Chaim M. Rosenberg – författare

After the Revolutionary War, despite political independence, the United States still relied on other countries for manufactured goods. Francis Cabot Lowell, born in Massachusetts in 1775, was one of the principal investors in building the India Wharf and the shops and warehouses close to the harbor. His work was instrumental in establishing domestic industry for the United States and spurred the American industrial revolution. Francis Cabot Lowell's Method—a detailed investment plan, cheap raw materials and power, a motivated labor force, a sound marketing plan, and above all, modern technology—became the standard for the American factory of the nineteenth century.

At the close of the 19th century, more than 2 million American children under age 16--some as young as 4 or 5--were employed on farms, in mills, canneries, factories, mines and offices, or selling newspapers and fruits and vegetables on the streets. The crusaders of the Progressive Era believed child labor was an evil that maimed the children, exploited the poor and suppressed adult wages. The child should be in school till age 16, they demanded, in order to become a good citizen. The battle for and against child labor was fought in the press as well as state and federal legislatures. Several federal efforts to ban child labor were struck down by the Supreme Court and an attempt to amend the Constitution to ban child labor failed to gain enough support. It took the Great Depression and New Deal legislation to pass the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (and receive the support of the Supreme Court). This history of American child labor details the extent to which children worked in various industries, the debate over health and social effects, and the long battle with agricultural and industrial interests to curtail the practice.

On October 19, 1781, British general Charles Lord Cornwallis surrendered his army at Yorktown, effectively ending the Revolutionary War and conceding the independence of the United States of America. Britain soon overcame the humiliation of defeat by expanding its empire elsewhere. Five years after Yorktown, Cornwallis was installed as governor and commander of the army in India, determined to make the subcontinent the brightest jewel in the British crown.Officers who served under him during the War rose to high positions in the British army and navy. Emulating Cornwallis's deep sense of duty to king and country, they vigorously pursued the conquest of India, put down the 1798 Irish Rebellion, defended Canada, defeated the Dutch at the Cape of Good Hope, occupied Ceylon and battled Napoleon. Prominent among them was General Sir James Henry Craig, governor of Canada, whose clumsy attempt to spy on the U.S. was a factor in setting off the War of 1812.

Freedom of speech was restricted during the Revolutionary War. In the great struggle for independence, those who remained loyal to the British crown were persecuted with loss of employment, eviction from their homes, heavy taxation, confiscation of property and imprisonment. Loyalist Americans from all walks of life were branded as traitors and enemies of the people. By the end of the war, 80,000 had fled their homeland to face a dismal exile from which few would return, outcasts of a new republic based on democratic values of liberty, equality and justice.

Ancient farmers used draft animals for plowing but the heavy work of harvesting fell to the humans, using sickle and scythe. Change came in the mid-19th century when Cyrus Hall McCormick built the mechanical harvester. Though the McCormicks used their wealth to establish art collections and universities, battle disease, and develop birth control, members of the family faced constant scrutiny and scandal. This book recounts their story as well as the history of the International Harvester Company (IHC)--a merger of the McCormick and Deering companies and the world's leader in agricultural machinery in the 1900s.

Between 1881 and 1914, more than two million Jews came to America. Most were poor, from the stultifying shtetls of the Pale of Settlements of the Russian Empire, steeped in Jewish tradition and religion, and Yiddish-speaking. In New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago they formed overcrowded Jewish ghettoes, living in cramped walk-up apartments and finding low-pay work in the clothing sweatshops or tobacco and cigarette factories.The children of the American Jewish ghetto had higher aspirations. From neighborhood elementary schools, the most academically gifted kids gained admission to elite high schools and acceptance into the nation's leading universities. Combining original thought with hard work, many reached the top levels in their chosen fields: in the sciences, the arts, academia, entertainment, Hollywood and in business. Despite anti-Semitism, more than 40 of them went on to become Nobel laureates, and many others were Pulitzer, Academy, Emmy and Tony award winners. This book shares the stories of many American-educated children of Jewish immigrants who emerged from American Jewish ghettoes.

The arrival in 1620 of the Mayflower and Puritan migration occupy the first pages of the history of colonial America. Less known is the exodus from New England, a century and a half later, of their Yankee descendants. Yankees engaged in whaling and the China Trade, and settled in Canada, the American South, and Hawaii. Between 1786 and 1850, some 800,000 Yankees left their exhausted New England farms and villages for New York State, the Northwest Territory and all the way to the West Coast. With missionary zeal the Yankees planted their institutions, culture and values deep into the rich soil of the Western frontier. They built orderly farming communities and towns, complete with church, library, school and university. Yankee values of self-labor, temperance, moral rectitude, respect for the law, democratic town government, and enterprise helped form the American character. New England was the hotbed of reform movements. Yankee-inspired religious movements spread across the nation and beyond. The Anti-Slavery and the Anti-Imperialism movements started in New England. Susan B. Anthony campaigned for women’s suffrage, Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross, Dorothea Dix established asylums for the mentally ill, and May Lyon was a pioneer in women’s education. Yankees spread the Industrial Revolution across America, using waterpower and then stream power. Opposing slavery and advocating education for all children, the Yankee pioneers clashed with Southerners moving north. In Kansas the dispute between Yankee and Southerner erupted into armed conflict. In time the Yankee enclaves in Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Minneapolis, and San Francisco fused with others to form the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant elite (WASPs), to dominate American commerce, industry, academia and politics. By the close of the nineteenth century, industry began to leave New England. Yankees felt threatened by the rising political power of immigrants. In an effort to keep the nation predominantly white and Protestant, prominent Yankees sought to restrict immigration from Asia, and from eastern and southern Europe, and impose quotas on American-Catholics and Jews seeking admission to elite universities and clubs. Despite barriers, the American-born children of the immigrants benefited from their education in public schools and colleges, entered the American mainstream, and steadily eroded the authority of the Protestant elite. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 opened the United States to immigrants from Asia, Africa and South America. The great mix of races, religions, ethnicity and individual styles is forming a pluralistic America with equally shared rights and opportunities.

Since Revolutionary times, Jews have served in the United States armed forces and fought bravely in Americas wars.Jews first arrived in the New World in 1654, seeking religious freedom. Since the beginning of American nationhood, Jewish volunteers and conscripts fought in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, on both sides of the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, in both World Wars, and in the Korean, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Over the years, the American military learned to integrate its Jewish servicemen and women by providing Jewish military chaplains, kosher food, religious services, and placing the Star of David on the graves of fallen Jewish soldiers. The end of conscription and the establishment of the All-Volunteer Force in 1973 offered other paths to serve our country. American Jews have contributed with distinction in the arts and sciences, academia, entertainment, government, and in building the economy. For Jews, America is the Goldene Medinathe Golden Country.