Imperialism and Industrialism

Question #1:

Who's Responsible for the Destruction of the Main? 

America was trying to expand as a new world power, which meant we were on an Imperialist mission in 1898. Our country was looking for a reason (basically an excuse), to declare war on Spain, because Spain owned territory that the U.S. wanted. You could say that many people had motive to sink the ship. Anyone or any group that wanted war between these two countries would be targets of speculation. There were the "yellow-journalists" of America, who thought that they could generate news rather than report it. Then there were the Spanish military officers who resented American interference in Spanish-Cuban business. There were others that could be blamed as well, but weren't as prominent of a threat. Most American's immediately jumped to the conclusion that it was Spain who was responsible...due to the reason I wrote about above.

The modern 1976 belief disagrees with the initial belief that the Spanish sunk the Main. The sinking was re-investigated by the official Navy. The inquiry concluded that the sinking was due to a boiler explosion; that it wasn't the Spanish but simply fate. To date, this is the overall consensus when it comes to what happened on that fateful day. Although I guess it really doesn't matter what caused the accident. Whether Spain was behind it or not, the sinking of the battleship Maine in Havana harbor ended up being the catalyst that led America into the one-sided Spanish-American War in 1898.

Online sources:
1) http://library.thinkquest.org/18355/the_sinking_of_the_uss_maine.html
2) http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq71-1.htm
3) http://beyondthebubble.stanford.edu/assessments/explosion-uss-maine

Book page: pg. 308

History Links

Websites that seem interesting:
1) http://www.loc.gov/index.html
2) http://chnm.gmu.edu/tah/
3) http://www.pbs.org/
4) http://www.history.com/games/action-adventure/warriors/play

Books:
1) Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
2) To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee 
3) Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

Jungle Project

1) Upton Sinclair believed you must have certain qualities to succeed in Packingtown. One of these qualities was the idea that you had to be a "pace-maker", someone who is able to keep up to the pace of the work environment. If you failed to do this, there was a long line of people waiting for your job.

2) The plant owners main goal was to maintain their profits. Factories continuously oppressed their workers through capitalism and treated the animals terribly before they were killed. Anything they did was justified to the owners as long as they maintained the profits.

3) When Sinclair says "…there was no place in it where a man counted for anything against a dollar", he's saying how there was no decency between the workers and no one was loyal to each other. Everyone was there to make money and not lose their job, they didn't care about the others. The workers wanted to keep their place in "The Jungle" and didn't care about being friendly and having allies.

The government still relies on meat packaging today, making new safety and health regulations a priority. Years ago when meat packaging was handled so poorly, many people got sick and injured. That's why it's necessary to have guardrails, ventilation, etc, to keep people safe from risk.

Lumiere Brothers

As photography was starting to progress in the middle 1800's, the Lumiere Brothers Auguste and Louis, saw financial opportunity in the photographic process. Louis quickly discovered a process which assisted the development of photography...a 'dry plate' process. Soon, the two brothers and their father Antoine, were recognized as successful businessmen; producing about 15 million plates a year. Because of this, Edison's Peephole Kinetoscope was revealed to Antoine in Paris. He gave it to his sons, telling them how they should work on improving it because the prices at which Edison sold the Kinetoscope were unfair for the quality of the product.

Identifying the two main problems with Edison's invention, its size and how only one person could experience the film at a time, the brothers set to work on making an improved version. Soon after, in 1895, Auguste and Louis had invented the Cimematographe, by combining camera with a printer and projector. It was lightweight, hand-cranked and incorporated the principle of intermittent movement. They began showing the films by having screenings for invited guests only, but soon excitement surrounding this new technology spread and the public became interested. Because of all this excitement and discussion involving the brothers invention, they began to open theaters to show their films to the people. These theaters became known as cinemas. By the first four months of the brothers starting to share their films with the public, theaters had opened up in London, Brussels, Belguim and New York. Their film "La Sortie des ouvriers de l’usine Lumière" is considered to be the first motion picture. Auguste's and Louis last big contribution to the world of film, as if starting the cinematic explosion wasn't enough, was the production of the first practical color photography process...the Autochrome Plate.

Sources:
1) http://earlycinema.com/pioneers/lumiere_bio.html
2) http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1403398/Lumiere-brothers

Life in the Camps

While the railroads were quickly forming, entrepreneurs eager to take advantage of the idle labor force rushed in. Everything you could imagine, from gambling houses to brothels, sprang up to accompany the needs of the railroaders...while taking all their cash from them at the same time. Eager for the comfort of this new outpost, miners and traders alike gathered around the towns that featured a railroad running through it. Because these towns grew to become boomtowns, they grew without law, just as the other convergence points did during that time. This created a spirt of utter loss of control and reason...a time of anarchy.

These colonies were extremely portable. As soon as the railroaders began building towards new towns and opportunities, the agents of these enterprises could easily pack up and follow along. Because of the loss of profit, this typically left the past towns they had stayed in dried up. All throughout the Union Pacific, prospective towns were made into lots, which were then sold to emigrants carried West by the railroad. A few of the camps turned into grand enterprises, such as Cheyanne, which didn't produce as much rough and tumble as the other "Hell on Wheels" towns.

These towns were called "Hell on Wheels", because the people who escorted the railroads advance were considered immoral and criminal. It got to the point that the town of Laramie, Wyoming had murders occurring nightly and overall anarchy happening in the streets. The characters who started these camps created a time of scoundrels, retaliation and misbehavior.

Civil War Prison Camps

The number of men that perished in civil war prisons is a causality rate greater then any battle in the war. An estimated 56,000 men died in the prison camps. This high rate of mortality was created by the combination of a couple different things. The mental tole the camps had on the prisoners, the horrible conditions and the ignorance of how to deal with the number of men contained...all of these were contributing factors.

One of the most dangerous diseases for the camps prisoners was depression. Many suffered from this because of the mental toll that being contained in the camps had on them. Starvation and poor sanitation  inflamed outbreaks of diseases such as smallpox, malaria and cholera. If sores were left untreated they would have to be amputated...clearly causing more mental anxiety. The horrible conditions of the camps are thought to be worse then those on the battlefield.

Overcrowding was common and there was a major lack of sewer and sanitation. These factors caused disease-ridden camps that spread filth. The meager provisions that the prisoners were given, lacked vegetables and fruit and often lead to outbreaks of scurvy and other diseases. Sometimes, they got so hungry, inmates were forced to hunt rats to find something to eat. The hundreds of thousands of men imprisoned were too much for the camps to handle and lead to oppressive conditons.

Sources:
1) http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/07/0701_030701_civilwarprisons.html
2) http://www.spingola.com/CivilWarCamps.html
3)http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/warfare-and-logistics/warfare/andersonville.html