AP Sources: 1861-1912

"The Big Rock Candy Mountain," from the song "Hallelujah, I'm a Hobo" (1870s)

One evening as the sun went down

And the jungle fire was burning,

Down the track came a hobo, humming,

And he said, "Boys, I'm not a turning.

I'm headed for a land that's far away,

Beside the crystal fountain.

I'll see you all this coming fall

On the Big Rock Candy Mountain."

In the Big Rock Candy Mountain

There's a land that's fair and bright,

Where the handouts grow on bushes

And you sleep out every night,

Where the boxcars are all empty

And the sun shines every day--

Oh, the birds and the bees and the cigaret [sic] trees,

The rock-and-rye springs where the whang-doodle sings,

On the Big Rock Candy Mountain.

On the Big Rock Candy Mountain,

All the cops have wooden legs,

And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth,

And the hens lay softboiled eggs.

The farmers' trees are full of fruit,

And the barns are full of hay.

Oh, I'm bound to go where there ain't no snow,

Where the sleet don't fall and the wind don't blow,

On the Big Rock Candy Mountain.

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"The Little Old Sod Shanty on the Claim," song adapted by a Nebraska farmer (1880s)

I am looking rather seedy now while holding down my claim,

And my victuals are not always of the best;

And the mice play shyly round me as I nestle down to rest,

In my little old sod shanty in the West.

Yet I rather like the novelty of living in this way,

Though my bill of fare is always rather tame,

But I'm happy as a clam on the land of Uncle Sam,

In my little old sod shanty on my claim.

The hinges are of leather and the windows have no glass,

While the board roof lets the howling blizzards in,

And I hear the hungry kiyote [sic] as he slinks up through the grass,

Round my little old sod shanty on my claim.

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An Editorial from The Nation (March 4, 1875)

Congress has at last passed the Civil-Rights Bill, and the President has signed it. The bill, as passed, does not enforce mixed schools, and only secures negroes equal rights in public conveyances, inns, theaters, and other places of amusement. While the bill was on its passage in the Senate, Mr. Tipton of Nebraska moved to insert the word "churches" after the word "theaters," including the former under the head of places of amusement--a suggestion which of course brought down the galleries, though it really is not much more amusing than the bill itself. The negroes of the South, being mainly occupied in tilling the soil, or in labor of some kind, are not as a rule in the habit of travelling much from place to place; and when they do go from time to time to some local court-house or county-seat for a holiday, they are apt to move in crowds on foot, or in wagons not subject to the jurisdiction of Congress. They do not frequent hotels much, for similar reasons, and the number of theaters and opera-houses in the South is not so great as to warrant the expectation of a great advance of the race through the influence of drama and music. Indeed, it is a harmless bill, and does not seem to have had much effect on public opinion in the South. The chief objection to it is its entire unconstitutionality, which Mr. Carpenter showed, much to the consternation of the Radical Republicans, in an able and convincing speech.

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Henry George, from Progress and Poverty (1880)

The present century has been marked by a prodigious increase in wealth-producing power. The utilization of steam and electricity, the introduction of improved processes and labor-saving machinery, the greater subdivision and grander scale of production, the wonderful facilitation of exchanges, have multiplied enormously the effectiveness of labor.

At the beginning of this marvelous era it was natural to expect, and it was expected, that labor-saving inventions would lighten the toil and improve the condition of the laborer; that the enormous increase in the power of producing wealth would make real poverty a thing of the past. Could a man of the last century--a Franklin or a Priestley--have seen, in a vision of the future, the steamship taking the place of the sailing vessel, the railroad train of the wagon, the reaping machine of the scythe, the threshing machine of the flail; could he have heard the throb of the engines that in obedience to human will, and for the satisfaction of human desire, exert a power greater than that of all the men and all the beasts of burden of the earth combined; could he have seen the forest tree transformed into finished lumber--into doors, sashes, blinds, boxes or barrels, with hardly the touch of a human hand; the great workshops where boots and shoes are turned out by the case with less labor than the old-fashioned cobbler could have put on a sole; the factories where, under the eye of a girl, cotton becomes cloth faster than hundreds of stalwart weavers could have turned it out with their hand-looms; could he have seen steam hammers shaping mammoth shafts and mighty anchors, and delicate machinery making tiny watches; the diamond drill cutting through the heart of the rocks, and coal oil sparing the whale; could he have realized the enormous saving of labor resulting from improved facilities of exchange and communication--sheep killed in Australia eaten fresh in England, and the order given by a London banker in the afternoon executed in San Francisco in the morning of the same day; could he have conceived of the hundred thousand improvements which these only suggest, what would he have inferred as to the social condition of mankind?

…And out of these bounteous material conditions he would have seen arising, as necessary sequences, moral conditions realizing the golden age of which mankind have always dreamed. Youth no longer stunted and starved; age no longer harried by avarice; the child at play with the tiger; the man with the muck-rake drinking in the glory of the stars. Foul things fled, fierce things tame; discord turned to harmony! For how could there be greed where all had enough? How could the vice, the crime, the ignorance, the brutality, that spring from poverty and the fear of poverty, exist where poverty had vanished? Who should crouch where all were freemen; who oppress where all were peers?

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Peter Finley Dunne, from Mr. Dooley on Reform (1898)

"That frind iv ye'ers, Dugan, is an intilligent man," said Mr. Dooley. "All he needs is an index an' a few illusthrations to make him a bicyclopedja iv useless information."

