Today is Yako's birthday we celebrated her birthday many times back in louie but now we cant,
i miss the time we spent, by no joke that girl really filled something in me i never ever think it will be the same,
i think we established some kind of bond at the beginning that wasn't easily broken, i think it was product of the time and place of course,
now we are far away and the relationship who knows what i think she found someone else,she will
developed countries are there and there things are there as well, no need to look around things are ready for picking
i wonder what will happen i kind of have an idea but i cant think of it.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Friday, March 14, 2008
It’s Always Now
Two animals decided to go on a journey in midst of the sea and then to the open ocean.
they decided to ride a bit long boat. One person was to sit on the front tip of the boat. The other was to sit all the way in the back.
Both started stroking the gentle water, their direction, their goal seemed to be set. And they both agreed that if something comes along the way, it was for that person to who-ever needs to say something have to say it. Both agreed so they sailed through the waters.
The trip had both its enjoyable and miserable times, when the waves were high and the wind blew strong, they struggled together to keep the boat safe and the trip on time.
When the wind and the water current were calm, so was the mood of the two. They fished, swam together in the warm waters, chatted and enjoyed the trip.
On one particular night darkness fell surprisingly quick. the sky seemed to predict some action through the clouds. The sky went from murky grey to great to absolute dark, the clouds look as if it was a pieces of cotton soaked in ink.
the monkey looked at the sky and sensed another rough night on the sea. Though it was like almost every rough night on the sea, he predicted this one to be rougher. So the monkey shouted to the Cat who seemed silent for some time. “hello… I think it will be rough time tonight…”
the cat had no response, she seemed gloomy and quite,
“Cat can you hear me?....ohh this distance between us the cat always make big deal of it”
“Hello…can you hear me?”
“I said it might be rough time tonight”
again no answer from the cat.
The monkey and the Cat had not talked for a while, and for some odd reason the monkey cant rembre why. Monkey started speculating thinking to itself,
”even though the time is not right to think about these type things, but I think we got carried out with our tasks, as the trip went on we forgot our promises to each others”
“I think we enjoyed our times, we thought we bonded through this trip”
the monkey thought about this for some time, as the storm seemed to be brewing in the distance.
the monkey continued.
”…well I could leave my post and head over there and meet the Cat and talk to her, but looking at the sky I don’t think its feasible,”
I will try to call her again..
“Hey Cat can you hear me or not?? Why your not answering me ?” the monkey shouted and tired again and again but no avail.
finally the Monkey told the Cat ” okay Cat I am on my way to you, can you meet in the middiel of the boat at least ?” , the cat did not even turn around which made the monkey worry, “okay I am coming over.”
The vessel started rocking left and right as the monkey was trying to reach to the cat he had to remove the covers they had there to protect therie food and belongings, the narrowness of the boat made it almost impossible to walk.it seemed that this boat was meant to be constructed this very awkward desing.
it had two bowls shaped places with a norrow path in-between, the tube if you like was used to to keep both passengers belongings which was utilized for just that.
Also as the way it was designed these to halves if you well, couble easily separated, all was needed is for each passenger is to unplug their bowl and used as a normal water carrying boat type, problem is then that person would have to fill in the hole where the tube used to be, plus he/she would have to deal with the sea alone, since unplugging would seemingly make the vessel lose more balance.
On “The Open Great Land” on its sea shore, on one of many Great Seas stood a cat and a Macaque, both looking at the blue ocean. The two were looking at animals whom took the ocean together on what is called on that Land a “journey”. Next to the two animals were the vessels of which these animals of the Land used so they can take up a Journey. These vessels are not in effect actual vessel, it
way it was designed these to halves if you well, couble easily separated, all was needed is for each it was a very simply designed,to make one an animal would have to find a bowl that fits its passenger, though these bowls can ride the sea but it would be risky to do so.
so to make a vessel two bowl shapes would have to attached through a pole or tube if done correctly these two bowls with that pices betweeb them suprisgly balances it self on the sea!.
however the length of the tube or a pole depndes on the travelers cognition. Meaning there are many poles around the land,one were long one were short, and each comes with its own property and reponcibilty on the sea.
and so if the pole would be long it would means the though the vessel is balanced for the journey, the distance between the two anilams might be long,which naturally means less and depends on the needs of the travlers, so if if the journey would need more pepratoin that is many stuff to carry animals would look for a tube and if less peprations are needed a pole might do!.together for two animals, person would have to fill in the hole where the tube used to be, plus he/she would have to deal with the sea alone, since unplugging would seemingly make the vessel lose more balance.
was made of for some time they both had lived a life on land and both had seen many animals leave the shores. The Cat wondered one time if she can ask the Macaque if it would like to on the ocean for a journey together,
the Cat said “Hi Macaque, I want to ask you if you would like to go with me along a journey you and me through the ocean, see other lands and enjoy each other’s company I think it will be nice what do you say?”the Macaque was quite on the top of one tree chewing on some fruit, the Cat continued again, “well I’ve been looking at you for sometime and wondered about you and about your Macaque life, I’ve seen many other different Macaques before but I never seen one like you before”
the Macaque was grinned for little bit, the Cat realized the grin, and asked so what do you say ?
Listen I know that you and I are different animals, we eat differently we speak differently we look differently! but I think we should give it a chance, we should take a chance and take a trip. At the moment the Macaque slowly descended down and tired to
it was as if its been a while since the time they talked, so the one in the back asked “do you remebre our promise?”
no replay…, the one in the back asked “hello…I am talking to you”
but no replay again, the person in the back felt like coming in the fornt as waves were at its higher again one night the wind seemed to blow littitle bit harder, and
when that land lingered close in the distance, the cat swiftly jumped off the boat very gracefully, and landed on it paws like she was walking on air it self.
The monkey was suspired and mouth wide open, he thought the cat might get hurt …”ca cat CAT”
She landed fine, looked to the monkey, and said very calmly we are but different animals, you and I.
I enjoyed the ride with you don’t get wrong, but I was thinking about all these, and I couldn’t see it anyway else, I took it on my behalf to think for you without telling you, I just think you should carry on my friend, and forget about the cat that you once knew and maybe…loved.
I made this so I don’t hurt you, in a way I think I should hurt my self but not you…
maybe I love you maybe I am not, but after all I think this the best for all of us.
maybe when time is right monkeys and cats can be together, but as I see the world this the land I think I belong to, and you should stay on land and forget boats even if riding them is fun…”
Bye monkey…
Friday, February 29, 2008
yes the Net is a place to which anyone can edit, Wikipied did not really come with a genuine idea that is the net, I mean in my first HTML class the teacher in an community college showed us as for of study what and HTML encoder put here and there in their code just from clicking on the show page source, look at anything in any computer dubitably you find a place to where you can see or peek into the codes that makes the program your using,
so yes the net is that place, I cant really put and explanation to why everyone is on the net, reason been not everyone around the world is, in the states yes they do have an access that access is not really because these people want to be there its more because communication companies made it easy but not always cheap.
Even “free Wi-Fi” at most places do require some type of payments for income.
So I share some of Keen’s theories but I disagree with him on the bases that he mention something like it’s kind of dangerous or whether its important or not. And I wouldn’t go far to judged or think it’s good or bad for democracy.
so yes the net is that place, I cant really put and explanation to why everyone is on the net, reason been not everyone around the world is, in the states yes they do have an access that access is not really because these people want to be there its more because communication companies made it easy but not always cheap.
Even “free Wi-Fi” at most places do require some type of payments for income.
So I share some of Keen’s theories but I disagree with him on the bases that he mention something like it’s kind of dangerous or whether its important or not. And I wouldn’t go far to judged or think it’s good or bad for democracy.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
A critic to the “history of the internet”
If you look at most history the net articles one would fine that the history don’t really fall in many of the scientific historical stories, when one read it’s always a story about some pep lint MIT or somewhere trying to figure out how to make possible the sharing of information and the story goes on.
What this lacks is the most stories found scientific discoveries that is a lab or materials or what worked and what not when element A or B was added.
If you look at most history the net articles one would fine that the history don’t really fall in many of the scientific historical stories, when one read it’s always a story about some pep lint MIT or somewhere trying to figure out how to make possible the sharing of information and the story goes on.
What this lacks is the most stories found scientific discoveries that is a lab or materials or what worked and what not when element A or B was added.
Friday, February 22, 2008
in his own words
I a guy was hired shortly after I was let go, my friend at the old job called me up and said that, that guy had made a statement about the job and the office and all that, I always thought of doing something similar it just never formalized, so instead I am going to be using his statement though i don’t agree with few things but overall it shows some insight.
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“You stay until 5:30. Those are the hours and you will be here until 5:30.” I smiled as my bosses chin jiggled with anger. I couldn't’t wait to get home and show my girlfriend his penguin waddle. I wonder if anyone in the office has asked him what happened to make him walk in such a peculiar way.
“Will there be any more problems with you following the rules of the office Jeffery. We hire you because we think you smart enough to do as we say, but you continue and we have no choice but to get rid of you.” His five foot two inch frame looked strained. The circles around his eyes were darker than his brown skin. I’ve always had the hardest time understanding a foreign accent and now I’m working in an office full of them.
“If you have to fire me, I’m sure you’ve got another family member who needs a job.”
“Very funny smart guy. No, no, you crack us up, that’s very funny Jeffery. Because we have lots of family working here, I get it, its very smart, I see why you graduate from college.” There was no jiggling this time and I felt the distain he had for me, not that I could blame him. I took my seat and stared at the paper work I was supposed to be checking, I am quality control. I have been trying to lose this job since I started three days ago. God bless the mediocre work ethic in this country though. I’ve got a tried and true formula when it comes to office work. And before you start denouncing the formula there are of course exceptions to every rule.
For every hour you work, you spend one hour doing nothing. It’s that simple. You work half as much as you are told to work. Of course you can only pull this off at office jobs or jobs without any supervision. After 7 years of office work, my work ethic has never come into question. Some of you are probably thinking some bullshit about pride in your work and all other sort of capitalist propaganda, not that I blame you. I was brought up in the same public school systems as you. But unless you own your own business, what’s the point. I don’t have any benefits. Nothing happens to me if the company sees more profits and nothing happens if profits fall, in fact I often pray to my hands that profits do fall. Unemployment is a pretty sweet gig if you are still a bachelor and childless.
I try to avoid staring out the windows or blankly at a spot in the ceiling. The same rules from school apply to work. There are still write ups and there are still visits to an authority figures office. I’ve had some good jobs and I’ve had some bad jobs. Most are a combination of both and so it goes. You can’t always get away with discussing placenta sandwiches or saying its just skin. At my last job the boss had a giant poster of a sports car, it said, “Those who aren’t obsessed with money are poor.” I always found the poster to be disgusting and ignorant, but there is nothing wrong with that poster, at least its honest. When you set laws according to a certain economic system, the systems has no choice but to entrench itself in the culture in which it exists, it knows no other way and so I sit and waste another minute staring at the same numbers, forty-eight and six hundred thirty two.
The days go slow without the internet. I miss seducing the lonely fat girls and the men pretending to be women for who knows what reason. The only time I pretend to be a woman is to seduce lesbians. It’s ballsy to expect 8 full hours of work, they obviously haven’t assimilated yet. I get so tired of their damn work ethic. Even the bosses work second jobs on the weekends. I imagine it’s hard to be one of their children. Do they expect as much or more? The Muhammad Ali lookalike is the boss’s cousin. The others tell me he’s the spy on the office floor. He keeps looking at me as I type, so I try to keep the typing noises to a minimum.
“Babily, it’s snowing you know.” Only in desperation do I speak to the boss. It usually leads to a new work assignment or a review of what I have done for the day.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Scanner
he grew out in an environment,
the environment thrived inside another environment,
he grew within a within,
he had to adapt to the first environment and than to the other environment his father was making money...big money,
big money made it easy to head to the other environment,
he met te people there he felt as one of the whole,
he had to lave to another country,
he met with people from both environments,
he did not know what to do,
hang with the within, or with,
he chose to go within and do without the latter,
Accepted by the few, accepted by the loudest he feels fine now, because they got the loudest voices.
the environment thrived inside another environment,
he grew within a within,
he had to adapt to the first environment and than to the other environment his father was making money...big money,
big money made it easy to head to the other environment,
he met te people there he felt as one of the whole,
he had to lave to another country,
he met with people from both environments,
he did not know what to do,
hang with the within, or with,
he chose to go within and do without the latter,
Accepted by the few, accepted by the loudest he feels fine now, because they got the loudest voices.
