them with an odor so bad that a man could hardly bear to be in the room with them. To pump into these the packers had a second and much stronger pickle which destroyed the odor – a process known to the workers as "giving them thirty per cent." Also, after the hams had been smoked, there would be found some that had gone to the bad. Formerly these had been sold as "Number Three Grade," but later on some ingenious person had hit upon a new device, and now they would extract the bone, about which the bad part generally lay, and insert in the hole a white-hot iron. After this invention there was no longer Number One, Two, and Three Grade – there was only Number One Grade. The packers were always originating such schemes – they had what they called "boneless hams," which were all the odds and ends of pork stuffed into casings; and "California hams," which were the shoulders, with big knuckle joints, and nearly all the meat cut out; and fancy "skinned hams," which were made of the oldest hogs, whose skins were so heavy and coarse that no one would buy them – that is, until they had been cooked and chopped fine and labeled "head cheese!"

Section 3-Cut up by the two-thousand-revolutions- a-minute flyers, and mixed with half a ton of other meat, no odor that ever was in a ham could make any difference. There was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage; there would come all the way back from Europe old sausage that had been rejected, and that was moldy and white – it would be dosed with borax and glycerin, and dumped into the hoppers, and made over again for home consumption. There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs. There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it. It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together. This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one – there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit. There was no place for the men to wash their hands before they ate their dinner, and so they made a practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the sausage. There were the butt-ends of smoked meat, and the scraps of corned beef, and all the odds and ends of the waste of the plants, that would be dumped into old barrels in the cellar and left there. Under the system of rigid economy which the packers enforced, there were some jobs that it only paid to do once in a long time, and among these was the cleaning out of the waste barrels. Every spring they did it; and in the barrels would be dirt and rust and old nails and stale water – and cartload after cartload of it would be taken up and dumped into the hoppers with fresh meat, and sent out to the public's breakfast. Some of it they would make into "smoked" sausage – but as the smoking took time, and was therefore expensive, they would call upon their chemistry department, and preserve it with borax and color it with gelatin to make it brown. All of their sausage came out of the same bowl, but when they came to wrap it they would stamp some of it "special," and for this they would charge two cents more a pound.

Progressivism

ARE THESE 2 QUOTES CONTRADICTORY?

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

Emma Lazarus, "The New Colossus"

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism...The one absolutely certain way of bringing the nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.         

Theodore Roosevelt, 1915

The Progressive Era:

I.              Origins

A. Populism:

Farmers' Alliance

Omaha Platform:

--inflationary currency policy

--graduated income tax

--direct government ownership of railroad and telegraph industries

--redistribution of railroad owned lands

B. Hull House—1889

            Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr

http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/10870.html

II.         A New Mindset:

Progressivism Defined:

Progressivism was a series of movements designed to combat the ills of industrialism. Some progressives also wanted to control the behavior of the working classes.

Stanley Schultz, Univ. of Wisconsin:

·         Government should be more active

·         Social problems are susceptible to government legislation and action

·         Throw money at the problem

·         The world is “perfectible”

III.   Progressive Movements:

A.                    Anti-Trust

Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890

“Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal.”

B.                    Anti-Lynching (Ida B. Wells-Barnett)

C.                    Good Government Movement

--17^th Amendment=direct election of senators

--referendums and recalls

D.                    Consumer Protection: The Jungle

Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906

                                                            Spreading the Idea of Progressivism

IV.         Progressivism in Practice:

TRIANGLE SHIRTWAIST FIRE OF 1911

                        (a focusing even to make the idea real)

A. The ILGWU Strike:

                        B. Fire on the Factory Floor

                        C. Reporters and the Visibility of Triangle

                                    1. "Love Affair in Mid-Air"

                                    2. Mortillalo and Zito

D. The Public Response

V. Progressivism Abroad:

A. Foreign Policy Community

                        --T.R., Henry Cabot Lodge

                        --“large policy”

            B. Capitalism

            C. "Yellow" Journalism

                  Pulitzer: New York World

Hearst: New York Journal

Rudyard Kipling, “White Man’s Burden” (1899)

     

Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proffered laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!