"Well," said Mr. Hennessey, judiciously, "he ain't no Socrates an' he ain't no answers-to-questions colum; but he's a good man that goes to his jooty, an' as handy with a pick as some people are with a cocktail spoon. What's he been doin' again ye?"

"Nawthin," said Mr. Dooley, "but he was in here Choosday. 'Did ye vote?' says I. 'I did,' says he. 'Which wan iv th' distinguished bunko steerers got ye'er invalu'ble suffrage?' says I. 'I didn't have none with me,' says he, 'but I voted f'r Charter Haitch,' says he. 'I've been with him in six ilictions,' says he, 'an' he's a good man,' he says. 'D'ye think ye're votin' f'r th' best?' says I. 'Why, man alive,' I says, 'Charter Haitch was assassinated three years ago,' I says. 'Was he?' says Dugan. 'Ah well, he's lived that down be this time. He was a good man,' he says.

"Ye see, that's what thim rayform lads wint up again. I liked rayformers, Hinnissy, an' wanted f'r to see thim win out wanst in their lifetime, I'd buy thim each a suit iv chilled steel, ar-rm thim with raypeatin' rifles, an' take thim east iv State Sthreet an south iv Jackson Bullyvard. At prisint th' opinion that pre-vails in th' ranks iv th' gloryous ar-rmy iv ray-form is that there ain't annything worth seein' in this large an' commodyous desert but th' pest-house an' the bridewell. Me frind Willum J. O'Brien is no rayformer. But Willum J. undherstands that there's a few hundherds iv thousands iv people livin' in a part iv th' town that looks like nawthin' but smoke fr'm th' roof iv th' Onion League Club that have on'y two pleasures in life, to wur-rak an' to vote, both iv which they do at th' uniform rate iv wan an a half a day. That's why Willum J. O'Brien is now a sinitor an' will be an aldherman afther next Thursdah, an' it's why other people are sinding him flowers.

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Frank Norris, from The Octopus (1901)

The silence widened, broken only by the sound of torn paper as Annixter, Osterman, old Broderson, Garnett, Keast, Gethings, Chattern, and Dabney opened and read their letters. They were all to the same effect, almost word for word like the Governor's. Only the figures and the proper names varied. In some cases the price per acre was twenty-two dollars. In Annixter's case it was thirty.

"And--and the company promised to sell to me, to--to all of us," gasped old Broderson, "at two dollars and a half an acre."

It was not alone the ranchers immediately around Bonneville who would be plundered by this move on the part of the Railroad. The "alternate section" system applied throughout all the San Joaquin. By striking at the Bonneville ranchers a terrible precedent was established. Of the crowd of guests in the harness room alone, nearly every man was affected, every man menaced with ruin. All of a million acres was suddenly involved.

Then suddenly the tempest burst. A dozen men were on their feet in an instant, their teeth set, their fists clenched, their faces purple with rage. Oaths, curses, maledictions exploded like the firing of successive mines. Voices quivered with wrath, hands flung upward, the fingers hooked, prehensile, trembled with anger. The sense of wrongs, the injustices, the oppression, extortion, and pillage of twenty years suddenly culminated and found voice in a raucous howl of execration. For a second there was nothing articulate in that cry of savage exasperation, nothing even intelligent. It was the human animal hounded to its corner, exploited, harried to its last stand, at bay, ferocious, terrible, turning at last with bared teeth and upraised claws to meet the death grapple. It was the hideous squealing of the tormented brute, its back to the wall, defending its lair, its mate and its whelps, ready to bite, to rend, to trample, to batter out the life of The Enemy in a primeval, bestial welter of blood and fury….

…"What's to be done now?"

"Fight! My God! do you think we are going to stand this? Do you think we can?"

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Upton Sinclair, from The Jungle (1906)

At the same instant the ear was assailed by a most terrifying shriek; the visitors started in alarm, the women turned pale and shrank back. The shriek was followed by another, louder and yet more agonizing--for once started upon that journey, the hog never came back; at the top of the wheel he was shunted off upon a trolley, and went sailing down the room. And meantime another was swung up, and then another, and another, until there was a double line of them, each dangling by a foot and kicking in frenzy--and squealing. The uproar was appalling, perilous to the ear-drums; one feared there was too much sound for the room to hold--that the walls must give way or the ceiling crack. There were high squeals, grunts, and wails of agony; there would come a momentary lull, and then a fresh outburst, louder than ever, surging up to a deafening climax. It was too much for some of the visitors--the men would look at each other, laughing nervously, and the women would stand with hands clenched, and the blood rushing to their faces, and the tears starting in their eyes.

Meanwhile, heedless of these things, the men upon the floor were going about their work. Neither squeals of hogs nor tears of visitors made any difference to them; one by one they hooked up the hogs, and one by one with a swift stroke they slit their throats. There was a long line of hogs, with squeals and life-blood ebbing away together; until at last each started again, and vanished with a slash into a huge vat of boiling water.

It was all so businesslike that one watched it fascinated. It was pork-making by machinery, pork-making by applied mathematics. And yet somehow the most matter-of-fact person could not help thinking of the hogs; they were so innocent, they came so trustingly; and they were so very human in their protests--and so perfectly within their rights! They had done nothing to deserve it; and it was adding insult to injury, as the thing was done here, swinging them up in this cold-blooded, impersonal way, without a pretense at apology, without the homage of a tear. Now and then a visitor wept, to be sure; but this slaughtering-machine ran on, visitors or no visitors. It was like some horrible crime committed in a dungeon, all unseen and unheeded, buried out of sight and of memory.