Town of monson in central maine has a big problem. The town has bounced back from a fire that swept through its downtown, destroying many of the buildings in 1860, and it is recovering from the trauma of the american civil war. The civil war ended just seven years earlier, in 1865. More than 10 of townspeople served in the civil war, and at least six of them died. The problem, even as the town of monson celebrates the 50th anniversary of its founding, is that so many of its young people are moving away. In the census of 1870, monson was listed as having 604 residents. 604. Out of curiosity, how many of you are from places with more than 604 residents, show of hands . Virtually everyone. How many of you went to high school with more than 604 people . Again, virtually everyone. Monson was a tiny place, and that meant that every departure, every person who moved away from home, hurt. Their absence was noted. In 1872, when townspeople gathered to celebrate turning 50, the speaker at the event tried to put a good spin on things, but he admitted, quote, this constant immigration of our citizens, and especially of the young, seems discouraging. Its worth noting that this problem was not new. In new england, young people had been moving away from home for centuries. In several parts of new england, often, if you were not the child who inherited the family farm, you had to move away to find land. The frontier of maine was becoming one of the places people moved to. This map was from about 1820. Ive marked the location of monson, maine, with a star, and i love this map in part because it shows just how little was known about the interior of maine in 1820. Monson would be founded there two years after this map was created. There is plenty of information about Coastal Maine, but virtually nothing about the interior of the state. This was truly the nations Northern Frontier in 1820. Monsons founders were part of a tidal wave of movement in the first half of the 1800s. During the first half of the 1800s, almost half of all americans crossed state boundaries to change residence. Almost half of all americans crossed state boundaries to change residence. This was one of, if not the most mobile period in American History. In previous classes, we talked about the majority of settlers who headed west, but a Smaller Group moved on to the Northern Frontier. Monson was founded in 1822 by settlers from massachusetts and Southern Maine who came pushing north into the ancestral homeland of the wabanaki people. This map shows you the division of that land, wabanaki land, into townships. I will point out a couple of things. You can see monson, circled on the left. It has been divided between two educational institutions, Hebron Academy and Monson Academy. Hebron was located in Southern Maine and Monson Academy in monson, massachusetts. And perhaps you will note some of the other educational institutions who have been given, granted by the legislature, townships. Bowdoin college. Williams college. The massachusetts medical society. This was a common practice. The legislature would grant townships, would grant land on the frontier to educational institutions or philanthropic societies. They could then sell off the land to individual settlers and use the proceeds to pay their expenses. Also note how close monson is to the center of maine. You can see at the very top of the map the efforts of maine to fix the people in place can be seen, on land reserved for indians. Lets fastforward 50 years back to 1872, where we started. Monson existed because people had been willing to pick up roots and relocate. Now, in 1872, the town was concerned because so many of its residents were leaving home. And monson was not alone. Many rural places throughout the United States were confronting the same problem. Some rural people were moving west, into the far west or midwest, in search of better farmland, so rural people moving to new rural areas. But others were leaving rural life entirely. This was a trend that gained steam in the 1840s and never stopped. You are looking here at census data from the u. S. Census bureau. This data shows us some important things about American Life in the 19th and early 20th centuries. I want to get your thoughts about what stands out in this census information. Whats noteworthy . Who has some comments about what this shows us about American Life . Yes. Please. There is a very direct linear trend that as more people move from rural to urban, every 10 years it seems to be twofold. Prof. Witmer excellent, thank you. Yes. So, the trend that i noticed is that it actually starts to show the Industrial Revolution in the United States, so it kind of shows the increase of a middle class, because when you become a middleclass citizen, they typically move towards more urban areas, so you can see that as rural decreases, urban increases, which shows the rise of probably jobs increasing in those urban areas, as is the lack of need to work on farms. Prof. Witmer excellent, thank you. Let me highlight a couple things. Thank you for those good comments. One, until 1920, most americans were rural people. They lived in the countryside. So, if you want to understand the 19th century american experience, you have to understand the rural experience. But as was just pointed out, a big part of that experience is the Steady Movement of people into the city. Now, actually, in hard numbers, the rural population was increasing. But you could see that rural people as a percentage of overall American Population is declining. It is declining decade by decade by decade. We also know that many rural people, especially ambitious young people, were moving to the cities. Historians of the midwest have described a pipeline from the farms to the cities by the end of the 1800s. I should note that rural was defined by the Census Bureau at this time as any place with fewer than 2500 residents, so these were truly small places, places like monson, maine. This could be terribly hard for the people who remained behind. Just think about it. Its hard enough living in a college town like harrisonburg where, every year, people that you care about graduate and leave and dont come back. How rude, how thoughtless. But at least here, thousands of new people show up every year to replace you, not that they can, but here they come, every year. Imagine what it would be like if every year the seniors graduated and went away and no freshman ever came to take your place. One historian has argued that population loss, especially the loss of young people to cities and to the west, raised fears among some rural northeastern is that not just their town, but their way of life was fading. It was clear that cities were culturally powerful in shaping tastes and fashions and values. Additionally, over the previous few decades, the differences between the city and the country and the differences between city people and country people had been increasing. So, let me just give you one way in which this takes place. Urban historians have shown that during the years before the civil war, there were many animals and significant agriculture in major american cities. For example, in 1820, there were an estimated, by one estimate, 20,000 hogs living in the settled portions of manhattan. 