   D. The Great War:

--Bloody Alliances—

                   Triple Alliance(France, GB, Russia)

                   Triple Entente (GR, Austro-Hungary, Italy) 

VI. Significance:

HOME READING DUE THURSDAY

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

.
No. CCCXCI
JUNE, 1889.

WEALTH

BY ANDREW CARNEGIE.


The problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may still bind together the rich and poor in harmonious relationship. The conditions of human life have not only been changed, but revolutionized, within the past few hundred years. In former days there was little difference between the dwelling, dress, food, and environment of the chief and those of his retainers. The Indians are to-day where civilized man then was. When visiting the Sioux, I was led to the wigwam of the chief. It was just like the others in external appearance, and even within the difference was trifling between it and those of the poorest of his braves. The contrast between the palace of the millionaire and the cottage of the laborer with us to-day measures the change which has come with civilization.
This change, however, is not to be deplored, but welcomed as highly beneficial. It is well, nay, essential for the progress of the race, that the houses of some should be homes for all that is highest and best in literature and the arts, and for all the refinements of civilization, rather than that none should be so. Much better this great irregularity than universal squalor. Without wealth there can be no Mæcenas. The "good old times " were not good old times. Neither master nor servant was as well situated then as to-day. A relapse to old conditions would be disastrous to both--not the least so to him who serves--and would Sweep away civilization with it. But whether the change be for good or ill, it is upon us, beyond our power to alter, and there fore to be accepted and made the best of. It is a waste of time to criticise the inevitable.
It is easy to see how the change has come. One illustration will serve for almost every phase of the cause. In the manufacture of products we have the whole story. It applies to all combinations of human industry, as stimulated and enlarged by the inventions of this scientific age. Formerly articles Were manufactured at the domestic hearth or in small shops which formed part of the household. The master and his apprentices worked side by side, the latter living with the master, and therefore subject to the same conditions. When these apprentices rose to be masters, there was little or no change in their mode of life, and they, in turn, educated in the same routine succeeding apprentices. There was, substantially social equality, and even political equality, for those engaged in industrial pursuits had then little or no political voice in the State.
But the inevitable result of such a mode of manufacture was crude articles at high prices. To-day the world obtains commodities of excellent quality at prices which even the generation preceding this would have deemed incredible. In the commercial world similar causes have produced similar results, and the race is benefited thereby. The poor enjoy what the rich could not before afford. What were the luxuries have become the necessaries of life. The laborer has now more comforts than the landlord had a few generations ago. The farmer has more luxuries than the landlord had, and is more richly clad and better housed. The landlord has books and pictures rarer, and appointments more artistic, than the King could then obtain.
The price we pay for this salutary change is, no doubt, great. We assemble thousands of operatives in the factory, in the mine, and in the counting-house, of whom the employer can know little or nothing, and to whom the employer is little better than a myth. All intercourse between them is at an end. Rigid Castes are formed, and, as usual, mutual ignorance breeds mutual distrust. Each Caste is without sympathy for the other, and ready to credit anything disparaging in regard to it. Under the law of competition, the employer of thousands is forced into the strictest economies, among which the rates paid to labor figure prominently, and often there is friction between the employer and the employed, between capital and labor, between rich and poor. Human society loses homogeneity.
The price which society pays for the law of competition, like the price it pays for cheap comforts and luxuries, is also great;but the advantage of this law are also greater still, for it is to this law that we owe our wonderful material development, which brings improved conditions in its train. But, whether the law be benign or not, we must say of it, as we say of the change in the conditions of men to which we have referred : It is here; we cannot evade it; no substitutes for it have been found; and while the law may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department. We accept and welcome therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few, and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of the race. Having accepted these, it follows that there must be great scope for the exercise of special ability in the merchant and in the manufacturer who has to conduct affairs upon a great scale. That this talent for organization and