Read the excerpt from The Evolution of Useful Things.The new two-tone style of painting automobiles was popular in 1925, but it presented considerable problems for auto manufacturers and body shops alike. In order to get a clean, sharp edge when applying a second paint color, the first had to be masked, of course, and this required that newspaper or butcher paper be fastened to the car body. If shop-brewed glue was used, it would sometimes stick so well that it had to be scraped off, more often than not pulling paint with it. Surgical adhesive tape was sometimes employed, but its cloth backing tended to absorb solvents from the newly sprayed paint and cause the masking materials to stick to the paint they were intended to protect. Clearly, existing means of masking had serious flaws.
Read the excerpt from "Finding Unity in the Alabama Coal Mines.”Nevertheless, the UMWA was able to bridge the racial divide in that state, forming a powerful interracial labor union fifty years before the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s would make racial integration the rule of the land.
Read the excerpt from "Finding Unity in the Alabama Coal Mines.”The southern state of Alabama was a stronghold for Jim Crow practices. Nevertheless, the UMWA was able to bridge the racial divide in that state, forming a powerful interracial labor union fifty years before the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s would make racial integration the rule of the land.
Read the excerpt from "Ellis Island."For 62 years, some 12 million people passed through Ellis Island for the promise of a better life in America. They came on huge steamships, the majority from Eastern Europe and Italy, the rest from other corners of the world: Lebanon, Cyprus, China, Jamaica, and numerous other places. Many had left their homelands to escape poverty, while others had fled religious persecution or war.
Read the excerpt from "Ellis Island.""We lived there for three days—Mother and we five children, the youngest of whom was three years old,” recalled Angelo Pellegrini, whose family moved from Italy when he was 10. "Because of the rigorous physical examination that we had to submit to, particularly of the eyes, there was this terrible anxiety that one of us might be rejected. And if one of us was, what would the rest of the family do?”Along with everyone else, Angelo’s family was examined for contagious diseases, such as chicken pox, measles, mumps, scarlet fever, and tuberculosis. If an illness could be treated, the sick were hospitalized on the island. About 2 percent were sent back to where they came from.
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