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Anna Tran - SOAPSTONE (nonfiction) outline

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Krutik Peddakotla - Copy SOAPSTONE (nonfiction) outline

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Layla Gonzales-Copy of Copy SOAPSTONE (nonfiction) outline

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Copy of Copy SOAPSTONE (nonfiction) outline

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So we lift our gazes but to what stands between us, but what stands before us. We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside.
I would recognize these lines because although short the it has a lot of meaning to it.

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Two quotes from the poem i would choose are “if only we’re brave enough to see it, if only we’re brave enough to be it” and “we are striving to forge a union with purpose to compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man” .  I chose these two quotes because I feel that these represent what we strive for in life in order for equality as in how each individual should be treated .

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"That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb if only we dare it because being American is more than pride we inherit, it's the past we step into and how we repair it."
This line highlights the importance of embracing the past and moving forward.

"And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it, somehow we do it, somehow we've weathered and witnessed a nation that isn't broken but simply unfinished"
This line highlights the idea of an "unfinished" America. It is the idea that there is always room for change, and that change is what will happen.

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In our analysis of the boy in 12 Angry Men, we find that he lives in the slums, a generally poor area, and comes from a poor background. Our essential question talks about how socioeconomic class affects those in the working class. The boy doesn't have a mother and an abusive father on top of living in a poor household. This leads to him possibly being disheveled and malnourished due to not having enough money to buy food, clothes, or basic hygienic needs. It also leads him to do dangerous and illegal activities such as stealing or mugging to survive. This is also a result of the environment he lives in since it is such a poor area.

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"We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president only to find herself reciting for one." (Gorman, Stanza 2)
These lines gives us the reality of the past and shows us how far we've gone in terms of human rights.

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1. I feel like I understand the play now that we have finish Act 1
2. It depends on my mood if I can follow along during the class reading. Watching the movie usually let's me focus and understand it more though
3. The movie and the group discussion. The tree diagram and note taking have not been helpful.

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1. I understand the play very well
2. I am easily following the plot during readings in class.
3. Annotating and highlighting phrases and sentennces has greatly helped to understand the play. Nothing has not been helpful. The campfires we do are very educational and constructive

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1. It was surprising to me that Juror 10 and Juror 3 had a lot more in common than I thought. After I said my part about Juror 10, Juror 3 said almost exactly what I said about Juror 10, about how they are very immature and adamant about the boy being guilty.
2. This discussion setting went almost the same in terms of me speaking, but it was a lot easier to speak than campfires. We didn't have to worry about speaking over others and we each were able to have a turn speaking. We were even able to ask those who didn't speak much to give us their opinion which would've been otherwise hard to get in a campfire discussion.

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Layla Gonzales // Play Reflection 3-22-22  

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Layla Gonzales // Play Reflection 3-22-22  

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1.I feel like I am understanding the play pretty well now that we are finished with act one
2.I am able to follow the plot good as well for the most part but at sometimes there is a lot going on in each paragraph it is hard to keep track in my mind with how the play would be going.
3.Somethings that have been helpful for me to understanding the play is when the class analyzes what we previously read together as one and when we watch the film itself to see how each seen really played out compared to how I thought it would play out in my mind

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1. I'm understanding the play pretty well. I can infer and make deep connections in the play and am able to have opinions on each jurors' character.
2. I am able to follow the play well when we are reading. It's not too hard to follow along, but when we act it out it causes some pauses which hinders my ability to follow the script.
3. The discussions we have helps me understand the play. It's nice to see other people's point of view and it sometimes answers questions I have of the play. Watching the movie also helps a lot since it gives us an actual visual representation of what is happening and how'd it'd work in real life.

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Layla Gonzales - Characterization Reflection 

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Layla Gonzales - Characterization Reflection 

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One thing i learned about another juror is that juror #8 is more understanding and in some ways may relate to other characters in the story. I feel like I did the same in the group discussion as i would in a camp fire discussion

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I learned that Juror 7 is very laid back and does not care about the case at all. This is an embodiment of many peoples feelings when they first recieve the message that they will be on jury duty. Most really dont want to be there and dont care about the case.

I feel like this discussion went better than a campfire as it was a tighter group allowing more interactions.

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1. I learnt that Juror 3 is very selfish and doesn't take the case seriously
2. I feel like I did better in this discussion because I talked and pay attention more.

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This will be where a summary of annotations will be, you don't have any annotations yet.

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Dialectic Journal Entry 2 - Krutik Peddakotla

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Dialectic Journal Entry 2 - Krutik Peddakotla

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Dialectical journal no.2 - Layla Gonzales 

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Dialectical journal no.2 - Layla Gonzales 

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The alliteration in stanza 8 connects different word/pharses together and create a new meaning. For example "our blunders become thier burdens" connecttwo different phrases and creates a deeper meaning of our faults effect the future.It also makes each word and pharses stronger and more powerful when you hear it. The alliteration in this stanza changes the tone to be more serious and important. It also highlights the differences and connects them to show a new side of the words.

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- professional
- poetic
- emotional/reminiscent
- spoken by a "skinny black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother"
- quite extravagant
- purposeful
- forceful
- strong

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Some symbolism we found was "find light in this never-ending shade?", "a sea we must wade.", and "We've braved the belly of the beast." This symbolism impacted us in that it gave us a visual that helps us better understand what the author wanted to say. It made what she said more impactful and made it seem like we were heroes in a story.

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The Impacts of Social Class: Crash Course Sociology #25

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Social Class & Poverty in the US: Crash Course Sociology #24

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In the second stanza, we find ethos in the line, "a skinny black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one." because she puts her own experiences which leads us to believe and trust her words more. It also shows pathos in that it appeals to our emotions and sympathy with the words "descended from slaves" and "single mother". Throughout the whole poem Amanda also uses words that appeal to our pathos such as words of hope for the future, trust, faith, and patriotism.

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These people are coming together in front of the flag 

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- unprepared
- eye opening
- powerful
- Inspiring
- hopeful
- overcoming

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C. Gorman is both optimistic and pessimistic but is more on the optimistic side. Throughout her poem she has a common theme of stating the downsides or flaws of our country but always says how we can persevere and fix our wrongs for the future. She believes in our country and is hopeful in the people and how we improve our world.
D. Gorman's worldview is very different from Rose's worldview. Gorman has a very hopeful and positive view on human behavior. She believes that we are harmonious and can be better while Rose highlights the flaws of human nature. He shows us the bad and how we humans all have different feelings/views that is difficult to change.