management is rare among men is proved by the fact that it invariably secures for its possessor enormous rewards, no matter where or under what laws or conditions. The experienced in affairs always rate the MAN whose services can be obtained as a partner as not only the first consideration, but such as to render the question of his capital scarcely worth considering, for such men soon create capital; while, without the special talent required, capital soon takes wings. Such men become interested in firms or corporations using millions ; and estimating only simple interest to be made upon the capital invested, it is inevitable that their income must exceed their expenditures, and that they must accumulate wealth. Nor is there any middle ground which such men can occupy, because the great manufacturing or commercial concern which does not earn at least interest upon its capital soon becomes bankrupt. It, must either go forward or fall behind : to stand still is impossible. It is a condition essential for its successful operation that it should be thus far profitable, and even that, in addition to interest on capital, it should make profit. It is a law, as certain as any of the others named, that men possessed of this peculiar talent for affair, under the free play of economic forces, must, of necessity, soon be in receipt of more revenue than can be judiciously expended upon themselves; and this law is as beneficial for the race as the others.
Objections to the foundations upon which society is based are not in order, because the condition of the race is better with these than it has been with any others which have been tried. Of the effect of any new substitutes proposed we cannot be sure. The Socialist or Anarchist who seeks to overturn present conditions is to be regarded as attacking the foundation upon which civilization itself rests, for civilization took its start from the day that the capable, industrious workman said to his incompetent and lazy fellow, "If thou dost net sow, thou shalt net reap," and thus ended primitive Communism by separating the drones from the bees. One who studies this subject will soon be brought face to face with the conclusion that upon the sacredness of property civilization itself depends--the right of the laborer to his hundred dollars in the savings bank, and equally the legal right of the millionaire to his millions. To these who propose to substitute Communism for this intense Individualism the answer, therefore, is: The race has tried that. All progress from that barbarous day to the present time has resulted from its displacement. Not evil, but good, has come to the race from the accumulation of wealth by those who have the ability and energy that produce it. But even if we admit for a moment that it might be better for the race to discard its present foundation, Individualism,--that it is a nobler ideal that man should labor, not for himself alone, but in and for a brotherhood of his fellows, and share with them all in common, realizing Swedenborg's idea of Heaven, where, as he says, the angels derive their happiness, not from laboring for self, but for each other,--even admit all this, and a sufficient answer is, This is not evolution, but revolution. It necessitates the changing of human nature itself a work of oeons, even if it were good to change it, which we cannot know. It is not practicable in our day or in our age. Even if desirable theoretically, it belongs to another and long-succeeding sociological stratum. Our duty is with what is practicable now ; with the next step possible in our day and generation. It is criminal to waste our energies in endeavoring to uproot, when all we can profitably or possibly accomplish is to bend the universal tree of humanity a little in the direction most favorable to the production of good fruit under existing circumstances. We might as well urge the destruction of the highest existing type of man because he failed to reach our ideal as favor the destruction of Individualism, Private Property, the Law of Accumulation of Wealth, and the Law of Competition ; for these are the highest results of human experience, the soil in which society so far has produced the best fruit. Unequally or unjustly, perhaps, as these laws sometimes operate, and imperfect as they appear to the Idealist, they are, nevertheless, like the highest type of man, the best and most valuable of all that humanity has yet accomplished.
We start, then, with a condition of affairs under which the best interests of the race are promoted, but which inevitably gives wealth to the few. Thus far, accepting conditions as they exist, the situation can be surveyed and pronounced good. The question then arises, --and, if the foregoing be correct, it is the only question with which we have to deal, --What is the proper mode of administering wealth after the laws upon which civilization is founded have thrown it into the hands of the few ? And it is of this great question that I believe I offer the true solution. It will be understood that fortunes are here spoken of, not moderate sums saved by many years of effort, the returns on which are required for the comfortable maintenance and education of families. This is not wealth, but only competence which it should be the aim of all to acquire.