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
jafar Lalu and the "computer-Savvy Thieves Who Rips Off Gas Stations"
its amazing how events in time go by!.
i went to work like every morning, this the year which Kevin ( laliuWodd)
started working for the station, "down stairs".
one day (the day mentioned in this entry) local news channels here in st.Louis, started reporting on a guy from somewhere atthikng gas pumps.
the attack...well it not really a damage attack, but more of hacking the pump to make fill gas without charging.
at sometime in the afternoon, a reporter from local channel KSDK NBC affailite in here. he had some intense tan and a grey suite and as reporters he was asking almost everyone around questions.
this brought 'Jafar' into the picture
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created: 5/6/2006 10:44:34 PM
updated: 5/8/2006 10:46:59 AM
i went to work like every morning, this the year which Kevin ( laliuWodd)
started working for the station, "down stairs".
one day (the day mentioned in this entry) local news channels here in st.Louis, started reporting on a guy from somewhere atthikng gas pumps.
the attack...well it not really a damage attack, but more of hacking the pump to make fill gas without charging.
at sometime in the afternoon, a reporter from local channel KSDK NBC affailite in here. he had some intense tan and a grey suite and as reporters he was asking almost everyone around questions.
this brought 'Jafar' into the picture
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
created: 5/6/2006 10:44:34 PM
updated: 5/8/2006 10:46:59 AM
By Alex Fees (KSDK) :-
"At least two St. Louis gas station owners or managers say somebody is breaking into gas pumps, reprogramming interior keypads and instructing the machines to dispense fuel at no charge.Free gas is certainly not what the gas station owners had in mind.Kevin Tippit is manager of the Phillips 66 at Lindell and Boyle in St. Louis. Tippit says his boss lost between $6,000 and $10,000 worth of gas Friday before a regular customer tipped-off an employee."They (the thieves) have a key to the pump and then after they open up the pump they go in and they reprogram the pump, so they can have free gas. And then everybody behind them sees what they're doing, and they continue," says Tippit.Tippit was asked why gas station employees would not notice such activity."What it actually does is bypass our system," says Tippit. "It goes beyond the register and is drawing directly off the pumps."While Tippit says he and his employees have keys to the gas pumps, they don't have codes to the interior keypads. He says the only people with those codes are employees of companies that service gas stations.Amjad Darwish, owner of Mobile Food Mart at Lindell and Delmar, agrees. His store got hit last month.A company that services gas stations offered a solution. That company took the interior keypads out of the gas pumps.Darwish believes the suspect came back and tried again Friday night. This time employees recognized the suspect's license plate. They were able to see it because, in addition to several cameras that monitor the inside of the store, the store also has several cameras that monitor the parking lot and gas pumps."When he walks in, we locked the door and call the police. They searched his car. They found the keys (and) the program. Everything was in his car."The St. Louis Police Department continues to investigate the thefts.
"At least two St. Louis gas station owners or managers say somebody is breaking into gas pumps, reprogramming interior keypads and instructing the machines to dispense fuel at no charge.Free gas is certainly not what the gas station owners had in mind.Kevin Tippit is manager of the Phillips 66 at Lindell and Boyle in St. Louis. Tippit says his boss lost between $6,000 and $10,000 worth of gas Friday before a regular customer tipped-off an employee."They (the thieves) have a key to the pump and then after they open up the pump they go in and they reprogram the pump, so they can have free gas. And then everybody behind them sees what they're doing, and they continue," says Tippit.Tippit was asked why gas station employees would not notice such activity."What it actually does is bypass our system," says Tippit. "It goes beyond the register and is drawing directly off the pumps."While Tippit says he and his employees have keys to the gas pumps, they don't have codes to the interior keypads. He says the only people with those codes are employees of companies that service gas stations.Amjad Darwish, owner of Mobile Food Mart at Lindell and Delmar, agrees. His store got hit last month.A company that services gas stations offered a solution. That company took the interior keypads out of the gas pumps.Darwish believes the suspect came back and tried again Friday night. This time employees recognized the suspect's license plate. They were able to see it because, in addition to several cameras that monitor the inside of the store, the store also has several cameras that monitor the parking lot and gas pumps."When he walks in, we locked the door and call the police. They searched his car. They found the keys (and) the program. Everything was in his car."The St. Louis Police Department continues to investigate the thefts.
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
Ainu
In 1904 a group of eight Ainu were brought from Hokkaido to St. Louis to constitute, along with other Native people from throughout the world, a "living group" exhibit in the Department of Anthropology at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Prof. W. J. McGee, chief of the department, secured the services of the Ainu through the assistance of Professor Frederick Starr from the University of Chicago; Starr made the trip to Japan for the purpose.
In Rydell's All the Worlds a Fair, he argues that the world's fairs in America from 1876-1916 were a material vision of political, business, and intellectuals to promote their vision of racial dominance. According to Rydell's book the world fairs portrayed a sinister agenda. And the ideas of American progress were related to scientific racism. He also states that the world fair's organizers utilized the Fair in a "scientific" manner to racially segregate members of the American population and the world.
Moreover Anna carol Christ's' The Sole Guardians of the Art Inheritance of Asia": Japan at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, echoes Rydell points. In her article she focus on how the Japanese used their exhibits in the St. Louis's World's Fair, to take advantage of China's vulnerability. Both historians' accounts rises intriguing points onto the subject of the St. Louis Worlds Fair exhibits. The Ainu exhibit in the anthropology department and the "Japan Fair" seemed to connect on the same principles both historians mentioned but fagot to discuss which this paper will try to expand upon.
This paper looks at the role of Department of Anthropology at St. Louis Fair in exhibiting the Ainu group. This display of the Ainu served the general agenda of World's Fair and that of Japan. Also this paper will look at how the Imperial Japanese Commission to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition used its exhibits designed in Western style for self-promotional purposes, by the use of display, journalism, and literature. The Commission wanted to disassociates it self from anything that is uncivil on the Fair's grounds.
I will begin with a brief overview of the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair Anthropology Department at the Fair and its Ainu exhibit. Next I will look at the Japanese Commission to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition's "Fair Japan" exhibits related materials and publications produced in English for the Fair's audience.
In 1899 ninety delegates representing states and territories of the Louisiana Purchase met in St. Louis. Their meeting was to figure out how to memorialize the centennial acquisition of the Louisiana territory. After extensive discussions it was generally agreed on that the celebration would be best accomplished by creating an international exposition held in St. Louis, hence The Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904[1].
As the with World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, anthropology had a significant role in the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. According to the president of the St. Louis’s Fair David R. Francis, "the Anthropology reservation will carry representatives of upward of thirty living groups are to be seen in nature dress, living in houses of their own construction, cooking and eating the food to which they are accustomed at home, and practicing those simple arts and industries, which they themselves developed." to do the job Francis sought the help of Prof. W.J. McGee.
Prof. W. J. McGee was the head of the Bureau of American Ethnology in Washington, D.C. was appointed chief of the Department of Anthropology at the Exposition in the summer of 1903. Prof. W. J. McGee was considered then as the leading authority on anything anthropology. Especially during his tenure at the Bureau of American Ethnology in Washington, D.C. and prior to his appointment as chief of the Department of Anthropology St. Louis Fair, according to Rydell Prof. McGee was charged with financial irregularity, which forced him to resign the Washington position.
In Prof. McGee's early speeches in preparing for the Fair he assured the audience of mainly Fairs organizers that “the aim of the Department of Anthropology at the World's Fair will be to present human progress from the dark prime to the highest enlightenment; from savagery to civic organization, from egoism to altruism. The method will be to use living peoples in their accustomed avocations as great object lessons; failing these in some cases, we shall use human products to illustrate human progress".[2]
Prof. McGee created the most extensive anthropology exhibits of any world's fair before or since[3]. Although the Department of Anthropology featured traditional museum, or "still." exhibits in a building on the camps of Washington University, the main emphasis, as McGee had promised, was on "living peoples," outdoor ethnographic exhibits located on an extensive "anthropology reservation" where representatives of up-ward to thirty living groups are to he seen in native dress, living in houses of their own construction, cooking and eating the food to which they are accustomed at home, and practicing those simple arts and industries, which they have. Themselves developed"[4].
According to Vanstone living groups, or "out-of-doors exhibits" as it was labeled by concessionaires, had been used for the first time in U.S. in the Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893. And in a way Prof. McGee was trying to equal Prof. F. W. Putnam efforts in displaying anthropology to the public. Moreover the anthropology reserve was not the only place where Native peoples were to be exhibited as "living peoples". Another popular feature of the Exposition was "The Pike".
The Pike was described by David Francis, as a "living color page of the world." And it ranged as mile long amusement adjunct, and it was referred to as St. Louis's equivalent to Chicago's Midway of 1893. On the Pike food, beverages, rides, shows, souvenirs, and the living groups were displayed along each other. Here the various anthropological concessions exhibits were set up. The exhibits included a Chinese village a Moorish palace and according to Vanstone the Pikes' most popular the Esquimaux village concession[5]. Also Native American Indians concessions were built, the "Cliff Dwellers," where the Hopi and Zuni Indians tribes form Colorado displayed hand made crafts and danced for the fairgoers.
For the Pike visitors paid different admission fee every time they wanted to visit an exhibit along The Pike, the fees in return went to each exhibits' concessionaire[6]. Visitors to the Anthropology exhibits had the opportunity to watch the primitives from all around the world. First visitors watched the natives pursuing daily activities on the reserved land for anthropology, and then on the more a commercialized concession exhibits. The emphasis on the later one was theatrical display and entertainment.
To represent a living group from Japan, McGee and Exposition officials picked the Ainu of Hokkaido Island. Ainu have long been the subject of academic debate. And in actuality it was not the first time American had heard of them. the Ainu were particularly noted for their hairy bodies in The Atlantic Monthly, article titled In a Quest of a Shadow by Todd Loomis in September 1897.As Loomis referred to them as "Hairy Ainu". And perhaps it was for their controversial background that McGee felt that Ainu had to be present at the World Fair.
During Tokugawa (Edo) Period (1603 - 1867) the Ainu population on Main Island Japan has been reduced and moved farther north Japanese isle to Hokkaido. Under the Matsumae domain grants and permissions were given to wealthy Tokyo and Osaka merchant to utilize the land and its fishery. This domain continued its commercializing plans, and demand for fishery labor eventually lead to the Ainu's subjugation militarily[7].
According to David Howell "trade originating in this medieval period and, the proto-industrial production that eventually evolved out of it, made the Ainu dependent for their subsistence upon the Matsumae domain and its agents, particularly the established concept of contract-fishery operation which the Matsumae Domain had brought to Hokkaido." by the end of the Tokugawa period labor in the commercial fishery the Matsumae domain had created, according to Howell "was at least as important to the Ainu economy as traditional hunting and gathering activities."[8]
During Meiji period commonly known as Meiji Restoration period that lasted from 1868 to 1912, Ainu culture and society witnessed tremendous decline. This is important because the restoration that the Meiji brought was heavily concentrated on westernizing Japan by democratizing and industrializing the island. The Restoration the Meiji introduced made new and aggressive policies of assimilation. To the Ainu the Restoration came in the form of deculturation, which sought to eliminate everything from their language and other manifestations of Ainu's native culture. The policies were devastatingly effective.
On January 18 1904 McGee wrote instructing Starr for his trip to Japan, " You are to secure the voluntary attendance at the Exposition of eight or ten Ainu tribesmen, preferably comprising one or two families, with such appurtenances as may be required to permit them to live in their accustomed way throughout the period of the Exposition, in a habitation or habitations erected by themselves on the Exposition grounds."[9] Also Starr was given a letter of introduction from President Francis to the Commissioner General of the Imperial Japanese Commission for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in Tokyo.
Starr arrived at a time when Meiji Japan was preparing for war with Russia. And apparently Starr was surprised to how the Japanese officials accommodation to his mission went peacefully, even though war was brewing. Starr noted his experience about that time stating " But, through this period of stress and preparation, of dispatching troops and moving war equipment, we were never disrupted or delayed in our mission; those officials, whom we were obliged to meet, received us with the same courtesy and attended to our requests with same care and promptness, as if it were a time of complete peace."[10]
When Starr reached Hokkaido he was advised to meet Rev. John Batchelor in his house on outskirts of Sapporo city. According to Starr "The Rev. John Batchelor came to Yezo in I879, a young man of twenty-four years. He has lived here ever since- more than half his lifetime. A clergyman of the Church of England and a missionary of the Church Missionary Society, he labors among both Japanese and Ainu, but considers himself particularly called to be 'the Apostle to the Ainu'. He knows this people as no other stranger, Japanese or "foreigner," does. He has visited their villages in all parts of the island; he speaks their language more perfectly than their own young people do; he has studied their life, and thought, and fancies. He is their friend and adviser in need and trouble.
While his converts among them may number nine hundred, his acquaintance and influence extends to thousands. He has actually lived for years in their villages, especially Piratori and Horobets. He has written a Dictionary and a Grammar of the Ainu language and has translated the Psalms, the New Testament, several Bible narratives, he is the author of the two best books upon their life and thought The Ainu of Japan and The Ainu and Their Folk-lore."[11] While Starr stay with the Rev. saw his first Ainu.
With Rev. John Bachelors' help Starr was able to obtain the Ainu group he came for. His group consisted of two couples in their mid fifties Sangea Hirmura husband, and his wife Santukno. Two younger couples Kutoroge Hiramura husband and his wife Shutratek and their two young girls Kin and Kiku; and slightly younger couple, Yazo Osawa husband, age twenty-three, and his wife Shirake, age eighteen; and a twenty-six years old Main Land native Coro Bete for translation[12].
According to David R. Francis President of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, who was shared the views of McGee, "the Ainu were selected to illustrate industries connected with body ward movement, a primitive agriculture which has produced a distinctive Corm of millet, specialized architecture befitting a trying climate, A most primitive musical system and a bear-cult; and in the hope of acquainting the world for the first time with the full law and faith of a little-known primitive people".
The Ainu group eventually arrived to St. Louis and was brought to St. Louis Worlds Fair grounds. Materials for the construction of the Ainu house were brought on May 11, and the Ainu were "astonishingly prompt"[13] in erecting their house (Fig1). The Ainu worked on their house in the present of a group of invited guests, which included W. J. McGee and George A. Dorsey, curator of anthropology at the Field Columbian Museum in Chicago. According to Vanstone Prof. Frederick Starr was teaching his class in Chicago and couldn't come to the meeting.
The Ainu group eventually arrived to St. Louis and was brought to St. Louis Worlds Fair grounds. Materials for the construction of the Ainu house were brought on May 11, and the Ainu were "astonishingly prompt"[14] in erecting their house (Fig1). The Ainu worked on their house in the present of a group of invited guests, which included W. J. McGee and George A. Dorsey, curator of anthropology at the Field Columbian Museum in Chicago. According to Vanstone Prof. Frederick Starr was teaching his class in Chicago and couldn't come to the meeting.
Prof. McGee provided the necessary building materials for the Ainu, and they according Vanstone were a prompt in using the materials to build their house for the six-month period of the Fair. Surprisingly Ainu were familiar with building material, because in one picture from the Fair, the Ainu appeared as if they were in an actual village-house that Starr had found them in.
