Assistant Professor Of History Research Articles

Standardizing the Subject: Experimental Psychologists, Introspection, and the Quest for a Technoscientific Ideal

Standardizing the Subject: Experimental Psychologists, Introspection, and the Quest for a Technoscientific Ideal DEBORAH J. COON Historians of psychology have long noted the extent to which American psychologists after the turn of the century, and especially after World War I, were motivated by the progressive ideals of practicality, order, and control, ideals arising from and compatible with a rapidly urbanizing, industrializing American society.1 They have noted how early psychologists stressed the usefulness of their discipline and emphasized their ability to engineer people’s behavior Dr. Coon is an assistant professor of history in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Research for this article was partially funded by a Smithsonian Institution postdoctoral fellowship at the National Museum of American History and by a Paul S. Beer Trust minigrant from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Houghton Library at Harvard University gave permission to quote from the William James Papers. The article is an extension of earlier work done in collaboration with Merriley Borell, Hughes Evans, and Gail Hornstein. The author also wishes to thank I. Bernard Cohen, Audrey Davis, Donald Fleming, Robert J. Richards, and Barbara Rosenkrantz for guidance over the years and is grateful to P. Thomas Carroll, John Carson, Ruth Schwartz Cowan, Kurt Danziger, and the Technology and Culture referees for their comments on the article. 'John C. Burnham’s Paths into American Culture: Psychology, Medicine and Morals (Philadelphia, 1988), brings together several of his seminal essays discussing the progressivist faith of early psychologists in the United States. See also John M. O’Donnell, The Origins of Behaviorism: American Psychology, 1870—1920 (New York, 1985); Dorothy Ross, G. Stanley Hall: The Psychologist as Prophet (Chicago, 1972); Michael M. Sokal, ed., Psychological Testing and American Society, 1890—1930 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1987). On the impact of industrialization on modern society, see Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, trans. John Wilkinson (New York, 1964). On industrialization specifically in American society in the 19th and early 20th centuries, see John F. Kasson, Civilizing the Machine: Technology and Republican Values in America, 1776-1900 (New York, 1976); Robert H. Wiebe, The Searchfor Order, 1877-1920 (New York, 1967); Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (New York, 1982); Thomas P. Hughes, American Genesis: A Century ofInvention and Technological Enthusiasm, 1870-1970 (New York, 1989). On the effects of industri­ alization on American science, see P. Thomas Carroll, “American Science Trans­ formed,” American Scientist 74 (1986): 466-85; and David Noble, America by Design: Science, Technology and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism (Oxford, 1977).© 1993 bv the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/93/3404-0004$01.00 757 758 Deborah J. Coon into desired channels. Behaviorism, as it was initiated by John B. Watson in 1913, and neobehaviorism, as developed by B. F. Skinner, were exemplars of this ideal. Behaviorism was explicitly designed to predict and control human behavior, and Skinner even referred to his system of behaviorism as a social technology.2 Mental testing and industrial psychology were other early offshoots of the same techno­ logical ideal, and the former especially has been a subject of intensive study by historians.3 When they have acknowledged the existence of this technological ideal, historians have generally mentioned that its roots lay slightly earlier in the history of American psychology. As examples, one can readily point to James McKeen Cattell’s address to the St. Louis Congress of Arts and Science of 1904 and William James’s even earlier 1892 American Psychological Association presidential ad­ dress.4 Both of these eminent American psychologists called for a useful and practical science of psychology. Both gave preference to application of knowledge over knowledge for its own sake. While historians have recognized these effects of a technological ideal on the development of experimental psychology in the United States, I think there was another more fundamental and subtle way in which technological—or technoscientihc—ideals shaped the discipline of psychology in the United States from the 1880s onward? This had 2For example, see B. F. Skinner, About Behaviorism (New York, 1974), pp. 248-50, and Science and Human Behavior (New York, 1953), p. 51. ’The...

Standardizing the Subject: Experimental Psychologists, Introspection, and the Quest for a Technoscientific Ideal

Historians of psychology have long noted the extent to which American psychologists after the turn of the century, and especially after World War I, were motivated by the progressive ideals of practicality, order, and control, ideals arising from and compatible with a rapidly urbanizing, industrializing American society.' They have noted how early psychologists stressed the usefulness of their discipline and emphasized their ability to engineer people's behavior DR COON is an assistant professor of history in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Research for this article was partially funded by a Smithsonian Institution postdoctoral fellowship at the National Museum of American History and by a Paul S. Beer Trust minigrant from Rensselaer

Engineering in the Progressive Era: A New Look at Frederick Haynes Newell and the U.S. Reclamation Service