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Amanda Gorman is mostly optimistic in her poem "The Hill We Climb." Her poem talks about the current state of America, with common themes of hope and perseverance. She uses cunning words to create an elaborate picture of the America's dark past, while using vernacular that highlights our struggle and how we've overcome many obstacles, and how we will continue to do so in the future. This message contrasts with Reginald Rose's "Twelve Angry Men." The play is often pessimistic, showing hidden truths of the judicial system of America, and drawing attention to its many flaws and prejudices, leaving us hopeless near the end of the play.

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Yellow-kyle
Blue-Krutik
Pink-Anna

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What effect does socioeconomic status have on the working class?

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What effect does socioeconomic status have on the working class?

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Fran Lock exposes the hypocrisy, classism and elitism in contemporary liberal attempts to edit, erode and police working-class participation in the arts, and she calls for the radical, systematic democratisation of culture.

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When Diane Reay, Cambridge University professor of education, started researching her book about working class children's experiences of education, she had no idea just how much inequality she would uncover in state schools today. "The most important thing I found out was that we are still educating different social classes for different functions in society."

She expected to find the English state system was providing roughly the same education for all. "But it doesn't. Even within a comprehensive school, when they're all in the same building, the working classes are still getting less education than the middle classes, just as they had when my dad was at school at the beginning of the 20th century."

Reay's background informs her book and her opinions. The daughter of a coalminer, and the eldest of eight, she grew up on a council estate and received free school meals. She then spent 20 years working as a teacher in London primary schools before moving into academia and ending up at Cambridge.

"My parents had a strong sense that the educational system hadn't been fair to them and they had missed out. I learned as a small child I had to work at least twice as hard as the middle class children to achieve the same result. When I did show ambition - to go to LSE [the London School of Economics and Political Science] to be a political researcher - I was told it wasn't appropriate."

How much has changed? "This government is making inequality in education worse, not better," she says.

Reay carried out more than 500 interviews and identified most with the children who were difficult and out of place: the "fighters", she calls them. "That was the sort of child I was in school."

Now she hopes to open up a national debate about what a socially just education would look like. "There's this incessant babble from the government about social mobility. But the academy and free school movement has made things worse for working class children, with more segregation and polarisation." In spite of free schools and academies receiving more funding per pupil than state comprehensive schools, they typically educate fewer children in receipt of free school meals, she found. "Free schools and academies have a more advantaged intake than the comprehensive schools do."

England does not have an education system that is serious about realising the potential of all children, she argues, with those on free school meals and receiving pupil premium 27% less likely to achieve five or more GCSEs at grades A*-C including English and maths. Four-fifths of children from working-class minority ethnic families are taught in schools with high concentrations of other immigrant or disadvantaged students - the highest proportion in the developed world, according to a report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. Half of all free school meal children are educated in just a fifth of all schools.

"There are predominantly middle class comprehensives and predominantly working class and ethnically mixed comprehensives - and despite all the rhetoric around pupil premiums, pupils in the more working class comprehensives get less money per head. They get less qualified teachers. They get higher levels of teacher turnover and more supply teachers. Even if they are in the same schools as middle class children, they are in lower sets and yet again they get less experienced teachers."

All the children she interviewed had a powerful sense of their position in the academic hierarchy. "Right from reception now some children are in sets aged four and they can tell they're only in 'the monkeys' and that's not a very good group to be in. That means they're not very clever." She was shocked by the anxiety displayed by very young children, who, she says, blame themselves if they are put in the lower sets.

Research suggests it is the wealth and inclination of parents, rather than the ability and efforts of the child, that have the most bearing on a child's educational success today. "If you're a working class child, you're starting the race halfway round the track behind the middle class child. Middle class parents do a lot via extra resources and activities."

'There's lots of lining up and standing to attention. It's about disrespecting working class young people.' Photograph: Getty Images

Less affluent children also get a more restrictive educational offer, she discovered. "It wasn't until I talked to young people about their experiences that I realised how different and unequal their educations were. Because the schools that working class children mostly go to are not doing well in the league tables, there's a lot of pressure on their teachers and heads to increase their league table position. That means they focus ruthlessly on reading, writing and arithmetic."

Some children in these schools talked wistfully about hardly ever doing art, drama or dance: "These children come from families where their parents can't afford to pay for them to do those activities out of school. It almost feels criminal. It feels very unfair."

The difference between amounts spent on educating children privately or in the state sector is stark. She cites research from University College London that found £12,200 a year is the average spending on a privately educated primary pupil, compared with £4,800 on a state pupil. For secondary, it's £15,000 compared with £6,200.

"Society has got more unfair, and the gap between the rich and poor is a lot greater than it was even 30 years ago. We've got to move back instead of going further in the direction of austerity, which seems to be punishing the poor."

She believes the government's support for academies and free schools is powerfully ideological. "It's about opening up education to the markets. I found it particularly shocking - and I had to read some quite boring parliamentary reports to get the information - that masses of money has gone into the academy and free school programme, and it's been taken out of the comprehensive school system."

Reay found that free schools receive 60% more funding per pupil than local authority primaries and secondaries, and that £96m originally intended for improving underperforming schools was redistributed to academies.

To make things worse, an analysis of Department for Education data reveals that schools with the highest numbers of pupils on free school meals are facing the deepest funding cuts: in secondary schools with more than 40% of children on free school meals, the average loss per pupil will be £803. That's £326 more than the average for secondary schools as a whole. And primary schools with high numbers of working class pupils are e xpected to lose £578 per pupil.

Another blow being inflicted on working class children is through the way they are treated in some super-strict schools, argues Reay. She says some academies operate on the principle that working class families are chaotic and children need school to impose control. "There's lots of lining up in silence, standing to attention when an adult comes into the room, and mantras. I think it's about disrespecting working class young people and their families.

"There's one academy where the children have to say: I aspire, he aspires, she aspires, we all aspire."

Another issue is widespread setting and streaming. "There's masses of research that shows it doesn't work - that, actually, if you put children in mixed ability groups, the majority make greater progress.

"Plus, research on wellbeing shows that you need to decrease the social distance between people. There's mistrust, wariness and anxiety about people who are different from us. That obviously came out in the Brexit vote. If you put children together in their classroom, they start to learn that what they share is much greater than the differences between them."

After her own schooling at Ashby grammar school, Leicestershire, Reay went to Newcastle University to study politics and economics before getting a job as a primary teacher in Islington. She took her master's in 1985 at the Institute of Education then went back to teaching. She was the main breadwinner in her family, and managed to get funding to do a sociology PhD at South Bank University when she was in her mid-40s.

She took up her first research post at King's College London a few years later and in 2001 was given a chair at the Institute for Policy Studies in Education at London Met. After collaborating on a research project on school inclusivity with academics at Cambridge, she was asked to apply for her current job in the faculty of education in 2004. "If I hadn't worked with colleagues at Cambridge already, I don't think I'd have dared."

