Coney Island - Creating a Carnival Atmosphere

The idea I found most interesting about the primary sources in the reader was that the carnival atmosphere is created not by the gaiety of the people but by the structural organization of the park. Frederic Thompson, the architectural genius behind Luna Park, knew that in order for an amusement park to prosper, it had to contain amusing aspects in it for the audience. I had always imagined that the people made the parks, not the other way around.

Thompson notes that the "spirit of gaiety, the carnival spirit, is not spontaneous, except on extraordinary levels" (2). Less than 10 minutes from my house in Essex Junction, Vermont, an annual exposition is held. It contains concerts, shows, rides, food, and animals, as well as much more entertainment for all ages. I know everyone, even if they have been to the fair twenty or thirty times, always looks forward to going once again at the beginning of September. I knew that everyone you enjoyed the event became excited to go, I never thought about how much thought goes into the layout of all the attractions. At one end of the fair there are rides lined up in a U shape, with aisles of games beckoning to passer-bys to come spend money on cheap, worthless prizes, and pay money on expensive tickets for each ride. Toward the middle we have aisles of food, all smelling sweet, delicious, and fattening. Of course the cheapest hot dog around is $3. It's easy to blow off twenty plus dollars in one meal:  homemade lemonade ($5), a bloomin' onion ($4), a Philly cheese steak sandwich ($6), earn of corn smothered in butter ($3), and fried dough ($5). On the far end are the buildings housed with all sorts of venders trying to get the visitors to buy jacuzzis,  furniture, a pool, or maybe new windows. Also, there is a farm animal section where kids of all ages can feed the goats, ride the horses, and sometimes even ride a camel. The main attraction located in the grandstands include tractor pulling and nightly concerts, even bringing teen pop sensation Justin Beiber to Vermont.

Everyone is happy at the fair, just as they were at Coney Island, caught up in the carnival spirit. However, it's not the people that bring the mood to the environment, it's the attractions which create, maintain, and restore the happiness and care-free living which amusement parks deliver. The engineering of all the aspects takes great planning and care to ensure that the way entertainment flows will create the most amusement, helping the park to prosper and attract an even greater mass of participants.

Criticism of Coney Island

As the critics of Coney Island demonstrate, all forms of entertainment will have its controversies. The amusement activity which the majority find fun and exhilarating will always have an opposition calling it dangerous or unacceptable for social behavior. Used to the Victorian era, some of the elder people were probably shocked at the sensuality and lack of morals the park demonstrated. In the words of Edward A. Ross, at Coney Island "masked by their anonymity, people feel free to give rein to the expression of their feelings" (97). Free from the stress of work, people let loose and stop thinking about the consequences of their actions as much, relying on their heart to guide their actions on the spur of the moment. Similarly, I think that the college party scene, in terms of social interactions, on weekends faces the same issues which Coney Island presented: the negative being a loss of inhibitions with the positive being having time to have fun  .

At Coney Island, the skirts became shorter, the boys were in closer contact with the girls, and people were controlled by their emotions. On the weekends at college, the skirts also become shorter, the heels are higher, and, regardless if alcohol is involved or not, people will be a little more wild and rambunctious than normally as form of stress relieving. Both situations allow for reason and logic to be forgotten, actions are driven by emotional desires, sometimes getting the individual in trouble. At amusement parks, after the species of straitjacket that we wear in every-day life is removed at such Saturnalia as Coney Island, the human animal emerges in a not precisely winning guise" (96). James Gibbons Huneker's comment reinforces the observation that the decisions people make which swept away in entertainment aren't always the most moral ones. In college, the alcohol only encourages these decisions which are made in the now without consideration as to the outcome. After 4 shots, maybe that one night stand is looking like the best idea of someones entire life, but they regret it on the walk of shame back to their dorm the next morning. People at Coney Island and at college parties might not feel the same way about their decisions if they removed themselves from the situation and really considered the actions they were about to take. Both situations create an environment where losing inhibitions is accepted and encouraged.

Although people may not have been the happiest with the decisions they made, Coney Island and the social scene at college allows both generations the chance to be free from all the hard labor or work they are subjected to during the week. Coney Island presented a Sunday get away for the middle class family from their strenuous long work week. A time to be in an amusement park removed the workers from the city where the idea of work would still linger. The displacement from where work was and this city created specifically for fun allowed people to become a new person in this new world of lights, rides, and shows. Similarly, at college on a Saturday night, students will forget about any and all of their school work, staying out of the library, the environment associated with school work. The social aspect of parties does encourage illegal underage drinking, but regardless the students are more engaged in who is winning their pong game then about writing their literature paper. The social scene, even if students aren't drinking, removes the people from the stresses of the week and opens up into a world of fun and fun. Both Coney Island and college parties allow the subjects a stress reliever from their hard work during the week.

The question I have about the social changes during the beginning of the 20th century is did the social morals change as a result of the new age entertainment or did the new age entertainment only reflect the growing needs of the people?

