Touring Turn-of-the-Century America: Photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company, 1880 - 1920

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Touring Turn-of-the-Century America: Photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company 1880-1920, documents a number of historic events such as the Spanish-American War and the 1906 California earthquake. Other pieces in this collection chronicle the development of U.S. enterprises such as the railroad, telegraph, and telephone industries. Many works also represent the efforts of the renowned photographer William Henry Jackson.

1) William Henry Jackson

William Henry Jackson set out for the uncharted territory of the western United States in the second half of the nineteenth century. His various expeditions led to a remarkable career that demonstrated both his personal skill and the inherent value of documentary photography.

A Print of William Henry Jackson's Photograph of Old Faithful in Yellowstone.

Jackson was a Civil War veteran working in a Vermont photo gallery when he headed west in 1866. He soon found himself sketching landmarks along the Oregon Trail, photographing the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad, and joining geologist Ferdinand Vandiveer Hayden for an expedition into the Yellowstone Lake area. Expeditions were important in documenting uncharted areas within the United States. The federal government sponsored these diverse groups of artists, scientists, and soldiers to explore an area and to report on its resources. Hayden's expedition included illustrators, a mineralogist, and a topographer. The natural beauty depicted by the artists, including Jackson's many photographs, helped to convince Congress to establish the area as a national park in 1872.

Jackson later worked on several other geologic surveys and headed expeditions of his own. His early achievements included being the first U.S. photographer to document prehistoric Native-American dwellings in Mesa Verde, Colorado and working as a principal photographer of the nation's railroad system. In 1894, Jackson began a two-year world tour for the World's Transportation Commission. (Many of the photographs from this tour are available in the American Memory collection, Around the World in the 1890s.) Jackson joined the Detroit Publishing Company four years later and added his extensive body of work to the company's collection of negatives. The collection's timeline chronicles key events in Jackson's career as well as key events in the history of photography. Meanwhile, a search on William Henry Jackson photographer produces thousands of examples of his work.

Jackson's Photograph of a Railroad Crew and Train Tracks in Mexico.

• How do you think that Jackson's career paralleled national growth throughout the nineteenth century?
• How do you think that Jackson's career relates to the history and development of photography?
• Why do you think that Jackson might have joined and led so many expeditions?
• How might these expeditions have contributed to the development of photography?
• Are there any differences among Jackson's photographs that correlate with the differences among his projects?
• Are there any consistent subjects throughout Jackson's extensive body of work?
• Do you think that Jackson had a distinctive photographic style? If so, how would you describe it?

2) The Telegraph and Telephone Industries

On May 24, 1844, Samuel F.B. Morse sent the first telegraph message approximately forty miles from the Supreme Court chamber in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, Maryland's Mount Clare Railroad Station. Morse's collaborator, Alfred Vail, translated the question, "What hath God wrought?" in the station and sent it back to Morse on an electrical current that sparked the nineteenth-century communications revolution.

Electromagnetic telegraphs provided a fast, reliable means of communication for an expanding nation. The Western Union Telegraph Company was formed in 1856. Five years later, telegraph lines stretched across the continent and connected more than 2,200 offices. The telegraph machines transmitted personal and national news as well as military orders throughout the Civil War. They also reduced railroad accidents by determining the position of trains on the tracks.

In 1872, Alexander Graham Bell began experimenting with multiple telegraphs that could simultaneously send and receive several messages. After he failed to earn a patent for his work, he turned his attention to using telegraph lines to transmit the sound of human speech. Bell and his assistant, Thomas Watson, successfully constructed a telephone on March 10, 1876. Bell spent subsequent years competing with Western Union over the right to market his machine. Searches on the terms telegraph and telephone produce images of telegraph offices such as the "Richmond & Backus Company Office," of early telephones (including a model of Bell's original phone), of a telecommunications cable, and of telephone operators.

A Wireless Phone from the Early-Twentieth Century.

Meanwhile, the Special Presentation, "The Telephone and the Multiple Telegraph," in the American Memory collection The Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers, details Bell's experimental efforts.

• How do you think that these machines altered both the landscape and the business world?
• Why do you think that Western Union competed fiercely with Bell to provide telephone services?
• How did the design of the telephone change over time? Why do you think that the design changed?
• How did photographers depict telephone workers and their products?

3) The Pullman Strike

In September 1859, cabinet-maker George Pullman introduced the first railroad sleeping car. It became an overnight sensation as railroads offered nightly service to various destinations. The Pullman Palace Car Company soon opened near Chicago, Illinois with a factory and a company town for its workers.

Pullman, Illinois was the site of a vicious labor strike beginning in May 1894. Over the previous nine months, the Pullman factory had reduced its workers' wages but did not lower the cost of living in its houses. Pullman workers joined Eugene Debs's American Railroad Union (ARU) in the spring of 1894 and shut down the factory with a strike on May 11.

Management refused to deal with the ARU and the union prompted a nationwide boycott of Pullman cars on June 21. Other groups within the ARU started sympathy strikes on behalf of the Pullman workers in an attempt to paralyze the nation's railroad industry. The U.S. Army was called into the dispute on July 3 and the arrival of the soldiers sparked widespread violence and looting in Pullman and Chicago, Illinois.

