Library of Congress's Blog, page 103

Trending: Start the School Year with the Library of Congress

This is a guest post by Stephen Wesson of the Education Outreach Program.

[image error]As educators return to the nation’s classrooms and school libraries, we are delighted to launch another year of teaching ideas and discovery at loc.gov/teachers and Teaching with the Library of Congress! The Library’s K–12 education program supports teachers and school librarians in the effective use of the Library’s resources, and we hope educators will find it a source of inspiration in their work.

All our resources focus on the educational power of primary sources. Primary sources are the raw materials of history—materials that were created by participants in or witnesses to historical events. By supporting students as they analyze these sources, teachers can help them engage with difficult topics, build their critical thinking skills and create new knowledge.

The Library’s vast online collections offer students countless primary sources for exploration, from around the world and across thousands of years of human history, and we present free resources to support this exploration at our portal for educators.

Our online teaching tools make it easy for teachers to find the primary sources they need and to put them to use in their classrooms quickly and effectively. They support teachers at all grade levels and across the curriculum, from English and language arts to history and social studies, from science to music to art, and can be searched by state and national content standards. Recently, we’ve published a series of blog posts focusing on teaching with multimedia resources and on using primary sources in science classrooms and in the primary grades.

We’re always working to create more resources and find new ways to support educators. This year, we plan to share new resources on the Civil War, informational literacy and world history, as well as provide a platform for the Library’s latest Teacher in Residence and showcase exciting new online collections and new initiatives from the Library.

Here are some blog posts with activities teachers can use right away!

Learn more about ways to incorporate the Library’s primary source analysis tool into classroom activities.
Find effective ways to use informational texts.

Remember that you can use the “Search this blog” box for keyword searches of our past posts. We have several years’ worth of posts archived, so there’s a good chance we’ll have published something of interest to any educator.

You can also find resources for teachers on the Library’s YouTube channel and through our Twitter account for teachers, @TeachingLC.

We’d love to hear your ideas as well—please share your thoughts with us in the comments section of this post. We wish you and your students a rewarding year, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Poetry 180: New Poems Added to the Mix

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Billy Collins at the 2014 National Book Festival. Photo by Colena Turner.

Anne Holmes of the Library’s Poetry and Literature Center wrote this post, which first appeared on “ From the Catbird Seat ,” the center’s blog.  Tracy K. Smith, the 22nd Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry at the Library, will give her inaugural reading in the Library’s Coolidge Auditorium this evening, marking the beginning of her laureateship. Like her predecessors, Smith will identify projects to carry out during her tenure. “Poetry 180” came into being as a laureate project of Billy Collins, who served from 2001 to 2003. He initially selected 180 contemporary poems, one for each day of the school year, with high school students in mind. Collins envisioned the poems being read aloud to all members of a school community. The poems are accessible  on the Library’s website ; poetry lovers can also subscribe to receive a daily poem by email or RSS feed . Here Holmes writes about an update to Poetry 180 and conveys a message from Collins.

This month, as thousands upon thousands of high schools around the country bittersweetly sounded their morning bells for the first time this school year, we at the Poetry and Literature Center sounded our bells as well. Why, you ask? Because the start of the school year also brings with it the start of Poetry 180, and this year is particularly exciting—we’ve added 10 new poems to the mix.

Billy Collins, former poet laureate and creator of Poetry 180, offers this message for the new school year:

I would like to extend a personal welcome to everyone who is visiting the newly updated Poetry 180 website. The website, as many of you know, was my pet project when I was poet laureate. I decided that poetry was most endangered in high school for reasons too numerous to go into here. My idea was to collect 180 poems, which could be read aloud to the assembled high school, one for every day of the school year. Going forth with no idea of what kind of response the site would attract, I was surprised and gratified to see the sizable number of schools, even some in English-speaking countries far from the United States, who began participating in the program. I was even more gratified to hear from scores of high school teachers in person, most of whom approached me after a reading, who reported not only that they used the poems on the website (and the print volumes that followed), but that the program worked! The most poetry-phobic students found themselves intrigued and even charmed by a poem, and that was enough to break through to students, to show them that poetry can be a pleasure as well as an academic subject.

With the help of the staff of the Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress, I have periodically updated the poems on the website—“freshened the jukebox,” as we began to say. And for the beginning of this school year, the website features many new poems. So dig in anywhere and be prepared to find 180 poems that are readable, engaging and entertaining for you and your students.

If you’re familiar with Poetry 180, you might just recognize the newly added poems on your own. For those seeking a cheat sheet, though, here’s what the first half of the school year has in store:

“The Good Life” by Tracy K. Smith
“Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation” by Natalie Diaz
“Question” by May Swenson
“Thanks” by Yusef Komunyakaa
“How Bright It Is” by Brian Turner
“Walking Home” by Marie Howe
“El Florida Room” by Richard Blanco
“A Little Girl Tugs at the Tablecloth” by Wislawa Szymborska
“Eddie Priest’s Barbershop & Notary” by Kevin Young
“The Revolt of the Turtles” by Stephen Dunn

Whether you’re reading them out loud in a classroom or in your living room, we hope these poems stir up new ideas, questions and the hunger for more.

