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Impact of industrial revolution on society
Johnstown flood 1889 dbq
Impact of industrial revolution on society
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McCullough presents a meticulously researched, detailed account of the Johnstown Flood of May 31st 1889, which provides arguments for why the disaster was both “the work of man” and “a visitation of providence”. However, it is apparent that McCullough believes that man was more responsible than nature/god for the extent of the catastrophe. In McCullough’s opinion, the storm that caused the flood was no more than the inevitable stimulus of the disaster, whereas the deferred maintenance and poor repairs on the dam were the primary reason that Johnstown was devastated in 1889. McCullough exposes the failed duties of Benjamin Ruff and other members of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, whilst simultaneously questioning the responsibility of the Johnstown folk who were concerned about the safety of the dam but complacently trusted the wealthy, powerful club members to fulfil their responsibilities. McCullough clearly explains the debate that took place immediately after the flood, on what or whom was to blame for the disaster, by explaining the views of the press, the townspeople and the lawsuits that were filed. McCullough’s view is evident from the sub-title of his book. By placing the word “natural” within quotation marks, McCullough immediately suggests that the flood was unusual to any other, and implies that mankind has displaced its blame onto nature.
McCullough explains how Johnstown became an example of ‘The Gilded Age’ industrialization prior to the 1889 disaster. The canal made Johnstown the busiest place in Cambria County in the 1820s. By the 1850s the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Cambria Iron Company began, and the population increased. There were about 30,000 people in the area before the flood. The Western Reservoir was built in the 1840s, but became generally known as the South Fork dam. It was designed to supply extra water for the Main Line canal from Johnstown to Pittsburgh. By saving the spring floods, water could be released during the dry summers. When the dam was completed in 1852, the Pennsylvania Railroad completed the track from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, and the canal business began its decline. The state offered to sell the canal, the railroad company bought it for the right of ways yet had no need to maintain the dam, which due to neglect, broke for the first time in 1862. McCullough stresses that man was responsible for the...
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...mong them, for we have indeed been very careless in this most important matter and most of us have paid the penalty of our neglect.”
McCullough offers a detailed account of the events of the Johnstown Flood as well as a thorough description of prior events, consequences, newspaper coverage and public opinion. McCullough makes a firm argument for the responsibility of man, and asserts the blame on the necessary people, therefore I feel he makes a fair and accurate assertion which I would agree with. By balancing his argument and depicting reasons why the flood was both a “work of man” and a “visitation of providence”, he illuminates not only the issues surrounding the Johnstown Flood, but on a broader scale he makes a powerful statement on the 19th century class structures that dominated ‘The Gilded Age’ of Victorian America. Throughout the book, I found the defining and most fundamental quote to be that of a New England newspaper that concluded, “The lesson of the Conemaugh Valley flood is that the catastrophes of Nature have to be regarded in the structures of man as well as its ordinary laws.”
Bibliography
David McCullough, The Johnstown Flood, (Simon & Schuster: NY 1968)
To continue, Wigmore develops his argument by looking at the multiple tensions that existed on both sides of the river. In one way, Wigmore paints the positive picture that these b...
Author and historian, Carol Sheriff, completed the award winning book The Artificial River, which chronicles the construction of the Erie Canal from 1817 to 1862, in 1996. In this book, Sheriff writes in a manner that makes the events, changes, and feelings surrounding the Erie Canal’s construction accessible to the general public. Terms she uses within the work are fully explained, and much of her content is first hand information gathered from ordinary people who lived near the Canal. This book covers a range of issues including reform, religious and workers’ rights, the environment, and the market revolution. Sheriff’s primary aim in this piece is to illustrate how the construction of the Erie Canal affected the peoples’ views on these issues.
In a passage from his book, Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, author John M. Barry makes an attempt use different rhetorical techniques to transmit his purpose. While to most, the Mississippi River is only some brown water in the middle of the state of Mississippi, to author John M. Barry, the lower Mississippi is an extremely complex and turbulent river. John M. Barry builds his ethos, uses elevated diction, several forms of figurative language, and different styles of syntax and sentence structure to communicate his fascination with the Mississippi River to a possible audience of students, teachers, and scientists.
McGregor, Michael. “The Vanport Flood & Racial Change in Portland.” Oregon History Project. Oregon Historical Society, 2003.
In conclusion, the flood at Buffalo Creek destroyed the inhabitant’s very social fabric. This in itself is not unique, but what was unique about Buffalo Creek is that there was no post disaster euphoria, where people who have survived the disaster are uplifted by the fact that the community is still present and viable. That was not the case in Buffalo Creek, mostly in part due to HUD’s internal policies but also due to the very devastation caused by the flood. The other thing that was unique about Buffalo Creek was that ninety-three percent of the survivors had diagnosable emotional disorders eighteen months after the disaster. Usually survivors of disasters are able to get over it and move on, but the survivors of the Buffalo Creek disaster were not able to do this because of their total loss of “Gemeinschaft� or sense of community.
...y as “the root of all evil” would be too simplistic; what she suggests, rather, is that the distribution of wealth in mid-nineteenth-century America was uneven, and that those with money did little to effectively aid the workers whose exploitation made them rich in the first place. In her portrayals of Mitchell and the “Christian reformer” whose sermon Hugh hears (24), she even suggests that reformers, often wealthy themselves, have no useful perspective on the social ills they desire to reform. Money, she seems to suggest, provides for the rich a numbing comfort that distances them from the sufferings of laborers like Hugh: like Kirby, they see such laborers as necessary cogs in the economic machinery, rather than as fellow human beings whose human desires for the comfort, beauty, and kindness that money promises may drive them to destroy their own humanity.
In the year 1919, on January 15th, Boston experienced a strange disaster. This said disaster is now known as the Boston Molasses Flood. The disaster occurred when an above-ground tank filled with 26 million pounds of molasses burst and unleashed a wave of molasses from eight to fifty feet high and moving at 35 miles per hour killed people and destroyed buildings in the surrounding neighborhood. After the wave of molasses had slowed down, it settled at two to three feet in depth. Acting like quicksand, the molasses effectively suffocated people and animals. The massive cleanup of the molasses took over 87,000 man-hours. This is white textThe negative impact of the flood was tremendous as it killed 21 people, injured 150, lead to a civil lawsuit representing 119 families, caused great destruction to the buildings and stores, polluted the water, and led to a costly cleanup. Nevertheless, the resulting positive impacts of holding businesses accountable through civil lawsuits, creation of state licenses for engineering and architecture, advancing government regulations over big
People in the northern United States during the early nineteenth century wanted to rapidly industrialize and increase the amount of money they were making. The Erie Canal they believed was a great way to reduce the distance and time of shipping goods to the west. They also realized that the canal would probably increase their markets, which would mean a larger profit. The problem with all of this was how people had to destroy parts of nature in order for this to happen. Nathaniel Hawthorne, a prominent writer during the time, described the canal as “too rapid, unthinking advance of progress.” (57) Hawthorne and his supporters were very upset to see how forests and swamps were being destroyed and ruined in order t...
The South Fork Dam was a dam built 14 miles upstream of Johnston to protect against floods, The Dam was 72 feet high made out of mud and rock, the largest earth dam in the United states. On May 31, 1889 The village of Johnstown PA was flooded after the South Fork dam failed to contain the water and collapsed. The dam collapsed after several days of very heavy rainfall and released 14.55 million cubic meters of water killing over 2,000 people and causing damage of $17 million (equal to $453 million in 2010)
and while they may generate a lot of rainfall in a short time it is
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