Engineering in the Progressive Era: A New Look at Frederick Haynes Newell and the U.S. Reclamation Service DONALD C. JACKSON The passage of the national irrigation law was one of the great steps not only in the forward progress of the United States but of all mankind. [Theodore Roosevelt, 1903]1 The cumulative effect of the barrage of favorable publicity for reclamation has been the conditioning of the public mind to an unquestioning acceptance . . . that federal reclamation is a great and unmixed good, and that it is the major if not the exclusive factor in irrigated agriculture. [Stanley Davison, 1952]2 The American West constitutes an environment well suited to transformation through the agency of technology. As Walter Prescott Webb illustrated in his classic 1931 book The Great Plains, the expanse of America lying west of the ninety-eighth meridian (a line running through the center of Kansas) is largely defined by the lack of precipitation.3 Water is a key factor in the economic and social development of the arid region, and water control technologies are Dr. Jackson is assistant professor of history at Lafayette College. He gratefully acknowledges comments from Donald J. Pisani, Jack Cell, and several Technology and Culture referees that helped make this a better article. Some of the research underlying the article was completed as part of a contract between FraserDESIGN and the Bureau of Reclamation for documentation of historic resources affected by the Central Arizona Project; however, the opinions expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of FraserDESIGN, the Bureau of Reclamation, or any agency employees. 'Telegram from Theodore Roosevelt to National Irrigation Congress, September 15, 1903, reprinted in F. H. Newell, comp., Proceedings ofthe First Conference of Engineers of the Reclamation Service (Washington, D.C., 1904), p. 121.¿Stanley Davison, The Leadership of the Reclamation Movement, 1875—1902 (New York, 1979), pp. 32-33 (reprint of Ph.D. diss., University of California, 1952). ’Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains (Boston, 1931), pp. 3-44.© 1993 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/93/3403-0004$01.00 539 540 Donald C. Jackson especially important because moisture is not evenly distributed over the landscape in either density or seasonality.4 Torrential downpours might dump millions of gallons of water on the desert, but these storms can be spaced years apart during periods of severe drought. Most rivers depend on melting snowpack rather than rainfall to sustain their flow, and westerners have long recognized the impor­ tance of storage dams in capturing both torrential floods and spring “runoff” from snowcapped mountains.0 Without dams, huge quanti­ ties of flood waters can be lost. If stored behind artificial barriers, however, this water can support sustained growth of agriculture, industry (e.g., mining and hydroelectric power), and municipalities.6 Of these, irrigated agriculture (often called reclamation) historically constitutes the most widespread use of water in the West.7 Although irrigation in the West predates the era of European settlement, it started a new phase in 1847 when Mormon pioneers began diverting small creeks onto desert land near Utah’s Great Salt Lake.8 Other Anglo groups followed the Mormons and soon estab- ’Extensive references on western water history are provided in Lawrence B. Lee, Reclaiming the American West: An Historiography and Guide (Santa Barbara, Calif., 1980). Also see Donald J. Pisani, “Deep and Troubled Waters: A New Field of Western History,” New Mexico Historical Review 63 (October 1988): 311-31; and Lawrence B. Lee, “Water Resource History: A New Field of Historiography?” Pacific Historical Review 57 (November 1988): 457—67. Notable recent books in the field include William L. Kahrl, Water and Power: The Conflict over Los Angeles’ Water Supply in the Owens Valley (Berkeley, 1982); Donald J. Pisani, From the Family Farm to Agribusiness: The Irrigation Crusade in California and the West, 1859-1931 (Berkeley, 1984); James Earl Sherow, Watering the Valley: Development along the High Plains ofthe Arkansas River (Topeka, Kans., 1990); Norris Hundley, The Great Thirst: Californians and Water, 1770s-1990s (Berkeley, 1992); and Donald J. Pisani, To Reclaim a Divided West: Water, Law, and Public Policy, 1848-1902 (Albuquerque, N.M...

Losing Time: The Industrial Policy Debate by Otis L. Graham, Jr

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 467 The Technology Pork Barrel provides an excellent look at the role of the federal government in planning large-scale R&D programs for the commercial sector. It is an important complement to the works of Richard Nelson on the government’s role in technological develop­ ment and economic growth, even when, for purely ideological rea­ sons, the government chooses not to support a program. The book is not without its shortcomings, however. A couple of factual errors bear mention. James Fletcher was the administrator of NASA in the early 1970s, not James Beggs (p. 104), and the first shuttle mission after the Challenger explosion occurred in 1988, not 1989 (p. 197). Furthermore, Cohen and Noll’s statistical analyses of congressional votes are somewhat obtuse and tend to obscure the role of powerful and influential individuals in Congress on the process. Derek W. Elliott Dr. Elliott, formerly a curator in the history of public policy at the National Air and Space Museum, is an assistant professor of history at Tennessee State University. Losing Time: The Industrial Policy Debate. By Otis L. Graham, Jr. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992. Pp. xiii + 370; notes, index. $29.95. Losing Time is a very good book. It chronicles the ways in which history has been ignored and manipulated in the American dispute about sector-specific economic policy. In doing so, it documents the role of a hostile ideology (based in neoclassical economics) in distorting the his­ torical record regarding U.S. governmental (national and subnational) interventions for the purpose of microeconomic development. And it shows how advocates ofindustrial policy missed the opportunity to mo­ bilize history on their side of the debate. The lack of critical analysis of the industrial policy track record (for example, whether or not the Reconstruction Finance Corporation had, on balance, been a success or not) is shown to characterize both sides in the controversy. Inaccurate history has been debilitating. Rather than developing a coherent industrial policy, like Japan or several members of the European Community, the U.S. has resorted to subterfuge (hiding initiatives in the Pentagon orjustifying them as once-only concessions to powerful client groups, such as agricultural interests). The result is America’s “unconscious industrial plan.” Laissez-faire theology per­ petuated the fiction that government could not be involved in the targeting of strategic industrial sectors. Doing without industrial policy meant that America undertook the worst kind of sectoral interventions—the bailout of Chrysler Corporation being the most recent example. Otis Graham divides his book into three sections. Part 1 begins with a troubled United States in the 1970s as we worry about what 468 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE happened to the “American century.” The economic priesthood tells us everything is fine—services, or some combinations of services and high-technology products, will substitute for manufacturing capabil­ ity. They tell us to ignore the problems with the steel industry and increasing protectionist sentiments (and Chrysler). But optimists had a tougher time making their arguments credible as the U.S. economy went through bad times in the late 1970s and was hemorrhaging between 1980 and 1983. As a consequence, the first movements of the business community toward the industrial policy idea could be detected here—at least the recognition that we had a de facto technology policy that was badly designed. However, Reaganomics bought time for defenders of the faith. Heavy investments in defense helped right the economy. The year 1983 proved to be a temporary flood tide for critics, marked by presidential candidate Walter Mondale’s retreat from supporting a modified industrial policy before the conservative counterattack that blended ideology and political “realism” (reliance on markets plus a denial that government had the capability to manage). History was manipulated by everyone. Part 2 is about how we discovered we had 29 different federal government agencies with 265 sectorally targeted initiatives on the books in 1982, not to mention the 50 different state governments with their own initiatives. Yet the 1984 election provided opponents with enough confirmation that they could continue to ignore the issue. A decision was made not to manage the existing unconscious industrial policy mix. Nonetheless, the number and...