If you haven’t already, make sure to subscribe to our daily Poetry 180 e-mail blast or RSS feed. And stay tuned—Billy Collins will be refreshing the Poetry 180 jukebox for the second half of the school year, too.

How has Poetry 180 made an impact on you or your students? Share your stories in the comments.

Listen to Billy Collins

Billy Collins talks about why he developed Poetry 180 at the 2002 National Book Festival.


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 Billy Collins reads at the 2014 National Book Festival.

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The Art of Etching: Masterpieces by James McNeill Whistler

This is a guest post by Katherine Blood, curator of fine prints in the Prints and Photographs Division, and Linda Stiber Morenus, a longtime paper conservator and special assistant to the director of scholarly and educational programs. The post was first published on “ Picture This ,” the blog of the Prints and Photographs Division.

Known for his credo “Art for Art’s Sake,” American artist James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) was a virtuoso etcher whose delicate lines and dreamlike atmospherics were achieved through rigorous work.

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“The Doorway,” etching by James McNeill Whistler, c. 1879–80

Through the end of this month, visitors to the Library of Congress can explore a special display of original Whistler etchings alongside the artist’s etching needle and one of his original copper etching plates. All come from the Library’s extensive Whistler collection, which includes over 400 etchings, lithographs and drawings, as well as photographs, technical materials, ephemera, correspondence and books. Even if you do not plan a trip to Washington, D.C., the prints featured in the display and many more are available online.

Etching is an intaglio printmaking technique that uses acid to etch lines below the surface of a metal plate. As co-curators of the display, we selected 16 etchings Whistler made throughout his career, including superb impressions from his “French Set,” “Thames Set,” “Venice Set” and “Amsterdam Set” series.

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“Longshoremen,” 1859

Side-by-side comparisons printed on different papers, with variant approaches to ink application, and in different states before and after plate changes, highlight the artist’s evolving practice and careful choices to create artworks so compelling they continue to inspire artists and audiences today.

Each time the etching plate changes and is reprinted, a new “state” is produced. In the etchings below, Whistler’s earlier state of “The Pierrot” combines delicate etched lines and a thin skim of ink (or plate tone) in the foreground. The later state has extensive additions of lines that suggest deep, floating shadows. Whistler also added his butterfly monogram near the upper left corner. Though the action is set on an Amsterdam canal, Whistler has poetically imagined the young man in the role of Pierrot from the Italian commedia dell’arte.

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“The Pierrot,” 1889

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“The Pierrot,” 1889

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also not to be missed is an original etching by 17th-century Dutch master Rembrandt, who was one of Whistler’s early influences.

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One of three “Art of Etching” display cases, with Whistler’s etching needle and an original copper plate in the center of the case. Photo by Katherine Blood.

“The Art of Etching: Masterpieces by James McNeill Whistler” is on display through September 30 in the Library’s Jefferson Building. For further explorations, the Library’s Whistler holdings are ready to study and enjoy in several of its research centers, including the Prints and Photographs Division, Manuscript Division, and Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

Learn More

Glean some more clues about Whistler from other items digitized from the Joseph and Elizabeth Robins Pennell Collection of Whistleriana.
Revisit earlier blog posts relating to Whistler and to Rembrandt.
Have a look at the finding aid for the Pennell-Whistler Collection in the Manuscript Division.
View a list of works relating to James McNeill Whistler in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division.
Dive deep in the online catalogue raisonnė: Margaret F. MacDonald, Grischka Petri, Meg Hausberg and Joanna Meacock, “James McNeill Whistler: The Etchings, a catalogue raisonné,” University of Glasgow, 2012.

Inquiring Minds: Folklife Center Shines a Light on the Skiffle Craze

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Billy Bragg, center, visited the American Folklife Center offices in July when he came to the Library to talk about his new book about skiffle. The 1950s music genre popularized the guitar, inspiring John Lennon, Jimmy Page, David Bowie and many others to embark on music careers. Here Bragg holds the original record sleeve for a 1934 field recording of ”Rock Island Line” from the John A. Lomax Southern States Collection. The song launched the skiffle craze in England when singer and musician Lonnie Donegan had a major hit with it in 1956. With Bragg are, from left, Folklife Center senior staff members Betsy Peterson, John Fenn and Nicole Saylor. Photo by Stephen Winick.

When Stephen Winick of the American Folklife Center learned about Billy Bragg’s 2016 album, “Shine a Light,” he quickly contacted the album’s publicist to invite the English singer-songwriter to speak at the Library. The reason: the album, recorded with American folksinger Joe Henry, includes several songs known to the world thanks to recordings in the Library’s folk archive. Sadly, Bragg was too busy during his 2016 tour to come.

What Winick didn’t know at the time was that “Shine a Light” came about because of Bragg’s research for a book about skiffle—a genre heavily influenced by many recordings in the Library’s archive. Skiffle was a homegrown music craze in 1950s and 1960s England that skyrocketed the guitar to the forefront of the music scene. The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Faces, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Kinks and David Bowie all started out playing skiffle.

Earlier this year, when Bragg published his skiffle book, “Roots, Radicals and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World,” he thought the time was right to speak at the Library. But he had a problem: he couldn’t recall who had extended the invitation to him the previous year.