Post Civil War Industrial Boom

I. Why was there such vast growth so rapidly in the U.S.?

1. War: Why would war encourage industrial growth?

Example #1: Morrill Act (1862)

Example #2: Railroads:
1860: 30,000 miles of r.r.
1864: Congress grants 131 million acres
1910: 240,000 miles of railway

2. Resources: land, raw materials, people,
ideas=booooooom!

1864: 872,000 tons of iron and steel
1919: more than 24 million tons

1860: 20 million tons of coal
1910: 500 million tons of coal

1860: 500,000 barrels of petroleum
1910: 209 million barrels of petroleum

3. Integration:

a. Horizontal Integration:
--monopolize one part of the productive process

Example: meatpacking plants

b. Vertical Integration:
--monopolize all elements of productive process

Example: Andrew Carnegie: mining iron ore, own blast furnaces (factories), own shops, own ships, own railroad and rail lines

4. Mindset:

a. Small Government is Best:
Laissez faire: “let it do”

Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776)

b. Aggressive Business Mentality:
The Robber Barons

Andrew Carnegie

J.P. Morgan

Jay Gould: “Mephistopheles of Wall Street”
(bribed Grant’s brother in law for gold secrets)

Cornelius Van Derbilt:
(steamships and railroads: $100 million)

Gentlemen:
You have undertaken to cheat me. I will not sue you, for law takes too long. I will ruin you.
Sincerely,
CVD
c. Justifying the New World:
How do you justify the world when fabulous wealth and wretched poverty exist so closely together?

William Graham Sumner: Social Darwinism

The New Impoverished City

Rapid Urbanization:
1860: 25 million Americans lived in rural areas

6.2 million in what the Bureau of the Census
called "urban territory" (2500 or more)

1910: 42 million of the 92 million in urban areas

Tenement Buildings:
1879 NYC law declared that every room must have a window and every floor must have a bathroom

Contamination:
1877-Philadelphia: 82,000 privies

Boston Harbor was “one vast cesspool, a threat to all
the towns it washed.”

Crime-Filled:
Murder Rate: 1266 in 1881
7340 in 1898
(an increase of 25 per million people, to 107 per million people)

Women in Workforce:
1/7th of the Paid workforce
(2.6 million of the 17.4 million)
500,000 married, yet they were paid less than
men, especially after 1900 when the “family wage” idea spread.

Immigration:
Newspaper in 1900: "It is well known that nearly every foreigner…goes armed. Some carry revolvers, while many others hide huge ugly knives upon their person."

Senator William Bruce (Maryland):
Immigrants are “indigestible lumps in
the national stomach.”

1890-1900: 3.5 million
1900-1910: 7 million
Ellis Island:

“Such an impulse toward better things there certainly is. The German rag-picker of thirty years ago, quite as low in the scale as his Italian successor, is the thrifty tradesman or prosperous farmer of to-day. The Italian scavenger of our time is fast graduating into exclusive control of the corner fruit-stands, while his black-eyed boy monopolizes the boot-blacking industry in which a few years ago he was an intruder.”
Jacob Riis on social fluidity

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVUXA9ZW0Bw
Ragtime to Jazz

Child Labor:
1900: 700,000 10 and 15 year olds in workforce.

--Monangah, West Virginia, 1907:
Martin Honick

Children Working in the cotton mills (Tennessee Valley)
"They were children only in age…little, solemn pygmy people, whom poverty had canned up and compressed…the juices of childhood had been pressed our…no talking in the mill…no singing…they were more dead than alive when at seven o clock, the Steam Beast uttered the last volcanic howl which said they might go home…in a speechless, haggard, over-worked procession."


What if you do not want to justify the disparity between rich and poor? What could you do?

II. Progressivism:

Mulberry Bend (so dangerous and impoverished, it was destroyed to make the park below)

Reconstruction Outline

I. Reconstruction:
Jourdon Anderson

II. Political Reconstruction:
A. LINCOLN’S PLAN FOR RECONSTRUCTION
B. CONGRESSIONAL RECONSTRUCTION
Both Radicals and Moderates had plans:

1. RADICALS:

Thaddeus Stevens & Charles Sumner
“The foundations of their institutions
must be broken up and re-laid, or all our blood and treasure will have been spent in vain.” (Stevens)
“40 Acres and a Mule”
Was redistribution of land a real option?
Was redistribution of land a good option?

