Assistant Professor Of History Research Articles

“Reduced to Science”: Gender, Technology, and Power in the American Dressmaking Trade, 1860–1910

“Reduced to Science”: Gender, Technology, and Power in the American Dressmaking Trade, 1860—1910 WENDY GAMBER “In Germany,” writer-reformer Virginia Penny mused in 1863, “many dress makers are men, and there is one on Broadway, New York.” Penny’s observation—one of many such comments sprinkled throughout her massive Cyclopedia of Woman’s Work—reveals much about cultural distinctions between men’s and women’s work in 19thcentury America. The very incongruity of a “man dressmaker” af­ firmed a rigidly decreed sexual division of labor that assigned the making of feminine apparel to women; indeed, “man milliner” was an epithet leveled not only at men who made women’s dresses and hats but at all who deviated from established norms of “masculine” behavior.1 On the surface, at least, there was little conflict between ideology and reality. Women constituted 98 percent of the nation’s “milliners, dress and mantua makers” in 1870, a proportion that re­ mained largely unchanged as the century drew to a close.2 More often than not, sex segregation has been the bane of wageDr . Gamber is assistant professor of history at Indiana University, Bloomington, and the author of The Female Economy: The Millinery and Dressmaking Trades, 1860—1930 (forthcoming). She thanks Patricia Cooper, Nancy Page Fernandez, Morton Keller, Glenna Matthews, Carole Srole, and especially Carole Turbin for their comments on earlier drafts of this article, and Patricia Trautman for allowing access to her impressive collection of instructional pamphlets. The research for this article was supported by fellowships from the Women’s Studies Program, Brandéis University; the Smithsonian Institution; the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America; and the Massachusetts Historical Society. 'Virginia Penny, The Employments of Women: A Cyclopedia of Woman’s Work (Boston, 1863), p. 324. See Roscoe Conkling’s comments on reformers, quoted in Morton Keller, Affairs of State: Public Life in Late Nineteenth Century America (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), p. 248. 2According to the census of 1870, there were 92,084 “milliners, dress and mantua makers” in the United States, of whom 90,480 were female and 1,604 male. See A Compendium of the Ninth Census (June 1, 1870) (Washington, D.C., 1872), p. 612. For 1900 figures, see Statistics of Women at Work (Washington, D.C., 1907), pp. 70, 75.© 1995 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/95/3603-0001101.00 455 456 Wendy Gamber earning women’s existence, confining them to poorly paid jobs that promised few prospects for advancement.3 But in this respect dress­ making contradicted conventional wisdom. The custom manufacture of feminine apparel (not until the late 1890s did ready-made clothing pose a serious challenge to “bespoke” work) held out rarely equaled opportunities to women of the working classes: highly skilled work, creative labor, relatively high wages, the very real possibility of some­ day opening an establishment of one’s own. For dressmakers labored in a largely female world, one in which the lowly apprentice, the experienced veteran, even the shop’s proprietor (who very likely had never married) were women.4 Ironically, the most “feminine” of trades presented a compelling alternative to the middle-class standard of domesticity and the working-class ideal of the family wage.5 While they often ignored its more radical implications, contempo­ raries attributed this state of affairs to the “natural” consequence of biological factors—after all, was not sewing woman’s “natural” voca­ tion? But as several scholars have demonstrated, sexual divisions of labor are neither fixed nor natural, but are continually redefined.6 3As historians are beginning to recognize, sex segregation did have advantages, for it gave women access to skilled jobs within “their” trades. See esp. Mary H. Blewett, Men, Women, and Work: Class, Gender, and Protest in the New England Shoe Industry, 1780-1910 (Urbana, Ill., 1988), pp. xvi, 104-10, 138-39, 324-25. 4This is not to say that all dressmakers lived lives of prosperity and ease; rather, they enjoyed significant advantages in comparison to other wage-earning women. See Wendy Gamber, “The Female Economy: The Millinery and Dressmaking Trades, 1860-1930” (Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 1991), esp. chaps...

Landmarks in Digital Computing: A Smithsonian Pictorial History by Peggy A. Kidwell, Paul E. Ceruzzi

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 717 was in its artisanal stage, broadcasters were in no position to resist ASCAP demands. Indeed, they formed the National Association of Broadcasters largely to prevent the society from demanding higher license fees for the use of music composed by ASCAP members. Finally, Smulyan might have emphasized that the rise of radio re­ flected general tendencies inherent in capitalist economies. Time after time, the deployment of new technology in the United States has resulted in the concentration of wealth and power, larger bureau­ cratic structures, and the use of state power for private gain. It has also inspired myriad campaigns for the hearts and minds of the American people as well as turmoil in the labor force. The similarities between the evolution of radio and that of other American industries appear to qualify this book’s thesis. Since the American system of broadcasting emerged within the nation’s capitalist system, was radio not destined to assume some of its most distinguishing features? James Kraft Dr. Kraft is an assistant professor of history at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. He has recently completed a book on musicians and technological change in America from the 1920s to the 1950s, to be published by Johns Hopkins University Press. Landmarks in Digital Computing: A Smithsonian Pictorial History. By Peggy A. Kidwell and Paul E. Ceruzzi. Washington, D.C.: Smith­ sonian Institution Press, 1994. Pp. 148; illustrations, glossary, bibli­ ography, index. $15.95 (paper). Half a century ago a “computer” was a person who carried out computations either by hand or with the aid of a machine. Today the word “computer” is synonymous with one specific computing technol­ ogy, the electronic digital computer. Initially developed in the 1940s for use in scientific and military applications, electronic digital com­ puters have, since the mid-1950s, also had an enormous influence on business practice, industry, and engineering, as well as more recently on education and leisure activities. Electronic digital computing de­ vices have simultaneously become more powerful, smaller, and cheaper. Indeed, since the introduction of “personal computers” in the 1980s, their use has become so widespread and the range of applications so diverse, that the term “computer” is becoming some­ thing of an anachronism. Yet though the invention and development of electronic digital computers/computing is one of the most signifi­ cant intellectual achievements and important economic developments of the 20th century, there are remarkably few comprehensive histori­ cal accounts. In Landmarks in Digital Computing: A Smithsonian Pictorial History, Peggy A. Kidwell and Paul E. Ceruzzi provide a densely illustrated and extremely accessible account of the development of digital aids to computation from ancient times to the mid-1980s. As the title 718 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE suggests, the landmarks chosen by Kidwell and Ceruzzi have largely been drawn from the collections currently held by the Smithsonian Institution. Organized into eight chapters, these landmarks are pre­ sented in chronological order. Yet this book is no mere catalog of artifacts. Each chapter has a concise introduction that provides con­ textual information relevant to the development of each group of digital computing landmarks. Within the chapters, each landmark has its own subsection in which its development and use is described in relation to the wider context of technical possibilities, personalities, and economic, institutional, and social factors. In chapter 1 we are introduced to devices that were used to record numbers or to help people calculate but in fact did not actually perform calculations. Among the examples given are the abacus, Napier’s rods, and mathematical tables. This provides an instructive contrast when compared with the digital devices described in chapter 2, “Machines that Calculate or Control,” which describes a selection of mechanized aids to computation, mostly adding ma­ chines. These range from the Arithmometer, developed and pat­ ented in France by Charles Xavier Thomas in the 1820s, to the cash registers manufactured by the National Cash Register Company in the United States from the mid-1880s. This chapter also contains a brief account of a machine that, though not an aid to calculation, nevertheless belongs to the history of digital computing: the auto­ matic loom developed by Joseph-Marie Jacquard at the beginning...