As a Cambridge professor, she is also highly critical of Oxbridge's failure to attract students from working class backgrounds and ethnic minorities. But lowering entry requirements is not the solution, she believes. "Focus just at the admissions level isn't really going to change very much. We're never going to have a critical mass of those students who are non-traditional to make a difference."

Instead of blaming non-traditional students for not applying, which she finds hypocritical, she'd like the elite universities to look at their whole culture and ethos. "Maybe they need to ask: how can we make ourselves more attractive to non-traditional applicants? The courses, for example, need to be brought into the 21st century, instead of staying in the 17th."

She was feeling positive that a debate about the diversity of Cambridge University reading lists was opening up - until the Telegraph ran its inaccurate front page story claiming a black student, Lola Olufemi, was forcing the university to drop white authors from its syllabus. "That poor woman was subject to so much negative feedback. The attitude of the Telegraph was: who does she think she is?"

Reay says she felt compelled to write this book because she believes things cannot go on as they are. "There needs to be a sea change in public opinion, for us to say this is too inequitable and unfair. There needs to be a new collective effort to make things fairer."

Miseducation: Inequality, education and the working classes by Diane Reay (£12.99) can be ordered from the Guardian Bookshop

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'Working-class children get less of everything in education - including respect'

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Interview Diane Reay grew up on a council estate, the eldest of eight, and became a Cambridge professor. Now she wants to talk about inequality in education

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Is Wealth Inequality Actually a Problem?

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Is Wealth Inequality Actually a Problem?

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Is Wealth Inequality Actually a Problem?

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Listen to this episode from Economics Explained on Spotify. The wealthiest among us today live a life unparalleled by any other human throughout history. The greatest Kings and emperors could only dream of the life afforded to today's billionaires.

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Socioeconomic inequality is one of the most pressing issues American society is grappling with. How does it play out over generations and how have those inequalities led to discrepancies in wealth, especially for people of color?

This year's Boston University Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) annual Learn More series is focused on an exploration of social class, and the latest installment of the virtual series is today, Wednesday, October 21, featuring noted sociologist Dalton Conley, Henry Putnam University Professor in Sociology at Princeton University.

Conley's talk, Construction and Understanding of Social Class, will examine the effects of socioeconomic equality, how it can be inherited across generations, and how it affects access to wealth among people of color. The event begins at 4 pm.

The author of several books, including Being Black, Living in the Red: Race, Wealth, and Social Policy in America (University of California Press, 2009), The Pecking Order (Vintage, 2009), Elsewhere, USA (Vintage, 2008), and Parentology (Simon & Schuster, 2014), Conley is also a faculty affiliate at Princeton's Office of Population Research and Center for Health and Wellbeing and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He serves in a pro bono capacity as dean of health sciences at the University of the People, an accredited, tuition-free online college that strives to increase accessibility to higher education.

BU Today spoke with Conley ahead of today's talk.

BU Today: How is socioeconomic status inherited? How does generational wealth or its lack affect an individual's economic mobility?

Conley: Today, we typically measure socioeconomic status with four measures. First is someone's education level, second is occupation (which can be rank-ordered through a methodology by their prestige), third is their income level, and fourth is their wealth level (accumulated or lack thereof). Those four together we feel composite the resources an individual has to bring to bear in society, and we call that socioeconomic status. There are other dimensions, like political power, but I think that if you use those four measures, it's a pretty good summary of what someone's relative position in society is from a socioeconomic perspective.

How it's inherited is not something that we know a definitive answer to. My earlier work was on the impact of parental wealth. Back in the '90s, when I was studying it, there were three measures: education, occupation, and income. I was a part of a group of new scholars that was saying, "No, we really have to consider wealth." Wealth is an important component of class, and in some cases, it's literally passed on through inheritance or gifts. What we found was that if you consider all of those dimensions and more, like age, appearance, marital status, race, and so on, when you throw them all in a model together to see what actually matters for the offspring and their socioeconomic status, it turns out that the single biggest effect is parents' education level, and second to that is parental wealth.

When you think about that, it illustrates the two main mechanisms by which parents pass on advantage or disadvantage socially. Education captures parental attitudes towards education, how much they value it, and what sort of cognitive and noncognitive skills they have to pass on to their kids. Wealth is the money side of it, and a lot of it is in the form of their home. If they're homeowners, that is correlated with the quality of your kids' schooling because in the United States, we finance local schools predominantly through local property taxes. Then, how much wealth the parents have influences whether you're able to go to college, whether you're able to stay in college without having to take a job, which in turn influences your performance and whether or not you're likely to get through in four years. If you think about income, when you send your kids to college, you're not thinking, "Yeah, I'll just skim a little off my weekly paycheck." You pay out of wealth, out of money that you saved up for a long time, like a college savings plan, or loans.

In your book Being Black, Living in the Red, you discuss the relationship between race and wealth mobility. How does race influence someone's economic status?

It goes two ways, and I think that it's a cycle. In that research, what I found was that if you look at, for example, college graduation rates, there is a racial gap. However, when you just simply compare, say, African Americans and white Americans on likelihood of graduating with a four-year bachelor's degree, you're really comparing apples and oranges, because you're comparing, on average, people who came from vastly different economic resources in their families. There's an income gap, like a pay gap, by race, and that's substantial.

But if you look at the wealth gap, the wealth gap has been consistently about one to 10, meaning that the typical, or median, African American family has 10 cents of wealth to the dollar of wealth of the typical median white family.

What I found is [that] a huge racial gap in wealth seems to be the engine of continued wealth inequality in a post-1960s era, meaning that it's not that race doesn't matter in society, but for example, education differences by race are actually differences by family wealth levels. Differences in premarital or teenage childbearing are actually differences in teenage childbearing rates by family wealth levels. There is a difference in likelihood of relying on public assistance or welfare by race, but actually, that's not a race difference, it's a difference by family wealth level. So really, what appear to be race effects in a lot of domains like education, welfare, and so forth, are actually wealth effects. They're not explainable by just income differences and savings rate differences between them. They're a product of a lot of different factors, contemporary and historical, but that wealth gap is not just going to go away itself if we have equal education or even equal incomes.

It's a legacy of hundreds of years of racial inequality. And institutions and policies and market dynamics generate it still today. The argument of that book is that if we want to address racial equality or equity, one of the main things we should be tackling is the wealth gap. It doesn't do everything, like solve differences in police violence, but for a lot of the disparities, like educational disparities, the best policy for racial equity and education would actually be racial equity and wealth. Unfortunately, people like their wealth, and it's very hard to have a very progressive wealth policy; even in much more socialistic countries in Europe, when there have been wealth taxes imposed for redistribution, there have been political revolts. So it is a challenge, but it is an important challenge.

