it was early spring. 
a railroad train chugged its way through the melting snow of rural 
illinois. 
it reached a small town where it stopped to pick up freight and passengers. 
a small group of farmers, the mud and slush of the unpaved main street 
still on their boots, climbed the steps of a slat sided passenger car. 
they chose seats together, in the nearly empty car, sat down, and talked 
quietly. 
they had hardly been seated when the engineer blew his whistle and the 
pot-bellied engine jerked its short line of cars away from the station. 
the conductor, looking important in his blue uniform, strode into the car. 
as he reached the first farmer, he held out his hand and said "ticket?" 
the farmer handed the conductor a carefully counted stack of soiled bills 
and said, "we didn"t get a chance to buy our tickets at the station. 
we"re all going to chicago, and we"ll buy our tickets from you." 
quickly counting the money, the conductor answered, "sorry, but this isn"t 
enough. 
it will cost you four dollars and twenty-cents more to go to chicago!" 
"wait a minute," said the farmer, with a look of anger and determination 
growing on his face, "we"re all going to chicago, and we"re all paying the same 
fare. 
the state legislature passed a law that said railroads couldn"t charge more 
than two and a half cents a mile to carry passengers. 
that's the law now, and that's all we will pay!" 
the conductor, now a little confused, answered, "this is a private 
railroad. 
it sets its own rates, and no bunch of hayseeds, in or out of the 
legislature, is going to set them for us! 
either you pay our fare or get the heck off." 
the whole group of farmers stood. 
 
when we received the cable from admiral dewey telling of the taking of the 
phillipines, i looked up their location on the globe. 
i could not have told where those darned islands were within 2,000 miles! 
the truth is i didn"t want the phillipines, and when they came to us, as a 
gift from the gods, i did not know what to do with them. 
when the spanish war broke out, dewey was at hong kong, and i ordered him 
to go to manila and to capture or destroy the spanish fleet.... 
but that was as far as i thought then.... 
... i thought first we would take only manila; then luzon; then other 
islands, perhaps also. 
i walked the floor of the white house night after night until midnight; and 
i am not ashamed to tell you, gentlemen, that i went down on my knees and 
prayed almighty god for light and guidance more than one night. 
and one night it came to me this way, i don"t now how it was, but it came: 
that we could not give them back to spain, that would be cowardly and 
dishonorable; that we could not turn them over to france or germany, our 
commercial rivals in the orient, that would be bad business and discreditable; 
we could not leave them to themselves, they were unfit for self-government, 
and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than spain's was; 
and that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to 
educate the filipinos, and uplift and civilize and christianize them, and by 
god's grace to do the best we could by them.... 
 
for many years after columbus" voyages, europeans thought the new world was 
just a large land mass between them and the far east. 
explorers sailed up the broad rivers of both north and south america 
searching for a water route which would take them to the pacific ocean. 
since no such route existed, men began to dream of building one by cutting 
a canal across the land barrier. 
the most logical place was the narrow neck of land between north and south 
america called the isthmus of panama. 
like many of man's dreams, the building of a canal took a long time to 
complete. 
the first serious attempts were not made until the late 1800"s, and they 
ended in dismal failure. 
an american company had attempted to build a canal through nicaragua, in 
1889, but went bankrupt after wasting four and one half million dollars. 
a few years earlier, a french company led by ferdinand de[lesseps, famous 
for building the suez canal, had begun work in a province of colombia, called 
panama, at the site of the present canal. 
steaming hot jungle, torrential rain, and mosquitoes carrying malaria and 
yellow fever plagued the workers from the start. 
in all 5,527 workers died before the project was abandoned in 1889 at a 
great financial loss. 
one frenchman who worked with lesseps, however, did not give up. 
his name was philippe bunau-varilla. 
a closer look at the cartoon will reveal that bunau-varilla is depicted as 
the villain with a black hat and pointed mustache. 
he was a brilliant and energetic french engineer who refused to quit when 
lesseps" company went bankrupt. 
it was his hope that the united states would provide the money which would 
help him succeed where the other companies had failed. 
teddy roosevelt was also very interested in building a canal that would 
join the atlantic and the pacific oceans. 
 
it began on a sunny june morning in 1914. 
a chauffeur-driven, open, touring car containing the archduke of 
austria-hungary and his wife was winding its way through the narrow streets of 
sarajevo, an obscure town in the little-known country of bosnia. 
the chauffeur, who had made a wrong turn onto francis joseph street, was 
preparing to turn around when a nineteen-year old youth moved toward the car 
with a pistol in his hand. 
he fired twice at the archduke and his wife. 
a spurt of blood shot from the archduke's mouth as his wife sophie cried, 
"for heaven's sake, what's happened to you? 
seconds later she collapsed into unconciousness from what the chauffeur 
thought was shock. 
the dying archduke somehow sensed that she, too, had been hit by the 
assassin's bullets. 
he cried out, "sophie dear, sophie dear, don"t die! 
stay alive for our children!" 
by 11 a.m. both the archduke and his wife were dead. 
so ended the drama of sarajevo. 
by evening shocked citizens around the world read in their newspapers of an 
assassinated archduke in a faraway place. 
few people thought that this event could have any effect upon their lives. 
few realized that the shot that killed the archduke was like a spark 
igniting a powder keg. 
the powder keg was europe and it exploded into world war i. 
world war i ended on a grey, november morning in 1918. 
at 11 a.m. the cease-fire order went into effect. 
for the first time in four years it was truly "all quiet on the western 
front." 
at war's end there was little to celebrate. 
what had begun as an adventure and novelty ended in a nightmare of chaos 
and human suffering. 
nearly 10,000,000 men and women had been killed in the four years of 
fighting and more than 6,000,000 had been crippled for life. 
 
in the centers of many american cities are positioned huge armories, grim 
nineteenth-century edifices of brick or stone. 
they are fortresses, complete with massive walls and loopholes for guns. 
you may have wondered why they are there, but it has probably never 
occurred to you that they were built to protect america, not against invasion 
from abroad, but against popular revolt at home. 
their erection was a monument to the great upheaval of 1877. 
july, 1877, does not appear in many history books as a memorable date, yet 
it marks the first great american mass strike, a movement which was viewed at 
the time as a violent rebellion. 
strikers stopped and seized the nation's most important industry, the 
railroads, and crowds defeated or won over first the police, then the state 
militias, and in some cases even the federal troops. 
general strikes stopped all activity in a dozen major cities, and strikers 
took over social authority in communities across the nation. 
it all began on monday, july 16th, 1877, in the little railroad town of 
martinsburg, west virginia. 
on that day, the baltimore and ohio railroad cut wages ten percent, the 
second cut in eight months. 
in martinsburg, men gathered around the railroad yards, talking, waiting 
through the day. 
toward evening the crew of a cattle train, fed up, abandoned the train, and 
other trainmen refused to replace them. 
as a crowd gathered, the strikers uncoupled the engines, ran them into the 
roundhouse, and announced to bno officials that no trains would leave 
martinsburg till the pay cut was rescinded. 
the mayor arrived and conferred with railroad officials. 
he tried to soothe the crowd and was booed; when he ordered the arrest of 
the strike leaders they just laughed at him, backed up in their resistance by 
the angry crowd. 
 
the great upheaval was an expression of the new economic and social system 
in america, just as surely as the cities, railroads and factories from which it 
had sprung. 
the enormous expansion of industry after the civil war had transformed 
millions of people who had grown up as farmers and self-employed artisans and 
entrepreneurs into employees, growing thousands of whom were concentrated 
within each of the new corporate empires. 
they were no longer part of village and town communities with their 
extended families and stable, unchallenged values, but concentrated in cities, 
with all their anonymity and freedom; their work was no longer individual and 
competitive, but group and cooperative; they no longer directed their own work, 
but worked under control of a boss; they no longer controlled the property on 
which they worked or its fruits, and therefore could not find fruitful 
employment unless someone with property agreed to hire them. 
the great upheaval grew out of their intuitive sense that they needed each 
other, had the support of each other, and together were powerful. 
this sense of unity was not embodied in any centralized plan or leadership, 
but in the feelings and action of each participant. 
"there was no concert of action at the start," the editor of the "labor 
standard" pointed out. 
"it spread because the workmen of pittsburgh felt the same oppression that 
was felt by the workmen of west virginia and so with the workmen of chicago and 
st.[louis." 
in pittsburgh, concludes historian robert bruce, "men like andrew hice or 
gus harris or david davis assumed the lead briefly at one point or another, but 
only because they happened to be foremost in nerve or vehemence." 
in newark, ohio, "no single individual seemed to command the... strikers. 
 
further, the character of strikes changed radically. 
through the depression years that preceded 1886, strikes had mostly been 
in resistance to wage cuts. 
now, with the beginnings of business recovery, they became above all 
strikes for power over such issues as the hours of labor, hiring and firing, 
the organization of work, and the arbitrary power of foremen and 
superintendents. 
the wave began late in 1885 with "spontaneous outbreaks of unorganized 
masses." 
typical was a strike for the ten-hour day in the saginaw valley in 
michigan. 
the legislature had passed a ten-hour law which proved unenforceable. 
in response, with little previous organization, the predominantly polish 
and american workers in the lumber and shingle mills struck for an immediate 
ten-hour day with no reduction in pay. 
the strikers marched in a body from mill to mill, demanding that the men 
quit work, and shut down the entire lumber industry, turning off steam and 
banking fires, including seventeen shingle mills, sixty-one lumber mills, and 
fifty-eight salt blocks. 
although the employers imported more than fifty pinkerton detectives and a 
large body of militia was poised to intervene, the strike was won after two 
months. 
the workers on jay gould's southwestern railroad system exemplified this 
movement. 
they had discovered their power in previous strikes and had developed 
their own organization and coordination. 
yet they still were subject to the arbitrary power of their employers, 
their wages constantly cut or chisled, arbitrarily transferred from one job to 
another, harassed by local railroad officials, and beset by grievances on 
which they could get no answer. 
when one of their members was fired for attending a union meeting, even 
though he had been given permission, the strike they had long felt inevitable 
broke out march 6th, 1886. 
 
for some years after we began the convict labor system, we found that we 
were right in calculating that free laborers would be loath to enter upon 
strikes when they saw that the company was amply provided with convict labor. 
in the spring of 1891, miners in briceville, anderson county, turned down 
a contract which would forbid strikes against grievances, give up the right to 
a checkweightman, and provide pay in "scrip" redeemable only to the company 
store, the last two were illegal under tennessee law. 
on july 5th, the operators imported a carload of forty convicts. 
the convicts tore down the miners" houses and erected stockades for 
themselves. 
ten days later, the miners decided at a mass meeting to act before the 
main body of convicts arrived the next day. 
just after midnight 300 armed miners advanced on the stockade in a massed 
line, demanding the release of the convicts. 
the officers and guards realized that resistance was futile. 
the miners marched convicts, guards, and officers to the depot at coal 
creek and packed them on the train to knoxville. 
the next day the governor in person came to anderson county, at the head of 
three companies of the militia, with the convicts in tow. 
after the governor departed, the miners entertained the soldiers in their 
homes and slipped food into their barracks. 
the militia requested leaves of absence and one whole detachment nearly 
deserted. 
it was generally doubted that the militiamen would have taken any action 
against the miners. 
similarly, according to the state superintendent of prisons, "nearly all 
the citizens of anderson county around (the) mines are in sympathy with the 
mob." 
at 6 a.m., on july 20th, miners from the surrounding counties, including 
some from kentucky, armed with shotguns, winchester rifles, and colt pistols, 
began pouring into briceville and coal creek, on trains and mules and even on 
foot. 
 