Introduction to Coney Island

In a book by Victor Turner titled The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, Turner discusses the idea of liminality and communitas in a few of his chapters. Liminality refers to being on the threshold between two states, and communitas is the Spanish word for community, signifying unity and togetherness. Often it is the case when people are in a liminal state, they have a sense of communitas forms, born from their homogeneity of being away from standard social rules. Coney Island, discussed in John F. Kasson's Amusing the Million, was a location at the turn of the nineteenth century which foreshadowed the changes of morals and social interactions which would become more prominent in the 1920s. Coney Island fits into Victor Turner's ideas on liminality and communitas through its necessary escapism from the profane, working world, and through uniting all the visitors, turning socio-economic structures inside out.

Coney Island's amusement parts created a liminal world for the working class Americans of the time, allowing for them to break away from the real world and experience fun and play. A park filled with ride, shows, games, and excitement for all let people fall free from their worries and lose themselves in the entertainment which the island provided them. As the racy and colorful postcards exhibit of the visitors, " in arriving at the resort they crossed a critical threshold, entering a world apart from ordinary life, prevailing social structures and positions" (41). There was no distinction between classes because the people were all dressed similarly, with fashion not daring to give away a hint as to the wearer's background. The park created this atmosphere which removed itself from the city life, and shedding the rules of society within the walls. Dwarfs, distorted bodies, odd talents now became the highlight of the Coney Island world where the people would be mocked for their deformities any where else in the New York City area. The island created a fun, playful world, providing the working class a break on the weekends to allow them to return back to their structured worlds and provide this liminal vacation to make their monotonous work life more bearable.

In this world of liminality, Coney Island creates a sense of communitas among its participants which defies the racial and class tensions seen in the city. By breaking free of reality, the people join together and are bound together in their escape from society. No rules exist; the people create their own social rules in the parks which would be scorned outside anywhere else. In Coney Island the visitors "display a sense of solidarity and mutual pleasure in the release of social restraints" (46). Everyone has broken free of all city ties at the parks and beaches, and are united in their ability to drop their biases and enjoy the company of everyone. Ethnicities intermingle, the upper class interacts with citizens of the lower class, and the outcasts are accepted in this fun-filled society. Amusement and fun unites the people of New York City and abroad in a world which defies socio-economical ties. In this liminal state, Coney Island creates an atmosphere in which the people who support a stronger communitas than the one outside the walls of the park.

Coney Island and other parks and attractions like it brought fun and entertainment into the lives of the middle class workers and stripped the people of their biases and misconceptions of other classes and ethnicities. Men and women could show public displays of affection, the poor were allowed to ride the same rides as the rich, and the shunned citizens of society were suddenly on top of the world. In this liminal threshold on Coney Island, communitas is reached as it is produced no other place outside the walls of Luna Park and Dreamland.

After this first reading in Amusing the Million, one of the questions I have about the entire setting is about why people allowed these breaks in social morals to occur. In today's society, it is a given that amusements parks contain certain attractions, but why is it that these new ideas were accepted by the people? I think reading about some oppositions to the events at Coney Island would be helpful in gaining a more accurate picture of the location.

The Tenants Speak

During the 19th century, the focus on improving the lives of the tenants were laid in improving the designs of the tenement houses. They held competitions to see who could come up with the best design and tried to make changes to improve the health and sanitation of the residents. However, as discussed in class, the root issue of reforming the tenements lay not in the renovation of the buildings themselves but in raising the wages of the tenants.

The entire New York Society was attacking the tenement problem from the wrong angle every single time. They were hoping that instilling change in the buildings people occupied would instill change in the occupants of those buildings. They were working on hygiene and sanitation in schools as children, for when asked what they needed to do to stay healthy they replied "I must keep my skin clean,Wear clean clothes, Breathe pure air, And live in the sunlight." Perhaps cleaner people and a cleaner environment would help the poor people rise from rags to riches and prosper in society, living the American Dream. Last I knew, although cleanliness will make a person appear more presentable to the public, such as when Ragged Dick cleaned up his clothes and washed, it doesn't mean that food will now magically be on the peoples' plates and the rent will suddenly become manageable. Their jobs remain the same, their wages remain the same, and their social and economic status still remains at the bottom.

Reformers like Jacob Riis, had other ideas as to how to eliminate poverty from the city which included renovating or rebuilding the houses in which the people lived. Riis suggests that the three effective ways in dealing with this include "by law, by remodeling and making the most out of the old houses, [and] by building new, model tenements" (Riis, 223). New plumbing would be nice, because without it "you had to go down to the yard, and the toilets were in the yard" (Sigrist). Also, if air and light could reach all corners of rooms, that would provide people with in essence more hope by lightening the atmosphere in the home. However, new innovations and inventions placed in the tenements would increase the cost of the housing and the poor  people whose home's they were supposed to belong to couldn't afford it. Why? Because their occupational wages were too low to support themselves and family.