Driving Ambitions: An Analysis of the American Hot Rod Enthusiasm by H. F. Moorhouse

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 419 Smith’s triumph over Pocahontas’s people. Rescued from death by the Native American woman, Smith dazzles the natives with his compass and frightens them with cannon fire. Englishmen, Wright appears to imply, are the knowledgeable enthusiasts; Native American women and men the ignorant technophobes. And yet, if they cared nothing for technology, why did the Native Americans even bother to look at the compass? Smith fired his cannons, Wright tells us, because natives “were carrying millstones away from the English camp.” Why, 1 wonder, would they bother? I suspect that the relation between technology and white, middleclass masculinity goes a step further than these essays have taken it, so deep that the tools and techniques associated with femininity and women, with people of color and poor people, are identified as in some sense not technology. Is cooking an act of technological mastery? Is The Joy of Cooking a how-to book? Did Native Americans have a technological use for those millstones? I would like to know more about enthusiasm for technology on the part of the outsiders all these scientists, engineers, colonialist adventurers, magazine writers, soap­ box racers, audiophiles, and nuclear physicists were struggling against. Virginia Scharff Dr. Scharff is assistant professor of history at the University of New Mexico. She published Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming ofthe Motor Age in 1991, with the Free Press, and is coauthor of Present Tense: The United States since 1945 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992). Driving Ambitions: An Analysis of the American Hot Rod Enthusiasm. By H. F. Moorhouse. Manchester and New York: Manchester Univer­ sity Press, 1991; distributed by St. Martin’s Press. Pp. 231; notes, index. $29.95. Most readers of this journal presumably find nothing odd about subjecting hot rods and their subculture to academic scrutiny. Schol­ ars coming from other traditions, however, may be inclined to dismiss them as products of a prolonged adolescence that has been nurtured by an ethos of vulgar consumption. With this segment of the academic community the author of Driving Ambitions has no patience; his book is an attempt to understand hot rodding on its own terms, and in so doing gain a fuller comprehension of modern work, life, and leisure. The opening chapter takes on the legion of social critics who see modern life as consisting largely of dehumanizing, alienating work coupled with passive, commercially manipulated leisure pursuits; cars, if they are deemed worthy of mention, are significant only for their contributions to environmental destruction, highway fatalities, and numbing assembly-line routines. In direct contrast, H. F. Moor­ 420 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE house fastens on the hot rod and its subculture as a source of community, learning, craftsmanship, involvement, and creativity. This theme is developed systematically only in one subsequent chapter. The bulk of the text is devoted to a history of hot rodding that covers such topics as pre-World War II timing runs on the dry lakes of Southern California, the role of Hot Rod magazine and the closely associated National Hot Rod Association in promoting hot rodding as a safe and legitimate activity, the growth of a speed equipment industry and the challenge posed to it by clean-air legislation, the controversy over the use of nitromethane fuels for competition dragsters, women’s accomplishments within the sport, and sundry other matters. These chapters constitute a thoroughly competent narrative of the development of hot rodding, but contrib­ ute only marginally to the issues introduced in the first chapter. This lack of fit between the theoretical concerns initially addressed and the bulk of the book’s content is Driving Ambitions’ greatest shortcoming. Most readers attracted to the sociological issues intro­ duced in the opening chapter will have little interest in the contro­ versy over the use of exotic fuels by dragsters, while those interested in hot rodding per se will find the theoretical orientations at best irrelevant and at worst incomprehensible. The conceptual shortcomings of the book are exacerbated by shoddy production. The mangled spelling of many Southern Califor­ nia place names is perhaps excusable; the numerous misspellings of common words less so. Even worse, flawed typesetting and editing have rendered some...

“That World’s Fair Feeling”: Control of Water in 20th-Century America

Review Essay “THAT WORLD’S FAIR FEELING": CONTROL OF WATER IN 20TH-CENTURY AMERICA THEODORE STEINBERG Writer Wallace Stegner is not terribly fond of dams, especially those that dot the American West, which happens to be his home.1 But when he visited Hoover Dam in 1946—then called Boulder—he had this to say: “Nobody can visit Boulder Dam without getting that World’s Fair feeling. It is certainly one of the world’s wonders, that sweeping cliff of concrete, those impetuous elevators, the labyrinth of tunnels, the huge power stations. Everything about the dam is marked by the immense smooth efficient beauty that seems pecu­ liarly American.”2 Hoover Dam is indeed a wonder. It took five years to build, contains over 4.5 million cubic yards of concrete (more than the Bureau of Reclamation used in all the dams it built until that time), rises to a height of over 700 feet, cost more than fifty million dollars, and claimed over 100 lives. When it was finished in 1936, it ranked as a singular engineering feat, a symbol of American ingenuity and the mark of a nation that was fast rising to global dominance. But Hoover Dam was only the beginning. Over the course of Wallace Stegner’s life (he was born in 1909), a long list of dams went up across the waters of the Colorado River Basin: Parker Dam, Imperial Dam, Davis, Laguna, Navajo, Flaming Gorge, Blue Mesa, Morrow Point, and, ultimately, Glen Canyon, itself a mere 16 feet shorter than Hoover. Welcome to the World’s Fair. The guiding philosophy behind this profusion of dams was the simple will to control and dominate the natural world. That is a very Dr. Steinberg is postdoctoral scholar, Michigan Society of Fellows, and assistant professor of history at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is the author of Nature Incorporated: Industrialization and the Waters ofNew England (New York, 1991). ‘See, e.g., Wallace Stegner, “Myths of the Western Dam,” Saturday Review, October 23, 1965, pp. 29-31. ’Quoted in Russell Martin, A Story That Stands like a Dam: Glen Canyon and the Struggle for the Soul of the West (New York, 1989), p. 42.© 1993 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/93/3402-0007$01.00 401 402 Theodore Steinberg old idea, arguably as old as the human species, which from the beginning has sought to control nature to survive on this earth. But the technological conquest of nature in the 20th century has had a scale, an arrogance, with few rivals in history. Perhaps never before has the will to conquer nature been so consciously and purposefully expressed, so matter-of-fact. What was being expressed here was arrogance by design. The Hoover Dam that Stegner and the thou­ sands of visitors before and after him viewed was supposed to signify greatness, power, and domination. It was planned that way. In his book Hoover Dam, Joseph E. Stevens notes that the Bureau of Reclamation solicited advice from the architect Gordon B. Kaufmann in building the project.3 Kaufmann disposed of an earlier architec­ tural plan that had recommended that two eagles with outstretched wings be placed on the dam’s access towers. What Kaufmann pro­ posed instead was a simpler, more elegant design. So as not to divert attention from the dam’s massive concrete face—which radiates power, and plenty of it—he advised that the towers on the dam’s crest be moved down so that they would rise directly out of the front of the dam. Kaufmann then went on to strip the outlet works and power­ house of ornamentation. It was evidently his view that austerity be the main concern. The dam should be as unadorned as possible, he seemed to feel, a pure mass of 20th-century concrete that would speak for itself. And speak it does, of a culture that has striven to dominate nature wherever and whenever it chooses. That at least was the message, the statement that Hoover Dam made in the 1930s and 1940s as it was celebrated and swept up in a deluge of American boosterism. But the...