the first major event in which the a.r.u. was involved was a strike on the 
great northern railroad, controlled by james j.[hill. 
three times within a year the great northern had cut wages; three times 
the officers of the railroad brotherhoods had recommended that the men accept 
the cuts. 
disgusted, a number of the men had joined the a.r.u. 
under its rules, in contrast to those of the brotherhoods, a strike could 
be called by a majority of members on the railroad line involved. 
after the third wage cut, the a.r.u. members on the great northern 
declared a strike, although the a.r.u. was so new that not a single lodge had 
as yet been organized. 
the strike was supported not only by a.r.u. members, but by a great many 
other workers, including even the rank and file of the railroad brotherhoods. 
even though brotherhood officials helped the company recruit strikebreakers 
to run the trains, the strike stopped all freight traffic on the line without 
recourse to blockade. 
within little more than two weeks, the company was forced to accept an 
arbitration decision that was practically a complete victory for the workers. 
the victory over jim hill in 1894 had much the same results for the a.r.u. 
that the victory over jay gould had had for the knights of labor in 1885. 
coming in the midst of rising discontent and a series of defeats, the 
victory dramatized for workers everywhere the possibility and power of 
solidarity. 
workers flooded into the a.r.u. 
according to ray ginger, debs" biographer, 
the officers were unable to pass out charters fast enough to keep pace with 
the applications. 
entire lodges of the railway carmen and the switchmen transferred to the 
a.r.u. 
firemen, conductors, even engineers, joined the industrial union. 
 
the real issue of the strike of course had not been simply the wages of 
the workers at pullman. 
george pullman defined the issue as "the principle that a man should have 
the right to manage his own property." 
the secret minutes of the general managers" association suggested that the 
question was whether the railroads would "determine for themselves" what cars 
they would or would not handle on their lines. 
or, as vice-president george howard of the a.r.u. put it, "i always 
contended that the men had a right to handle or not handle anything they 
pleased," whereas the company announced publicly that "they would haul such 
cars as they chose regardless of what the delegates to the a.r.u. convention 
might say, or what their own employees might say." 
the real issue was the issue of power; it was understood that this in turn 
would determine the other questions of wages, working conditions, and the 
like. 
the pullman strike showed that merely by making a non-violent strike 
against an industry, if the strike seriously challenged corporate power, 
workers would bring down upon themselves the entire organized force of 
society, including military force. 
as debs put it, 
we have only got a number, and a limited number, of poorly paid men in our 
organization, and when their income ceases they are starving. 
we have no power of the government behind us. 
we have no recognized influence in society on our side... 
on the other side the corporations are in perfect alliance; they have all 
of the things that money can command, and that means a subsidized press, that 
they are able to control the newspapers, and means a false or vitiated public 
opinion. 
the clergy almost steadily united in thundering their denunciations; then 
the courts, then the state militia, then the federal troops; everything and all 
things on the side of the corporations. 
 
danny morgan was a boy who lived on a ranch. 
his father, brick morgan, owned the ranch. 
they lived at a time when there were many indians. 
one day, danny and his father rode up a mountain trail. 
danny talked excitedly. 
the ride to lookout point was fun for danny because it was near an indian 
camp. 
"father, after we ride to the point, let's go over to the indian camp," 
danny said eagerly. 
"no, danny. 
i"m afraid there won"t be time today," brick morgan answered. 
danny liked indians. 
all the way up the trail, he hoped he would meet some indian boys on 
their spotted ponies. 
"look! 
there's golden boy!" danny said suddenly. 
he pointed to a tiny speck racing across the fields. 
danny's heart pounded. 
the sight of golden boy always excited him. 
the big horse was leader of the morgan herd of horses. 
"when will you go after the horses?" asked danny, hoping that he could go 
with his father and the cowboys on the spring roundup. 
"we start next week," brick morgan answered. 
"i wish i could take you along, partner, but someone has to stay at home 
to feed the animals." 
danny felt sad that he could not go along. 
"be a good boy," his father said. 
"i may have a surprise for you when i come back." 
"a colt? 
will it be a colt, father?" 
"it wouldn"t be a surprise if i told you," his father laughed. 
weeks passed before the roundup was over. 
when brick morgan returned home, danny ran to meet him and jumped into his 
father's strong arms. 
 
many of the strikes of 1919 were "outlaw" or wildcat strikes, opposed as 
heartily by the unions as by the employers. 
these spread even to such citadels of trade union authority as the 
printing trades. 
but the most important of all was on the railroads. 
for practical purposes, the right of railroad workers to strike did not 
exist after the federal suppression of the pullman strike. 
the unions generally supported this state of affairs. 
thus those railroad strikes which occurred met the opposition not only of 
the railroads but of the unions and the government. 
this was all the more true during the war and post-war period because the 
railroads were under federal control until march, 1920. 
discontent rose with the cost of living; by april, 1920, prices had risen 
one hundred percent since 1914, railroad wages only fifty percent. 
after april, 1919, the government refused all requests for wage increases. 
according to commons" "history of labor in the united states," "in the 
mindsof the men the pent-up resentment against this injustice became directed 
not only against the dilatory government officials and railway managers but 
also against their own union officials who apparently bore this situation with 
a patience unbecoming..." 
in this charged situation, a railroad worker named john grunau, a leader of 
an insurgent chicago yardmen's association, was demoted in the chicago yards on 
april 2nd. 
the 700 switchmen on his line immediately walked out in protest. 
the strike crystallized the general discontent of the railroad workers, 
and within two days every railroad in the chicago area was involved in the 
strike, with 9,000 switchmen out. 
by april 9th, the strike had spread spontaneously across the country, 
reaching new york, san[francisco, los[angeles, pittsburgh, memphis, st.[louis, 
kansas city, omaha and detroit. 
engineers, conductors and firemen joined the striking switchmen. 
 
the 1920's were a period of great expansion for american capitalism. 
for the trade unions, it was a period of decline, which they met by trying 
to persuade employers to establish unionism in order to guarantee labor peace. 
by the late twenties, one of america's leading economists was widely 
seconded when he declared that the country had entered an era of "permanent 
prosperity." 
already, however, serious constriction had begun in such industries as 
coal and textiles, and with the collapse of the stock market in october, 1929, 
depression, long believed a thing of the past, set in. 
with it came enormous misery, loss of jobs, some fifteen million workers 
were unemployed. 
by early 1932, according to a new york newspaperman, groups of thirty or 
forty men would enter chain grocery stores and ask for credit. 
when the clerk tells them business is for cash only, they bid him stand 
aside; they don"t want to harm him, but they must have things to eat. 
they load up and depart. 
out of this kind of desperation the unemployed began improvising a variety 
of forms of direct action to meet their needs. 
most dramatic was direct action to stop evictions. 
a reporter described a typical anti-eviction "riot" in chicago: 
a woman living in a certain block in chicago has five children; her 
husband is a stockyards workman who has been out of a job a year and a half. 
but on ten dollars a month sent by her brother-in-law, and borrowing now 
and then from the neighbors" pantries, she has fed her family. 
there is no money left for rent. 
so after two warnings from the landlord, a crisis. 
she is to be evicted next tuesday at five. 
in the same block lives a member of the local branch of the unemployed 
council, who has been through it all before. 
 
on july 17th, charles wheeler, vice-president of the mccormick steamship 
lines, said that raids on radical centers would start soon, with government 
consent. 
that day a series of vigilante raids began up and down the coast on the 
marine workers industrial union, the ex-service men's league, the western 
worker, and many other radical organizations and gathering places. 
according to the "new york times," the vigilantes "were connected with the 
committee of 500 organized by prominent citizens at the behest of mayor 
rossi." 
the raids followed a regular pattern; men in leather jackets drove up, 
broke in, smashed windows, furniture and typewriters, and beat up those within; 
the police invariably arrived just after the attackers departed and arrested 
those they had beaten. 
u.s. army and immigration officials interrogated many of those arrested 
and held some of them for possible deportation. 
radicals faced a virtual reign of terror. 
the general strike succeeded in preventing the crushing of the 
longshoremen for the moment, but the labor council leadership began 
maneuvering to bring it to an end almost before it began. 
on july 18th, president green of the a.f.l. disowned the strike. 
the second day of the strike the general strike committee called for 
arbitration of all issues, thus giving up the basic demand which the strike was 
all about, the union hiring hall. 
the third day it reopened all union restaurants and butcher shops and 
ended embargoes on gasoline and fuel oil. 
this generated irresistable pressures on those still striking for, as the 
strike strategy committee in the east bay declared, "it would be unfair to the 
unions to continue the strike in view of the return of some san[francisco 
organizations to work." 
by the fourth day, the general strike committee voted 191 to 174 to end the 
general strike. 
 
on tuesday morning, october 16, 1962, shortly after 9:00 o"clock, 
president kennedy called and asked me to come to the white house. 
he said only that we were facing great trouble. 
shortly afterward, in his office, he told me that a u 2 had just finished a 
photographic mission and that the intelligence community had become convinced 
that russia was placing missiles and atomic weapons in cuba. 
that was the beginning of the cuban missile crisis, a confrontation 
between the two giant atomic nations, the u.s. and the u.s.s.r., which brought 
the world to the abyss of nuclear destruction and the end of mankind. 
from that moment in president kennedy's office until sunday morning, 
october 28, that was my life, and for americans and russians, for the whole 
world, it was their life as well. 
at 11:45 that same morning, in the cabinet room, a formal presentation was 
made by the central intelligence agency to a number of high officials of the 
government. 
photographs were shown to us. 
experts arrived with their charts and their pointers and told us that if 
we looked carefully, we could see there was a missile base being constructed in 
a field near san[cristobal, cuba. 
i, for one, had to take their word for it. 
i examined the pictures carefully, and what i saw appeared to be no more 
than the clearing of a field for a farm or the basement of a house. 
i was relieved to hear later that this was the same reaction of virtually 
everyone at the meeting, including president kennedy. 
even a few days later, when more work had taken place on the site, he 
remarked that it looked like a football field. 
the dominant feeling at the meeting was stunned surprise. 
no one had expected or anticipated that the russians would deploy 
surface-to-surface ballistic missiles in cuba. 
 
the members of the joint chiefs of staff were unanimous in calling for 
immediate military action. 
they forcefully presented their view that the blockade would not be 
effective. 
general curtis lemay, air force chief of staff, argued strongly with the 
president that a military attack was essential. 
when the president questioned what the response of the russians might be, 
general lemay assured him there would be no reaction. 
president kennedy was skeptical. 
"they, no more than we, can let these things go by without doing 
something. 
they can"t, after all their statements, permit us to take out their 
missiles, kill a lot of russians, and then do nothing. 
if they don"t take action in cuba, they certainly will in berlin." 
the president went on to say that he recognized the validity of the 
arguments made by the joint chiefs, the danger that more and more missiles 
would be placed in cuba, and the likelihood, if we did nothing, that the 
russians would move on berlin and in other areas of the world, feeling the 
u.s. was completely impotent. 
then it would be too late to do anything in cuba, for by that time all 
their missiles would be operational. 
general david m.[shoup, commandant of the marine corps, summed up 
everyone's feelings: "you are in a pretty bad fix, mr. president." 
the president answered quickly, "you are in it with me." 
everyone laughed, and, with no final decision, the meeting adjourned. 
later, secretary mcnamara, although he told the president he disagreed with 
the joint chiefs and favored a blockade rather than an attack, informed him 
that the necessary planes, men, and ammunition were being deployed and that we 
could be ready to move with the necessary air bombardments on tuesday, october 
23 if that was to be the decision. 
 