20,000 hogs roaming the streets of manhattan, one hog for every five people. And this was the case, hogs roaming the streets of the city, until the middle decades of the 19th century. Middleclass gentrifiers began to restrict urban agriculture in the name of public health. Last week, we studied the rising wealth and growing inequalities of the gilded age. As the United States industrialized on a grand scale after the civil war, cities amassed more power and more economic clout. They became economic hubs. For example, rural people could now buy urban goods through the mail. Last week on sunday afternoon, i ordered two books on amazon, and they showed up at my doorstep the next day. It was almost as if jeff bezos was standing outside my house just ready to give me whatever i asked. Thats impressive, but its worth noting that sears got there first. Based in chicago. You can order by mail an incredible variety of merchandise, from the city, that made its way into the country. Some urban people, struck by the economic clout of chicago and new york, compared their relationship with rural areas the relationship between an Imperial Capital and its colonies. City people, many of them, by the way, born and raised in the countryside, began to popularize negative stereotypes of country people, some stereotypes that we still recognize today. Here is a cartoon that was published in a new york city magazine in 1890. It imagines what would be the case if rural people elected a country person as president of the United States. We talked last week about the growing political activity of people in the countryside, the farmers alliance, the populist party. What negative stereotypes of country people do you see in this image . What do you notice . Tiffany . I mean, they dont look really refined. Like, on the top, you can see a guy whittling a stick. His feet are on the table. We dont exactly think of that is professional now, so i dont think they thought of it as professional back then. Prof. Witmer these people are not fit to wield political power, yet here they are. The caption reads, the great political future of the farmer, a glance ahead to the time when the hayseed runs the government. Has anyone ever heard the term hayseed . This term, this insult for a country person was point in 1851 in the novel moby dick. Who is the author of moby dick . Anyone know . Hermann melville. Prof. Witmer thank you, and where is he from . I dont know. [laughter] prof. Witmer new york city. Hayseed. A provincial, a rustic. Urban people had so many putdowns they could use to mock rural people. We know a couple others that had been used for centuries, bumpkin, hick. Urban americans began to use hick as an adjective as well, as in, that guy is from a hick town. And they invented a new insult for country people, rube, during the 1800s. But it went both ways. Last week when we talked about the populist movement, i showed you this cartoon. Country people fought back with their own stereotypes about city people. You can see it happening in this cartoon, where the populist movement warned that urban fatcats were exploiting hardworking country people. Country people also came up with insulting nicknames for city people. We still use some of them today. If i were to ask you, whats the name of someone from the city who goes out into the countryside and sticks out like a sore thumb, doesnt have the knowledge or the skills to survive in the country, what would you call that kind of person . A city slicker. Thats exactly right. That insult for urban folks was first used, that we know, in indiana in the early 1900s. Many americans at this time thought of urbanrural as a dichotomy, fundamentally different and even competing things. And we still do, often, dont we . Heres a cartoon from just a few years ago that is quite similar to the populist cartoon i just showed you. Urban california is depicted as elitist, demanding, grabby. Give unto us your water, your bountiful harvests, exploiting the hard work of farmers and other rural people. Our political conflicts in the United States today often seem to map onto the urbanrural divide. This is familiar, right . Red states, republican, associated with its own distinctive, rural way of life, its own culture. Opposing blue states, democratic america, with its own distinctive urban culture. And we know from recent survey data that Many Americans, whether in the country or the city, feel misunderstood or disliked by people from other kinds of places. Here is survey data from the pew research center. It says that 63 of urban americans feel that their communities are looked down on and misunderstood by people in other types of communities. The same is true for 56 of rural people. And suburbanites dont feel as looked down upon or misunderstood. 70 of rural people say that most people who dont live in the same type of community has them dont understand the problems that they face. In light of all this, you might think that rural people always responded negatively and defensively to the growing power of cities. Differences were multiplying. There was resentment and distrust. But in the rest of todays class, i want to show you another aspect of the relationship between city and countryside in the late 19th century. Historians have shown that it is misleading to only focus on the tensions and the conflict. There was also a symbiotic relationship between city and countryside. We see that, for example, in this book by the historian william cronin, which explored how chicago and many western, rural places remade themselves by working together to produce globally desirable commodities, like grain, lumber, and meat. So, as cities grew, sparking concerns about rural depopulation and the declining way of life, rural people recognized that cities might help them solve their problems. Looking at all the census numbers i showed you earlier might seem to suggest that decline in the countryside