Building Air Bases in the Negev: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Israel, 1979–1982 by Frank N. Schubert

432 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE on the definition of missile accuracy. Spinardi provides a clear narra­ tive and clearly established links to this broader literature, as well as framing the book with a deft exposition of the main themes in the social construction of technology program. Readers trained as histori­ ans to write contextual accounts may doubt the essential novelty claimed for this approach, but the intelligence with which it is summa­ rized here counts as one of the real strengths of the book. Bruce Hevly Dr. Hevly is assistant professor of history at the University of Washington. His work includes studies of the development of research rockets at the Naval Research Laboratory and of plutonium production at the Hanford Works. Building Air Bases in the Negev: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Israel, 1979—1982. By Frank N. Schubert. Washington, D.C.: United States Army Center of Military History, 1992. Pp. xiii + 303; illustrations, notes, index. Both Herodotus and Thucydides wrote about Middle Eastern mili­ tary history. Herodotus based most of his work on oral history, and Thucydides’ documentation involved participant observations. Frank Schubert, a contemporary military historian, has used both of these methodologies in his three-year chronicle of a contemporary episode of Middle Eastern military history. His topic centers on the role of administrative leadership of the U.S. Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Air Force, and the Israeli Air Force in the construction of two Israeli air bases. As a result of the Camp David agreements between Jimmy Carter, Anwar Sadat, and Menachem Begin, Israel agreed in 1978 to move out of the occupied Sinai Peninsula and restore this territory to Egypt. The United States promised to help replace Eitam and Etzion, two Israeli air bases in the Sinai that had been a key to Israel’s air superi­ ority in the Middle East. Even before planning for construction started for the new bases at Ramon and Ovda in the Negev, Lieuten­ ant GeneralJohn W. Norris assigned Frank Schubert the task to write the history of this enterprise. Schubert based his work on correspon­ dence of the principals involved, field trips to Israel, and close to one hundred interviews conducted during the 1979-82 period of fast-track construction. Like Herodotus and Thucydides, Schubert discovered that the personalities of leadership, the institutional loyal­ ties of the second-in-command, and the cultural traditions of all in­ volved were the key elements in understanding the successful out­ come of this turning point in Middle Eastern history. The book is entitled Building Air Bases in the Negev, but if one wishes to examine working drawings, review site plans, and learn of the building technology of modern air base construction, one will not find it here. One does find, however, a very interesting, if not com­ TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 433 plex, insight into administrative management. Schubert discusses in revealing detail how the Corps of Engineers aggressively planned to obtain and control the contract for the construction of these bases, how it made sure it had the power of the purse during construction, and how it set the goals and agenda to complete the work within the three-year time schedule. Problems such as diversion channels for flood control at Ovda, the need for quality control of materials, the work stoppages by imported labor, the allegations of fraud and mis­ management, the overprocurement by contractors, the presence of unexploded ordnance, and the concerns of archaeological deposits are all discussed. However, the focal dilemma Schubert describes was the power struggles between the leaders of the U.S. Air Force, the Israeli Air Force, and the Corps of Engineers. Air Force Brigadier General Paul T. Hartung was assigned to be program manager and liaison between the Corps and Israel. Rather than working out problems, Schubert believes Hartung was the protagonist for quality control. The other protagonist was Israeli Air Force Brigadier General Moshe Bar-Toy, who advocated cost containment. Both of these men served their constituencies during the whole phase of the construction event. In contrast, the Corps had a maze of leaders and Schubert should have provided a flowchart to visualize the frequent changes in...

The History of Agricultural Science and Technology: An International Annotated Bibliography by R. Douglas Hurt and Mary Ellen Hurt

442 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE the text. Despite these shortcomings, this book provides an informa­ tive and balanced historical account of chiropractic in America. Lesley Biggs Dr. Biggs is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Saskatchewan. The History ofAgricultural Science and Technology: An InternationalAnno­ tated Bibliography. By R. Douglas Hurt and Mary Ellen Hurt. New York: Garland, 1994. Pp. xiii + 485; index. $75.00. Many members of SHOT have benefited from the fine series of Bibliographies of the History of Science and Technology published by Garland. R. Douglas Hurt and Mary Ellen Hurt have made an important, comprehensive, and creative contribution to that series. The 1,380 annotated citations are divided into nineteen chapters. The chapter on the plant sciences is the most extensive, containing 21 percent of the entries. Readers of Technology and Culture might find something useful among the 161 entries on agricultural technol­ ogies, an area in which Doug Hurt has made important contributions of his own. Chapters on agricultural science and animal science con­ tain over one hundred entries each. Biotechnology and the Green Revolution also receive attention, providing references for those in­ terested in the newest areas of agricultural research. These selections include enough sources to provide researchers interested in the standard agricultural science and technology litera­ ture with places to begin looking. The Hurts have gone far beyond the standard literature, however. As they explain in their preface, this bibliography reflects an unconventional approach and methodology. First, the Hurts often selected works from the scientific and social scientific literature, especially items published within the past few decades. There is noticeably less emphasis on works written by histori­ ans. Second, they tapped deeply into materials available through elec­ tronic databases, gaining access to countless sources that standard historical abstracts would miss. And third, the bibliography is truly international; they have included citations concerning the agricul­ tural science and/or technology of more than fifty nations. Some­ times, the authors’ methodology results in some unusual selections— such as a two-page history of veterinary medicine in Portugal, or a three-page account of irrigation policy in Bhutan. The approach also means that gems of unknown manuscripts or rare 19th-century books are not to be found. In general, however, the authors’ system is both valid and valuable. Surely there are hundreds of citations here that even the experienced scholar would not have easily found on his or her own. There were a few typographical errors—including one in the anno­ tation of an article I had written. But more important, all citations that I checked were correct, and the annotations were clear and accu- technology and culture Book Reviews 443 rately hinted at the value of the work. The index is also useful and reasonably thorough. Though historians will still want to consult more traditional bibliog­ raphies, such as those produced in the 1970s by the Agricultural History Center, the Hurts have provided a solid, up-to-date bibliogra­ phy with an innovative approach and extensive list of sources. Mark R. Finlay Dr. Finlay is an assistant professor of history at Armstrong State College. His disser­ tation was on the history of German agricultural experiment stations, and he has published articles on agricultural science in Europe and the United States. A Practical Introduction to Videohistory: The Smithsonian Institution and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Experiment. Edited by Terri A. Schorzman . Malabar, Fla.: Krieger, 1993. Pp. xi + 243; illustrations, notes, appendixes, bibliography, index. $30.75. “Videohistory,” as defined in this book, “is the video recording of visual information as primary historical evidence and involves a historian in shaping the original inquiry” (p. vii). It is an oral history interview recorded on videotape, with picture as well as sound. Funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Smithsonian Institu­ tion sponsored a five-year “experiment... to work out new guidelines and methodologies” for videohistory (p. vii). In existence from 1986 to 1992, the Smithsonian Videohistory Program focused on the theme “Science in National Life.” It undertook twenty-two projects, including topics in astronomy, aviation, biology, computers, conserva­ tion, genetics, medicine, national security, nuclear weapons, paleontol­ ogy, robotics, space science, and watchmaking; a list ofthe projects and...