on that monday afternoon, before his speech and after lunch with jackie, 
the president held several meetings. 
at the first, he formally constituted our committee, which up until that 
time had been called "the group" or "war council," under national security 
council action memorandum number 196 as the executive committee of the national 
security council, "for the purpose of effective conduct of the operations of 
the executive branch in the current crisis." 
the president became the official chairman, and until further notice we 
were to meet with him every morning at 10:00 a.m. 
shortly thereafter, the president met with the members of the cabinet and 
informed them for the first time of the crisis. 
then, not long before the broadcast, he met with the leaders of congress. 
this was the most difficult meeting. 
i did not attend, but i know from seeing him afterward that it was a 
tremendous strain. 
many congressional leaders were sharp in their criticism. 
they felt that the president should take more forceful action, a military 
attack or invasion, and that the blockade was far too weak a response. 
senator richard b.[russell of georgia said he could not live with himself 
if he did not say in the strongest possible terms how important it was that we 
act with greater strength than the president was contemplating. 
senator j.[william fulbright of arkansas also strongly advised military 
action rather than such a weak step as the blockade. 
others said they were skeptical but would remain publicly silent, only 
because it was such a dangerous hour for the country. 
the president, after listening to the frequently emotional criticism, 
explained that he would take whatever steps were necessary to protect the 
security of the united states, but that he did not feel greater military 
action was warranted initially. 
 
there was no purpose, he said, for us to interfere with any of his ships 
now bound for cuba, for they contained no weapons. 
he then explained why they carried no missiles: all the shipments of 
weapons were already within cuba. 
this was the first time he had acknowledged the presence of missiles in 
cuba. 
he made reference to the landing at the bay of pigs and the fact that 
president kennedy had told him in vienna that this was a mistake. 
he valued such frankness, wrote khrushchev, and he, too, had similar 
courage, for he had acknowledged "those mistakes which had been committed 
during the history of our state and i not only acknowledge but sharply 
condemned them." 
(president kennedy had told him in vienna that he was quick to acknowledge 
and condemn the mistakes of stalin and others, but he never acknowledged any 
mistakes of his own.) 
the reason he had sent these weapons to cuba was because the u.s. was 
interested in overthrowing the cuban government, as the u.s. had actively 
attempted to overthrow the communist government in the soviet union after 
their revolution. 
khrushchev and the soviet people wished to help cuba protect herself. 
but then he went on: "if assurances were given that the president of the 
united states would not participate in an attack on cuba and the blockade 
lifted, then the question of the removal or the destruction of the missile 
sites in cuba would then be an entirely different question. 
armaments bring only disasters. 
when one accumulates them, this damages the economy, and if one puts them 
to use, then they destroy people on both sides. 
consequently, only a madman can believe that armaments are the principal 
means in the life of society. 
no, they are an enforced loss of human energy, and what is more are for 
the destruction of man himself. 
 
in the midst of these deliberations, another message came, to change the 
whole course of events and alter history. 
major rudolf anderson, jr., from south carolina, one of the two air force 
pilots who had carried out the original u 2 reconnaissance that uncovered the 
presence of missiles in cuba, had since flown several other 
photo-reconnaissance missions and was flying one that saturday morning, 
october 27. 
our meeting was interrupted by the report that his plane had been hit by a 
sam missile, that it had crashed in cuba, and that he had been killed. 
there was sympathy for major anderson and his family. 
there was the knowledge that we had to take military action to protect our 
pilots. 
there was the realization that the soviet union and cuba apparently were 
preparing to do battle. 
and there was the feeling that the noose was tightening on all of us, on 
americans, on mankind, and that the bridges to escape were crumbling. 
"how can we send any more u 2 pilots into this area tomorrow unless we 
take out all of the sam sites?" the president asked. 
"we are now in an entirely new ball game." 
at first, there was almost unanimous agreement that we had to attack early 
the next morning with bombers and fighters and destroy the sam sites. 
but again the president pulled everyone back. 
"it isn"t the first step that concerns me," he said, "but both sides 
escalating to the fourth and fifth step, and we don"t go to the sixth because 
there is no one around to do so. 
we must remind ourselves we are embarking on a very hazardous course." 
he asked for absolute verification that the u 2 was shot down and did not 
crash accidentally, and for a careful review, "before we decide finally what we 
shall do," of the implications of all possible courses of action. 
 
during the cuban missile crisis, the president not only received 
information from all the significant departments, but went to considerable 
lengths to ensure that he was not insulated from individuals or points of view 
because of rank or position. 
he wanted the advice of his cabinet officers, but he also wanted the 
opinion of those who were connected with the situation itself. 
he wanted to hear from secretary rusk, but he also wished to hear from 
tommy thompson, former (and now again) ambassador to the soviet union, whose 
advice on the russians and predictions as to what they would do were uncannily 
accurate and whose advice and recommendations were surpassed by none; from ed 
martin, assistant secretary for latin america, who organized our effort to 
secure the backing of the latin american countries; also from george ball, the 
under secretary of state, whose advice and judgment were invaluable. 
he wanted to hear from secretary mcnamara, but he wanted to hear also from 
under secretary gilpatric, whose ability, knowledge, and judgment he sought in 
every serious crisis. 
on other occasions, i had frequently observed efforts being made to 
exclude certain individuals from participating in a meeting with the president 
because they held a different point of view. 
often, the president would become aware of this fact and enlarge the 
meetings to include other opinions. 
at the missile-crisis conferences he made certain there were experts and 
representatives of different points of view. 
president kennedy wanted people who raised questions, who criticized, on 
whose judgment he could rely, who presented an intelligent point of view, 
regardless of their rank or viewpoint. 
he wanted to hear presented and challenged all the possible consequences of 
a particular course of action. 
the first step might appear sensible, but what would be the reaction of our 
adversaries and would we actually stand to gain? 
 
two nights later, danny went out to tell his horse good night. 
he saw her standing away from the herd, all by herself. 
she was very quiet as if she had expected him to come. 
"she knows me!" thought danny. 
"she knows me now." 
the mare had never been friendly with danny, but he thought she acted 
friendly now. 
as he came closer, he saw that someone else was standing beside the mare. 
it was a boy. 
an indian boy! 
"what are you doing here?" danny called out. 
"i"ve come to see my horse," said the indian boy. 
"your horse? 
she isn"t. 
she's not branded," said danny. 
"this is my horse, star fire," the indian said. 
"see how she knows me?" 
the black mare was rubbing the indian's hand with her nose. 
she stood quietly as he petted and stroked her. 
"but, but, you didn"t brand her," danny gasped. 
"i didn"t brand star fire," said the indian boy. 
"a brand doesn"t make her mine. 
friendship makes her mine. 
she will always be mine no matter where she goes." 
danny felt very sad. 
he knew that the mare must belong to the indian because she was so 
friendly with him. 
she would never let danny pet her. 
"what's your name?" asked danny. 
"i am eagle," said the indian. 
"what do they call you?" 
"danny," said danny. 
there was so much love in the way eagle petted star fire that danny was no 
longer afraid. 
"did you miss her while she was gone?" he asked. 
eagle nodded his head. 
"i want star fire home again." 
 
in your statement, you said that the main aim lies not only in reaching 
agreement and adopting measures to avert contact of our ships, and, 
consequently, a deepening of the crisis, which because of this contact can 
spark off the fire of military conflict after which any talks would be 
superfluous because other forces and other laws would begin to operate, the 
laws of war. 
i agree with you that this is only a first step. 
the main thing is to normalize and stabilize the situation in the world 
between states and between people. 
i understand your concern for the security of the united states, mr. 
president, because this is the first duty of the president. 
however, these questions are also uppermost in our minds. 
the same duties rest with me as chairman of the u.s.s.r. council of 
ministers. 
you have been worried over our assisting cuba with arms designed to 
strengthen its defensive potential, precisely defensive potential, because 
cuba, no matter what weapons it had, could not compare with you since these 
are different dimensions, the more so given up-to-date means of extermination. 
our purpose has been and is to help cuba, and no one can challenge the 
humanity of our motives aimed at allowing cuba to live peacefully and develop 
as its people desire. 
you want to relieve your country from danger and this is understandable. 
however, cuba also wants this. 
all countries want to relieve themselves from danger. 
but how can we, the soviet union and our government, assess your actions 
which, in effect, mean that you have surrounded the soviet union with military 
bases, surrounded our allies with military bases, set up military bases 
literally around our country, and stationed your rocket weapons at them? 
this is no secret. 
high-placed american officials demonstratively declare this. 
 
a piratic vessel had shelled havana. 
they say that this shelling was done by irresponsible cuban "emigres." 
perhaps so. 
however, the question is from where did they shoot. 
it is a fact that these cubans have no territory, they are fugitives from 
their country, and they have no means to conduct military operations. 
this means that someone put into their hands these weapons for shelling 
havana and for piracy in the caribbean in cuban territorial waters. 
it is impossible in our time not to notice a piratic ship, considering the 
concentration in the caribbean of american ships from which everything can be 
seen and observed. 
in these conditions, pirate ships freely roam around and shell cuba and 
make piratic attacks on peaceful cargo ships. 
it is known that they even shelled a british cargo ship. 
in a word, cuba was under the continuous threat of aggressive forces, 
which did not conceal their intention to invade its territory. 
the cuban people want to build their life in their own interests without 
external interference. 
this is their right, and they cannot be blamed for wanting to be masters 
of their own country and disposing of the fruits of their own labor. 
the threat of invasion of cuba and all other schemes for creating tension 
over china are designed to strike the cuban people with a sense of insecurity, 
intimidate them, and prevent them from peacefully building their new life. 
mr. president, i should like to say clearly once more that we could not 
remain indifferent to this. 
the soviet government decided to render assistance to cuba with means of 
defense against aggression, only with means for defense purposes. 
we have supplied the defense means which you describe as offensive means. 
we have supplied them to prevent an attack on cuba, to prevent rash acts. 
 
