Inspired by Mary Shelley's novel about a man-made monster who turned upon its creator, this cartoon depicted the railroad trampling the rights of the American people. Agriculture

With his famously laconic style, President Calvin Coolidge captured the spirit of the 1920s when he announced in a speech before the Society of American Newspaper Editors that "the chief business of the American people is business." Coolidge's aphorism revealed the centrality of commerce to the nation and its culture in the 1920s, even while it concealed some of the wrenching cultural changes that were required to accommodate a commercial civilization. Coolidge, as a son of rural Vermont and small-town Massachusetts, played a key role in reassuring people that the new business order was compatible with traditional American values. In this 1925 address to the New York State Chamber of Commerce, Coolidge mixed new prescriptions for a pro-business government with traditional homilies about the contributions of American business "to the spiritual restoration of the world." He insisted that "traditional" values could fit comfortably into a business civilization.

Known best by his knack for moneymaking, turn-of-the-century steel magnate Andrew Carnegie nonetheless found a moment to pen a one-sided poetic tribute to the "eighth wonder" of the world--steel manufacturing in his Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, plant. This brief poem reflected how he (and other contemporaries) viewed the monumental process of steelmaking. The poem was notable for its use of passive voice and the absence of workers--miners, railroad men, or blast furnace crews--from the process by which "one pound of solid steel" came to be.

With his famously laconic style, President Calvin Coolidge captured the spirit of the 1920s when he announced in a speech before the Society of American Newspaper Editors that "the chief business of the American people is business." Coolidge's aphorism revealed the centrality of commerce to the nation and its culture in the 1920s, even while it concealed some of the wrenching cultural changes that were required to accommodate a commercial civilization. An even more forceful publicist for the view that business and spirituality were compatible was Bruce Barton. The son of a Congregational minister, Barton co-founded one of the nation's largest and best-known advertising agencies. Barton's greatest fame, however, came from his 1925 best-selling book, The Man Nobody Knows, in which he crafted a new vision of Christ and Christianity that was not simply compatible with but organically connected to the business-oriented 1920s. Barton's aggressive efforts to merge business and Christianity may seem comical in the late 20th century, but his exertions were sincerely felt by him and sincerely received by many Americans. Edward E. Purinton's 1921 article, "Big Ideas for Big Business," from the magazine Independent similarly promoted business as "the salvation of the world."

In the decades after the American Revolution, improvements in transportation facilitated the growth of internal commerce in the United States. State and local governments planned turnpikes, roads, and canals, and New York State built the grandest one of the era: the Erie Canal. The Erie Canal was constructed at public expense by thousands of laborers between 1817 and 1825. The canal stretched 364 miles from Albany to Buffalo and linked the new nation's heartlands in the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley with New York City and the Atlantic coastal trade. Nathaniel Hawthorne recorded his travels along the waterway in this 1835 sketch, noting the traffic in goods and people along with the rise in commercial activity along its path. The canal and other improvements, however, also threatened farmers 'abilities to withstand the market's fluctuations and maintain local sufficiency.

William A. Rogers depicts Capital and Labor as evenly matched with Commerce a beleaguered referee on a 1901 cover of Harper's Weekly. Variations on this theme frequently appeared in the Progressive Era's mainstream press. Commerce alternated with other allegorical figures like the nation" or the "public

Traditional craft production centered around an independent master artisan, his journeymen, and the apprentice helpers who worked together in small shops. Apprentices worked alongside masters and received training in the "mysteries of the craft" in exchange for their labor. Journeymen looked forward to becoming proprietors when they accumulated sufficient capital and skill. In his Sketches of Lynn (1880), David Johnson recalled the masculine work culture and small-scale setting of the shoe industry in early-19th century Lynn, Massachusetts. With transportation improvements and growing commercial activity, manufacturing moved from small shops engaged in custom work to larger-scale production of ready-made goods. No area experienced greater dislocation than Lynn, where shops multiplied, the division of labor increased, and some masters opened larger central shops. Less skilled workers, including women and children, replaced journeymen, apprenticeship declined, and the world that Johnson described faded.

