Word: railroads
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...elephant circus. That is how a circus used to be advertised, by the elephant-count. In the late nineteenth century, circus owners competed for the elephant crown. In 1881, Barnum had four elephants, Forepaugh had five, and the Sells Brothers called their gig the "Great European Seven Elephant Railroad Show." No match for Pompey, who is 61 B.C. advertised a celebration at the Circus Maximus in his own honor and promised that five hundred lions and twenty pachyderms would be slain...
Sure enough, Brown lurched along carrying the American flag in an eddy of reporters and supporters. Then he and Jackson, flanked by his own entourage, linked up in the middle of a street like the two construction gangs completing the Union Pacific Railroad. The significance of this union was unclear, but all hell broke loose anyway. Both men were delighted with the media frenzy they had ignited. "Everything is perfect," intoned Jacques Barzaghi, Brown's spooky alter ego, clad in his trademark black beret...
TSONGAS THE SERIOUS. Looking at what passes for Tsongas' national campaign, it is tempting to dismiss his strong New Hampshire finish as a freak of nature. Tsongas is, after all, a contender who introduced Texas railroad commissioner Bob Krueger as "my Southern connection" and meant it: that is about all the organizational support Tsongas has in many March primary states. The campaign last week had just one staff member in Georgia and a lone 19-year-old holding down the fort in South Carolina. True, Tsongas raised $360,000 the day after New Hampshire, but he still largely depends...
...various histories in America are based on the link of muffled racism with occasional exprssions of overt racism. The persecution of Japanese-Americans during World War II, the exploitation of Chinese in building the transcontinental railroad, the harassment of Korean grocers in New York and the general suspicion of Vietnamese after the Vietnam War are the most blatant examples...
...still much to revise in the story of the European conquest of North and South America that historians inherited? Its basic scheme was imperial: the epic advance of civilization against barbarism; the conquistador bringing the cross and the sword; the red man shrinking back before the cavalry and the railroad. Manifest Destiny. The notion that all historians propagated this triumphalist myth uncritically is quite false; you have only to read Parkman or Prescott to realize that. But after it left the histories and sank deep into popular culture, it became a potent myth of justification for plunder, murder and enslavement...