Cradle to Grave: Life, Work, and Death at the Lake Superior Copper Mines by Larry Lankton

160 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE small-scale, entrepreneurial industrial culture, Scranton’s introduc­ tion lends greater meaning to the several-score site descriptions that constitute the bulk of the inventory. In sum, this is not a perfect publication, and criticisms can be made concerning both site selection and the volume’s format. But as an initial attempt to delineate the industrial archeology of one of the world’s premier early-20th-century manufacturing centers, it de­ serves recognition. And given the relative lack of knowledge concern­ ing Philadelphia as a cauldron of industrial development, Workshop Of the World warrants praise in helping to further our understanding of American technology. Donald C. Jackson Dr. Jackson is assistant professor of history at Lafayette College and book review editor of IA: The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology. Cradle to Grave: Life, Work, and Death at the Lake Superior Copper Mines. By Larry Lankton. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Pp. xi + 319; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $39.95. In Cradle to Grave, Larry Lankton has written a history of copper mining on the Keweenaw Peninsula of northern Michigan. He exam­ ines the origins and growth of copper mining between roughly 1840 and 1920 and to a lesser extent the decline of the industry in the years since 1920. He aims at a ‘“social history of technology’—one that works that particular space where machine and man meet, and where industry and society connect” (p. viii). For the most part, Lankton has succeeded admirably in his exploration of the social consequences of technological change. Lankton concentrates chiefly on the years between 1890 and 1920. He offers rich and thoughtful accounts of technological change as it transformed copper mining at the turn of the century. His treatments of the adoption of the first power drills, nitroglycerine, mechanized transport of rock, and the substitution of one-man drills provide the reader with a succession of case studies of management efforts to increase labor productivity. He is sensitive to conflicts within this larger process—between mine owners and managers on the one hand, and between management and workers on the other. He offers nuanced explanations of the course of technological change within a context that is strongly influenced by social relations at the workplace. Notable also in Lankton’s account is his treatment of corporate paternalism in the mining region. As the book’s title suggests, mining firms shaped the lives of workers beyond the mines, rockhouses, and smelters where they labored. Lankton is interested in power relations TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 161 between workers and managers and in the ways paternalist practices shaped these relations. He shows, for instance, how economic necessity required the first mine owners to provide worker housing, but he also explores how housing policies changed over time. As firms moved from renting homes to leasing building lots to workers, they found a more cost-effective way to provide workers’ housing. Still, by leasing lots to workers and encouraging them to build their own homes, mining firms offered incentives that reduced turnover and effectively tied workers to the company. Similar treatments of company policies concerning compensation to victims of industrial accidents and early pension practices demonstrate how firms adopted paternalistic policies that reinforced their unilateral power and largesse. The discussions of technological change and corporate paternalism will be of interest to business and labor historians familiar with similar developments in industrial America in the years between the Civil War and World War I. As useful as Lankton’s treatment of the transformation of technol­ ogy and labor relations in copper mining between 1890 and 1920 is, I would have liked to see him carry the analysis more fully into the period of industrial decline. He offers a final chapter on the years since 1920, but, in summarizing a fifty-year period in only twentyfour pages, he is necessarily brief in his treatment of deindustrializa­ tion. This problem is common to much of the literature in economic history; we know far more about economic and social change in periods of industrialization than we know about the periods of decline that have followed. So many questions remain unanswered in the book...

God's Terminus: Boundaries, Nature, and Property on the Michigan Shore

Journal Article God's Terminus: Boundaries, Nature, and Property on the Michigan Shore Get access Theodore Steinberg Theodore Steinberg Postdoctoral Scholar, Michigan Society of Fellows and Assistant Professor of History *University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar American Journal of Legal History, Volume 37, Issue 1, January 1993, Pages 65–90, https://doi.org/10.2307/845769 Published: 01 January 1993

Lancashire on the Scrapheap: The Cotton Industry, 1945–1970 by John Singleton

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 175 withholding payments and discounting invoices. A generation of goodwill evaporated. The point was not to make profits, as typically understood, but to generate enough cash flow to take advantage of the trumped-up depreciation allowances that cheated the tax man. This was, in Seymour Melman’s memorable phrase, profits without production. And, relentlessly, the Japanese machine tools kept com­ ing, their quality unmatched and their price, owing to the overvalued dollar of Ronald Reagan’s military Keynesianism, unmatchable. Quibbles with such a successful case study can be few. Holland has the historian’s eye for detail, and the journalist’s ear for turn of phrase, but occasionally his explanations are too thin. One instance is Burgmaster’s transition from making machine-tool accessories to successfully manufacturing machine tools themselves. Launching the manufacture of world-beating machine tools must have entailed some difficulty, but Holland’s source interviews have not recaptured this complexity. Similarly, while Holland is evenhanded in his treatment of corporate financing, I could not follow the rationale behind the “pot of gold” that motivated institutional investors to back leveraged buyouts. In the event, the 1979 leveraged buyout netted commonstockholders a whopping 436 percent profit in 1986 when Kohlberg, Kravis, and Roberts engineered a second deal to recapitalize the conglomerate’s staggering debt. Holland explains the profits as a move to appease the original equity investors; I wondered how they justified such a rate of return on a company going down the tubes. Ultimately, Holland blames government’s militarization of the economy and management’s abandonment of sound manufacturing principles for Burgmaster’s demise. His is a penetrating case study in the decline of American manufacturing. As Holland insists, there are few, if any, villains; rather, there are a dozen fundamental changes in government policy, managerial practice, and financial regulation that appear necessary if American manufacturing is to avoid additional tragic tales of when the machine stopped. Thomas Misa Dr. Misa, assistant professor of history at Illinois Institute of Technology, is completing a book dealing with the science, technology, and industrial structure of steelmaking in America from 1865 to 1925. Lancashire on the Scrapheap: The Cotton Industry, 1945—1970. By John Singleton. Oxford: Pasold Research Fund and Oxford University Press, 1991. Pp. xiii + 256; tables, notes, appendix, bibliography, index. $89.00. Britain’s cotton industry has all but vanished. The thesis of this study is that it was inevitably doomed because, from the 1920s, comparative advantage shifted in favor of Far Eastern countries and 176 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE their low labor costs. However, John Singleton argues, the process might have been delayed by government intervention and protection. In a rounded analysis, the author investigates three large areas: the role of government, the role of labor, and the role of capital. Students of the history of technology will be most interested in the last. The first two are not unrelated, however. A range of options faced government in trying to save the British cotton industry in the 1940s and 1950s. Hugh Dalton, the wartime president of the Board of Trade (and Labour member of the coalition government), favored amalgamations to “push the bone-heads out” (p. 28). This route to larger operating units and new technology was rejected by owners as the Trojan horse for nationalization. Government action in interna­ tional markets, employers and unions agreed, would be an optimal way to halt decline: either by market sharing or by further protection in imperial markets or, most controversially, by using the powers of the Allied Occupation to stifle the rebirth of the Japanese cotton industry. In the event, the postwar Labour government’s efforts to achieve rationalization and competitiveness for the industry ended in abject failure, hobbled by resistance from both employers and unions. Cotton did contribute to the postwar export drive, so important in countering a deepening balance-of-payments crisis, but much more could have been done. Unsurprisingly, the rapid resurgence or rise of Asian cotton industries halved British yarn production and cut employment by two-thirds between 1950 and 1970. Japanese competition in overseas markets and Hong Kong and Indian and Pakistani competition in the domestic market only belatedly...