A Practical Introduction to Videohistory: The Smithsonian Institution and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Experiment ed. by Terri A. Schorzman

technology and culture Book Reviews 443 rately hinted at the value of the work. The index is also useful and reasonably thorough. Though historians will still want to consult more traditional bibliog­ raphies, such as those produced in the 1970s by the Agricultural History Center, the Hurts have provided a solid, up-to-date bibliogra­ phy with an innovative approach and extensive list of sources. Mark R. Finlay Dr. Finlay is an assistant professor of history at Armstrong State College. His disser­ tation was on the history of German agricultural experiment stations, and he has published articles on agricultural science in Europe and the United States. A Practical Introduction to Videohistory: The Smithsonian Institution and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Experiment. Edited by Terri A. Schorzman . Malabar, Fla.: Krieger, 1993. Pp. xi + 243; illustrations, notes, appendixes, bibliography, index. $30.75. “Videohistory,” as defined in this book, “is the video recording of visual information as primary historical evidence and involves a historian in shaping the original inquiry” (p. vii). It is an oral history interview recorded on videotape, with picture as well as sound. Funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Smithsonian Institu­ tion sponsored a five-year “experiment... to work out new guidelines and methodologies” for videohistory (p. vii). In existence from 1986 to 1992, the Smithsonian Videohistory Program focused on the theme “Science in National Life.” It undertook twenty-two projects, including topics in astronomy, aviation, biology, computers, conserva­ tion, genetics, medicine, national security, nuclear weapons, paleontol­ ogy, robotics, space science, and watchmaking; a list ofthe projects and the interviewees appears in an appendix. A PracticalIntroduction to Vid­ eohistory is the final report ofthe program. Edited by program manager Terri A. Schorzman, the book contains articles by her and several par­ ticipating historians and curators and one media producer, as well as useful appendixes. In addition to this book, the Smithsonian Videohis­ tory Program created historical documents in the form of videotapes and transcripts of interviews—270 hours on tape—and this documen­ tation is on deposit in the Smithsonian Institution Archives. In advising on the development of the Smithsonian Videohistory Program, Nathan Reingold stressed the role of a trained scholar in establishing the analytical structure of an interview, and the impor­ tance of collecting source materials in the history of science. The administrative, technical, and scholarly collaborators heeded this ad­ vice. In one case study Stanley Goldberg discussed his extensive expe­ rience with videohistory as applied to the Manhattan Project, record­ ing individuals and groups, on site or in studio, with or without artifacts. He amply demonstrated the interviewer’s importance to both content and style. Steven Lubar and Carlene Stephens gathered videotaped information about robotics and watchmaking, respec­ 444 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE tively. Stephens documented the dynamic process of making watches at the Waltham Clock Company in Massachusetts, and she discovered a reliance on handwork that is overshadowed in published literature preoccupied with automatic machinery. For her, videohistory became a tool for finding and using historical evidence in objects, for docu­ menting and studying our material culture. Lubar used videohistory to document museum acquisition of robots, but he noted a tension between documentation and investigation. Covering how-to and why, this PracticalIntroduction is indeed practi­ cal. Its emphasis is on the video and visual side of interviews, and it thereby assumes some knowledge of traditional interview techniques and the associated problems, like faulty memories and biased partici­ pants. Among the questions addressed is: Do you need to capture simultaneously, in Brien Williams’s words, “the observed present and the recollected past?” (p. 145). Will you capture unique visual data? Will videotaping, with the presence of the technical crew and equip­ ment, distort the interview process? Will the benefits outweigh the costs of production? An appendix contains worksheets, checklists, and sample documents, covering recording formats, equipment, per­ sonnel, planning, production, transcription, finding aids, archival re­ quirements, budget, release forms, and even set design. The Smithson­ ian Videohistory Program concluded that videotaping interviews is most useful in recording three types of historical information—(1) the interaction ofpeople with objects, places, or other people; (2) personal­ ity and body language; and (3) a process or the function of...