An interpreter provided by the Japanese Commission to Fair, Mr. Inagaki, presided over traditional ceremonies with a Christian dedication scheduled for the following Sunday [15]. During their stay at the Exposition the Ainu surprised the visitors by holding Christian religious services and, on several occasions, attending services at a nearby Episcopal church.
All the living groups at the Exposition a subject matter of lectures by students and scientists. The Ainu were measured, questioned, and they faced ethnology classes while professors lectured on their customs, religion, and ceremonies. According to J. Stone "Frederick Starr taught a three-week course, beginning on September 1, entitled 'The Louisiana Purchase Exposition Class in Ethnology,' for which students Could receive credits in their major subjects. It attracted about 30 students from the University of Chicago and some St. Louis schoolteachers."
Starr's lectured on the Ainu was between 9 to 10:00 am, titled the physical characteristics of race. The Ainu, like the other living groups, were tolerant of questions asked to them sometimes through the interpreter. Hanson for his Official History of the World's Fair wrote about this "Pertinent and impertinent, about themselves without asking return information respecting the white people who were studying them". One enthusiastic writer referred to the Ainu as "mysterious little Japanese primitives" and noted that visitors were impressed by their cleanliness and polite manners, but somewhat disappointed that they were not "man-eaters, dog eaters or wild men"[16]
August marked "Anthropology Days", which were Olympic type contests and activities in the Exposition. The contests involved the members of the living groups in sport competitions. The sports ranged from running, high jumping, archery and, spear throwing. The Ainu, Patagonians, Eskimos, Native Americans, Philippine and African groups were all competing. For example the Ainu and Patagonians tribe from Argentina competed in archery contests. The winners were given American flags instead of gold medals.
The Ainu group elicited particular interest because they were the first of their people to come to the United States; they were not well known even in their own country. It is noteworthy that of the more than 600 persons in the Japanese entourage at the Exposition, only one person had previously seen an Ainu[17].
The Department of Anthropology was credited with great success in presenting the world's peoples "true to life." including, of course, the Ainu. Visitors and Exposition personnel agreed, "Ethnology was never so truthfully represented as at the Universal Exposition of 1904."[18]
The Exposition administrators must have been pleased, because according to Van Stone, on October 17. 1904, about six weeks before the Exposition was to close. McGee notified Star that, for the Ainu group, he was awarded a "Grand Prize", supplemented by a silver medal for Mr. Y. Inagaki. These prizes were awarded in the Ethnology, United States, Depart mental Exhibits category. The Ainu group's "primitive culture" which Prof. Starr exhibited at the St. Louis's World's Fair, centuries prior to his arrival had endured cultural transformations and economic dependency.
"On July 10, 1903, an imperial ordinance for the organization of the imperial Japanese commission to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition was issued by the Mikado to the effect that the imperial commission to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition should be under the supervision of the minister of state for agriculture and commerce, and should deal with all the matters relating to the participation of the Japanese Empire in the
Louisiana Purchase Exposition;"[19]
At the beginning of the 20th century, a global movement made by industrial nations and nation-state alike in attempt to farther modernize, industrialize, and militarize for purpose of expansionism. Asian countries particularly China with the exception of Japan experienced throughout the end of the 19th century exploitations and colonization largely made by Western states.
On this era which St. Louis's World's Fair of 1904 coincided with, Anna Christ writes," This was an era of international arm-wrestling in which losing countries were eclipsed, and China had been losing for some time".[20] After the Opium Wars, Great Britain, France, and Russia, followed by the United States had great economical power in East Asia. Japan understood Western intentions in the East, and Japanese tired to emerge from this aggressively imperialist period as much stronger nation than China by equating it self with the West.
The First Sino–Japanese War (1894 - 1895) was a war fought between Qing Dynasty China and Meiji Japan over the control of Korea[21]. The Sino-Japanese War symbolized the degeneration and weakness of the Qing dynasty and demonstrated to the Meiji Japan how successful westernization and modernization had been in Japan since the Restoration. After the war Japan took possession of Chinese territory and Formosa current day Taiwan.
According to Christ "Japanese were threatened by the U.S. seizure of the Philippines during the Spanish-American War. In 1900, when Japanese troops entered Peking with the Western powers in response to the Boxer Rebellion, it was apparent that the Japanese sought to measure up on the Western scale."[22]
The principal results from these events in East Asia, was a shift in regional power and dominance from China to Japan; from Chinese traditions of the Qing Dynasty to Emperor Meiji's Restoration.
Japan at the time of the World's Fair tired to raise its international status from defamed "Oriental" to a respected colonial power. The Japanese understood the World's Fair environment very well. And by 1904 Japan was an accomplished exposition participant and a promoter of its state and culture. Since the international exposition in Vienna in 1873,to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, Japan has participated in twenty-seven world's fairs. [23]
The Japanese, in views of accomplished St. Louis Fair cessionaries, were successful exhibitors on the Fairs' grounds. Because Japan along with Western nations was a model of “modern representational order” from East Asia, in which neither the Chinese nor the Ainu were. The Japanese official Commission to the fair sized the opportunity of the St. Louis Fair as a way to strengthen its dominant position in the Far East. According to Stevens," Her (Japan) participation in the exposition at St. Louis was more memorable in many respects than at any preceding exposition. In the first place, the exhibits never before occupied such an extensive area. It was three times as large as that occupied by Japan at the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the Paris Exposition of 1900, respectively."[24]
Notwithstanding the fact that there was only a short period of nine months between Japan's decision to participate and the opening of the fair, and that in the course of that comparatively short period the rupture of friendly relations between Russia and Japan greatly handicapped the latter's endeavors concerning the exposition, the officials and exhibitors pursued their preconceived plan without an interruption. In view of such disadvantages, the promptness and accuracy with which articles were brought into their destination, arranged, and displayed seasonably in proper form may well be regarded as remarkable.
The Official Commission to the Fair participated in almost each department of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Displays on an especially elaborate scale, however, could be found in the following eleven palaces, namely: Palaces of Education and Social Economy, Fine Arts, Liberal Arts, Manufactures, Varied Industries, Transportation, Mines, Forestry, Fish, and Game, Electricity, and Agriculture. The total area of space of the Japanese sections totaled 129,457[25] Square feet.
The Japanese sent “a fine collection” of decorative arts to the St.Louis fair.
According to Christ this was due to “political changes” giving “a new turn” to Japanese foreign policy. These changes surely led to the 1868 Meiji Restoration. The Vienna Exposition of 1873 marked the beginning of a more aggressive style of participation with which the Japanese announced their capabilities. The Meiji government spent three years planning the exhibit and another year choosing materials. From 1873 forward, Japanese governmental agencies staged exhibits in most international fairs[26].
Japan’s newly earned status as imperialist nation ensured its entry into St. Louis’s fine arts palace current day St. Louis Art museum. And just like the World's Fair founders, Japanese bureaucrats and businessmen made up the Japanese Official Commission to the Fair. According to Christ these officials persuaded Halsey Ives head of the Art building, for more space for more than two years prior to the fair.
They constantly requested more gallery space and held a juried event in Tokyo to choose the works to be sent to St. Louis. Shugio sent Ives a proposed gallery plan many months in advance and ended up with seven spacious galleries on which he spent an unusually large amount of money and attention, sending Japanese artists to St. Louis to paint friezes directly on the walls. The representative value of fine art was so high that Japan included an artist’s studio in its pavilion, a feature that no other nation offered. In addition to many other publications about their exhibits, the Japanese produced an elaborate fine arts catalog complete with artists’ names and a full array of photographs.
Japanese writers publishing in English during the era championed Japanese nationalism as they depicted a broken and dependent China. In Awakening of Japan Okakura proclaimed that Japan stood “alone against the world” without “the benefit of a living art in China.” In Ideals of the East he called Japan a “museum of Asiatic civilization” where “Chinese and Indian ideals” were preserved because “they were long since cast away by the hands that created them.
In Book of Tea, published the year following the St. Louis fair, Okakura described the Chinese as “old and disenchanted.” Hoshi had put the West on notice several years earlier by depicting Japan in a paternalistic stance, a common posture for colonial powers: “The nations of the West shall not be allowed to transform the soul of [the Chinese] people, no matter how much they may hack and cut at their flesh.” He also asserted that Japan had, "the same cause to uphold in China and the same interests to protect as other civilized nations." which reflected Western imperialist notion of ac-quiring Asian lands. And in another article Takahira expressed Japan’s determination to stop Russia from "acquiring any part of China’s territory."
Another example was Nitobe Inaz¯o’s book Bushido: The Soul of Japan published in 1901 and it was sold it in the Fair. In this book Nitobe tried to familiarize foreign readers with Japan, and also to demonstrate a parallel in Japanese and Western traditions. He effectively portrayed Japan as the moral equivalent of the Western powers in Asia because according to Anna Christ Nitobe heard that President Theodore Roosevelt actually had read Bushido.
St. Louis's Fair exhibition ordering helped Japan alternate the reading of Japan’s colonial position. By assigning Japan the title of imperial nation and colonial power: the protector of Chinese territory and the inheritor of Chinese culture. The Japanese Ainu exhibit was located closely to the U.S. Philippine and Native American exhibits at the Anthropology Department. And for the Ainu, Japan actually did collaborate with McGee's Anthropology Department to exhibit the Ainu as inferior to the people at the Fair. The eight Ainu "specimens" were considered inferior several stages to the Japanese in the claimed scientific poster titled "Types and Development of Man" at the Department.
To disassociate themselves from the Ainu, the Commission listed them primitive race. Ironically the Ainu were considered "simple barbarians" incapable of "civilization". Even though since the Ainu's arrival, the Ainu had built their houses cooked their food, competed in sports and, answered Fair gores questions.
It seemed apparent that Department of Anthropology at World's Fair categorization of the Ainu seemed to legitimize Japans' colonial venture in China.
According to Rydell the confusion surrounding the Ainu exhibit, made visitors think of the Ainu as spoils of japans' colony in the Far East. Those eight Ainu were the first of their people to come to the United States. Before the Fair according to Francis only one person out of 600 or more members of the Official Japanese Commission to the Fair had claimed to previously seen an Ainu.
The game of colonial competition on St. Louis World’s Fair is was part of a global colonial phenomenon. The McGee's Anthropology underplayed the Ainu's civilization, by displaying them as objects for study and experiments.
4 Francis David Rowland, 1850-1927."The Universal Exposition of 1904 / by David R. Francis." St. Louis, Mo.: Louisiana Purchase Exposition Company, 1913.
[2] 1903 the Exposition Concessionaires' Association. World’s Fair Bulletin 4912):34-35
[3] Rydell, Robert W.
[4] Frederick Starr The Ainu Group at the Saint-Louis Exposition.( Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company.1904)
[5] Van Stone, James W
[6] Anonymous1903~34-35; Mac Mechen 1904:Zl
[7] “Making Useful Citizens OF Ainu Subjects in Early Twentieth-Century Japan”.
[8] David L. Howell, Capitalism from Within: Economy, Society, and the State in a Japanese Fishery. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995) 5.
[9] Vanstone p.3
[10] Frederick Starr. The Ainu Group at the Saint-Louis Exposition (Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company.1904) 4
[11] Frederick Starr p.12
10 Frederick Starr p.15
[13] Starr p.12
[14] Starr p.12
[15] The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sunday. May 22. 1904
[16] (Hanson 1904:385, 393).
[17] Francis.
[18] Stevens, Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission.
[19] Walter B. Stevens 1904 p.8
[20] Anna C. Christ. "Japan's Seven Acres: Politics and Aesthetics at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition." (Durham: Duke University Press,1996): 2.
[21] Reischauer East Asia Tradition and Transformation
[22] Anna C. Christ p.2
[23] Walter B. Stevens p.273
[24] Walter B. Stevens
[25]
[26] Alcock Rutherford, Art and Art Industries in Japan (London: Virtue, 1878), 5.
In Rydell's All the Worlds a Fair, he argues that the world's fairs in America from 1876-1916 were a material vision of political, business, and intellectuals to promote their vision of racial dominance. According to Rydell's book the world fairs portrayed a sinister agenda. And the ideas of American progress were related to scientific racism. He also states that the world fair's organizers utilized the Fair in a "scientific" manner to racially segregate members of the American population and the world.
Moreover Anna carol Christ's' The Sole Guardians of the Art Inheritance of Asia": Japan at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, echoes Rydell points. In her article she focus on how the Japanese used their exhibits in the St. Louis's World's Fair, to take advantage of China's vulnerability. Both historians' accounts rises intriguing points onto the subject of the St. Louis Worlds Fair exhibits. The Ainu exhibit in the anthropology department and the "Japan Fair" seemed to connect on the same principles both historians mentioned but fagot to discuss which this paper will try to expand upon.
This paper looks at the role of Department of Anthropology at St. Louis Fair in exhibiting the Ainu group. This display of the Ainu served the general agenda of World's Fair and that of Japan. Also this paper will look at how the Imperial Japanese Commission to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition used its exhibits designed in Western style for self-promotional purposes, by the use of display, journalism, and literature. The Commission wanted to disassociates it self from anything that is uncivil on the Fair's grounds.
I will begin with a brief overview of the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair Anthropology Department at the Fair and its Ainu exhibit. Next I will look at the Japanese Commission to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition's "Fair Japan" exhibits related materials and publications produced in English for the Fair's audience.
In 1899 ninety delegates representing states and territories of the Louisiana Purchase met in St. Louis. Their meeting was to figure out how to memorialize the centennial acquisition of the Louisiana territory. After extensive discussions it was generally agreed on that the celebration would be best accomplished by creating an international exposition held in St. Louis, hence The Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904[1].