By making minimum wage a law in the United States, this would increase the amount of money that the poverty stricken people earned, allowing them to afford better housing and giving themselves better quality lives. The poor weren't poor because the tenements made them poor. The poor were poor because their wages made them poor, with tenement housing being the only home they could afford to have. Sanitation in an area where disease spread was inevitable, cleanliness and plumbing in an area where the drinking, washing, and bathroom water were all too close, and education in an area of ignorance would all be beneficial to the poor residents in New York City, however they wouldn't be forward progress in improving their poverty status. The focus of the reformation of the time should have been on the wages of the tenants and not on the tenement buildings themselves. Changing the appearance of a living space won't change the quality of the living space.

My question of the reformation is when did the tenement housing stop? I know some of the buildings are still around and used today, but there aren't a lot of people living in these kinds of conditions in the city today? What happened to the people and the tenements they called home?

Ethnicity in the Tenements

Jacob Riis wrote the book How the Other Half Lives to educate his audience of  middle and upper classmen on the desperate situation of the tenants of the lower, poor class. He wanted to instill a sense of change and inspire action to his readers. However, was Riis really advocating for change for all people of all nationality, race, and ethnicity in the city of New York. Due to racism at the time, ethnicity of the tenement residents would effect whether the people of the city felt the area should be reformed.

Beginning with the Chinese, Riis demonstrates present racism towards this group of citizens in New York City, highlighting their lack of aptitude to change and inability to integrate and Americanize. Riis mentions the Chinese' absence of passion when talking about their conversion to Christianity because "he lacks the handle of a strong faith in something, anything" (77). A lack of faith in religion or in anything which the Americans value in society suggests their inability to be transformed and reformed in any means to be helped out financially and thus socially. Also, their differing morals clash with those of the upper class citizens, who find it baffling that "he was angry" at police interference when a Chinese man was beating up his wife (82). The Chinese' failure to Americanize into society and their seeming lack of passion to anything in American values suggests to the audience that reform effort or help need not be offered to these people because they are essentially helpless. They shouldn't be helped because they don't want to be helped. They would rather stay in the bottom than improve their status, in sense giving the upperclassmen the cold shoulder and ignoring any help the government may have to offer. The Chinese racism of how Riis and his audience portrayed this group would influence whether people would want to put in effort to reform the area.

The Jewish community was seen as very odd and dirty, and whether the ability of the people to integrate into upper levels of society were questioned. The dress of the Jews was "queer" and "outlandish" and the robe didn't just demonstrate or exhibit the religion of the people but "betrayed" the race to passersby on the street (85). The chosen adjectives used by Riis to describe the people of the Jewish community clearly show how they weren't favored by society and thus weren't the priority of the city to come to the aid of. Also, Riis mentions that "typhus fever and small-pox are bred" in the housings of the the Jewish people (88). The upper class citizens were terrified that living closer to these kinds of disease centers would increase their affinity to contract the disease. Why would they want to help the people who only caused huge outbreaks of deadly diseases. While it was more likely the close living quarters were the reason for the high numbers of people who would sub come to typhus and cholera, they people still believed it was these foreigners who brought the sicknesses with them. The oddities of the city and the sickly were not priorities in the push towards reform of the tenements. The discrimination of the Jews would effect whether the people of the city felt the area should be reformed or not.

While Jacob Riis' book was revolutionary in bringing the life in the tenements to light to the literate public, it placed the spot light of reform on certain areas of town more so than others instead of incorporating the entire city as one and looking at the lower class as equal. The negative views of the Chinese and Jews specifically shows how the worth of investing help in these groups doesn't appear as if it will be very high.

The question I have about this topic is on whether Riis himself was actually racist towards certain groups and nationalities or was he only writing what his audience would want to hear. Was he putting down other ethnicities because he believed in the discriminatory words he used or was he trying to appeal to the upper class and feed into their beliefs.

"The Mirror with a Memory"

Jacob Riis' work is said by some to have created some of the most objective photographs  in history to the primitive state of photography as well as the lack of any development of an artistic style in the field. Also, Riis was not using to photographs as his argument but using them as a supplement to his worded claims. The camera had no countless number of settings because just taking the picture was an entire process itself. However, I believe that the innovation of photography created biased photographs of the tenants in Jacob Riis' book How the Other Half Lives.

The expressions of some of the subjects are altered due to their curiosity and admiration of the camera. Riis was one of the first people to travel into the tenements are photograph the residents as they were, meaning that it may well have been the first time those people were getting their picture taken let alone seeing a camera up close. The camera created emotions of uncertainty in the new technology, reflected in the expressions of the people whom he was photographing. In Riis' photograph "Bohemian cigar makers at work in their tenement," the young boy continues his hand work in the picture "although the young boy cannot keep his eyes off the camera" (218). The workers are caught in their environment, however the expressions of the subject, his awe and uncertainty with the invention, adds to a biased tint on the photograph. The obvious interest in the apparatus taking their picture changes the expressions on the subjects' faces, making the photographs free of biases in attempting to catch the tenants in their absolute natural environments.

