Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into Pennsylvania
Page 18
End of the Line
The Pennsylvania Railroad remained a titan of transportation until 1968, when it merged with the New York Railroad. That new company didn’t last long—just 870 days later, it declared bankruptcy. But Amtrak bought many of the Pennsy’s trains and rail lines, and it still runs some of the same routes.
Oh, the Symbolism
How well do you know Pennsylvania’s state symbols?
1. The Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources calls the state animal “undoubtedly one of the most influential species of wildlife in Pennsylvania.” What is it?
A.White-tailed deer
B.Groundhog
C.Red fox
2. Milk is Pennsylvania’s state drink, and dairies in the Keystone State produce more than a billion gallons of milk every year. Where does Pennsylvania rank in milk production compared to the other U.S. states?
A.First
B.Fifth
C.Seventh
3. What’s the state bird?
A.Riffled grouse
B.Ruffed grouse
C.Ruffled goose
4. The state fish is also Pennsylvania’s only native species of trout. What is it?
A.Blueback trout
B.Cutthroat trout
C.Brook trout
5. Governor Gifford Pinchot chose the mountain laurel as the state flower in 1933. What color are its petals?
A.Blue and white
B.Pink and white
C.Pink and blue
6. Pennsylvania’s state fossil is the trilobite, a group of ancient creatures that included some of the first-known animals to have what sense?
A.Vision
B.Hearing
C.Taste
7. Fireflies are Pennsylvania’s state insects. For what purpose do the animals use their bioluminescence?
A.Lighting their way
B.Finding food
C.Attracting mates
8. Pennsylvania adopted its state song in 1990. What’s it called?
A.“Pennsylvania”
B.“Long Live PA”
C.“The Great Keystone State”
9. As a tribute to its railroad history, Pennsylvania has a state train: the K4s steam locomotive. When did those trains first take to the track?
A.1865
B.1880
C.1914
10. Nineteenth-century American landscaper A. J. Downing called Pennsylvania’s state tree the “most picturesque and beautiful of the world’s evergreens.” What is the tree’s name?
A.Douglas fir
B.Eastern hemlock
C.Jack pine
Answers on page 304.
Did You Know?
Quarry owner William Abbot Witman Sr. built a 72-foot-tall red-and-gold pagoda in Reading in 1908 to hide the scarred hills of Mount Penn (where his quarry was located). Witman hoped that the pagoda would eventually become a luxury hotel, but there were no good roads leading to it in the early 1900s and his application for a liquor license was turned down. (No luxury hotel in the years before Prohibition could be successful without selling liquor.) So the structure sat empty. In 1910, Witman sold the building to a businessman who gave it to the city of Reading the next year. Over the years, the city used it as an office, snack bar, art gallery, and, before radio communication became common, even a news transmitter—lights on the top tier flashed different colors to signal winners of presidential elections or other events. Today, the pagoda is a tourist attraction and, in 2008, underwent a renovation.
The Phillies By the Numbers
Baseball is a game of numbers, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the City of Brotherly Love, where the Phillies have been racking up super stats since 1883.
2
Times the Phillies have won the World Series: 1980 and 2008.
3
Official team names in the franchise’s history: Quakers (1883–89), Phillies (1890–1942, 1945–present), Blue Jays (1943–44).
4
Number of times Phillies pitcher Steve Carlton won the National League Cy Young Award: 1972, 1977, 1980, and 1982.
5
Stadiums the Phillies have called home: Recreation Park (1883–86), Baker Bowl (1887–38), Connie Mack Stadium (1938–70), Veterans Stadium (1971–2003), Citizens Bank Park (2004–present).
9
Number of no-hitters that Phillies pitchers have thrown to date: 1885 (Charlie Ferguson), 1898 (Red Donahue), 1903 (Chick Fraser), 1906 (Johnny Lush), 1964 (Jim Bunning), 1971 (Rick Wise), 1990 (Terry Mulholland), 1991 (Tommy Greene), and 2003 (Kevin Millwood).
33
Years it took before the Phillies reached their first World Series (1915). They lost to the Boston Red Sox, four games to one.
35
Number of pounds the costume of the team’s beloved mascot, Phillie Phanatic, weighs. The tall, birdlike creature made his debut on April 25, 1978, in a game against the Chicago Cubs. The New York design and merchandising firm of Harrison/Erickson created the Phanatic as an attraction to rival the San Diego Padres’ popular Chicken mascot. The Phillies were offered the costume and copyright ownership for $5,200, but in a cost-cutting move, they chose to purchase only the costume for a discount: $3,900. Big mistake. The Phanatic was so popular that five years later, the team had to pay Harrison/ Erickson $250,000 for the copyright. The Phillie Phanatic has since been voted “Best Mascot Ever” by Sports Illustrated and was enshrined in the Mascot Hall of Fame in 2005.
38
Number of wins earned by pitcher Kid Gleason in 1890. It’s still a franchise record.