As the with World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, anthropology had a significant role in the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. According to the president of the St. Louis’s Fair David R. Francis, "the Anthropology reservation will carry representatives of upward of thirty living groups are to be seen in nature dress, living in houses of their own construction, cooking and eating the food to which they are accustomed at home, and practicing those simple arts and industries, which they themselves developed." to do the job Francis sought the help of Prof. W.J. McGee.
Prof. W. J. McGee was the head of the Bureau of American Ethnology in Washington, D.C. was appointed chief of the Department of Anthropology at the Exposition in the summer of 1903. Prof. W. J. McGee was considered then as the leading authority on anything anthropology. Especially during his tenure at the Bureau of American Ethnology in Washington, D.C. and prior to his appointment as chief of the Department of Anthropology St. Louis Fair, according to Rydell Prof. McGee was charged with financial irregularity, which forced him to resign the Washington position.
In Prof. McGee's early speeches in preparing for the Fair he assured the audience of mainly Fairs organizers that “the aim of the Department of Anthropology at the World's Fair will be to present human progress from the dark prime to the highest enlightenment; from savagery to civic organization, from egoism to altruism. The method will be to use living peoples in their accustomed avocations as great object lessons; failing these in some cases, we shall use human products to illustrate human progress".[2]
Prof. McGee created the most extensive anthropology exhibits of any world's fair before or since[3]. Although the Department of Anthropology featured traditional museum, or "still." exhibits in a building on the camps of Washington University, the main emphasis, as McGee had promised, was on "living peoples," outdoor ethnographic exhibits located on an extensive "anthropology reservation" where representatives of up-ward to thirty living groups are to he seen in native dress, living in houses of their own construction, cooking and eating the food to which they are accustomed at home, and practicing those simple arts and industries, which they have. Themselves developed"[4].
According to Vanstone living groups, or "out-of-doors exhibits" as it was labeled by concessionaires, had been used for the first time in U.S. in the Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893. And in a way Prof. McGee was trying to equal Prof. F. W. Putnam efforts in displaying anthropology to the public. Moreover the anthropology reserve was not the only place where Native peoples were to be exhibited as "living peoples". Another popular feature of the Exposition was "The Pike".
The Pike was described by David Francis, as a "living color page of the world." And it ranged as mile long amusement adjunct, and it was referred to as St. Louis's equivalent to Chicago's Midway of 1893. On the Pike food, beverages, rides, shows, souvenirs, and the living groups were displayed along each other. Here the various anthropological concessions exhibits were set up. The exhibits included a Chinese village a Moorish palace and according to Vanstone the Pikes' most popular the Esquimaux village concession[5]. Also Native American Indians concessions were built, the "Cliff Dwellers," where the Hopi and Zuni Indians tribes form Colorado displayed hand made crafts and danced for the fairgoers.
For the Pike visitors paid different admission fee every time they wanted to visit an exhibit along The Pike, the fees in return went to each exhibits' concessionaire[6]. Visitors to the Anthropology exhibits had the opportunity to watch the primitives from all around the world. First visitors watched the natives pursuing daily activities on the reserved land for anthropology, and then on the more a commercialized concession exhibits. The emphasis on the later one was theatrical display and entertainment.
To represent a living group from Japan, McGee and Exposition officials picked the Ainu of Hokkaido Island. Ainu have long been the subject of academic debate. And in actuality it was not the first time American had heard of them. the Ainu were particularly noted for their hairy bodies in The Atlantic Monthly, article titled In a Quest of a Shadow by Todd Loomis in September 1897.As Loomis referred to them as "Hairy Ainu". And perhaps it was for their controversial background that McGee felt that Ainu had to be present at the World Fair.
During Tokugawa (Edo) Period (1603 - 1867) the Ainu population on Main Island Japan has been reduced and moved farther north Japanese isle to Hokkaido. Under the Matsumae domain grants and permissions were given to wealthy Tokyo and Osaka merchant to utilize the land and its fishery. This domain continued its commercializing plans, and demand for fishery labor eventually lead to the Ainu's subjugation militarily[7].
According to David Howell "trade originating in this medieval period and, the proto-industrial production that eventually evolved out of it, made the Ainu dependent for their subsistence upon the Matsumae domain and its agents, particularly the established concept of contract-fishery operation which the Matsumae Domain had brought to Hokkaido." by the end of the Tokugawa period labor in the commercial fishery the Matsumae domain had created, according to Howell "was at least as important to the Ainu economy as traditional hunting and gathering activities."[8]
During Meiji period commonly known as Meiji Restoration period that lasted from 1868 to 1912, Ainu culture and society witnessed tremendous decline. This is important because the restoration that the Meiji brought was heavily concentrated on westernizing Japan by democratizing and industrializing the island. The Restoration the Meiji introduced made new and aggressive policies of assimilation. To the Ainu the Restoration came in the form of deculturation, which sought to eliminate everything from their language and other manifestations of Ainu's native culture. The policies were devastatingly effective.
On January 18 1904 McGee wrote instructing Starr for his trip to Japan, " You are to secure the voluntary attendance at the Exposition of eight or ten Ainu tribesmen, preferably comprising one or two families, with such appurtenances as may be required to permit them to live in their accustomed way throughout the period of the Exposition, in a habitation or habitations erected by themselves on the Exposition grounds."[9] Also Starr was given a letter of introduction from President Francis to the Commissioner General of the Imperial Japanese Commission for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in Tokyo.
Starr arrived at a time when Meiji Japan was preparing for war with Russia. And apparently Starr was surprised to how the Japanese officials accommodation to his mission went peacefully, even though war was brewing. Starr noted his experience about that time stating " But, through this period of stress and preparation, of dispatching troops and moving war equipment, we were never disrupted or delayed in our mission; those officials, whom we were obliged to meet, received us with the same courtesy and attended to our requests with same care and promptness, as if it were a time of complete peace."[10]
When Starr reached Hokkaido he was advised to meet Rev. John Batchelor in his house on outskirts of Sapporo city. According to Starr "The Rev. John Batchelor came to Yezo in I879, a young man of twenty-four years. He has lived here ever since- more than half his lifetime. A clergyman of the Church of England and a missionary of the Church Missionary Society, he labors among both Japanese and Ainu, but considers himself particularly called to be 'the Apostle to the Ainu'. He knows this people as no other stranger, Japanese or "foreigner," does. He has visited their villages in all parts of the island; he speaks their language more perfectly than their own young people do; he has studied their life, and thought, and fancies. He is their friend and adviser in need and trouble.
While his converts among them may number nine hundred, his acquaintance and influence extends to thousands. He has actually lived for years in their villages, especially Piratori and Horobets. He has written a Dictionary and a Grammar of the Ainu language and has translated the Psalms, the New Testament, several Bible narratives, he is the author of the two best books upon their life and thought The Ainu of Japan and The Ainu and Their Folk-lore."[11] While Starr stay with the Rev. saw his first Ainu.
With Rev. John Bachelors' help Starr was able to obtain the Ainu group he came for. His group consisted of two couples in their mid fifties Sangea Hirmura husband, and his wife Santukno. Two younger couples Kutoroge Hiramura husband and his wife Shutratek and their two young girls Kin and Kiku; and slightly younger couple, Yazo Osawa husband, age twenty-three, and his wife Shirake, age eighteen; and a twenty-six years old Main Land native Coro Bete for translation[12].
According to David R. Francis President of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, who was shared the views of McGee, "the Ainu were selected to illustrate industries connected with body ward movement, a primitive agriculture which has produced a distinctive Corm of millet, specialized architecture befitting a trying climate, A most primitive musical system and a bear-cult; and in the hope of acquainting the world for the first time with the full law and faith of a little-known primitive people".
The Ainu group eventually arrived to St. Louis and was brought to St. Louis Worlds Fair grounds. Materials for the construction of the Ainu house were brought on May 11, and the Ainu were "astonishingly prompt"[13] in erecting their house (Fig1). The Ainu worked on their house in the present of a group of invited guests, which included W. J. McGee and George A. Dorsey, curator of anthropology at the Field Columbian Museum in Chicago. According to Vanstone Prof. Frederick Starr was teaching his class in Chicago and couldn't come to the meeting.
The Ainu group eventually arrived to St. Louis and was brought to St. Louis Worlds Fair grounds. Materials for the construction of the Ainu house were brought on May 11, and the Ainu were "astonishingly prompt"[14] in erecting their house (Fig1). The Ainu worked on their house in the present of a group of invited guests, which included W. J. McGee and George A. Dorsey, curator of anthropology at the Field Columbian Museum in Chicago. According to Vanstone Prof. Frederick Starr was teaching his class in Chicago and couldn't come to the meeting.
Prof. McGee provided the necessary building materials for the Ainu, and they according Vanstone were a prompt in using the materials to build their house for the six-month period of the Fair. Surprisingly Ainu were familiar with building material, because in one picture from the Fair, the Ainu appeared as if they were in an actual village-house that Starr had found them in.
An interpreter provided by the Japanese Commission to Fair, Mr. Inagaki, presided over traditional ceremonies with a Christian dedication scheduled for the following Sunday [15]. During their stay at the Exposition the Ainu surprised the visitors by holding Christian religious services and, on several occasions, attending services at a nearby Episcopal church.
All the living groups at the Exposition a subject matter of lectures by students and scientists. The Ainu were measured, questioned, and they faced ethnology classes while professors lectured on their customs, religion, and ceremonies. According to J. Stone "Frederick Starr taught a three-week course, beginning on September 1, entitled 'The Louisiana Purchase Exposition Class in Ethnology,' for which students Could receive credits in their major subjects. It attracted about 30 students from the University of Chicago and some St. Louis schoolteachers."
Starr's lectured on the Ainu was between 9 to 10:00 am, titled the physical characteristics of race. The Ainu, like the other living groups, were tolerant of questions asked to them sometimes through the interpreter. Hanson for his Official History of the World's Fair wrote about this "Pertinent and impertinent, about themselves without asking return information respecting the white people who were studying them". One enthusiastic writer referred to the Ainu as "mysterious little Japanese primitives" and noted that visitors were impressed by their cleanliness and polite manners, but somewhat disappointed that they were not "man-eaters, dog eaters or wild men"[16]
August marked "Anthropology Days", which were Olympic type contests and activities in the Exposition. The contests involved the members of the living groups in sport competitions. The sports ranged from running, high jumping, archery and, spear throwing. The Ainu, Patagonians, Eskimos, Native Americans, Philippine and African groups were all competing. For example the Ainu and Patagonians tribe from Argentina competed in archery contests. The winners were given American flags instead of gold medals.
The Ainu group elicited particular interest because they were the first of their people to come to the United States; they were not well known even in their own country. It is noteworthy that of the more than 600 persons in the Japanese entourage at the Exposition, only one person had previously seen an Ainu[17].
The Department of Anthropology was credited with great success in presenting the world's peoples "true to life." including, of course, the Ainu. Visitors and Exposition personnel agreed, "Ethnology was never so truthfully represented as at the Universal Exposition of 1904."[18]
The Exposition administrators must have been pleased, because according to Van Stone, on October 17. 1904, about six weeks before the Exposition was to close. McGee notified Star that, for the Ainu group, he was awarded a "Grand Prize", supplemented by a silver medal for Mr. Y. Inagaki. These prizes were awarded in the Ethnology, United States, Depart mental Exhibits category. The Ainu group's "primitive culture" which Prof. Starr exhibited at the St. Louis's World's Fair, centuries prior to his arrival had endured cultural transformations and economic dependency.
"On July 10, 1903, an imperial ordinance for the organization of the imperial Japanese commission to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition was issued by the Mikado to the effect that the imperial commission to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition should be under the supervision of the minister of state for agriculture and commerce, and should deal with all the matters relating to the participation of the Japanese Empire in the
Louisiana Purchase Exposition;"[19]
At the beginning of the 20th century, a global movement made by industrial nations and nation-state alike in attempt to farther modernize, industrialize, and militarize for purpose of expansionism. Asian countries particularly China with the exception of Japan experienced throughout the end of the 19th century exploitations and colonization largely made by Western states.
On this era which St. Louis's World's Fair of 1904 coincided with, Anna Christ writes," This was an era of international arm-wrestling in which losing countries were eclipsed, and China had been losing for some time".[20] After the Opium Wars, Great Britain, France, and Russia, followed by the United States had great economical power in East Asia. Japan understood Western intentions in the East, and Japanese tired to emerge from this aggressively imperialist period as much stronger nation than China by equating it self with the West.
The First Sino–Japanese War (1894 - 1895) was a war fought between Qing Dynasty China and Meiji Japan over the control of Korea[21]. The Sino-Japanese War symbolized the degeneration and weakness of the Qing dynasty and demonstrated to the Meiji Japan how successful westernization and modernization had been in Japan since the Restoration. After the war Japan took possession of Chinese territory and Formosa current day Taiwan.
According to Christ "Japanese were threatened by the U.S. seizure of the Philippines during the Spanish-American War. In 1900, when Japanese troops entered Peking with the Western powers in response to the Boxer Rebellion, it was apparent that the Japanese sought to measure up on the Western scale."[22]
The principal results from these events in East Asia, was a shift in regional power and dominance from China to Japan; from Chinese traditions of the Qing Dynasty to Emperor Meiji's Restoration.
