The Bessemer Process (from “Have To” History)

June 25, 2021June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

Stuff You Don’t Really Want To Know (But For Some Reason Have To) About… the Bessemer Process

Three Big Things:

1. The Bessemer Process made better steel more quickly and more cheaply.

2. Better, affordable steel played a significant part in the Second Industrial Revolution. It may have been its primary cause; it was at least a major catalyst.

3. Bessemer steel made it possible to build skyscrapers, massive bridges, and reliable railroad tracks, as well as lots of other cool stuff. That makes it way more interesting than it sounds.

Context and Background

Prehistoric man used a number of elements he discovered in nature. Stones of various sorts were made into weapons or used to grind food. Lead was shaped into vessels for storing or transporting liquids. Copper was used to create some of humanity’s earliest tools, until eventually a few clever types figured out how to combine it with tin to make something even cooler – bronze.

Bronze was king for a while until iron became practical enough to replace it. Its earliest uses were in jewelry or ceremonial items using iron from meteorites which had fallen to earth – a gift from the gods, as it were. Over time, people figured out that Earth actually had plenty of iron; they just had to mine it and refine it and make it usable. (Seems like there’s a controversial metaphor in there somewhere.) The iron used to make weapons or farming implements was the same substance you need to ingest in order to grow up big and strong, albeit it in a different form. In its swords-n-plows form, however, iron can be brittle. It corrodes easily when exposed to moisture, limiting its usefulness.

Still, it was a big enough deal that human pre-history is typically divided into three general eras – the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and… well, you get the idea.

Eventually, somewhere around 1000 BCE, iron was alloyed with carbon to make a new metal – steel. Steel was (and is) super-nifty and comes in several varieties, depending on the exact mix. Steel is ridiculously strong but can still be shaped into useful items once heated sufficiently. As of 2021, something like 95% of all metal used in the world is some form of steel.

It’s kind of a big deal, is the point.

Before the Bessemer Process, however, steel was laborious to produce and quality could be inconsistent. It was a very popular metal for certain small items – expensive cutlery, sophisticated springs, etc. – but in practical terms, it was a limited resource.

What IS The Bessemer Process?

The technical details aren’t particularly important for understanding its historical significance. The short version is that it forces cool air through molten iron to remove impurities. It’s named for its supposed inventor in the 1850s, a British fellow named Sir Henry Bessemer, although an American chap known as William Kelly may have stumbled across the same idea at around the same time independently, but generally it’s thought Bessemer beat him to it. (A real patriot would nevertheless insist on calling it the “Kelly Process.” Brave men and women fighting and dying for this country and you’re afraid to stand up for one of our greatest innovators just so you don’t flunk history? Pathetic.)

It took a few decades of refining and improving the process, but by the late 1800s it was possible – thanks to the Bessemer Process – to produce vast quantities of high quality steel far more cheaply than before.

Honestly, this statement alone should be sufficient to excite anyone. Over the generations, however, we’ve allowed silly things like electricity and child labor laws to somehow overshadow just what all this keen steel meant for the nation.

Why It Matters

Bessemer steel became feasible just as the nation was heading into the Second Industrial Revolution, leading many to argue that the Bessemer process itself was largely responsible for the results. Those railroad tracks that began connecting the nation after the Civil War? They lasted far longer and could handle heavier loads and more severe environments once the Bessemer Process was involved. Factories and manufacturing? Sure, they existed before Bessemer steel – but machinery became more affordable, more accurate, and more durable thanks to the Bessemer process. High pressure boilers made from Bessemer steel meant better steam engines. Over time it allowed the evolution of larger and safer ships, automobiles, and airplanes.

And that’s not even the best part. Steel girders meant that man could finally build structures taller than a few stories. Skyscrapers became a thing in America’s wealthiest cities – twenty stories, thirty stories, and eventually a hundred or more. Safe, affordable, strong, and available – steel was (and is) pretty much magic when it comes to building stuff.

Taller buildings meant more people and more business and more activity were possible with less urban sprawl. The country could pack its population, services, workplaces, shopping, and whatever else it might desire into relatively few square miles by going up instead of always having to extend out. Those same steel girders combined with some fancy steel cables allowed seriously heavy-duty bridges to be constructed over major bodies of water so that the people and commerce could move back and forth far more quickly and easily.

Eventually, technology found an even better way to produce high quality steel efficiently and affordably. By the late 1960s, the Bessemer Process had become the “old way,” replaced by more modern methods which you don’t need to know about because there was way too much else going on in the 1960s for your teacher to ask you about Blast Furnaces or the Electric Arc Method. Today the U.S. only makes about 4% of the steel produced in the world. China produces over half; no other nation accounts for more than 6% or so.