If Riis was trying to or not, his inclusion or exclusion of photographs and the objects in them creates proclivity. Riis took many many photographs of the tenement housing and its guests, but he could only implement a fraction of them in his finished works. This new technology allowed for the mass production of such pictures. His choosing of which photographs to put in his book is biased because the reader doesn't know what the other hundreds of prints looked like or what those portrayed. Perhaps they were all similar to the ones which appeared in the novel. Maybe a few showed happiness and joy in the expressions of the subjects, indicating that the lower class still held hope and it wasn't the middle class' duty to save the rest of the population in poverty. Also, although Riis attempted to photograph things as they were and show the world the poor life with no strings attached, while taking the photograph, he could only include so much. Whether he focused on a person or their surroundings, this act of changing the field of view created biases based on what the author was and wasn't willing to include in his work. The exclusion and inclusion of various details both in the field of view as well as which prints were used created biases in the work of Riis.

Riis wanted to show readers the lives of the poor without changing any of the environment to bring to readers the truth about the lives of not only the other half, but the lives of the majority of the citizens of the city. He did a very good job at showing the middle and upper class people just how the people living near the Five Points lived. However, no matter how close to the truth Riis wanted to come, he couldn't capture all of it. The modernity of photography created bias photographs in How the Other Half Lives in terms of the subjects' expressions as well as the inclusion and exclusion of certain details.

Introduction to the Tenements

How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis enlightened the higher class citizens on the standard of living that the other half, or more like the other three quarters, of the city lived in. Riis' work was evolutionary due to his inccorporation of photography to support and bring more life to his journalistic writing style. People can disregard words and stories as false exaggerations of the truth, but "if half the country tried to ignore how the other half lived, let them ignore photographs" such as Riis produced for his tale (vii). His first publishings couldn't reprint the pictures he wanted to include, detracting from the reality of the stories which the pictures tell. A drawing, no matter the ability of the artist, will be biased, unable to portray the exact unsanitary, filthy, and wretched living quarters which the people lived in. To get a better sense of the mess which the people of the time lived in, I thought I would compare my dorm room at it's worse to the best of the tenements in order to help myself realize how far the nation has come in terms of living quarters.

My dorm room at it's best:

Compared to average tenement housing:

The first obvious difference between these two photographs is the incorporation of color. True, color film had yet to be invented seeing as the first black and white photograph had only made its newspaper debut in 1873 compared to the publishing of Riis' book in 1890 (vii). However, even if the photograph of the tenement housing had been in color, I doubt the bed sheet would have been a magenta and orange combination, and had there been posters on the wall, they most definitely would have been a poster advocating for vacation and an endless summer.

Dorm life is the first experience I have ever had sharing my sleeping area with another person; at home everyone has their own bedroom with a spare one for guests. In tenement housing, not only are the residents sharing their entire sleeping area with their entire family, but their sleeping space is also their kitchen, their living room and their dining room and their bathroom is the alleyway in the back of their housing building. I can adjust the amount of light which enters the room with the tug of a shade, but in tenement housing "large rooms were partitioned into several smaller ones, without regard to light or ventilation" (5). The people lived in a world of darkness both physically in the dreary depths of their tenement home and mentally in the ignorance of their lack of resources to receive an education. Here my roommate and I are at Stonehill paying around fifteen thousand dollars to room at the school in addition to the rooms we have at home, and the people of the tenements were struggling to provide five cents to afford the space which they called home.

The next thing which caught my eye in comparison of the two photographs was the difference in the messes of my side of the dorm room and the messes found in and around the tenement housing. My mess consists of sweatshirts, books and other articles of clothes I accumulate on my floor during a busy school week. People of the tenement have no such commodities to make any disarray with. Their messes consist of people's garbage strewn about the streets (3), the rubble of old buildings and decaying homes (7), and the dirt which the people wear on their clothes and faces with no means to wash it off (35), symbolizing their poverty status in the city.

A last differing feature between the two rooms is the idea of sanitation and safety. My laundry basket holds my disgusting sweaty clothes which I have worn once and must wash before I wear them again. I don't even know if the tenants even did laundry, let alone how many times they wore an outfit before they deemed it too dirty to go out in public with. However, with dirt as a common accessory, virtually anything would look fashionable at the Five Points. A couple weeks ago there were about ten people in my hallway who got a cold and spread the germs due to the closeness of the living quarters. Everyone took some NyQuil and recovered in a week. In the tenement housing, someone might get cholera and pass it on to others due to close living quarters. One of the children from each family might die, and everyone would hope that they wouldn't get it. If you open my dorm door, directly to the right is the fire exit, which sets off an alarm if anyone pushes it open. In the tenement housing, while trying to rescue residents of a building "the firemen had to look twice before they could find the opening that passes for a thoroughfare; a stout man would never venture in" (36). The owners were more interested in the profits of the business than the safety of those who provided their income. Luckily for me, Stonehill College is more concerned with my safety than the amount of occupants they can place in O'hara Hall.

The question I still have about the tenement housing is how was this problem fixed? I know that reforms were taken to improve specific aspects such as lighting and sanitation, but hos was tenement housing eliminated and better lives established for the majority of the citizens of New York City?