Has the relationship between wealth and race in America changed? If so, how?

Unfortunately, the answer is a short one: It has not changed. Some of the institutions that prevented minority wealth accumulation in the past are now gone, like redlining, which was an official practice in the early 20th century. That's the process by which banks would draw a red line on maps of neighborhoods and draw a red line around minority neighborhoods and not give any loans to those neighborhoods. Things like a racially restrictive covenant, where an owner could stipulate that the future owner could only sell or rent their house to people of a particular race, are illegal now. Segregated public facilities were made illegal in the 1960s.

There are clearly things that have changed that have affected wealth distribution, but it's very tenacious, almost like a weed. It's still there. And the crazy thing is that over my entire lifetime of 50 years, since there have been measures of wealth inequality, the race gaps have been stable. We haven't really directly tackled it, but we have chipped away at it with different policies, and yet things haven't changed. It probably requires a much more direct policy shift in the environment to do something about it. Others hope that if we continue to equalize education and continue to have incomes inched closer together slowly, that by spillover, that will reduce the wealth gap, but I personally believe that it will require something much more dramatic, like wealth taxes and universal baby bonds, something that [New Jersey Democratic Senator] Cory Booker talked about in his brief campaign for president, where every child in America gets a pre-funded savings account that can be used later on.

Dalton Conley will speak on Construction and Understanding of Social Class, part of the Diversity & Inclusion Learn More Series, on Wednesday, October 21, at 4 pm. Register to attend virtually.
Explore Related Topics:

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How Does Socioeconomic Inequality Affect Social Class, Especially for People of Color?

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Princeton University sociologist Dalton Conley will give a virtual lecture on the effects of intergenerational socioeconomic inequality as part of BU Diversity & Inclusion's Learn More Series today, October 21, at 4 pm.

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It's a history lesson worth remembering: The exploitation of immigrant workers only encourages more-and worse-abuse.

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In 1624, Jane Dickenson petitioned the governor of Virginia for relief from bondage. Four years earlier, her husband had signed a contract of indenture to pay for his immigration from England; it obliged him to labor for a man named Nicholas Hide for a period of seven years.

Before the indenture was up, however, Jane's husband was killed in the Second Anglo-Powhatan War, and she was taken captive by the Pamunkey Indians. Held for 10 months, she was finally ransomed for two pounds of beads by one of the Virginia Company's grandees. Jane now found herself bound to labor "with a towefold Chaine," one "for her late husband's obligation," the other "for her ransome." Seeking her own release, Jane testified that her indentured service "differeth not from her slavery [with] the Indians."

Stories similar to Jane's abounded in the colony, where labor for growing cash crops was perpetually scarce and turning a profit required keeping tight control over immigrant workers. English law provided indentured servants some avenues for redress, but local Virginian courts-like the one Jane appealed to-were run by their employers. Masters traded laborers and disciplined them with impunity, all with the law's support. Just a year after Jane filed her petition, the English ship captain Thomas Weston refused to carry more servants to Virginia because they were sold there "like horses."

It's a lesson as old as European settlement of the present-day United States: Treating migrant workers as property for the benefit of others leads to terrible consequences. But judging from a recent immigration-reform proposal, the country hasn't entirely learned that lesson. In a Politico piece originally titled, "What If You Could Get Your Own Immigrant?"-a headline that provoked such anger it was quickly changed-Eric Posner, a professor at the University of Chicago's Law School, and Glen Weyl, an economist at Microsoft Research New England, described a plan that amounts to reintroducing a form of bonded immigrant labor to the United States. Their idea, in essence, is to give every American citizen the right to "sponsor" an immigrant, put that person to work, and then take a portion of his or her wages.

If these two scholars at elite institutions were aware of their plan's historical precedent, they gave no indication of it. But it's clear from American history that such a proposal would be a disaster not only for immigrants, but for American democracy. Once set in motion, any policy that creates conditions for exploitative labor practices is likely only to encourage more exploitation.

The history of how indentured servitude transformed into racialized chattel slavery in America provides a particularly vivid example of this vicious cycle. In theory, colonial Virginia's intense labor scarcity ought to have meant favorable terms for migrating workers. But as Jane Dickenson learned, the men who governed the colonies changed market dynamics by imposing harsh laws that allowed them to control and capture laborers in new ways. Whereas contracts of indenture for agricultural workers in England typically ran to only one year, in America they stretched out to seven. And colonial authorities routinely punished servants who tried to escape-or simply displeased their masters-with whippings, split tongues, sliced ears, and extra years of service. As the late American historian Edmund Morgan put it, even before slavery took root, Virginia's masters were moving "toward a system of labor that treated men as things."

This still wasn't enough. As free subjects of the English crown, servants who managed to outlive their indentures could eventually obtain property and some measure of political clout. As former servants increased in number, they indeed began to challenge their former masters' authority, most famously in Bacon's Rebellion of 1676. Enslaved Africans provided a dual solution to this problem. First, the importation of already enslaved laborers allowed masters to more easily treat servitude as a lifetime, hereditary status, preventing the growth of a troublesome population of the formerly unfree. Second, it made whiteness the mark of freedom, ensuring that "ordinary" English settlers identified with their social betters instead of making common cause with the new arrivals.

Still, the transition to a slave society was gradual. For several decades, Africans forcibly transported to the American colonies were not necessarily treated very differently from English indentured servants, and some achieved not only freedom but significant local prominence. The "black patriarch of Pungoteague Creek," Anthony Johnson, for example, was brought to Virginia in chains, but he was able to purchase liberty for himself and his wife, accumulate extensive land holdings, and have his testimony accepted in court. According to the historians T.H. Breen and Stephen Innes, through much of the 17th century, Johnson and other free blacks in his Eastern Shore community "experienced a kind of rough equality with their poor white neighbors."

Over time, however, and increasingly after 1700, legal codes hardened racial boundaries and entrenched chattel slavery, so that society came to be based on the principle of white supremacy. It was in this context that whiteness served to unite one portion of the population in the unmitigated exploitation of another. "Slavery was not born of racism: rather, racism was the consequence of slavery," wrote Eric Williams, a pioneering historian and the first prime minister of independent Trinidad and Tobago, in his seminal analysis Capitalism & Slavery. Although the economic benefits of enslaved labor flowed almost entirely to slave owners, the racialization of bondage gave every white person a social and political interest in the subordination of Africans and their descendants. In this way, the "wages of whiteness" were generalized to the majority in the white republic that emerged from the American Revolution.

