A not-so-subtle way to expose teenagers in the 1920's to the industrial work ethic. From William H. Elson, Christine M. Keck & Mary H. Burris. Junior High School Literature, Book Two. Revised Edition. (Chicago: Scott, Foresman & Co., 1920, 1928).
The book introduced me to the writings of Herschel S. Hall (1874-1921) in a piece called "Pete of the Steel Mills" that was originally published in Scribner's Magazine in 1919. It's a very evocative short story of someone who gets a job working in an open-earth steel mill of the time, apparently based on Hall's first-hand knowledge of this kind of work:
Herschel wrote a novel titled Steel Preferred, a Horatio Alger type story set in a steel mill. It was adapted for the silver screen as a 1925 silent movie starting Vera Reynolds and William Boyd. I expect it would be worth watching just for the period industrial operations in the background.
The book introduced me to the writings of Herschel S. Hall (1874-1921) in a piece called "Pete of the Steel Mills" that was originally published in Scribner's Magazine in 1919. It's a very evocative short story of someone who gets a job working in an open-earth steel mill of the time, apparently based on Hall's first-hand knowledge of this kind of work:
"This tapping a 'heat' is a magnificent and startling sight to the newcomer. I stood fascinated when I beheld it the first time. A lake of seventy-five or eighty tons of sun-white steel, bursting out of furnace bounds and rushing through the runner, a raging river, is a terrifying spectacle. The eye aches as it watches it; the body shrinks away from the burning heat it throws far out on all sides; the imagination runs riot as the seething flood roils and boils in the ladle."
Herschel wrote a novel titled Steel Preferred, a Horatio Alger type story set in a steel mill. It was adapted for the silver screen as a 1925 silent movie starting Vera Reynolds and William Boyd. I expect it would be worth watching just for the period industrial operations in the background.
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