Boston, Massachusetts

On page 132, I note that Boston was one of the first American cities to get a telegraph line, which was installed in 1844 and connected Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, DC. Because Boston was the ocean port closest to Liverpool and London, it was often the best place on the East Coast to get fresh information about grain prices in Europe. On page 133, I note that, "later when trans-Atlantic travel became more frequent and highly specialized, ships from England would dock at Boston, while ships from continental Europe would dock at New York. This meant that grain traders in Buffalo needed to receive information from both cities, not just the latter."

Unlike New York, which thrived in the 19th century due to its all-water-routes back to Albany and Buffalo, Boston thrived due to its railroads. The map on the bottom (railroads leading into and out of Boston) dates from 1846, just two years after the first telegraph lines were laid down. The map at the top (the Grand Trunk Railroad's grain routes) dates from 1891. Here Boston numbers among a handful of ocean ports the handle Canadian grain: the others are Montreal, Portland (Maine), and New York. In 1913, Boston was the location of (at least) three grain elevators, all apparently owned by either the Boston & Main Railroad or the Boston & Albany. The former had two elevators totally 1.5 million bushels in Charleston, while the other had a single, 1 million-bushel elevator in East Boston. (Report of the Directors of the Port of Boston, Year Ending November 30, 1912, Wright & Potters, Boston 1913, p. 68). As late as 1922, Boston ranked among the top 23 most important grain ports in America.

Bradley University, Illinois

At 2 pm on Thursday 16 April 2009, I will be speaking at the Inland Visual Studies Center symposium at Bradley University, in Peoria, Illinois. The theme will be "Flatlands: Middle America and The Pastoral Sublime." The event will be free, open to the general public and will require no advance registration.

The purpose of the Symposium as a whole is to discuss new theories of Midwest visual culture including relationships between fine art traditions, popular culture, and new design models which respond to the influences of progressive modernist architecture movements defined in Illinois over the last century.

All events will take place in The Horowitz Auditorium, at the Caterpillar Global Communications Center on the Bradley University campus.
1501 W. Bradley Avenue • Peoria, Illinois 61625

Thursday, April 16
9:00 - 10:30 am Panel Discussion, “Manifest Liminality: Midwest As Gateway”
11 am - 12:30 pm Panel Discussion, “Mapping”
2:00 - 3:30 pm Panel Discussion, “Flatlands: Middle America and The Pastoral Sublime”
5:00 - 6:00 pm Reception in the Heuser Art Center lobby
6:30 - 7:30 pm Lecture by Michael Mercil, Horowitz Auditorium, CGCC

Friday, April 17
10:30 – Noon Panel Discussion, “Inland Identities and the "real"
America”, Horowitz Auditorium, CGCC

For more information, see this news item at BU's website.

Grain shovelers

On pages 125-126, I discuss the grain shovelers (also known as grain scoopers), who were workers hired to shovel, scoop and sweep piles of "loose" grain (grain in bulk) so that they were within the reach of the buckets attached to the elevating leg after it had been lowered into the grain-bearing vessel and turned on. Because the elevating leg was "stiff," and couldn't move in any direction other than down or up (in or out of the hull), many such workers were needed, and they were forced to work as fast as possible. The constant presence of grain dust was also a health-hazard if breathed in and a potential explosive if ignited.

Before the invention of the grain elevator, a great many workers were also required, and were required to work hard and fast, but they were tasked with lifting, carrying and storing sacks of grain, not shoveling or sweeping up grain in bulk. No grain dust was involved then. In addition to introducing grain dust into the workplace, the grain elevator required fewer workers than a "traditional" grain-storage warehouse. As the number of grain elevators grew, so did the numbers of unemployed stevedores and dockworkers.

