Urban infants in the 1840s had only a 50 percent chance of living to the age of five. Progressive reformers believed that high infant mortality was linked to adulterated and infectious milk, a concern that remained even after New York passed regulation laws. On March 25, 1913, the Committee of Women's Organizations of the New York Milk Committee held a meeting to educate mothers living in the...
In 1867, the National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry was established to unite small farmers around the United States in the aftermath of the Civil War and combat problems facing them. Grangers around the United States began calling for railroad regulation to lower crop freight rates in addition to negotiating better credit rates with local merchants and combating falling crop prices. One local...
During the early 20th century, reformers and activists worked to encourage a variety of social reforms by using communication tools, including photography. Jacob Riis’ photographed tenament houses in New York city, documenting the living conditions of immigrants and the poor. Lewis Hine photographed young workers for the National Child Labor Committee. These men focused on dangerous and unhealthy...
The whiny dulcets tones belonging to presidential hopeful William Howard Taft argued his stance on American Imperialism from a recorded speech given on September 05, 1908 in Hot Springs, Virginia. The recording known as, “Our Foreign Dependencies: Porto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines” comes from the Library of Congress National Jukebox. Recorded on a Victor Talking Machine the recording lasted...
Columbus and his men are on their journey to America, and to their surprise, they seem to find "AYER'S SARSAPARILLA" waiting for them on the shores of the New World. In the play on words, the Victorian Trading Card claims, "Without Doubt the Discovery of America is Ayer's Sarsaparilla. Dr. Ayer's almanac gives the signatures of thousands of sick people who consumed Ayer's Sarsaparilla and fully...
In 1907, the parents of a Native American child Lizzie received a heartbreaking letter. The letter was from the superintendent of the Flandreau Boarding School where Lizzie attended. The Superintendent wrote that Lizzie had died from slow tuberculosis days before the letter was written. In the letter he claimed that he had been away at the time of Lizzie’s death, and was unable to write her mother...
By 1907, the old wooden casino on Belle Isle, built in the late nineteenth century, was set to be torn down, and a new one erected elsewhere. The citizens of the city of Detroit were upset and did not want to see that historic building disappear from the landscape completely. They proposed moving it to the northern section of the island. Officials, on the other hand, opposed this plan. The actual...
The essay, “The History of Yellow Fever”, was written by Philip S. Hench, for the purpose of portraying the history, cause, and tragedies that people experienced when infected with the disease. It also contained information for Americans explaining how Yellow Fever originated and what measures the government took to prevent the disease from resurfacing in later years. The article was written...
Notebook in hand, Florence Danielson roamed the river valleys of Massachusetts in search of her research subjects, the ‘hill folk.’ Like other degenerate families studied by eugenicist field workers in early twentieth-century America, the hill folk were quite a fascinating group—constantly wreaking havoc wherever they settled. Feeblemindedness, alcoholism, and incest, among other deplorable...
Detroit’s playground, Belle Isle, is getting a makeover. It is August 24, 1913, and Detroit City Commissioner William T. Dust has recognized that there is a surplus in dirt in the city. The building of a skyscraper hotel downtown has yielded this surplus, and it is currently an "embarrassment" to the city. What better way to rid of the embarrassment than add it on to Detroit’s beautiful...