Continued study of the language, literature, and culture of Spanish-speaking countries. Materials are from Spain and Latin America and include films, short stories, novels, plays, poetry, and journalistic reports in various media.

To raise commodity prices during the Great Depression, some midwestern farmers enforced Farm Holidays

Rather than call for the creation of federal relief programs, this 1931 advertisement placed by the President's Organization on Unemployment Relief opts for local voluntary charity as a response to the Great Depression. President Herbert Hoover firmly believed that relief was a local responsibility, although even this step, which proved inadequate, went further than pre-World War I presidents, who stood by passively during financial panics. Few Americans expected the government to take drastic action when the Depression struck. Many turned instead to their employers, merchants, churches, landlords, and local banks, as well as to family networks, for assistance. As the Depression and unemployment deepened, however, it became clear that the moral capitalism" of marketplace institutions was drastically inadequate and aggressive government action was needed."

Starting in the mid-19th century, industrial methods of producing goods began to overtake the small-scale methods of artisans and apprentices. The artisanal ideal of independence was eroded by the replacement of craft work by machine work, strict new work rules, and the growth of child labor. For miners and some other workers, the prevalence of store pay (wages paid only as credit), scrip wages (money redeemable only by the company), and company stores intensified their dependence on employers. If company stores lacked the items that miners wanted, they had no alternative but to do without. In these three excerpts from the Ohio Bureau of Labor Statistics First Annual Report in 1878, miners complained about the stranglehold that company-owned stores, scrip wages, and store pay had on the welfare and independence of coal and iron ore workers in the Buckeye State.

The country store was an important crossroads in nineteenth-century rural communities. In the decades after the War for Independence, commercial activity increased in the hinterlands as rural residents brought their farm produce to local storekeepers to exchange for commodities (such as rum) that were not produced locally. With cash scarce, much of the trade was conducted by barter and recorded in the merchant's account books or "daybooks," and traveling peddlers extended market activity beyond the reach of village stores. It was in this commercializing environment that Phineas Taylor Barnum honed his entrepreneurial skills. Barnum, born in Bethel, Connecticut, in 1810, eventually took his skills to New York City where he achieved fame as a cultural impresario and museum owner. He wrote several autobiographies that became key documents in the substantial nineteenth-century advice literature on how to achieve fame and fortune; this excerpt is drawn from The Life of P.T. Barnum, Written By Himself (1855) where he described his early days in greatest detail.

As the federal government drastically reduced funding for low-income housing during the 1980's and 1990's, homelessness emerged as a new and serious issue in many urban areas. Between one and three million Americans became homeless during the 1980's as the minimum wage fell in value and the creation of affordable housing came to a virtual standstill. By the end of the decade one-third of homeless Americans were children. As the homeless population grew, so did the number of organizations created to serve and organize the men, women, and families living in the streets or in over-crowded shelters. Ted Houghton was an organizer for Coalition for the Homeless, an advocacy group founded in 1981 and dedicated to the principle that decent shelter, sufficient food, affordable housing, and the chance to work for a living wage are fundamental rights in a civilized society.

Slavery and a society based on slave labor were well established in the Chesapeake region by the third decade of the 18th century. Hugh Jones described the beginnings of African-American culture as slavery spread in the Chesapeake. Virginia's slave population grew from 3,000 in 1680 to 13,000 in 1700. It further expanded to 27,000 by 1720. Despite Jones's rosy picture, he effectively depicted the enslaved population's contact with whites, the growth of a smaller group that spoke English, and the emergence of strong kinship bonds facilitated by a naturally increasing population, a first in the New World. Hugh Jones arrived from England and served as a minister in Jamestown and professor of mathematics at William and Mary. He authored The Present State of Virginia (1724) where he described the distinctive form of society emerging in Virginia of large and small landowners, poor white laborers, and enslaved Africans.

This 1921 cartoon from the Chicago Tribune newspaper prescribes good old fashioned hard work" as the cure for the 1920-21 economic depression. While this artist attributed unemployment to lack of motivation

Free labor provided possibilities for emancipation for some enslaved people. The most industrious and the most skilled of the enslaved could take greater advantage of these opportunities. Venture Smith had been born in the 1720s, the son of a West African prince who named him Broteer Furro. Slave traders captured him at the age of six, spirited him away to the coast, and transported him to a life of enslavement in Long Island and eastern Connecticut. After several changes of ownership, he was able to purchase his freedom by his labors at the age of 31. Those labors, along with his entrepreneurial activities such as fishing, working on a whaler, and agricultural activities, made possible the purchase of his son, daughter, and wife's liberty. Near the end of the 18th century he related his life history to Elisha Niles, a schoolteacher and Revolutionary war veteran. Published in 1798, A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native of Africa: But Resident above Sixty Years in the United States of America, Related by Himself recounted his successful negotiation of the slavery economy and recognition of free labor as the key to a free identity.

The massive growth in unemployment during the depression of the 1870s forced many urban workers to wander from town to town, looking for work. These wanderers often used the railroads to travel, which gave rise to the popular image of the rail-riding "tramp." To some Americans, the unemployed who wandered the country in this manner posed a threat to order and safety. The "tramp menace," many argued, required a repressive response--and advertisements like this exploited the pervasive fear.

At the turn of the 20th century, the number of business mergers skyrocketed. Among manufacturing companies, mergers jumped from three in 1896 to sixty-three only three years later. Just as quickly the wave of mergers subsided--by 1904, there were only three mergers. This unprecedented wave of mergers was marked by horizontal consolidation--the simultaneous merger of many or all competitors in an industry into a single, giant enterprise. Many of the consolidated firms created in this period--DuPont, U.S. Steel, and International Harvester--remained major corporations throughout the 20th century. Contemporaries reacted to the great merger movement with alarm. Some used satire to express their concern. In this poem published in the New York Journal, George V. Hobart lampooned the wide range of trusts created by merger mania.