was inevitable. Decade by decade, cities rise, rural places fade. But, as you know, in this course, we are trying throughout American History to read history forward. In hindsight, most developments seem inevitable, right, because they happened, but when we step back into the shoes of rural people in 1870 or 1900, when we read what they wrote and try to see the world through their eyes, we often find a surprising degree of optimism about their ability to use urban resources for their own purposes. This actually moved beyond the ruralurban division to work across other supposed oppositions, such as local and global. Rural people often worked to strengthen local places. They learned how to weave the fabric of locality from imported as well as indigenous materials. We could look in many places to see this happening, but i want to focus on how it all played out in the small town where we began today of monson, maine. Why monson . Good question. A few more people lived in chicago than in monson. But until 1920, more people lived in places like monson than in places like chicago. There were still thousands of small towns across the United States. Why this particular small town . The short answer is that i care personally much more about this particular small town than i do about those thousands of other small towns. Theres nothing very special about monson, maine, from an academic point of view, which is actually helpful for studying broader developments in american rural life. This was not an unusual place, so it can open a window into changes in other similar small, rural places. But for me, theres a lot thats special about monson from a personal point of view, because this is the place where i spent the first 18 years of my life. This is my hometown. Included in this 1889 lithograph, this birds eye view of monson are the house where i grew up, the church on main street where my father pastored, the lake where i learned how to swim, not very well. I failed swim lessons. Thats another story. The shop where my brothers and i bought penny candy, and the hills where i went camping with my parents, and where they now live. I know the mean streets of monson from firsthand experience. [laughter] prof. Witmer yep, thats me in the center on the bike i got for my birthday. No, you are not seeing double. On the right is my identical twin brother on his identical bike [laughter] prof. Witmer dressed identically, and also badly in need of a haircut. This is the view from the house where my parents now live, on homer hill, where we used to cut down Christmas Trees and go camping in the summer. This is the view from my parents thermometer one cold winter morning, which could explain why so few people lived in monson. Its very cold in the winter. Has anyone ever heard of monson . No . Didnt think so. Once in a great while, i will mention my hometown and someone will say, i know it, ive been there, and its almost always because of this. Monson is on the appalachian trail. Its at the beginning or end, depending on if you are hiking north or south, the hundred mile wilderness, which is the last hundred miles of the trail before you get to mount katana. Many come through monson, where they stock up, take a muchneeded shower, and prepare for the final push, or recuperate from just having hiked the hundred mile wilderness. Just last summer, a friend of mine spent a day or two in monson as he section hiked the appalachian trail. I love this town, i love monson, but like all those young people who are leaving monson and other rural places in 1872, i moved away when i turned 18, and i never moved back. Many of my friends also left town. Like other rural places in central maine and throughout the United States, monson has faced hard times. The furniture mill shut down. That was the backbone of the towns economy. Many jobs were lost. The Elementary School where i attend kindergarten through fifth grade closed. In 2000, the Census Bureau reported the official population of monson was 666 residents. 666 residents. 666. At that point, i think someone needs to take one from the team and just move away from town, or persuade a friend to come move in with them so you have 665 or 667 residents, but not 666. For a long time, as i studied history in graduate school and continued writing history here, i enjoyed visiting monson in the summer, but i did not think much about the history of the place i was from. A few years ago, i began to realize that many of the things i studied as a historian, for world, and the way that places and identities are formed through global interactions, many of those things that i study as a historian played out here in this place that i was from. I began to dream of writing a history of my hometown. That would explore how rural places often forged locality not by isolating themselves from the wider world, but by creatively engaging in it. Long story short, that is the book that i am currently writing. Fortunately for me, the towns always had people who cared about its history and worked hard to preserve it. Heres the monson Historical Society, which has allowed me to work with its wonderful collections. I was there doing research a couple of years ago in the summer and they literally gave me the key to the Historical Society so i could come and go as i wished. Local historians have worked for heres, like glenn poole, to preserve the towns history and they have been incredibly generous to me in sharing documents and photographs, including many that i will show you in just a bit. In offering Research Advice and guidance and support. I want to draw on that research to examine four ways that the people of this rural place responded to the problem that i talked about. Their town was declining and they rejuvenated it in the late 1800s by tapping urban and Global Resources. Over the next few minutes, we are going to look at the creation of the industrial landscape. A tourist landscape. The creation of a new local newspaper and rural immigration. First of all, an industrial landscape. We talked about industrialization last week when we explored the gilded age. Between 1870 and 1900s, as the United States industrialized on a grand scale, the value of manufactured product quadrupled. United states passed a significant milestone in 1890. For the first time in American History, the value of manufacturing goods passed the value of agricultural products. We spent some time last week in discussion section exploring some of the industrial activity that took place in the city like chicago. Think of immigrants working in the meatpacking factories in chicago. Rural