i have today been informed by chairman khrushchev that all of the il 28 
bombers now in cuba will be withdrawn in thirty days. 
he also agrees that these planes can be observed and counted as they leave. 
inasmuch as this goes a long way toward reducing the danger which faced 
this hemisphere four weeks ago, i have this afternoon instructed the secretary 
of defense to lift our naval quarantine. 
in view of this action i want to take this opportunity to bring the 
american people up to date on the cuban crisis and to review the progress made 
thus far in fulfilling the understandings between soviet chairman khrushchev 
and myself as set forth in our letters of october 27 and 28. 
chairman khrushchev, it will be recalled, agreed to remove from cuba all 
weapons systems capable of offensive use, to halt the further introduction of 
such weapons into cuba, and to permit appropriate united nations observation 
and supervision to insure the carrying out and continuation of these 
commitments. 
we on our part agreed that, once these adequate arrangements for 
verification had been established, we would remove our naval quarantine and 
give assurances against invasion of cuba. 
the evidence to date indicates that all known offensive missile sites in 
cuba have been dismantled. 
the missiles and their associated equipment have been loaded on soviet 
ships. 
and our inspection at sea of these departing ships has confirmed that the 
number of missiles reported by the soviet union as having been brought into 
cuba, which closely corresponded to our own information, has now been removed. 
in addition the soviet government has stated that all nuclear weapons have 
been withdrawn from cuba and no offensive weapons will be reintroduced. 
nevertheless, important parts of the understanding of october 27th and 28th 
remain to be carried out. 
 
in assembling the american industrial complex, railroads played a crucial 
role. 
the construction of the first transcontinental line was a major 
breakthrough; how it was built, moreover, is an epic indicative of the spirit 
in which america attacked industrialism. 
our surveying parties were expected to live upon the game of the country. 
each party entering a country occupied by hostile indians was generally 
furnished with a military escort of from ten men to a company under a 
competent officer. 
the duty of this escort was to protect the party when in camp. 
in the field the escort usually occupied prominent hills commanding the 
territory in which the work was to be done, so as to head off sudden attacks by 
the indians. 
notwithstanding this protection the parties were often attacked, their 
chief or some of their men killed or wounded, and their stock run off. 
the location part in our work on the union pacific was followed by the 
construction corps, grading generally a hundred miles at a time. 
that distance was graded in about thirty days on the plains, as a rule, 
but in the mountains we sometimes had to open our grading several hundred miles 
ahead of our track in order to complete the grading by the time the track 
should reach it. 
all the supplies for this work had to be hauled from the end of the track, 
and the wagon transportation was enormous. 
at one time we were using at least ten thousand animals, and most of the 
time from eight to ten thousand laborers. 
the bridge gangs always worked from five to twenty miles ahead of the 
track, and it was seldom that the track waited for a bridge. 
 
reaping generally came about the 20th of july, the hottest and dryest part 
of the summer, and was the most pressing work of the year. 
it demanded early rising for the men, and it meant an all-day broiling over 
the kitchen stove for the women. 
stern, incessant toil went on inside and out from dawn till sunset, no 
matter how the thermometer sizzled. 
on many days the mercury mounted to ninety-five in the shade, but with 
wide fields all yellowing at the same moment, no one thought of laying off. 
a storm might sweep it flat, or if neglected too long it might crinkle. 
no task save that of cradling surpassed in severity binding on a station. 
it was a full-grown man's job, but every boy was ambitious to try his hand, 
and when at fourteen years of age i was promoted from bundle boy to be one of 
the five hands to bind after the reaper, i went to my corner with joy and 
confidence. 
for two years i had been serving as binder on the corners (to keep the 
grain out of the way of the horses), and i knew my job. 
i was short and broad-shouldered, with large, strong hands admirably 
adapted for this work, and for the first two hours easily held my own with the 
rest of the crew; but as the morning wore on and the sun grew hotter my 
enthusiasm waned. 
a painful void developed in my chest. 
my breakfast had been ample, but no mere stomachful of food could carry a 
growing boy through five hours of desperate toil. 
along about a quarter of ten i began to scan the field with anxious eye, 
longing to see harriet and the promised luncheon basket. 
 
suppose we look into one of the slums. 
be a little careful, please! 
the hall is dark, and you might stumble over the children pitching pennies 
back there. 
not that it would hurt them; kicks and cuffs are their daily diet. 
they have little else. 
here where the hall turns and dives into utter darkness is a step, and 
another, another. 
a flight of stairs. 
you can feel your way if you cannot see it. 
close? 
yes! 
what would you have? 
all the fresh air that ever enters these stairs comes from the hall door 
that is forever slamming and from the windows of dark bedrooms that in turn 
receive from the stairs their sole supply of the elements god meant to be free 
but man deals out with such niggardly hand. 
that was a woman filling her pail by the hydrant you just bumped against. 
the sinks are in the hallway, that all the tenants may have access, and all 
be poisoned alike by their summer stenches. 
hear the pump squeak! 
it is the lullaby of tenement house babes. 
in summer, when a thousand thirsty throats pant for a cooling drink in this 
block, it is worked in vain. 
but the saloon, whose open door you passed in the hall, is always there. 
the smell of it has followed you up. 
here is a door. 
listen! 
that short, hacking cough, that tiny, helpless wail, what do they mean? 
they mean that the soiled bow of white you saw on the door downstairs will 
have another story to tell, oh! a sadly familiar story, before the day is at an 
end. 
the child is dying with measles. 
with half a chance it might have lived, but it had none. 
that dark bedroom killed it. 
 
it was not only in their neglect of the fine processes of the law that the 
americans outdid their european contemporaries; when they fought, they 
abandoned the gentleman's rapier for the roughneck's brass knuckles. 
an instance in point is the struggle for the control of the 
albany-susquehanna railroad, a vital link in a system torn between jim fisk and 
the patrician morgan. 
morgan held one end of the line in his own hands, and the other terminal 
was a fisk stronghold. 
the controversy was accordingly resolved by each side mounting a locomotive 
on its end of the track and running the two engines, like gigantic toys, into 
one another. 
and even then the losers did not give up, but retired as best they could, 
ripping up tracks and tearing down trestles as they went. 
in this "melee" for industrial supremacy no quarter was asked and none 
given. 
even dynamite had its uses, being employed to eliminate one particularly 
sticky competitor of the standard oil group, while less violent means, such as 
kidnaping, were remarkable more for their ingenuity than their immorality. 
in 1881, when a great blizzard blew down the telegraph lines in new york, 
jay gould, the ruthless master of the money markets, was forced to send his 
orders to his broker by messenger. 
his enemies saw their chance and acted on it; they kidnaped the boy, 
substituted another of the same general physiognomy, and for several weeks 
gould was dismayed to find that his moves were all somehow known to his 
adversaries in advance. 
needless to say, the pirates who thus forced each other to walk the plank 
could scarcely be expected to treat the public with reverence. 
 
and what, one may ask, was the united states government doing while these 
portentous events were afoot? 
it is hard for us, today, to realize how small the government was in 1900, 
and how limited in its functions and powers. 
it spent roughly half a billion dollars a year, about one-eightieth of what 
it was destined to spend half a century later. 
in fact, the federal government in 1900 spent considerably less money than 
new york state did in 1950. 
the national debt amounted to only a little over a billion and a quarter 
dollars, about one two-hundredth of the 1950 debt of 257 billions. 
even when one makes allowance for the diminished value of the dollar and 
for the way in which federal expenses and particularly the federal debt have 
been swollen since 1900 by wars and defense expenditures, those are incredibly 
small figures by today's standards. 
the government had no department of commerce, no department of labor, no 
federal trade commission, no federal reserve system. 
the reason was simple: business was supposed to be no affair of the 
government"s. 
it had an interstate commerce commission, which was supposed to regulate 
the railroad companies, but the powers of the commission were small and 
uncertain. 
even the sherman antitrust act had been whittled down by supreme court 
decisions into a feeble instrument for the maintenance of competition in 
business; and during the year 1900 the attorney general brought not one single 
suit under that law. 
as for the white house, we have it on the authority of "ike" hoover, who 
was long the chief usher, that when he began work there in the early nineties 
"the whole executive office staff, which was then domiciled in the white house 
proper, consisted of but ten people, and four of these were doorkeepers and 
messengers." 
 
at the very bottom of the economic scale the conditions may perhaps best be 
suggested by two brief quotations. 
the first, from jonathan norton leonard's "three years down," describes 
the plight of pennsylvania miners who had been put out of company villages 
after a blind and hopeless strike in 1931: 
reporters from the more liberal metropolitan papers found thousands of them 
huddled on the mountainsides, crowded three or four families together in 
one-room shacks, living on dandelions and wild weed-roots. 
half of them were sick, but no local doctor would care for the evicted 
strikers. 
all of them were hungry and many were dying of those providential diseases 
which enables welfare authorities to claim that no one has starved. 
the other quotation is from louis v.[armstrong's "we too are the people," 
and the scene is chicago in the late spring of 1932: 
one vivid, gruesome moment of those dark days we shall never forget. 
we saw a crowd of some fifty men fighting over a barrel of garbage which 
had been set outside the back door of a restaurant. 
american citizens fighting for scraps of food like animals!... 
it was a strange time in which to graduate from school or college. 
high schools had a larger attendance than ever before, especially in the 
upper grades, because there were few jobs to tempt anyone away. 
likewise college graduates who could afford to go on to graduate school 
were continuing their studies, after a hopeless hunt for jobs, rather than be 
idle.... 
the effects of the economic dislocation were ubiquitous. 
not business alone was disturbed, but churches, museums, theatres, 
schools, colleges, charitable organizations, clubs, lodges, sports 
organizations, and so on clear through the list of human enterprises; one and 
all they felt the effects of dwindling gifts, declining memberships, decreasing 
box-office returns, uncollectible bills, revenue insufficient to pay the 
interest on the mortgage. 
 
gray fox was a little indian boy. 
his father was big chief beaver. 
gray fox dreamed of the time when he would be big enough to go hunting 
with the braves. 
one evening the indian braves sat close around the fire. 
big chief beaver quietly smoked a pipe. 
tomorrow they would start on the big hunt. 
young gray fox sat in the outer circle. 
he watched the smoke from the campfire curling lazily on its way up to the 
sky. 
he listened to the tales of the hunt. 
the braves had many stories to tell of their great skills in hunting. 
soon the fires burned low. 
the braves left, one by one, to rest before their long journey. 
before sun-up they would be well along the trail. 
gray fox waited until the last indian brave had left the campfire. 
then he crawled over and sat down beside his father, big chief beaver. 
"father," said gray fox, "i too wish to hunt with the braves. 
i am strong. 
my arrow shoots more swiftly than the wind." 
"even the son of a chief must prove his courage before he can hunt with 
the braves," said his father. 
"first you must bring me a feather pulled from the tail of a fierce live 
eagle. 
only then can you go on the hunt." 
early the next morning, gray fox started on his long, difficult search for 
the nest of the mighty eagle. 
he knew it would be hidden high up on the mountain. 
he walked many days before he reached the foot of the mountain. 
 
in the fourth place, the new deal gave a go-ahead signal to organized 
labor. 
up to this time such laws as seemed to authorize collective bargaining, 
like the clayton act, had frequently been nullified by the courts. 
but now the norris-laguardia anti-injunction act of 1932 was follwed by 
section 7a of the national industrial recovery act of 1933, and, after that law 
had been set aside by the supreme court, by the wagner act. 
the authorization to organize being clear and specific, there was a rush to 
join unions. 
through its general sympathy with labor, the new deal had unleashed what 
j.[kenneth galbraith has subsequently called a "countervailing force" in the 
american economy, a force which, acting in opposition to business managements, 
and generating for the time being a formidable amount of friction, served to 
bring about a redistribution of the national income downward to those in the 
lower income brackets. 
finally, the new deal tried to do a job of managing the national economy as 
a whole. 
it abandoned the automatically operating gold standard and introduced 
something approaching a managed currency. 
it abandoned the idea that the first duty of a government was to balance 
its budget, and embraced the keynesian idea of deficit spending, with the 
highly optimistic notion that deficits in bad years would be counterbalanced 
by surpluses in good years. 
whatever the dangers inherent in such a dream, at least the idea became 
pretty solidly established that it was the job of the authorities at 
washington so to manipulate their spending and their fiscal controls that the 
economy would run on a reasonably even keel. 
the result of all these interventions, the reform measures, the subsidies 
and guarantees, the public works, the encouragement of labor, and the attempt 
to steer the economy as a whole, was certainly not a socialist order, at least 
in the old sense of the government's taking over the management of business and 
industry. 
 