Workshop of the World: A Selective Guide to the Industrial Archeology of Philadelphia by the Oliver Evans Chapter of the Society for Industrial Archeology

technology and culture Book Reviews 159 human picture of the individual and offers a great deal of insight into the period in which he lived. George H. Daniels Dr. Daniels is professor of history and chairman of the Department of History at the University of South Alabama. He has published articles on Alabama business history and has in progress a study of an early Alabama industrialist. Workshop of the World: A Selective Guide to the Industrial Archeology of Philadelphia. By the Oliver Evans Chapter of the Society for Indus­ trial Archeology. Wallingford, Pa.: Oliver Evans Press, 1990. Pp· 300; illustrations, notes, bibliography, site index. $25.00 (paper). In concert with its annual conferences, the Society for Industrial Archeology usually produces a useful inventory of historic engineer­ ing and industrial sites within the host city or region. For the 1990 meeting in Philadelphia, the society’s local chapter assembled a lengthy list of historic sites covering most, but certainly not all, of the self-proclaimed “workshop of the world.” Working as a decentralized team under the overall leadership of John Bowie, about twenty members took responsibility for an inventory of separate districts and neighborhoods. With widely disparate backgrounds, the individual team members necessarily brought their own interests and skills to the project, and, unfortunately, this meant that coverage within the inventory would not be of uniform quality or depth. Given the size of Philadelphia and the richness of its industrial heritage, almost inevi­ tably an inventory of this type must be more of a “sampler” than an all-inclusive listing. In fact, Bowie acknowledges this with the caveat: “No effort was made for this study to be comprehensive. Instead the publication is intended to be a guidebook to some of Philadelphia’s industrial sites and neighborhoods for those people interested in exploring and seeing them” (p. i-4). For historians who may not be interested in arranging field trips and site visits, the inventory still has much to offer. In particular, Philip Scranton’s “Context and Overview” provides a succinct yet scholarly introduction to the city’s industrial history which explains how “from roughly 1880 through 1920, Philadelphia’s industrial districts supported an array of mills and plants whose diversity has scarcely been matched anywhere in the history of manufacturing” (p. ii-2). Drawing from a perspective akin to that developed in his book Proprietary Capitalism (Cambridge, 1983), Scranton explains how the city supported a few major factories such as the Baldwin Loco­ motive Works but was “far better known as an incubator for small enterprises,” with almost seven hundred separate companies operat­ ing in the textile industry alone at the turn of the 20th century. In providing a context for why and how Philadelphia nurtured such a 160 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE small-scale, entrepreneurial industrial culture, Scranton’s introduc­ tion lends greater meaning to the several-score site descriptions that constitute the bulk of the inventory. In sum, this is not a perfect publication, and criticisms can be made concerning both site selection and the volume’s format. But as an initial attempt to delineate the industrial archeology of one of the world’s premier early-20th-century manufacturing centers, it de­ serves recognition. And given the relative lack of knowledge concern­ ing Philadelphia as a cauldron of industrial development, Workshop Of the World warrants praise in helping to further our understanding of American technology. Donald C. Jackson Dr. Jackson is assistant professor of history at Lafayette College and book review editor of IA: The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology. Cradle to Grave: Life, Work, and Death at the Lake Superior Copper Mines. By Larry Lankton. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Pp. xi + 319; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $39.95. In Cradle to Grave, Larry Lankton has written a history of copper mining on the Keweenaw Peninsula of northern Michigan. He exam­ ines the origins and growth of copper mining between roughly 1840 and 1920 and to a lesser extent the decline of the industry in the years since 1920. He aims at a ‘“social history of technology’—one that works that particular space where machine and man meet, and where industry and society connect...

The Sporting Past in American History

Journal Article The Sporting Past in American History Get access Linda J. Borish Linda J. Borish Linda J. Borish is Assistant Professor of History at Western Michigan University. She has published articles on American women's health and sport history in The International Journal of the History of Sport and Agricultural History and teaches the American Sport History course in the Honors College at Western Michigan University. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar OAH Magazine of History, Volume 7, Issue 1, Summer 1992, Pages 3–5, https://doi.org/10.1093/maghis/7.1.3 Published: 01 June 1992

Strategic Determinism in Technology Selection: The Electric Battleship and U.S. Naval-Industrial Relations