Post Ragged Dick Readings

As cliche as the phrase is, a picture sometimes really is worth a thousand words. A photograph provides the audience with a more tangible source than letters arranged in disarray on a sheet of paper. While Ragged Dick and other primary sources from the Gilded Age are telling stories, they fail to capture the essence of the destitute poverty infecting New York City and account for its growing population of street arabs. Throw as many statistics at someone as you may please, however the mind is incapable of fathoming the extent of numbers and the importance they embody in contrast to the emotions which pictures can flood an individual with. Certain events in history, such as the stories of the poor in the late 19th century are best told not in words, but in film.

Although Ragged Dick is a tale of the rise from rags to riches, the life of Dick while he is in rags is almost glorified; the times appear rough, as indeed they are, but his consistent, merry attitude and perseverance can shadow the truth behind his situation. Words just can't do the time period justice. While describing the sleeping situations of the young vagabonds, "to sleep in boxes, or under stairways, or in hay-barges on the coldest winter nights," definitely appears horrible to the audience, a reader will most likely be more indifferent to the passage, forgetting about it ten minutes later as they saunter off to participate in social aspects of their lives ("Homeless Boys," 143). However, seeing a photograph such as those which are in the edited version of Ragged Dick from Jacob Riis' How the Other Half lives, hits closer to home to the audience.

The above photograph speaks to me tenfold compared to reading about the corners and alleyways that the street children slept in (photograph from How the Other Half Lives). Actually seeing photographs of real children sleeping in a doorway on a metal grate will stick in my mind far longer than words describing the same situation will. Seeing living human beings suffering evokes empathy in the audience because witnessing the horrible situation makes it more real, more tangible and the reader is forced to believe that young children were necessitated to live in such desolate manners.

The supplemental reading to accompany Ragged Dick, "Street-Rats and Gutter Snipes," tries to provide readers with statistics on the age, gender, and nationality of a specific group of pick pocketers in New York City. Charts, like that one on page 28 illustrating the age of the thieves, do provide solid information on the statistics of the past, but charts and graphs and words alone don't do history justice. The mind can't fathom and process the number of kids actually left to fend for themselves and each other on the streets, just as humans can't comprehend the number of casualties from a war. We can read the number 20,000 or 3,000,000 and know that both are big numbers, but when we see hundreds of pictures of different kids roaming the streets of New York alone or we see a picture of hundreds of bodies piled in a mass grave, suddenly that large number becomes alive and we are humbled by it's truth and enormity. The incorporation of photographs in historical events makes the events which are occurring all over the world so much more intimate and tangible to the audience, and can speak many more silent messages to the onlooker than any essay or novel can.

Ragged Dick (Chapters 12-27)

Ragged Dick by Horatio Alger, Jr. is the classic tail of rags to riches, presenting the idea that if someone is determined enough, motivated, and given some encouragement, they can rise from the unsanitary life of poverty to a lifestyle where such basics as food and shelter can be provided for. The majority of the audience reading this story in the 19th century would have been either the middle or upper classes, being as the lower classes held no education and were thus illiterate. In some ways it provided false advertisement of the poverty stricken citizens, giving them the impression that all poor people were as charismatic as the story's hero, Ragged Dick. The story can give inspiration to the lower classes, and to all of the nation's citizens of the time it stresses the idea that education if the key to earning a better living.

Opportunities to improve both socially and economically aren't handed out to anyone. Work needs to be accomplished to achieve greater status, and placing this labor in studies is the key to living more comfortably. With encouragement from a compassionate stranger and a few dollars to get him started, Dick is enlightened with the idea that through education and books, he can leave his occupation of a boot-black behind and become something more. Dick drops his bad habits of gambling and going to the Old Bowery to see plays and instead opens a bank account and spends his evenings expanding his knowledge through the help of his friend, Fosdick. When an ignorant man asks the boys how they spend their evenings, he is astounded at their response that they "spend [their] evenings in study" (93). He is naive to the heights which a higher education can bring someone and the money which studying saves from wasting it on drinking, gambling, and other such fruitful things, bringing happiness for a short moment in contrast to the lasting happiness which education can provide to both a  person's mind and spirit. The act of learning requires the learner to reflect on their morals and their "constitution" as Dick phrases it, as well as paving the pathway towards better standards of living.

With the rise of the industrial revolution, factories began replacing the jobs which had once required skilled workers to perform. Because of this loss of craftsmanship, in order to obtain a job which had a decent, steady pay, education was the the window of opportunity to achieve a higher status in the changing economy. Anyone could black boots or fill a space in the mundane factory, along with other simple jobs, but it took a greater mental capacity to obtain a steady paying job and move up the economic and thus social class ladder. When Dick saves a man's son from drowning, the man feels indebted to him and offers the young boy a job. The man offers Dick a clerk position asking " I suppose you know something of arithmetic, do you not?" (113). A year past, Dick would have had to answered no to this question, however with help from a kind friend as well as a constant motivation, Dick could proudly answer that yes he did know some basic mathematics. Similarly to the world today, the higher education a person could achieve and afford, the better his occupational situation would be. With a standard basis of knowledge in reading, writing, science, and arithmetic, Dick was able to secure a job which will aid in his elevation to a better lifestyle. Alger demonstrates to his entire audience that education is a very important aspect of every one's life, regardless to their class, if they wish to make something of themselves in the world.