In 1862, the grain shovelers of New York went out on strike to protest against the recent adoption of mechanized grain elevators in that city's harbor. The first grain elevators in New York -- but not in Brooklyn, where stationary elevators had been built since 1847 -- were in fact floating elevators. According to John Foord, author of The Life and Public Services of Simon Sterne (MacMillan, 1903), there were six such elevators in use in New York when the 2,000 shovelers went out on strike. According to Foord, a non-mechanized grain dock required a dozen men, one horse and five days to unload a grain-bearing vessel, while a steam-powered grain elevator only required nine men and two days to do the same job. Simon Sterne had apparently counseled the grain workers of 1862 not to go out on strike, but to use the time that remained until their jobs were completely phased out by staying at their jobs and saving money, so that when their jobs were gone they could purchase a grain elevator of their own. They ignored his advice and went out on strike (Simon Sterne, pp. 45-47).

The pressure upon grain shovelers became even greater in 1865, when engineers working for the Watson Elevator in Buffalo came up with the "power shovel." Powered by the elevating leg itself, the power-shovel used a series of ropes to pull shovels full of grain towards the leg's buckets, thus speeding up the process even more. Fewer shovelers were needed, but those who remained had to work harder and the work was more dangerous: those ropes could easily coil around and snap off a man's leg.

As this video shows, "power shovels" were still in use at Buffalo, New York, as recently as the 1990s.

First grain elevator in Portland, Maine

On page 123, I mention that it wasn't until 1866 (more than 20 years after the construction of the Dart Elevator) that Portland, Maine got its first one. Perhaps I should have said grain elevators were active in Portland as early as 1866: a large elevator can be seen, sitting alongside the water, in the center-right part of this photograph, which was taken after the Great Fire of 1866. How long had it been standing there? I don't know.

First grain elevator in Philadelphia

On page 121, I mention that it wasn't until the late 1850s (fifteen years after the construction of the Dart Elevator) that Philadelphia, Pennsylvania got its first one. John Mayer's Workshop of the World - Philadelphia, which was published as a book by Oliver Evans Press in 1990, confirms that the first grain elevator in Philadelphia was constructed in 1859 by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and that, beginning in 1862, floating elevators were also deployed. I will return to the subject of other grain elevators in Philadelphia (the Iron Elevator, built in the 1860s, and the Girard Point Elevator, built in the 1910s) in subsequent blog posts.

The Dart Elevator

As I note on page 116, there are virtually no images of the Dart Elevator, which was the world's first mechanized grain elevating and storage warehouse. Built by Robert Dunbar and his team between November 1842 and May 1843, and powered by a wood-burning steam engine, the Dart Elevator was named after Joseph Dart, an entrepreneur who either had the capital or the bank credit to finance the operation. Incorrectly thought to be the inventor of the grain elevator, Joseph Dart showed little awareness of how "his" elevator worked in 1865, when -- three years after the Dart exploded and was replaced by the Bennett -- he appeared before the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society (BECHS) to argue that he, and he alone, deserved to be granted a patent for "his" invention.

It is likely that the person(s) who made this model of the Dart Elevator, which was displayed at the BECHS and photographed by Chuck LaChiusa in 1992, knew more about the workings of the Dart Elevator than Joseph Dart himself did. Depicted here is the Dart Elevator after 1845, when it was doubled in storage capacity (from 55,000 to 110,000 bushels) and received a second elevating leg. It appears that the structure on the right (underneath the little cupola) was the second or "new" leg: it certainly looks like an add-on, while the leg in the middle, encased in a very sturdy-looking marine tower, looks well thought-out and planned.

A curious feature is the complete absence of canal spouts. Unlike nearly all of the elevators that followed it, the Dart required canal boats to dock underneath it, not alongside it, and to receive out-going grain through spouts that couldn't be seen. This arrangement was utilized in order to "economize" on available waterfront space. The only subsequent elevator in Buffalo to adopt this spatial practice was the Watson Elevator, built in 1863.