Dearest Chums and Partners—Joel Chandler Harris's Letters to His Children: A Domestic Biography (review)

Reviews379 enee, although gender and its role in Dawson's life are examined. Ellen Peel's "Semiotic Subversion in 'Desiree's Baby,' " offers an intriguing assessment of the semiotic and political approaches to Kate Chopin's widely anthologized work, but critical language frequently overwhelms the essay. "Evangeline's Darker Daughters: Crossing Racial Boundaries in Postwar Louisiana" by Alice Parker is a critical reading of Sidonie De la Houssaye's French text, Les Quateronnes de la Nouvelle-Orléans (The Quadroons ofNew Orleans). However, Parker's esoteric analysis of De la Houssaye's difficulty in exploring issues of race, gender, and sexuality would be formidable to many readers. The finest segment of this entire text is the bibliography. Dorothy H. Brown's "A Note on the Bibliography" entertains while clearly stating the bibliography's parameters: (1) women who wrote chiefly in the genres of poetry, drama, and fiction; (2) native Louisiana women who either remained to pursue their careers or who wrote elsewhere; (3) women who were educated in the state, moved there to make it their home, or who visited for extended periods; and (4) women who wrote in English (De la Houssaye's work is the exception). Brown also explains some of the difficulties in selecting appropriate information from the various sources. Each entry contains biographical statistics, data on each author's body of works, and secondary document information, all of which serves as a guide to further research and to gauging the writers' popularity, whether in their own time or afterwards. Brown impressively meets the tremendous challenge of being as complete as possible, especially in supplying comprehensive material from out-of-print or relatively inaccessible nineteenth-century reference works. The 113-page bibliography places writers in three sections: nineteenth century, approximately sixty-two entries; twentieth century (deceased), approximately thirty-seven; and contemporary writers, approximately ninety-seven. Dearest Chums and Partners—Joel Chandler Harris's Letters to His Children: A Domestic Biography. Edited by Hugh T. Keenan. University of Georgia Press, 1993. 531 pp. Cloth, $39.95. Reviewed by David B. Parker, assistant professor of history at Kennesaw State College, who is Tar Heel bom and bred. Parker is the author ofAlias Bill Arp: Charles Henry Smith and the South's "Goodly Heritage." As his children began to leave home in the 1890s, Joel Chandler Harris often took time away from his Uncle Remus stories and other projects to write letters to them. After Harris's death in 1908 a number of these letters were reprinted or excerpted in Uncle Remus's Home Magazine and in Julia Collier Hanis's Life and Letters ofJoel Chandler Harris, for years the standard biography. Now Hugh T. Keenan, professor of English at Georgia State University, gives us Dearest Chums and Partners. Keenan's volume, complete with introduction, annotations , chronology, and the other scholarly apparatus one expects in a definitive collection , contains all of the nearly three hundred surviving letters from Harris to his children. AU but two of the letters are in the Harris Collection at Emory University's Woodruff Library. The book's main title is from a letter Harris wrote to daughters Lillian and Mildred while they were students at Saint Joseph's Academy, a Catholic school in Washington, 380Southern Cultures Georgia. Harris's letters to his "dearest chums and partners" fill more than half the book. They are often playful, with riddles, puns, poems, and drawings. The letters also tend to be quite lengthy. "I haven't the least idea what I'm going to write about," Harris noted at the beginning of one letter, but he went on for two pages about the weather, his cows, sick children in the neighborhood, a magazine subscription, chimney cleaning, grandchildren, and so on. It became a running joke. "There is positively nothing to write about in this neck of the woods," he told the girls in another letter packed with news about the rain, the death of a calf, the welfare of two new puppies, visits from friends, and more. This is the trivial side of the "domestic biography" of Keenan's subtitle: more than you ever wanted to know about Joel Chandler Harris's private daily life. But there are...

Les ponts modernes: 18e–19e siècles by Bernard Marrey

180 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGYAND CULTURE lians in the 14th century; it endured as the world’s tallest dam for more than 500 years. A History ofDams explicates water-storage technology within the context of various functions (e.g., irrigation, power, domestic supply, fish ponds) and provides descriptions of important ancillary technologies such as movable gates and siphon spillways. Additionally, extensive material on the mathematical “rationalization” ofdam design addresses topics such as DeSazilly’s “profile of equal resistance” for masonry gravity dams devel­ oped in the 1850s, the “variable-radius” arch designs first built by Lars Jorgensen in 1913, and the mathematically complex “trial-load” method of arch-dam analysis popularized in the 20th century. While Schnitter clearly describes the range of dam types and construc­ tion technologies developed by engineers and builders, he is less success­ ful in imparting to readers a sense of why or how different designs might reflect varying interests and objectives on the part of engineers, finan­ ciers, and governments. As such, his purpose is not so much to analyze the technology of water storage as it is to instruct readers on fundamental issues relating to the development of dams over a period of 5,000 years. For scholars, the value of the book is enhanced by a detailed bibliography that lists more than 250 important books and articles; most important, these references are frequently keyed into the text as an aid to further research. Anyone interested in the technological history of waterresources development and/or the history of hydraulic engineering will find this to be a useful and often intriguing reference work. Donald C. Jackson Dr.Jackson is assistant professor of history at Lafayette College. His article, “Engineering in the Progressive Era: A New Look at Frederick Haynes Newell and the U.S. Reclamation Service,” appeared in the July 1993 issue of Technology and Culture and was awarded the Western History Association’s Billington Prize in 1994. Les ponts modernes: 18'-19' siècles. By Bernard Marrey. Paris: Picard, 1990. Pp. 319; illustrations, notes, glossary, bibliography, index. F 550.00. The civil engineering sessions at the 1993 SHOT conference in Washington, D.C., seemed to indicate that there is still a bloc of historians eager to provide traditional “objective” accounts of civil engineering—and that there still is an audience to embrace such work. This audience will enjoy Les ponts modernes, a large, expensive, illustrated volume that surveys bridge building in France during the 18th and 19th centuries. Those who believe that the history of technology can be understood better through the exploration of general questions will find this book less engaging. Bernard Marrey, who has written extensively on engineering and architecture, states that Les ponts modernes is a continuation of an uncompleted bridge history by an engineer named Dartein. Hence he TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 181 perpetuates a tradition of civil engineering histories written by engi­ neers or closely based on their accounts. While the engineer’s viewpoint can provide insight into design and construction, the mindset and concerns of engineers often vary from those of historians as well as most of the general public. For those who seek to go beyond the bounds of the historiographic tradition that Marrey chose, Les ponts modemes will appear somewhat lacking. It avoids thematic interpretation and passes over scholarship in the history of engineering. While it covers 200 years in 300 pages, no explicit questions tie the book together. Chapter organization is ran­ dom: bridges are grouped according to geography, material, type, and supposed historical epochs; the overall organization is chronological. Marrey does not clarify the agenda that leads him to reject recent synthesis while citing primary materials. Most or all of the book originally appeared as a series of articles, and these have not been well accomodated to book form. This compendium nevertheless has much to recommend it. There is a lot of information here; in a field as underresearched as the history of modern civil engineering, a book of this type will automatically become a source for those who need to identify the major engineers, entrepre­ neurs, and works. And Les ponts modemes contains many entertaining stories. Moreover, Marrey often emphasizes neglected aspects of...