Japan at the time of the World's Fair tired to raise its international status from defamed "Oriental" to a respected colonial power. The Japanese understood the World's Fair environment very well. And by 1904 Japan was an accomplished exposition participant and a promoter of its state and culture. Since the international exposition in Vienna in 1873,to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, Japan has participated in twenty-seven world's fairs. [23]
The Japanese, in views of accomplished St. Louis Fair cessionaries, were successful exhibitors on the Fairs' grounds. Because Japan along with Western nations was a model of “modern representational order” from East Asia, in which neither the Chinese nor the Ainu were. The Japanese official Commission to the fair sized the opportunity of the St. Louis Fair as a way to strengthen its dominant position in the Far East. According to Stevens," Her (Japan) participation in the exposition at St. Louis was more memorable in many respects than at any preceding exposition. In the first place, the exhibits never before occupied such an extensive area. It was three times as large as that occupied by Japan at the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the Paris Exposition of 1900, respectively."[24]
Notwithstanding the fact that there was only a short period of nine months between Japan's decision to participate and the opening of the fair, and that in the course of that comparatively short period the rupture of friendly relations between Russia and Japan greatly handicapped the latter's endeavors concerning the exposition, the officials and exhibitors pursued their preconceived plan without an interruption. In view of such disadvantages, the promptness and accuracy with which articles were brought into their destination, arranged, and displayed seasonably in proper form may well be regarded as remarkable.
The Official Commission to the Fair participated in almost each department of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Displays on an especially elaborate scale, however, could be found in the following eleven palaces, namely: Palaces of Education and Social Economy, Fine Arts, Liberal Arts, Manufactures, Varied Industries, Transportation, Mines, Forestry, Fish, and Game, Electricity, and Agriculture. The total area of space of the Japanese sections totaled 129,457[25] Square feet.
The Japanese sent “a fine collection” of decorative arts to the St.Louis fair.
According to Christ this was due to “political changes” giving “a new turn” to Japanese foreign policy. These changes surely led to the 1868 Meiji Restoration. The Vienna Exposition of 1873 marked the beginning of a more aggressive style of participation with which the Japanese announced their capabilities. The Meiji government spent three years planning the exhibit and another year choosing materials. From 1873 forward, Japanese governmental agencies staged exhibits in most international fairs[26].
Japan’s newly earned status as imperialist nation ensured its entry into St. Louis’s fine arts palace current day St. Louis Art museum. And just like the World's Fair founders, Japanese bureaucrats and businessmen made up the Japanese Official Commission to the Fair. According to Christ these officials persuaded Halsey Ives head of the Art building, for more space for more than two years prior to the fair.
They constantly requested more gallery space and held a juried event in Tokyo to choose the works to be sent to St. Louis. Shugio sent Ives a proposed gallery plan many months in advance and ended up with seven spacious galleries on which he spent an unusually large amount of money and attention, sending Japanese artists to St. Louis to paint friezes directly on the walls. The representative value of fine art was so high that Japan included an artist’s studio in its pavilion, a feature that no other nation offered. In addition to many other publications about their exhibits, the Japanese produced an elaborate fine arts catalog complete with artists’ names and a full array of photographs.
Japanese writers publishing in English during the era championed Japanese nationalism as they depicted a broken and dependent China. In Awakening of Japan Okakura proclaimed that Japan stood “alone against the world” without “the benefit of a living art in China.” In Ideals of the East he called Japan a “museum of Asiatic civilization” where “Chinese and Indian ideals” were preserved because “they were long since cast away by the hands that created them.
In Book of Tea, published the year following the St. Louis fair, Okakura described the Chinese as “old and disenchanted.” Hoshi had put the West on notice several years earlier by depicting Japan in a paternalistic stance, a common posture for colonial powers: “The nations of the West shall not be allowed to transform the soul of [the Chinese] people, no matter how much they may hack and cut at their flesh.” He also asserted that Japan had, "the same cause to uphold in China and the same interests to protect as other civilized nations." which reflected Western imperialist notion of ac-quiring Asian lands. And in another article Takahira expressed Japan’s determination to stop Russia from "acquiring any part of China’s territory."
Another example was Nitobe Inaz¯o’s book Bushido: The Soul of Japan published in 1901 and it was sold it in the Fair. In this book Nitobe tried to familiarize foreign readers with Japan, and also to demonstrate a parallel in Japanese and Western traditions. He effectively portrayed Japan as the moral equivalent of the Western powers in Asia because according to Anna Christ Nitobe heard that President Theodore Roosevelt actually had read Bushido.
St. Louis's Fair exhibition ordering helped Japan alternate the reading of Japan’s colonial position. By assigning Japan the title of imperial nation and colonial power: the protector of Chinese territory and the inheritor of Chinese culture. The Japanese Ainu exhibit was located closely to the U.S. Philippine and Native American exhibits at the Anthropology Department. And for the Ainu, Japan actually did collaborate with McGee's Anthropology Department to exhibit the Ainu as inferior to the people at the Fair. The eight Ainu "specimens" were considered inferior several stages to the Japanese in the claimed scientific poster titled "Types and Development of Man" at the Department.
To disassociate themselves from the Ainu, the Commission listed them primitive race. Ironically the Ainu were considered "simple barbarians" incapable of "civilization". Even though since the Ainu's arrival, the Ainu had built their houses cooked their food, competed in sports and, answered Fair gores questions.
It seemed apparent that Department of Anthropology at World's Fair categorization of the Ainu seemed to legitimize Japans' colonial venture in China.
According to Rydell the confusion surrounding the Ainu exhibit, made visitors think of the Ainu as spoils of japans' colony in the Far East. Those eight Ainu were the first of their people to come to the United States. Before the Fair according to Francis only one person out of 600 or more members of the Official Japanese Commission to the Fair had claimed to previously seen an Ainu.
The game of colonial competition on St. Louis World’s Fair is was part of a global colonial phenomenon. The McGee's Anthropology underplayed the Ainu's civilization, by displaying them as objects for study and experiments.
4 Francis David Rowland, 1850-1927."The Universal Exposition of 1904 / by David R. Francis." St. Louis, Mo.: Louisiana Purchase Exposition Company, 1913.
[2] 1903 the Exposition Concessionaires' Association. World’s Fair Bulletin 4912):34-35
[3] Rydell, Robert W.
[4] Frederick Starr The Ainu Group at the Saint-Louis Exposition.( Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company.1904)
[5] Van Stone, James W
[6] Anonymous1903~34-35; Mac Mechen 1904:Zl
[7] “Making Useful Citizens OF Ainu Subjects in Early Twentieth-Century Japan”.
[8] David L. Howell, Capitalism from Within: Economy, Society, and the State in a Japanese Fishery. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995) 5.
[9] Vanstone p.3
[10] Frederick Starr. The Ainu Group at the Saint-Louis Exposition (Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company.1904) 4
[11] Frederick Starr p.12
10 Frederick Starr p.15
[13] Starr p.12
[14] Starr p.12
[15] The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sunday. May 22. 1904
[16] (Hanson 1904:385, 393).
[17] Francis.
[18] Stevens, Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission.
[19] Walter B. Stevens 1904 p.8
[20] Anna C. Christ. "Japan's Seven Acres: Politics and Aesthetics at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition." (Durham: Duke University Press,1996): 2.
[21] Reischauer East Asia Tradition and Transformation
[22] Anna C. Christ p.2
[23] Walter B. Stevens p.273
[24] Walter B. Stevens
[25]
[26] Alcock Rutherford, Art and Art Industries in Japan (London: Virtue, 1878), 5.
freedom ???
Ask any learned American to name the deadliest war the united state had ever been involved in and they would sure to say the Civil War. Equal perhaps to the Second World War the civil war had spawned more books fictional and none, movies also fictional or reenactment of actual events and battles. So much so that it is only dwarfed in bulk by academic papers in scholarly magazines on it causes and on its effects. Everywhere you go in the nation you are reminded of it. Either through museums or national parks dedicated to it. As if that is not enough every year, so called Civil War clubs commemorate certain key or bloody battles, like that of Gettysburg, by reenacting it. Full with authentic uniforms and arms down to the food they ate. But the effect of the Civil War cannot be only seen by such displays to its memory. The Civil War’s effect on the American consciousness and how the nation function as a nation is real. It is perhaps ironic that both sides of the conflict fought to attain the same goal, freedom. The north fought for freedom of the slaves, while the south fought for the freedom of maintaining its way of life. More then that the south fought to keep itself free from, what it perceived, as an interfering federal government. But what lessons did the united state derive from its deadliest of all wars; and above all how did it look back at the Civil War and even more importantly the prewar period. Did things truly change that much for the African now freed slaves in the reconstruction period or did things remain the same. Did they remain in poverty and harassed in their efforts for self-determination. Or did their northerner white liberators tried to carry them along to the their own status of life and living.
Gone With the Wind is perhaps the most famous movie about the civil war period other then perhaps the silent Birth of a Nation. Produced in 1939, it starred Clark Gable as Rhett Butler and Vivien Leigh as Scarlet O'Hara. The movie follows the lives of its two heroes against the backdrop of the Civil War era, including what life was like before and during the reconstruction period. In it’s beginning the movie shows southerners in fine clothing and acting in genteel manners. That is how most American even now remembers the pre Civil War south. In fact the following words introduced the movie “ There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South. Here in this pretty world, Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind…” But of course the truth was far from the prettily painted picture. The old south was filled with suffocating cotton plantations. With slaves, who were sold, bought, punished, rewarded, clothed, fed, married, divorced and finally allowed to live, all according to their masters whim and wish.
So did the American view of the south change after the civil war. Now days the south is viewed as backwards full of citizen who are in the majority uneducated and ardently racist. Who even after they had gone to war and their defeat still oppressed the black population. But was the south alone in their attitude. Northerners may claim equal rights and freedom but when it came to putting it to practice were they agreeable and eager? The answer was unfortunately was no. Though there were no organized lynching mobs as it was in the south and complete disregard to the human life of blacks. There was in the north an indifferent that is in many ways worse then what was happening to the blacks in the south. Worst of all was the unfulfilled promise of Forty acres and a mule promised to every freed slave. An economic force that would have lifted the blacks from their abject poverty, which continues to this day as was shamefully revealed after the hurricane Katrina crisis.
It is true that the united state was slow in learning the lessons of the civil war. That oppressed people will one day stand up and fight for their rights and what is due to them. No more can this be seen then in the events of 1863 depicted in the movie Gangs of New York. When finally low wages and slave-like work places driven the angry and hate filled workers to a deadly riot. When exploited immigrants turned to what they saw as the reason for their low wages and miserable life, not the owners and factories but their minority black coworkers. But were they to blame for their hatred. During the reconstruction period the north saw an influx of African American escaping the continued bigotry of the south seeking their fortune in industry of the north, an industry that had for long been dominated by European immigrants.
The victorious north had failed miserably to assimilate the south and usher it into the industrial age. Worse it failed to protect the freed slaves who now looked forward to make their living as free human beings with all due dignity. At first the north seemed genuine in its fight for freedom. In fact General Sherman, with the approval of the War Department, issued a Special Field Order No. 15 on January 16, 1865. The order stated that "the islands of Charleston south, the abandoned rice fields along the rivers for thirty miles back from the sea, and the country bordering St. Johns River, Florida are reserved and set apart for the settlement of Negroes now made free by the acts of war and the proclamation of the President of the United States." Furthermore, Sherman's order specified freedmen would be offered assistance "to enable them to establish a peaceable agricultural settlement." Then president Andrew Johnson in an act of what he hoped reconciliatory pardoned many of the landowners, who of course later pressured him to rescinded all land titles and return the lands to their previous owners. It was also president Johnson who vetoed the Homestead Act of 1862 and every other plan that would help the free slaves raise from their dismal economic status. Even efforts to have congress act failed. So in desperation the free slaves went back to work the fields from which they were liberated from few years back and it was as if the civil war had not been fought at all and half a million men did not give their lives to it.
So what is the conclusion of the civil war? What has the united sate learned from it? the answer to both is nothing. The civil war had again to be fought in the fifties on till the seventies and arguably till today. African Americans are still among the poorest minorities in the country. Plagued by ignorance and every other calamity to befall the people a modern society. They suffer from high rates of alcoholism, drug abuse and HIV. In every city in the nation they live in the most poorly maintained neighborhoods. They are discriminated against on a daily bases and blamed for, freely in secret and deviously in public, the affliction of the country. Still African American of today are in a much better condition then their forefathers. But above all the African American of today realized that in order to lift themselves from their condition they have to fight for themselves and that is a cause for hope.
Gattaca
What make us what we are? What determines our fate, our fortunes in life? What factor or more elevate a Man to the echelon of society while many others have to grovel and suffer at the bottom? Philosophers have pondered the question of self, of what makes us, us, for centuries and the prevailing answer for as long was the divine.
They believed the gods provide humans with abilities and characteristics that set them apart and above other Men. Following that thought to its perhaps inevitable conclusion, some Men are directly descended from the gods. Alexander the great claimed such a relation to justify his sovereignty over his people. He was neither the first nor the last in making such a calim. Roman emperors have made such claims so did their inheritors the Roman Catholics popes who claimed to derive their authority directly from god. So here is one answer to what makes us, us, God. God is the provider of abilities and talents that distinguish one Man from another. That can make a king or queen of one and a beggar of another.
There are inherited fallacies with such a conclusion. History is full of kings and queens who have been cruel and sadistic by the admission of their own people and of others. So when they are at there worst what does that say about the nature of god to have chosen such a representative? Another problem of such a claim is, it eliminate free will. Free will is simply no longer an option, if what I am to become in life has already been predetermined. Another view of the same answer is that god only provides us with the opportunity to become and it is up to the individual to exert the effort to advance in their position. This answer is of course a compromise between free will and fate though it relay heavily on fate. Meaning that there are people who through god, are better equipped to succeed in life then others. By being born to a rich family that can provide an education; or with an above-then-average intelligence; or with physical attributes that are superiors to others.
Then came Darwin and replaced god with nature. Dispelling the notion of divine choice. Man was no longer ‘ a flock of sheep,’ in need of a shepherd telling him what to do. Man is now in possession of free will. He is the maker of his own destiny. Determinism is no longer the explanation of who we are.