Here Winick tells the story of how he connected with Bragg, and he answers questions about skiffle and its precursors in the Library’s folk archive. Bragg appeared at the Library on July 21 in an event co-sponsored by the Folklife Center and the Folklore Society of Greater Washington. A recording of Bragg’s talk is available on the Library’s website.

First, tell us a little about Billy Bragg.

Billy Bragg is a singer-songwriter who came to prominence in the 1980s. He came out of the punk movement, but he performed solo with a guitar, which made his music very similar to the singer-songwriters on the folk scene. He began to get interested in political songwriting around the time of the big UK miners’ strike in 1984 and 1985, which aligned him even more with the ideals of the folk movement. In the 1980s, he was often called “folk-punk.” In his first couple of years, he had a hit with one of his love songs, “A New England,” when it was covered by the pop singer Kirsty MacColl. Then a year or two later, he found himself singing a very political song called “Between the Wars” on “Top of the Pops,” a major English pop music TV show. He’s continued over the years to write very moving songs about human relationships and also witty polemical songs about politics.

Another thing Billy is known for is his work with Woody Guthrie’s lyrics. In the late 1990s, Woody Guthrie’s family realized that, in addition to his famous songs like “This Land is Your Land” and “Pastures of Plenty,” Woody had written thousands of lyrics for which no music survived. The family decided to get someone to write music for them. In trying to think about who might be a modern equivalent of Woody, they came up with the idea of asking Billy Bragg. So Billy set some of these great lyrics to music. The Guthries also called in the group Wilco, and eventually Billy Bragg and Wilco released the three albums that make up the “Mermaid Avenue Sessions.” Of course, Woody is a figure forever associated with the Library of Congress folk archive, since his first extensive recording sessions were here in 1940. So this was one of the first connections I knew about between Billy Bragg and the archive.

How did you get into contact with Bragg?

I have to confess that I first met him as a fan in the 1980s. Billy’s about 10 years older than I am, so his initial success as a musician happened when I was a teenager. I was buying his records and going to his concerts when he visited the U.S. I got my girlfriend at the time to listen to Billy’s music, and she loved it. Her name is Jenny Lewis, and her brother Avi was a host on the TV channel MuchMusic, which was Canada’s answer to MTV. So Jenny raved to Avi about Billy Bragg. She says that it was partly because of us that Billy got airplay on MuchMusic in the 1980s. Avi eventually moved on and became a political journalist but remained friends with Billy.

Their friendship came in handy for me later. After I tried and failed to get Billy to come to the Library in conjunction with the “Shine a Light” album, he decided he wanted to come here to talk about his book. But we had only been in touch through a publicist, whom he wasn’t working with anymore, so he had to find me again. Luckily, he remembered the story about Avi’s sister’s former boyfriend being a Billy Bragg fan at the Library of Congress. So he reached out through the Lewises. I got a message from Jenny saying, “Send me your contact info at work. Billy Bragg wants to meet with you.” It turned out that Billy and I were both going to be at the Folk Alliance International meeting in Kansas City this past February, so we met there and hatched the plan for him to come here.

What, exactly, is skiffle?

Skiffle is a music genre that was created in the 1950s in Britain. It grew out of the scene called “Trad Jazz,” which is essentially New Orleans-style jazz—a lot of ensemble playing with almost no solos. In clubs with no amplification, everyone played loud. With no time for one player to rest while another played a solo, the brass players’ lips periodically went numb. They had to take breaks throughout the evening. To avoid losing the audience, some bands figured out that they could have their string players and drummers keep playing and do mini-sets between the band numbers. A lineup developed that included a singer with a guitar along with double bass and drums or percussion. The bigger bands were already playing African-American music. So for repertoire, these smaller ensembles looked to another facet of the same root tradition: African-American folksong. They ended up doing mostly covers of black American folk ballads and blues.

The most famous skiffle artist was Lonnie Donegan. He was a member of two of the top Trad Jazz bands, Ken Colyer’s Jazzmen and The Chris Barber Jazz Band. In the jazz bands, he played banjo, but when the breaks occurred he was the guitarist and singer for the smaller groups. For both Colyer and Barber, he recorded a few skiffle numbers to fill out their jazz albums in 1954. One of the songs he recorded with Barber, “Rock Island Line,” was reissued as a single in late 1955. It was a surprise hit in the final week of the year and became one of the biggest hits of 1956. From there, skiffle took off and was one of the most popular styles in Britain for a few years.

What is the importance of skiffle in the music world?

It was the first guitar-led music to become popular in Britain. It was a pretty simple music, too—before rock-and-roll or R&B came to Britain, it was the first style where you could play a song with three chords on a guitar. As a result, huge numbers of kids started playing music. Teenage skiffle bands sprang up everywhere, mostly with a guitar, a homemade bass made out of a tea chest (a ubiquitous kind of packing crate in Britain) and a washboard for percussion. Although as a fad, skiffle didn’t last that long, it made a whole generation of teenagers pick up guitars. Those teenagers included Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, Van Morrison, Jimmy Page, Dave Davies, David Bowie, Roger Daltrey and lots of other rock musicians, as well as Martin Carthy, John Renbourn and many others on the folk scene. The British rock explosion in the 1960s, as well as the folk scene of that era, both came out of skiffle.