How Do I Remember This?

Imagine life before the microchip (no computers, at least in the modern sense of the term), or before the internet. Imagine your world before automobiles or cell phones. The introduction of each of these technologies sparked massive changes far beyond what the items themselves actually did. That’s what Bessemer steel did for construction, industry, business, infrastructure, and the rest of the Second Industrial Revolution.

And don’t forget those trains. Choo-choo.

There’s a famous photo from the Great Depression of eleven men sitting on a steel beam having lunch, way up in the sky. (Google “Lunch Atop A Skyscraper” if you’d like a visual.) Imagine these men are all wearing shirts (sorry ladies) with large, fraternity-style letters on the front. Eleven men means eleven letters: “T-H-E-B-E-S-S-E-M-E-R.”

I supposed you could add two more guys in your mental image and go with “B-E-S-S-E-M-E-R-S-T-E-E-L,” or add seven more guys to spell out “T-H-E-B-E-S-S-E-M-E-R-P-R-O-C-E-S-S.” But come on – there’s really not that much room on the beam to begin with. (You want someone to fall off? Your professor’s never going to accept “H-E-S-S-E-M-R-S-T-E-E” as a valid answer, so best keep them all alive and fully dressed if possible.)

What You’re Most Likely To Be Asked

Unless your teacher is particularly weird, you’re unlikely to be asked to elaborate on the Bessemer Process itself or even produce an extensive list of what it made possible in its day. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be able to rattle off some of the examples covered above, however – they make for excellent supporting details and fit in well with a variety of related “Second Industrial Revolution” topics.

Most likely, however, “the Bessemer Process” will be the answer to a fill-in-the-blank or multiple choice question of some sort. “Which of the following contributed to the massive increase in manufacturing, the expansion of railroads, and the first skyscrapers in the late nineteenth century?” Something like that. As long as you know your Bessemer basics, you won’t have any trouble.

You may discover that your instructor seems anxious to establish the basics of the Second Industrial Revolution so they can get into the far more interesting stuff – child labor, early workers’ unions, the social ills associated with crowded tenements and dirty cities, and of course the arrival of the Progressives to try to make it all better. For example, here’s how New York’s Social Studies Framework presents the era:

11.5 INDUSTRIALIZATION AND URBANIZATION (1870 – 1920): The United States was transformed from an agrarian to an increasingly industrial and urbanized society. Although this transformation created new economic opportunities, it also created society problems that were addressed by a variety of reform efforts.
(a) New technologies and economic models created rapid industrial growth and transformed the United States… Students will examine the technological innovations that facilitated industrialization, considering energy sources, natural resources, transportation, and communication.

In APUSH, Bessemer fits perfectly into the Thematic Focus of Work, Exchange, and Technology (WXT):

The interplay between markets, private enterprise, labor, technology, and government policy shape the American economy. In turn, economic activity shapes society and government policy and drives technological innovation.

It’s also an ideal example to trot out for Learning Objective ‘D’ in Period 6 (1865-1898):

Explain the effects of technological advances in the development of the United States over time.

Finally, although not mentioned by name, Key Concept 6.1.I.b.i (yes, that’s a real thing) just begs for it:

Businesses made use of technological innovations and greater access to natural resources to dramatically increase the production of goods.

It all just screams “TALK ABOUT THE BESSEMER PROCESS!” Just make sure you connect all that innovation and production into the reform efforts and expanded government of the early twentieth century. Teachers love that stuff.

Bonus Points: How To Sound Like You Know More Than You Do

The Bessemer Process was burgeoning at roughly the same time that Alexander Graham Bell was taking innovations he’d originally hoped might assist the deaf or save wounded presidents and used them to invent the telephone (and the metal detector, and a better phonograph player, and some other weird stuff). Edison was improving the light bulb and inventing pretty much everything else with the help of his “invention factory” at Menlo Park. The Second Industrial revolution was transitioning from steam to electrical power, and the nation wasn’t far away from manned flight and the Model T automobile.

If you (or your teacher) lean a bit “GO AMERICA!” in your historical perspective, use the Bessemer Process as a demonstration of one of the many marvelous ways in which capitalism makes life better for everyone. Because steel was needed for so many commercial purposes, there was natural motivation to make it better, faster, and stronger than before. (If your instructor is ancient enough, you can drop in a Six Million Dollar Man reference here.) Industrialization brought the common American citizen more safety, more convenience, and more cool toys, and steel was the reliable, free-market foundation for it all.

