George E. Johnson 's ' Sam Patch : The Famous Jumper Uses A Mill Worker 's Personal Background

Patch continued to jump off many more waterfalls which soon led him to his stardom. Patch illuminated many changes in American history due to his career as a falls jumper. Johnson argues that, “Sam inhabited and helped shape an America in which things like factory work and modern celebrity were beginning to happen” (Johnson, 2003, p.1).

Rebecca Harding Davis wrote “Life in the Iron Mills” in the mid-nineteenth century in part to raise awareness about working conditions in industrial mills. With the goal of presenting the reality of the mills’ environment and the lives of the mill workers, Davis employs vivid and concrete descriptions of the mills, the workers’ homes, and the workers themselves. Yet her story’s realism is not objective; Davis has a reformer’s agenda, and her word-pictures are colored accordingly. One theme that receives a particularly negative shading in the story is big business and the money associated with it. Davis uses this negative portrayal of money to emphasize the damage that the single-minded pursuit of wealth works upon the humanity of those

Fitzgerald depicts 1920’s America as an age of decline in traditional social and moral values; primarily evidenced by the cynicism, greed and the relentless yet empty pursuit of prosperity and pleasure that various characters in The Great Gatsby exhibit. He presents a society in which uninhibited consumerism, materialism and an all-pervading desire for wealth have perverted the previously righteous qualities of the American Dream, corrupting it in the process.

social history with economic tendencies, The Shoemaker and the Tea Party incorporates many subfields of history; such as social, economic, and cultural histories successfully. The aspect of social history and the explanation of the lower classes propelling events of the American Revolution was particularly effective and fresh. Young uses members of lower classes to uncover various risings and rebellions. Members of the elite believed that the lower class were ramblers and were uncivilized. The radicalism of the common man was swept under the rug. Young mirrors the writing of E.P. Thompson’s, The Making of the English Working Class. Both writers are meticulous in their interpretation of the common man. Furthermore, Thompson and Young examine just how much class conflict effects the constructs of history.

During the late 1800’s, a pervasive sense of melancholy permeated throughout the forgotten, dreary Midwestern United States. While the industrial revolution boosted the economy on the coasts, Midwestern farmers were victims of deflationary debt increases, exorbitant shipping and railroad rates, a high protective tariff, and a government that for the most part ignored them.1 Desperate circumstances moved the everyday American farmers to join together and voice their grievances. Instead of seeking federal aid or economic relief, they attempted to use the power of the ballot to achieve their goals.1 The united group of farmers used the Populist Party as a springboard to launch their complaints and eventually got their candidate, William Jennings Bryan, nominated for the presidential election of 1896 by the Democratic Party. L. Frank Baum, a newspaper writer who lived in a small prairie town in South Dakota, experienced the populist wave firsthand, attending Bryan’s famous “Cross of Gold” speech in Chicago, and subtly incorporated many aspects of Bryan’s campaign into his children’s novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.2 Despite his own claim that “this novel was written solely for the entertainment of the children of today”, several historians have discovered that the book clearly reflects the culture of the time period in which it was written.3 By symbolically representing the struggles of the everyday working man, Bryan’s political enemies, and the campaign for free silver, Baum

Although there are many reason the Jacksonian period of 1824-1848 has not always been celebrated as the period of the “common man,” because it didn't live up to certain expectations such as women, Indians and slaves not having rights. Yet, the period should still be celebrated as the era of the “common man” because it lived up to its expectations by the significant impact it had on America's economic development, politics and reform movements.

In the late 1700’s and early 1800’s the United States was in a transformation from the Jeffersonian vision of an agricultural nation, into Alexander Hamilton’s vision of an industrial America. The book Sam Patch, the Famous Jumper gives a good idea of what America was like during the Early Republic period. The industrial life would turn America into a country that is dependent on the work of manufactories.

Accurately established by many historians, the capitalists who shaped post-Civil War industrial America were regarded as corrupt “robber barons”. In a society in which there was a severe imbalance in the dynamics of the economy, these selfish individuals viewed this as an opportunity to advance in their financial status. Thus, they acquired fortunes for themselves while purposely overseeing the struggles of the people around them. Presented in Document A, “as liveried carriage appear; so do barefooted children”, proved to be a true description of life during the 19th century. In hopes of rebuilding America, the capitalists’ hunger for wealth only widened the gap between the rich and poor.