The Islamic World and the Bosnian Crisis

Essay| November 01 1994 The Islamic World and the Bosnian Crisis Tetsuya Sahara Tetsuya Sahara Tetsuya Sahara is an assistant professor of history at Tokyo Metropolitan University. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Current History (1994) 93 (586): 386–389. https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.1994.93.586.386 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Tetsuya Sahara; The Islamic World and the Bosnian Crisis. Current History 1 November 1994; 93 (586): 386–389. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.1994.93.586.386 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentCurrent History Search This content is only available via PDF. © 1994 by The Regents of the University of California1994 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Women and Technology: An Annotated Bibliography by Cynthia Gay Bindocci

technologyand culture Book Reviews 891 about the history of technology, it will probably eventually wind up on the shelves of most serious scholars in the field. John Magney Dr. Magney, an assistant professor in the Department of Technical Resource Manage­ ment at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, teaches courses in labor relations and data analysis. He is doing research on concerns with quality and productivity in modem management ideology. Women and Technology: An Annotated Bibliography. By Cynthia Gay Bindocci. New York: Garland, 1993. Pp. xiv+229; illustrations, indexes. $39.00. In the introduction to Women and Technology: An AnnotatedBibliography, Cynthia Gay Bindocci explains that this small volume originated in a discussion among people attending a WITH (Women in Technological History) meeting at the 1985 SHOT conference, where the participants complained about the dearth of published bibliographies on women and technology. This work, while far from exhaustive, is a good first step toward addressing that need. Bindocci has compiled the bibliography using suggestions given to her by other scholars and through a search of a limited number of sources, most significandy Dissertation Abstracts, a number of journals “sensitive to research on women,” and Technology and Culture. The majority of the entries are historical in nature, with a concentration on America in the last century. The remainder are largely sociological or anthropological. The author has also included a few secondary sources on Europe and a much-needed category on women in developing nations. All entries are in English. The resulting 570 books, articles, and dissertations are annotated with descriptions ranging from a sentence to a half-page. Many annotations very usefully summarize the thesis of the work in question in a sentence or two. Descriptions of edited volumes give lists of individual contributors and titles ofarticles. The descriptions ofworks I am familiar with varied in accuracy. In a number of cases, dissertations and articles were noted without the titles of monographs that have superseded them. Bindocci cannot be faulted for not having added some recently published books because of the need to meet publication deadlines, but readers would be well advised to check for the book before ordering the dissertation. In her introduction, Bindocci notes the difficulty of creating analyti­ cal categories for this kind of bibliography. The problem is complicated by the nebulous boundaries of both tbe history of technology and women’s history. The result here is both a sometimes idiosyncratic categorization and a heavy emphasis on certain categories. Women and work is by far the largest category. One could in fact argue that this is largely a bibliography of women’s work divided into categories such as “Clerical,” “Household Technology,” “Industrial Work,” and “Labor 892 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGYAND CULTURE Organization.” Other smaller categories include forty-three entries under “Reproductive Technology,” the aforementioned survey of women and technology in developing nations, and a curious emphasis on women airplane pilots. To begin each category, Bindocci has chosen a number of marvelous archival photographs, mosdy of American women in the interwar period. Compiling a substantial bibliography such as this one can be a thankless task. Therefore those of us who work on subjects relating to women and technology owe Cynthia Bindocci a debt ofgratitude for the time and effort she has spent to aid our scholarship. Arwen Mohun Dr. Mohun is assistant professor of history at the University of Delaware. The Staircase, vol. 1: History and Theories; vol. 2: Studies ofHazards, Falls, and SaferDesign. Byjohn Templer. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992. Pp. xiv+185; xvi+200; illustrations, tables, glossary, appendix, bibliog­ raphy, index. $27.50; $32.50; $55.00 the set. As the understated main title of this two-volume set suggests, The Staircasejoins that emerging family of exhaustive studies devoted to all possible aspects, historical and technological, of a single object type. So far we have seen The Pencil (Henry Petroski, 1989), TheAmerican Railroad Passenger Car (John H. White, 1982) and Freight Car (White, 1993), and Zipper (Robert Friedel, 1994). By their nature, such worthy studies court the danger of being labeled (usually incorrectly) as narrow exercises in connoisseurship, or worse, antiquarianism, with all the overtones of noncontextual wallowing in one’s favorite obsession. Collector groups have long produced great tomes...

The Staircase, vol. 1: History and Theories; vol. 2: Studies of Hazards, Falls, and Safer Design by John Templer

892 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGYAND CULTURE Organization.” Other smaller categories include forty-three entries under “Reproductive Technology,” the aforementioned survey of women and technology in developing nations, and a curious emphasis on women airplane pilots. To begin each category, Bindocci has chosen a number of marvelous archival photographs, mosdy of American women in the interwar period. Compiling a substantial bibliography such as this one can be a thankless task. Therefore those of us who work on subjects relating to women and technology owe Cynthia Bindocci a debt ofgratitude for the time and effort she has spent to aid our scholarship. Arwen Mohun Dr. Mohun is assistant professor of history at the University of Delaware. The Staircase, vol. 1: History and Theories; vol. 2: Studies ofHazards, Falls, and SaferDesign. Byjohn Templer. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992. Pp. xiv+185; xvi+200; illustrations, tables, glossary, appendix, bibliog­ raphy, index. $27.50; $32.50; $55.00 the set. As the understated main title of this two-volume set suggests, The Staircasejoins that emerging family of exhaustive studies devoted to all possible aspects, historical and technological, of a single object type. So far we have seen The Pencil (Henry Petroski, 1989), TheAmerican Railroad Passenger Car (John H. White, 1982) and Freight Car (White, 1993), and Zipper (Robert Friedel, 1994). By their nature, such worthy studies court the danger of being labeled (usually incorrectly) as narrow exercises in connoisseurship, or worse, antiquarianism, with all the overtones of noncontextual wallowing in one’s favorite obsession. Collector groups have long produced great tomes on duck decoys, orange-crate labels, motorcycles, plumb bobs, and wrenches, happily excluding all other life forms and forces. This monophasism, however, pays considerable divi­ dends for the larger society when such specificity is allied with a broader understanding and treatment of human interactions that may or may not occur around the object ofattention. HereJohn Templer rises to the challenge, with a unified social and technical study of steps, those stationary but highly interactive rectangles of wood, metal, and stone that connect all levels of the built environment. As in Robin Evans’s Fabrication of Virtue: English Prison Architecture, 1750-1840 (Cambridge, 1982), Templer looks both at how a structural system has evolved over the centuries and at the various impacts of this system on its users, a pair of goals well beyond the scope of Cleo Baldon and lb Melchior’s pretty but shallow Steps and Stairways (New York, 1989). Steps, climbing poles, ladders, ramps, handrails, companionways, and great sweeping staircases in all their dogleg and helical variations come before Templer’s gaze. As a senior professor of architecture at Georgia Institute of Technology, Templer adopts the mantles of archi­ TECHNOLOGYAND CULTURE Book Reviews 893 tectural engineer and social scientist in deconstructing every square inch ofa stair’s working surfaces, preferably a well-worn stair that reveals patterns of habitual use. At the heart ofTempler’s study is the realization that stairs historically have been mistaken (largely by architects and builders) as architectural elements like columns or pediments, when they actually are architec­ tonic, functional pieces of hardware that also happen to work visually with the surrounding structure. Elevators and escalators tend to be designed by mechanical engineers rather than architects. Templer shows throughout this pair of books that stairs deserve no less consid­ eration simply because they appear to be static and aesthetic. The first volume, History and Theories, gives us Templer the globe­ trotting stairway climber, seeking out stairs of all ages, primarily in Europe and South America. His black-and-white snapshots are often small and fuzzy, but they capture the full sweep of this universal means of ascent and descent: the careworn stone steps to religious shrines of the ancient world, regal risers in the palaces of France and Italy, sword-scarred turret spirals inside cashes of feudal England, all furnish­ ing indisputable evidence of stair behavior over time. “The staircase,” Templer declares, “ is art object, structural idea, manifestation of pomp and manners, behaviorial setting, controller of our gait, political icon, legal prescription, poetic fancy, or the locus of an epidemic of cruel and injurious falls” (p. x). From Vitruvius to Venturi, Templer charts the work of the great architects...