Workmen's Houses in Company Town, Pullman, Illinois.

The strike unofficially ended four days later when Eugene Debs and other union leaders were jailed. The Pullman factory reopened in August and denied local union leaders an opportunity to return to their jobs. A search on the term Pullman produces an image of the interior of a Pullman car and images of the company town, including exteriors of "Workmen's Houses" and "The Pullman Residence."

• How would you describe the differences between the workers' homes and George Pullman's personal residence?
• How do you think that the Pullman Strike reflected the class distinctions between the company's management and its laborers?
• Do you think that living in a company town might exacerbate class tensions? What would be the benefits of living in a company town? How would having a company town benefit the company?
• Why do you think that the Pullman company refused to negotiate with the American Railroad Union and refused to let union representatives return to work?

4) The Spanish-American War

Two hundred sixty United States sailors died off of the coast of Cuba on February 15, 1898, when the Maine exploded and sank in Havana Harbor. Relations between the U.S. and Spain were already tense over the debate of Spanish rule in Cuba. Despite the fact that the cause of the explosion could not be determined, many people in the U.S. held the Spanish government responsible. In April 1898, the U.S. proclaimed Cuba free from Spanish colonial rule and declared war on Spain.

Damage to the U.S.S. Iowa After the Battle of Santiago.

The expansion of the U.S. Navy and public interest in the Spanish-American war prompted the Detroit Publishing Company to dedicate vast resources to documenting the conflict. A search on the phrase Spanish-American War produces images such as "The Wreck of the Maine" and scenes from the 1898 Battle of Guantanamo Bay in which the U.S. gained control of the area but lost numerous Marines. (The Marines' efforts are represented in images such as "Hoisting the Flag . . .," and "Graves of Marines killed in battle. . .") Other images document the end of the war in January 1899, with photographs such as "Spanish Troops Evacuating Havana." Additional information on the events surrounding the war is available in the Library of Congress presentation, The World of 1898: The Spanish-American War, while films relating to the conflict (including documentaries and recreations) are available in the American Memory collection, The Spanish-American War in Motion Pictures.

• What aspects of the war have the photographers chosen to depict? What other subjects could have been included in a documentation of this war?
• How do photographs of the Spanish-American War compare to images from Selected Civil War Photographs? What might account for the differences in these photographs?
• How do you think that the public might have responded to these photographs of the Spanish-American War?
• How do these photographs compare to the motion pictures documenting the conflict?

5) The 1906 California Earthquake

Shortly after 5:00 a.m. on April 18, 1906, a violent earthquake rumbled through the San Francisco Bay area with shocks lasting up to one minute at a time. Tremors occurred over approximately 375,000 square miles from Oregon to Los Angeles and inland to central Nevada. The earthquake destroyed buildings and trees, sparked a fire that burned for four days, leveled San Francisco's Chinatown neighborhood, and killed more than 3,000 people. Another consequence of the tragedy, however, was the establishment of new processes to predict earthquakes and minimize the risk of future events. Additional information and films regarding the tragedy are available in the American Memory collection, Before and After the Great Earthquake and Fire: Early Films of San Francisco, 1897-1916.

A Man Walks Through the Rubble Caused by the Earthquake in Chinatown.

A search on the term, earthquake, produces images of earthquake damage including photographs of Market Street, "Ruins of City Hall," and "The Heart of Chinatown." Chinatown's general population consisted of immigrants who maintained their native dress, language, and customs--attributes that often led to misunderstanding and discrimination.

Beginning in the late-nineteenth century, Chinese immigrants were targets of restrictive laws and community ordinances that prohibited them from working for federal, state, and local governments and from educating their children in public schools. Many birth, death, and marriage certificates were lost in the earthquake and ensuing fire. When residents were asked to complete new documents, some Chinese immigrants claimed to have more children than they really did. This fraud allowed family members, neighbors, and total strangers to enter the U.S. from China as "paper sons."

• Why do you think that people documented the destruction caused by this earthquake and fire?
• How do you think that the government and the general public might have responded to the destruction of Chinatown?
• How do these materials compare to contemporary documents of a natural disaster?

6) Amusement Parks

Amusement parks appeared across the United States at the end of the nineteenth century. The parks served the needs of both a growing middle class and a developing transportation industry. Trolley companies were often required to pay a flat fee for electricity, regardless of the fact that they used more units during the work week. To keep up their usage throughout the weekends, trolley companies built amusement parks and other recreation areas at the end of their lines.

Dreamland Park in Coney Island, New York.

These recreation centers provided opportunities to swim, picnic, and see a variety of entertainers. A search on the phrase, amusement park, produces images of parks from Montana to Massachusetts with an emphasis on photographs from one of the nation's most famous parks--New York's Coney Island. Coney Island established itself as a popular recreation area with horse racing, and, in 1884, the nation's first roller coaster. Numerous amusement parks were added to Coney Island over the years. Paul Boynton introduced his Water Chutes Park to the resort in 1895. This was the first place on Coney Island to charge admission and to attract visitors with rides.

• What types of amusements were available at these parks?
• What types of people do you think attended these recreation centers?
• Why do you think that people were willing to pay admission to enter an amusement park?
• Were there any differences in parks across the country?