Franklin D. Mitchell

I read this in about 8 hours. For the American history buff it is a wonderful trip through the first half of the 20th century. It was edited at a textbook and as such does an excellent job. There are 3 parts to each section.The editors introduce the period, there are several secondary sources from then current literature and finally primary sources. There are classics such as selected important state of the union speeces, Dubois article from the Crisis on the aims of the Negro, 1915, Calvin Coolidges"Declaration for Economic Indepencence, presented to a group of DAR ladies sounds like the 2000 Republican platform."We want the people to be owners of their property in their own right",even the editors writing in 1969 introduce the term "trickle-down theory of government"20 years before Reagan.At the very end is a 1965 New York Times article saying get out of Vietnam now placed right after Johnson's Great Society speech."Man, Work and the Automated Feast" by Seligman,1962, on computers already states they have led to unemployment The editors introduce the article by saying 40,000 to 60,000 were laid off that year, presumably because of computerization. Seligman "Between 1953 and 1960 a million and a half jobs disappeared. During that time output rose 65 per cent while production and maintenance jobs declined." Perhaps the most remarkable sentence anticipates a computer function just now becoming common in retail stores, self-checkout.The article is preceded by a 1958 secondary literature article Leuchtenburg "The Second Industrial Revolution" which explained that when Ford opened his Highland Park plant in 1922 time need to produce a car declined from 14 house per car in 1921 to 93 minutes per car using the endless chain conveyor. By the end of the decade there were 5 cars per family in the United States. Even the Oakies refugeed in cars.… (altro)