Grain elevators in Demmin, Germany

On pages 110-111, I mention the Speicherensemble (the group of storage containers) at the Peenehafen (Peene Harbor) in Demmin, Germany. A caption to this picture, which appears on the website of the City of Demmin, explains that, moving from right to left, we see the Luebecker Speicher, built around 1820, the Berliner Speicher, built in 1900, and an unnamed pair of Speichern, built in 1925. Note the ever-growing height of such buildings.

Grain elevators in Gdansk, Poland

On page 110, I speak of Gdansk's Speicherinsel (Storage Container Island), which was destroyed in World War II. Prior to that, Gdansk/Danzig had been a major grain port for hundreds of years. One incredible photograph from this website shows a row of seven-story-tall, wood-timbered granaries, two of which have had modern elevating mechanisms attached to them. In each case, these granaries have been outfitted with an elevating leg and a canal spout, which suggests these buildings were both transshipping and storage warehouses. The elevating leg in both cases is not housed in any structure or "marine tower," as would be common in other modern transshipping and storage warehouses, but stands exposed. Evidently it could be extended out over and down into an incoming-ship.

Note the elevator at the far left: it too has both an exposed elevating leg and a canal spout, but its mainhouse appears to be built out of brick, not wood, and it would seem to have been built much later than the other buildings along the dock. It is possible that the other, older granaries received their new equipment when this brick grain elevator was built. Perhaps in the 1910s?

Erie Canal song/"Low Bridge"

On pages 88-91, I discuss Thomas Allen's famous song, "Low Bridge" (also known as "Fifteen Years on the Erie Canal"). The Erie Canal was the single biggest factor that led to the invention of the first mechanized grain elevator by Robert Dunbar and Joseph Dart in 1843: the grain elevator was originally built to transship large quantities of grain in bulk coming from lake vessels to boats small enough to navigate through the canal. In fact, if you can tolerate the excruciating sincerity of the version of the song in this particular video, you will see -- at precisely 1:04 in, behind the caption that reads "The Importance of Waterways" -- an illustration that depicts the Erie Basin Elevator, built in Buffalo, New York, in 1854. Clearly based upon a photograph, the illustration shows the elevator's marine tower, from which the marine leg has been extended into the hull of a lake steamer. Canal boats stand ready in the foreground.

The echoes that the song stirs, indeed, the song's very popularity, in all of its many versions, indicates the centrality of the Erie Canal to American history. But, despite appearances -- or, if you will, despite Bruce Springsteen, who like so many people mistake the tone of the song to be "authentic" and sincere -- the song wasn't written in 1840, as one might expect ("fifteen years on the Erie Canal" could be 15 years after the Canal opened in 1825). In fact, the song was written in 1905, two years after the Erie Canal was scrapped and work on its replacement, the New York State Barge Canal, had begun. It's tone is not nostalgic or sentimental: it is dry and ironic.

The elevated see further

On page 66, I note that while everyone can see, and project themselves upon, the grain elevator, only a few people get to see the view or project themselves from the grain elevator. As Walter Benjamin asks, "For in those days who besides the engineer [who built it] and the proletarian [who worked there] had climbed the steps that alone made it possible to recognize what was new and decisive about these structures: the feeling of space?" Only a few get to explore the "galleries" of these elevated spaces while they are in operation. The same thing is true, even after their owners have closed up shop and abandoned their towering structures, only the engineers and supervisors have been replaced by security guards and the climbing workers have been replaced by "urban explorers." The similarity to a religious, royal or economic elite is striking: only a few can attain the dignity, the eminence and the loftiness -- in a word, the elevation -- necessary to comprehend, appreciate and give proper praises to the supremely elevated (God, the sublime or immortality). Everyone else is doubly low: beneath God's chosen elite and beneath God Himself. This certainly explains the grandiosity of the videotape I posted about the grain elevator in Stalingrad: the music doesn't celebrate the triumph of the Russians over the Germans, but the ego of the man who has managed to climb such a tall building and can now look down upon his surroundings.

But what goes up, must come down; even the dignified, the eminent and the most lofty must fall on their faces.

