YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION
When the Industrial Revolution hit, kids who weren’t working city streets selling papers and shining shoes found work in factories; farm kids found employment in mills and mines. All worked under the same miserable and dangerous conditions as adults.
Because a Nicaraguan stamp showed a volcano, the U.S. built a canal through Panama instead.
SIDE TRIP TO ENGLAND
Charles Dickens didn’t have to go very far for story ideas. Children in Great Britain whose parents couldn’t support them (or who had no parents at all) were called “pauper children.” The government was supposed to arrange for them to become apprentices, to learn a trade, and be cared for. But thousands were turned over to mill owners, with no one to intercede for them or keep track of their status. Some parents even sold their children to mill owners for a period of years. The lucky ones who stayed at home still worked long hours to supplement the family income.
THE WHEELS OF PROGRESS
In 1802, England passed the first child labor legislation, but it only applied to pauper apprentices and wasn’t enforced in any way. Over the next 76 years, it was followed by a series of “Factory Acts” that gradually strengthened inspection of conditions, shortened work hours, and raised the minimum age for working tykes.
REPORT TO THE COMMISSIONER
When Parliament set up a commission in the 1830s to investigate problems, a young textile mill worker testified that since the age of eight he had worked from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., with an hour off at noon. However, when things were especially busy, he worked 16 straight hours, from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. Another boy, whose parents sold him to a mill owner, testified that child laborers were locked up in the mill night and day. A few dared to escape, but if found, they caught the Dickens, if you know what we mean.
BACK IN THE U.S.A.
Child labor problems first became an issue in the U.S. in the 1850s, mostly in large northern cities like New York. And the problems grew as industrialization increased. Add to that the increasing immigration at the turn of the century, and the South’s late and slow industrial development, and you’ve got a system that screamed for reform.
It wasn’t until the early 20th century that a serious child labor movement was born. Activists fought against a system that allowed six-year-olds to work 16 hours a day, even if the little darling was bringing home a whopping two cents a week.
Tiny Morocco was the first country to recognize the U.S. as an independent country.
NOW, THAT’S PROGRESS
Naturally, the factory and mill owners fought like crazy against these do-gooders. That is, until they realized that new machinery could do the job more efficiently than children—and do it for free. So, as more and more factories and mills were mechanized, the movement gathered steam. In the U.S., it wasn’t until 1938 that a law was passed forbidding anyone under 16 to hold a job (except for 14 and 15 year olds who are permitted to work in certain occupations after school). But as these little laborers were liberated from the workforce, a huge, new problem loomed. What to do with children who now had nothing to do all day? Crime was rampant in the cities, mostly committed by bored kids.
SCHOOL DAYS, SCHOOL DAYS
“I know!” said somebody, “Let’s put them in school, that’ll keep them off the streets.” The idea caught on. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how compulsory public education was born, and with it, the segregation of children from the rest of society. Our present-day concept of childhood had almost arrived. Just one more thing was needed to complete the picture.
HI, MOM!
The continuing trend toward mechanization was forcing women out of work, too, leaving the men to do all the heavy lifting. So moms stayed home and the kids became more and more dependent on them. Finally there was someone who could answer those burning questions: “What’s for dinner?” “Did you see my other sock?” “Can I sleep over at Kimberly’s?”
And this of course—after World War II when the “boys” returned home—gave rise to that perfect ideal of the nuclear family of the 1950s, made up of a dad, a mom, and 2.7 kids.
The rest, as Uncle John says, is history.
KEEP SMILING
The yellow smiley face is as round as the name of the man who created it. Harvey R. Ball, a World War II veteran and graphic artist. Ball gave birth to his grinning brainchild in December 1963 as a commission for the State Mutual insurance company, who wanted to boost company morale. He received $45 for his work of art. The smiley face spread like wildfire and the rest is history. Harvey passed away on April 14, 2001, at the age of 79, but his smiley face will live on. Maybe forever.
When slavery ended, some 40,000 African Americans became cowboys.
HENRY THE NAVIGATOR
* * *
Our story begins sometime around the third century, when Europe lost the continent of Africa. . .
The ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece, and Rome had known that south of Africa’s Sahara Desert there was a large area populated by black people. As the Dark Ages descended and closed Europe off for a thousand years of ignorance and superstition, they forgot. By the seventh century, Muslim Arabs had overrun Egypt and all of North Africa. Europe was still picking up the pieces (and none too successfully) after the fall of Rome and didn’t have time to look for black Africa, even if they’d known it was there. Besides, the Arabs made North Africa a stronghold no one dared cross, cutting the rest of Africa off, just as if it had slid into the ocean.
ENTER OUR HERO
Years after the curtain had descended across Africa, in 1394 a man was born whose delusions would change all this: Portuguese Prince Henry, known to history as “Henry the Navigator.” Henry was famous for a few things, among them the fact that he never got on a ship. However, he was single-handedly responsible for a long series of Portuguese voyages of exploration which, nearly 100 years later, would result in Portuguese ships sailing around the African coast, with Bartholomew Diaz rounding the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, and finally discovering it was possible to reach East Africa and India by sea. All these Portuguese sailors were graduates of Henry’s School of Navigation. And he kept the voyages going in the face of war, debt, and disaster. Why? Not because he wanted to explore Africa. He was in search of paradise.
