Category: Learn History Through Fiction

In the early 1900s, tragedies such as the Triangle Shirtwaist fire and Sinclair Lewis’s exposé The Jungle about the meat-packing industry, contributed to the growth of labor unions. Over the next several decades, unions won shorter hours, higher wages, and better conditions for laborers, many of them immigrants and minorities. The number of people in the middle class rose. But, since the mid-1950s, as union membership has declined from a peak of 33% to less than 7% today, income inequality has risen to levels not seen since the era of the “robber barons.” Read more about the exploitation of workers and early labor laws in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).

The taboo against wearing white when summer ends is rooted in social class snobbery at the turn of the twentieth century. As more people entered the ranks of the wealthy, those who inherited money wanted to distinguish themselves from those who acquired it. One way was to establish strict dress codes on the assumption that the nouveau riche would commit fashion faux pas. Hence arose the rule to pack away white dresses and suits after lawn parties and beach vacations were over. When Labor Day was declared a national holiday in 1894, it became a convenient date for the seasonal shift. Although the rule was observed primarily among the elite (poorer people, whose wardrobes were limited, shunned white year-round simply because it got dirty), by the 1950s women’s magazines also made it clear to the middle class that whites were out between Labor Day and Memorial Day. Fashions have changed — “winter white” is in style — but many people still think twice before donning white clothes from early September to late May. Read more about fashion rules and trends over the past century in A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve. (see NOVELS).

FDR created the Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC) in 1941 to ban discriminatory employment practices by federal agencies, unions, and companies engaged in war-related work. FEPC was intended to help African Americans and other minorities obtain jobs in home-front industries during WWII, and contributed to substantial economic improvements among black men during the 1940s. Analyses showed that blacks who gained entree into the defense industry benefitted from higher wages and retained their jobs through 1950, after which discriminatory practices returned. While the minority unemployment rate today is twice that of whites, the federal government still employs more minorities than industry as a whole. Read more about labor laws over the last century in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).

In 1942, architect Albert Speer was placed in charge of Germany’s Economics Ministry. The war required large-scale employment of forced laborers. To supply the Third Reich with slave labor, the Nazis abducted 12 million people from twenty countries, the majority from Central and Eastern Europe. Many died from mistreatment, malnutrition, or torture. Others became civilian casualties of Allied shelling. Jews were also subject to forced labor in ghettos and work camps before being sent to death camps for extermination. Org.Todt, a civil and engineering organization named for its founder Fritz Todt, administered the construction of the concentration camps used to supply German industry with a steady flow of workers from 1943-1945. Read more about Nazi Germany in A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve. (see NOVELS).

In 1941, the San Diego Naval Air Station began training pilots for the U.S. Air Force, a total that reached 31,400 pilots by the end of World War II in 1945. However, years before the war began, Japanese aviators trained at the school, including Lieutenant Otozo Yamada, who would later head the Imperial Japanese Naval Aviation Army. Read more about San Diego’s military facilities and aviation industry in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).

In 1956, San Diego’s El Cortez Hotel added the world’s first outside glass hydraulic elevator, designed by C.J. Paderewski who worked for Otis Elevator. The glamorous apartment-hotel, which opened in 1927, dominated the city’s skyline for years. The large “El Cortez” sign, added in 1937, illuminated the night. The elevator, taking guests to the rooftop Starlight Room Restaurant, was reportedly a bellboy’s idea. The Travolator bridge, essentially a moving walkway or flat escalator, was built in 1959 to connect the hotel with the owner’s new motel across the street. Read more about the “Starlight Express” elevator and San Diego’s history in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).

The Wizard of Oz was officially released 80 years ago today on August 25, 1939. MGM previewed the movie in Wisconsin two weeks earlier to test its popularity in the Midwest, where the film is set, and see the audience response to Technicolor. Viewers were wowed! The film was also shown in Hollywood on August 15 and New York City on August 17 before it opened nationwide on August 25. Initial reviews were mostly positive, but some criticized MGM for encroaching on Disney territory. With average ticket prices 25 cents (and only 10 or 15 cents for children), it was a decade before MGM recouped its nearly $3 million investment, and the film’s longevity wasn’t assured until CBS began annual television broadcasts in 1956. Read more about the making of The Wizard of Oz and its “big” and “little” stars in A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve. (see NOVELS).

Debates about clothes cheaply made overseas have been in the news lately. Consider the other end of the apparel spectrum. Savile Row is a shopping street in central London famous for men’s bespoke tailoring. The term “bespoke” is believed to have originated there when cloth for a suit was said to “be spoken” for by individual customers. The short street, termed the “golden mile of tailoring,” opened its first men’s store in 1846 when Henry Poole moved his 50-year-old establishment to Number 15. Since then, Savile Row’s customers have included Napoleon III, Winston Churchill, Lord Nelson, Lawrence Olivier, Duke Ellington, Muhammad Ali, and Prince Charles. Read more about the creative and competitive world of fashion and tailoring in A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve. (see NOVELS).

While researching the short story “Spinning,” I discovered yet another (egregious) example of history repeating itself. After the Civil War, when cotton once again flowed to the North, hundreds of thousands of French-Canadian immigrants came south across the order to work in the textile mills of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. By 1900, one-tenth of New Englanders spoke French. The immigrants clustered in communities dubbed “Little Canadas,” often over-crowded, company-owned tenements. Determined to maintain their culture, the Catholic “invaders” aroused suspicion among their Protestant neighbors and raised alarms throughout the nation. In 1881, The New York Times described them as “ignorant and unenterprising. They care nothing for our free institutions, have no desire for civil or religious liberty or the benefits of education.” There was fear that they planned to colonize the northeast corner of the continent and create “New France” under the control of the Roman Catholic faith. Groups like the Know Nothings and American Protective Association burned Catholic churches, assaulted priests, and attacked Catholic neighborhoods. The fear of French Canadians waned only when immigrants began to arrive from farther afield: Jews and non-Protestants from Southern and Eastern Europe. Today the perceived threat to the “American way of life” comes from south of the border, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. The location of origin changes, but the reaction on U.S. shores doesn’t. To learn more about the immigrant experience and other topics in my writing — from historical to contemporary, serious to humorous, and realistic to absurdist — see NOVELS and SHORT STORIES.