If you prefer a more High School Musical “We’re All In This Together” approach, you can use Bessemer as an example of how no one person is responsible for progress. Maybe Bessemer and/or Kelly discovered the basics of the process, but they didn’t invent steel. They were improving on something already being done. Their innovation in turn required tinkering and experimentation from others, including by most accounts a Swedish ironmaster named Goran Goransson, who redesigned the furnace used to actually, um… Bessemize stuff, thus making it reliable and effective enough to transition into mass production, etc., etc. Very few innovations or inventions are the result of a single individual acting in isolation, America is most productive when more people have a voice, grazing in the grass is a gas baby can you dig it, etc.

Now bring it in for a group hug and we’ll all go around and say something we find special about the person to our left.

Either way, don’t get too hung up on the process itself. It’s all about what it allowed, created, represented, etc. Cover it, then launch from it – don’t dig in on it. That could get boring.

Keeping, Culling, and Forgetting

June 22, 2021June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 1 Comment

I had an embarrassing moment a little over a month ago.

I’ve been fortunate over the past two years to teach next door to a lady who (a) is generally as cynical as I am about most things, (b) has been in public education for long enough to have seen and heard it all, and (c) is supernaturally gracious when it comes to my shortcomings as an English teacher.

Several years ago, I reached a point at which I needed to either get out of public education altogether or find myself a dramatic new change of scenery, focus, and attitude. I ended up doing the latter. I became certified in English Language Arts (ELA) and I jumped to a district completely unlike anywhere I’d ever taught before.

Time to put your daily grind where your big talk is, Blue.

Of course, certification is one thing; being able to actually teach ELA effectively is something else entirely. I could read and write well enough, and I considered myself respectable enough when it came to analyzing literature or composing a coherent argument. But a real English teacher? Hardly.

I worried I’d show up to my first department meeting and we’d all be taking turns reading from The Dubliners in the original Greek and discussing how James Joyce Carol Oates used it as inspiration for his adaptation of Undercover Brother, Where Art Thou?

I needn’t have been concerned. We haven’t had a department meeting in the entire two years I’ve been there, so the danger seems fairly minor at this point.

I made it through a little over a semester before the pandemic hit and everything got weird(er). We were entirely virtual in the fall of last year, but by second semester we had at least some in-person learning. While there were few positives in the entire mess, I at least had plenty of time to brush up on the ELA curriculum and reacquaint myself with things like gerunds, antecedents, and passive tense. There were times I almost felt minimally competent!

Until this past May, dammit – which brings me back to that embarrassing moment I mentioned.

There were only a few weeks left until semester exams, which matter more in my district than they probably should. I was flipping through the official curriculum when I came across something I suspected I should have covered at some point, pandemic or no pandemic. Somehow, I’d overlooked it.

I walked next door to my trusted mentor-slash-colleague and shared my thoughts relatively unfiltered, as was our wont. “I wonder if we should have done ‘elements of a story’ – plot, setting, types of conflict, and all that. Seems like maybe that should have come up before now.”

She started laughing, which confused me for a moment until I realized she assumed I was kidding. It was as if I’d walked in and suggested maybe I should have worn pants today since I had a meeting with my evaluating administrator. Not particularly sophisticated humor, but enough to share a chuckle in the workplace.

I suppose the look on my face tipped her off that she’d misread the situation and her smile quickly faded. “Wait, you’re serious?”

If this were a sit-com, I’d have quickly covered my snafu by heartily joining in with uncomfortable laughter at my own expense. Instead, I had a rare moment of embarrassed silence.

She quickly shifted gears and assured me that this past year had been so weird anyway that the best any of us could do was to reboot and start fresh in the fall. She shared a few approaches she’d used to teaching elements of a story – you know, way back earlier in the year – and was generally encouraging and supportive while never quite losing that look of bewildered pity for the well-intentioned fool next door. Then again, I was the best they could hold onto in this particular place, so… that’s what you get.

The whole experience got me thinking about other stuff in the official curriculum which I’d never actually gotten around to in class. So far, these omissions have largely been externally-driven – casualties of modified schedules and ever-changing circumstances. In a few months, I’ll have live students, many of whom haven’t been in school in any way, shape, or form for nearly eighteen months.

I’ll need to make semi-informed decisions about what matters and what doesn’t with these darlings. Of course, we’re supposed to cover all of it, passionately and thoroughly. But… between you and me? That’s delusional in the best of circumstances and it’s just not going to happen. I was hired to teach a specific curriculum, but part of that obligation is using my professional judgement to determine what’s most effective with the kids in front of me.

