Most of the employees in the early years of the Boston Manufacturing Company, which was one of the first American cloth factories, were young, unmarried women. Founded at Waltham, Massachusetts, in 1814 by Francis Cabot Lowell, the company ran the first American factories to produce both yarn and finished textiles. Its employees were daughters of…
The sign “NINA” in front of 19th-century factories in the U.S. meant “No Irish Need Apply.” It expressed native-born American prejudice against the two million Irish immigrants who arrived in the U.S. between 1830 and 1860.
The 1950 Broadway musical Guys and Dolls by Frank Loesser was inspired by the 1933 short story “The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown.” It chronicles the courtship and marriage of gambler Sky Masterson and mission worker Sarah Brown. A revival of Guys and Dolls opened on Broadway in spring 1992.
The founder of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) Samuel Gompers was, like his father, a cigar maker. The English immigrant reshaped the Cigar Makers International Union before founding the AFL in 1886.
The government lowered the draft age of U.S. military recruits from 20 to 18 on November 12, 1942, to expand American forces during World War II.
Yes and no, the U.S. and France almost went to war with each other. From 1798 to 1800, the U.S. and France clashed in a series of naval hostilities but never formally declared war. At issue was France’s resentment at what it viewed as American partiality to France’s enemy Britain. The U.S. was angry because…