The story doesn't end here. By the turn of the 19th century, gradual abolition in the North alongside slavery's massive expansion in the South opened up a fissure among whites. In 1852, the increasingly acrimonious debate over the institution's future led The New York Times to advocate the importation of indentured Chinese laborers-so-called "coolies"-as a "happy medium" between "forced and voluntary labor." These foreigners from supposedly backward places would occupy a new position on the lower rungs of the American racial hierarchy-between slavery and freedom, black and white. To moderate Northerners, the indentured workers seemed like a solution to the nation's problems.

The practice of trafficking Asian workers began in the 1830s in the British Empire. British leaders sought to alleviate labor "shortages" in the Caribbean colonies-the result of newly emancipated slaves' withdrawal from the plantation complex-by importing "excess" South Asian labor. During the 1840s, American shippers expanded the trade, transporting indentured Chinese workers throughout the Americas-but not the United States-to provide cheap labor in mines and plantations. Indenture contracts, and the bodies to go with them, were auctioned off upon arrival at port.

In 1856, the U.S. commissioner to China, Peter Parker, declared that the traffic was so "replete with illegalities, immoralities, and revolting and inhuman atrocities," that its cruelty at times exceeded the "horrors of the 'middle passage.'" Working conditions at labor sites in the Americas were no better. On the Chincha Islands off the coast of Peru, trafficked Chinese workers mined guano, a fertilizer used on American farms and plantations. They labored up to 20 hours per day in a toxic environment, while bosses applied whippings and attacks by dogs as punishment for insubordination. Suicide at the camps was common. On plantations in South America and the Caribbean, experienced observers reported migrants were "treated as slaves," sometimes "worse than brutes."

By the eve of the Civil War, media exposés and government reports had publicized these abuses sufficiently to convince most Americans that the traffic was " only another form of the slave-trade," which had been banned decades before. In 1862, Congress banned the carriage of "coolies" on American vessels. The act was one of many reforms intended to fundamentally restructure American society around a liberal notion of free labor.

But while intended as a humanitarian act, the law helped solidify white Americans' prejudice against Chinese migrants of all kinds, who came to be understood as "naturally" servile because they had supposedly "allowed" themselves to be trafficked-a prejudice later deployed to justify the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and subsequently transferred to other Asian migrants. Meanwhile, the trafficking of contract laborers worldwide continued well into the 20th century. The unfree conditions it produced has no shortage of modern analogues-as historians have often noted. In 2016, for instance, the UN warned Qatar to end "migrant worker slavery," a system in which sponsoring employers wield nearly absolute power.

Common to all of these stories is the subordination of a minority group-usually made up of foreigners and other marginalized people-for the economic and social benefit of the majority, using the tools of political disenfranchisement and the impairment of legal rights. This is what makes the immigration proposal put forward by Posner and Weyl last month so alarming. Their plan aims to cut through the current immigration-policy impasse by giving working-class Americans-presumably, the white ones concerned about "illegal aliens"-a contracted property right in the labor of immigrants. It would "achieve the goals of both sides of the immigration debate," they write, by allowing immigrants into the country to the economic benefit of those already here.

But their plan seems more likely to produce an effect similar to that achieved when Virginia's colonial governors interposed whiteness between indentured English servants and enslaved Africans: That is, it would gradually establish an impenetrable social barrier between ordinary American citizens and outcast immigrant workers. Bit by bit, the United States would transform as legislators, judges, and administrators adjudicated countless matters pitting the interests of sponsoring citizens (who could vote) against the interests of immigrants (who could not). The deepening divide would corrode democracy twice over: first, by excluding immigrants from having a political voice and rights, and second, by encouraging a social hierarchy that would inevitably intensify class distinctions among citizens, too.

Personal familiarity poses no barrier to this process. Posner and Weyl naively misread history when they wrote that "it is hard to demonize the person who lives in your basement, or the basement of your neighbor, and has increased your income greatly." It may seem like common sense that proximity breeds understanding, but when a property right in others' labor is at stake, just the opposite is often the case. For most of American history, family members' labor was under the legal control of male heads of household. Abuse without redress was pervasive, despite bonds of affection.

And in regimes premised on indentured servitude and slavery, affection was no protection at all. Indeed, intimacy can make exploitation all the more oppressive. Far from treating the people living in their "basements" with care, slaveholders-who liked to call their human property "family"-regularly raped enslaved women and "unblushingly reared" their own children "for the market," as Harriet Jacobs, who escaped slavery, recounted in her 1861 autobiography.

Immigrants subordinated both economically and politically-and this, at bottom, is what Posner and Weyl unwittingly propose-would be defenseless against abuse. Like the millions indentured, enslaved, and trafficked before them, they would be despised for their very inability to resist, then abused all the more for being despicable. Thomas Jefferson, a slaveholder himself, described this dynamic clearly: "The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other," he wrote in the 1780s. "Our children," he added, "see this, and learn to imitate it."

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

Ariel Ron is an assistant professor of history at Southern Methodist University.

Dael Norwood is an assistant professor of history at Binghamton University.

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America Cannot Bear to Bring Back Indentured Servitude

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It's a history lesson worth remembering: The exploitation of immigrant workers only encourages more-and worse-abuse. In 1624, Jane Dickenson petitioned the governor of Virginia for relief from bondage. Four years earlier, her husband had signed a contract of indenture to pay for his immigration from England; it obliged him to labor for a man named Nicholas Hide for a period of seven years.

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By Tim Lambert
Society in the 19th Century

During the 19th-century life was transformed by the Industrial Revolution. At first, it caused many problems but in the late 19th-century life became more comfortable for ordinary people. Meanwhile, Britain became the world's first urban society. By 1851 more than half the population lived in towns. The population of Britain boomed during the 1800s. In 1801 it was about 9 million. By 1901 it had risen to about 41 million. This was despite the fact that many people emigrated to North America and Australia to escape poverty. About 15 million people left Britain between 1815 and 1914.

However many people migrated to Britain in the 19th century. In the 1840s many people came from Ireland, fleeing a terrible potato famine. In the 1880s the Tsar began persecuting Russian Jews. Some fled to Britain and settled in the East End of London.

In the early 19th century Britain was ruled by an elite. Only a small minority of men were allowed to vote. The situation began to change in 1832 when the vote was given to more men. Constituencies were also redrawn and many industrial towns were represented for the first time. The franchise was extended again in 1867 and 1884. In 1872 the secret ballot was introduced.

Once most men could vote movements began to get women the right to vote as well. In 1897 in Britain local groups of women who demanded the vote joined to form the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS).

In 19th century Britain at least 80% of the population was working class. In order to be considered middle class, you had to have at least one servant. Most servants were female. Throughout the 19th century, 'service' was a major employer of women.