The Wagner Bill was the most radical and far-reaching piece of legislation passed in Roosevelt's second "hundred days." Following on the heels of intense industrial unrest, large-scale strikes, and social turmoil, the act guaranteed workers the right to organize unions, and to strike, boycott and picket their employers. It also outlawed "unfair" labor practices by employers, including blacklisting union activists or intimidating workers who sought to join an independent union, and ensured workers the right to collective bargaining. This leaflet distributed by the United Automobile Workers captures the impact of the Wagner Act on union organizing, as it provided a spur for industrial unionism.

The struggle against Great Britain in the years leading up to the War for Independence promoted an expansion of popular participation in politics. Popular pamphlets,urban demonstrations, and voluntary associations such as the Sons of Liberty gave voice to the sentiments of ordinary men and women. In May 1770 an anonymous author named "Brutus"--believed to be the New York City merchant and Son of Liberty Alexander McDougall--addressed his fellow citizens and urged them to reject the claims of leading merchants or "Mercantile Dons," as he labeled them, to decide unilaterally issues of great political and economic concern. Two years earlier, some merchants had organized boycotts against certain products imported from Great Britain (a strategy known as nonimportation) to resist British taxation measures aimed at the rebellious Americans. And these merchants regarded the decision to resume trade as their decision alone to make. But Brutus disagreed, and responded with this single-sheet broadside.

The National Recovery Administration (NRA) was one of a constellation of federal agencies that made up President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal program to help Americans recover from the Great Depression. Established in 1933 in an effort to spur industrial recovery, the NRA sought to use government power to restrain competition and end the downward cycle of wage cuts and price reductions, without abolishing the free market. The administration asked businesses, labor, and consumers to help write new codes for hour limits, minimum wages, and production standards. To encourage voluntary adoption of these new codes, participating businesses were allowed to display a blue eagle logo, and consumers were urged to spend money only where the symbol was displayed. This photograph captures three unlikely spots for the display of the otherwise ubiquitous NRA eagle.

Compared to the French, Spanish, and Dutch, the English were slow to develop an interest in North American colonization By the later part of the sixteenth century, however, a group of interested and well-connected Englishmen with experience in Irish colonization began to consider permanent settlements in North America. Bartholomew Gosnold undertook a small prospecting expedition on the vessel Concord in 1602, passing down the coasts of Maine and Massachusetts to explore the northern Virginia coast. Gosnold was the first European to see and set foot on Cape Cod--which received its name for its abundance of cod fish--and built a small fur trading station there. The successful voyage enticed English colonization efforts to turn toward this part of North America. Four years later, Gosnold commanded a voyage to bring the first colonists to Jamestown, Virginia. Several accounts of the 1602 prospecting expedition quickly appeared in print.; this complete one was first published by Samuel Purchas in 1625.

The Homestead Act of 1862 opened the Great Plains for Euro-American settlement. The law allowed anyone to claim 160 acres after payment of a nominal fee. Final title to the land followed after five years of occupation and the improvement of the claim. While many of the Act's supporters intended its benefits to go to urban workers, city dwellers found it difficult even to raise the fees much less the capital necessary for farm equipment and supplies. Many Civil War veterans did move West, including Uriah Oblinger and other residents of older farming areas such as Indiana. He and two of his wife's brothers took advantage of the Homestead Act in the fall of 1872. Uriah's letters to his family described the emerging community of young settlers who had migrated to the Nebraska territory to start new lives with their families.

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), launched by the federal government in 1933, provided temporary work to three million young men, who lived in semi-military camps, constructed recreation facilities, and carried out conservation projects. This photograph of a young CCC worker epitomizes the agency's emphasis on the morally and physically curative powers of vigorous outdoor life. Building strong bodies is a major CCC objective

A 1929 installment of J. R. Williams's popular comic strip Out Our Way poked fun at the illusions held by some of the workers who bought stocks in the companies that employed them. High wages, good benefits, and employee welfare programs became means for large employers to maintain stable labor relations. Besides stock-purchase plans, some companies offered pensions, subsidized housing and mortgages, insurance, and sports programs. In many cases, these employee welfare programs were distributed through company unions

The end of the War of Independence in 1783 curtailed wartime loss of life and destruction of property. However, peace also brought economic distress through cycles of depression and glut. These cycles were exacerbated when Massachusetts authorities pursued strict policies on money and debt and British creditors called in their debts during the post-Revolutionary depression. When merchants turned to already pressured farmers and rural traders who had no cash to pay their debts or taxes, courts and jails filled with debtors. In protest, Daniel Shays, a former captain in the revolutionary militia, led an uprising in western and central Massachusetts to close the courts and prevent the seizure of property for unpaid debts. Massachusetts Governor Bowdoin sent a military force that scattered the rebels. In his 1799 treatise to his fellow working men and women, William Manning offered a history of Shay's Rebellion along with his prescription for avoiding such insurrections in the future by an organization of working people.

Although publicists for late nineteenth-century corporations celebrated their "efficiency" and the "science" of management, their employees did not always join the celebration. What looked like careful and disciplined management from one perspective might be viewed as petty tyranny from below. Some workers directed their anger to the very top of the corporations. An anonymous author, writing in the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen's Monthly Magazine in 1878, claimed that these "ten commandments" were "written down in the Statute-Books of Railroad Officials and idle Monopolists, and Jay Gould Aristocrats."