Strategic Determinism in Technology Selection: The Electric Battleship and U.S. Naval-Industrial Relations WILLIAM M. MCBRIDE In May 1904, Admiral Jackie Fisher, the driving force behind the creation of the British dreadnought battleship, declared that ship design must be dictated by strategy.1 Fisher’s pronouncement appears axiomatic, but warship design was (and remains) a compromise re­ sulting from internal service disputes over the “correct” strategic doc­ trine, the level of autonomy engineering specialists were allowed with regard to military decisions, and the influence of political-industrial alliances. In striving for a naval renaissance in the 1870s, American naval officers rejected their tradition of commerce raiding and blockade warfare for an ambitious global strategy—a strategy that required a modern steel navy that comprised “a few vessels that we will not be afraid or ashamed to show to foreign powers.”2 A favoritejustification for this global strategy was the need to protect American commercial expansion around the Pacific rim.3 But operations in the vast Pacific mandated territorial acquisitions for coaling stations or compromises in warship design? The ill-fated USS Maine, commissioned in 1895 as Dr. McBride is an assistant professor of history at James Madison University. He earned his Ph.D. in the history of science and technology from Johns Hopkins University and is a former Olin Fellow in military history and strategic studies at Yale University. 'Admiral John Fisher to the Committee of Seven, May 1904, reprinted in The Papers ofAdmiral SirJohn Fisher, vol. 1, ed. Lieutenant P. K. Kemp, RN (London, 1960), p. 40. "Ensign Robert Welles, USN, to his mother, February 4, 1886, quoted in Peter H. Karsten, The Naval Aristocracy: The Golden Age of Annapolis and the Emergence of Modern American Navalism (New York, 1972), p. 301. ’The American navy’s strategic interest in the Pacific Ocean can be traced back to the commerce raiding conducted by the frigate Essex during the War of 1812. The push for U.S. naval expansion, as a result of the professionalization of the late-19th-century American officer corps, is a theme that runs throughout Karsten (n. 2 above); for its relation with commercial enterprise, see pp. 300—317. ’Initially, the question was moot since Congress, fearing imperialistic adventurism, restricted the steaming range of the navy’s first three battleships appropriated in© 1992 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/92/3302-0002J01.00 248 The Electric Battleship and U.S. Naval-Industrial Relations 249 a “second-class battleship,” was originally designed to carry sails, in addition to steam engines, to extend her cruising radius.3 * * The acqui­ sition of the Philippines in 1898 and the emergence ofJapan as a rival Pacific naval power after it vanquished Tsarist Russia in the 1904—05 war underscored the geopolitical factors governing the design of U.S. naval propulsion technology. Without a worldwide coaling network like the British, the United States required warships (as it would later require strategic bombers) capable of long-range operations. Captain C. W. Dyson of the navy’s Bureau of Steam Engineering described the unique situation facing the U.S. Navy: The former [European] nations were providing for operations in confined waters such as the North Sea and the Mediterranean, where they were never far from their bases. . . . Under the conditions foreseen high speed was more desireable than cruising radius, and the latter was sacrificed. Turning now to the conditions which confront us, we see . . . the entire line from Seattle to Panama to the southward, and from Seattle to Honolulu, thence to Guam and on to the Philippines and still further to Samoa, requiring our attention. The areas to be covered are great and the distances to bases and from base to base in some cases are magnificent. Fuel economy is of the highest value, even predominates over speed, as the refueling problem becomes a serious one and the greater our bunker capacities and the fuel economy of our machinery, by so much is the seriousness of the problem reduced.6 By 1909, American battleships were being designed with a steaming radius of 10,000 nautical miles, almost double that of the longestranged battleship, USS Oregon, which had...

Strategic Determinism in Technology Selection: The Electric Battleship and U.S. Naval-Industrial Relations

In May 1904, Admiral Jackie Fisher, the driving force behind the creation of the British dreadnought battleship, declared that ship design must be dictated by strategy.' Fisher's pronouncement appears axiomatic, but warship design was (and remains) compromise resulting from internal service disputes over the correct strategic doctrine, the level of autonomy engineering specialists were allowed with regard to military decisions, and the influence of political-industrial alliances. In striving for naval renaissance in the 1870s, American naval officers rejected their tradition of commerce raiding and blockade warfare for an ambitious global strategy-a strategy that required modern steel navy that comprised a few vessels that we will not be afraid or ashamed to show to foreign powers.' A favorite justification for this global strategy was the need to protect American commercial expansion around the Pacific rim.3 But operations in the vast Pacific mandated territorial acquisitions for coaling stations or compromises in warship design.4 The ill-fated USS Maine, commissioned in 1895 as DR. McBRIDE is an assistant professor of history at James Madison University. He earned his Ph.D. in the history of science and technology from Johns Hopkins University and is former Olin Fellow in military history and strategic studies at Yale University.

Reworking the Past: Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Historians' Debate (review)

Volume 10, No.1 Fall1991 147 Tschirgi defines the core of the Middle East conflict as the "struggle between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs for sovereign control of Palestine ." Thus although he clearly recognizes Israel's existence, paired with Palestinian self-determination, as necessary elements of a solution, he neglects the importance of the Arab states and movements within those states in the context of a solution that would insure Israel's secure existence. In addition he fails to address the question of whether the two objectives might indeed be irreconcilable. Ultimately Tschirgi falls victim to the common mistake of assuming that there are really only two alternatives with regard to the territory that came under Israeli control in 1967: incorporating it into Israel or withdrawing from it so that a Palestinian state can be established. Perhaps the time has come to recognize that a solution might require looking creatively beyond these two choices. A number of other options do exist. Although complicated , some of them may offer a means of getting around the various stumbling blocks that have been encountered repeatedly since 1967. In the meantime, Tschirgi's book represents one account of the course of American diplomacy on the Middle East, but does not achieve the degree of evenhandedness that a superficial examination might suggest. Harold M. Waller Department of Political Science McGill University Reworking the Past: Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Historians' Debate, edited by Peter Baldwin. Boston: Beacon Press, 1990. 308 pp. $29.95. Between 1985 and 1988 a verbal confrontation erupted in the West German press which was known in German as the Historikerstreit. In the wake of President Reagan's honoring of war dead (including members of the Waffen SS) at Bitburg, two conservative professors, Ernst Nolte and Andreas Hillgruber, published essays which seemed to suggest that Nazi Germany and its crimes were more or less normal and understandable responses to the mass violence of the first half of the twentieth century in general and to the threat of Bolshevism in particular. In response Jilrgen Habermas, the leftof -center professor and critic, denounced them and their approach as representative of malevolent right-wing tendencies in the Federal Republic of Germany. What followed was the "Historians' Debate," as it is called in English . The term loses in translation the sense of bitterness and urgency which the German word maintains; it might better be called the historians' "conflict " or "fight." Every historian of modern Germany on both sides of the 148 SHOFAR Atlantic seemed anxious to get something into print as quickly as possible to take a stand on the issue and its various permutations. This anthology includes sixteen such essays, all of them critical of Nolte and Hillgruber. In a sense this book was out of date before it was released. Detailed, learned, and spirited disputation over questions raised by the Bitburg incident , the plans for a Museum of Ger:man History in Berlin, and the provocative essays on the German past, now have been overshadowed by the opening of the Wall, the crumbling of Communism in East Germany, and the reunification of Germany on terms set by the conservative coalition in Bonn. In May 1988 I visited divided Berlin at the invitation of the Federal Republic with several other Americans who study German history. The Historikerstreit was at its zenith, and we asked to speak with Ernst Nolte. He received us with impeccable courtesy, but behaved very much like a man under siege, carefully tape recording all of our dialogue as if he feare9 that wewould try to trap him intellectually or distort his position for dark political purposes . In March 1991 I returned to a new and undivided Berlin. A whole new series of questions was under discussion among historians, questions of rewriting the East German official histories, of restructuring school and university faculties, and of the future of Marxist historical analysis now that the self-proclaimed Marxist state on German soil has proven so artificial and transitory. Baldwin, assistant professor of history at Harvard when the book was published, was caught off guard by the rush of events (just as was every historian I know, including those who lived only a few...