places sometimes industrialized as well. For example, small towns in the midwest opened canning factories, usually staffed by local farm women that canned local produce. Sweetcorn, peas, tomatoes. That was a form of Rural Industrialization. These images from monson reveal some of the ways that monsons landscape was altering as the nation industrialized. Here is some economic activity. Can you see it . Can you tell what it is . If you look at the upper left part of that image, you can see the existence of logging. This was an important source of additional income for farmers and others. They would cut trees, float them across lake e brian lake hebron, through the canal and i dont know if you can make it out, but there is a lumber mill, where they can saw them into boards. There is a railroad. I will talk in just a moment about why monson gets a railroad in the 1880s. Then there is some big activity going on in the bottom image. This is the heart of the creation of monsons industrial landscape. It has to do with the discovery that monson had something that the rest of the nation, even other parts of the world, desired. Here it is. Here is the thing that other places wanted. Can you tell what that is . What material was used to create this cut out . Any idea . Something hard . Something hard, excellent. Very good. Can you tell what that is . It is a kind of stone. That is monson slate that was cut into the shape of maine. Monson found that it had something very valuable and it was willing to work hard to dig it out of the ground and ship it to the rest of the world. Running through monson are two veins of high quality blueblack slate. The veins on the bottom image run through town to monson pond. Literally crossing under main street. Townspeople in monson have often talked about slate being discovered in 1870. The towns Wikipedia Page talks about the discovery of slate in 1870. I was surprised to learn in my research that townspeople actually knew long before 1870 about the existence of slate in their area. For example, in 1820, two years before the town was officially incorporated, a few settlers built a slate chimney, with slate they found lying on the ground. They said it worked about as well as a brick chimney. From early on, some townspeople buried their dead beneath slate markers in the towns first churchyard cemetery. We see a couple of those markers close to the foreground of this photograph. In the 1860s, surveyors from the state of maine passed through monson, and they reported in their official report that there was highquality slate that could be profitably quarried. So what happened in 1870 was not the result of the discovery of slate. The creation of monsons Rural Industrial landscape was not the result of the discovery of slate. Many people knew it was there, but it didnt have much value to them until national and Global Developments made it possible to quarry slate profitably in rural central maine. If you were buying slate in the late 19th century, what were you going to do with it . Any guesses . What would you use slate for in the late 1800s . You guys arent in the slate market . No one is trying to buy slate . Mia . Possibly blackboards at schools. Yes. That is one of the main uses. Later in the 1800s, early 1900s, blackboards in schools. But the main use was roofing. If you were buying slate in the late 1800s, you probably intended to use it to shingle a building. Your home or your church or a courthouse or some other public building. Slate shingles were fire resistant and they lasted longer than wood shingles. But they were also expensive. Therefore, quite rare in the United States. Before the civil war, most people who could afford to buy slate shingles bought it from quarries in wales or in england. Often ship as ballast it was often shipped as ballast in the holds of ships from england or wales. Three changes during the middle decades of the 19th century created demand for monson slate. Here very quickly are three changes in the middle decades of the 1800s that created demand and led monson people to begin digging up slate and shipping it out of their town. First of all, development of the Railroad Network in the United States. This made it possible to profitably ship heavy stone over long distances. Development of the Railroad Networks. As part of this, conversion to steel rails, thank you andrew carnegie. Conversion to steel rails allowed people to use larger locomotives that could hold haul heavier loads. That is the first factor in development of the rail network. Second factor was new building styles. The new styles that caught on across the United States featured steeper roofs and they worked better with slate shingles. They were also more visible from the street, and so because they were visible from the street, design experts began to praise slate as a roofing material. They liked how it looked. Some builders, like the biller builder builder of this vermont house constructed in 1885, even begin to arrange slate shingles into multicolored ornate patterns. The third factor was welsh immigration. Welsh immigrants from slate quarrying regions of wales began to move in large numbers to the United States. Dozens of them moved to monson and welsh immigrants dramatically improved american quarries. The growth of monsons quarries was part of a much Larger Development. A Larger Development in which americans fought their way into an established market, an established industry, and grabbed control from english and welsh quarries. The slate market. Monson had a kind of crazy first decade with slate. Quarries opened in 1870 and there was something that sounds to me, reading the documents, like a slate rush for the first decade. Local people were buying and selling land. Fortunes were won and lost, and then in 1880, after it was clear that there was a lot of slate here in very high quality and there was demand for it, outside investors from massachusetts came to town and they bought up the quarries and began to operate the quarries. These investors opened new markets for monson slate in the west and they connected the town to the nearest Railroad Line with a Narrow Gauge Railroad that opened in 1883. The quarries brought hundreds of new jobs to this small town in central maine, and those jobs attracted many new people. Here are some of the workers in monsons slate quarry. The work that they were doing was quite dangerous. The quarries descended hundreds of feet into the ground. This is the same photograph. I zoomed in on the right so that you can glimpse the men at the bottom of this vast pit. You can hardly see