Essay Assignments and Research Links

SUGGESTED ESSAY TOPICS

First Essay assignment:  due end of second week:  review the documents on child labor and urban reform below and answer and reflect on the following problem:

Why was there a movement for reform in the early 1900s?  Why was child labor in particular a subject of concern for reformers?  What was the form and presentation for documenting these conditions that were chosen by Lewis Hine and others?

For example, go through the archive of photographs of Lewis Hine's photographic documentary project in the early 1900s at the New York Public Library 

I've chosen a representative photograph from this collection and posted it here:  We'll need to review both the typed caption card above and the photograph below to understand the shocking reality of conditions Hine is documenting.
Fig. 1   Lewis Hine, B&W photograph of a 7 year old child shucking oysters
Read the typed caption card above typed 1913
Source:  New York Public Library Digital Archive



 Primary Sources on the decade of 1900 http://www.vlib.us/amdocs/index.html#1900

  • Child Labor and Reform
A good summary website on Child Labor as a problem for American History
National Child Labor Organization http://www.nationalchildlabor.org/
Lewis Hines - photographer of child labor conditions

  • The Panic of 1907 and Financial Reform

Economic History Encyclopedia entry, “The Panic of 1907”  

A link to the Pujo Commision report, otherwise known as "Money Trust Investigation: Investigation of Financial and Monetary Conditions in the United States Under House Resolutions Nos. 429 and 504 : 1912-1913." http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/publications/montru/
In 1912, a special subcommittee was convened by the Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee, Arsene P. Pujo. Its purpose was to investigate the "money trust," a small group of Wall Street bankers that exerted powerful control over the nation's finances. The committee's majority report concluded that a group of financial leaders had abused the public trust to consolidate control over many industries. The Pujo Committee report created a climate of public opinion that lead to the passage of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914.
This report provided the evidence for Louis Brandeis, Other People's Money (1914)

  • Labor on the West Coast and in Astoria:

On Reserve:  Paul George Hummasti, Finnish radicals in Astoria, Oregon, 1904-1940 : a study in immigrant socialism  (1979)
On reserve:  Remembering union town [videorecording] : Finnish-Americans in Astoria, 1918-1942 

Labor and the Finns of Astoria, Oregon: The Effects of the War on an Immigrant Community Author(s): P. George Hummasti Source: International Migration Review, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Autumn, 1977), pp. 334-349
The Seattle General Strike (February 1919): http://depts.washington.edu/labhist/strike/
Lumber workers on the West Coast

Darius Kinsey Photographs from University of Washington http://content.lib.washington.edu/kinseyweb/index.html

The Farm Labor Strikes and their Suppresion 1933-1936 in Salinas http://www.farmworkers.org/strugcal.html
History of the Farm Worker Movement as told by Fred Ross, Sr. in 1974http://clnet.ucla.edu/research/chavez/themes/ufw/history1.html
San Francisco General Strike of 1934 as reported by Paul Taylor http://newdeal.feri.org/survey/34405.htm
Recommended on Reserve:  Victoria Ruiz, Cannery Women, Cannery Lives:  Mexican women, unionization, and the California food processing industry 1930-1950.
  • The League of Nations

Those students interested in how citizens outside the major powers viewed the League may benefit from looking at J.C. Coyajee, India and the League of Nations (1932), available from the Internet Archive at http://www.archive.org/details/indiaandtheleagu020279mbp . Coyajee presents a rational discussion of the merits of League membership for Asian states that have been under colonialism or are independent.
Selective League of Nations research websites: http://www.indiana.edu/~league/  
Link to documents of the League of Nations: http://www.indiana.edu/~league/sites_documents.htm 
WHO Historical Collection Documents:  Includes documents on malaria and other public health efforts by the League of Nations  http://www.who.int/library/collections/historical/en/index4.html
The archived collection of documents of the League of Nations is maintained by the UN Office at Geneva (UNOG):http://www.unog.ch/library/archives/faq.htm

  • The Great Depression 1929-1941
Main page and index (you can search this by location to find photographs of Pacific Northwest, including Clatsop County and the North Coast.
UCLA's Lee Ohanian: Hoover, Roosevelt and the Great Depression (Causes of the Great Depression - market failures of supply and demand.  These market failures were a result of well intended but badly designed policies by Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_YMR1Gk2JU
Conversations with History - Interview with David Kennedy, author of Freedom From Fear http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2epzw9AWcrM



  • Kennedy Assasination and the Deep Politics of Crisis

National Achives database of documents http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/
Peter Dale Scott website, articles and book on Deep Politics and the Death of JFK http://www.peterdalescott.net/B-IV.html
See book by Robert Dallek in CCC library

The US and Vietnam
A good historical archive of documents, including the Kennedy NSAM No. 263 directive on 10/11/1963 to withdraw advisors is at http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/vietnam.htm
Internet Modern Sourcebook - Asia in the 20th Century - go to Vietnam Sectionhttp://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook52.html
Vassar University research site on Vietnam http://vietnam.vassar.edu/abstracts/index.html
Texas Tech research site http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/
Comparing US troop levels with Iraq and Afghanistan (Congressional Research Service Report)http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R40682.pdf




Supplemental and Suggested Readings:
John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929 (1955). (On reserve)
Robert D. Johnston, The Radical Middle Class:  Populist Democracy and the Question of Capitalism in Progressive Era Portland, Oregon.  (2003)  (On Reserve)
Philip Agee and Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, (1941)
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and the film of the same title by John Ford, (1940).
Ardis Cameron, Looking for America: The Visual Production of Nation and People.  (Wiley-Blackwell, 2005) (On reserve)
Jeremy Suri Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente (Harvard University Press, 2003). 

Internet Sources and Public Open Library Archives:
Writings of Jane Addams:  founder of the Hull House for homeless in Chicago
The New Deal Stage: Selections from the Federal Theater Project, 1935-1939
The Federal Theatre Project was one of five arts-related projects established during the first term of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt under the Works Progress Administration (WPA).
Voices from the Dust Bowl: The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection
Archive of American Folk Song (now the Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center).
A History of Jazz before the 1930s
Index to the National Civic Foundation Records at the New York Public Library

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