What is the connection between the Library’s folk archive and the skiffle craze?

I mentioned that the repertoire that skiffle folks drew on was largely African-American folksong. Specifically, that 1956 hit for Lonnie Donegan, “Rock Island Line,” was a song he had learned from a record by Huddie Ledbetter, better known as “Lead Belly.” In 1934, Lead Belly was an assistant to John Lomax, a collector for the Library of Congress, when “Rock Island Line” was collected from several prison work gangs in Arkansas. Lead Belly learned the song and sang it himself for Lomax. So the Library has the original field recordings, for which Lead Belly was part of the recording crew, and also the first recordings of Lead Belly singing “Rock Island Line.” It was one of many Lead Belly songs from the archive to be made into skiffle hits, including “Bring a Little Water, Sylvie,” “Midnight Special,” “Diggin’ My Potatoes,” “Ol’ Rattler,” “Pick a Bale of Cotton” and others. As Billy points out, George Harrison once said, “No Lead Belly, no Lonnie Donegan. No Lonnie Donegan, no Beatles.”

More generally, the Library of Congress folk archive made its field recordings available as albums as early as the 1940s, edited by archivists Alan Lomax, Benjamin Botkin and later Duncan Emrich. Crucially, the United States Information Service maintained a lending library in London with the goal of spreading American ideals through exposure to our culture. That library stocked the archive’s records. So a generation of young people, including Lonnie Donegan, were able to listen to Library of Congress field recordings, which became one of the most important sources for the skiffle repertoire. You can listen to the Lead Belly recording of “Midnight Special” here:

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Why don’t we know more about the genre, given its influence?

Two reasons, I think. First, the fad never happened in the U.S. The closest American equivalent as a movement was rockabilly. But there was never a genre called “skiffle” here, so it’s like a lot of cultural things that British people would recognize but Americans wouldn’t. If you told most Americans you had some scrumpy at a knees-up, or that you were getting into grime music, most of us wouldn’t know those cultural references. Second, the fad was short-lived, and almost every skiffler who got truly famous, except for Lonnie Donegan himself, got famous for later pop styles, especially rock. So “skiffle” is an unfamiliar name for a phase in the career of musicians like Paul McCartney. It’s not the phase that we remember, it’s the longer careers of those skiffle kids.

Still, taken on its own terms, skiffle played a vital role in 20th-century pop music, which I think Billy Bragg’s book and his talk at the Library both highlight really well. I was delighted to bring him to the Library, and I’m glad the talk is online for people to watch and learn from.

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Watch Live in Support of Literacy

This is a guest post by Gayle Osterberg, director of the Library’s Office of Communications.

On January 31, award-winning author and literacy advocate Stephen King helped the Library launch our annual call for nominations for the Library of Congress Literacy Awards honoring organizations working to promote literacy and reading in the United States and worldwide. Throughout the winter, 18 additional authors, including Kwame Alexander, Ken Burns and Margo Jefferson added their voices of support for the importance of literacy.

This year’s recipients will be announced TONIGHT during the Library of Congress National Book Festival Gala beginning at 7 p.m. Eastern, and you can join us live on the Library’s Facebook page at facebook.com/libraryofcongress and our YouTube site (with captions) at youtube.com/LibraryOfCongress.

Illiteracy remains an enormous problem around the world. Seven hundred and fifty-eight million adults cannot read or write a simple sentence. Approximately 1 in 3 primary school-age children globally are not learning the basics in reading. In the United States, 65 percent of fourth graders read at or below the basic level.

Each year, thanks to the extraordinary generosity of David M. Rubenstein, the Library of Congress presents three leading organizations with cash awards to support their life-changing work.

Tune in tonight to see which organizations will be honored and to learn more about their inspiring work. Then, consider ways to support literacy promotion in your own home town. For inspiration, a list of previous recipients and additional organizations honored for exhibiting best practices can be found here: http://read.gov/literacyawards/winners.html.

And enjoy some of the inspirational words of authors who participated in this year’s announcement:

Reading gives you an inner life. It helps your imagination. It helps you form your values. It gives you worlds to measure and balances the world you’re in. . . . It sharpens your intelligence . . . every nation, every country needs citizens with values and rich interior lives and imaginations that allow them to move past just themselves.

—Margo Jefferson

We are a country stitched together by words and more importantly their dangerous progeny, ideas.

—Ken Burns

Books are magic. Books make your heart soar, they break your heart, they make it rise again. Books move you, entertain you; they enlighten you.

—Harlan Coben

It’s important that literacy and reading are encouraged by the Library of Congress because reading is the most essential and available skill that people use to realize the American dream.

—Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Trending: Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys

This is a guest post by Abby Yochelson, a reference specialist in the Main Reading Room.

 

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In an example of work from the 1770s, two blacksmiths hammer steel bones for a pair of stays—an 18th-century women’s foundation garment—while a client is being fitted.