RUMOR #1: In the 14th century, the Garden of Eden was thought to be a real place, and it was believed that God had appointed a Christian monarch by the name of Prester John (which means “Priest John”) to guard it. He was supposed to rule over a land of fantastic riches somewhere in East Africa. In fact, there was a kingdom there called Abyssinia, which had been Christian for a thousand years, but it was cut off from the rest of the Christian world by those darn Arabs.
If people asked Al Capone what he did for a living, he would say he dealt furniture.
RUMOR #2: Based on another legend that said the Nile River had a western branch that emptied into the ocean on the West African coast, Henry sent a bunch of ships to explore the coast, go up the river, and find Prester John and the Garden of Eden.
RUMOR #3: The Arabs said that beyond the terrible Cape Bojador on the northwest coast lay the Green Sea of Darkness—the beginning of the end of the world. The land changed to desert, the sun burned everything black, and there were great sea monsters. No one had ever returned from there. Was Henry afraid? Heck no. He was going to stay home.
LUCKY 15TH
He sent out 15 expeditions between 1424 and 1434, until finally, one brave captain, Gil Eannes, managed to round the fearsome Cape Bojador. He and his crew were eaten by huge, ugly sea monsters and that’s the end of the story. (Just kidding.) They actually put ashore on the coast of the Sahara. They didn’t find people, but brought back a few hardy plants as proof of their accomplishment. The next voyages went farther down the coast. Since the Portuguese (and pretty much everyone else) thought that the earth was uninhabitable in the region below the Sahara, it caused a sensation when the 1441 expedition found real, live black people. No one in Europe ha
d even known they existed. But it barely made an impression on Prince Henry. He still wanted to find Prester John.
THE RIVER, THE PROBLEMS
In 1445 one of his expeditions at last found the great river he’d been looking for—the Gambia. Two problems: Henry’s money was running out, so it would be ten years before he could finance an expedition up it. The second problem was that the Gambia wasn’t connected to the Nile and wasn’t very navigable for very far (but this would be discovered later). Henry’s contribution was huge. Literally. He died hopelessly in debt in 1460 at the age of 66. but, with all his dreaming, he’d found a whole new continent and a whole new race of people. He’d also opened a new chapter in world history. Portuguese explorers and seamen inspired by Henry, and trained at his school of navigation, went out and established the most extensive empire in the world, an empire that dominated European trade for the next 150 years.
Connecticut, Georgia, and Massachusetts waited until 1941 to ratify the Bill of Rights.
THE SWAN KING’S CASTLES
* * *
Was the so-called mad king Ludwig just a genius born in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or was he really nuts?
Ludwig II of Bavaria is remembered as “the mad king.” He was pronounced unfit to rule by reason of insanity in 1886, and removed from the throne by court officials. While lots of sane kings leave behind a forgotten list of battles and ugly fields of tombstones, Mad Ludwig’s legacy still enchants the world.
THE PALACE CLOSET
Madness aside, Ludwig’s day-to-day problem was that he was living in the palace closet. He was a youthful monarch in Victorian Europe, and was expected to have a wife and children, but he was a homosexual. Ludwig tried to escape from the impossible pressures of his monarchy into a fantasy world of castles and horses and mountains. In the end his fantasies killed him.
THE LITTLE PRINCE
Ludwig became crown prince at age three. Granddad Ludwig I had to abdicate the throne after giving too much power to his mistress, dancer Lola Montez. Daddy Maximilian took the throne, and Ludwig’s childhood became an endless, lonely preparation for becoming king. Little Ludwig had some happy times with his governess who read him fairy tales. Mainly he was isolated with his younger brother Otto in a cold, military environment. The future ruler’s program involved daily lessons from 5:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. The stress was on military training, but for Ludwig it was just plain stress.
THE SWAN KING
When Maxmillian suddenly died in 1864, the shy, handsome teenager was presented to the public as their new monarch. They adored him, and Ludwig adored them back. “I carry my heart to the throne, a heart which beats for my people and which glows for their welfare,” he wrote his old governess. In his mind, Ludwig was now the Swan King, the hero of the fantasies and fairy tales his governess had taught him. Ludwig’s idea of being a Swan King was reinforced by Lohengrin, a romantic opera by Richard Wagner about some “Knights of the Swan.” One of King Ludwig’s first official acts was to bring Wagner to Munich at his own expense. Ludwig’s patronage helped the composer create his masterpiece, The Ring of the Nibelungen.
The original Bill of Rights would have kept federal politicians from raising their own salaries.
THE KING AND THE CLOSET
Aside from opera, Ludwig enjoyed dressing up in fine costumes, and driving through the countryside in carriages or winter sleighs, ideally with a handsome young man by his side. Unfortunately, it soon became clear that the handsome young king just wasn’t interested in women. Rumors began to circulate about Ludwig’s relationship with Wagner. The composer only cared about Ludwig’s money and prestige, but in the public mind Wagner was just a male Lola Montez. Wagner was booted out of Munich.