Americans and Their Forests: A Historical Geography by Michael Williams

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 399 of New England. It explains how the ecological order changed and posits a theory for why it changed in the way it did. Indeed, the book’s theorizing about ecological and social change—especially its integra­ tion of gender into the analysis—is a signal contribution. But Mer­ chant’s quest for theoretical rigor may have come at the expense of a more nuanced, richly textured narrative. There are painfully few people making history in this book. One reads about systems—social, ecological, and cosmological—but little sense is conveyed of how these ecological revolutions changed the structure and substance of peo­ ple’s everyday lives. Still, Merchant has written a stimulating book that raises new and interesting questions for historians of technology. What was the ecological impact of technological change? How, if at all, did change or crisis in the ecological order fuel the search for new technologies? By introducing the concepts of ecology and gender into her analysis, Merchant has enriched our understanding of the relationship be­ tween technology and culture. Theodore Steinberg Dr. Steinberg is assistant professor of history at the University of Michigan and postdoctoral scholar, Michigan Society of Fellows. He is the author of Nature Incorpo­ rated: Industrialization and the Waters of New England (Cambridge University Press, in press). Americans and Their Forests: A Historical Geography. By Michael Williams. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Pp. xxii + 599; illustrations, tables, notes, bibliography, index. $44.50. Michael Williams’s Americans and Their Forests is weighty, both physically and intellectually. The book surely makes any new synthesis in the forest history of the United States unnecessary for many years to come. Readers of thisjournal may, however, be less than satisfied by Williams’s discussion of the relations between technology and culture. Williams deals ingeniously with the topical, chronological, and geographical unevenness of research on America’s forest history by alternating among three organizing principles. The first fifty pages (pt. 1) and the last 100 (pt. 4) deal primarily with the politics and ideology of forest perception, use, and preservation: part 1 for the period before 1600 and part 4 for the 1870s through the mid-20th century. Part 2 (approximately pp. 50—200) deals with the retreat of forests in the colonies and states east of the Mississippi between 1600 and 1860. Chapters in this section cover both the overlap and the contrasts between farmers and loggers, between the subsistence and the market economies. Part 3 (approximately pp. 200—400) deals mostly with forest-based industries. Thanks to the moving “lumber­ man’s frontier,” this section’s fundamentally geographical organiza­ 400 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE tion is also roughly chronological: from the Great Lakes (1860—90) to the South (1880—1920) to the Pacific Northwest (1880—1940). Present-day forest planners for developing countries might have an uncomfortable feeling of déjà vu when reading about how the rising price of fuelwood converted America’s domestic and industrial fur­ naces to coal and thus eventually to other fossil fuels (pp. 332—33). If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then it is appropriate to praise Williams’s rigorously quantitative history of American forest use by citing statistics about the book: over 100 figures—mostly statistical data presented in the form of maps that forest historians and policymakers will ask permission to photocopy frequently, nearly fifty tables, almost as many illustrations, about fifty pages of notes, and an additional forty pages of bibliography. Perhaps inevitably, a few sentences requiring second readings were carried along in this landslide of information—both author and copy editor must have felt overwhelmed at times. Yet Americans and Their Forests lays remarkably few traps for the many people who will read it as an encyclopedia of forest-related facts. Examples of such facts include the transforma­ tions worked by forest succession and by Native Americans in forests seen by later generations of romantics as unchanging and “virgin” before European settlement (pp. 30, 35—42, 49) and the quantitative importance of forest products in the growth of the American econ­ omy (p. 5, table 1.1, and p. 331). As a treatise on technology and culture...

Souls of the Skyscraper: Female Clerical Workers in Chicago, 1870-1930.

During the late nineteenth century, a visitor to the city of Chicago would have looked in wonder at the many strange, new, and exciting sights: the nation's first skyscrapers, the bustling and congested streets, the large department stores, and the business girls. The Souls of the Skyscraper documents and explains the transformation of clerical work from a male to a female occupation amidst the industrialization and urbanization of the United States. Using literary, organizational, statistical, cinematic, and archival evidence primarily from Chicago, Lisa M. Fine explains the historical reasons why clerical work became women's work. The appearance of the female clerical worker in the business office signaled two on-going developments: the simple shift of women entering and dominating office jobs that were previously held by men, and the changing gender definition of clerical work. This new opportunity for employment provided women with relatively well-paying and respectable jobs, even though the prestige of the clerical positions was devalued as more women were hired. While economic forces contributed to this process of occupational change, the vocational education of women, the availability of various types of social services such as group homes (e.g. the Eleanor Residences), and the evolving image of the working girl in the popular culture encouraged women to seek clerical positions. Fine explores the realms where the gender definition of clerical work was discussed and negotiated: among technical experts, in the popular culture, in the prescriptions and actions of civic leaders, and in the private worlds of clerical workers themselves. In revealing the dynamics of change within the clerical sector, she enhances our understanding of occupational sex-typing. Author note: Lisa M. Fine is Assistant Professor of History at Michigan State University.

Team Teaching the Voices of Central America

Marcie Paul, assistant professor of Spanish, and Lawrence McAndrews, assistant professor of history, began teaching fulltime at St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin, in the fall of 1985. Among Paul's courses was Con temporary Latin American Literature and Culture. One of McAndrews* of ferings was The History of Latin America. In 1987, funded by a Title VI International Studies Grant from the U.S. Department of Education, they began preparing a course that com bined their common interests and ex pertise in the literature and history of Central America. What follows con cerns the setbacks and successes of their interdisciplinary team-teaching experi ence, The History and Literature of Central America.