what happened when an economy went into an economic tailspin was that its 
income contracted, and what happened as its income contracted was that its 
savings were squeezed out. 
how could a community be expected to save as much when everyone was hard up 
as when everyone was prosperous, asked keynes. 
quite obviously, it could not. 
the result of a depression would not be a glut of savings, but a drying-up 
of savings; not a flood of saving, but a trickle. 
and so it was, in fact. 
in 1929 the american private citizenry put aside $3.7 billions out of its 
income; by 1932 and 1933 it was saving "nothing," in fact it was even drawing 
down its old savings made in the years before. 
corporations, which had tucked away $2.6 billions at the top of the boom 
"after" paying out taxes and dividends, found themselves losing nearly $6 
billions three years later. 
quite obviously keynes was right: saving was a kind of luxury which could 
not withstand hard times. 
but the practical consequence of that decline in saving was more portentous 
than the individual tragedies which accompanied it. 
it resulted in a paralyzing situation where the economy was in perfect 
"economic" balance, even though it was in the throes of social agony. 
for if there was no surplus of savings, there would be no pressure on 
interest rates to encourage businessmen to borrow. 
and if there was no surplus of investment (and the very essence of 
depression is that investment is not large enough), then there would be no 
impetus for expansion. 
the economy would not budge an inch. 
thus the paradox of poverty amidst plenty and the anomaly of idle men and 
idle machines. 
to be sure, at the bottom of a slump there is a heartless contradiction 
between a crying need for goods and an insufficiency of production. 
 
the american economy is the fattest goose laying the most golden eggs the 
world has ever seen. 
of course, this remarkable creature has been fed on some pretty rich food, 
and has been rather wasteful and rapacious in its consumption. 
whether the proverbial goose can, or should be allowed to, survive is 
surely a vital issue for america and the world. 
it is difficult enough to understand the american economy now, let alone 
what it will be. 
nevertheless, there are some important trends to be noted and questions to 
be raised with regard to the future. 
one of the facts of american economic life is the growing complexity and 
size of corporations. 
if included in a rank of the nations of the world according the gnp (gross 
national product ] the total value of the goods and services a nation produces 
in one year), general motors would be number 16! 
even henry ford would have trouble competing with that kind of clout. 
and what chance does the neighborhood grocer have against huge chain 
stores? 
quasi-monopoly implies power. 
to be sure, it is not the same as in the days of morgan and carnegie: 
once known primarily as a man of action, the businessman still remains 
that. 
but the areas of significant action have changed. 
the old competitive system has been replaced by a system of "imperfect 
competition" in which the corporations compete with one another less in prices 
than in brands and in "products," that is, in alternative materials for 
achieving the same results. 
as for the big fortunes, a drastic tax system has made them archaic. 
the heads of the corporate empires no longer get their sense of 
fulfillment from personal accumulation, nor is their prime quality that of 
acquisitiveness. 
they are still movers and shakers, but for a different reason than before.
 
the british customs officials, spurred into unusual activity in the face of 
pitt's demand for the strict enforcement of the trade and navigation acts in 
order to break up the pernicious practice of bringing aid and comfort to the 
enemy, were led to employ writs of assistance for the purpose of laying their 
hands upon goods landed in american ports and secured in exchange for american 
provisions sent for the most part... to the french west indies. 
although in the midst of hostilities, most of the merchants in boston 
showed bitter opposition to the writs... 
but the most fateful aftermath of the great war for the empire... grew out 
of the problem of the control and support not only of the vast 
trans-appalachian interior... but of the new acquisitions in north america 
secured from france and spain... 
(the proclamation of 1673) created there a temporary but vast indian 
reserve by laying down as a barrier the crest of the mountains beyond which 
there should be no white settlement except by specific permission of the 
crown. 
the proclamation has been represented not only as a blunder... but also as 
a cynical attempt by the british ministry to embody mercantilistic principles 
in an american land policy that... ran counter to the charter limits of many 
of the colonies and the interests in general of the colonials. 
nevertheless, this view of the proclamation fails to take into account the 
fact that it was the offspring of the war and that the trans-appalachian 
aspects of it were an almost inevitable result of promises made during the 
progress of hostilities... these indians were assured that they would be 
secure in their trans-appalachian lands as a reward for deserting their 
allies, the french... 
thus committed in honor in the course of the war, what could the cabinet 
council at its termination do other than it finally did in the proclamation of 
1763? 
 
it is a great mistake to think of public opinion as united in the colonies 
and as gradually rising against british tyranny. 
public opinion is never wholly united, and seldom rises to a pitch of 
passion without being influenced, in other words, without the use of 
propaganda... 
the years preceding the final secession of the colonists may be divided 
into three periods. 
during the first, from the passage of the sugar act to the practical repeal 
of all obnoxious legislation in 1770, the different groups were by force of 
circumstances united in opposition to the policy of england. 
the merchants needed no propaganda to realize that their business was being 
seriously interfered with, though they cared little about the popular 
catchwords that were being used by the new leaders of the people to inflame 
them... 
but by 1770 the merchants" grievances were settled, and from then until 
1773 all desire for agitation and "rocking the boat" disappeared among the 
richer classes. 
up to that point, the popular anger had served their own cause... 
from the first (samuel) adams and those working with him had realized the 
necessity of democratic slogans in the creation of a state of mind... 
his political philosophy was eagerly lapped up by a populace smarting under 
hard times... 
the establishment of government by free consent of all had become imbedded 
in the mind of the average man, as an essential part of the american dream... 
such talk as this could only make england fearful of how far the people 
might try to put such precepts into practice. 
the upper classes in the colonies also began to be uneasy. 
up to 1770, when their own grievances were redressed, they might allow such 
ideas to be disseminated, considering themselves in control of the situation, 
but after that it became clear that they were losing control. 
 
...no state shall engage in any war without the consent of the united 
states in congress assembled, unless such state be actually invaded by 
enemies, or shall have received certain advice of a resolution being formed by 
some nation of indians to invade such state, and the danger is so imminent as 
not to admit of a delay till the united states in congress assembled can be 
consulted... nor shall any state grant commissions to any ships or vessels of 
war... except it be after a declaration of war by the united states in congress 
assembled... and then only against the kingdom or state... against which war 
has been so declared, and under such regulations as shall be established by 
the united states in congress assembled, unless such state be infested by 
pirates, in which case vessels of war may be fitted out for that occasion, and 
kept so long as the danger shall continue, or until the united states in 
congress assembled shall determine otherwise. 
when land forces are raised by any state for the common defense, all 
officers of or under the rank of colonel shall be appointed by the legislature 
of each state respectively by whom such forces shall be raised or in such 
manner as such state shall direct... 
all charges of war, and all other expenses that shall be incurred for the 
common defense or general welfare... shall be defrayed out of a common 
treasury, which shall be supplied by the several states in proportion to the 
value of all land within each state... 
the taxes for paying that proportion shall be laid and levied by the 
authority and direction of the legislatures of the several states... 
 
in 1801 a new period opened in the history of aristocracy in america with 
the accession of the jeffersonian republicans to power. 
the event was hailed by the republicans as a return to the principles for 
which the war for independence had been fought. 
"the revolution of 1776 is complete" was their exultant cry. 
but the federalists stood aghast at the disaster which they believed had 
befallen the country. 
theodore dwight of connecticut asserted... that the great object of 
democracy was "to destroy every trace of civilization in the world, and force 
mankind back into a savage state... 
we have a country governed by blockheads and knaves..." 
cabot, a massachusetts leader, declared that by democracy was meant "the 
government of the worst." 
both hamilton and rufus king apprehended "a bloody anarchy" as the 
consequence of the leveling tendencies of the times... 
but jeffersonian democracy did not, as a matter of fact, cause the doom of 
the caste principle in american society and government. 
on the contrary, it perpetuated it in a more enlightened and less offensive 
form... it is clear that political power had shifted from a mercantile 
aristocracy built on english models to a landed aristocracy... 
the great planters of the south supplied the atmosphere of gentility in 
which the federal administration at washington moved... the presidency for six 
administrations fell, almost as a matter of right, to a line of succession 
known as the "virginia dynasty." 
from the viewpoint of subsequent progress toward democracy, "jeffersonian 
aristocracy" seems the appropriate term to employ, for the mass of the people 
still continued very largely as spectators of events. 
the philosophical outlook of the new aristocracy was, to be sure, quite 
different from the old... the former prided itself as functioning as the 
guardian and protector of the masses... 
 
there is a traditional presentation of the early development of american 
foreign policy that is based on the assumption that the new nation followed a 
consistent policy of isolation and neutrality. 
it runs along the following lines. 
george washington, saddened by the disputes among americans stimulated by 
the wars in europe following the french revolution, laid the foundations for a 
policy of isolation in his farewell address, in which he warned americans to 
"steer clear of permanent alliances." 
this policy was followed by jefferson and madison, both of whom attempted 
to keep the young nation out of foreign involvements. 
continued british violations of our freedom of the seas, however, and 
impressment of american seamen, brought us into the "second war for 
independence," the war of 1812. 
the policy of isolation was extended to the entire western hemisphere by 
president monroe in the monroe doctrine of 1823, which warned european nations 
that the americas were no longer open to colonization and, in return, pledged 
americans to stay out of european affairs. 
various areas of this interpretation have come under attack by historians. 
several questions suggest the inadequacy, for example, of the traditional 
view of the causes of the war of 1812. 
if the war was declared over maritime rights, why did the maritime new 
england states oppose it? 
why did we go to war in 1812, when impressments were no longer common, 
rather than in 1807, when the attack upon the american ship "chesapeake" had 
fired up national feelings? 
why did congressmen from the south and the west, not affected by such 
violations, press most eagerly for war? 
why was war declared against england, rather than france, which had 
violated american shipping rights as blatantly as had england? 
within the last half-century, a number of historians have suggested that 
the desire for territorial expansion, rather than maritime interests, was the 
major cause for war. 
 