One question I would have after reading this book would be about the reactions of the upper and middle class citizens who did read this book son after it was published, therefore more in context to their lives. I would like to know whether this helped to educate other people on the real lives of the impoverished or whether it provided false information in terms of the characteristics and personalities of the poor as well as possibly providing an unrealistic view of the idea of rising from rags to riches.

Ragged Dick (Chapters 1-11)

To me, the most prevalent theme which the first few chapters of Ragged Dick presents is the idea that if someone is born into poverty, if they work hard enough and gain an education, they can raise their economic status and thus improve their social class. Dick's new friend Frank as well as the boy's uncle both encourage Dick to pursue an education and save up the money he earns from shoe shining to purchase books. In the economy of the time there was no other way to obtain an occupation of higher quality and pay unless one could find a method to obtain greater knowledge.

Most of the books I have read before this one have all stressed the idea that poverty is a condition of entrapment which makes it virtually impossible to rise out of the grime of the streets into the upper class sections of the city. The story Maggie: Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane exhibits the average story of the tenements where the parents are alcoholics and beat their children and each other, the brother makes his living in any way he can, one child doesn't even survive past 3, and then there is Maggie who hopes for the best to escape from the turmoil of poverty, and when her plan fails her she looks at death as her salvation from the destitute life. The entire book demonstrates how difficult it is to rise from rags to riches. Due to the majority of the population living in poverty and working the minimum wage jobs with maximum hours, historical evidence would suggest that moving from the slums to Wall Street would be highly unlikely, although there are always a few exceptions to every rule.

On the contrary, many upper class men and women believed that it was the attitudes of the poor which kept them confined to their low social and economic status. Frank and his uncle,Mr. Whitney, believed that Dick possessed characteristics and personality qualities which would enable him to progress in life. Before Dick leaves, Mr. Whitney tells Dick, regarding his economic state,"if I judge you rightly, it won't be long before you change it. Save your money, my lad, buy books, and determine to be somebody, and you may yet fill an honorable position" (49). Being given faith, staying hopeful and motivated, and persevering to make a better living are all qualities which if presented before someone might be the knowledge and determination they need to make more of a name for them self then an impoverished laborer. Ragged Dick presents the idea that anyone who maintains the correct mental outlook on their situation, can bring themselves up from poverty, which is the ideal many rich men and women and upper class men felt.

Andrew Carnegie, a million dollar man alive around the era that Ragged Dick was published, was a man who rose from a lone factory worker to the steel factory franchise owner his legacy is known for. He felt that if he could make the transition, so could anyone else. However, as shown by a fellow boot-blacker, Johnny, in any business "energy and industry are rewarded, and indolence suffers. Dick was energetic and on the alert for business, but Johnny was the reverse. The consequence was that Dick earned probably three times as much as the other" (8). Due to Dick's views on industry and business and how he ran his, it would suggest that he held character traits which would in turn set him up for success. His go-getting attitude about every life opportunity would make him a prime candidate out of anyone to make the social and economical climb.

The question I have after all of this, is whether or not it is plausible to make the claim that anyone in poverty can help themselves out of their situation if they have the right attitude? Or is it only people who hold energetic and industrious attitudes like Dick who have any chance of making the climb?

Draft Riots Reading 3

The conclusion of the Draft Riots was brought about in part by the removal of the draft lottery from the city. With a new date for the reinstatement of the lottery a month or so away, the government, both state and federal levels, had time to prepare for another battle or to create a set up to make another successful riot impossible. When the draft commenced, "the federal government stationed ten thousand federal troops in the city" to ensure that another riot would either not occur or the attempt of one would become a suicidal mission. I am sure that the government would have received some hint or idea that a mob of protesters was forming the first time and have been able to send troops in to protect the city and quell the riots. It was apparent through the readings that there was little to no action at night, giving the government time to rally some federal troops together to protect the citizens. The mob was savage and out of control, but I think quick and objective actions could have spared some lives and subdued some of the savage chaos.

One concept I found interesting in these last readings compared to the previous days' reading of the riots was the attempt to integrate a religious aspect into the angry mob in hopes of preventing any more havoc. Although sickly, Archbishop John Hughes spoke to thousands of the rioters, primarily the Irish-Catholics, to create an atmosphere which was non violent. The mob had spent days chasing and killing people, burning buildings, looting houses, and turning into savage beasts. Police forces tried to help some, but the mob was too many to use much force against. Perhaps a religious approach would get the people to behave and act civil once more. In the daily paper announcing the proposed speak by Hughes, it read "If they have any respect for the episcopal authority, to dissolve their association with reckless men who have little regard for the Divine or human law." This I found most interesting because it is basically scolding the religious man for if he has any respect for his faith he will stop marching around with men who have seem to lost their morals. This statement would make people step back form their situation and really look at what they have been doing, and notice that they have been sinning and be convinced to stop the violence no matter the cause.