 

Career guidance takes many paths. In the 1970s, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings sang this advice from an Ed and Patsy Bruce song:

Mamas’ don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys

Don’t let ’em pick guitars or drive them old trucks

Let ’em be doctors and lawyers and such

Mamas’ don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys.

But vocational counseling must keep up with the times. For centuries, technological changes have transformed or eradicated jobs. Work as a lamplighter, bowling-pin boy or power monkey no longer exists, while new jobs like social media strategist and video game designer are on the rise, as a 2015 post on this blog pointed out. More recently, passionate discussions about artificial intelligence and robots replacing human endeavors have been much in the news.

The combination of Labor Day, robots taking over the world and the start of a new academic year inspired me to revisit age-old questions students and their parents confront over the issue of work: for students, what would I like to be when I grow up? What major should I choose to get a good job? Or, from a parent’s perspective, what should I encourage my child to study so she will be hired?

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Title page from the 1757 edition of Campbell’s “The London Tradesman”

A couple years ago, while completing a short-term assignment in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, I became fascinated by a book that answers many of these questions—albeit from an 18th-century viewpoint. “The London Tradesman” by R. Campbell was first published in 1747. By 1757, it was in its third edition and, somewhat inexplicably, two different publishers reprinted the book in 1969. The balance of the title provides a better understanding of its scope: “Being an Historical Account of all the Trades, Professions, Arts, both Liberal and Mechanic, now practised in the Cities of London and Westminster, Calculated for the Instruction of Youth in the Choice of Business.”

Before getting to actual job descriptions, Campbell provides lengthy “Advice to Parents, to study and improve the Genius, Temper, and Disposition of their Children, before they bind them Apprentices.” He relates a sad tale of prideful parents forcing their boys into unsuitable positions—a would-be admiral, parson and attorney—all brought to a bad end. If the brothers could have simply swapped professions based on their natural interests and talents, this would have ended happily.

Glancing through the table of contents, you see that professions such as attorney and architect are still with us; whale-bone stay-maker, not so much. Brewers and distillers are having a resurgence, while wax chandler has evolved into a more artisanal occupation. In terms of changing technology, candlelight was replaced by gaslight and then electricity, but today entire shops are devoted to candles once again.

The “London Tradesman” breaks broad categories, such as “Of Painting in General,” into more specific classifications: drapery-painter; herald, house and coach painter; and colour-men, among them. House painters are still with us in abundance; herald and coach painters have gone the way of the snuff-box maker.

In case your curiosity was aroused by the term “drapery-painter,” here’s the basic description:

The Drapery-Painter is but the lowest Degree of a liberal Painter; he is employed in dressing the Figures, after the Painter has finished the Face, given the Figure its proper Attitude, and drawn the Outlines of the Dress or Drapery. A Portrait-Painter who is well employed has not Time to cloath his Figures, and therefore employs a Drapery-Painter to finish that Part of the Work.

Campbell includes descriptions of businesses; required qualifications, education and abilities; and wages. Some creative professions such as sculptor or musician have headings indicating that genius and talent are also required. Depending on the job, other headings reveal that temper and disposition, degree of strength and age or measure of knowledge or learning must be considered.

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Contents page from “The London Tradesman.”

Campbell never hesitates to express his opinion of the character of those holding a particular occupation. Of herald, house and coach painters, he remarks, “The Journeymen of this branch are as dirty, lazy, and as debauched a Set of Fellows as any Trade in and about London.” Parents, don’t pick this job for your children!

Most of the occupations described are for boys, but certain jobs, such as millinery, are clearly designed for girls. There are, however, firm warnings to parents to think long and hard before sending their daughters into the hat business. “Take a Survey of all the common Women of the town, who take their Walks between Charing Cross and Fleet Ditch,” Campbell writes. “I am persuaded, more than one Half of them have been bred Milliners, have been debauched in their Houses, and are obliged to throw themselves upon the Town for Want of Bread.” Campbell maintains that private millinery shops are a gathering place for rakes and may be fronts for assignations or bawdy houses. There’s no job description for “common woman.”

Not all of the guidance is directed at parents. Campbell also provides “Advice to the young Apprentice how to behave during his Apprenticeship,” as well as “Lastly, Directions how to avoid the many Temptations to which Youth are liable in this great City.” This is clearly a good model for any handbook intended for an intern newly arrived in Washington, D.C.

It’s hard to say whether the U.S. Department of Labor knew about “The London Tradesman” when it began producing the “Occupational Outlook Handbook” in 1948. A standard reference source in schools and libraries, it is now released biennially online.

The handbook supplies a wealth of information on hundreds of occupations (architect, yes; milliner, no). Besides basic descriptions of jobs, pay and educational and skill requirements, it estimates the outlook for individual professions—particularly beneficial for college students pondering the big questions. Recent outlook statistics show a downward trend for travel agents and bank tellers, for example, but the prospects are rosy for information security analysts.

The handbook links to a career outlook site with the catchy heading “You’re a What?” It lists occupations including mystery shopper, polysomnographic technologist and genetic counselor, all developed in the last couple of decades. But Campbell would have been familiar with two jobs on the list: farriers and chimney sweeps.

Sadly, no advice is given to parents, but perhaps mamas will be happy to know that cowboy is not found in the A–Z list of occupations.