Then came along advances in mathematics, chemistry and physics, which led to breakthrough in biology and anthropology, by providing practitioners with the tools to investigate. Slowly the brain is giving up its secrets and so is gene the building block of humans. Not a day goes by when we hear of a new discovered gene that control some aspect of our behavior or strongly influences it. So once again Man is no longer the master of his own destiny and is slowly, once again, approaching the conclusion of determinism.
Before when god was the deciding factor prayer was a way for a favorable attributes in the off spring. Although we are not there yet, soon skill and money would be the guarantee of favorable outcome.
Art has always been under the influence of philosophy following its trends for how long those trends prevail. The Greek thought Man as the ideal creation. So Greek artists for centuries celebrated the idea by carving the most exquisite statues to show off the human form. What the Greek artist did in their time modern artist still do today with more choices of a medium.
Movies can be seen as the culminations of all the arts into one. Providing us with visual presentation as well as a written one. So it comes to no surprise that since its foundation the cinema had been used to discuss philosophical issues, however, often doing so covertly, so as not to offend contemporary laws or tastes. Metropolis and Charlie Chaplin’s movies to name a few are clear examples of movies reflecting the fears and philosophy of their time.
Gattaca is such a movie. Under the guise of science fiction the movie tries to discuss the possibilities of once we arrive at a point when humans are engineered and programmed to what they may become in life. It tries to answer the question of which is stronger Nature or Nurture. Do we choose what to become or are we born with attributes the forces us to what we become.
The movie centers on the life or a young man whose parents have chosen to conceive him naturally without the help of science. The result is a young man with the intellect and ambition unparalleled by his un-tampered with physical attributes. Refusing to let his spirit hampered by his fate the young man takes extreme measures to realize his dream of becoming an astronaut. Armed with his unbound ambition and assuming some one else’s life the young man finally realizes his dream.
The movie touches on a very fundamental question, fate or free will? What are the consequences of either on our morals? While the young man whom the hero of the movie assume his identity was born with all the chances science can provide for success he chooses not to. Choosing instead a life of pleasure, which leads him to an accident that renders him crippled for the rest of his life. Another character is the leader of the project who commits murder and lie when asked if he did it, citing in his defense that he does not have the gene to commit murder.
The movie doesn’t make an argument against determinism but it makes one for free will. Saying in essence that a good gene only provides us with the opportunity to become and it is up to the individual to exert the effort to advance in their position. This answer is again a compromise between free will and fate. Claiming, as with the influence of god, that there are people who through a good gene, are better equipped to succeed in life then others.
On the other hand the movie makes the strong argument that even with good genes behavior cannot be predicted and there is no account to how far humans would push themselves to succeed in life or in whatever enterprise they choose to peruse. Illustrating this final concept with another bout between the naturally born hero and his engineered brother. A rematch of when for the first time the less ordinary, our hero, realizes that with determination he can over comes the ordinary, his engineered brother. A rematch that makes the point of the movie, that without the will to match engineered attributes are not guarantee of success in life.
James Webb
Ever since the dropping of the nuclear bomb on Japan, the question of whether the U.S has been justified in its action or not has been up to debate, with many arguments on both sides of the issue. Although unstated anywhere in the excerpts the author, James Webb, is of the opinion that the U.S was justified in following the only course it had available to it at the time that is dropping the bombs. In not clearly stating his position on the matter the author has committed his first of many fallacies staining the excerpts.
Beginning with the first paragraph one can note the first fallacy the author has committed, that of his windy preamble, with his bit about Albert Einstein. Which can also be read, combined or viewed with the mention of the mayor of Nagasaki’s words, as a weaseler. Einstein’s words and the mayor’s serve no purpose and have no relevance to the argument the author is trying to make. Unless he was attempting by mentioning the mayor’s words, to sow indignation in the reader (assuming they are all Americans) by saying they have been compared to the Nazis.
Another weasler in my opinion is giving the number of casualties after both bombings. Again the numbers are useless facts because they are not even used in comparison to how many the Japanese have killed when they bombed Chinese cites.
The numbers are giving to us in the second paragraph where the author commits other fallacies. The first is “Two wrongs don’t make right.” By insinuating the high casualties from the droppings of the nuclear bombs evens the score since the Japanese have also killed many people with their bombs. The author’s other mistake is his voicing of a popular assumption, “…if Japan had had nuclear weapons, it would have used them.” Without giving facts or reasons of such an assumption.
In the third paragraph the most noticeable is the ‘Proof surrogate,’ fallacy. Giving us the opinions of experts without giving us the number of the experts or their credentials. Not even how they have arrived at their conclusion. More subtle fallacy is the use of words that has an emotive force behind them. “…U.S historians…” as compared to “…some historians…” without giving them a nationality. As if saying no U.S historian would hold to the same opinion. Also his appeal to popular belief by writing “,more U.S historians…” is another fallacy in the same paragraph.
In the fourth paragraph the author commits the fallacy of composition and division. Finding the larger population guilty of the crime committed by the less representative and much smaller Japanese army.
Along with the noted fallacies above the author has also committed perhaps his most noticeable fallacy, innuendo. The whole excerpts is full of it, with at least one in ever paragraph.
Beginning with the first paragraph one can note the first fallacy the author has committed, that of his windy preamble, with his bit about Albert Einstein. Which can also be read, combined or viewed with the mention of the mayor of Nagasaki’s words, as a weaseler. Einstein’s words and the mayor’s serve no purpose and have no relevance to the argument the author is trying to make. Unless he was attempting by mentioning the mayor’s words, to sow indignation in the reader (assuming they are all Americans) by saying they have been compared to the Nazis.
Another weasler in my opinion is giving the number of casualties after both bombings. Again the numbers are useless facts because they are not even used in comparison to how many the Japanese have killed when they bombed Chinese cites.
The numbers are giving to us in the second paragraph where the author commits other fallacies. The first is “Two wrongs don’t make right.” By insinuating the high casualties from the droppings of the nuclear bombs evens the score since the Japanese have also killed many people with their bombs. The author’s other mistake is his voicing of a popular assumption, “…if Japan had had nuclear weapons, it would have used them.” Without giving facts or reasons of such an assumption.
In the third paragraph the most noticeable is the ‘Proof surrogate,’ fallacy. Giving us the opinions of experts without giving us the number of the experts or their credentials. Not even how they have arrived at their conclusion. More subtle fallacy is the use of words that has an emotive force behind them. “…U.S historians…” as compared to “…some historians…” without giving them a nationality. As if saying no U.S historian would hold to the same opinion. Also his appeal to popular belief by writing “,more U.S historians…” is another fallacy in the same paragraph.
In the fourth paragraph the author commits the fallacy of composition and division. Finding the larger population guilty of the crime committed by the less representative and much smaller Japanese army.
Along with the noted fallacies above the author has also committed perhaps his most noticeable fallacy, innuendo. The whole excerpts is full of it, with at least one in ever paragraph.
Trans-Siberian Railroad
However, though Russia had built the Trans-Siberian Railroad (1891-1904), it still lacked the transportation facilities necessary to reinforce its limited armed forces in Manchuria with sufficient men and supplies. Japan, by contrast, had steadily expanded its army since its war with China in 1894 and by 1904 had gained a marked superiority over Russia in the number of ground troops in the Far East. After Russia reneged in 1903 on an agreement to withdraw its troops from Manchuria, Japan decided it was time to attack.
The war began on Feb. 8, 1904, when the main Japanese fleet launched a surprise attack and siege on the Russian naval squadron at Port Arthur. In March the Japanese landed an army in Korea that quickly overran that country. In May another Japanese army landed on the Liaotung Peninsula, and on May 26 it cut off the Port Arthur garrison from the main body of Russian forces in Manchuria. The Japanese then pushed northward, and the Russian army fell back to Mukden (now Shen-yang) after losing battles at Fu-hsien (June 14) and Liao-yang (August 25), south of Mukden. In October the Russians went back on the offensive with the help of reinforcements received via the Trans-Siberian Railroad, but their attacks proved indecisive owing to poor military leadership.
The Japanese had also settled down to a long siege of Port Arthur after several very costly general assaults on it had failed. The garrison's military leadership proved divided, however, and on Jan. 2, 1905, in a gross act of incompetence and corruption, Port Arthur's Russian commander surrendered the port to the Japanese without consulting his officers and with three months' provisions and adequate supplies of ammunition still in the fortress.
The final battle of the land war was fought at Mukden in late February and early March 1905, between Russian forces totaling 330,000 men and Japanese totaling 270,000. After long and stubborn fighting and heavy casualties on both sides, the Russian commander, General A.N. Kuropatkin, broke off the fighting and withdrew his forces northward from Mukden, which fell into the hands of the Japanese. Losses in this battle were exceptionally heavy, with approximately 89,000 Russian and 71,000 Japanese casualties.
The naval Battle of Tsushima finally gave the Japanese the upper hand in the conflict. The Japanese had been unable to secure the complete command of the sea on which their land campaign depended, and the Russian squadrons at Port Arthur and Vladivostok had remained moderately active. But on May 27-29, 1905, in a battle in the Tsushima Straits, Admiral Togo Heihachiro's main Japanese fleet destroyed the Russian Baltic Fleet, which, commanded by Admiral Z.P. Rozhestvensky, had sailed in October 1904 all the way from the Baltic port of Liepaja to relieve the forces at Port Arthur and at the time of the battle was trying to reach Vladivostok. (See Tsushima, Battle of.) Japan was by this time financially exhausted, but its decisive naval victory at Tsushima, together with increasing internal political unrest throughout Russia, where the war had never been popular, brought the Russian government to the peace table.
President Theodore Roosevelt of the United States served as mediator at the peace conference, which was held at Portsmouth, N.H., U.S. (Aug. 9-Sept. 5, 1905). In the resulting Treaty of Portsmouth, Japan gained control of the Liaotung Peninsula (and Port Arthur) and the South Manchurian railroad (which led to Port Arthur), as well as half of Sakhalin Island. Russia agreed to evacuate southern Manchuria, which was restored to China, and Japan's control of Korea was recognized. Within two months of the treaty's signing, a revolution compelled the Russian tsar Nicholas II to issue the October Manifesto, which was the equivalent of a constitutional charter.
*****
Battle of Tsushima (May 27-29, 1905), naval engagement of the Russo-Japanese War, the final, crushing defeat of the Russian navy in that conflict.
The Japanese had been unable to secure the complete command of the sea because the Russian naval squadrons at Port Arthur and Vladivostok made sorties and both sides suffered losses in the ensuing engagements. Meanwhile, the Russian government decided to send the Baltic Fleet all the way to the Far East under the command of Admiral Zinovy Petrovich Rozhestvensky to link up with the Pacific Squadron at Port Arthur, upon which the combined fleets would overwhelm the Japanese navy. The Russian Baltic Fleet, having spent the whole summer fitting out, sailed from Liepaja on Oct. 15, 1904. Off the Dogger Bank (in the North Sea) on October 21, several Russian ships opened fire on British trawlers in the mistaken belief that they were Japanese torpedo boats, and this incident aroused such anger in England that war was only avoided by the immediate apology and promise of full compensation made by the Russian government. At Nossi-Bé, near Madagascar, Rozhestvensky learned of the surrender of Port Arthur to Japanese forces and proposed returning to Russia; but, expecting naval reinforcements, which had been sent from the Baltic via Suez early in March 1905 and which later joined him at Camranh Bay (Vietnam), he decided to proceed. His full fleet amounted to a formidable armada, but many of the ships were old and unserviceable and their crews were poorly trained. Early in May the fleet reached the China Sea, and Rozhestvensky made for Vladivostok via the Tsushima Strait. Admiral Togo Heihachiro's fleet lay in wait for him on the south Korean coast near Pusan, and on May 27, as the Russian Fleet approached, he attacked. The Japanese ships were superior in speed and armament, and, in the course of the two-day battle, two-thirds of the Russian Fleet was sunk, six ships were captured, four reached Vladivostok, and six took refuge in neutral ports. It was a dramatic and decisive defeat; after a voyage lasting seven months and when within a few hundred miles of its destination, the Baltic Fleet was shattered, and, with it, Russia's hope of regaining mastery of the sea was crushed.
*****
Treaty of Portsmouth, (Sept. 5 [Aug. 23, Old Style], 1905), peace settlement signed at Kittery, Maine, U.S., ending the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. According to the terms of the treaty, which was mediated by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, the defeated Russians recognized Japan as the dominant power in Korea and turned over their leases of Port Arthur and the Liaotung Peninsula, as well as the southern half of Sakhalin Island, to Japan. Both powers agreed to restore Manchuria to
Kenkyūkai
Marxism was first introduced in Japan in October 18, 1898, through the intellectual study society; a small group of Westernized intellectuals held the first meeting of the Shakaishugi Kenkyūkai (The Association for the Study of Socialism) at the Tokyo Unitarian Church. Although most of the founders considered themselves Christian socialist, the association was open to any intesetd party. The first phase of the socialist movement of the late Meiji period was marked by relative moderation and strong support for paraliametrism. The dominant force was Christian humanism , which did much to set the tone of the early Japanese socialist thought. At the general conventioin of the minuscule Japa Socliast Party (Nihon Shakatio) in mid-February 1907, the deep didvision within the momvent was clearly displayed. When Kotoku Denjiro emphises the the casue of “ direct action” was deafted by two votes, with a compromise resolution passing. The “moderates” who called for full-fledged esouosla of parliamentarism and complete rejection of the direct action. This dispute between the social democrats and the anarchists continued , with the left gaining increasing influence and further isolation of the socialist from the mainstream of the Japanese life; the Case of the Great Treason of 1910, when the anarchists had finally moved from words to action, with a failed plot to assassinate the Emperor Meiji, however as result twelve Japanese radicals , including Kotouko Denjiro, were punished, and the socialist party was virtually silenced. during World War I, few individuals like Arahata Kanson, Osugi Sakae, Sakai Toshihiko, and Yamakawa Hitoshi, kept the socialist movement active, but the tone of was still anarcho-syndicalist, reflective of the earlier one. It was at this time Japan had shifted from an agrarian society to predominantly industrial commercial society instead; this resulted in the first generation of labor class, with peasants serving as the recruits.
