Featured eResources
- History Reference Source This link opens in a new window
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Discover historical insights for your research needs. Explore a wide range of topics including events, people, and significant developments throughout history.
- Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
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Discover reliable information on a wide range of topics, perfect for students and researchers. Access encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other reference sources covering various subjects for quick and comprehensive knowledge.
- Historic American Newspapers This link opens in a new window
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Explore a free searchable database of America's historic newspaper pages from 1756-1963. Explore invaluable primary sources covering events, culture, and everyday life in America's past.
- Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window
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A great place to start your search for both popular and scholarly articles on almost any topic. It contains many scholarly journals, magazines, and other sources across various disciplines, including sciences, social sciences, humanities, and more.
- Academic Video Online (AVON) This link opens in a new window
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A streaming platform offering a diverse collection of educational videos from top producers like BBC and PBS. It's a great place to access documentaries, lectures, and performances to enrich the learning experience and supplement classroom material.
The Progressive Era
Electronic Books from the MTC Library
The Industrial Revolution: Key Themes and Documents by This concise guide zooms in on the period of American history known as the Industrial Revolution, from its earliest beginnings in the mid-18th century to just after the First World War.This book is a concise reference source on the era in American history known as the Industrial Revolution--a period characterized by urbanization, mass immigration, organization of labor, and an immense gap between wealthy industrialists and the poor. It serves as an ideal resource for students preparing to take the AP U.S. history exam as well as being useful to undergraduates and anyone interested in this important period.Using encyclopedic entries on important events, key people, and trends of the time, the era is examined through the exploration of key themes such as agriculture, business, economy, finance, labor, and politics. Other features of the book include sample documents-based essay questions, rigorous thematic tagging of encyclopedic entries, a detailed chronology, and primary source documents--all of which guide readers through the material and aid in their comprehension of the Industrial Revolution's historical significance. Content covers factories, mass production, the progressive movement, muckrakers, populists, laissez-faire economics, social Darwinism, and robber barons, among other topics.
The Industrial Revolution: Steam and Steel by The Industrial Revolution has had the most far-reaching and transformative effects of any era in the planet's history. After detailing life and technology in Europe prior to the revolution, this volume presents the changes that led to the revolution, important inventions and innovations, societal and economic consequences, and the Second Industrial Revolution in the United States. Readers will learn how inventions we take for granted today, such as the telephone, steam engine, and railroad, transformed our world and started us on the path to globalization.
Article Hodgepodge
- Broken Promises: Child Labor and Industrial ViolenceAbstract: The article discusses the issue of child labor in the U.S. and around the world. Child labor has come to existence throughout history including the apprenticeships that were done by children to serve their masters within the Middle Ages and the American colonies of the British from 17th to 18th centuries, although child labor boomed during the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s all over U.S. and Europe. The U.S. passed the Fair Labor Standards in 1938 as part of the U.S. Constitution to ban child labor all over the country.
- The Big ShiftAbstract: The article examines the development of U.S. democracy in the 35 year period following the Civil War. It looks at how the failures of the Reconstruction that led to economic depressions were not adequately addressed by the government. The author goes on to suggest that despite these failures, the U.S. became successful due to the industrial Revolution and the rapid technological, social, and economic changes that altered political structure.
- The Good Old Days? Not for Machine OperatorsAbstract: The article provides a brief history of industrial safety and workplace injuries in the U.S. The Industrial Revolution caused the relocation of manufacturing from small shops to factories which used powerful machines that were operated by inexperienced workers resulting in accidents. The lack of machine safeguarding features prompted the labor movement to call for factory safety. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration was established in 1970.
- Credo Reference Topic Page: Industrial RevolutionThis is an overview page that highlights some of the database's best resources on the subject. Be aware that it will cover the Industrial Revolution in Europe as well as in the United States.
- "Habits of Employees": Smoking, Spies, and Shopfloor Culture at Hammermill Paper CompanyAbstract: An essay is presented on the subject of cigarette smoking among U.S. laborers in factories, corporate spying on workers, and the social culture of shopfloors in the U.S. during the 20th century. It examines the records of Erie, Pennsylvania, paper manufacturer Hammermill Paper Company concerning employee cigarette consumption, how employees attempted to evade corporate surveillance of their smoking, and labor relations in the U.S.
- "Educate the Individual ... to a Sane Appreciation of the Risk"Abstract: The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 and the Workers Right to Know laws later in that decade were signature moments in the history of occupational safety and health. We have examined how and why industry leaders came to accept that it was the obligation of business to provide information about the dangers to health of the materials that workers encountered. Informing workers about the hazards of the job had plagued labor-management relations and fed labor disputes, strikes, and even pitched battles during the turn of the century decades. Industry's rhetorical embrace of the responsibility to inform was part of its argument that government regulation of the workplace was not necessary because private corporations were doing it.