New home construction declined dramatically during the Great Depression as rents rose, reaching an all-time high in 1940. A persistent housing shortage continuing into the early 1950s forced families to separate and apartment dwellers to "double-up." The housing reform movement, largely ineffectual in the 1920s and 1930s, gathered strength in the postwar period. Labor and veteran groups pressured Congress and the White House to enact a comprehensive housing policy with money for public housing and continued wartime rent control. President Harry S. Truman, echoing reformers, wrote to Congress, "A decent standard of housing for all is one of the irreducible obligations of modern civilization." Despite opposition from real estate interests, the Housing Act of 1949 passed. Although the Act called for the construction of 810,000 units of public housing over six years--and two additional housing acts in 1961 and 1965 promised substantial increases--by the mid-1960s, more people lived in substandard housing than in 1949. In addition, many blamed public housing itself for destroying neighborhoods and fostering social problems. In the following 1947 testimony before a joint Congressional committee, including Frank L. Sundstrom, Representative of New Jersey, created by anti-housing reform legislators to stall action, New Jersey spokespersons for tenants quoted the proposed Taft-Ellender-Wagner legislation and described housing conditions, while a number of tenants related their own difficult living situations.

Tobacco was promoted in Europe in the 17th century as a cure for a number of ailments, including toothache, fatigue, and joint pains, as well as a calming agent. Smoking for enjoyment, however, was mainly responsible for the growth of the tobacco industry. By the time the following Collier's article was published in 1950, a campaign to warn smokers--who by then made up more than half of the American population--of potential dangerous effects of smoking was underway. Opposed to these efforts, the author argued that scientific attempts to link tobacco products to lung cancer and heart disease had failed and that the antismoking crusade interfered with needed research into more likely cancer causes. In 1951, an important medical study in London concluded that smoking was "an important factor" contributing to lung cancer. Despite a growing antismoking movement, aided by a 1979 Surgeon-General's report linking smoking to heart disease and the classification of nicotine as an addictive drug by the Food and Drug Administration in 1995, over five trillion cigarettes were sold that year. Threatened with state and local class-action lawsuits, the U.S. tobacco industry agreed in 1998 to a consent decree that settled 37 pending cases, quieted future claims, and ended certain types of tobacco advertising.

After the War for Independence, the northern states slowly abolished slavery. However, the rising population of northern free blacks still faced significant obstacles in their struggle to achieve economic and social liberty. African Americans in New England remained concentrated in the seaport cities, often clustered in low-paying jobs. Successful entrepreneurs and skilled traders still faced discrimination as well as opposition from white wageworkers. William J. Brown had been born in 1814 into a free black family in Providence, Rhode Island. His father was a sailor and laborer and his mother was the daughter of an African-American slave and Narragansett Indian woman. William became an artisan and leader in Providence's African-American community. But he described his uphill struggle to find work and obtain respect from his fellow New Englanders in his autobiography Life of William J. Brown of Providence (1883).

For workers at the Pullman Palace Car Company in the 1890s, home was the company town of Pullman, Illinois, and rent was deducted from their wages. While owner George Pullman touted it as a model town, the men and women who labored there during the 1893 depression endured starvation wages, deplorable living and working conditions, and, worst of all, Pullman's paternalistic control over all aspects of their lives. Workers appealed to the American Railway Union (ARU), which organized a nationwide strike and boycott against Pullman. This statement from a Pullman striker, delivered at the June 1894 Chicago convention of the ARU, reflected the depth of the strikers' hatred of their employer and their commitment to the union.

For workers at the Pullman Palace Car Company in the 1890s, home was the company town of Pullman, Illinois, and rent was deducted from their wages. While owner George Pullman touted it as a model town, the men and women who labored there during the 1893 depression endured starvation wages, deplorable living and working conditions, and, worst of all, Pullman's paternalistic control over all aspects of their lives. Workers appealed to the American Railway Union (ARU), which organized a nationwide strike and boycott against Pullman. In this open letter in the Chicago Herald in June 1894, as the strike began, Pullman explained his motives for cutting wages during the economic depression of 1893.

College education was rare in colonial America, mostly intended for young men entering the ministry. Artisans learned the skills and secrets of their trade through an apprenticeship to a master as Benjamin Franklin related in this excerpt about his education as a craftsman from his famous autobiography. After their service they became journeymen, hired for a time while they saved to open a workshop of their own. Franklin's father, with seventeen children, had to plan carefully in order to secure a niche for his youngest child, Benjamin. Printers stood near the top of the mechanical arts because the trade required literacy. Printers, clustered in the port cities, often formed a network of interrelated families; Benjamin's brother James was a master before him. Benjamin quickly learned the printing trade and ventured out into independent activities. Armed with his valuable training and a penchant for independence, he never finished his term of service and instead moved on to ply his trade in Philadelphia and London.