them in the photograph on the left. Here are images of men ascending and descending to the bottom of slate quarries. Note how they get up and down in these little rickety looking wooden boxes. This is dangerous work. The local newspaper is filled with accounts of people injured in blasts, of massive chunks of slate falling onto men and injuring them or crushing them. The blasting method that was used in monsons slate quarries produced a massive amount of waste. Much of that waste is visible to this day in mountains of jagged slate that rise around the rims of old abandoned slate quarries. With permission from the state of maine, the quarries dumped waste into lake hebron, helping to form this peninsula where i played when i was a kid. We used to call it slate point. I skipped slate on lake hebron with my grandfather at the end of slate point and more recently, i skipped slate with my own children. This photograph shows you how large the quarries got. I know this place, because on saturdays when i was growing up, we would get into the car, drive to the edge of this quarry, which by that time was long abandoned, take our trash out of the trunk of the car, and throw it over the edge. When i was growing up, this was the town dump, believe it or not. It continued to be until i left for college and someone realized it was probably not a good idea and began to haul the trash away. As the pit deepened, monson slate began to appear on the roofs of harvard law school, new england prisons and cathedrals. The new york courthouse. Countless other buildings across the country. Slate quarries were soon monsons largest employer. The town was reinventing itself by drawing on outside capital to profit from an industry that had recently been dominated by british quarries. That is the creation of a Rural Industrial landscape. But even as the quarries blasted and burrowed deeper and deeper, shipping off slate to the city, urban people began to arrive in monson. Usually during the summer months. Those city people were looking for a very different kind of rural landscape. One that in many ways was at odds with the industrial landscape. For most americans, taking a vacation was still a relatively new experience. The middle class, we have talked about them, had begun the practice of taking a vacation just during the 1850s. Soon, businesses were giving their brain workers, their whitecollar workers, one week of paid vacation during the summer. City people often saw rural s as a chance to get away from the heat and the congestion, the noise, the stress of the city, and to reconnect with nature. Every summer, crowds of urban middleclass vacationers left on the railroads for rural destinations. Places like white Sulfur Springs in the south in West Virginia or lake tahoe in nevada. Or the Hudson Valley in new york. As the nations Railroad Network quadrupled in size, between 1865 and 1890, vacationers could travel further and further. You had a week, but if you could travel by railroad, you could make it to a more distant location and enjoy your time away. This was part of the process by which Coastal Maine became a tourist mecca. Gradually, people began to find their way even into the center of the state of maine. To a place called moosehead lake. Who said lake is one of the largest lakes within the bounds of one state in the country. It is located just 15 or 20 minutes north of monson. It was on that map i showed you, the one without any detail in the center of maine. All they said was Something Like a large lake has been discovered here. That was moosehead lake. It became a major Tourist Destination for bigcity tourists from places like boston making their way during summertime. Railroad companies realized that more urban vacationers meant more paying passengers, so Railroad Companies became some of the big vacation promoters. They released eyecatching travel guides and brochures. There was lots of money to be made. One person called bigcity vacationers the crop from the city. Every year, the crop from the city. With the right approach, even quiet and outoftheway places like monson might be able to get in on the Rural Tourism boom. There were some requirements. One was easy transportation. People had to be able to get there easily and quickly. Massachusetts investors helped by connecting the town to the Railroad Network. Monson people got into the act. They voted in a town meeting to use town funds to improve the roads for bicyclists, like these people. And for carriage riders, hoping to move through the countryside. Outside investors also constructed a place to stay, this was another requirement. In 1882, investors built monson a beautiful new hotel. There needs to be easy travel. You need good lodging and good roads. But the most important requirement was what we might call place making. Place making. Defining and marketing your rural place as the kind of place where urban vacationers might enjoy visiting. For that crucial task, monson people turned to a railroad publicist, his name was George Haynes. Who had already mastered the formula. George was a publicist for the railroad and over just five years or so, he cranked out nearly 20 promotional guides touting small places as good vacation destinations. Here is the brochure that he created for monson. This was published in 1889. It was designed to lure city people onto Railroad Cars and into the middle of maine to spend their vacation in monson. Now how do you do that . Lets think about it. If you are a railroad publicist in 1889, what do you say about monson, or any other isolated rural place to make it seem appealing to city people . I would like to get your thoughts. What do you think . If you are a publicist in the late 1880s, what do you emphasize about a quiet rural place . Tiffany . I would emphasize something unique to the place they are visiting. So like the slate and also it is emphasize that it is beautiful and you connect back to nature and the fact that you can get to it easily with the train. Excellent. They are saying you can get here quickly, you wont need to take a week traveling. There is something to see when you get here, the slate quarries. And it is beautiful. What else . What kind of adjectives would you use . I was going to say that you could emphasize the lake, because water is pretty cool and being in the city, there is not a lake around. I also thought what was interesting up there at the top, it says the switzerland of maine. Is that because of the temperature . I think it is because of the beauty of the landscape. Excellent, thank you. Lake, the water, you could swim. You could