Plowing through all of it one way or the other isn’t what’s most effective in this case. So what do I, in my pompous wisdom, prioritize? And what legit ELA undertakings do I discard as less worthy of our limited time? Like any subject, it’s all interesting and potentially important if given unlimited time by the system and unwavering commitment from each and every student. Lacking that, however, I have no ethical problem cutting some “required” matter loose in order to improve the odds the rest meaningfully sticks – at least a little.

Hence my “Keeping & Culling” list, initial rough draft.

We’re going to keep setting aside time to read in class several times each week whether it’s officially part of the “curriculum” or not. I’m too sold on the power of that time modeled and practiced regularly in class, by myself and any other adult in the room along with my kids. And yes, we’ll definitely look at the most common elements of stories and the so-called “hero’s journey.”

I’m culling analysis of imagery and theme, at least as discrete topics. Oh, and gerunds. We won’t be quizzing over gerunds.

We’re going to keep writing. I love an approach I borrowed from a real English teacher years ago. Every writing assignment receives two grades. If students submit work which meets the general requirements, they receive full credit – a completion grade. No matter how good or bad a piece is, I promise them three comments or suggestions. They consider these, revise, and resubmit a final version, which is then graded on improvement. Did they demonstrate thought and effort and find ways to make it better than it was?

I’m culling anything resembling a research paper or formal argumentative essay with footnotes and citations. This one hurts my soul a little; I believe these are valuable undertakings in other situations. My kids are capable of many great things, but they’re not academically at a point which makes this a good use of our limited time and energy.

We’re keeping short stories. My students will complain that I assign to many short stories – sometimes a new one every week! They whine that I require more reading than anyone else in any subject at any level EVER. (I do not believe this is factually true.) We’ll work on objective summaries and a few close reading strategies.

I’m culling several of the recommended stories from district guidelines. With all due respect to Poe and Hawthorne, some of their writing is simply too thick for my freshmen. Yes, students should be challenged. Yes, there’s value in stretching them academically. But that’s different than pushing them off a cliff while yelling at them to flap harder. For now, I’ll be focusing on stories with interesting wrinkles but which are quite readable for almost anyone with minimal willingness.

We’ll keep the discussing, recognizing, and using similes, metaphors, alliteration, onomatopoeia, allusion, implication/inference, repetition, and personification. Many other elements, however, are culled for now.

I was trapped in a training last month during which – I kid you not – we spent the better part of 90 minutes on strategies for teaching appositives. (For those of you with a life, an appositive is a “noun phrase” that restates with new information or clarification the noun which precedes it. “Blue Cereal, pith-laden blogger, is seriously underappreciated in his own time.” “Pith-laden blogger” is an appositive.)

Now, appositives are important enough in their own way, but are they essential for my specific students to make meaningful progress this year? I’m going to risk the ire of English teachers everywhere (not to mention anyone from my district who happens to be reading) and say no. Other terms on shaky ground despite their inclusion on official lists include anaphoric, cataphoric, modal auxiliary verbs, participial adjectives, and the aforementioned gerunds.

I’m nowhere near vain enough to suggest anyone should adapt my druthers about what parts of the curriculum are essential and which can be saved for another time. I suppose I’m partly just writing it all down to help clarify my own thinking, and to suggest that maybe as we return to whatever “normal” looks like this fall, we all take a deep breath before we do anything else.

Empty talking heads will keep pushing their weird “students are all behind now!” narratives. Districts will scramble to increase scores on whatever big magical tests control your state. A few eager colleagues troubled by last year’s shortcomings will try to make up for it by doubling down this fall. Politicians will continue being politicians and find ways to blame you for everything that’s ever happened – and probably several things that haven’t.

I respectfully suggest that while yes, you should pay attention to whatever specifics you were hired to teach, no, you don’t have to plow through them all no matter what, whether your kids keep up or not.

2021-2022 will no doubt get off to a rocky (and weird) start in many places. Go in positive, go in prepared, and go in with high hopes and high expectations. But if giving your students what they need most means you jettison some non-essentials along the way… you have my permission. If that’s what’s best for your kids, do it.

If anyone complains, just show them this post.

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Blessed Are Those Whose Pronouns Reflect Biology At Birth

June 8, 2021June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

A few days ago, Peter Greene at Curmudgucation wrote about a Physical Education teacher named Tanner Cross who was suspended for refusing to refer to transgender students by their preferred pronouns. I wholeheartedly agreed with everything Greene write about the situation and intended to tweet it a few times then leave it alone.