The end of World War II unleashed a new "war" at home--a war that pitted workers against employers. The year following V-J day saw more strikes than any other twelve-month period in American history: 4,630 work stoppages involving 5 million strikers and 120 million days of lost work. One of the most revealing of the postwar confrontations between labor and capital came in the November 1945 strike by 320,000 autoworkers against the nation's largest corporation, General Motors. UAW leader Walter Reuther took a new and radical negotiating stance, arguing that GM could afford to increase wages without increasing prices. In the process, Reuther challenged what had been a fundamental corporate prerogative to set its own prices. GM sharply rejected his demand that they "open the books" and show why they couldn't afford both lower prices and higher wages. That confrontation was captured in this transcript from one of the negotiating sessions.

Beginning in the mid-1760s, colonists began taking to the streets in Boston and other port cities. Crowds of artisans and laborers joined the elite in protesting British policies, although their differing points of view revealed the divisions within colonial society. Protests mounted in 1767 when Britain passed the Townsend Act, which included a series of unpopular taxes. In Boston, resentment and tension also grew over the presence of British troops, quartered in town to discourage demonstrations, who were also looking for jobs. A private seeking work at a ropemakers' establishment sparked a confrontation on Boston's King Street. When some in the crowd pelted the assembled British soldiers, the troops opened fire; five colonists were killed and six wounded. George Robert Twelves Hewes, a Boston shoemaker, participated in many of the key events of the Revolutionary crisis. Over half a century later, Hewes told James Hawkes about his presence at the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party.

The Fair Labor Standards Act, signed into law on June 25, 1938, as the last major piece of New Deal legislation, outlawed child labor and guaranteed covered workers a minimum wage of 40 cents an hour and a maximum 40-hour work week. Although more than 22 million workers benefited, conservative forces in Congress saw to it that the Act exempted many others--including agricultural workers, public employees, and domestic workers--from its provisions. The landmark law, nevertheless, helped establish a precedent for the Federal regulation of work conditions. In the following testimony to a Senate subcommittee, Ruth Green, a worker in an interstate company serving business laundry needs, argued that despite efforts by her union to raise wages, a federal law mandating a minimum wage of at least 75 cents an hour was needed to insure adequate wages during hard times. In addition, she maintained that competition from non-unionized laundries made it difficult for the union to obtain "decent contracts." On October 26, 1949, President Harry S. Truman signed into law the Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1949, which established the new minimum at 75 cents an hour. Some groups, however, remained excluded from the Act"s protection.

In the early nineteenth century a woman in the emerging middle class was often dependent on her father or husband's position. Many women, however, chose or were forced to seek independence and autonomy in their work and family lives. Anne Carson was one such person. With an alcoholic father and a timid mother, her middle status in port city Philadelphia was always shaky. She attended one of the first coeducational academies in the new nation but her unemployed father forced the 15-year-old to marry a 41-year-old ship captain. Her husband's frequent abuse and absences left her without financial support, and Anne worked as a seamstress and opened a china shop to support her parents, siblings, and four children. She achieved modest success, but economic distress after the War of 1812 and her involvement in a murder case sent her spiraling into Philadelphia's underclass. In an effort to earn money she published her autobiography, where she recorded the variety of work available to women in the commercial cities of the early Republic.

In colonial America, apprenticeship was the usual means by which young men entered a trade and master craftsmen obtained the labor necessary to staff their workshops. A young man's guardian signed an indenture (contract) for a period of time and the apprentice in turn was to receive food, lodging, and knowledge of "the mysteries of the trade," or traditional craft practices. For young John Fitch of Connecticut in the 1760s, anxious "to learn a trade" and "subsist myself in a genteel way when I came for myself," that exchange was no simple matter. The Cheney brothers, Connecticut clockmakers who were innovated in making moving wooden clocks that were far cheaper than the usual brass ones, were not eager to share either their dinner or their knowledge of clockmaking with Fitch. He found himself caught between his father's and his master's patriarchal expectations of receiving his labor, while he had to worry about how he would support himself when he came of age.

Urban artisans experienced dramatic changes in the second quarter of the 19th century. New York and other cities were destinations of choice for many rural mechanics as well as those coming from overseas. Upon arrival they found workshops in great flux as traditional social relations among master, journeyman, and apprentice were being transformed into an employer-employee relationship. In some crafts, such as cabinetmaking, change came more slowly because of the complexities of fashioning large case furniture. In other trades, such as tailoring, tiny sweatshops started to dot the city streets. A new working class was coming into being, often with a variety of religions and backgrounds, and they organized to contest these and other changes in work conditions and compensation. This anonymous account from a British periodical in 1845 related the experience of a British cabinetmaker in New York in the 1830s; he eventually returned home.