fish. It is beautiful. The switzerland of maine. This is a place where you can breathe mountain air. You can be rejuvenated. You are escaping the sooty, industrialized, polluted environment of the city. Were going to play a little bit of smalltown bingo. These are very good adjectives that you have helped us come up with. I want you to listen and see how many of the qualities that were just mentioned are used in the in George Haynes actual pamphlets. Im just going to read a couple selections. Monson the beautiful is a charming locality and nestled between high hills. It has within its borders 25 lakelets with picturesque surroundings. The scenery, as viewed from this lake, is very beautiful. As a place for summer recreation, riding, walking, boating, a thing or swimming, fishing and hunting sports. Monson has charms which those who know it best most love. It is fast becoming a favorite summer resort for the weary City Resident who desires rest from business, society cares, and the oppressive heat of the city. Here the invalid or overworked man of business or letters can quaff the godgiven pure mineral waters and breathe the mountain air mingled with the balsam pine that braces them as no other tonic can and have the opportunity of enjoying a quiet country life over farms and forests, mountains and lakes. The language of rest. We the language of rest. Relaxation. Step out of the rat race. Slow down. It is like a step out of the modern world. And what about the people who live there, what about the town itself . He wrote, flower gardens are numerous. Ornamental grounds are often seen and fine cottage homes and villas, just such as one would expect love and happiness to dwell in are found upon every street. It sounds like a Thomas Kincaid painting. It sounds almost too good to be true. This is a small town depicted as the opposite of the ills of the city. Again, it is like stepping out of modern life with all of its problems and being able to recharge your batteries for a week in the countryside. As monson created and marketed its tourist landscape, it joined the widespread romanticization of rural life. The very qualities, quietness, relative isolation, that had led many of its young people to leave for the cities could now be emphasized in order to draw city people to the country. Even if for only a week. Local people were absolutely involved in this kind of place making. The stewards, a family of monson artists, sold images of this tourist landscape that they painted on canvas, on canoe paddles, and on slate in the bottom left. This is the monson of the hotel pictured in the upper left. Moose and fish, of a quiet, peaceful lake without the noise and din and pollution of the city. There was absolutely some truth in the monson created by George Haynes and painted by stewart. But, the qualities you see here were clearly not the whole truth about monson or other rural places. Picturing the country as the opposite of the city, as a place to get away from the problems and difficulties of modern life, ignored the fact that rural places were complex. And changing. And part of modern life. We can see that simply by noting the existence of the industrial landscape. This image from 1889 features both the tourist landscape, the lake hebron hotel, and the boaters on the lake, but it exists alongside the monson of Railroad Cars and slate quarries and a lumber mill. There is some tension between the rural tourist landscape and the Rural Industrial landscape. The creation of a new local i was just going to say this reminds me a little bit about global savages. Being part of nature forever, but not part of the modern world. That is a very insightful comment, the myth of the vanishing indian. The way Many Americans romanticize native americans, they picture native american way of life as beautiful, the opposite of all of the problems of modern life, but doomed to fade away when it confronts modern life. We can add to that and point that the same thing was done with the precivil war south, which after the civil war was falsely remembered as beautiful, antiquated, unmodern and doomed to be gone with the wind when it confronted the modern north. It is a very perceptive observation. You can see it with native americans. You can see it with the precivil war south and you can see it with rural places and small towns. As the nation in test realize is as the nation industrializes and confronts the problem of modernization, people are looking for something to imagine an alternative, and often they romanticize these other groups. And often even as they are saying that is beautiful and admirable, there is condescension involved. Thank you for that comment. Now lets talk about the third point, the weekly slate. In june 1885, a stranger walks into this building on main street. It was called the rat hole, and it was a tiny little law office of john Francis Sprague. Summer of 1885, the stranger was visiting from bangor. Bangor was a regionally significant city, just about 15 50 miles from monson, southeast. The stranger represented a Printing Firm in bangor that was establishing a line of locally edited smalltown newspapers. John Francis Sprague jumped at the chance to serve as the first editor of monsons first and only newspaper. The town was so small, it could never have supported a newspaper on its own, but it was appealing to join a syndicate run by a big city printer. Soon the first issue of the weekly slate, great name, rolled off the press in bangor and went on sale in monson in five neighboring towns. I found the first years run and at the main Historical Society in portland. This is issue number one. It was definitely a local paper. It advertised itself that way. A local newspaper devoted to the interests of the people of northern prostatic was that is the county, and vicinity. It doesnt get much more local than the breaking news at the top of the fourth column that the other day, one of a. P. Hathaways hens laid an enormous egg. [laughter] the slate promoted understanding of locality that embraced outside influences. This is one of the things i found as i studied the first years run of this newspaper. Local people debating the meaning of local. What is local . For the slate, for john Francis Sprague, local meant welcoming in outside influences. This was a local newspaper that was owned and printed in a city, bangor. Every issue combined adds and ads and news about monson and nearby towns with material that was drawn from outside sources. So news from the cities, or literature serialized from european sources and writers. We get the glimpse, the slates view