In the 19th century families were much larger than today. That was partly because infant mortality was high. People had many children and accepted that not all of them would survive.

In the early 19th century a group of Evangelical Christians called the Clapham Sect were active in politics. They campaigned for an end to slavery and cruel sports. They gained their name because so many of them lived in Clapham.

Religion was much more important in the 19th century than it is today. Nevertheless, in 1851 a survey showed that only about 40% of the population were at church or chapel on a given Sunday. Even allowing for those who were ill or could not make it for some other reason it meant that half the population did not go to church. Certainly many of the poor had little or no contact with the church. In 1881 a similar survey showed only about 1/3 of the population of England at church on a given Sunday. In the late 19th century religion was in decline in Britain.

Work in the 19th Century

During the 1800s the factory system gradually replaced the system of people working in their own homes or in small workshops. In England, the textile industry was the first to be transformed. It employed many children. Unfortunately, when children worked in textile factories they often worked for more than 12 hours a day.

In the early 19th century parliament passed laws to restrict child labor. However, they all proved to be unenforceable. The first effective law was passed in 1833. It was effective because for the first time factory inspectors were appointed to make sure the law was being obeyed. The new law banned children under 9 from working in textile factories. It said that children aged 9 to 13 must not work for more than 12 hours a day or 48 hours a week. Children aged 13 to 18 must not work for more than 69 hours a week. Furthermore, nobody under 18 was allowed to work at night (from 8.30 pm to 5.30 am). Children aged 9 to 13 were to be given 2 hours of education a day.

Conditions in coal mines were often terrible. Children as young as 5 worked underground. However, in 1842, a law banned women and boys under 10 from working underground. In 1844 a law banned all children under 8 from working. Then in 1847, a Factory Act said that women and children could only work 10 hours a day in textile factories. In 1867 the law was extended to all factories. (A factory was defined as a place where more than 50 people were employed in a manufacturing process). In 1878 a law banned women from working more than 56 hours a week in any factory.

In the 19th century, boys were made to climb up chimneys to clean them. This practice was ended by law in 1875.

In the 19th century being a domestic servant was a common job for women. Other women worked as charwomen or laundresses. Many women worked at home finishing shirts or shoes. Others made boxes or lace at home. In the Black Country in the West Midlands of England, some women made chains in forges by their homes. In the 19th century married working-class women often worked - they had to because many families were so poor they needed her earnings as well as her husbands.

In the 1850s and 1860s, skilled craftsmen formed national trade unions. However unskilled workers did not become organized until the late 1880s.

British Cities in the 19th Century

Living conditions in early 19th British century cities were often dreadful. However, there was one improvement. Gaslight was first used in 1807 in Pall Mall in London. Many cities introduced gas street lights in the 1820s. However early 19th century cities were dirty, unsanitary, and overcrowded. In them, the streets were very often unpaved and they were not cleaned. Rubbish was not collected and it was allowed to accumulate in piles in the streets. Since most of it was organic when it turned black and sticky it was used as fertilizer.

Furthermore, in the early 19th century poor people often had cesspits, which were not emptied very often. Later in the century, many people used earth closets. (A pail with a box containing granulated clay over it. When you pulled a lever clay covered the contents of the pail). In the early 19th century only wealthy people had flushing lavatories.

However, in the late 19th century they became common. In the early 19th century poor families often had to share toilets and on Sunday mornings queues formed.

Given these horrid conditions, it is not surprising that disease was common. Life expectancy in cities was low (significantly lower than in the countryside) and infant mortality was very high. British cities suffered outbreaks of cholera in 1831-32 and in 1848-49.

Fortunately, the last outbreak finally spurred people into action. In the late 19th century most cities dug sewers and created piped water supplies, which made society much healthier. Meanwhile, in 1842 Joseph Whitworth invented the mechanical street sweeper.

Poverty in the 19th Century

At the end of the 19th century more than 25%of the population of Britain was living at or below subsistence level. Surveys indicated that around 10% were very poor and could not afford even basic necessities such as enough nourishing food. Between 15% and 20% had just enough money to live on (provided they did not lose their job or have to take time off work through illness).

If you had no income at all you had to enter the workhouse. The workhouses were feared and hated by the poor. They were meant to be as unpleasant as possible to deter poor people from asking the state for help. However during the late 19th century workhouses gradually became more humane.

Houses in the 19th Century

Well-off people lived in very comfortable houses in the 19th century. (Although their servants lived in cramped quarters, often in the attic). For the first time, furniture was mass-produced. That meant it was cheaper but unfortunately standards of design fell. To us, middle-class 19th-century homes would seem overcrowded with furniture, ornaments, and knick-knacks. However, only a small minority could afford this comfortable lifestyle.

In the early 19th century housing for the poor was often dreadful. Often they lived in 'back-to-backs'. These were houses of three (or sometimes only two) rooms, one of the top of the other. The houses were literally back-to-back. The back of one house joined onto the back of another and they only had windows on one side. The bottom room was used as a living room and kitchen. The two rooms upstairs were used as bedrooms.

The worst homes were cellar dwellings. These were one-room cellars. They were damp and poorly ventilated. The poorest people slept on piles of straw because they could not afford beds. However, housing conditions gradually improved. In the 1840s local councils passed by-laws banning cellar dwellings. They also banned any new back-to-backs. The old ones were gradually demolished and replaced over the following decades.

In the early 19th century skilled workers usually lived in 'through houses' i.e. ones that were not joined to the backs of other houses. Usually, they had two rooms downstairs and two upstairs. The downstairs front room was kept for the best. The family kept their best furniture and ornaments in this room. They spent most of their time in the downstairs back room, which served as a kitchen and living room. As the 19th century passed more and more working-class people could afford this lifestyle.

In the late 19th-century worker's houses greatly improved. After 1875 most towns passed building regulations which stated that e.g. new houses must be a certain distance apart, rooms must be of a certain size, and have windows of a certain size. By the 1880s most working-class people lived in houses with two rooms downstairs and two or even three bedrooms. Most had a small garden. At the end of the 19th century, some houses for skilled workers were built with the latest luxury - an indoor toilet.

However, even at the end of the 19th century, there were still many families living in one room. Old houses were sometimes divided up into separate dwellings. Sometimes if windows were broken slum landlords could not or would not replace them. So they were 'repaired' with paper. Or rags were stuffed into holes in the glass.

In the late 19th century most homes also had a scullery. In it was a 'copper', a metal container for washing clothes. The copper was filled with water and soap powder was added. To wash the clothes they were turned with a wooden tool called a dolly. Or you used a metal plunger with holes in it to push clothes up and down. Wet clothes were wrung through a device called a wringer of mangle to dry them. The clothes wringer or mangle was invented by Robert Tasker in 1850. In 1875 a man named John B. Porter invented a portable ironing board. Sarah Boone patented an improved device in 1892.