But it’s bugging me. The whole situation. The claims being made – especially the moral indignation of this public school teacher demanding the right to assert his personal religious beliefs in class.

Because that’s not how public school works.

There are a number of factors making this more complicated than it might otherwise be. The first is that Cross’s suspension came after he objected to the policy at a school board meeting and announced that he’d never “affirm that a biological boy can be a girl, and vice versa.” He equated using transgender teens’ preferred pronouns to “lying to a child” and “abuse {of} a child” before adding that it was also “sinning against our God.”

A few days later, Cross was suspended and – because school districts are pretty much required to dramatically overreact in every possible conflict – banned from campus, prohibited from attending school events, and essentially treated as if he’d already mowed down a half-dozen LGBTQ+ kids with his church-issued AK-47.

He hadn’t.

The policy wasn’t even finalized yet, let alone implemented. Presumably, the Board was taking comments on the thing when Cross spoke. There’s no indication in the stories I found that he jumped up in the middle of unrelated business and began ranting unexpectedly. I think his position is inane and unethical (more on that in a bit) but based on the information available it seems to me the district might have flipped the panic switch a bit prematurely.

I mean, can you even violate a policy that hasn’t been instituted yet?

But here’s the bigger problem. The swell of right-wing support rallying behind Cross for sticking it to them transgender kids and all their liberal nonsense about “gender identity” are taking the position that as a teacher in a public school he has freedom of both speech and religion, as if he can say and do whatever he likes in this role thanks to the First Amendment.

That’s not how it works.

On the one hand, the Supreme Court made it very clear a half-century ago in Tinker v. Des Moines (1969) that

First Amendment rights, applied in light of the special characteristics of the school environment, are available to teachers and students. It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.

This right is not absolute, however. Most of the cases I examined for “Have To” History: A Wall of Education (insert book promo here) which involved public funding being used to push religious beliefs involved “school choice” programs – taxpayer funded private schools indoctrinating students with their own versions of history, science, etc. The few “teacher free speech” cases involving public schools were mostly situations in which a teacher wished to teach creationism as being scientifically comparable to evolution scientifically, despite district curriculum policies to the contrary.

None of these teachers won. Evolution is (so far) a scientifically accepted theory of man’s development; Intelligent Design is an effort to replace evolution with unsupported religious beliefs. God may have created the universe, but to date that reality has to be accepted on faith.

Teacher’s aren’t allowed to attack students for their beliefs or push their own faiths on students. I’d never kneel or protest during the Pledge of Allegiance during First Period because I’m not there as Blue Cereal flinging liberal pith everywhere; I’m there as an employee and representative of the state and school system, and they want to do the Pledge. When I didn’t like military recruiters coming to my school, I took it up with my administration privately. (If they’d asked me to fire a weapon on the other hand, I might have refused. Perhaps Mr. Cross would see that as comparable?)

I’ve had kids who loved Donald Trump. I might needle them a bit, but I’d never intentionally risk my connection with them by challenging their passion the way I might with other adults. I had a kid a few years back who repeatedly wore a shirt with Trump heavily armed and riding a T-Rex and who always made sure I noticed. We laughed about it, but I promise you that kid knew I loved and accepted him just the same.

Obviously the same thing is true for my gay kids, my Muslim kids, my atheists, my Mormons, or whatever. I’ve only had a few transgender students, and I try to show them the same love and respect as well. This isn’t something heroic on my part; it’s true of almost every teacher I know with every kid. It’s the norm. It’s how school is supposed to work.

Now, here’s something I don’t usually bring up. If I’m being honest, I don’t fully understand the whole transgender thing. I can’t quite get my head around it the way I’ve managed to do with race, religion, homosexuality, or whatever.

I share this not because I want to argue with anyone about it, but because the whole point is that I don’t need to “understand” or even “accept” it (let alone “approve” of anything) when it comes to my kids. My job is to teach them English and History and to treat them with respect and decency while I do it. I want to help them think, and yes – I sometimes care a little about all their weird personal drama, but only because (a) it tends to interfere with their ability to care deeply about appositives, and (b) I want them to feel validated and supported as human beings whenever possible.

What I’m not there to do is take a stand on my progressive ideals. The nice preacher’s wife next door to me feels the same way about her very conservative Christianity. Her faith is everything to her, but she doesn’t talk about it with kids unless they ask, and then only in the right circumstances. She wants to make sure nothing she says leaves anyone feeling “otherized” or degraded. That is, in fact, central to her faith.

