Bookshelf
Written by PA Heritage Staff in the Bookshelf category and the Winter 1985 issue Topics in this article:Buggy Town: An Era in American Transportation
by Charles M. Snyder
Oral Traditions Project, 1983 (80 pages, paper, $8.95)
Part of an ongoing series dealing with rural and smalltown handcraft industries which flourished in Pennsylvania during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this contribution by historian Charles Snyder presents a compelling and beautifully illustrated portrait of a small community transformed by the economic – and eventually social – impact of carriage-making, which became a central feature there beginning in the late nineteenth century. Using the emergence of horse and buggy transportation in the New England states as a convenient starting point, the author traces the spread of the industry westward to Pennsylvania and to its introduction into his hometown of Mifflinburg as early as the 1850s. The subsequent “buggy town” which gradually emerges is graphically underscored in the small community’s shops, vehicles and customs, as well as its obviously centralized economy. Buggy Town is as much a picture of small-town American society at the turn of the nineteenth century as it is a reflection of this dynamic chapter in American transportation history.
Susquehanna’s Indians
by Barry C. Kent
Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1984 (438 pages, cloth, $15.95)
Literally unearthing a fascinating period of the Native American experience, this book traces the history and culture of the Susquehannocks and other Indian tribes who lived along the Susquehanna River of central Pennsylvania from the beginning of the fifteenth to the second half of the eighteenth centuries. Beginning with a description of the Susquehanna Valley and a general picture of the changing ways of life of its Indian occupants, the narrative offers an in-depth portrayal of how the history and culture of these vanished people have been reconstructed. A variety of artifacts collected during excavations – from bows and arrows to guns and gunflints – have been rescued from obscurity and analyzed as mirrors of changing patterns of Native American culture. Evidence gathered from historic accounts and secondary sources are also included in this comprehensive examination. Flavored by the archaeologist’s unique interpretation of “culture history,” Susquehanna’s Indians emerges as a highly informative and readable synthesis of a people in transition.
Cornwall: The People and Culture of an Industrial Camelot, 1890-1980
by Carl Oblinger
Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1984 (123 pages, paper, $3.50)
The changing impact of industrialization on American society has been a favorite problem for discussion and debate in the academic world. Rarely, however, have the actors of that controversial drama-the workers themselves – been given the opportunity to tell the tale from the uninhibited perspective of personal experience. The candid recollections contained in Cornwall effectively answer that need and, in the process, reveal some provocative and surprising conclusions about working-class response and behavior. Like other industrial ventures of the nineteenth century, the Cornwall Ore Bank Company in Lebanon County generated its share of unskilled and semi-skilled immigrant labor from eastern and southern Europe. Unlike other growing industrial giants, however, the family-operated mining enterprise skillfully constructed a sense of paternalism which engendered a climate of harmony and cooperation. Although basically a periodic treatment of workers’ experiences in the twentieth century, the interviews collected here reflect the subtle confrontation between that nineteenth century legacy and the reality of the monopoly capitalism initiated by Bethlehem Steel with its takeover in 1921. A number of events, especially the depression of the 1930s, the CIO unionization drive in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and the mine closings in 1973, would provide a serious challenge to management’s hold on the community, and underscore workers’ desperate struggle to come to grips with capitalism’s unpleasant side effects. Cornwall is an interesting and important contribution to the literature of this complex period of American social and economic history.