At the beginning of the 19th-century people cooked over an open fire. This was very wasteful as most of the heat went up the chimney. In the 1820s an iron cooker called a range was introduced. It was a much more efficient way of cooking because most of the heat was contained within. By the mid-19th century ranges were common. Most of them had a boiler behind the coal fire where water was heated.

Gaslight first became common in well-off people's homes in the 1840s. By the late 1870s, most working-class homes had gaslight, at least downstairs. Bedrooms might have oil lamps. Gas fires first became common in the 1880s. Gas cookers first became common in the 1890s. In the last 2 decades of the 19th century, many British towns and cities installed electric street lights. However electric light was expensive and it took a long time to replace gas in people's homes.

In the early 19th century only rich people had bathrooms. People did take baths but only a few people had actual rooms for washing. In the 1870s and 1880s, many middle-class people had bathrooms built. The water was heated by gas. Working-class people had a tin bath and washed in front of the kitchen range.

Food in the 19th Century

In the early 19th century most of the working class lived on plain food bread, butter, potatoes, and bacon. Butcher's meat was a luxury. However, food greatly improved in the late 19th century. Railways and steamships made it possible to import cheap grain from North America so bread became cheaper. Refrigeration made it possible to import cheap meat from Argentina and Australia. Consumption of sugar also increased.

By the end of the 19th century, most people were eating better food. Furthermore in the late 19th century canned food first became widely available. The rotary can opener was invented in 1870 by William Lyman. Furthermore, in the 1870s margarine, a cheap substitute for butter was invented. A man named Gail Borden patented condensed milk in 1856. John Meyenberg patented evaporated milk in 1884.

Meanwhile, several new biscuits were invented in the 19th century including the Garibaldi (1861), the cream cracker (1885), and the Digestive (1892). The first chocolate bar was made in 1847. Milk chocolate was invented in 1875. The first recipe for potato crisps appeared in a book by Dr William Kitchiner in 1817.

Education in the 19th Century

In the early 19th century the churches provided schools for poor children. From 1833 the government provided them with grants. There were also dame schools. They were run by women who taught a little reading, writing, and arithmetic. However many dame schools were really a childminding service.

In Britain, the state did not take responsibility for education until 1870. Forsters Education Act laid down that schools should be provided for all children. If there were not enough places in existing schools then board schools were built. In 1880 school was made compulsory for 5 to 10-year-olds. However, the school was not free, except for the poorest children until 1891 when fees were abolished. In 1893 the minimum age for leaving school was raised to 11. From 1899 children were required to go to school until they were 13.

Meanwhile, girls from upper-class families were taught by a governess. Boys were often sent to public schools like Eton. Middle-class boys went to grammar schools. Middle-class girls went to private schools where they were taught 'accomplishments' such as music and sewing.

Games and leisure in the 19th Century

In the early 19th century working people had very little leisure time. However, things improved by the end of the century. In 1871 the Bank Holiday Act gave workers a few paid holidays each year. Also in the 1870s some clerks and skilled workers began to have one week paid annual holiday. However, even at the end of the 19th century, most people had no paid holidays except bank holidays.

In the early 19th century everyone had Sunday off. In the 1870s some skilled workers began to have Saturday afternoon off. In the 1890s most workers gained a half-day holiday on Saturday and the weekend was born. By the end of the 19th century, most people had more leisure time.

Meanwhile during the 19th century sports became organized. The first written rules for rugby were drawn up in 1845. The London Football Association devised the rules of football in 1863. The first international match was held between England and Scotland in 1872. In 1867 John Graham Chambers drew up a list of rules for boxing. They were called the Queensberry Rules after the Marquis of Queensberry. The Amateur Athletics Association was founded in 1880. Polo was first played in Britain in 1869.

Several new sports and games were invented during the 19th century. Although a form of tennis was played since the Middle Ages lawn tennis was invented in 1873. Snooker was invented in India in 1875. Volleyball was invented in 1895.

At the end of the 19th century bicycling became a popular sport. The safety bicycle was invented in 1885 and in 1892 John Boyd Dunlop invented pneumatic tyres (much more comfortable than solid rubber ones!) Bicycling clubs became common in Victorian Britain.

Ludo was originally an Indian game. It was introduced into Britain c. 1880.

Reading was also popular in the 19th century. In 1841 Edgar Allan Poe published the first detective story. The first Sherlock Holmes story n was published in 1887 by Arthur Conan Doyle. Many middle-class people also enjoyed musical evenings when they gathered around a piano and sang. Middle-class people were very fond of the theatre. In the late 19th century there were also music halls where a variety of acts were performed.

In the 19th century going to the seaside was very popular with those who could afford it. The first pleasure pier was built at Brighton in 1823 and soon they appeared at seaside resorts across Britain.

The steam-driven printing press was invented in 1814 allowing newspapers to become more common. Stamp duty on newspapers was abolished in 1855, which made them cheaper. However, newspapers did not become really common until the end of the 19th century. In 1896 the Daily Mail appeared. It was written in a deliberately sensational style to attract readers with little education.

One new hobby in the 19th century was photography. Henry Fox Talbot took the first photograph in 1835. However, photography was more than just a pastime. In 1871 a writer said that one of the great comforts for the working class was having a photo of a family member who was working a long way off. They could be reminded of what their loved ones looked like. The first cheap camera was invented in 1888 by George Eastman. Afterward, photography became a popular hobby.

In the late 19th-century town councils laid out public parks for recreation. The first children's playground was built in a park in Manchester in 1859.

In the 19th century, the modern Christmas evolved. Before then Christmas wasn't especially important. It was one of only many festivals celebrated during the year. However, the Victorians invented the Christmas card and the Christmas cracker. The Christmas tree was known in England before the 19th century but it was really made popular when the royal family was shown in a magazine illustration with one. Father Christmas or Santa Claus became the figure we know today in the 19th century.

Transport and Communications in the 19th Century

Transport greatly improved during the 19th century. In the mid 19th century travel was revolutionized by railways. They made travel much faster. (They also removed the danger of highwaymen). The Stockton and Darlington railway opened in 1825. However, the first major railway was from Liverpool to Manchester. It opened in 1830. In the 1840s there was a huge boom in building railways and most towns in Britain were connected. In the late 19th century many branch lines were built connecting many villages.

The first underground railway in Britain was built in London in 1863. Steam locomotives pulled the carriages. The first electric underground trains began running in London in 1890.