of very local in a war of words between monsons newspaper and dovers, called the piscataquais observer. Dover is at the feet of the seat of theat the county where monson is located. For a long time, this was the only newspaper in the county. It did not look kindly on the larger city of bangor starting a smalltown newspaper within the county in monson. The observer published in dover complains the slate, its new rival, can hardly be called a local institution inasmuch as it is owned by foreign capital and is wholly printed outside of piscataquais county. I thought how interesting, something published 50 miles away is called foreign. Because it is owned by people outside the county. Here is a very closed and insular meaning. If it is outside of the county, it doesnt qualify. It is foreign. The controversy that continued shows john Francis Sprague also saw himself as a champion of the local and that he had a very conception of local. A newspaper published in bangor was not for him a foreign threat but actually a powerful resource for building and promoting his town. John Francis Sprague clearly saw the place making power of print. Like many others who measured their small towns not primarily against cities but in comparison to nearby small towns, sprague saw closer ties with bangor not as undermining local independence but as a way of history monsons position within its county. Seat in theounty home of the observer, was the key rival. Sprague wanted to use his city published newspaper to bypass dover and make monson and economic and cultural hub for towns in his vicinity. Here you have an urban printer as a resource for a smalltown editor who wants to strengthen his position against other small towns. You see something similar happening a few years later, when a boston artist and entrepreneur comes to monson selling birds eye views. I have been showing you vignettes from this. These were very popular. More than 2400 communities had birds eye views made. Local people would pay to have their business numbered on the image, and then listed at the legend on the bottom. You could share this lithograph. You could send it to customers or put it in your home or shop. This was advertising. And it was a way of announcing the significance of your place, your community. Bangor had one. Dover had a birds eye view. 60 other maine places had birds eye videos. Views. If you had one, it was a way of announcing you were significant. Who is creating them . Mainly urban artists who travel through the countryside offering to sell them, collaborating with local Business People who helped to fund them. Monson worked with an outsider, a boston artist and entrepreneur, to produce locality. It was paying to be a place in 1889. Here again as with the slate is a conception of local that didnt require isolation or selfsufficiency but rather the ability to channel outside flows of capital and culture. One scholar has called this an extroverted sense of place. How do you make a place . This is an extroverted sense of place. You make a place by weaving together a unique arrangement of outside flows, capital and culture. This is opposed to an introverted sense, where you put up the walls and emphasize what is unique to your place, trying to keep out other influences. We see something similar in the last development i wanted to examine and the fourth and final development is rural immigration. Think about an immigrant. If i ask you to identify an immigrant to the United States in the late 1800s, where is that person . If you imagine an immigrant, where is that immigrant located . Call out some places. New york city. Any factory. Prof. Witmer any factory probably based in the city. Most of us associate immigrants with urban areas. Is that fair . It is worth noting in 1900 one third of foreignborn americans in 1900, one third lived in places with fewer than 2500 residents. A third of them lived in rural places. The areas with the highest percentages of foreignborn residents were often rural. Immigrants moved to the countryside. Waves of immigrants came to monson. The welsh arrival in the 1870s. Swedes settled in large numbers in the 1880s. And finns showed up in the first decade of the 20th century. This presented distinctive challenges to newcomers. One was how to keep up ties with distant family and friends in other parts of the country. Monson immigrants responded by using urban print. I will give you a couple of examples. These grieving parents announced the death of their little girl, and this widow announced the death of her husband in a log driving accident with obituaries in a chicago published swedish language newspaper. Monson immigrants also wrote in to this newspaper to complain about poor working conditions and low pay in the slate quarries. Even as they cultivated these ties with family and friends and fellow swedish immigrants in other parts of the country, monson people transformed their own town. Swedish language advertisements began to appear in the weekly slate. Swedish immigrants constructed a new church building, a lutheran church, in monson. It was beautified with gothic ornamentation that made it look like churches back in sweden. So slate reshaped monsons social landscape as well as its physical landscape. Of the 604 residents in 1870, 1 was born outside the United States. By 1900 there were 248 foreignborn residents in monson. A drop in the bucket in a big city, 248. Not very impressive. But this was a big deal in a small town. This is another distinctive feature of rural immigration. That is the ability of relatively small groups of immigrants to quickly and dramatically alter the texture of local life. By 1900 immigrants formed 22. 