World War I: Workers Greet Labor Day 1918 with Optimism

This is a guest post by Ryan Reft, a historian in the Manuscript Division.

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In a 1918 U.S. Department of Labor poster, a worker shakes hands with a soldier in symbolic support of the U.S. war effort.

Amid war, Labor Day in 1918 took on increased importance. Mobilization had presented unprecedented opportunities, and workers achieved remarkable advances during America’s months at war. Many reached out to President Woodrow Wilson before the 1918 holiday, hoping that he might make an appearance at their celebration: “Consider this Mr. President, and think of the moral effect upon our tens of thousands of shipyard workers who look to you for light and guidance,” wrote Oakland, Calif., labor representative William A. Spooner. Soon, however, in the afterglow of armistice and peace, labor would witness retrenchment.

The Library of Congress exhibition “Echoes of the Great War: American Experiences of World War I,” along with holdings from our Prints and Photographs Division, illuminates both the opportunities and the challenges that faced wartime laborers.

For labor, Wilson seemed an unlikely ally. As a younger politician, he had assailed the labor movement, describing it simultaneously as “economically disastrous” and “politically divisive.” When presidential ambitions and political necessity collided, however, Wilson courted labor.

In his first term, Wilson elevated the Department of Labor to a cabinet body and appointed “labor partisan” William B. Wilson as its head. Later, the president supported the passage of several labor reforms, including the Keating-Owens and Adamson Acts. In November 1917, Wilson became the first president to address the American Federation of Labor (AFL) at its annual convention.

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A December 14, 1917, letter from Samuel Gompers to Woodrow Wilson pledging the AFL’s support for the war.

Behind its president, Samuel Gompers, the AFL leant its support to Wilson and mobilization, even declaring labor’s “undivided support . . . so that it shall be a war of the people” in defense of the “fundamental institutions for human liberty transmitted to us by the forefathers of our country.”

The AFL expanded its membership from 2 to 3 million between 1917 and 1919. By the war’s conclusion, nearly a fifth of the workforce, excluding agriculture, belonged to a union. That is to say nothing of the benefits that nonunion labor in wartime industries enjoyed due to the achievements of their unionist counterparts. Yet the AFL did not represent all workers and could not fully guarantee the actions of all organized labor.

War rarely creates new conditions or movements in American society, but it does accelerate processes already in motion. This proved true of the nation’s labor movement, which had been battling big business since the late 1800s. From 1916 to 1922, between 1.5 and 4 million workers struck annually. The war failed to end such conflicts—instead, it raised the stakes.

More radical unions like the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) struggled as the U.S. government sought to place its foot on the IWW’s proverbial neck. In September 1917, the government raided IWW offices and placed over 100 of the union’s officers on trial in Chicago in 1918. Ironically, Gompers and other conservative unionists welcomed government intervention; it allowed Gompers to purge the AFL’s more radical members, marginalize rival unions and secure his own power.

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A July 12, 1917, photograph of hundreds of Wobblies being deported into the desert from Lowell, Ariz., now part of Bisbee.

Unions faced nongovernmental opposition as well: vigilantes targeted Wobblies, as IWW members were known, with violence. In 1917 in Bisbee, Ariz., local business leaders and police forced hundreds of Wobblies onto trains and deported them into the middle of the desert without food or water.

With nearly 440 strikes in the first month after the U.S. entered the war, Wilson agreed to the creation of numerous wartime labor agencies. The President’s Mediation Commission was created in September 1917 and dominated by future Supreme Court Justice and labor sympathizer Felix Frankfurter. The National War Labor Board, headed by former President William Taft and labor militant Frank P. Walsh, was established in April 1918 to intervene in labor disputes.

Through these two agencies and others, labor made great advances—though they were not shared equally across industries. Achievements included de facto recognition of unions, eight-hour work days, better wages, improved work conditions and collective bargaining. Critically, however, Wilson and Congress never institutionalized these gains. Or as historian Melvyn Dubofsky argued, “Wilsonians stocked the barest of legislative cupboards.” Moreover, the government’s wartime agencies lacked the power to actually enforce decisions; outcomes hinged on their ability to manipulate nationalism and wartime patriotism to cajole industry and labor to cooperate.

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A 1917 lithograph by Joseph Pennell depicts wartime work. He created it on behalf of a federal committee charged with pictorial publicity about the war effort.

Consequently, when armistice arrived on November 11, 1918, many of the gains afforded labor quickly evaporated. With the pressure of war removed, business leaders, who had always chaffed at government intervention, rolled back reforms. Under duress from an economy afflicted by inflation, workers soon went on strike; 1919 witnessed 3,000 strikes involving 4 million laborers.

Despite these admitted setbacks, World War I enabled labor to weaken what Frankfurter and others called “industrial autocracy.” It might not have enacted the “industrial democracy” that had been on the lips of workers during the war, but business now had to acknowledge labor, even if with half-hearted company unions.

Later, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was assistant secretary of the Navy during World War I, drew upon his wartime experience to sign labor reforms into law through New Deal legislation. World War II then normalized and undergirded the labor movement, putting postwar retrenchment out of reach.