OTTAWA – Saskatchewan residents may have been surprised yesterday to hear Prime Minister Stephen Harper muse publicly about what it would take to defeat the province. The Prime Minister appeared to be on a war footing while at a press conference to announce a highway project in Nova Scotia.

"We have to define what victory means in Saskatchewan," said Harper, when he was asked about Canada's role in Afghanistan.

He quickly retreated from the slip of the tongue.

"I don't know why I said that. I have no idea," Harper said.

Everyone at the press conference had a good chuckle, including the Prime Minister. But even so, Saskatchewan residents might well be advised to barricade the grain elevators just in case he wasn't kidding. At least they will have the advantage of seeing the invaders coming for days.

Reported by Richard J. Brennan on 7 March 2009 for The Toronto Star.

Louis Lozowick

On page 54, in a footnote to my discussion of Charles Demuth's My Egypt, I mention Louis Lozowick's Minneapolis, a lithograph dated 1925. In it, Minneapolis has grown at the confluence or crossing of the Mississippi River (see the boats and ships at the lower left) and the railroad (lower right). It has in fact grown to a great height, which is a emphasized by the single, tall and narrow building (a grain elevator, it would seem) that rises from the bottom to the top of the picture. But this tall building is in fact made of three stacks of tall buildings: a group of cylindrical grain tanks at the bottom, a large mill or factory in the middle, and the upper half of a 19th century-style grain elevator, complete with a clerestory-like gallery. Elsewhere in the picture, we see the same "stacking" effect, sometimes going as high as four levels, of factories, smokestacks, silos, towers, and elevated railroad trestles.

The gesture is clear: though it is "merely" a city of commerce and industry -- note the absence of churches, cathedrals, statues, monuments and trees -- Minneapolis in fact requires several different perspectives to be seen for what it really is: a complex and novel production of space.

Grain elevator in Al Basra, Iraq

On pages 44-45, I mention the United States' accidental destruction of the grain elevator in Al Basra, Iraq, which took place in early June 2003. Built in "the American style" in the 1950s, this elevator was so prized (or its destruction was so embarrassing) that the United States not only offered to rebuilt it, and build a brand-new grain elevator in Umm Osar, but also put a picture of the Al Basra Elevator on one of the new dinars that were issued in June 2003.

See Tom Sawyer, et al, "Plans laid for next phase as Iraq rebuild continues," Engineering News-Record, 20 October 2003.

Elevation/erection

On page 63, I refer to the "sexual" symbolism of grain elevators. Among many other things, the word "elevation" brings up associations with "erection": when a man is excited, his penis stiffens and becomes upright, and the head of his penis is elevated; furthermore, during the "heights" of orgasm, his seed rises from within his testicles to the top of his penis. See 1:00 in to this clip to see what I mean.

Though apparently unrelated, grain elevators and Frankenstein's monster have a great deal in common. First, Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory, at least in James Whales' version from 1931, is located in an abandoned windmill (windmills grind grain for flourmills). Second, the very first thing the monster says, at least in The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), is "Bread . . . good" (bread is typically made of wheat). Third, some anti-genetically modified food activists use the neologism "Frankenfood," which denotes foods made from genetically modified products, but especially wheat or corn.

Charles Demuth

Between pages 53 and 54, I briefly touch upon Charles Demuth's painting My Egypt (1927), which depicts a small "country elevator" (made out of reinforced concrete) that was built in Lancaster, Pennsylvania (Demuth's hometown) only a few years previously. In her reading of the painting and its cryptic title, Karal Ann Marling argues that the ultimate reference is to the Great Pyramids of ancient Egypt ("My Eygyt: the Irony of the American Dream," Winterthur Portfolio, Spring 1980).