58
Home runs hit by first baseman Ryan Howard in 2006—also the most in franchise history.
216
Number of home runs hit by the Philadelphia Phillies during the 2006 season—a Major League record.
716
Record number of official at-bats registered by Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins in 2007. Rollins’s stellar all-around play earned him the 2007 National League Most Valuable Player Award.
$1,000 (and two players)
Amount the Phillies paid the Pittsburgh Alleghenies to get out-fielder Billy Sunday in 1890. Sunday was a great athlete, known for stealing bases and making incredible catches in the days before fielders wore gloves. Sunday was acquired by Philadelphia to improve the team’s chances of capturing the National League pennant and had already played eight years in the major leagues at the time.
But as it turned out, baseball wasn’t his true calling—Sunday requested a release from his contract in 1891 to accept the position of secretary of the religious department at the Chicago YMCA. The position paid considerably less than his baseball contract, but it offered the potential to do ministerial work. He later went on to become a world-famous evangelist.
1,199
Runs surrendered by Phillies pitchers during the 1930 season. The mark remains an all-time major league record. (Ouch.)
1915
The first year the Phillies won the National League pennant. (They also won it five more times: 1950, 1980, 1983, 1993, and 2008.)
43,647
Seating capacity of Citizens Bank Park.
3,206,532
Number of fans who attended Philadelphia Phillies home games in 2004, a franchise record.
Did You Know?
Philadelphia’s Mummers Parade has been an official New Year’s tradition since the city started sponsoring it in 1901. But its roots go all the way back to the 1600s and Pennsylvania’s earliest immigrants.
In medieval England, “mummers” were entertainers who traveled around the countryside performing folklore plays. As Europeans immigrated to Pennsylvania, they brought the mummer practice with them. Philadelphia’s first Mummers Parade was an informal neighborhood gathering in the 1870s. People from all over the city showed up on South Philly’s “Two Street” (Second Avenue) in costumes to celebrate New Year’s Day. Today, the parade attracts more than 10,000 entrants who compete for cash prizes in four categories: Comic
(spoofing modern politics), Fancy (dressing in elaborate costumes), Fancy Brigade (dressing in elaborate costumes and performing skits), and String Band (dress ing in elaborate costumes while playing in a marching band).
Steamtown
This onetime iron-smelting city in northeastern Pennsylvania is now the proud home of Dunder Mifflin—the world’s best-known fictional paper company.
Town: Scranton
Location: Lackawanna County
Founding: 1856
Population (2008): 76,000
Size: 25.4 square miles
County seat: Yes
What’s in a Name?
Before it was incorporated as a city, Scranton was a settlement called Capouse, a variation on the spelling of Chief Capoose, who headed the local Munsee tribe. In 1840, businessmen George and Selden Scranton arrived, bought what’s now the downtown area for $8,000, and opened an iron-smelting company. Before it officially became Scranton, though, the city had various other names: Slocum Hollow, Armstrong, and Scrantonia.
Claims to Fame:
•The city’s nickname of “Steamtown” comes from Scranton’s iron-smelting past. Between the mid-1800s until the end of World War II, iron mining and smelting were the city’s major industries.
•Scranton has one of the lowest murder rates in the country, averaging about one per year over the last decade. There were none in 2006.
•Scranton’s Steamtown Marathon, held every October, attracts about 1,500 runners annually.
•The NBC sitcom The Office is set in Scranton. (See page 131.) The show is filmed on a set in California, but the scenes of Scranton in the opening credits are real, shot by star John Krasinski. The city itself welcomes the Hollywood association and even displays banners with the name Dunder Mifflin (the paper company depicted on the show) on downtown lampposts. And each fall, venues around the city (including the Steamtown Mall) host a convention for Office fans.
•Scranton is the birthplace of Vice President Joe Biden.
•Early 20th-century illusionist and escape artist Harry Houdini had no connection to Scranton (he was born in Hungary and is buried in New York), but the city is home to the Harry Houdini Museum. It’s full of personal effects and exhibits detailing the magician’s famous stunts. One annual event: a Halloween séance held in an attempt to contact Houdini. (So far, he hasn’t answered.)
Did You Know?
Every year, the White Thorn Lodge in western Pennsylvania hosts a nude volleyball tournament. But don’t get any ideas: only members of the lodge (a private nudist club) can participate.
The Lattimer Massacre
In the late 19th century, the tiny coal town of Lattimer was the site of one of the most violent labor strikes in American history. For the strikers, the result was deadly, but for the larger coal mining community, it actually brought some positive changes.
In 1897, Lattimer was a mining town just outside of Hazleton in coal-rich Luzerne County. The Lehigh and Wilkes-Barre Coal Company, which ran several mines in the area, had built Lattimer about 30 years earlier to support its mine there. By the late 1890s, a few hundred people lived and worked in Lattimer.