2 of monsons population. More than 1 5 of the town was composed of immigrants. That was a higher proportion than in portland which was maines largest city and under the proportion of foreignborn population in philadelphia. If you factor in the children of immigrants, one quarter of monsons population was at most a generation removed from sweden. Such dramatic changes might have been expected to create unease and even backlash. That was in fact the case in some other small towns near monson. We are going to talk about the rebirth of the ku klux klan next week and you will see that the klan was strong in maine including in towns like milo and dexter next to monson. The reason immigrants were better treated that many immigrants in other parts of maine is that unlike francoamericans and irish americans, they were from northern europe, they were they were building lutheran and methodist churches, and they were eager to assimilate. The klan in maine was mainly anticatholic, antiimmigrant. This church constructed in 1890 still stands in monson. The legacy of immigration continues to shape the town. I grew up around people with last names like burke and sumi and ericsson. Let me wrap it up. We have seen that monson, like other american rural places during the late 19th century, was well aware of the challenges posed by the growth of cities. And that it was quite ingenious in drawing upon urban and Global Resources to respond to those challenges. Monson did this by creating new industrial and tourist landscapes, working with an urban printer to create the towns first local newspaper and weaving rural immigrants into the life of the town. A few weeks ago, somebody visited during office hours. I have this image hanging in my office. We were looking at it and they karen he asked a reasonable question. He asked does everyone in monson know everyone else . My answer to the question is monson is a small enough place that you could know everybody else. I say that because even in a small town, community and local identity and local loyalty do not emerge spontaneously or automatically. They have to be created and recreated continuously. The thing that has struck me as i have examined monsons history is that locality is created by weaving in outside influences. Monsons story continued to be wrapped up with Global Developments into the 20th century. The slate industry declined, jobs disappeared. In the 1900s, the town entered steep decline, losing many of its done people including me. This is a common, tragic story in americas rural areas. But this story, it ends with a twist. That is what i want to end with today. Just a few years ago, three years ago, the Philanthropic Foundation based in Southern Maine began working with local people to revive monson. Over the years it has attracted some very talented, even globally famous artists. Some of them came as summer vacationers, some of them became residents. The Libra Foundation is building on that history and spending millions of dollars to renovate buildings in monson. To create lofts and studios and attract artists and art lovers to monson. This experiment in what is called creative place making has even been discussed in the boston globe and new york times. During all of those hard years as the town really struggled, i could never have imagined this would happen to my hometown and it would attract interest from bigcity newspapers. We started today with monson celebrating the 50th anniversary of its founding in 1872. Monson is now preparing to celebrate its bicentennial, and once again local people find themselves debating, discussing how to weave inside influences, the outside world, into their place. That is it for today. Thanks, everyone. Have a good afternoon, and i will see you on thursday. [applause] announcer listen to lectures in history on the go by streaming our podcast anywhere, anytime. Announcer American History tv is on cspan3 every weekend, featuring museum tours command programs on the presidency. The civil war, and more. Heres a clip from a recent program. Is sexism. A lot of people believe that women lack the talent or emotional stability to perform any of the same jobs as men. Man women basically need a to take care of them, and manage the broader parts of their lives. Also, they really do not have a broader role of society outside of rearing children rearing children. Again, they have real consequences. It is not just a moderate inconvenience. I cant go to law school because i have a baby. It is real discrimination that limits womens freedoms and affects the outcome and potential of their lives. In 1960, a Credit Card Company could refuse to give a woman a credit card simply because she was a woman. You have a credit card in your pocket today . Not always the case women could not serve on juries in every state. You could not get Birth Control in every state. A woman could be fired from her job for becoming pregnant. Women could not go to Many Ivy League law schools. Yale and princeton did not admit women until 1969. Consider the opportunities that all the men that go to the schools get that women are blocked from. All of those career paths. It is not a meritocracy, it is no women allowed, literally. Women did not receive the same pay for the same work. Women, by Legal Definition could not be raped by their spouses and could not unilaterally divorce their husbands. That means that legally, women did not have recourse in a bad or dangerous marriage. Financialt a severe disadvantage if they try to leave. They couldnt get a credit card or job. Many people were trapped. And then restrictions. Who gets to go to law school, who gets to be a doctor, who gets promoted, general outright sexism that limited womens ability to rise in society in the same way as men. Announcer you can watch this and other American History programs on our website where all of our video is archived. That is cspan. Org history. Announcer cspan, your unfiltered view of government. Created by cable in 1979 and brought to you today by your television provider. This weekend on American History tv, a lecture from the university of north carolina, chapel hill, on the 1960s. The 1945 film to the shores of iwo jima. A look at slavery in the nations capital. 2 30, smithsonian secretary lonnie bunch and David Rubenstein take part in a White House Historical conversation on slavery in washington. Nine of the first 12 president s brought in slave labor in the white house. You are trying to figure out, what do you need to get a building going . What do you need for the entertainment . That slaveealized is labor is going to provide the foundation for them to craft and create what became the white house. Railamerica, 4 00 p. M. Eastern. To the shores of iwo jima, cotelling the story of the brutal 36 day battle where 7000 marines were killed. Presidency,n the a look at lincoln, douglas and emancipation. Explore the american story. Watch American History tv this weekend on cspan3. Announcer in this National History center briefing, we hear about the role of middle east oil and American Foreign policy since the end of world war ii, especially the importance of saudi oil. I want to welcome you here this morning. Thank you all for coming. My name is dane kennedy. I am directory of the National History center. Which is sponsoring this briefing. It is on the geopolitics of middle east oil, perspectives on the current crisis. I want to briefly explain what we are doing and why we are doing it. This is part of an ongoing series sponsored by the center