s. history us history us history - Embassy of the United States

OUTLINE OF U.S. HISTORYTop, the World War II Memorial, opened in 2004, is the most recent addition tothe many national monuments in Washington, D.C. It honors the 16 million whoserved in the armed forces of the United States, the more than 400,000 who died,and all who supported the war effort from home. Above, the planned design forthe World Trade Center Memorial in New York City is depicted in this photographof a model unveiled in late 2004. “Reflecting Absence” will preserve not only thememory of those who died in the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, but thevisible remnants of the buildings destroyed that morning, too.machine, and the reaper-thresher orcombine. Mechanical planters, cutters,huskers, and shellers appeared,as did cream separators, manurespreaders, potato planters, hay driers,poultry incubators, and a hundredother inventions.Scarcely less important than machineryin the agricultural revolutionwas science. In 1862 the MorrillLand Grant College Act allottedpublic land to each state for the establishmentof agricultural and industrialcolleges. These were to serveboth as educational institutions andas centers for research in scientificfarming. Congress subsequentlyappropriated funds for the creationof agricultural experiment stationsthroughout the country and grantedfunds directly to the Department ofAgriculture for research purposes.By the beginning of the new century,scientists throughout the UnitedStates were at work on a wide varietyof agricultural projects.One of these scientists, MarkCarleton, traveled for the Departmentof Agriculture to Russia. Therehe found and exported to his homelandthe rust- and drought-resistantwinter wheat that now accountsfor more than half the U.S. wheatcrop. Another scientist, MarionDorset, conquered the dreaded hogcholera, while still another, GeorgeMohler, helped prevent hoof-andmouthdisease. From North Africa,one researcher brought back Kaffircorn; from Turkestan, anotherimported the yellow-flowering alfalfa.Luther Burbank in Californiaproduced scores of new fruits andvegetables; in Wisconsin, StephenBabcock devised a test for determiningthe butterfat content of milk; atTuskegee Institute in Alabama, theAfrican-American scientist GeorgeWashington Carver found hundredsof new uses for the peanut, sweet potato,and soybean.In varying degrees, the explosionin agricultural science and technologyaffected farmers all over theworld, raising yields, squeezing outsmall producers, and driving migrationto industrial cities. Railroadsand steamships, moreover, began topull regional markets into one largeworld market with prices instantlycommunicated by trans-Atlanticcable as well as ground wires. Goodnews for urban consumers, fallingagricultural prices threatened thelivelihood of many American farmersand touched off a wave of agrariandiscontent.THE DIVIDED SOUTHAfter Reconstruction, Southernleaders pushed hard to attract industry.States offered large inducementsand cheap labor to investors to developthe steel, lumber, tobacco, andtextile industries. Yet in 1900 theregion’s percentage of the nation’sindustrial base remained about whatit had been in 1860. Moreover, theprice of this drive for industrializationwas high: Disease and childlabor proliferated in Southern milltowns. Thirty years after the CivilWar, the South was still poor, over-176177