out of the west came andrew jackson, bringing with him, on the tide of the 
revolution of 1828, the fresh winds of frontier democracy. 
the spokesman for the common man, jackson instituted the principle of 
rotation in office to prevent the development of an aristocracy of public 
officers; to check the power of the "money power," he destroyed the national 
bank; in the tradition of western equality and individualism, the jacksonians 
pressed for universal manhood suffrage and individual freedom. 
this, at least, is the traditional presentation of "the age of jackson." 
actually, jacksonian democracy is a term that is applied to a complex set 
of events and attitudes, and to this day there is controversy over its nature. 
different areas of the traditional interpretation have come under attack 
by modern historians. 
in an attempt to determine answers to the problem posed in the chapter's 
title, we shall examine a number of questions: how much did jackson himself 
believe in democracy? 
was the major source of jacksonian democracy the western frontier or the 
eastern cities? 
was the bank destroyed on behalf of the debtor farmers and workers, or for 
and by jacksonian businessmen who resented the power of the established money 
interests and wanted a larger share of the wealth for themselves? 
was the principle of rotation in office merely a mask for the distribution 
of rewards to political friends out of the public purse? 
the clash of opinion may be confusing, but it is well to remember that few 
issues in today's world are so simple or so clear-cut that there is unanimity 
of opinion. 
to a large extent, your own view of jacksonian democracy will be influenced 
by the set of beliefs about democracy in general with which you approach this 
chapter. 
 
william h.[seward, senator from new york, later to become lincoln's 
secretary of state, warned in 1858 of an "irrepressible conflict" between the 
slave system of the south and the free labor system of the north. 
for many years, the authors of northern textbooks echoed this concept as 
the basic cause of the civil war. 
southern historians, on the other hand, have tended to repeat calhoun's 
contention (see preceding topic) that the southern states were victims of the 
increasing and unwarranted interference by the federal government. 
the united states government, according to this view, reflected the 
sentiments of the more populous north, and was infringing upon the 
constitutionally guaranteed rights of the southern states. 
in the 1920's and 1930"s, a number of respected historians described the 
civil war as an economic struggle between northern businessmen and southern 
planters. 
the conflict was the culmination of political strife between economic 
interests for the control of the national government. 
more recently, a small group of historians have tended to reject the notion 
that there were irreconcilable differences between the north and south. 
these historians blame irresponsible agitators and incompetent politicians 
for whipping up the emotional atmosphere to the point where war could break 
out. 
in large part, they claim, the war was fomented by fanatics who 
exaggerated the issue of slavery. 
these historians refer to themselves as "revisionists," since they have 
been occupied with "revising" the traditional interpretations. 
these revisionist studies provoked a series of attacks during and since 
world war ii. 
rejecting the contention that the civil war was the result of fanaticism, 
these "anti-revisionists" object that the moral issue of slavery has been 
ignored as a factor. 
while the two previous chapters, dealing with growing sectionalism, 
explored contemporary arguments over the developing struggle, this chapter is 
devoted to interepretations by historians who have come to their conclusions 
on the basis of evidence available after the civil war. 
 
at last the day for the trip came. 
the sun was shining brightly, and the school bus was parked in front of 
the school. 
everyone came to school all dressed up. 
the girls wore ribbons in their hair, and almost every boy wore a necktie. 
"my," said miss white, "how nice you all look for our trip today." 
then all of the boys and girls in the second grade class went out and got 
into the bus. 
sally and susan sat in the first seat, just behind the bus driver. 
when everyone was seated, the bus started down the street. 
it went past the house where susan lived, past the post office and the 
park, where they would eat their lunches. 
at last the bus came to the library. 
"who is that on the library steps?" asked sally. 
"that is the librarian," said miss white. 
"she is expecting us. 
she will take us through the library and explain things to us." 
the bus stopped. 
the children went up to the steps where the librarian greeted them. 
"good morning, children," she said. 
"how nice of you to visit our library. 
before we go inside, i want to explain to you that everyone must be quiet 
in a library. 
we do not want to disturb people who are reading or studying." 
"now, when we first go into the building, we will go to a room where i can 
explain how our library works. 
you may talk and ask questions there. 
but when we go through the rooms where people are reading, you must be 
quiet." 
 
"the primary task of statesmanship in this era," nevins wrote, "was to 
furnish a workable adjustment between the two sections, while offering strong 
inducements to the southern people to regard their labor system not as static 
but evolutionary, and equal persuasions to the northern people to assume a 
helpful rather than scolding attitude."... 
because the revisionists felt no moral urgency themselves, they deplored as 
fanatics those who did feel it, or brushed aside their feelings as the 
artificial product of emotion and propaganda. 
the revisionist here was stephen a.[douglas, who always thought that the 
great moral problems could be solved by sleight-of-hand. 
the phrase, "northern man of southern sentiments," randall remarked, was 
"said... as if it were a base thing for a northern man to work with his 
southern fellows." 
by denying themselves insight into the moral dimension of the slavery 
crisis, in other words, the revisionists denied themselves a historical 
understanding of the intensities that caused the crisis. 
it was the moral issue of slavery, for example, that gave the struggles 
over slavery in the territories or over the enforcement of the fugitive slave 
laws their significance. 
these issues, as the revisionists have shown... were not in themselves 
basic. 
but they were the available issues; they were almost the only points 
within the existing constitutional framework where the moral conflict could be 
faced... 
to say that the civil war was fought over the "unreal" issue of slavery in 
the territories is like saying that the second world war was fought over the 
"unreal" issue of the invasion of poland. 
the democracies could not challenge fascism inside germany any more than 
opponents of slavery could challenge slavery inside the south; but the 
extension of slavery, like the extension of fascism, was an act of aggression 
which made a moral choice inescapable... 
 
despite strange doings in statehouses, the southern people of both races 
lived as quietly and as normally during reconstruction as in any politically 
disturbed period before or after. 
the defiance of the traditional caste division occasionally expressed in an 
official reception or in an act of the legislature was not reflected generally 
in common social relations. 
no attempt was made to destroy white supremacy in the social or economic 
sphere or to sanction interracial marriages. 
the political aggressiveness of the negroes, characteristic of the period, 
did not extend to other phases of human relations... 
negro officeholders who were aggressive politically were known to observe 
carefully the etiquette of the southern caste system... 
one of the accepted conventions of reconstruction scholars is that the 
carpetbaggers failed because their measures were excessively radical... 
a truly radical program would have called for the confiscation of land for 
the freedmen. 
land was the principal form of southern wealth, the only effective weapon 
with which the ex-slaves could have battled for economic competence and social 
equality... 
the dominant radicalism of the day naively assumed that a people's 
salvation could be obtained through the ballot and the spelling book... 
in another vital respect the so-called radicals of the 1860's lost an 
opportunity to attempt genuine radicalism. 
they did not try to destroy the greatest obstacle to the negroes" 
salvation, the southern caste system... 
no one was ever allowed to forget that race distinctions existed... 
a reinterpretation of the tax policies of the radical regimes suggests a 
new explanation of the odious reputations possessed by these governments. 
of course, a partial answer is that there was corruption and incompetence. 
illiterate freedmen were easily seduced by unscrupulous carpetbaggers and 
scalawags. 
but were these malpractices the most serious offenses of the 
reconstructionists? 
 
in the very olden time, there lived a semibarbaric king who was a man of 
exuberant fancy and of an authority so irresistible that, at his will, he 
turned his varied fancies into facts. 
he was greatly given to self-communing, and when he and himself agreed 
upon anything, the thing was done. 
when everything moved smoothly, his nature was bland and genial; but 
whenever there was a little hitch, he was blander and more genial still, for 
nothing pleased him so much as to make the crooked straight, and crush down 
uneven places. 
among his borrowed notions was that of the public arena, in which, by 
exhibitions of manly and beastly valor, the minds of his subjects were refined 
and cultured. 
but even here the exuberant and barbaric fancy asserted itself. 
this vast amphitheater, with its encircling galleries, its mysterious 
vault, and its unseen passages, was an agent of poetic justice, in which crime 
was punished, or virtue rewarded, by the decrees of an impartial and 
incorruptible chance. 
when a subject was accused of a crime of sufficient importance to interest 
the king, public notice was given that on an appointed day the fate of the 
accused person would be decided in the king's arena. 
when all the people had assembled in the galleries, and the king, 
surrounded by his court, sat high up on his throne of royal state on one side 
of the arena, he gave a signal, a door beneath him opened, and the accused 
subject stepped out into the amphitheater. 
 
jess sat in the kitchen at the long table by the west window where in 
winter he kept his grafting tools: the thin-bladed knife, the paper sweet with 
the smell of beeswax and the resin, the boxes of roots and scions. 
jess was a nurseryman and spring meant for him not only spirits" 
flowering, but the earth"s. 
a week more of moderate weather and he"d be out, still in gum boots, but 
touching an earth that had thawed, whose riches were once again fluid enough 
to be sucked upward, toward those burgeonings which by summer would have 
swelled into early harvests, permains, and sweet bows. 
spring's a various season, jess thought, no two years the same: comes in 
with rains, mud deep enough to swallow horse and rider; comes in cold, snow 
falling so fast it weaves a web; comes in with a warm wind blowing about thy 
ears and bringing a smell of something flowering, not here, but southaways, 
across the ohio, maybe, in kentucky. 
nothing here now but a smell of melting snow, which is no smell at all, 
but a kind of prickle in the nose, like a bygone sneeze. 
comes in so various, winter put by and always so welcome. 
"and us each spring so much the same." 
"thee speaking to me, jess?" 
"nothing thee"d understand, eliza." 
spring made jess discontented with the human race, and with women, if 
anything, more than men. 
it looked as if spring put them all in the shade: the season so 
resourceful and they each year meeting it with nothing changed from last year, 
digging up roots from the same sassafras thicket, licking sulfur and molasses 
from the big-bowled spoon. 
 
i don"t mind staying after school," i says to professor herbert, "but i"d 
rather you"d whip me with a switch and let me go home early. 
pa will whip me anyway for getting home two hours late." 
"you are too big to whip," says professor herbert, "and i have to punish 
you for climbing up in that cherry tree. 
you boys knew better than that! 
the other five boys have paid their dollar each. 
you have been the only one who has not helped pay for the tree. 
can"t you borrow a dollar?" 
"i can"t," i says. 
"i"ll have to take the punishment. 
i wish it would be quicker punishment. 
i wouldn"t mind." 
professor herbert stood and looked at me. 
he was a big man. 
he wore a gray suit of clothes. 
the suit matched his gray hair. 
"you don"t know my father," i says to professor herbert. 
"he might be called a little old-fashioned. 
he makes us mind him until we"re twenty-one years old. 
he believes: if you spare the rod you spoil the child. 
i"ll never be able to make him understand about the cherry tree. 
i"m the first of my people to go to high school." 
"you must take the punishment," says professor herbert. 
"you must stay two hours after school today and two hours after school 
tomorrow. 
i am allowing you twenty-five cents an hour. 
that is good money for a high-school student. 
you can sweep the schoolhouse floor, wash the blackboards, and clean 
windows. 
i"ll pay the dollar for you." 
 
in our age of mass production, most painters buy their materials 
ready-made. 
but during the middle ages and the renaissance, painters prepared many of 
their pigments in their own workshops. 
they made them out of colored materials and pieces of earth, which they 
ground into fine powder and mixed with water to form a paste. 
they knew how bright or dull certain colors would appear after drying, and 
they knew fairly well what their paintings would look like after ten, twenty, 
or even a hundred years. 
because artists in those days knew their materials so well, many of their 
paintings are still in excellent condition. 
look, for instance, at the clear, beautiful colors in the 
fifteenth-century manuscript illumination reproduced here (plate 1). 
the ultramarine blue used for both the sea and the sky was made from a 
semi-precious stone called lapis lazuli. 
before applying each mixture of pigment and water, the artist added a 
gummy substance to make the paint adhere firmly. 
manuscript illuminators often used the white of an egg, but painters who 
worked on canvas or wooden panels used the yolk. 
egg tempera, as this kind of paint is called, dries so fast that each new 
stroke of color can be added almost instantly without blurring or mixing. 
in a period such as the early renaissance, when precision of detail was so 
highly admired, egg tempera was the perfect medium. 
panel paintings were often much larger than manuscript illuminations but 
could be just as precise in detail (plates 2 and 3). 
the surface of the panel was prepared with many layers of a fine white 
plaster called gesso, rubbed down to a smooth finish. 
 