Paul Johnson utilizes monograph to recount the story of Sam Patch, an intoxicated working class spinner who got praised for leaping off waterfalls in the late 1820s. In spite of the fact that the chronicled record is spotty, Johnson arranges Patch inside an arrangement of more extensive subjects dependent upon the areas of his bounced. To start with, experiencing childhood in the factory town of Pawtucket, Johnson tells an account of seized patriarchy: Sam's father was a craftsman shoemaker who lost his business in the face of industrialization. This was some piece of a more extensive story of the rise of compensation work and diminishing area holding, both of which served to undermine the control and position of fathers. After the grown-up Sam Patch moves to Paterson, NJ, he does his first public/political hops. To begin with, he bounced to undermine the opening festival of a center privileged nature hold assembled by a neighborhood ambitious person who was attempting to prohibit the working population from his more cultured ideas of relaxation. Johnson utilizes the fairly interesting story of Sam Patch and his ascent to celebrity to investigate various expansive progressions happening in America throughout this time period. Industrialization, Rise of popular, self-made celebrity culture, Sam Patch as Jacksonian democracy - Whig vision vs. Democratic vision, Rise of wage labor mirroring decline of patriarchy are all wide-ranging changes that happen during the late

The industrial revolution introduced many new technology and improved our economic system. There have been a large increase in manufacture and machine tools since then. This led to better transportation, steam powered factories, consumer goods, a large workforce, and labour conditions. During the 1870’s , many financial issues had arise in the United States of America and in many European countries. Due to the financial crises that arise , it led to a major depressing era in history that is called the Panic of 1873. In “Standing at Armageddon” written by Nell Irvin Painter, the author discusses the progressive era and the United States economic crisis , as well as, social status during the ninetheeth century. Painter explains on how the high class white people owned most of the United States industry and due to their wealth, they owned fifty-one percent of the properties in America. They were the wealthiest one percent of the United States. There were different layers of wealth and social status which also integrates with race and ethnicity. Those who were wealthy in America weren’t the ones working hard and getting their hands dirty. Many low class were immigrants, women and blacks who worked in factories and were receiving low wages and poor work conditions. The low class owned only 1.2 percent of the properties in America. This caused major issues in the united states because the workers formed

Many from the working class were happy with President Jackson’s endeavors to ensure the protection of their equal economic opportunity from the rich. They believed that Jackson was a true hero of the common man which can be seen in 'The Working Men's Declaration of Independence’ of 1829 (Document A). This was modeled off of the Declaration of Independence, George Henry Evans claims that caring for the future, and acts of self-defense, decides the necessity Democrats, and their representatives, prevented dangerous combinations to destabilize the indestructible and fundamental freedoms. Proving that working men did view Jackson as a true hero to the common man and that Jackson followed through with his ideas. Which shows that it came as no surprise

At the same time, as we learned in class, America’s population grew because of labor mobility. People began to migrate from rural to urban areas, and from Europe to North America, in search of better economic opportunities, and to improve their lives. The job market became more and more competitive Hubert Gutman’s “Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America 1815-1919” sheds light on the struggle of farmers and tradesmen who were forced into unskilled labor positions during the industrial revolution and the many new immigrants that were finding their way to America Gutman states, “A factory worker in New

In the period of the 1920’s, there was a certain status of wealth that was difficult to achieve. There were two societal classes consisting of those with wealth from prior generations, and those who worked to earn it themselves. Tom, Daisy, and Nick, who represented the old money society did not have to work hard, unlike Gatsby which he represented the new money and they had to work to earn money. People like Gatsby, who gained their wealth on their own often fought for the approval from the upper class who inherited their wealth. Rather than having new money and old money, people who tried achieving the American Dream and ended up in failure usually they end up like George and Myrtle Wilson In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the notion that social norms in the upper class depict the idea that being apart of it was impossible unless they were born in it was expressed through Daisy’s rejection of Gatsby because of the corrupt way in which he gained his wealth, making his American Dream unattainable.

The laboring poor’s leisure activity was brief, casual, and non-commercial. Amusement was and had to be cheap. It mostly consisted of walks, visiting friends, and reading the penny press. The people of the Lower East Side entertained with sights of interest and penny pleasures such as organ grinders and buskers,

Horace McCoy's harsh depiction of a marathon dance contest can be read as a stinging critique of unrestricted free enterprise. McCoy himself was no Marxist, but his novel seems to echo socialist concerns about the unregulated economy that was in many ways responsible for the conditions that led to the Great Depression. It would be difficult to argue that the novel makes this case openly, but it is not difficult to see how such a theme might work its way into the fabric of the narrative without the author's conscious effort. The stock market crash of 1929 and the disastrous economic conditions that followed cast grave doubts on the ability of the unrestricted marketplace to serve the public interest. They Shoot Horses, Don't They presents