The question I wanted to propose was how were the people who were prosecuted chosen? There were so many people rioting and destroying lives and property that it must have been difficult to nail down everyone involved in murder, therefore I want to know how if the choosing of the prosecuted was deliberate or random just to satisfy some of the local Republicans.

Draft Riots Reading 2

As the draft riots commenced on the second and third day, the mob seemed to always have a meeting time and place even if it wasn't precisely spoken. They all new where to find each other. Once again, African Americans were the target of the mob's anger because of the chain effect mentality they held about the draft, the war, and slavery. The continuance of the riots exhibited the unfolding of the savagery in the people as well as the developing role of the lower class and working class women participating in the riots.

Often times mob behavior will take humans from civilization to barbarism, allowing the people to leave their moral compass behind and be guided by the sadistic actions of the masses. Almost every drawing which was published in newspapers depicted the rioters as savage and inhumane. The cartoons "How to escape the draft," "Looting of a Drug Store," and "Murder or Colonel O'Brien" all provide images where the attackers have lost their human qualities and have become savages, with no true reasons for attacking the people they killed or burning the houses of the innocent. The descriptions of the diagrams describe the rioters as "animalistic" and "exhibiting animal-like features" which compares to the same imagery used in other written articles and excerpts from the era including multiple works from J.T. Headley, commenting that "the spirit of hell seemed to have entered the hearts of these men" and by William O. Stoddard the idea that the protests "unchained these wolves from their dens of sloth and self-indulgence and crime." These implications of inhumane behavior demonstrate how dangerous the aggressors were to their victims as well as to the law enforcement and the government as the two worked to both protect the victims and try and negotiate terms with the lawless murderers to bring the rioting to a close.

The idea I found most intriguing in the set of second riot readings was the mentioning of the involvement of women in the riots. Women of the upper classes during the 1860s were not as involved in politics or the economy, in part because women were discriminated against by the male population for their supposed inferiority and frailness. Also, it was considered the men's duty to provide for the family. In the lower and middle classes however, the women needed to be more involved in political, economical, and social matters because often times they were forced to work to provide for their family and males and females had more equality in the lower classes. One of the depictions of the murder of colonel O'Brien includes women in the photo because "women had long participated in the rough-and-tumble politics of the streets in working-class neighborhoods." Women lived hard life styles and were not going to be sitting around while the men trashed the streets because the draft affected their families and they needed to protest too. An exert from a book by William O. Stoddard on the murder of Colonel O'Brien also proceeds to mention that when he was taken from the threshold of his home, "both males and females took part in the brutal transaction." The savage behaviors as mentioned in the paragraph above were not descriptions for only men. The women's mentality was a bloodthirsty, murderous, and thieving mindset as well as all the men. The women had just as much at stake as anyone else and would not go down without a battle.

In regards to the damage that was done and the money which was appropriated for the New York rioters, I am curious as to whether the citizens of the city had taxes placed on them afterwards to help pay for the damage they created or if the government took care of the payment by itself, possibly in fear that it could cause another uprising from the mob.

Draft Riots Reading 1

The New York draft riots were some of the bloodiest civilian occurrences in our nation's history, and I find it hard to believe that this is the first that I have learned of this gruesome event. I have taken part in numerous history classes, but never have I covered this important event in detail let alone in passing. I am thankful I have the chance to be made aware of the draft riots which took place in the city. If only high school classes could go more into depth on topics such as this one.

One fact which was a common thread through a few of the primary sources was the idea that the mob and rioters were a very mixed group of citizens yet they all seemed to work together to destroy homes, offices, and people. Frank Leslie's picture which was published in a newsletter depicted men wearing various outfits to show the diversity of the rioters. A couple of the men are wearing what appears to be work clothes or just clothes of lower quality, one man is wearing a suit with striped pants, and the last man on the right is wearing a soldier's uniform. The anger that touched many citizens in the United States over the draft, unified the rich and the poor and anyone in between to fight for a cause which they believed in. This idea of diversity was also reinforced in the article by J.T. Headley where he comments that "a more wild, savage, and heterogeneous-looking mass could not be imagined" also showing the unity of the mob through their anger and their common goal to destroy anything and anyone who is correlated with the draft.

The theme of murdering and lynching the black population was present in both the primary sources as well as in the movie, Gangs of New York. In another exert from a book by J.T Headley covering the attack on the colored orphan asylum, the rioters attacked this long standing unit because "there would have been no draft but for the war- there would have been no war but for slavery. But the slaves were black, ergo, all blacks are responsible for the war." Even if the children involved had no direct connections to slavery, the mob needed to target their anger at something and chose the race which they believed should be held responsible for the entire draft necessity. In Gangs of New York, a colored man in the Dead Rabbits gang was beaten and lynched for his color, with the same picture which shows the murder and mutilation of William Jones in the primary source packet flashing before the screen, as if the murder of the gang member was symbolizing the lynching of William Jones. The cruelty which the mob stopped too was disgraceful and disgusting to read about and watch in the movie. An event like the discrimination and savageness which these citizens displayed in New York City are unimaginable to me in today's world.