The problem for Marling’s reading of Demuth’s painting is that there is a mismatch: despite its dead-giveaway title, My Egypt does not resemble or even evoke a huge pyramid. And so, how to interpret the enigma of the title? Marling’s best guess is that Demuth was referring to his own death, his own passing into history, his own funereal monument: “The finality of these cool, pristinely modern shapes dictates that the Pennsylvania [grain] elevator would outlast Demuth.” But what if she’s got it backwards? Instead of memorializing his own death, Demuth might have been saying that the grain elevator in Pennsylvania – even though it was brand-new when he painted it – was already a kind of ruin. There is a possible parallel to America itself: never a young country; always already old and ruined.

Battle of Stalingrad, part 2

The Stalingrad Elevator in 2007. Though the videographer doesn't appear knowledgeable about grain elevators (we see nothing of the elevator's basement or the bottoms of the grain bins), he was kind enough to show us a few shots of the bin floor and the tops of the grain bins, that is, before concentrating on the view from the top of the surrounding areas.

There is a statue at ground level, out in front of the elevator. A banner proclaims: "Victory in the name of the Motherland; victory in the name of the living; victory in the name of those who will come after us. Victory!"

Battle of Stalingrad, part 1

On pages 44 and 319, I refer to the Battle of Stalingrad (July 1942 to February 1943) because "a part of this bloody campaign took place in and around a colossal grain elevator built on the banks of the Voga River." Other pictures from this era show that the building was damaged by mortar attacks and gun-fire, but unlike everything else it hadn't been flattened or knocked down. Indeed, it still stands today.

Because it is located in Volgograd (also known as the birthplace of Joseph Stalin), and because Tsaritsyn (the city's name before 1925) is not listed as one of the cities in which grain elevators were built in the 1910s, I conclude that this particular grain elevator was probably built in the early 1930s and in the context of Stalin's "collectization" of the farms and his transformation of Volgograd into a transshipping center. In any case, it was built in the "American style," that is to say, using freestanding cylindrical tanks made out of reinforced concrete.

Star Trek, part 2

The horror of discovering the grain storage compartments to be full of dead animals is successfully dispelled or off-set by the comic spectacle of Captain Kirk standing underneath one of the storage compartments and slowly being buried up to his armpits in tribbles as they fall down upon him. He has two immediate orders: find the man who brought the creatures aboard, and Close that door! It is possible the grain was stored at K7 in this elevated fashion because the only suitable storage compartments at the space station were the equivalent of current-day "over-head compartments" on air planes. It is also possible that, in the future, all civilized people store their grain in "raised floor buildings." In any event, if it were not for the elevation of the granary, and Kirk's position beneath it -- if the granaries were below floor-level and Kirk was looking down at them -- the scene would be ghastly, not funny.

Star Trek, part 1

On page 37, I write that,

So essential are granaries to human societies that they even figure in works of Science Fiction. Take for example "Star Trek," perhaps the most well-known, popular and influential Sci-Fi story ever told. In the television episode entitled "The Trouble With Tribbles" (episode 44, first aired on 29 December 1967), the Starship Enterprise is called in to protect a shipment of grain being temporarily stored at K7, a deep-space station located near Klingon space.

The action to which I refer takes place about 5:15 in.

It turns out that the quadro-triticale has in fact been poisoned by the Klingons, but Captain Kirk and the others only learn this after a very large number of small, fuzzy, irresistably cute "tribbles" have gotten into the storage compartments, devoured all of the grain, and died.

Dogon granary doors

On page 36, footnote 63, I note that,

In some ancient/primitive cultures, such as that of the Dogon of Mali, granary doors bears elaborate carvings that depict, among other wonders, the Nommo, the Dogon's primordial ancestors, who have now descended from heaven to bring fertility to Earth, and stand with their arms raised, praying for rain, rebirth and regeneration.

On this particular granary door, four Nommo stand with their arms raised, beseeching others of their kind to favor the Dogon with rain and a good harvest. There is a rhythm here that I find appealing: down from sky, up to the heavens. It is played twice: the ancestors come down and stand up; and the rain they request comes down and the crops stand up. This rhythm also plays in sync with the way grain behaves: "When it is stored in a 'raised floor building,' grain will pour down like a liquid if a door at the bottom of the building is opened" (American Colossus, page 36).

