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.