World War I Centennial, 2017–18 . With the most comprehensive collection of multiformat World War I holdings in the nation, the Library is a unique resource for primary source materials, education plans, public programs and on-site visitor experiences about the Great War including exhibits, symposia and book talks.

 

New Online: Alexander Hamilton Papers

This is a guest post by Julie Miller, a historian in the Manuscript Division.

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Alexander Hamilton from an original painting by Alonzo Chappel (1828–87).

In spring 1848, Congress appropriated $20,000 to buy the papers of Alexander Hamilton from his family, including his widow, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton. Mrs. Hamilton, 91 years old and widowed since 1804, had moved to Washington that year to live with her daughter and, in the words of a friend, to press her “honorable claims” on the federal government. For years, she had been gathering and preserving her husband’s papers so that his memory would continue to shine even after she was no longer alive to burnish it. Now her work was done.

Congress kept Alexander Hamilton’s papers at the State Department, where the first to use them was John Church Hamilton, the Hamiltons’ son, who fulfilled his mother’s long-held wish when he published his seven-volume Works of Alexander Hamilton between 1850 and 1851. In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt directed State to turn over its historical papers, including the Hamilton papers, to the Library of Congress. They arrived in the Library’s Manuscript Division in 1904, and they have been here ever since.

In the Manuscript Division, the Hamilton papers grew with additional gifts and purchases. The Library preserved, cataloged and microfilmed them. Scholars based books on them. A modern edition of Hamilton’s papers, edited by Harold C. Syrett, was published between 1961 and 1987. This edition was recently digitized by Founders Online. A separate edition of the papers Hamilton accumulated as a lawyer was edited by Julius Goebel and published between 1964 and 1981 (it has not been digitized). And then, in 2015, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical “Hamilton” made the Revolutionary War officer, treasury secretary, inconstant husband and duelist into a singing, dancing, 21st-century celebrity.

In January 2017, Sotheby’s sold a fresh trove of Alexander Hamilton papers at auction. These, mostly family papers, had surfaced after the musical’s success. The Library of Congress snagged 55 items at Sotheby’s, mostly letters from Philip Schuyler, Elizabeth Hamilton’s father, to her and her husband from 1790 until 1804, the year she lost them both. Now the Alexander Hamilton Papers at the Library of Congress, including the Sotheby’s purchase, have been digitized and are available online.

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A November 11, 1769, letter from Hamilton to his friend Edward Stevens.

The Hamilton Papers consist of letters, drafts of speeches and writings, legal papers and more, a total of approximately 12,000 items. They cover almost every aspect of Hamilton’s career and private life: as a boy in St. Croix; as George Washington’s aide-de-camp during the Revolutionary War; as a New York delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787; as first treasury secretary of the United States; as a New York lawyer; as inspector-general of the Army in the late 1790s, when war with France threatened; and as an unlucky duelist. Included are letters to and from George Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette and Charles Pierre L’Enfant. The papers also include correspondence with and among members of his family, including his wife; his sister-in-law, Angelica Schuyler Church; and his father-in-law, Philip Schuyler.

Among the highlights of the collection is a November 11, 1769, letter the 12- or 13-year old Hamilton, working as a clerk for a trading company in St. Croix, wrote his friend Edward Stevens: “Ned,” he wrote “my Ambition is prevalent that I contemn the grov’ling and condition of a Clerk or the like, to which my Fortune &c. condemns me and would willingly risk my life tho’ not my Character to exalt my Station.” He concluded: “I wish there was a War.”

Soon there was a war, and it offered Hamilton the chance to escape his impoverished boyhood just as his younger self had imagined it would. His correspondence as aide-de-camp to George Washington in the Revolutionary War is in the Hamilton Papers (and there is more in the George Washington Papers, which are also online).

As treasury secretary in George Washington’s presidential administration, Hamilton wrote a series of reports that shaped the economic program of the United States. Drafts of these, including four drafts of his “Report on Manufactures,” are another highlight.

Hamilton’s marriage to Elizabeth Schuyler in December 1780 was as important to his advancement as was his association with George Washington. The Library’s newly acquired letters from Philip Schuyler—one of George Washington’s major generals and a great landowner and political power in New York—to his daughter and son-in-law show how the Schuylers wholly embraced the immigrant, orphaned Hamilton, providing him not only social connections but also love. In a June 11, 1799, letter to his daughter, Philip Schuyler described his son-in-law as “that best of men whom heaven has bestowed upon you.”

Hamilton threw it all away when he agreed to meet with Aaron Burr on the heights of Weehawken on June 11, 1804. The papers contain the letters Hamilton wrote before the fatal duel. To his wife he wrote: “I need not tell you of the pangs I feel, from the idea of quitting you and exposing you to the anguish which I know you would feel. . . . Adieu best of wives and best of Women. Embrace all my darling Children for me.” But expose her he did, and the children, which is how she came to be in Washington in 1848, petitioning Congress to buy the paper remains of his life.

Now you can read Alexander Hamilton’s Papers online at home. You can page through folders, enlarge and rotate single images and learn from the bibliography, timeline, information for teachers, and more. And you will please the ghostly Elizabeth Hamilton, who I imagine is flickering around the Library of Congress right now, scrolling through her husband’s papers and smiling.