2. MODERATES:
Wade-Davis Bill (“ironclad oath”)
--passed Congress at end of 1864:
--sent to the President and…

C. JOHNSON'S RESTORATION
1. Freedmen's Bureau
2. Black Codes
D. RADICALS STRIKE BACK
1. First Civil Rights Bill (1866)
2. 14th Amendment (1867)
3. First Reconstruction Acts (1867)
4. Tenure of Office Act
5. Fifteenth Amendment
E. The Compromise of 1877
Hayes versus Tilden

III. Why does Reconstruction Matter?
Frederick Douglass (1865):
"Slavery is not abolished until the black man has the ballot."

JACOB RIIS HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVE READING GUIDE:

How to Read How the Other Half Lives:

1.     Read the book quickly. There’s no need to read every word or remember every story.

2.     However, as you read, focus on individual scenes, descriptions, or characters who stand out to you. What makes those parts of the book so gripping? Write down individual page numbers to enhance our discussion.

3.     Read the following discussion questions before reading the book. As you read, look for answers to these issues. You will not be turning these in, but the questions will guide our discussion of the book.

Based on the first chapter, describe tenement life.

What is impoverished about tenement life?

Why do you think Riis writes this work?

What impact do the photos have on your reading of this work? What does Riis hope to achieve through images?

As you read, look for evidence of Riis’ views on assimilation. Does he seem to think assimilation is possible?

COURSE SYLLABUS...

History 232—Tu Th 3:10PM - 5:15PM
Fall 2011
Section 003 CRN 10259
Sci II 179
Office: Faculty Towers 201A
Instructor: Dr. Brett Schmoll
Office Hours: Tues and Thu 1:30-3
…OR MAKE AN APPOINTMENT!!!
Email: bschmoll@csub.edu
Office Phone: 654-6549

Course Description: We will examine the political, social, and cultural foundations of American history from 1870 to the Present. We will cover Reconstruction, the problems of an increasingly urban and industrialized society, and the United States in World Affairs.

Course Reading:
1. Philip Caputo, Rumor of War

2. Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives
3. Robert McElvaine, Down and Out in the Great Depression
4. Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi
5. Recommended: Firsthand America

Grading Scale:
5% Debate on Dropping of the Bomb
10% Participation
25% Writing About Civil Rights
30% Midterm Exam
30% Final Examination

The Blog: If you have questions or comments about this class, or if you want to see the course reader or the syllabus online, just go to http://history232winter2012.blogspot.com/

You need to read this blog this week.
You will also have short readings on the blog. I will announce these in class.

Attendance:
Just to be clear, to succeed on tests and papers you really should be in class. That’s just common sense, right? To pass this class, you may not miss more than two classes. If you miss that third class meeting, you are missing 15% of the quarter. You cannot do that and pass.

Being Prompt:
Get to class on time. Why does that matter? First, it sends the wrong message to your principal grader(that’s me). As much as we in the humanities would like you to believe that these courses are objective (at what time of day did the Battle of the Marne begin?), that is not entirely the case. If you send your principal grader the message that you don’t mind missing the first few minutes and disturbing others in the class, don’t expect to be given the benefit of the doubt when the tests and papers roll around. Does that sound mean? It’s not meant to, but just remember, your actions send signals. Being late also means that someone who already has everything out and is ready and is involved in the discussion has to stop, move everything over, get out of the chair to let you by, pick up the pencil you drop, let you borrow paper, run to the bathroom because you spilled the coffee, and so on. It’s rude. There’s an old saying: better two hours early than two minutes late. Old sayings are good.
So, what are the consequences of persistent tardiness? What do you think they should be? Remember that 10% participation? You are eligible for that grade if you are on time. And no, I’m not the jackass who watches for you to be late that one time and stands at the door and points in your face. If you are late a few (that means three) times, you will lose the entire 10% participation grade. One time tardiness is not a problem precisely because it is not persistent. It’s an accident. But if you are late several times, you will not be able to receive a participation grade above 50%.