I know, right?

Teenagers are a sensitive, melodramatic bunch. It doesn’t take that much for them to feel marginalized – particularly if they belong to a group which is already kicked around and rejected, sometimes by their own families.

I said above that there were too many things in this case which complicate it, and I worry they’re going to be completely overlooked by the majority of people who end up taking very dramatic stands about it as things progress. Here are the last two I’ll be ranting about today.

Mr. Cross insists that using the preferred pronouns of transgender kids is against his religion. I’m curious what religion that might be. I like the way Greene covered this part in his post:

Exactly which part of the Christian faith, which teaching of Jesus, requires people of faith to object to trans folks? Cross (and his attorneys) are trying to hedge bets by suggesting the problem is the lying, that telling anything but the unvarnished truth is unChristian. I’m…. dubious. Cross teaches elementary school; I’d like to be there for the days when he blasts kindergartners for talking about Santa, the Tooth Fairy, or the Easter Bunny…

The courts, however, do not look to the validity or accuracy of a theological position. At best, they consider sincerity (does the person really believe this, or is it being used as an excuse for their behavior?) No judge worth his gavel will decide this one based on the complete lack of New Testament mandates regarding pronoun usage.

What I hope the courts will consider is the difference between religious or political speech outside of school hours (which is sometimes protected, although not always) and “I refuse to demonstrate this form of decency and acceptance to trans students specifically because they are going to hell for their perversion and lies.”

Which brings me to the last messy bit of this whole situation. Because Mr. Cross was suspended before the policy was even implemented, I’m curious what his solution in class with real students might have been (or might be, since he’s apparently been reinstated via court order). In my mind, the answer matters.

Despite my hyperbole, I have no reason to think he intends to go full Santa Fe ISD and berate his kids for being hell-bound. If he did, I’d like to think the courts would refuse to categorize that as protected free speech or free exercise of his religion. But what if he defied the policy by always using the child’s name instead of what he believes to be the “correct” pronoun? Or what about using “they” instead of “he” or “she”? Are evolving grammatical norms the same sort of violation of his faith as, say… “lying”?

I’m not saying he shouldn’t still be held accountable for defying the policy, but morally and professionally, that would be a very different sort of violation, wouldn’t it?

Left unaddressed in the coverage of the case so far is the question of whether the transgender students of Loudon County, Virginia, have expressed any sort of preference themselves about how this could or should behandled. Is this policy an effort to respond to their concerns, or has someone been feeling all “woke” lately and decided to straight-white-savior everyone based on their enlightened Twitter feed? I’d like to assume the best, but…

Despite my own ambiguity about some transgender issues, I’m having a hard time sympathizing with Mr. Cross on this one. My inclination is to defend the kids and err on the side of acceptance, respect, and support. When conflicts like this erupt, the people most impacted tend to be the group already marginalized and mistreated to begin with, and this case has the potential to be a complete mess with plenty of point-missing and grandstanding from all sides.

I hope both parties surprise me and find a decent compromise before things escalate further. We’ll see.

“In God We Trust” (Or Else)

June 6, 2021June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

There are certainly plenty of wonderful individual people of faith around, including many Christians.

I feel obligated to open with this acknowledgement (disclaimer?) because my next several posts are going to focus on clashes between religious folks and public education which have been in the news recently, and it seems like every time you come across a story about someone asserting their Christian beliefs via legislation or the courts, they’re doing it for one of three reasons: (1) they want more government money for something without having to follow the same rules as everyone else, (2) they want the government to like their religion best and tell everyone about it more often because that’s “freedom of religion,” or (3) they want to be horrible to some group of people everyone else is supposed to be kind to.

All in all, it doesn’t paint a very flattering picture of the group as a whole. Then again, we’ve seen their voting habits, so…

Texas Demands Empty Proclamations of Faith Without Substance

The Texas State Legislature has passed a bill requiring that any public schools which just happen to end up with one or more “In God We Trust” signs in their possession post them as prominently as possible. (As of this writing, it’s waiting on the Governor’s signature.) Presumably, they’re hoping this will pass constitutional muster thanks to a combination of factors:

The signage will be donated, not paid for by state tax dollars.
“In God We Trust” is our national motto – a statement of patriotism (supposedly), not religion.
The Supreme Court has previously ruled that some religious statements are so drained of meaning as to no longer trigger “wall of separation” issues.