Trending: Wonder Woman of Tennis . . . and More

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Tennis star Alice Marble on September 3, 1937, during the U.S. National Championships—now known as the U.S. Open—in Forest Hills, New York. The photo montage is meant to demonstrate Marble’s serve and backhand.

Tens of thousands of tennis lovers will happily brave big crowds and warm temperatures this week to cheer their favorite stars in the U.S. Open. Held in New York City, the international tournament concludes the annual Grand Slam circuit.

Many Grand Slam champions are household names for years, whether for their history-making achievements, athletic prowess or colorful personalities—Arthur Ashe, Martina Navratilova, John McEnroe and Serena Williams are a few who come to mind. As decades pass, however, many stars fade from memory.

Today, probably few people outside the tennis world know the story of Alice Marble. But she was the No. 1 women’s tennis player in the United States between 1936 and 1940; the No. 1 player in the world in 1939; and an 18-time Grand Slam major champion. She appeared on the cover of Life Magazine on August 28, 1939.

I came across Marble’s story while researching an article for the upcoming issue of LCM, the Library of Congress Magazine, which will highlight the Library’s vast collection of comics. Why comics? The reason: after Marble retired from tennis, her career continued on a pretty remarkable trajectory, including a stint as an associate editor of Wonder Woman.

Psychologist William Moulton Marston—the inventor of the lie-detector test—created the character of Wonder Woman as a strong, courageous figure meant to inspire self-confidence and achievement in young girls. She became the first female superhero to have her own comic book: Wonder Woman No. 1 appeared in summer 1942.

Marble became involved when Wonder Woman’s publisher was seeking endorsements from notable athletes to promote the new comic. Marble pitched the idea of creating an insert about real-life women who’d made history.

“What better way to promote strong women than to show that there are also superwomen in everyday life?” asks Georgia Higley, head of the Library’s Newspaper Section, in reference to Marble’s proposal. Higley is a curator of the Library’s comics collection, which includes more than 140,000 issues of more than 7,700 different titles, making it the biggest in the United States and perhaps the world.

Wonder Woman’s publisher embraced Marble’s concept, appointed her associate editor and paid her handsomely. Marble’s photo appears in Wonder Woman No. 1, along with a four-page comic about Florence Nightingale, the first Wonder Woman of History. Nightingale was followed by Clara Barton, Abigail Adams, Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Chapman Catt, Madame Curie, Helen Keller, Sojourner Truth and dozens of others.

It isn’t clear how long Marble wrote or edited Wonder Women of History. But her story continued to take fascinating twists and turns.

In 1942, she married an Army captain who left to fight in World War II not long afterward. Marble miscarried their baby following an accident and then, after learning that her husband had been killed, she attempted suicide.

Next she was recruited to serve as a World War II U.S. spy in Switzerland. Believing she had nothing more to lose, she agreed, she writes in her memoir, “Courting Danger.” She traveled to Switzerland under the pretense of conducting tennis clinics and exhibitions and gathered intelligence about Nazi finances from an old flame, a banker suspected of helping Nazis smuggle riches out of Germany. Found out, she was shot in the back while fleeing.

She recovered and settled her attention once again on tennis as an advocate for racial integration. In a July 1950 editorial in the American Lawn Tennis Magazine, Marble contended that fellow player Althea Gibson should be welcomed to play in U.S. Lawn Tennis Association competitions. Marble’s letter is widely credited with influencing Gibson’s invitation to play in the U.S. National Championships. She was the first African-American to do so.

Alice Marble was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1964. She died on December 13, 1990, at age 77.

Keep an eye out for the next issue of LCM to find out more about real people in comics and much more!

Pic of the Week: Picturing the Parks

This post is based on an article from the November–December 2016 issue of LCM, the Library of Congress Magazine.

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Carleton Watkins captured this view of Yosemite’s Mirror Lake while most of the country was engaged in the Civil War.

National parks are among the nation’s most cherished natural resources. The National Park Service, a bureau of the U.S. Department of Interior, was created by an act of Congress. On August 25, 1916—101 years ago today—President Woodrow Wilson signed the act into law.

A century after its founding, the National Park Service overseas more than 400 sites, in every U.S. state and territory. These include parks, monuments, battlefields, scenic rivers and trails and historic sites—many of which are represented in the Library’s photograph collections.

One of these sites is California’s Yosemite National Park. Carleton Watkins captured the pristine scene at Yosemite’s Mirror Lake shown here during the 1860s. One of the best landscape photographers of the 19th century, Watkins used the cumbersome, demanding technology of his era—requiring large glass wet-plate negatives—to produce some of the most stunning images of this extraordinary wilderness. His images are credited with encouraging Congress to pass legislation in 1864 that required California to protect the area from development. President Abraham Lincoln, who signed the bill, was reported to have been very taken with the beauty of the images.

Subsequent efforts by landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted and naturalist John Muir resulted in Yosemite becoming a national park in 1890—decades before the establishment of the National Park Service.

The Library’s website contains thousands of images of the national parks, including more than 100 views of the Yosemite area by Watkins.