After watching the movie and partaking in the readings, I am more clear as to the reasons supporting the mob's motives, however I would be interested in a primary source written by someone who was actually in the mob. I believe this in sight would help to further develop a perspective on the motives for the riots. The question I have is what became of the aftermath of the draft? Did New Yorkers still get drafted? Were there repercussions for their actions?

Five Points

During orientation here at Stonehill, I was one of the lucky candidates asked to take the CLA testing. A portion of this exam included writing an essay to support or refute a statement regarding America's nickname of "the land of opportunity" and how the growing gap between the rich and poor might suggest otherwise. I chose to support the statement, with one of my focuses of the paper targeting urban American centers where poverty was common and the living conditions were anything but sanitary. Five Points in New York (circa 1860) would definitely be a section of the nation which would immediately refute any inclination of America being a land full of wondrous opportunities.

According to the primary sources, Five Points was filthy, it was filled to the brim with gangs making their name known, prostitutes flaunting their bodies because it was the only thing they possessed, and men and women who had no where else to go. Five Points encaptures its victims; "those who once enter into this diabolical traffic are seldom saved" (Foster, 220). There are no means of escape form the dreadful and horrible life of those unfortunate souls who befall this fate. It is an easy ride to the depths of this mess and an impossible climb out.

During the prime days of Five Points, the Civil War had also overtaken the United States, inclusive of the Draft which Lincoln had to utilize. New York draft riots emerged as a consequence of the draft as angry civilians rebelled against the government. The citizens of Five Points, primarily the gangs, were suspects of these riots. Destined for a terrible and rancid life, war might not be a far step from the life the gang members were living already. After all, the gangs waged war against each other all the time. Why then would members object to being sent off to fight for a greater cause?

I believe that the gang members and citizens of Five Points in New York did not object to the actual act of fighting for the nation but held objections to the politics behind the draft. The draft allowed for the rich upper class men to pay their way out of fighting to spare their lives while the poor and unfortunate people had no choice but to answer their country's call for help. They had lived lives of destitution and were enslaved in the American system and the only means of escape that America was providing them with was to fight, and almost inevitably die. America as a land of opportunity should not place higher value on some one's life based solely on the amount of monetary profits which a person makes.

The question I hold after reading these articles and analyzing the pictures, lays in the necessity of a run down area of a city like Five Points in the seemingly grand and opportunistic view we hold of America. I want to know how Americans can be so indifferent to this level of poverty in the 1800s as well as today in our very own country. How did a place like this occur in our history and how can education of similar situations help to teach Americans about what they can do to help?

"Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts"

I have never thought about how someone should go about studying history before reading this article. In all of my previous years of learning, history was always taught either through text book readings or lecture notes in class. This is the manner which I figured history would always be taught. It never occurred to me that a more intellectual way of figuring out what occurred so many years ago is to uncover details and information from the primary sources themselves. When Alston was trying to deduce whether Lincoln was a racist or not through a series of documents handed to him, "his expertise lay not in his sweeping knowledge of this topic but in his ability to pick himself up after a tumble, to get a fix on what he does not know, and to generate a road map to guide his new learning" (21). Alston did not assume anything, as did other participants, but instead drew questions from words which Lincoln used which he himself did not understand the context of. I myself have never used this technique, but instead assume many things based on my previous knowledge, which I now know is not the smartest tool to use. Also, the majority of the time I have come in contact with historical documents, I have been searching for articles which support some thesis that I have already created. Reading this article has taught me that primary documents should not be used to find information but to search for new knowledge and formulate more questions.

Another idea which I found to be intriguing is the idea that the past should not be looked at as a culture to relate to and is not one that is to look familiar. Instead, the past should be looked at as unfamiliar and unrelatable as if the American culture 100 years ago was a foreign nation to America today. The idea that if you don't study history you are doomed to repeat it, does not ring true for all events. An event in the past may have resulted in terrible consequences then, but just because it didn't work then doesn't mean it will fail now. As we learned in the book How We Decide, the brain is quick to learn from its mistakes and often times our intuition picks up on the bad choice to make before we even realize it with our logical mind. We may see a historical mistake and our mind might steer us away from the same error, but put into a different year is a whole new context for a situation to be in. What might seem like the wrong decision may actually be the right one or the other way around. We can't look at the past through today's eyes and apply the same rules and guidelines to the present.

The biggest question that came to my mind while reading this was the section regarding how history should be presented through writing. I was wondering if addressing the readers in the form of "you" or by using "I" would be more beneficial to the readers in terms of how they interpreted the information they were given. If the text spoke more to you would it be more engaging or too biased?