Early Reflections on Teaching Western History

Journal Article Early Reflections on Teaching Western History Get access David M. Wrobel David M. Wrobel David M. Wrobel is Assistant Professor of History, Widener University. He is the author of The End of American Exceptionalism (1993). Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar OAH Magazine of History, Volume 9, Issue 1, Fall 1994, Pages 51–57, https://doi.org/10.1093/maghis/9.1.51 Published: 01 September 1994

Chiropractic in America: The History of a Medical Alternative

It is the position of the medical profession that chiropractic is an unscientific cult whose practitioners lack the necessary training and background to diagnose and treat human disease. December 1966 AMA House of Delegates Resolution (cited on p 133) He's a different kind of doctor, but a doctor just the same, Yet he doesn't have an M.D. as part of his printed name, He spent years of work and study learning what makes people ill, But he doesn't write prescriptions— and he doesn't give one pill. Anonymous (p 138) Chiropractic is one of the most widespread types of alternative medicine available in America. The term "alternative care" is bandied about, appearing on billboards, in health magazines, and in obvious business promotions, yet it eludes precise definition. J. Stuart Moore, an assistant professor of history at Radford University in Radford, Va, has attempted to put into a clearer perspective the history

A Mental Revolution: Scientific Management since Taylor ed. by Daniel Nelson

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 427 A Mental Revolution: Scientific Management since Taylor. Edited by Daniel Nelson. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1992. Pp. viii+249; notes, index. $49.50. Daniel Nelson, one of the foremost scholars of scientific manage­ ment, has gathered together a set of important papers in A Mental Revolution: Scientific Management since Taylor. These essays treat scientific management from F. W. Taylor’s death in 1915 through the postwar era, with most emphasis on the 1920s and 1930s. They examine management science as it changed after 1915, and they consider how it was influenced by Taylor. On the whole, these papers work well together. As a group they discuss the growing culture of efficiency in the early 20th century, the ironic relationship between industrial welfare work and scientific manage­ ment, labor’s concern with scientific management, and the way indi­ viduals worked to introduce scientific management into industry. The authors suggest that after Taylor’s death scientific management became even more important than it had been during his life. A Mental Revolution contains nine chapters, the first an excellent survey ofTaylor and scientific management by Nelson himself. For those who might have been intimidated by the volume of work by and about Taylor, this chapter offers a good introduction. For those who think they know what scientific management is all about, the chapter offers some interesting new insights, especially regarding the international scope of Taylor’s work. Four chapters address ways in which scientific management was implemented in industry, business, and education. They offer new and detailed case studies which help us to better understand how, and to what extent, scientific management was actually used. David Goldberg writes about Joseph & Feiss, clothing manufacturers, as a “premier example” of the application of scientific management, as well as an example of comprehensive industrial welfare work. Kathy Burgess’s study of the Fink-Belt Company focuses on the introduction of scientific management and its accompanying labor problems. John Rumm, in his examination of Du Pont’s High Explosives Operating Department, focuses on the industrial engineer and his use ofscientific management. In addition to these case studies, Daniel Nelson has contributed a chapter on the role scientific management played in business and managerial education as it developed in the early 20th century. The remaining four chapters focus on individuals and their work in developing and spreading scientific management. Brian Price writes about Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, looking at their controversy with Taylorites over motion study versus time study. Guy Alchon explores the career of Mary Van Kleeck, the social worker and reformer, and her interest in scientific management. In a chapter on Charles Bedaux, Steven Kreis examines Bedaux’s variation of scientific management and his company’s successes and failures in America and Britain. Finally, 428 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Steven Waring offers a fascinating analysis of Peter Drucker’s managerial philosophy as it compares to Taylor’s scientific management. There is little to criticize here except that the volume as a whole does not quite live up to the expectations developed after reading Nelson’s first “retrospective” chapter. There, he devotes ten of twenty-five pages to scientific management in Japan and Europe and also points out that there was much activity outside of industry. The chapters that follow deal almost exclusively with the United States, and they all focus on industry, with no treatment of scientific management in government, schools, hospitals, or other institutions. The focus on the United States and industry does not make A Mental Revolution any less important. It is a significant contribution to the literature of management and industrialization in the 20th century. As Nelson points out in his introduction, there has been little work on scientific management since 1915. This volume does much to change that. Lindy Biggs Dr. Biggs is assistant professor of history at Auburn University. She is completing a book on the American factory. TVA’ s Public Planning: The Vision, the Reality. By Walter L. Creese. Knox­ ville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990. Pp. xxi+388; illustrations, notes, index. $38.95. In 1993 the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) marked the sixtieth anniversary of its founding as a New Deal experiment...