in part 1 of this unit on poetry we learned how, over the years, various 
poets have used the elements of their craft, rhythm, rhyme, imagery, and 
figures of speech such as metaphor and simile, to achieve, all in their own 
ways, a variety of poetic effects as they expressed themselves on a variety of 
subjects. 
now, in part 2 of this unit, we shall use our new understanding of the 
poet's craft as we take a close look at the work of five well-known poets. 
and, since an understanding of writers" lives does a great deal to aid our 
understanding of their work, we shall take a closer look at the lives of these 
poets as well as at the background of the times in which they wrote their 
poems. 
the first of these five poets is carl sandburg, the well-known, 
twentieth-century american who is as well known for his monumental biography 
of abraham lincoln as for his poetry. 
from sandburg we shall turn to rudyard kipling, an englishman who lived in 
many parts of the world, india, south africa, and the united states, and whose 
poetry and stories made him the spokesman of his country and his age. 
turning back to the eighteenth century, we shall then come to "bobby" 
burns, whom scotland claims as her national poet and whose verse has for two 
hundred years delighted scots and non-scots alike. 
edna st.[vincent millay, the fourth poet at whom we shall have a close 
look, we have already encountered in part 1 (page 180). 
this twentieth-century american, who wrote stories and verse plays as well 
as poetry, is remembered chiefly for her intense and imaginative lyric poems. 
 
joseph rudyard kipling was a striking exception to the belief that 
writers, and poets in particular, usually starve. 
while still in his early twenties, he began to publish at an incredible 
rate in newspapers and magazines and soon found himself one of the hugest and 
youngest successes of any writer who ever lived. 
his short stories, novels, and poems were enormously popular, especially 
in england, the united states, and india, and he was one of the first writers 
to be published in paperback books. 
kipling was born in bombay, the "gateway of india." 
as a young boy he spoke hindustani as well as he did english, and was 
brought up on indian tales and legends told by his nurse in local dialect. 
he even went to both christian and hindu religious services, depending on 
which servant had charge of him that day. 
when he was five-and-a-half, he was sent to england for his education, but 
he returned to india before he was seventeen. 
an intelligent and inquisitive young man, he observed closely everything 
around him, the customs and the people, the plants and the animals, the usual 
and the unusual. 
this india that he learned to know so well was to furnish the characters, 
plots, and setting for many of his stories and poems. 
at the age of twenty-three, kipling returned to england from india with a 
suitcase full of stories and poems which launched his early success as a 
writer. 
a few years after his success in england, kipling married an american and 
lived for four years in vermont, traveling widely in america and giving 
lectures. 
 
the little fellow who worked all day long in the tumble-down old house by 
the river thames pasting oil-paper covers on boxes of blacking fell ill one 
afternoon. 
one of the workmen, a big man named bob fagin, made him lie down on a pile 
of straw in the corner and placed blacking bottles filled with hot water 
beside him to keep him warm. 
there he lay until it was time for the men to stop work, and then his 
friend fagin, looking down upon the small boy of twelve, asked if he felt able 
to go home. 
the boy got up looking so big-eyed, white-cheeked, and thin that the man 
put his arm about his shoulder. 
"never mind, bob; i think i"m all right now," said the boy. 
"don"t you wait for me; go on home." 
"you ain"t fit to go alone, charley. 
i"m comin" along with you."
""deed i am, bob. 
i"m feelin" as spry as a cricket." 
the little fellow threw back his shoulders and headed for the stairs. 
fagin, however, insisted on keeping him company; and so the two, the 
shabbily dressed undersized youth and the big strapping man, came out into the 
murky london twilight and took their way over the blackfriars bridge. 
"been spendin" your money at the pastry shops, charley, again? 
that's what was the matter with you, i take it." 
the boy shook his head. 
"no, bob. 
i"m trying to save. 
when i get my week's money, i put it away in a bureau drawer, wrapped in 
six little paper packages, with a day of the week on each one." 
 
my plan was clear, concise, and reasonable, i think. 
for many years i have traveled in many parts of the world. 
in america i live in new york or dip into chicago or san[francisco. 
but new york is no more america than paris is france or london is 
england. 
thus i discovered that i did not know my own country. 
i, an american writer, writing about america, was working from memory, 
and the memory is at best a faulty, warpy reservoir. 
i had not heard the speech of america, smelled the grass and trees and 
sewage, seen its hills and water, its color and quality of light. 
i knew the changes only from books and newspapers. 
but more than this, i had not felt the country for twenty-five years. 
in short, i was writing of something i did not know about, and it seems to 
me that in a so-called writer this is criminal. 
my memories were distorted by twenty-five intervening years. 
once i traveled about in an old bakery wagon, a double-doored rattler with 
a mattress on its floor. 
i stopped where people stopped or gathered, i listened and looked and 
felt, and in the process had a picture of my country the accuracy of which was 
impaired only by my own shortcomings. 
so it was that i determined to look again, to try to rediscover this 
monster land. 
otherwise, in writing, i could not tell the small diagnostic truths which 
are the foundations of the larger truth. 
one sharp difficulty presented itself. 
in the intervening twenty-five years my name had become reasonably well 
known. 
 
"shh!" whispered susan. 
and all the class stood still. 
that is, everyone stood still except larry johnson. 
he was walking along, looking at a shelf filled with stories of adventure. 
and as larry walked there was a squeak with every step. 
all of the children laughed. 
"larry made the squeaking noise," said susan. 
"he made the noise with his new shoes." 
larry looked down at his shoes. 
"i am sorry i made such a noise," he said. 
"next time i come to the library i will not wear squeaky shoes." 
after the class left the library, they went to the park to eat their 
lunches. 
then they ran and played and laughed until miss white said it was time to 
go home. 
everybody had a good time and learned how to get books from the library. 
david wilson was ten years old and had lived all his life in the city. 
he lived on the eighth floor of a tall apartment building. 
it was summer, and david had invited his cousin george for a week's 
vacation. 
george had never been to the city before. 
he lived on a farm in the middle of the state. 
at last the day came when george was to arrive. 
george felt quite grown up coming alone by train to the city for a visit. 
but he was glad to see david and his father when the train pulled into the 
station. 
everything looked very strange. 
"let's take the subway home," said david. 
"what's a subway?" asked george. 
"it's something like the train you came on, george," said david's father. 
 
when artists paint portraits, they usually try for more than simply a 
physical likeness. 
they try to tell us something about a person's character or type of life, 
what it is that makes that person interesting. 
one way an artist can do this is by representing the subjects of portraits 
in their usual surroundings. 
for example, the nineteenth-century french painter edgar degas portrayed 
one of his friends, another painter named james tissot, by posing the man in 
his own studio (plate 1). 
to make tissot seem to be part of the room around him, degas placed his 
figure in the background. 
the paintings we see are all by tissot, except for a small 
sixteenth-century portrait of a german prince on the wall just above his left 
shoulder. 
degas placed this compact little picture in the very center of his 
composition to exaggerate, by contrast, tissot's casual pose and the slimness 
of his figure. 
not all portraits are so informal, however. 
for example, sir anthony van[dyck's seventeenth-century picture of philip, 
lord wharton (plate 2) was intended not as an intimate likeness of a friend, 
but as a stately portrait of a young nobleman. 
since lords and ladies of this period loved to play at being shepherds, 
van[dyck has shown this young english lord holding a shepherd's staff, and he 
has painted every fold and wrinkle of his costume in exquisite detail. 
notice that the main areas of light tones, the patch of sky, the orange 
drapery, and the highlights along the sleeve of the jacket, all lead directly 
to the face. 
 
to really understand people, you must know something about the environment 
in which they live. 
environment is the setting in which man lives. 
man is surrounded by people, objects and nature. 
these three things help decide the way in which man lives. 
from man's earliest history, people have adapted their way of life to the 
natural environment, the habitat. 
the habitat consists of such things as soil, land surface (topography), 
climate, plants and animals. 
these things are different throughout the world. 
for this reason man has had to learn to use them differently. 
people in the warmer climates have ways of living which are different from 
those in colder climates. 
they build houses, wear clothing and eat foods that are different. 
where soil is fertile and climate is favorable, men earn their living by 
farming. 
in places where the land is rocky and the soil poor, men have had to make 
their living in other ways. 
as man's knowledge has grown larger, he has become better able to make the 
environment meet his needs. 
earliest man was very dependent on his environment. 
he did not use the environment well. 
he lived in trees or caves and gathered food or hunted animals. 
when the food supply disappeared, he either died or moved to where the 
food was plentiful. 
when man learned to farm, make simple tools and build houses, he no longer 
needed to move about to get food. 
he began to make the habitat work for him. 
the habitat is important, but there is another important part of the 
environment. 
this part is called the culture. 
 
the soviet union is the largest country in the world. 
it covers more than 8,500,000 square miles, or about 1/6 of the total 
land area of the earth. 
the soviet union is larger than the united states and canada combined. 
the ussr is spread over two continents, europe and asia. 
it stretches from the arctic ocean in the north to the black sea and the 
mountains of central asia in the south; it extends from the pacific ocean in 
the east to the baltic sea in the west. 
another way to look at russia's huge size is to look at the following 
facts. 
there is a three-hour time difference between new york city on the 
atlantic coast and los[angeles on the pacific. 
in russia there is almost a 12 hour difference between leningrad on the 
baltic sea and vladivostok on the pacific ocean. 
when the sun is rising in leningrad it has already set in vladivostok. 
russia was not always a large country. 
during much of its early history it was a small country in eastern europe. 
it was completely surrounded by land owned by other countries and was 
hundreds of miles from the open sea. 
in the 16th century russia began to expand until it reached its present 
size. 
the soviet union is located far to the north of the equator. 
its most southern point is 35 north latitude; the entire country is 
farther north than los[angeles. 
some of the most important cities are farther north than new york. 
new york city's latitude is 42 north, moscow is 55 north latitude, and 
leningrad is 60 north latitude. 
 
peter's wars cost russia a fortune. 
to pay for them, the government placed a tax on everything imaginable, 
mustaches, beards, hats, books, cucumbers, salt, and other things. 
most important was the poll tax on all "male souls." 
this meant that every man had to pay the government a tax just for being 
alive. 
since the privileged (rich) classes did not have to pay the poll tax, the 
poor peasants were left to pay for all the costs. 
peter's methods of bringing about reform were extremely cruel. 
the tsar did not hesitate to use force to change russia. 
those who suffered most were the poor. 
beggars and criminals were rounded up and sent to work in factories where 
they had to remain permanently. 
in working on the gigantic public projects, such as the construction of 
the baltic fleet and the new capital of st.[petersburg, thousands died from 
cold, hunger and disease. 
russian soldiers, poorly dressed and poorly armed, often went to battle 
without supplies or pay and died by the thousands. 
those who opposed peter were tortured and executed. 
catherine the great, who ruled russia from 1762 to 1796, was a remarkable 
woman in many ways. 
like peter she had two aims: to bring european culture to russia and to 
make russia powerful. 
catherine showed great ability in running the russian government, but many 
of her enlightened ideas about reforming (changing) russia were never really 
put into practice. 
catherine's chief claim to fame was in the field of foreign policy. 
under her rule the area of russia increased by 200,000 square miles. 
 