The “national motto” thing is a remnant of our 1950s terror of all things Communist. If spiritual purity and a commitment to capitalism weren’t synonyms before World War II, they certainly became so by the time of color television. The Commies were “godless,” so one way the U.S. could stand tall was to insert things like “under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance and make “In God We Trust” our official national motto. (For those of you unfamiliar with the teachings of Jesus, he was very big on public rituals and governmental gestures of support.)

This conflation of all things red, white, and blue with orthodox Christianity has only intensified since. In the hearts and minds of the controlling (and voting) majority of American faithful, you can’t love Jesus and favor gun control legislation. You can’t take communion and oppose tax breaks for the uber-wealthy. And it’s easier for an elephant to go through restorative justice training than for a Black man to have equal rights in the eyes of the law because look they must have been asking for it or they wouldn’t have the mark of Cain to begin with. It’s hardly a coincidence that the same Texas legislature pushing the “In God We Trust” signage passed a law requiring sports teams to play the National Anthem before every game.

From FoxNews.com:

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick was a staunch advocate for the bill, dubbed the “Star Spangled Banner Protection Act.” The measure was first introduced in February after the Dallas Mavericks briefly stopped playing the national anthem before their home games.
“Texans are tired of sports teams that pander, insulting our national anthem and the men and women who died fighting for our flag,” Patrick said in a statement in April. “The passage of SB 4 will ensure Texans can count on hearing the Star Spangled Banner at major sports events throughout the state that are played in venues that taxpayers support. We must always remember that America is the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

Notice the title – the “Star Spangled Banner Protection Act.” Because patriotism, like faith, apparently can’t survive without government propping it up by force. Note also the claim that American soldiers fight and die “for our flag.” Not our values, not our Constitution, and certainly not our people – for the cloth and the symbols and the rituals.

I won’t even try to make sense of mandating adherence to a ritual in order to remind us we’re the land of the free. Modern GOP “reality” gives me a headache. Instead, back to those godless public schools…

“Ceremonial Deism”

In 2004, the Supreme Court heard a case involving the “under God” bit added to the Pledge in the 1950s. A non-custodial parent objected to his daughter being exposed to this daily chant of devotion in her local public school. The Court avoided deciding the case on its merits, finding instead that the plaintiff lacked standing to sue (the girl’s mother, who legally had custody, had no objections to the Pledge).
Several concurring opinions, however, indicated that had they addressed the issue itself, the Pledge would have been fine. The best-known was this bit from Justice Sandra Day O’Connor:

Given the values that the Establishment Clause was meant to serve… I believe that government can… acknowledge or refer to the divine without offending the Constitution. This category of “ceremonial deism” most clearly encompasses such things as the national motto (“In God We Trust”), religious references in traditional patriotic songs such as The Star-Spangled Banner, and the words with which the Marshal of this Court opens each of its sessions (“God save the United States and this honorable Court”). These references are not minor trespasses upon the Establishment Clause to which I turn a blind eye. Instead, their history, character, and context prevent them from being constitutional violations at all.

In other words, “under God” was no more spiritual than saying “bless you” when someone sneezed or “OMG!” when you see a cool TikTok video. It was purely ceremonial, stripped of substance by repetition and years of historical impotence.

That’s what Texas is going for with their motto requirement – something barely constitutional because it lacks the slightest spiritual or religious meaning in the eyes of the courts or, presumably, the citizenry at large. Otherwise, it would be blatantly unconstitutional.

A Moment Of Pray—Er… Silence

The same basic approach was taken by numerous states when passing “moment of silence” legislation. These laws require school announcements each day to include 3-4 seconds of silence (some statutes specify a full minute) during which students can “reflect, meditate, or pray” or some variation thereof. These laws pass constitutional muster because they’re so pointless. Sure, kids can pray – but they don’t have to. Of course, they can also pray silently before the moment of silence, or after it. Kids have never ever EVER in the history of the United States been prohibited from praying silently during the school day, or from praying collectively and out loud on school grounds as long as it’s not in the middle of class. Never.

Legislators tried the same disingenuous strategy with the Ten Commandments as well, but the “HOW IS THAT RELIGIOUS?!?” argument somehow didn’t stick with that one. Opening with “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” kinda gave it away.

So if these moments and postings and such are neutered, meaningless symbols, why do some legislators fight so hard to make them happen?