Musicians in Hollywood: Work and Technological Change in Entertainment Industries, 1926–1940

Musicians in Hollywood: Work and Technological Change in Entertainment Industries, 1926-1940 JAMES P. KRAFT Research in American labor history has increasingly focused on the dynamic relationship between work and technological change. Studies of various trades and industries have shown how new methods of production revamped the labor process and capsized the traditional “world of workers.” While some historians have explained how laborsaving machinery simplified work tasks and reduced skill levels, others have shown how it generated demands for new skills and talents and occasionally increased rather than decreased labor’s bargaining power. Still others now argue that mechanization did indeed create new skilled jobs but fragmented new craft workers into complex bureaucracies and narrow, task-oriented roles.1 A critical look at how workers tried to Dr. Kraft is assistant professor of history at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, where he teaches American business and labor history. This article is based on research undertaken for his 1990 University of Southern California dissertation, “Stage to Studio: American Musicians and Sound Technology, 1890-1946.” He wishes to thank Edwin Perkins, Steven Ross, Terry Seip, Robert Locke, Idus Newby, David Sicilia, and the Technology and Culture referees for their comments on earlier versions of this essay. One version was presented at the 1993 meeting of the Business History Conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 'See Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation ofWork in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1974), which emphasizes that new technology separated the “concep­ tion” of work from its actual “execution.” In Contested Terrain: The Iransformation of the Workplace in the Twentieth Century (NewYork, 1979), Richard Edwards explains that the rise of impersonal bureaucracies increased management’s control over labor. Both Braverman and Edwards raise the question of whether management deployed new technology to increase production or gain more control over the workforce. Michael Burawoy, The Politics ofProduction (New York, 1985), pp. 21-84, and David Noble, Forces ofProduction: A Social History of Industrial Automation (New York, 1984), suggest that the total number of new skilled jobs that technical innovation creates falls far short of the number it destroys. In October 1988, Technology and Culture devoted an entire issue to the subject of technological change and the workforce (“Labor History and the History ofTechnology,” vol. 29, no. 4). Articles that have been particularly helpful to this study include Stephen Meyer, “Technology and the Workplace: Skilled and Production Workers atAllis-Chalmers, 1900-1941,” pp. 839-64; Michael Nuwer, “From Batch to Flow: Production Technology and Work-Force Skills in the Steel Industry,” pp. 808-38; Philip Scranton, “None-Too-© 1994 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/94/3502-0001$01.00 289 290 James P. Kraft influence managerial initiatives to modernize the workplace has hand­ somely complemented this literature on technology and the labor process. Imaginative scholars have offered new ways of understanding how workers struggled to control the pace of industrial change in order to preserve as many traditions, privileges, and jobs as possible.2 This article is a contribution to these discourses. It describes and assesses the impact of new technologies on one atypical group of American workers—musicians in Los Angeles—during a particularly important and stressful time of economic upheaval, the 1920s and 1930s. Between the two world wars, the “music sector” of the economy shifted from a diffused structure to a concentrated, highly mechanized setting. This shift transformed the musicians’ working world. With sound movies and network radio, business firms reproduced and marketed musical performances on a far wider scale than was previously possible. The mass dissemination of music eliminated thousands of jobs in silent-movie theaters and radio stations across the nation, while simul­ taneously creating a much smaller number of new opportunities in a few expanding media centers—especially Los Angeles. This article emphasizes that new opportunities in Los Angeles were lodged in elaborate occupational frameworks characterized by new patterns of hiring, wages, working conditions, and definitions of skills. It also shows that musicians, like other skilled workers, rejected the notion that modernization should benefit only entrepreneurs and their customers and sought instead to influence to their own advantage the changing work environment. The question of...

Nonviolence in the Civil Rights Movement

Nonviolence in the Civil Rights Movement Get access Carol Hunter Carol Hunter Carol Hunter received her PhD from SUNY Binghamton after working for over ten years as a special education teacher in the public schools. She is Assistant Professor of History and Humanities at Earlam College. Having authored To Set the Captives Free (1993), she has a Ford grant to prepare curriculum material based on Freedom Summer as a model of education for nonviolent social change. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar OAH Magazine of History, Volume 8, Issue 3, Spring 1994, Pages 64–74, https://doi.org/10.1093/maghis/8.3.64 Published: 01 March 1994

Dirt and Disease: Polio before FDR.

Will have an enthusiastic audience among historians of medicine who are familiar, for the most part, only with later twentieth-century efforts to combat --Allan M. Brandt, University of North Carolina Dirt and Disease is a social, cultural, and medical history of the polio epidemic in the United States. Naomi Rogers focuses on the early years from 1900 to 1920, and continues the story to the present. She explores how scientists, physicians, patients, and their families explained the appearance and spread of polio and how they tried to cope with it. Rogers frames this study of polio within a set of larger questions about health and disease in twentieth-century American culture. In the early decades of this century, scientists sought to understand the nature of polio. They found that it was caused by a virus, and that it could often be diagnosed by analyzing spinal fluid. Although scientific information about polio was understood and accepted, it was not always definitive. This knowledge coexisted with traditional notions about disease and medicine. Polio struck wealthy and middle-class children as well as the poor. But experts and public health officials nonetheless blamed polio on a filthy urban environment, bad hygiene, and poverty. This allowed them to hold slum-dwelling immigrants responsible, and to believe that sanitary education and quarantines could lessen the spread of the disease. Even when experts acknowledged that polio struck the middle-class and native-born as well as immigrants, they tried to explain this away by blaming the fly for the spread of polio. Flies could land indiscriminately on the rich and the poor. In the 1930s, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt helped to recast the image of polio and to remove its stigma. No one could ignore the cross-spread of the disease. By the 1950s, the public was looking to science for prevention and therapy. But Rogers reminds us that the recent history of polio was more than the history of successful vaccines. She points to competing therapies, research tangents, and people who died from early vaccine trials. Naomi Rogers is an assistant professor of history at the University of Alabama.

:American Beginnings: Exploration, Culture, and Cartography in the Land of Norumbega

'There is nothing else quite like it, and there is room, and a need, for quality books on this area in this era' - Colin G. Calloway, author of The Western Abenakis of Vermont, 1600-1800: War, Migration and the Survival of an Indian People. This illustrated collection of essays examines early Native American contact with European explorers, fishermen, and traders in 'Norumbega', the sixteenth-century name of the Atlantic coast of New England near the Penobscot River in Maine. This coast was the focus of several French and English voyagers seeking a northwest passage and other avenues to riches and treasure. A tacit division gradually emerged: the French concentrated on the region north of the Penobscot and the English on the lands to the south.The 100 illustrations in this book come largely from the Osher Map Library at the University of Southern Maine and include many rare early maps (1500-1800). Ten are reproduced in full color. Emerson W. Baker is an assistant professor of history at Salem State College. Edwin A. Churchill is the chief curator, Maine State Museum. Richard S. D'Abate is the associate director of the Maine Humanities Council. Kristine L.Jones is an independent scholar. Victor A. Konrad is director of the Fulbright Canada Program. Harald E. L. Prins is an associate professor of anthropology, Kansas State University.

