“A cold, thin October rain was falling as I took the little ferry-boat and crossed the Monongahela River to see Homestead and its iron-mills,” Hamlin Garland wrote in the early 1890s. “On the flats close to the water's edge were severe masses of great sheds, out of which grim smoke-stacks rose with a desolate effect, like the black stumps of a burned forest of great trees. Above them dense clouds of sticky smoke rolled heavily away.”
In 1956 I went with my chemistry class from a high school in Brooklyn, NY to visit a steel mill in Bethlehem, PA and see a Bessemer furnace in action. (After learning about the chemistry involved in class.) I have never forgotten that exciting visit, and Garland's description brought it all back to life. We walked along a narrow platform high up above the machinery and watched the pouring of the liquid metal. I was so enthralled by that experience that I started my college career as a chemistry major, but switched to English Lit later on. Women in chemistry were not looked kindly upon I was told, Marie Curie not withstanding. Thankfully those dark days are over!
One of the joys of Sunday mornings is being able to read for the pleasure of reading. Those mornings are made even more joyous when one finds a gem such as this where a great writer includes in his writing the great writings from others.
I suspect that I would never have stumbled upon these words from Hamlin Garland’s “Homestead and its Perilous Trades—Impressions of a Visit” had they not been placed here by Bill Brands. Thank you. My day is better for it.
Interesting essay (as all of Brands' essays are)! The account of men toiling in Carnegie's factories reminds me of Upton Sinclair's _The Jungle_, which led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. As terrible as the working conditions for adults were, we often forget that children were exploited, too. There were no child labor laws back then. A short but moving poem from that era went
In 1956 I went with my chemistry class from a high school in Brooklyn, NY to visit a steel mill in Bethlehem, PA and see a Bessemer furnace in action. (After learning about the chemistry involved in class.) I have never forgotten that exciting visit, and Garland's description brought it all back to life. We walked along a narrow platform high up above the machinery and watched the pouring of the liquid metal. I was so enthralled by that experience that I started my college career as a chemistry major, but switched to English Lit later on. Women in chemistry were not looked kindly upon I was told, Marie Curie not withstanding. Thankfully those dark days are over!
One of the joys of Sunday mornings is being able to read for the pleasure of reading. Those mornings are made even more joyous when one finds a gem such as this where a great writer includes in his writing the great writings from others.
I suspect that I would never have stumbled upon these words from Hamlin Garland’s “Homestead and its Perilous Trades—Impressions of a Visit” had they not been placed here by Bill Brands. Thank you. My day is better for it.
Interesting essay (as all of Brands' essays are)! The account of men toiling in Carnegie's factories reminds me of Upton Sinclair's _The Jungle_, which led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. As terrible as the working conditions for adults were, we often forget that children were exploited, too. There were no child labor laws back then. A short but moving poem from that era went
The golf course is so near the mill
That almost every day,
The little children at their work
Can see the men at play.