1st person account of the fair

Atlanta University's James Weldon Johnson saw it and described it for his fellow students and the faculty back home: "No one, who has not seen it, can form any idea of the immensity and grandeur of the exposition; nor can I give any adequate description of it. It has been fitly called the "White City," and one standing under the Peristyle and looking down the Court of Honor, surrounded by magnificent buildings with their chaste white columns and gilded domes glittering in the sunlight . . . might easily imagine himself in a fairy city."

The White City

The reproduction of the Convent of la Rabida is one of the most important buildings, because it was the same exact building that Columbus stayed (but in Spain) when he planned his trip to the west into the Ocean Sea.

The Administration Building is beautiful looking from the outside and it's important because the Court of Honor was held there and because friends could meet and talk there.

The Women's Building is one of my favorites because it was when the Congress authorized women to be managers ("The Board of Lady Managers"). It was an important day to women.

The Peristyle is important because it was where all the visitores that came by lake got inside the city. And on top of it, stands the Columbus Qadriga, the Quadriga rivaled the Republic, and vice versa.

I like the Ferris Wheel because it's a quiet and calm place. Also because is where you can see the whole city.

Letter to Editor (Maya, Amy and Kara)

Dear Editor,
We thought there was a huge problem in chapter XV: The Problem of the Children with the way children were raised. People had too many children and couldn’t take care of all of them with the amount of money they had. Most kids spent their days and nights on the streets looking for food or work. Their parents didn’t care and even gave them beer to drink and sell for extra money. Policemen noticed but after the kids gave them beer, they didn’t care and had other problems to worry about. Many of the kids died because of disease and poor living conditions but their parents hardly noticed and moved on with their lives as if nothing had happened.
There was also a problem with the Bohemian immigrants in Article XII: The Bohemians – Tenement-House Cigar making. Even though they don’t make an effort to learn the American way of life, have stubborn pride of race and a popular prejudice, which makes them disturbers of public peace and enemies of organized labor, we should care more about them. They live a “rat” life, because their bosses cut the wages of their underpaid labor. Most of Bohemians live and work in tenement cigar factories. Wives and children work too, so they can make a living for the family. Unions refused to accept women though. We don’t think the Court of Appeal should’ve prohibited cigar making in tenements. People that worked there became desperate. The Health Department considered thinking about helping them but decided that they lived much better than clothing-makers. We think that people there, specially Bohemian immigrants, should’ve been better treated and able to work wherever they wanted to.
In Article XVIII: The Reign of Rum, your article explains that in the slum regions there is a coint of 111 Protestant churches, chapels, and places of worship of every kind and 4,065 saloons. Although at the places of worship, the attendance is much larger, the amount of the saloons cast a dark shadow over the towns. It brings suffering into innocent lives and increases the rate of crime in the towns. Though this may be good for all the owners of the saloons, it decreases the quality of life for most of the people. Nobody cared if alcohol was sold to the under aged because it brought in more money. There was eventually a law made that only three liquor licenses could be given out per street crossing. Although this helped somewhat, there were still existing places selling alcohol without a license. We think the police should’ve done more to help this problem for the good of people.

Thanks,
Maya, Amy and Kara.

Immigrants

The picture shows immigrants arriving at Ellis Island and waiting to be checked in. They are all very different from each other, what shows that they are from different places.
All people, when they came to America, thought they would succeed and their life'd be perfect. But they didn't know much. Those people did not know how to speak english, they didn't know where they were going to work or even live, but all came hoping to have a better life.
They look afraid, but confident and eager to be an American citizen.
The woman with the white thing on her head looks a little mad and very frightened, because she just came from Germany, where she was born. She notices that everything is different from what she had expected. She thought they would just welcome her and let her in. Her name is Diana and she was married to a man that died of pneumonia and now she is afraidshe has the same disease and that they could send her back if she really had it.
Maybe Diana should've listened to her parents and stayed in Germany when they told her that it was totally different and she didn't know anything about her future. She had a friend coming with her, the guy waring a scarf, and he knew how to say something in English, and that was enough to help her until she found a way to learn it the right way.
Dana is also thinking about her son Jack that stayed in Germany finishing his school year, he was in the military. Jack and Dana weren't always close, they became close because he always helped her while she worked at her husband's bookstore after he died. but they had a fight whether they should or shouldn't come and he decided he was staying and he'd come when he finished a couple more school years. But Jack promised he'd try to write every week, so she felt a little bit better. She also wished her parents could come but they were old and she didn't want to change their way of life so suddenly.
She just moved here because she thought the environment was better and they could accomplish anything they wanted and Dana was determined that she was going to work at another bookstore, because she could remember her happy days while her husband was still with her. And soon she would have her own store, start writing books, and become famous all around America; that was her dream. But what if she couldn't find another job? Where would she live and how'd she pay for her living ? These questions came back to her mind every five seconds. But she knew her friend would not leave her alone, because they needed each other and they would do anything to make things better.
When she got to the front of the line, Dana and her friend will think about something else that will make them happy and start a new life, better than the last one, forgeting everything that made them sad and she'd wait to see her son again, and soon !

Titans of Industry: Rockefeller and Carnegie

Rockefeller and Carnegue started with nothing and worked their way to the top. But not in one day or two, it took the years to get where they were. Both became very rich and because of that people disliked them. But they weren't as mean as people saw them, because they donated money to help many places in need. Carnegie and Rockefeller were philantropists, people that made an effort to incrase the well-being of humankind, by charity and donations. Rockefeller believed in Efficiency Movement, he helped places like schools and universities that were good and would use his money to actually improve their teaching. He gave $80 millions to the University of Chicago, making it into a world-class institution, noa a Baptist college anymore. He also helped improve the study of medicine in the U.S. with the help of Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Rockefeller founded many teaching places and he donated a lot of money to these foundations, helping people to become successful on whatever they wanted to do. His two greatest goals were to make $100,000, that he accomplished, and to live 100 years, but he died 2 months before his 98th birthday. Carnegie wasn't a philantropists his whole life. In 1886, he wrote a book about his views on social subjects and the responsabilities of a great wealth; it was called Triumphant Democracy. He started helping people with their interests and improving education, like Rockefeller. Carnegie strongly promoted the spread of English language. He also donated to create public libraries all over the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom and many other places that spoke english. These libraries were called Carnegie libraries.But the local authority had to provide land and also provide some money for the operation and to mantain it. He founded around 3,000 libraries. He also donated 55,000 to the University of Birmingham.

The Rise of Industry (2nd picture)

During the time of the industrial revolution in the United States many businesses became very large. Each company tried to make more money and be more powerful than the other. These companies created the horizontal integration, big companies bought or took over smaller ones that sold the same product, which is not very different from today. The second strategy was called the vertical integration, that is when a company buys up all of the businesses that takes in order to make a finished product. One really big company was the Standard Oil Company, also known as octopus. Its tentacles took over everything in its path. It retained a monopoly in the oil industry, and the oil became the dominant resource industrial world, so people depended on this resource. This allowed John D. Rockefeller, the owner of the company, to set whatever prices he wanted. The Standard Oil Co. atrted controling everything and wanted to take control of the government, bank, insurance, electricity and many more. People disliked it, but the company was too big for them to destroy.