Life in the Iron-Mills

This is a rather depressing story of the life of Iron peddlers in the mid eighteenth century. Wolfe, who is Welsh, is the center of attention for the novel. He is described as a thin ghastly, and very feminine man. He is young and rather unpopular among his co workers since he has been slightly educated and has a hobby for creating sculpture. Deborah is also a main character in the story. She is a disfigured hunchback that is in love with Wolfe. She brings food to him every night as a token of her love. Wolfe is disgusted by her physical qualities yet never the less treats her kindly.
One Saturday night, just before his shift is over, a small group of educated men take shelter from the pelting rain in his work station. As he is closing up, they notice his sculpture of a naked muscular working women. When they inquire to the name of it, he replies Hunger. This puzzles the group and they discuss his work and potential for factory workers with"souls".
Wolfe recognizes the group as being a the overseer, Clarke,Kirby, one of the mill owners, and one of the local physicians May. There are two he does not recognize but is completely fascinated with. One appears to be a newspaper report and more notably is Michell. For some reason Wolfe can not keep his eyes of Michell. He must study him to see how a man of a nobler class and stature could be different from himself. HE feels hopeless and realizes that he could never get out of his condition. When they do ask him about his statue, the tiniest hint hope to get out begins to form.
I find this story so far to be really depressing in the condition of the mills in which the story takes place. I'm sure that the book is targeted to aid in the reformation movement and working class rights and eventually labor unions. The first part of the book told a history of the author and the time period to help us understand the context of what the book was written under. The author grew up in close proximity and first hand could describe these conditions so they are pretty accurate.

The Industrial Revloution and the Impact of Rail Roads on Early America

I found the Stowell paper to be very interesting in the way it portrayed American life in the eighteen hundreds. During the antebellum period in our history, America became increasingly industrial. The paper gave statistical figures from an industrial census that showed how much certain American towns expanded during the revolution. I found it interesting how Buffalo, Albany, and Syracuse were some ranked as some of the biggest cities in America during this time. When rail road technology began to appear in America, the public feared how it would impact their life. at first they were awed st the sight of these massive new marvels of technology. However, they quickly became a nuisance. Property owners did not want trains running through the main streets of towns in front of there houses. They noise was bearable at first as only a two or three trains would run through a day. However, when second lines were added to improve train traffic flow, trains were running through on eleven minute intervals in some towns. Another strange statistic that Stowell brought up was the death toll caused by the train. It seemed so unreasonable that Americans were this stupid that they could be killed in such numbers by trains. the figures stated that people were trying to jump trains which was apparently popular among young men of the time and would get killed when they missed and got ran over. Also people standing on the tracts for some reason could not hear the massive ton'age of metal coming and get destroyed. It is amazing how many people died and all of the injuries that occurred. Then it went into indirect deaths such as the boy who tried to cross the tracks in his laden wagon and the jolt or going over the tracks sent him head over heals in front of his own cart which quickly reduced him to a memory. What is seriously wrong with Americans of this time? I do agree with separating tracks from main city centers because they are definitely a noise nuisance.

t2

We were told to watch the terminator two for class on Wednesday. I have seen this movie around ten years ago and seeing it again under the context of this course, i interpret it completely differently. The Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court showed us how technology brought back in time would ream mayhem on civilization. The Yankee's new ideas brought him in control of society. When i watched terminator two i realized how technology could lead to complete disaster. By creating an evolutionary self thinking computer chip Miles Dyson inadvertently causes the destruction of man kind in the feature. The chip will gradually evolve and become a mind of its own and people will lose control of it. The movie opens with the final battle between humans and machines with the machines emerging victorious. The humans send back a robot as a last effort to destroy the original chip and as a response the machines send back a robot to kill the leader of the human resistance while he is a child. Of course the humans inferior robot manages to out play the machine liquid metal killing machine and succeed in destroying the first evolutionary microchip that really is not that micro.

Ragtime

We started a new novel this last week called Ragtime. It is a story from the turn of the century that follows the lives and interactions between several people. There is a well off afluent family who's father goes off on an exploration to the north pole. The brother in law of the father is a single man that is obsessed with a celebrity Evilyn. Evelyn's husband kills her lover and is sent to jail. She absolutly hates her husband but she pleeds his inocense for lump sum of money. She eventually gets involved with the anarchest movement and she meets the brother in law. At this point the book has gotten ptretty inapropriate. If this was written earlier and not in such a free time as the mid 70s I do not think the novel would have been such a hit. The book depcts some really perverted scenes that at the turn of the century in a very conservative time would have been outragous.