The Unforgivable Curse:
Speaking of one time issues, there is something that is so severe, so awful, that if it happens one time, just one time, no warning, no “oh hey I noticed this and if you could stop it that’d be super,” you will automatically lose all 10 percent of the Participation grade. Any guesses? C’mon, you must have some idea. No, it’s not your telephone ringing. If that happens, it’ll just be slightly funny and we’ll move on. It’s a mistake and not intentional, and the increased heart rate and extra sweat on your brow from you diving headfirst into an overstuffed book bag to find a buried phone that is now playing that new Cristina Aguilera ringtone is punishment enough for you. So, what is it, this unforgivable crime? Texting. If you take out your phone one time to send or receive messages you will automatically lose 10% of your course grade. That means, if you receive a final grade of 85%, it will drop to 75%. If you receive a final grade of 75%, it will become a 65%. Why is that? The phone ringing is an accident. Texting is on purpose and is rude. It, in fact, is beyond rude. It wreaks of the worst of our current society. It bespeaks the absolutely vile desire we all have to never separate from our technological tether for even a moment. It sends your fellow classmates and your teacher the signal that you have better things to do. Checking your phone during class is like listening to a friend’s story and right in the middle turning away and talking to someone else. Plus, the way our brains work, you need to fully immerse yourself, to tune your brain into an optimal, flowing machine (see Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s incredible book Flow) that can grasp and can let itself go. Students now tend to see school as a stopover on their way to a career. Brothers and sisters, that’s deadly! I wish that I could pay for you all to quit your jobs and just focus on the mind. I can’t yet do that, but if I could I would, because it’d be worth every penny. Devoting time to the mind and to thinking deeply about your world will change who you are and how you approach your future, your family, your job, and your everything. Is that overstated? I believe it to be true. So, until my stock choices really take off so that I can pay all of your bills, promise me one thing. When you are in class or preparing for class, you have to be fully here. Oh crap, now it’s going to sound like a hippy professor from the 1960s: “I mean, like, be here man, just be here.” Maybe the hippies were on to something. Devote yourself fully to your classes by unplugging from the outside world for awhile.

Participation:
You do not need to be the person who speaks out the most, asks the most questions, or comes up with the most brilliant historical arguments to receive full credit in participation. If you are in class and on time, discuss the issues that we raise, avoid the temptation to nod off, to leave early, or to text people during class (the three easiest ways to lose credit), and in general act like you care, then you will receive a good participation grade! Just being here does not guarantee a 100% participation grade, since you must be regularly actively involved for that to be possible.

Academic Honesty
You are responsible for knowing all college policies about academic honesty. Any student who plagiarizes any part of his or her papers may receive an “F” in the course and a letter to the Dean.

Academic Integrity
The principles of truth and integrity are recognized as fundamental to a community of teachers and scholars. The University expects that both faculty and students will honor these principles and in so doing will protect the integrity of all academic work and student grades. Students are expected to do all work assigned to them without unauthorized assistance and without giving unauthorized assistance. Faculty have the responsibility of exercising care in the planning and supervision of academic work so that honest effort will be encouraged and positively reinforced.
http://www.csub.edu/studentconduct/documents/academicintegrity.pdf

Course Schedule:

1/10 Intro to Reconstruction/Jourdon Anderson/Handout How the Other Half Lives Reading Guide
1/12 Reconstruction/HOMEWORK DUE TODAY: SIGNED STATEMENT

1/17 Industrialism
1/19 New Imperialism/1890s

1/24 Progressivism/McElvaine Reading Guide/How the Other Half Lives Due Today
1/26 World War I/Prohibition/Woman Suffrage/Midterm Review

1/31 Library Project Day
2/2 Harlem Renaissance/Women in the 1920s

2/7 The Great Depression/McElvaine must be read by today
2/9 The New Deal/Handout Coming of Age in Mississippi Reading Guide

2/14 From Quarantine to War/Dropping the Bomb Debate Prep
2/16 Bomb Debate/Post War Conformity

2/21 The Cold War
2/23 Civil Rights/Coming of Age in Mississippi Reading Due

2/28 New Rights Movements/Writing About Civil Rights Prep.
3/1 Writing About Civil Rights(in class essay)

3/6 Political life from Ike to LBJ
3/8 War in Vietnam/Caputo must be read by today

3/13 Student Unrest and Vietnam/
3/15 Watergate and the Turbulent 70s

FINAL EXAM 3/22, 5-7:30