From 1829 horse-drawn omnibuses began running in London. They soon followed in other towns. In the 1860s and 1870s, horse-drawn trams began running in many towns. Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler made the first cars in 1885 and 1886. The motorbike was patented in 1885. Also in the 1880s, the safety bicycle was invented and cycling soon became a popular hobby.

Meanwhile at sea travel was revolutionized by the steamship. By 1815 steamships were crossing the English Channel. Furthermore, it used to take several weeks to cross the Atlantic. Then in 1838, a steamship called the Sirius made the journey in 19 days. However steam did not completely replace sail until the end of the 19th century when the steam turbine was used on ships. By the mid 19th century lifeboats were commonly carried on ships.

In the early 19th century the recipient of a letter had to pay the postage, not the sender. Then in 1840, Rowland Hill invented the Penny Post. From then on the sender of a letter paid. Cheap mail made it much easier for people to keep in touch with loved ones who lived a long way off. The telegraph was invented in 1837. A cable was laid across the Channel in 1850 and after 1866 it was possible to send messages across the Atlantic. A Scot, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876. The first telephone exchange in Britain opened in 1879.

Clothes in the 19th Century

In the 19th century, apart from cotton shirts, men's clothes consisted of three parts. In the 18th century, they wore knee-length breeches but in the 19th-century men wore trousers. They also wore waistcoats and coats.

In the early 19th century women wore light dresses. In the 1830s they had puffed sleeves. In the 1850s they wore frames of whalebone or steel wire called crinolines under their skirts. In the late 1860s, women began to wear a kind of half crinoline. The front of the skirt was flat but it bulged outwards at the back. This was called a bustle and it disappeared in the 1890s. In the 19th century, women wore corsets.

Meanwhile, about 1800 women started wearing knickers. At first, they were called drawers. Originally women wore a pair of drawers i.e. they were actually two garments, one for each leg, tied together at the top. In the late 19th century in Britain women's drawers were called knickerbockers then just knickers.

Before the 19th-century children were always dressed like little adults. In that century the first clothes made especially for children appeared such as sailor suits. A number of inventions to do with clothing were made in the 19th century. Thomas Hancock invented elastic in 1820. The safety pin was invented in 1849 by Walter Hunt. The electric iron was invented by Henry Seely in 1882 but it did not become common until the 1930s. The zip fastener was invented in 1893. In 1863 Butterick made the first paper dress pattern.

Health and Medicine in the 19th-century

Medicine and surgery made great advances in the 19th century. Louis Pasteur 1822-1895 proved that disease was caused by microscopic organisms. He also invented a way of sterilizing liquids by heating them (called pasteurization). He also invented vaccination for anthrax (which killed many domestic animals) and for rabies. Immunization against diphtheria was invented in 1890. A vaccine for typhoid was invented in 1897.

Surgery was greatly improved by the discovery of anesthetics. James Simpson began using chloroform for operations in 1847. In 1865 Joseph Lister discovered antiseptic surgery, which enabled surgeons to perform many more complicated operations. Rubber gloves were first used in surgery in 1890. Then in 1895 x-rays were discovered.

Warfare in the 19th-century

The industrial revolution transformed warfare. Railways meant armies could be transported much faster than before. The telegraph meant that messages could also be transmitted much faster.

At the beginning of the 19th century, Sir William Congreve (1772-1828) developed the Congreve rocket. These rockets were used at Copenhagen in 1807 and they set most of the town on fire. However, rockets lacked both range and accuracy and after the Napoleonic Wars, they fell from favor.

Meanwhile, in 1807 a Scot named Alexander Forsyth patented the percussion cap. When a trigger was pulled a hammer hit a container of fulminate of mercury, which exploded and ignited the charge of gunpowder. The percussion cap replaced the flintlock. Furthermore, breech-loading guns greatly increased the rate of fire. The British army began using breech-loading guns in 1865. The range of guns was improved by rifling. Some guns had been rifled for centuries but it only became commonplace in the 19th century. In the late 19th century rifles were improved further by the introduction of magazines, which greatly increased the rate of fire.

Meanwhile, in 1836 Samuel Colt began making revolvers. Traditionally the cavalry fought with pistols and swords but the revolver made swords obsolete. In the 19th century, many people experimented with machine guns. In 1862 Richard Gatling invented the Gatling gun. However, the first really successful machine gun was the Maxim gun, invented by Hiram Maxim in 1884. It was adopted by the British army in 1889.

War at sea was changed by exploding shells, by steam engines, and by iron ships. In 1858 the French launched La Gloire. It was made with plates of iron fixed onto timber. However, in 1860, Britain launched HMS Warrior. This ship was made with an iron hull instead of a wooden hull with iron plates fixed on it. Soon the traditional gun deck on warships was replaced by turret guns on the top deck. Then in the 1860s, Robert Whitehead developed the modern torpedo. The British navy began making torpedoes in 1871.

In the 19th century, new explosives were invented to replace gunpowder. TNT was invented in 1863 and dynamite followed in 1867. Cordite was invented in 1889. Meanwhile, conditions in the services greatly improved. Uniforms were introduced for sailors in 1857. Flogging in the army and navy was abolished in 1881.

Last revised 2021

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Life in the 19th Century - Local Histories

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By Tim Lambert Society in the 19th Century During the 19th-century life was transformed by the Industrial Revolution. At first, it caused many problems but in the late 19th-century life became more comfortable for ordinary people. Meanwhile, Britain became the world's first urban society. By 1851 more than half the population lived in towns.

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Just How Bad Were Working Conditions in the 19th Century?

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If is commonly held that working conditions in 19th century cities were much worse than those who lived and worked in the countryside at the time or earlier; similarly you will regularly hear that the creation of factories split up families because the father had to go to work for so many hours every day whereas previously they had seen much more of him.

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Working-Class Families Are Getting Hit From All Sides

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Many American families are financially insecure. Job growth remains slow and a growing number of jobs are unstable, which means people are vulnerable to layoffs or a cut in work hours that result in lost wages. Alongside increasing anxiety about their jobs, people also have to worry more and more about being ill-prepared for an unexpected negative occurrence.

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C) Gorman is very optimistic. During her poem she states the flaws of our country but how we as a country will always fix our flaws in the future.
D) Gorman's worldview contrast with Rose's because while Gorman's poem is very optimistic, Rose's on the other hand brings up how flawed and prejudices we have as a country with our government system, etc.

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How Socioeconomic Status can Cause Homelessness

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How Socioeconomic Status can Cause Homelessness

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How Socioeconomic Status can Cause Homelessness

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Listen to this episode from Gender and Socioeconomic Status Podcast on Spotify. Canyon Clarke will explain how socioeconomic status can cause homelessness