BROTHERLY LOVE
The unhappy Ludwig hoped that he could burden his younger brother, Otto, with the glory of the Bavarian throne. He thought that Otto might give a more convincing performance as king—with a normal marriage and some children, for a start. Unfortunately, Otto was mad. As Ludwig wrote in 1871, “Otto did not take his boots off for eight weeks. [He was convinced he had boils on his feet.] He makes terrible faces and barks like a dog.” The royal family had to accept that Otto had gone over the edge. He was taken away for a long life under guard until his death in 1916.
Ludwig tried to go through with an arranged marriage in 1867, but at the last minute he called it off—he’d met a handsome blond groom in his stables. Ludwig promoted the groom to master of the horse with responsibility for 500 horses, but that didn’t stop his new infatuation from getting married. Ludwig was heartbroken. He developed a few more male relationships after that, but from now on there was only one important thing in his life. Ludwig spent his life building fairy tale castles suitable for the fantasies of a swan king.
UNIFICATION IN HIS SPARE TIME
Meanwhile, over in the militaristic German state of Prussia (the German states were still independent countries at that time) Chancellor of Prussia Otto von Bismarck decided to unify Germany. He said later that he couldn’t have done it without Ludwig’s consent, and so, without interrupting his Swan King fantasy, Ludwig helped create the German state, a momentous decision that eventually led to two World Wars.
The U.S. was the first independent country in the New World. Haiti was #2.
While the rest of Europe was building factories and battleships, Ludwig was busy building medieval fairy tale castles: Neuschwanstein, Linderhof, and Herrenchiemsee. They were partly inspired by Wagner’s operas, and partly by the medieval and rococo architecture that were everywhere in 19th-century Europe. Linderhof was Ludwig’s favorite castle. Framed by lush gardens the castle grounds contained small buildings that incorporated the romance of Wagner’s operas. Ludwig could stay in the Venusberg, inspired by the opera Tannhauser, or in the Gurnamantz’s Hermitage from the opera Parsifal. But his fun didn’t last; the powerful ministers at court who were ambitious for Bavaria resented money being thrown away on castles.
SHIPPED OFF TO SEE
In 1886, the ministers at court decided that enough was enough, and issued a proclamation saying that Ludwig was unfit to govern. He was driven from his palace in a closed carriage, and taken to a retreat by the Starnberg See lake near Munich. Three days later, he died under suspicious circumstances. He and the doctor attending him seemed to have drowned in shallow water while they were out walking. The mysterious death was never explained.
WAS THE SWAN KING A FEW FEATHERS SHORT?
Was Ludwig really loony? Some modern historians suggest that Ludwig was tortured by guilt about his sexuality and that led to deranged, obsessive behavior. But he may have always suffered from madness. As a boy, he tried to kill Otto by strangling him with a handkerchief. His diaries are full of paranoid, senseless ramblings. If Ludwig was mad, there was a magnificent method to his madness. He combined aspects of Wagner’s operas, the aura of old German fairy tales, and the reality of mountains and forests—and made Bavarian magic. Ironically, the castles he built so obsessively, and which his officials considered such a waste of money, today bring millions of dollars to Bavaria in tourist revenues. The impractical Ludwig actually created a viable business.
An army of cowboys called gauchos helped win freedom for Uruguay.
THIS SIDE UP
* * *
Henry “Box” Brown got his nickname the old-fashioned way. He earned it.
In the 1850s, a man called Henry “Box” Brown toured England, speaking and sometimes singing to enthusiastic audiences. He showed them a panorama he’d created, called “Mirror of Slavery,” a moving scroll with scenes from slave life—scenes that he knew firsthand. The pictures also showed the story of how Henry “Box” Brown got his nickname.
BORN A SLAVE
Born into slavery in America, he was separated from his family as a teenager and taken to Richmond, Virginia, to work in a tobacco factory. He worked hard and even earned a little money. He fell in love, got married, and had three children with his wife, Nancy.
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Before he married, Henry asked his owner to promise never to sell Nancy or their children. The owner agreed, but a few years later changed his mind. Henry watched helplessly as his family was led away with ropes around their necks. They were being taken south, and he knew he’d never see them again. After that, if Henry Brown’s life was going to be worth living, it would have to be in freedom. He worked out a bold plan, one that could easily kill him—even if it worked.
IN THE HANDS OF FATE
Henry Brown had a white friend, a carpenter, who built him a wooden crate, 3 feet long, 2½ feet deep and 2 feet wide. On the outside, the carpenter painted “THIS SIDE UP, WITH CARE.” He addressed the box to a friend in Philadelphia, an abolitionist who was a member of the Underground Railroad. On March 23, 1849, Henry Brown folded up his 5-foot-8-inch, 200-pound self, and squeezed inside the box. He later wrote, “I laid me down in my darkened home of three feet by two, and. . . resigned myself to my fate.”
Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into History Page 37