Note that the catalogue for the auction of Dogon granary doors held at Sotheby's on 12 May 2005 -- the bidding started at around $5,000 per item -- mentions a different kind of rhythm (open and shut, not down and up): "the granary itself is often associated with the celestial ark of origins and creation among the Dogon. The door itself can be likened to a heartbeat with its opening and closing[,] signaling the vitality of the granary to Dogon life."

Grain power

On page 18, I note that the "Big Five" grain companies -- Cargill, Continental, Louis Dreyfus, Bunge y Born, and Andre -- "have strategic advantages over smaller companies concerning the grain flow through the system, facility locations, processing capabilities and vertical integration."

This map is a good visualization of those strategic advantages, especially the positioning of grain elevators within/along the stream of commerce. It was produced in 1995 and based upon information obtained through a Freedom of Information Act Request. Cargill's grain elevators are represented by green dots and total 243. Continental's elevators are represented by red dots and total 83. All of the other competitors' elevators are represented by blue dots and are not counted. They are clearly very numerous, but this fact is outweighed in importance by their distance from the marketing and distribution centers.

Grain elevators in India

On page 16, I mention India.

But if one were to ask someone today which grain companies are reaping windfall profits from the rising prices of wheat, corn and rice, or helping to formulate American foreign policy concerning agriculture in Cuba, Brazil, the Sudan, Egypt, India, North Korea and China, he or she probably wouldn't know.

Working towards a better understanding of this issue, I note that the first mechanized grain elevator built in India is mentioned in British India, with Notes on Ceylon, Afghanistan, and Tibet, by Henry D. Baker, American Consult at Bombay, Department of Commerce, Special Consular Reports, No 72 (1915), p. 352:

The first grain elevator in India has been completed at Lyallpur, the center of one of the largest irrigation districts of the Punjab Province. This elevator will furnish an experiment of important significance to the grain trade of India, and if successful it will undoubtedly stimulate the building of many other elevators in this country and lead to far-reaching and important changes in present methods for handling, storing and marketing the grain crops of India. The material of the new elevator is reinforced brickwork, and the structure is to comprise storage bins.

No doubt the "far-reaching and important changes" centered upon abandoning the centuries-long practice of storing and transporting grain in sacks and adopting the relatively new American practice of storing and transporting grain in bulk.

It is unclear from this brief notice if the elevator's storage bins if they, too, were constructed of bricks, or if they were constructed of steel, tile or reinforced concrete.

Today, Lyallpur is called Faisalabad and is located in Pakistan, not India. The third-largest city in Pakistan, Faisalabad is no longer a grain market, but a commercial/industrial center.

Grain elevators in Montreal

On page 123, I say that it wasn't until 1887 that a mechanized grain elevator was constructed at Montreal, Quebec. According to Controleman, author of a History of Montreal Grain Elevators (1885-1913), the first elevator in the area was Warehouse "A," located at rue Wellington and the Lachine Canal, and operated by the Canadian Pacific Railway between 1859 and 1872.

Despite the error, my point remains valid: it took quite a while for other port-cities to follow Buffalo's example by building a mechanized grain elevator, and this delay must be accounted for. If grain elevators were so useful (and they were), why weren't they built in places like Montreal, Philadelphia, and St. Louis in the 1840s? What caused the delay, which lasted almost twenty years?

Drowning in the river of grain

On page 49, I say the following about Frank Norris' novel, The Pit: A Story of Chicago (published in 1903),

Though Norris’s novel doesn’t include such a scene, it gives its reader enough material and inspiration to imagine that “justice” would consist in either throwing the unsuccessful speculator into the mighty river whose course he foolishly attempted to divert for his personal benefit, or forcing him to eat the millions of bushels of grain he managed to hoard as part of his attempted corner, and thus driving home the point that grain is food, not a plaything for capitalist speculators. But it was only in the late 20th century that the American river of grain was actually portrayed as smothering and lethal. I can only find one such instance, but it is potent: in The Witness, a film directed by Peter Weir (1985), one of the “bad guys” gets buried by and suffocates to death in the grain stored an Amish country elevator. And yet there is no “poetic justice” in this death by drowning in grain. It just happens.