From the Titanic to the Challenger: An Annotated Bibliography on Technological Failures of the Twentieth Century by Susan Davis Herring

152 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE From the Titanic to the Challenger: An Annotated Bibliography on Technological Failures of the Twentieth Century. By Susan Davis Her­ ring. New York: Garland, 1989. Pp. xxv + 459; indexes. $54.00. One productive line of research in the history of technology is “what happens when things go wrong?” Thorough inquests into technological failures (or disasters, depending on one’s viewpoint) offer insight not only into the shortcomings of the actual equipment but also into the surrounding environment. As the 1986 Challenger review board demonstrated, red flags had been raised but not heeded by industry, government, or the media. This annotated bibliography provides a good beginning for the disaster researcher. Susan Herring provides 1,354 well-indexed en­ tries on the best-known engineering failures of our century. Not surprisingly, transportation—particularly under the water and above the land, regimes where failures have the most serious consequences— dominates, followed by nuclear and chemical plants. The focus is on technological failures caused by poor design, such as airplane crashes, as opposed to technological failures caused by natural disasters, such as earthquakes. Future editions might benefit by expanding the section on engi­ neering ethics to explore the paths engineers and others have followed when confronted with a potentially unsafe system. Another line of future work is predisaster coverage. The section on radioactive-waste disposal, for example, covers only the Soviet Union. Surely the technological and political failure of the United States to develop suitable repositories after four decades of experience warrants some comment. A third area is the notion ofchronic, as opposed to discrete, technological failure. Incremental innovation and diffusion are in­ creasingly recognized as major factors in technological growth. Might a similar process of gradual degradation occur in technological failure also? Some government documents are cited, but full use was not made of the wealth of congressional hearings, General Accounting Office reports, and executive branch documents, to mention only the U.S. government. Another useful source, the reports of the National Research Council, also was excluded. Although Garland published the book in 1989, some recent works, such as Henry Petroski’s To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985), are absent. Despite its gaps, this annotated bibliography deserves a place on a library reference shelf. Jonathan Coopersmith Dr. Coopersmith is an assistant professor of history at Texas A&M University with an interest in large-scale technologies. ...

La Technologie, science humaine: Recherches d’histoire et d’ethnologie des techniques by André-Georges Haudricourt

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 175 This collection of thirty-one previously published articles and an interview with the French anthropologist Georges Haudricourt is akin to a Pointillist painting. Each small piece has its own intrinsic value, but if one steps back mentally into the middle distance, the pieces coalesce into larger patterns of meaning. The book merits attention from historians of technology precisely because Haudricourt was an early advocate of the study of technology as part of the study of human culture. A student of the ethnopsychologist Marcel Mauss (nephew and disciple of Émile Durkheim), Haudricourt also had close ties with Marc Bloch and the Annales school of historical research and thus with some of the major 20th-century figures in French history and anthropology. His work, which draws on the Annaliste interest in mentalité as well as material life, is well represented in these small capsules dating from 1936 to 1978 and helped establish a method rooted in ethnography and linguistics for the study of technology. The book is organized into six sections, with an editor’s preface. The first section defines the field and method of Haudricourt’s inquiry, the others cover an impressive range of topics and cultures. There are articles on the origins of early-modern transportation vehicles and cultivated grains and on the relationship between habit­ ual gestures, the design of clothing, and the way heavy loads are carried. Haudricourt also wrote on how the knowledge of ironmaking passed from China to Europe in the Middle Ages and on the origins of animal fertilizer. Two facets of Haudricourt’s work are of special importance: his method and sources and his definition of technology. He was partic­ ularly interested in the archaeology and structure of language as a source of information about the development and spread of human culture. In this way, the analysis of terms for tools and techniques found in dictionaries and travelers’ diaries helped him establish the geographical and intellectual routes along which technologies moved from one culture to another, as well as the collective mentality of the societies and individuals that produced them. The conceptual frame­ work proposed by Haudricourt for the study of technology within preindustrial societies is broad and controversial. He defined technol­ ogy as a human science. Tools, techniques, and technical terms were closely interwoven with other forms of social and mental life. When studied in a rational and systematic way, they provided a deeper understanding of the development and spread of human civilization. The implications of his definitions and method were far-reaching, offering a foundation for the study of the history of technology as a discipline within the domain of the humanities and social sciences alongside other forms of culture. Although this foundation may be overly inclusive, the idea that technology is part of human culture still needs reiterating, as editor François Sagaut points out. He published this selection for the dual purpose of introducing Haudricourt’s work to a new generation of 176 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE scholars and promoting the study of technology as a valid academic enterprise. Hence, the term science humaine refers both to the fact that technology is the product of human knowledge and organized activity and that the study of technology should be an integral part of the university curriculum. While in France this position has political overtones, the argument is of some importance for historians of technology everywhere who are working to reform the curricula of their colleges and universities. I hope Haudricourt’s work will soon be translated into English so that a wider audience can examine it critically. If we cannot have an entire book, the essays in the section on methodology would be well worth the effort. Miriam R. Levin Dr. Levin is assistant professor of history in the Program in History of Technology and Science at Case Western Reserve University. She is the author of Republican Art and Ideology in Late Nineteenth Century France and is currently working with Pamela Mack on a history of science education in liberal arts colleges. Sciences et techniques en perspective. Vol. 15: La mutation de l'enseignement scientifique en France (1750—1810) et le rôle des...

New Homeless and Old: Community and the Skid Row Hotel.

Blending detailed historical perspective with contemporary survey research, Charles Hoch and Robert Slayton argue that the answers to one of the most pressing problems of our time come from the poor themselves. Their examination of the Skid Row single room occupancy hotel (SRO) reveals how communities formed by low-income single-person households have for decades offered the security, personal autonomy, and privacy for the old homeless that the homeless lack. And they show how public urban renewal efforts, which destroyed the bulk of these hotels with the intent to rid the inner city of the Skid Row homeless, actually laid the foundation for today's urban homeless crisis. Focusing on Chicago from 1870 to the present, but including case studies in other cities, Hoch and Slayton analyze how these SRO hotels operated in the past and claim that the term flop house really described a wide range of shelter types available to the poor according to their economic conditions. Based on their research, the authors conclude that policies for solving the homeless problem should focus mainly not on the homeless people, but on the institutional actors who benefit directly and indirectly from their predicament. This means changing public policies that encourage the destruction of affordable housing, especially SRO hotels, and implementing preservation, rehabilitation, and new construction policies instead. Author note: Charles Hoch is Associate Professor in the School of Urban Planning and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Robert A. Slayton is Assistant Professor of History at Chapman College and author of Back of the Yards: The Making of a Local Democracy.