First Settlement

It’s hard to imagine Chicago, the third most-populated city in the United States today, as ever being an open, swampy plain. But the area near the southern tip of Lake Michigan was once rich with wildlife, fish, and fertile soil. Different Native American groups, including the Illinois, Kickapoo, Miami, Ojibwa, Ottawa, Potawatomi, and Shawnee, once lived there. When the first French fur trappers and settlers arrived in presentday Canada and reached the western Great Lakes in the 1600s, they established a fur trade with the native communities there.

City On Fire

For years, legends blamed Mrs. O’Leary’s cow, Daisy, for starting Chicago’s Great Fire of 1871.

Dear Mama Letters From A Mill Girl

Lowell, Massachusetts, on the Merrimack River, was founded in the 1820s as a textile manufacturing center.

Champions For Reform

Imagine that instead of going to school 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, 9 months a year, you went to work 14 hours a day, 6 days a week, 12 months a year.

Focusing On Labor

Photographs can communicate in many ways.

What The Camera Captured - Outdoors

William Parralla, 7 years old, newsboy, 313 Second St., SW, Washington, D.C. Newsboy without a badge who tried to “short change” me when he sold me a paper. “He can rustle de poipers,” another boy said. April 1912.

Extra! Extra! Newsboys Strike!

Kid Blink, a teenage boy small for his age and blind in one eye, buttoned his shirt and brushed back his hair as he took the stage.

Give The Kids A Break! Crossword Puzzle

Can you solve this puzzle about the people and events connected to child labor and the issues it generated? All the information to help you can be found in this issue. Answers on page 48.

The Race Is Set

In 1857, Abraham Lincoln was the lawyer in a case for the Rock Island Bridge Company. The company had built one of the first railroad bridges across the Mississippi River. When a ship crashed into the bridge, the ship owner sued the company, claiming that the bridge obstructed free navigation of the river. The case was dismissed after the jury was deadlocked, but during it, Lincoln made an argument for the national support of “rail travel from East to West.”

Building The Line

Grenville M. Dodge, the Union Pacific’s chief engineer, had the following to say about building the first transcontinental railroad: “To supply one mile of track with material and supplies required about forty cars, as on the plains everything—rails, ties, bridging, fastenings, all railway supplies, fuel for locomotives and trains, and supplies for men and animals on the entire work—had to be transported . . .” to the railhead.

A Compromise to Save the Union

White Americans found compromises between slavery and freedom in the early years of the nation.

Maker of Masks

They were called mutilés—soldiers whose faces had been destroyed by the war. Some were missing an eye, a nose, or an ear. Some had horrible burns or parts of their jaws blown away by enemy fire.

A Deadly Flu

More than 50 million people, including half a mil-lion people in America, became victims of a force more deadly than war.

The Harlem Hellfighters

Private Henry Johnson was on watch in the French trenches of the Argonne Forest on May 15, 1918, when a grenade exploded nearby.

Great Facts About The Great War

World War I was the first war that used aircraft and aircraft carriers. About 65,000 aircraft eventually were built and used by the countries involved.

Preparing To Fight

When the United States declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917, the decision triggered a massive effort to organize, train, and supply U.S. forces for duty overseas.

Helping Hands

The large number of immigrants coming into the country at the turn of the century led to crowded living conditions in city tenements.

Protect and Conserve

When Theodore Roosevelt became president of the United States in 1901, he used the power of the federal government to support an important movement in the Progressive Era: the protection of America’s natural resources.

Cump Sherman Finds His Way

Of the 11 children in the Sherman family, red-haired Cump was the studious one. He read books and studied mathematics and Latin, while his younger brother John got into fistfights.

To Savannah And The Sea

To Savannah And The Sea