A Hard-Knock Life
Like many mining communities, Lattimer was a “company” town. The workers lived in company-owned homes, shopped at the company-owned store (a requirement to keep their jobs), and if they were sick, they saw the mine’s doctor. Typically, they paid for these things on credit, and when payday came, the mine deducted the expenses before handing over their paychecks. In many cases, the men came out behind and were constantly in debt to the company.
The miners’ financial problems got worse in 1897, when the Pennsylvania General Assembly enacted the “alien” tax in an effort to raise money. The tax required employers to pay three cents per day for each immigrant on their payrolls. (American citizens were exempt.) The mine owners passed the cost on to the workers, deducting it from each man’s already dwindling paycheck.
The mine bosses, fearing the growing influence of labor unions, typically hired immigrants who spoke little or no English and had no common language among them. Their reasoning was that if its labor force were made up mostly of men who couldn’t communicate with each other, let alone the larger labor movement, they would be less likely to organize. That proved to be a miscalculation.
The Union Comes to Town
By 1897, mine workers in Luzerne County had already started talking with representatives from the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). The union had been founded in Ohio just a few years earlier and had quickly become a dominant force in the mining industry.
With the support of UMWA, strike talks started brewing at mines throughout Luzerne County. In August, a 350-man workers’ march swelled to 3,000 men in just one day, and on September 1, workers at all the Lehigh and Wilkes-Barre Coal Company mines in the region agreed to go on strike. Within days, 10,000 workers at mines all over the region had walked off the job.
The Sheriff and His Posse
While all this was brewing, the Luzerne County sheriff, James Martin, was on vacation in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Once the strikers took to the streets, the mine company bosses ordered Martin to return to Pennsylvania and do something about the unrest. His solution? Form a posse of 87 men who had ties to the coal company, outfit them with Winchester rifles, and break the strike one mine at a time. His first stop: Lattimer.
Confrontation
On September 10, about 400 strikers gathered outside the town of Hazleton, intending to march through it on their way to the Lattimer mine. They were unarmed; UMWA leaders had advised them not to carry weapons. At around 2:00 p.m., led by a worker carrying an American flag, the strikers headed for the mine.
Sheriff Martin and his posse were ready for them outside of Hazleton. The two groups faced off, the sheriff raised his pistol, and he ordered the workers to disperse. When they refused, one of Martin’s men grabbed the strikers’ flag and destroyed it, igniting a brawl. Martin initially managed to restore order by telling the strikers they could continue if they walked around Hazleton, rather than through it. They agreed and kept marching.
But Martin and his men had no intention of allowing the strike to continue. Instead, they boarded trolleys to intercept the workers at Lattimer. En route, angry townspeople and local police joined the posse, which soon grew to about 150 armed men. Their mood turned ugly—many boasted that they would kill the strikers when they got to the mine. According to one witness, a posse member said he’d “drop six of them.”
“A Miniature War”
Around 3:45 p.m., Martin and his men caught up with the strikers just outside of Lattimer. Again, Martin raised his gun and ordered the workers to leave. Again, they refused. But this time, Martin intended to put an end to it.
He shot the flag bearer first. More posse members fired their guns, and the strikers began to run—many were shot as they did. According to witness Dominic Marsello, who was 13 years old at the time, the strikers had been “on the roadway walking with their coats on their arms and that sheriff gave orders to shoot. The men fell like rats—a pity sight. I saw them lying in among the briars near a gum berry tree. It was a miniature war.” When it was over, 19 strikers lay dead and 36 more had been wounded. Fearing reprisals, most of Martin’s posse scattered and went into hiding after the shooting.
Aftermath
The next day, Pennsylvania’s governor sent the state militia to Lattimer and Hazleton with orders to keep the peace. But the expected retaliations never materialized. One group of miners set fire to one of the boss’s homes, but otherwise, the townspeople didn’t lash out. And the funerals they held for the fallen strikers attracted thousands of sympathetic people from all over the region.
For their part, national newspapers condemned the violence. The New York Tribune ran the headline “Strikers March to Death.” Most papers also acknowledged the racial component that had led to the massacre. One editorial said, “If the strikers in the Hazleton region were of the Englis
h-speaking class there would have been no bloodshed.”
Justice Doesn’t Come Easy
Sheriff Martin and many of the posse members were tried for their role in the killings, but they were all acquitted. But justice, of sorts, came for the Lattimer miners in the form of a renewed commitment among laborers to demand fair and equal treatment. Publicity of the massacre also helped the nation’s workers recognize that immigrant workers, as well as American citizens, needed to be a part of labor reform.
After the Lattimer massacre, immigrant workers continued to join the UMWA—in many cases, in higher numbers than natural-born citizens. The larger voting base helped to bolster the union’s power, helping the UMWA gain significant concessions over the next few years. In 1898, it lobbied successfully for an eight-hour workday for coal miners (down from 12 hours). In 1933, it won collective bargaining rights (the legal right to organize and join unions). And in 1946, UMWA workers were among the first in the mining industry to receive health and retirement benefits.
Did You Know?