Framing Disease: Studies in Cultural History

In some ways disease does not exist until we have agreed that it does, by perceiving, naming, and responding to it, writes Charles E. Rosenberg in his introduction to this stimulating set of essays. Disease is both a biological and a social phenomenon. Patient, doctor, family, and social institutions--including employers, government, and insurance companies--all find ways to frame the biological event in terms that make sense to them and serve their own ends. Many diseases discussed here--endstage renal disease, rheumatic fever, parasitic infectious diseases, coronary thrombosis--came to be defined, redefined, and renamed over the course of several centuries. As these essays show, the concept of disease has also been used to frame culturally resonant behaviors: suicide, homosexuality, anorexia nervosa, chronic fatigue syndrome. Disease is also framed by public policy, as the cases of industrial disability and forensic psychiatry demonstrate. Medicl institutions, as managers of people with disease, come to have vested interests in diagnoses, as the histories of facilities to treat tuberculosis or epilepsy reveal. Ultimately, the existence and conquest of disease serve to frame a society's sense of its own healthiness and to give direction to social reforms. The contributors include Steven J. Peitzman, Peter C. English, John Farley, Christopher Lawrence, Michael Macdonald, Bert Hansen, Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Robert A. Aronowitz, Gerald Markowitz, David Rosner, Janet A. Tighe, Barbara Bates, Ellen Dwyer, John M. Eyler, and Elizabeth Fee. Charles Rosenberg is Janice and Julian Bers Professor of the History of Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Janet Golden is an assistant professor of history at Rutgers University.

Turning on Water with a Shovel: The Career of Elwood Mead by James R. Kluger

176 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE will stand as a monument to scholarship and as a clarion call for Californians and all Americans to develop new ways of water use. James E. Sherow Dr. Sherow, an assistant professor of history at Kansas State University, teaches environmental, U.S. western, and Kansas history and ethnohistory. He is the author of Watering the Valley (University Press of Kansas, 1990). Turning on Water with a Shovel: The Career ofElwood Mead. By James R. Kluger. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992. Pp. xvii + 218; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95. Elwood Mead served as commissioner of the United States Bureau of Reclamation from 1924 until his death in 1936 at age 78. He was an irrigation engineer and an expert in land settlement; he consulted with farmers in Wyoming and Colorado and governments in the United States, Australia, and Israel; he built irrigation colonies in California. Born on the eve of the Civil War, he witnessed the evolution of technology as applied to all areas of life: automobiles replaced horses and wagons, manufacturing processes and automa­ tion supplanted the brute force of human labor in the production of goods and services. Mead did not view technology as the solution to human problems, but rather as one of many tools. Raised on a tobacco farm in southeastern Indiana, Mead witnessed at an early age the destructive results of exploitative agriculture, which uses up the soil and is dependent on tenant labor. Fortunate to attend college at Purdue University, Mead studied agriculture and science and began his professional life as an assistant engineer with the Army Corps of Engineers. From there he moved to Colorado, where he first experienced irrigated agriculture. At 22 years of age, he had found his life’s work in Larimer County: the “study of all the physical, human and legal problems of turning on water with a shovel” (p. 11). James Kluger has written a very readable biography of Elwood Mead, an important person in the development of irrigated agricul­ ture and federal reclamation in the arid West. Mead differed from Frederick Newell and Arthur Powell Davis, his contemporaries in federal reclamation, in that he did not view irrigation from an engineering standpoint. As Kluger tells us, Mead was more concerned with solving existing problems and improving already functioning projects than with launching new programs. His goal was nothing less than the marriage of irrigation and settlement, of engineering structures and human needs. His efforts reflected that philosophy as he hoped to found one model planned settlement to demonstrate the possibilities of rural life and use federal reclamation to get there. Kluger describes Mead’s rural utopianism and his obsession with TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 177 reform. The expertise that went into the engineering aspects of irrigation would be applied to economic, agricultural, and social planning. Yet his two California colonies at Durham and Delhi were less than successful. Kluger notes the economic reasons for failure but tells us as well that Mead’s vision was probably doomed from the outset. How, after all, could one create a hearty independent farmer by regimented, dictatorial means? This focus on social conditions, however, stayed with Mead beyond Durham and Delhi. Kluger describes Mead’s final attempt at a model community, the town of Boulder City, Nevada, built by the Bureau of Reclamation for the workers constructing Boulder Dam, now known as Hoover Dam. Elwood Mead had a love for farming, order, and efficiency, but he looked beyond the technical aspects of dam and canal building for irrigated agriculture. To him, “the reclaiming of desert lands was more than an engineering problem; it encompassed all aspects of putting the land to use and settling it with family farmers” (p. 150). Federal reclamation, in its early years, was less than successful, because while federal engineers saw the relationship between building the dams and settling the land with family farmers, they could not construct it; it did not lend itself to formulaic solutions. And yet something drove men like Mead to continue the experiment, to hold to the vision of a West populated with family farms. Kluger has given us one man’s story...

Erratum

List of Contributors Carol Benedict is an Assistant Professor of History at Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts. Thomas Buoye is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Tulsa, Tusla, Oklahoma. Mark Elliott is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of California , Santa Barbara, California. Angela Ki Che Leung is a Research Fellow at the Sun Yat-sen Institute for Social Sciences and Philosophy, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. Yamamoto Susumu is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Kita—Kyüshü University, Kita-Kyüshü, Japan. Zhang Peiyuan is the Associate Director of the Institute of Geography at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People's Republic of China. Erratum In our previous issue of June 1993 (Volume 14, Number 1), two printing errors appeared in the article "Archival Research in Qing Legal History," by Nancy Park and Robert Antony. The second sentence on page 93 should have read, "Students of China have recently rediscovered this fascinating subject, branching off into the spheres of civil, administrative, and commercial law as well as continuing the more traditional focus on criminal law." The final line of text on the same page was also erroneously printed twice. These errors were a result of the shift of technology involved in the transfer of publishing responsibility for Late Imperial China from the Society for Qing Studies to the Johns Hopkins University Press. The editors and the Press apologize to the authors (to whom we have separately attempted to make amends) and to our readership; we have initiated procedures to minimize the possibility of similar errors occuring in future issues. James Lee William T. Rowe ...