north africa and the middle east is a region of deserts. 
there are mountains and plateaus as well, but the desert most affects the 
life of the people. 
the largest desert on earth, the sahara, is located in northern africa and 
covers the southern portions of morocco, algeria, and libya. 
in addition, desert lands extend eastward to the red sea. 
beyond the red sea there is desert again. 
the arabian peninsula contains one of the largest true deserts in the 
world, the rub al[khali, which is known as the "empty quarter." 
(a true desert has no vegetation at all.) 
there are no settlements in the empty quarter and few people have ever 
crossed it. 
this region is a continuation of the sahara and part of a desert chain 
that extends through large parts of southwest asia some 5000 miles from the 
atlantic to the indian ocean. 
the middle east is probably the driest place on earth. 
the major economic problem that people living here have to face can be 
summarized in one word: water. 
although some areas may have a lot of rainfall, the rain is concentrated 
so that it falls over a short period of time, leaving the ground dry through 
most of the year. 
during the rainy period, the water flows into seasonal streams called 
wadis. 
this water runs off rapidly, carrying with it most of the topsoil. 
as a result the land is left in worse condition than if it had not rained 
at all. 
it is along the mediterranean coast and some of the other coasts, as well 
as in the mountains that rain falls most heavily during the rainy season. 
 
between the years 700 to 1200 a.d. the moslems had the most advanced 
civilization in the world. 
then something went wrong. 
moslem civilization stopped advancing. 
by 1600 the civilization of europe began to develop more rapidly and 
surpass that of the moslems. 
there are a number of reasons which help to explain this decline. 
by the middle of the 10th century it was evident that there was no real 
unity in the moslem lands. 
although most of the countries recognized the caliph in baghdad as their 
ruler, local leaders did pretty much as they wished. 
different religious groups arose, each claiming to be the true followers 
of islam. 
these groups plotted against and fought with each other. 
arabs, persians and turks rivaled one another for important positions and 
for leadership. 
therefore, in the face of a common enemy the moslem lands could not really 
put up any resistance. 
from 1097 to 1291 the christians in europe tried to reconquer the holy 
land from the moslems. 
the coastal cities of palestine, parts of syria and turkey were captured 
by the christians. 
during this period moslem rulers made alliances with europeans against 
other moslems. 
finally the famous ruler of egypt, salah-al-din (saladin) was able to 
unite enough territory and in 1187 to defeat the christians, who were driven 
from jerusalem. 
during the 200 years of warfare there was considerable destruction in the 
middle east. 
in general, as the christians in europe grew stronger they began to expand 
at the expense of islam. 
areas such as spain, which had been part of the moslem world, were 
gradually taken over by the europeans. 
 
thirty years after the creation of the state of israel, the palestinian 
arabs not only are at war with israel but are in conflict with the arab 
governments and among themselves. 
many of the palestinians feel that the arab governments have let them 
down. 
the palestinians have been demanding that the arab countries join forces 
for a military showdown with israel. 
but the arab governments are not willing to risk another defeat in a war 
with israel at present. 
some of the arab countries have said they are willing to reach a 
settlement with israel, but the palestinians reject this idea. 
the palestinians would like to use the arab countries as a base for 
attacks against israel. 
for a long time they had bases in jordan, the arab country having the 
longest border with israel. 
from here they periodically attacked israel. 
however, in 1970 and 1971 king hussein of jordan decided to crack down on 
the guerrillas. 
as a result of a bitter war between the jordanian army and the palestinian 
guerrillas, the guerrillas were expelled from their bases in jordan. 
the palestinian guerrillas next decided to use lebanon as their base. 
refugee camps located along the border with israel were heavily armed, and 
from here attacks into israel were frequently launched. 
but these attacks resulted in israeli reprisals. 
the israeli army bombed border areas in lebanon causing substantial 
destruction. 
the guerrillas were becoming a headache to the government of lebanon, 
just as they had been to jordan earlier. 
in may 1973 violent fighting broke out between the palestinian guerrillas 
and the lebanese army and several hundred people were killed. 
 
there is an african proverb which says, "a man or woman without kin is as 
good as dead." 
this indicates how important the family is to an african. 
family life is important in all societies. 
the family satisfies the most basic human needs, the need for 
companionship, for food, for reproduction and for teaching and training the 
young. 
but africans are far more closely tied to their families than are 
americans or people in western countries. 
in a number of ways african family life is different from that of 
american families. 
in america when a young couple marries, they move into a home of their 
own. 
in africa the wife goes to live with her husband's family. 
in our country young people choose the husband or wife whom they wish to 
marry. 
in africa the marriage is usually arranged by the parents. 
this means that the parents may actually pick the mate for their son or 
daughter to marry. 
more often, however, a young man meets a girl whom he likes. 
he then reports this fact to his father and must get his approval. 
his father and several other members of the family then arrange to visit 
the girl's parents to get their approval and to discuss the marriage. 
part of the discussion involves the payment of what is known as "bride 
price" or "bridewealth." 
the young man has to make some kind of payment to the girl's father before 
he is allowed to marry her. 
this payment is usually in the form of cattle or sheep or another type of 
currency. 
 
from the beginning of history slavery in one form or another existed in 
many parts of the world. 
slavery had existed in africa hundreds of years before the arrival of 
europeans. 
enemies captured in battle, criminals and debtors were often forced into 
slavery. 
but this type of slavery existed only on a small scale and was not 
necessarily hereditary. 
it was also different from the type of slavery which developed later 
because africans did not regard slavery as the total ownership of another 
human being. 
the slave trade had existed long before the arrival of the europeans as 
well. 
long before the africans were carried to the new world, they were being 
captured by arabs and sold in the markets of the east, in india, indonesia, 
egypt, turkey, and persia. 
in 1441 a portuguese ship returned to lisbon, bringing back among other 
things 12 men, women and children from africa. 
these were the first african slaves to be sold in europe. 
but there was not much need for slaves in europe and so the slave trade 
was not very important to the europeans in the beginning. 
it was not until the european planters in the west indies discovered that 
they could make fortunes by growing sugar with the labor of african slaves 
that the trade in human beings assumed massive proportions. 
by the mid 1500s the slave trade had grown tremendously. 
as the european demand for sugar and tobacco grew, the need for slaves in 
the new world grew as well. 
the profits of the slave trade for the europeans were enormous. 
 
africa has always been a continent where foreign powers have competed with 
each other to gain influence. 
in the 1970s the country making the greatest effort to expand its 
influence throughout africa has been the soviet union. 
in this effort the soviet union is assisted by cuba. 
to a lesser degree other communist countries, mainly in eastern europe, 
have sent special units to africa to serve soviet foreign policy interests. 
these countries are east germany, czechoslovakia, hungary, poland and 
bulgaria. 
in 1978 there were over 40,000 cuban troops in africa, 20,000 in angola, 
17,000 in ethiopia and about 4,000 scattered in places like mozambique, the 
congo, equatorial guinea, guinea-bissau, libya and tanzania. 
in the past africa was never given top priority in soviet foreign policy 
plans. 
in the 1970s, however, the soviet union has become increasingly interested 
in africa. 
there are several reasons for this new interest. 
africa is an excellent location for soviet air and naval bases. 
these bases can help the soviet union extend its control to the indian and 
atlantic oceans. 
the soviet union and china are engaged in a worldwide competition to win 
underdeveloped countries to their own form of communism. 
the soviet union would like the african nations to follow the direction of 
moscow rather than peking. 
africa, with its wealth of natural resources, is very important to western 
europe, which lacks many of these resources. 
this situation makes africa valuable to the soviet union as well. 
since the soviet union does not have a history of colonialism in africa 
as western nations do, it is in a position to support african liberation 
movements such as the one in angola. 
 
during the next few days george was excited by all the different things he 
saw in the city. 
he even went to one of the big supermarkets. 
he pushed the cart for david's mother as she gathered things from the 
shelves to place in the cart. 
"how different," said george to himself. 
"at home we don"t have to buy so many things to eat at a store because we 
grow them in a garden." 
one morning, near the end of the week, david's mother called to the boys, 
"come on, sleepyheads, time to get up! 
father left for work an hour ago, and i think today we will visit one of 
the department stores." 
after the boys had had breakfast and were all dressed and ready to go, 
david's mother said, "since george has never been in one, we"ll take a taxicab 
to the store." 
george watched the meter in the taxicab as they drove to the department 
store. 
david's mother had told george that that was the machine that told the 
driver how much money to ask for at the end of the ride. 
david pointed out some of the places he had been to as they drove by. 
"i"ve been there with father," he said, as they passed the zoo and the 
museum. 
david's mother pointed to the elevated train as it went by. 
"see, george," she said. 
"by taking the elevated train one can get across the city in a short time 
without having to stop for other cars or people." 
"just like the subway," said david. 
"i never thought i would see a train in the air or under the ground," said 
george. 
 
in china today, as in the soviet union, real power lies in the hands of 
the communist party, and not in the government. 
in china the communists, who control all the power, are men of the older 
generation. 
until his recent death, mao tse-tung was at the very top, with a small 
group of men who set up the communist party and led the revolution. 
these men were all over seventy years of age. 
under them are men who run the government ministries and the party, and 
hold key posts in the army and the police. 
these men are in their fifties. 
following the unrest and difficulties of the late 1960s, younger members 
of the party were put into some positions of importance. 
their influence and ideas will most likely lead to changes in policy and 
methods in the future. 
until his death, the most important man in china was mao tse-tung, former 
chairman of the ccp . 
all policies were decided by mao and his associates. 
once a decision was reached, everyone was expected to obey and carry out 
the decision. 
there was very little criticism or debate. 
the government in china can not be considered democratic by western 
standards. 
in china, as in russia, there is only one political party, the communist 
party. 
the party controls the government. 
the most important people in the party are also in the government. 
members of the party have special privileges and great influence. 
the party manual says that a member must be willing to sacrifice even his 
life "without the slightest hesitation, with a feeling of happiness" for what 
the party tells him to do. 
 
coal is china's most abundant natural resource. 
most of the coal fields are found in manchuria. 
china also has large deposits of iron ore in manchuria, wuhan (the cities 
of hankow, hanyang, and wuchang) in central china and sinkiang. 
because of the iron and coal deposits, the chinese have been able to 
develop a growing steel industry. 
the leading steel producer is the manchurian city of anshan, which turns 
out about half the nation's steel. 
most of anshan's mills were built by the japanese. 
they have been enlarged and modernized with russian help since 1945. 
other important steel centers are mukden, also in manchuria, and wuhan, on 
the yangtze river. 
china has good supplies of tungsten, antimony and tin. 
tungsten is used in making steel and the filaments in light bulbs. 
tin is also used in making steel, and in food containers. 
antimony is used in printing. 
there is sufficient copper to meet china's needs. 
