Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are createdequal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienableRights, that among them are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit ofHappiness. 3The new government, lands, and opportunities in America weresought by over a quarter million Europeans between 1790 and 1815. Theybuilt boats, the Erie Canal, chain suspension bridges, locomotives, rails, machines,stoves and tools as the first half of the great century of industrialismbegan. The United States furnished its portion of machines, which revolutionizedindustry. They borrowed Watt’s steam engine and Stephenson’s locomotivefrom England. While Fulton put the steam engine into a ship, Howecreated the sewing machine, McCormick and Hussey invented the reaper,Morse spanned the continent with his telegram, Whitney made the cottongin. The great railways were financed by the Vanderbilts and the Goulds.Typical of American history was the day Irish laborers who had built theUnion Pacific Railway from east to west shook hands with Chinese laborerswho had built the Central Pacific Railway from west to east. The 2.5 millionIrish who immigrated to the United States by 1864 not only built railwaysbut filled the New England mills and manned the Pennsylvania coal mines.While African slaves toiled on the plantations in the southern states,the Native Americans were being systematically removed from their landsby American soldiers. Seventeen thousand Cherokees were removed fromNorth Carolina in 1838 to lands west of the Mississippi after gold was foundon their lands. They called this the “Trail of Tears.” The Navajo called theirtrail of tears the “Long March” when they were rounded up and sent to aprison at Bosque Redondo in New Mexico by Kit Carson in 1866. The Siouxwere also violently removed from their Black Hills in 1874 after vast goldresources were found.The flow of immigrants continued after the Civil War (1861–1865)as America’s industrial output increased twelve-fold. Approximately 10.7million people immigrated from Scandinavia, Great Britain, France, Ireland,Germany, South and Central Europe, Italy, Russia, Poland, the Baltic states,Asia Minor, and Japan. Another 11.5 million immigrated between 1901 and1920. They manned America’s machines, New England textile mills, Chicagoslaughter houses, New York clothing factories, and Pennsylvania coal minesand steel mills. By 1920 America was the world’s leading industrial nation.Steel, oil, and banking magnates such as Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller,and J. P. Morgan, created financial empires that could reach across308