In point of fact, D.W. Griffith's short film "A Corner in Wheat" -- released in 1909 and based upon a short story by Frank Norris called "A Deal in Wheat" (published in 1913) -- includes a scene in which the man who corners the market in wheat slips and falls into a grain bin while he is inspecting one of his elevators. While he is "drowning" (suffocating), we see scenes at the bread shop, where, due to the corner on wheat, flour has become so expensive that the baker soon runs out, which causes a bread riot.

Note well that such a scene is not included in Frank Norris' original, which only mentions grain elevators in "Part IV: The Belt Line," where they are used to disguise the corner as it is in progress. Griffith not only added the "drowning" scene, but also created a new part of the narrative, which he called "At the Elevators," in which to highlight it.

Typos

page 17, first line: delete "all"

page 18, six lines from the bottom: delete "all"

page 18, seven lines from the bottom: delete "all"

page 35, four lines from the top: change "is" to "was"

page 35, five lines from the top: change "is" to "was"

page 35, four lines from the top: change "is" to "was"

page 49, eleven lines from the top: change "com" to "corn"

page 52, three lines from the top: add "many" between "so" and "people"

page 56, six lines from the bottom: change "had" to "has"

page 58, six lines from the bottom: "anytime" is two words

page 186, end of footnote: "Erie as constructed" should be "Erie was constructed"

page 192, seven lines from the top: "Evans Slip" should be "Blackwell Ship Canal"

page 235, four lines from the top: add "of" between "of the end" and "the 'classic' grain elevator"

page 237, seven lines from the top: "AUSTON" should be "AUSTIN"

page 241, five lines from the top: "aid" should be "said"

page 244, two lines from the top: add "of" between "Trollope's image" and "the re-birth of Ceres"

page 245, center of page: "that an elephant's" should be "than an elephant's"

page 246, fourteen lines from the bottom: add "years" between "just a few" and "later"

page 249, three lines from the bottom: "your years" should be "your ears"

page 251, nine lines from the top: add "that" between "in a manner" and "to an English"

page 252, seven lines from the bottom: delete "bins"

page 278, six lines from the bottom: change "was" to "were"

page 320, six lines from the bottom: delete "of"

page 345, three lines from the top: "invented" should be "put into widespread use"

page 345, five lines from the bottom: "they" should be "she"

page 357, two lines from the top: delete the comma after "book"

page 359, center of the page: "Canada need to have" should be "Canada needed to have"

page 365, nine lines from the bottom: insert closing quotation marks between "cathedrals" and the footnote numbered 13

page 388, seven lines from the top: add "amount" between "a certain" and "of sense"

page 391, seven lines from the bottom: "International Workers Association" should be "Communist Party"

page 396, fifteen lines from the bottom: "Fifth" should be "Fourth"

page 404, three lines from the bottom: add "if" between "especially" and "it was housed"

Figure 3, caption: delete "Evans"

Figure 4, caption: change "Evans" to "City"

The Story So Far. . . .

So far, I have used this blog to entice my readers to buy copies of American Colossus by:

1) reproducing all of the illustrations that are contained in the book; and
2) uploading the book's "Introduction."

(Note that when you follow the links to the www.lulu.com page upon which the book is promoted, you will also see that the book's two epigraphs and its preface [by Marshall Brown, no relation to the author] have also been made available.)

Moving ever onward, I will now proceed to:

1) identify and correct the typographical errors in the book;
2) correct the errors of fact; and
3) provide "new" images and texts that illustrate or otherwise enrich individual ideas in the book.

Because the third job is the most difficult, and may very well take a long time, I will attempt to get through the first two jobs on this list as quickly as possible.