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Cartoon from San Francisco Call, questioning John Muir's masculinity for fighting the Hetch Hetchy Dam in Yosemite National Park, built to bring water to San Francisco. No precise date on the cartoon, quite likely in the early 1910s

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Opening of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, carrying water stolen from eastern California's Owens Valley, 1913

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Lynching, Omaha, Nebraska, 1919

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Children at free dental clinic, Lexington, North Carolina, 1918

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Aftermath of the 1910 bombing of the Los Angeles Times building by a union member angry over the paper's union-busting methods.

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This week's images revolve around the history of Los Angeles, as I prepare for my U.S. Urban History course this spring.

Map of Los Angeles, 1917

Border Threats, circa 1919

This isn't the first time Americans have freaked out from essentially non-existent threats to national security crossing the Mexican border.

This New York Times article from November 24, 1919 might as well come from 2010 with a few words changed. In 1919, American leaders were freaking out about radicals and Chinese crossing the Mexican border into the United States and threatening our national institutions. Of course, this proved to be vastly overblown--people were crossing the border illegally, but to work, not to assassinate the president. Today, people are also crossing the border and again, they are crossing to work. We laugh at our ancestors worries from 90 years ago; in 90 years, Americans may well shake their head at our actions today.

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Tsukamoto and Nakamura Laundry, Salem, Oregon, 1919

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Frank Little, I.W.W. organizer lynched in Butte, Montana in 1917.

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Socialist Party advertisement, 1912. Eugene Debs was the presidential candidate, Emil Seidel, VP. Debs received 6% of the vote that year.

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Emma Goldman speaking about birth control, Union Square, New York City, 1916

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Big Bill Haywood, leader of the Western Federation of Miners and then the Industrial Workers of the World.

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Strikers during the Seattle General Strike, 1919

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Elizabeth Gurley Flynn addressing a crowd of strikers in the famous I.W.W.-led Paterson strike, Paterson, New Jersey, 1913

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This week's photos will revolve around early 20th century radicalism. Inspired by Elliott Gorn's superb biography of Mother Jones, entitled, Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America. 

Protest demanding the release of Mother Jones from jail. Trinidad, Colorado, 1914

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Harry and Bess Truman on their wedding day, 1919.

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"Corn Harvest, Taos," painting by Theodore Wores, 1917

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4-H members with their corn crop, 1918

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Certificate from the Corn Products Refining Company, circa 1910. This company was a conglomeration of the major corn refiners in the country. They later expanded around the world. I'm not sure if they exist under that name today, but no doubt they played a big role in the expansion of high fructose corn syrup later in the 20th century.

This week's images are inspired by corn. We'll see how long I can produce corn-related images.  The book that inspired this was James McCann's Maize and Grace: Africa's Encounter with a New World Crop, 1500-2000. I read this as part of keeping up with the historiography of environmental history. It's an award winner. It is however an old school environmental history book, meaning that there's lots about the botany of corn and very little about actual people.

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Child labor in a coal mine, Pittston, Pa, 1911