Read Online Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States by Dave Barry - Free Book Online Page B
Book: Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States by Dave Barry
Read Free Book Online
Authors: Dave Barry
Tags: Humor, United States, Fiction, General, History, Political, Essay/s, Topic, Parodies, Form, United States - History
Ads: Link
it works!” he used to say, over and over, until finally somebody, we think his wife, shot him in the head with a revolver, invented by Samuel Colt.
McCormick’s invention was so successful that by the early 1870s the Midwest was disappearing under an enormous mound of reaped wheat, and it became clear that some kind of efficient method was needed to get it to the big cities, where it could be converted into sandwiches, which had been invented earlier in England by Samuel Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato. This caused Congress to authorize work on the first transcontinental railroad corporation, Amtrak. Two work crews began laying rails, one starting on the East Coast and the other on the West Coast. It was hard going. The crews endured broiling heat and bitter cold, often simultaneously. But they persevered, and finally, on October 8, the two crews met at Promontory Point, Utah, where, in a moving and historic ceremony, top railroad executives gathered to explain to them that they were supposed to be nailing the rails down, for God’s sake. But even this setback did not prevent women and minority groups from achieving many notable achievements.
THE RISE OF HEAVY INDUSTRY
Around this time heavy industry started to rise, thanks to the work of heavy industrialists such as Andrew “Dale” Carnegie, who made a fortune going around the country holding seminars in which he taught people how to Win friends by making steel. Another one was John D. Rockefeller, who invented oil and eventually created a monopoly, culminating in 1884 when he was able to put hotels on both Park Place and Boardwalk. This made him so rich that everybody started hating him, and he was ultimately forced to change his name to “Exxon.”
As heavy industrialism became more popular, large horrible factories were built in eastern cities. The workers—often minority women and children—toiled under grueling, dangerous conditions for twelve hours a day, seven days a week, for an average weekly salary of only $1.80, out of which they had to “voluntarily” give 85 cents to the United Fund. On top of this, the factory workers were subjected to one of the most cruel and inhumane labor concepts ever conceived of by the mind of industrial man: vending-machine food. The suffering this caused can only be imagined by us fortunate modern corporation employees, but we can get some idea of what it was like by reading this chilling excerpt from a nineteenth-century New York factory worker’s diary:
Nobody knows where the food comes from, or even if it
really is food. There is a machine that dispenses liquids
that are allegedly “coffee,” “tea,” “hot chocolate,” and
even “soup,” which all come from the same orifice and all
taste exactly the same. Another machine dispenses bags
containing a grand total of maybe three potato chips each,
and packages of crackers smeared with a bizarre substance
called “cheez,” which is the same bright-orange color as
marine rescue equipment. The machine for some reason is
constructed in such a way that it drops these items from a
great height, causing the contents, already brittle with
age, to shatter into thousands of pieces. Also half the
time it just eats your money, and forget about getting a
refund …
Conditions such as these resulted in the Labor Movement, the most important leader of which was Samuel Gompers. And even if he wasn’t the most important, he definitely had the best name. We could just say it over and over: Gompers Gompers Gompers. This would be an excellent name for a large dog (Such as a Labrador retriever.). “Gompers!” we can just hear ourselves yelling. “You put that Federal Express man down right now!” Nevertheless it was to be a long, hard struggle before the Labor Movement was to win even minimal concessions from the big industrialists—years of strikes and violence and singing traditional Labor Movement protest songs such as “Take This Job and
McCormick’s invention was so successful that by the early 1870s the Midwest was disappearing under an enormous mound of reaped wheat, and it became clear that some kind of efficient method was needed to get it to the big cities, where it could be converted into sandwiches, which had been invented earlier in England by Samuel Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato. This caused Congress to authorize work on the first transcontinental railroad corporation, Amtrak. Two work crews began laying rails, one starting on the East Coast and the other on the West Coast. It was hard going. The crews endured broiling heat and bitter cold, often simultaneously. But they persevered, and finally, on October 8, the two crews met at Promontory Point, Utah, where, in a moving and historic ceremony, top railroad executives gathered to explain to them that they were supposed to be nailing the rails down, for God’s sake. But even this setback did not prevent women and minority groups from achieving many notable achievements.
THE RISE OF HEAVY INDUSTRY
Around this time heavy industry started to rise, thanks to the work of heavy industrialists such as Andrew “Dale” Carnegie, who made a fortune going around the country holding seminars in which he taught people how to Win friends by making steel. Another one was John D. Rockefeller, who invented oil and eventually created a monopoly, culminating in 1884 when he was able to put hotels on both Park Place and Boardwalk. This made him so rich that everybody started hating him, and he was ultimately forced to change his name to “Exxon.”
As heavy industrialism became more popular, large horrible factories were built in eastern cities. The workers—often minority women and children—toiled under grueling, dangerous conditions for twelve hours a day, seven days a week, for an average weekly salary of only $1.80, out of which they had to “voluntarily” give 85 cents to the United Fund. On top of this, the factory workers were subjected to one of the most cruel and inhumane labor concepts ever conceived of by the mind of industrial man: vending-machine food. The suffering this caused can only be imagined by us fortunate modern corporation employees, but we can get some idea of what it was like by reading this chilling excerpt from a nineteenth-century New York factory worker’s diary:
Nobody knows where the food comes from, or even if it
really is food. There is a machine that dispenses liquids
that are allegedly “coffee,” “tea,” “hot chocolate,” and
even “soup,” which all come from the same orifice and all
taste exactly the same. Another machine dispenses bags
containing a grand total of maybe three potato chips each,
and packages of crackers smeared with a bizarre substance
called “cheez,” which is the same bright-orange color as
marine rescue equipment. The machine for some reason is
constructed in such a way that it drops these items from a
great height, causing the contents, already brittle with
age, to shatter into thousands of pieces. Also half the
time it just eats your money, and forget about getting a
refund …
Conditions such as these resulted in the Labor Movement, the most important leader of which was Samuel Gompers. And even if he wasn’t the most important, he definitely had the best name. We could just say it over and over: Gompers Gompers Gompers. This would be an excellent name for a large dog (Such as a Labrador retriever.). “Gompers!” we can just hear ourselves yelling. “You put that Federal Express man down right now!” Nevertheless it was to be a long, hard struggle before the Labor Movement was to win even minimal concessions from the big industrialists—years of strikes and violence and singing traditional Labor Movement protest songs such as “Take This Job and
Similar Books