In 1917 the Bloshevik Revolution provided a new source of stimulus for the Japanese left. This borught an agina verent of the earlier Communist momvent, Nosaka Sanzo who served as perfect example of the time. Nosaka grew up in a totally bouregeois atmosphere and was able to attend Keio univesrty a generally conciedrd an upper class school, it was there that he became interested in labor movment, manily through his professor Horie Kiichi, in fact he wrote his senior thesis on the Yuaikai ( Friendly Society), which also the name of then the Moderate Japanese labor organization lead by Suzuki Bunji. Nosaka started as social reformer in labor and politcies, eventually he worked in the editorship of the Rodo Oyobi Sangyo (Labor and Industry), the union journal. His first contact with Marxism came in 1919 after reading the Communist Manifesto that Koizumi Shinzo brought back from the west. He joind the Britich Communist party in 1920 and attended the first congress as a delegate from the London district. Within years young intellectuals who kept moving into the labor movements during this time; came to the Yuaikai headquarters directly after thire grduation from universities such as Waseda, or Tokyo, and they had rarely been involved in physical labor. These students in the Yuaikai were sampling a doctrine more left in nature to what was made by their senior mentors. in addition a student adherent the Maxsit thought by the name of Katayama Sen; Katayama who had been prisond for five moths in support of the Tokyo streetcar strike for and wrote of the mistreatment he met in prison
, he left japan on August 31, 1914, he also discovered that his movement was under the surveillance of the Japanese police. Katayama contact with Ruggers, one of the earlist Marxist- Leninsts, proved benifcial; because of this Katayama was able to meet a goroup of Russian revolutinares living in exile New York. There he met Trotsky, Bukharin, Madame Kollontai, along with others. Within short time Katayama was the leading Asian Communist of the world, he established an Association of Japanese Socialists in America, and also helped in the unification of the American Communist Party, and undertook the Comintern mission to Mexico. There after he went to Moscow to serve as chairman of the Far Eastern People’s Congress.
Eventually The Japanese Communist Party was founded on July 15, 1922, in the midst of the popular liberation struggle surging in Japan at the time, and it was dissolved in 1924 as its leader, Yamakawa Hitochi, concluded that the situation is in need for more education and preparation, and mass demonstration instead of plotting by small group, the party was reconstituted in 1925, but that year the apparatus of state suppression had been strengthened by the Peace Preservation Law. Consequently the party’s activities were limited to conspirational work by a small and dedicated minority. It was at this time the leadership came from a group intellectuals led by Fukumoto Kazuo.
Radical student found this new challenge from the government, rather stimulating, also these actions brought their organization under official suspicion. For sometime the Tanaka government was surprisingly tolerate toward the student-organized disorder , but in March 1928 more police sweeps brought and end to student agitation and to the Shinjinkai itself.
The intellect of the national and international emergency that charatireesed nationalism in the Kokitai, was met by the conversion of the left, tenko , or apostasy which allowed radicals from the left back into the main stream. During the 1920’s subjects or Marxist study, had become popular answer for social study and plotical economy. However State officials were alarmed by the tenko , and went on bigger scale of arrest done by the police, that resulted in large apprehensions actual and suspected radical alike in March 1928 . these arrests effected the labor momvents and diminished the “underground Communist Party”, most of these arrest pracuters found , that the young people leading the torubel were indeed from a well to do family , with great intelligent. During 1933 Sano Manabu , who joind Yoshino Sakuzo’s Shinjinkaias a student in Tokoyo Impreial University and evntully became leader in the Japan Communist Party, he also was arrested in Shanghai in 1929, with Sakuzo also Nabeyama Sadachika, also a member of the party’s Central Committee. Both men announce thire defection from the Communist Party; and withdrew thire oppostion to the events in Manchuria, and followed by mentioning that “self-rule” in Korea and Taiwan was necessary. More importantly Sakuzo, and Nabeyama went on to say that the emperor system is an obstacle to institutional reform in Japan.
The defections of Sakuzo and Nabeyama, affected those detained in police custody, and as result a mass apostasy went on action. Within 45 percent of those not yet convicted 614 out 1370, and 34 percent (133 out of 393) and those who had been convicted of radicalism or radical activities. Became defected as well in three years 74 percent (324 out of 438) announced that they also returned to the “fold”.
Several accounts of theses trails were recorded from a diverse interest, for example psychologist, on the interrogation side, the interrogators them selves were warned to evade any type of arguments or resistance that could in effect provoke the detainee; for the fact that most of the radicals were relatively young. instead every effort was made to make these radicals to “return” to the core Japans values. A manual was designed to guide the interrogators, for example the interrogators were encouraged to provide the prisoners with bowl of chicken and egg on rice, this meal to resemble a “parent-child” relationship. Police men also were caution not mention ideology, instead they should offer a reminder the “your mother is worried about you” type of attitudes; and never to mention the father in the interrogation, for that might trigger a sense of defiance of authority.
The defection of Sakuzo, and Nabeyama brought satisfainying result to the authority, however it created a complicated dilemma a complicated problem, it became hard to decide which suspects to prosecute and which to let go. These who were resealed would sometimes would join the communist party or commit “offensive thought”, this in turn made the procurators
In 1917 the Bloshevik Revolution provided a new source of stimulus for the Japanese left. This borught an agina verent of the earlier Communist momvent, Nosaka Sanzo who served as perfect example of the time. Nosaka grew up in a totally bouregeois atmosphere and was able to attend Keio univesrty a generally conciedrd an upper class school, it was there that he became interested in labor movment, manily through his professor Horie Kiichi, in fact he wrote his senior thesis on the Yuaikai ( Friendly Society), which also the name of then the Moderate Japanese labor organization lead by Suzuki Bunji. Nosaka started as social reformer in labor and politcies, eventually he worked in the editorship of the Rodo Oyobi Sangyo (Labor and Industry), the union journal. His first contact with Marxism came in 1919 after reading the Communist Manifesto that Koizumi Shinzo brought back from the west. He joind the Britich Communist party in 1920 and attended the first congress as a delegate from the London district. Within years young intellectuals who kept moving into the labor movements during this time; came to the Yuaikai headquarters directly after thire grduation from universities such as Waseda, or Tokyo, and they had rarely been involved in physical labor. These students in the Yuaikai were sampling a doctrine more left in nature to what was made by their senior mentors. in addition a student adherent the Maxsit thought by the name of Katayama Sen; Katayama who had been prisond for five moths in support of the Tokyo streetcar strike for and wrote of the mistreatment he met in prison
, he left japan on August 31, 1914, he also discovered that his movement was under the surveillance of the Japanese police. Katayama contact with Ruggers, one of the earlist Marxist- Leninsts, proved benifcial; because of this Katayama was able to meet a goroup of Russian revolutinares living in exile New York. There he met Trotsky, Bukharin, Madame Kollontai, along with others. Within short time Katayama was the leading Asian Communist of the world, he established an Association of Japanese Socialists in America, and also helped in the unification of the American Communist Party, and undertook the Comintern mission to Mexico. There after he went to Moscow to serve as chairman of the Far Eastern People’s Congress.
Eventually The Japanese Communist Party was founded on July 15, 1922, in the midst of the popular liberation struggle surging in Japan at the time, and it was dissolved in 1924 as its leader, Yamakawa Hitochi, concluded that the situation is in need for more education and preparation, and mass demonstration instead of plotting by small group, the party was reconstituted in 1925, but that year the apparatus of state suppression had been strengthened by the Peace Preservation Law. Consequently the party’s activities were limited to conspirational work by a small and dedicated minority. It was at this time the leadership came from a group intellectuals led by Fukumoto Kazuo.
Radical student found this new challenge from the government, rather stimulating, also these actions brought their organization under official suspicion. For sometime the Tanaka government was surprisingly tolerate toward the student-organized disorder , but in March 1928 more police sweeps brought and end to student agitation and to the Shinjinkai itself.
The intellect of the national and international emergency that charatireesed nationalism in the Kokitai, was met by the conversion of the left, tenko , or apostasy which allowed radicals from the left back into the main stream. During the 1920’s subjects or Marxist study, had become popular answer for social study and plotical economy. However State officials were alarmed by the tenko , and went on bigger scale of arrest done by the police, that resulted in large apprehensions actual and suspected radical alike in March 1928 . these arrests effected the labor momvents and diminished the “underground Communist Party”, most of these arrest pracuters found , that the young people leading the torubel were indeed from a well to do family , with great intelligent. During 1933 Sano Manabu , who joind Yoshino Sakuzo’s Shinjinkaias a student in Tokoyo Impreial University and evntully became leader in the Japan Communist Party, he also was arrested in Shanghai in 1929, with Sakuzo also Nabeyama Sadachika, also a member of the party’s Central Committee. Both men announce thire defection from the Communist Party; and withdrew thire oppostion to the events in Manchuria, and followed by mentioning that “self-rule” in Korea and Taiwan was necessary. More importantly Sakuzo, and Nabeyama went on to say that the emperor system is an obstacle to institutional reform in Japan.
The defections of Sakuzo and Nabeyama, affected those detained in police custody, and as result a mass apostasy went on action. Within 45 percent of those not yet convicted 614 out 1370, and 34 percent (133 out of 393) and those who had been convicted of radicalism or radical activities. Became defected as well in three years 74 percent (324 out of 438) announced that they also returned to the “fold”.
Several accounts of theses trails were recorded from a diverse interest, for example psychologist, on the interrogation side, the interrogators them selves were warned to evade any type of arguments or resistance that could in effect provoke the detainee; for the fact that most of the radicals were relatively young. instead every effort was made to make these radicals to “return” to the core Japans values. A manual was designed to guide the interrogators, for example the interrogators were encouraged to provide the prisoners with bowl of chicken and egg on rice, this meal to resemble a “parent-child” relationship. Police men also were caution not mention ideology, instead they should offer a reminder the “your mother is worried about you” type of attitudes; and never to mention the father in the interrogation, for that might trigger a sense of defiance of authority.
The defection of Sakuzo, and Nabeyama brought satisfainying result to the authority, however it created a complicated dilemma a complicated problem, it became hard to decide which suspects to prosecute and which to let go. These who were resealed would sometimes would join the communist party or commit “offensive thought”, this in turn made the procurators
Mars and Venus
The progress of science and spread of industrialization among the wealthy self-governing nations, aside from bettering the quality of life, helped in part to flush out the social inequalities that had prevailed for so long. Efficiency is key to any successful industry. Meaning for any manufacturer they have to produce products of quality better or at the least in bar with all other similar or substitute products. While at the same time producing at least-cost so to turn in a profit. To any industry there are few options available to produce cheaply. They can control the resources going in to make the product. Using lower quality or fewer numbers of resources. However a more efficient way of producing cheaply is by simply using cheap labor. Especially when the process of manufacturing is straightforward and does not require individualistic touches. To put a string on a shoe or a label on a can does not require much thought or deliberation. Anyone can do it, it does not require specialization. That was precisely what the owners of the industry figured out.
The acquisition of many farmlands for use of factories freed a large portion of the population to work in manufacturing. Also the conflicts raging in and the industrialization of Europe had sent many flocking to the U.S. Like their counterpart former farmers in the U.S, many of the immigrants were poor and unskilled. Leaving them with no choice to earn a living except in manufacturing. A new class emerged a working class of men and women and before it was checked and outlawed, of children. This working class produced what a minority of the population could afford to buy. More then often laboring under conditions that was abhorrent by any standard of judgment. They worked long hours, sixty or a little more then that a week, more often every day. They worked in facilities that were only suitable for the unfeeling product they produced. The list of injustices and sickening conditions under which they labored is long and at the time it must have seemed to the workers they would never be rid of them. But also a product (perhaps) of a wealthy freethinking society is the emergence of individuals who recognize injustices and try their best to correct them. Often these individuals seek others who are of the same mind and convictions. Or perhaps succeed in converting the indifferent or ignorant to sympathizers to their cause and together they form unions and pressure groups. At the beginning perhaps the different unions and groups have tried to appeal to the 'noblesse oblige' of the owners. However when such an appeal to pity and justice does not produce any long lasting, as unfortunately it often does not, they took the legal recourse.
Laws to better the working conditions in the industrial sector did not pass without hindrance. A prevailing attitude of the time was effort equaled to wealth or at least to moderate economic comfort. Which is perhaps true to some extent and in some instances. Aside from that there was the constitution and the article of contract and also the economic philosophy of laissez-faire, which warns the government from interfering with the free flow of commerce. Which perhaps explains why many lawmakers were recusant to any idea of reform. Recognizing that any such law would have to be policed in order to be effective and therefore it would conflict with the article of contract and laissez-faire.
But also a product of the time was that a large number of women and children were available and willing to work. When the concerned parties for the well being of the industrial workers failed to produce a law limiting the amount of hours for all workers, they sought and succeeded in passing one for women and children. By pointing out that long working hours were detriment to the health of children and the future and current mothers of the race. Especially when many of the jobs women and children were involved in required them to be working while standing. These laws were passed between the years of 1840 and 1850 and at the time were seldom enforced in the few states where they existed. Later amendments to the laws however rectified that.
But what of men workers? A larger workforce then women and more specialized they favored change through union actions. Those few who worked in an industry alongside of female were also not left out since when a law changes the condition of their female co-workers it automatically changes theirs. That was what many reformers had intended. By changing the conditions of women they are able to change the overall condition of the workplace. They simply used women as their appeal for change. In doing so they had to claim there was a major difference between men and women workers. They had to agree to, and maybe they even believed, that because women were weaker then men, they needed laws to protect them. That was the contention of the so-called Brandeis' brief. These laws though at the time worked proved to be a hindrance to many future attempts for women progress. Especially when just saying women were weaker then men was not enough.
Before the Brandeis brief reformers received a major set back to the hour-limit law. It was because of the Ritchie v. People case of 1895 that the Illinois Supreme Court delivered their blow. Interpreting the 14th amendment the court held to the opinion that an hour-limit law for women was class classifying them, therefore discriminatory and therefore illegal. The court wanted the people's lawyer to show that it was reasonable for an hour-limit law for women. Instead of using the court's decision in future cases for their benefit and try and find other reasons for an hour-limit law, future litigation wanted to provide the courts with their coveted reasons. The Brandeis brief delivered. It provided lawmakers with a detailed account of why an hour-limit law was important for women. Before it was the lawmakers opinions and beliefs unsupported by evidence, as they were though mostly also based on opinions and not facts, until the brief. It was the ammunition with which they fired whenever challenged to give women the same status as men under the law.
Another fight that had used women's suffrage as the basis for its claim was the fight for minimum wage. Again reformers instead of trying convincing men dominated industry and union of the validity of their claim they thought of acting on their behalf. However not by failing a claim on behalf of all workers men and women but again using women as the conduit for change. Citing again that women were the weaker sex and therefore needed protection. In 1920 however things changed.
During that year the amendment allowing women to vote was finally rectified. Giving women right groups a very powerful with which to bargain. Less was the effort for change through litigation then through influencing congress to act. Taking however the venues of fights from the courtrooms to the street. Instead of lawyers arguing against each other with the judge as mediator in waiting to be persuaded, social right groups vied with each other to influence politician for support. Some groups still held to the opinions of old. That the bases for intervention were not a general health issues but that of women suffrage. Fortunately they eventually lost.
Perhaps finally understanding the power of the union in influencing public policy the social rights advocates started pressuring the true law makers as intended by the constitution, the politicians. The 1930 saw the advancement of the many social solution proposed by the women right groups and male unions. It saw the birth of the social security program. It saw the establishment of a minimum wage, which passed unchallenged by judges afraid of the newly elected president's promise of reform. The changes during the 1930 proved right reformers who advocated reform for both sexes. As if to further proof their policy of action the hour-limit back fired on the reformers who adopted women suffrage as their bases of change. Hour-limit laws disqualified women from overtime and promotion.
The fight for social right is worthy cause that merits the efforts to gain them. Perhaps that is why reformers who used women suffrage as their line of action may be forgiven the harms they had not intended nor could have foreseen.
Topic # 2
Sultan Altemimi
The acquisition of many farmlands for use of factories freed a large portion of the population to work in manufacturing. Also the conflicts raging in and the industrialization of Europe had sent many flocking to the U.S. Like their counterpart former farmers in the U.S, many of the immigrants were poor and unskilled. Leaving them with no choice to earn a living except in manufacturing. A new class emerged a working class of men and women and before it was checked and outlawed, of children. This working class produced what a minority of the population could afford to buy. More then often laboring under conditions that was abhorrent by any standard of judgment. They worked long hours, sixty or a little more then that a week, more often every day. They worked in facilities that were only suitable for the unfeeling product they produced. The list of injustices and sickening conditions under which they labored is long and at the time it must have seemed to the workers they would never be rid of them. But also a product (perhaps) of a wealthy freethinking society is the emergence of individuals who recognize injustices and try their best to correct them. Often these individuals seek others who are of the same mind and convictions. Or perhaps succeed in converting the indifferent or ignorant to sympathizers to their cause and together they form unions and pressure groups. At the beginning perhaps the different unions and groups have tried to appeal to the 'noblesse oblige' of the owners. However when such an appeal to pity and justice does not produce any long lasting, as unfortunately it often does not, they took the legal recourse.
Laws to better the working conditions in the industrial sector did not pass without hindrance. A prevailing attitude of the time was effort equaled to wealth or at least to moderate economic comfort. Which is perhaps true to some extent and in some instances. Aside from that there was the constitution and the article of contract and also the economic philosophy of laissez-faire, which warns the government from interfering with the free flow of commerce. Which perhaps explains why many lawmakers were recusant to any idea of reform. Recognizing that any such law would have to be policed in order to be effective and therefore it would conflict with the article of contract and laissez-faire.
But also a product of the time was that a large number of women and children were available and willing to work. When the concerned parties for the well being of the industrial workers failed to produce a law limiting the amount of hours for all workers, they sought and succeeded in passing one for women and children. By pointing out that long working hours were detriment to the health of children and the future and current mothers of the race. Especially when many of the jobs women and children were involved in required them to be working while standing. These laws were passed between the years of 1840 and 1850 and at the time were seldom enforced in the few states where they existed. Later amendments to the laws however rectified that.
But what of men workers? A larger workforce then women and more specialized they favored change through union actions. Those few who worked in an industry alongside of female were also not left out since when a law changes the condition of their female co-workers it automatically changes theirs. That was what many reformers had intended. By changing the conditions of women they are able to change the overall condition of the workplace. They simply used women as their appeal for change. In doing so they had to claim there was a major difference between men and women workers. They had to agree to, and maybe they even believed, that because women were weaker then men, they needed laws to protect them. That was the contention of the so-called Brandeis' brief. These laws though at the time worked proved to be a hindrance to many future attempts for women progress. Especially when just saying women were weaker then men was not enough.
Before the Brandeis brief reformers received a major set back to the hour-limit law. It was because of the Ritchie v. People case of 1895 that the Illinois Supreme Court delivered their blow. Interpreting the 14th amendment the court held to the opinion that an hour-limit law for women was class classifying them, therefore discriminatory and therefore illegal. The court wanted the people's lawyer to show that it was reasonable for an hour-limit law for women. Instead of using the court's decision in future cases for their benefit and try and find other reasons for an hour-limit law, future litigation wanted to provide the courts with their coveted reasons. The Brandeis brief delivered. It provided lawmakers with a detailed account of why an hour-limit law was important for women. Before it was the lawmakers opinions and beliefs unsupported by evidence, as they were though mostly also based on opinions and not facts, until the brief. It was the ammunition with which they fired whenever challenged to give women the same status as men under the law.
Another fight that had used women's suffrage as the basis for its claim was the fight for minimum wage. Again reformers instead of trying convincing men dominated industry and union of the validity of their claim they thought of acting on their behalf. However not by failing a claim on behalf of all workers men and women but again using women as the conduit for change. Citing again that women were the weaker sex and therefore needed protection. In 1920 however things changed.
During that year the amendment allowing women to vote was finally rectified. Giving women right groups a very powerful with which to bargain. Less was the effort for change through litigation then through influencing congress to act. Taking however the venues of fights from the courtrooms to the street. Instead of lawyers arguing against each other with the judge as mediator in waiting to be persuaded, social right groups vied with each other to influence politician for support. Some groups still held to the opinions of old. That the bases for intervention were not a general health issues but that of women suffrage. Fortunately they eventually lost.
Perhaps finally understanding the power of the union in influencing public policy the social rights advocates started pressuring the true law makers as intended by the constitution, the politicians. The 1930 saw the advancement of the many social solution proposed by the women right groups and male unions. It saw the birth of the social security program. It saw the establishment of a minimum wage, which passed unchallenged by judges afraid of the newly elected president's promise of reform. The changes during the 1930 proved right reformers who advocated reform for both sexes. As if to further proof their policy of action the hour-limit back fired on the reformers who adopted women suffrage as their bases of change. Hour-limit laws disqualified women from overtime and promotion.
The fight for social right is worthy cause that merits the efforts to gain them. Perhaps that is why reformers who used women suffrage as their line of action may be forgiven the harms they had not intended nor could have foreseen.
Topic # 2
Sultan Altemimi
The Mouse and Mouse before
There is a story of a group of mice’s whom all had their own portions of lands,
The mice lived and ate and played as they wished in the hours of day and night
One night a dog came about, to dig into the mice land, mices wondered around the dog as it dug deep, and deep…..
The mice did not ask the dog what deal he is about,
The dog put a smile and left mices, and promised to come back with gift, not to all
The dog left on these words, the mice wondered, and puzzled for while, but returned to sleep for it was far to late.
In a swiftly cold night, dark brown mouse of the east appeard near dawn near the village , ridding on the back of a mouse of the same group as his, with the this dark brown mouse of the east came also riding, the un-talented bird of the center, together they came on the land of mice , and woke everyone in the village with noisy screeches and sounds,
and asked for the white mouse that ruled the mice, “ we don’t Carrie such thing”one mouse replied, “whit mouse is just a name, he come time to time but never stays”, for the white mouse is not from here you see, white mouse comes from farther lands to the north”
Dark brown mouse of the east laughed loud, and said “news could not be grater then this, for I am now the mouse leader to this clan,” “clan we are not O east mouse” replied a ragged mouse from the back “
“O great mouse”…I shall like this name, from now all you mice shall call me as thus
Un talented bird replied, I conquer o grate one , for now you secure my right onto this land and grant me what I never had, a voice I shall sing , and heal a broken wing of mine, east mouse replied I declare myself one and only on this land
”wait” ragged mouse from the back said, for we had no one telling us mouses what to do,
“For now you either follow me or trapped between me and the sea”
The strode back dog from the north came back as it had told before, and said “now look O great mouse from the east, I shall not tell you what to do here, or there, within this mere land of yours , for land matter not to me no more, but within these lands my needs are buried, I shall however, the these mice are treaatd I don’t care, that where I had dug before I need my
The mice lived and ate and played as they wished in the hours of day and night
One night a dog came about, to dig into the mice land, mices wondered around the dog as it dug deep, and deep…..
The mice did not ask the dog what deal he is about,
The dog put a smile and left mices, and promised to come back with gift, not to all
The dog left on these words, the mice wondered, and puzzled for while, but returned to sleep for it was far to late.
In a swiftly cold night, dark brown mouse of the east appeard near dawn near the village , ridding on the back of a mouse of the same group as his, with the this dark brown mouse of the east came also riding, the un-talented bird of the center, together they came on the land of mice , and woke everyone in the village with noisy screeches and sounds,
and asked for the white mouse that ruled the mice, “ we don’t Carrie such thing”one mouse replied, “whit mouse is just a name, he come time to time but never stays”, for the white mouse is not from here you see, white mouse comes from farther lands to the north”
Dark brown mouse of the east laughed loud, and said “news could not be grater then this, for I am now the mouse leader to this clan,” “clan we are not O east mouse” replied a ragged mouse from the back “
“O great mouse”…I shall like this name, from now all you mice shall call me as thus
Un talented bird replied, I conquer o grate one , for now you secure my right onto this land and grant me what I never had, a voice I shall sing , and heal a broken wing of mine, east mouse replied I declare myself one and only on this land
”wait” ragged mouse from the back said, for we had no one telling us mouses what to do,
“For now you either follow me or trapped between me and the sea”
The strode back dog from the north came back as it had told before, and said “now look O great mouse from the east, I shall not tell you what to do here, or there, within this mere land of yours , for land matter not to me no more, but within these lands my needs are buried, I shall however, the these mice are treaatd I don’t care, that where I had dug before I need my
Thursday, June 29, 2006
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
@ tha moives
Gone with the Wind is a movie based on the novel by Margaret Mitchell. Produced in 1939 it started Clark Gable as Rhett Butler and Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara. The movies follow the lives of its two heroes against the backdrop of the civil war era including what life was before and during the reconstruction period.
It is an excellent movie that had own many awards and was a hit in the box office. From historical perspective however the movie falls short of giving a full picture of the civil war era and the reconstruction period, particularly to the lives of the slaves. The movie however does show the horror of the civil war and the devastation of the south. It also mentions thought not as much as it had about the carpetbaggers the unchanging lives of the freed slaves. So in the main the movie is about the lives of the slave owners and how much they had suffered after they have enjoyed for so long.
With little mention of the slaves who are showed as typically submissive, slow and greedily vindictive when it came to wanting their rights. Failing to show a single good black person other then the nanny, who’s motives for staying were never fully explained.
Another movie that has dealt with the civil war era is Glory. It was 1989 production starting Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman. Like Gone With the Wind, Glory was also a product of its time. In that it tried to be balanced in its presentation. The movie primarily evolved around the lives of the freed slaves who constituted the first all-black volunteer union company and their white commander. I thought the movie was truthful and honest in its presentation. Showing the good and the bad on both sides. Showing the southerners who fought not to maintain slavery but for an independent state in which they believed. At the same time it showed how the rage of freed slaves in other regiment was exploited to drive terror in the hearts of the south. In all it was better representative then many of its predecessors of the civil war era.
It is an excellent movie that had own many awards and was a hit in the box office. From historical perspective however the movie falls short of giving a full picture of the civil war era and the reconstruction period, particularly to the lives of the slaves. The movie however does show the horror of the civil war and the devastation of the south. It also mentions thought not as much as it had about the carpetbaggers the unchanging lives of the freed slaves. So in the main the movie is about the lives of the slave owners and how much they had suffered after they have enjoyed for so long.
With little mention of the slaves who are showed as typically submissive, slow and greedily vindictive when it came to wanting their rights. Failing to show a single good black person other then the nanny, who’s motives for staying were never fully explained.
Another movie that has dealt with the civil war era is Glory. It was 1989 production starting Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman. Like Gone With the Wind, Glory was also a product of its time. In that it tried to be balanced in its presentation. The movie primarily evolved around the lives of the freed slaves who constituted the first all-black volunteer union company and their white commander. I thought the movie was truthful and honest in its presentation. Showing the good and the bad on both sides. Showing the southerners who fought not to maintain slavery but for an independent state in which they believed. At the same time it showed how the rage of freed slaves in other regiment was exploited to drive terror in the hearts of the south. In all it was better representative then many of its predecessors of the civil war era.
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