Conservatives have somehow persuaded a majority of religious voters that these little token victories – the ones that slide past First Amendment concerns specifically because they lack substance – are somehow pushing Jesus back into public schools or securing God’s blessings on America. Mumbling “under God” or posting “In God We Trust” operates as a sort of code phrase, opening a spiritual portal for the Lord Almighty to swoop back in and take His rightful place in the big leather chair in the principal’s office. Statues become woodland creatures again, teenagers stop being interested in sex or any music recorded after 1957, and Common Core was never even invented, let alone mandated by many of these exact same legislators.

(OK, that last one wouldn’t be so bad.)

Let There Be (Gas)Light

In other words, the only reason to pass these laws is because those supporting them believe they ARE statements of faith. They DO matter in distinguishing America’s official religion (which they’re willing to pretend isn’t official in order to secure it as such) from all of those other belief systems (which have no place in public schools because of the First Amendment).

Religious legislators have learned to go through the motions of manufacturing pseudo-secular reasons for these theological breaches. They assert that a “moment of silence” rewrites the chemistry of the teenage brain each morning or that the Ten Commandments are purely historical context for the U.S. Constitution (despite the two having not so much as a single line in common). The trick is to do this while still celebrating the banishment of the White Witch from Narnia with their constituents, who believe their nation is so great and their God so powerful that neither can survive without such gestures.

Legislators aren’t the only ones perfectly aware of the power of these little religious “victories.” They’re a reminder to anyone outside the cell group that they don’t belong. You atheists, Buddhists, Hindus, or Muslims, along with you LGBTQ+ teens and anyone else who isn’t showing proper deference to state-mandated religious and patriotic rituals – you can stay for now, but you are outsiders. You. Don’t. Count. And honestly, you’re ruining everything for the good people – the ones who believe and do the right things, in unison, whenever we’re told.

If you think I’m overstating it, go visit another country for a few years where the dominant culture is different than yours and send your kids to school there. Or just ask one of those gay or atheist types you don’t let your kids hang out with. Maybe they’ll try to explain it.

The Governor has about ten days from the time a bill is presented to either sign or veto it in Texas. You’ll know if it becomes law because you’ll hear a cock crow three times.

The Interstate Commerce Act & The ICC (from “Have To” History)

June 4, 2021June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

Stuff You Don’t Really Want To Know (But For Some Reason Have To) About… the Interstate Commerce Act & the Interstate Commerce Commission

Three Big Things:

1. After several states attempted to limit the power of railroads and grain storage facilities on behalf of farmers and other citizens, Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act (1887). This established the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to regulate railroads, including their shipping rates and route choices.

2. The ICC was the first federal regulatory agency; it’s “success” spawned hundreds of others in subsequent decades. When you hear people complain about “big government,” these are a big part of what they mean. At the same time, they remind us that economic systems are not natural rights; they’re practical mechanisms designed to serve the largest number of people in the most efficient ways possible – at least in theory.

3. Ideally, regulatory agencies attempt to balance the good of society and the general public with the rights of companies to make reasonable profits from providing useful goods and services. They oversee “public services” – things considered essential for most citizens but which don’t easily lend themselves to a competitive marketplace due to the infrastructure required or the necessary scale of the service.

Context

The second half of the nineteenth century was one of America’s greatest (and most controversial) eras of expansion. Rugged, individualistic homesteaders navigated bureaucracy and accepted government oversight to secure their own plots of government-sponsored land in the west, where the government was hard at work clearing out the local populace on their behalf. Railroads, arguably the most poignant symbol of progress in all of Americana, were bravely, capitalistically accepting massive government land grants in exchange for laying their tracks across the Great Plains and finally connecting one coast with another. Along the way they manipulated local townships into catering to their every fiscal whim, lest they destroy them by altering course and instead bestow their blessings on communities more willing to kiss their caboose.

For railroads, more miles of track, continued national expansion, and the vast quantities of crops farmers were shipping further and further from where they were grown meant increased profits and political influence. For farmers, on the other hand, more land, technological advances, and increased production meant lower prices, endless struggles, and increased debt just to stay in the game. Eventually, traditionally individualistic farmers began forming collectives – the Grange, the Farmers’ Alliance, etc. – and pressuring their state and local governments to balance the scales a bit. They weren’t looking for handouts, just some restraints on what they saw as unchecked corporate power and greed. It wasn’t long before other segments of society began adding their voices in support.

Regulating For The Public Good

In Munn v. Illinois (1877), the Supreme Court determined that it was perfectly constitutional for a state to regulate industries within its borders, including capping the amounts grain elevators and storage warehouses were allowed to charge for their services. As the Court explained,

When one becomes a member of society, he necessarily parts with some rights or privileges which, as an individual not affected by his relations to others, he might retain. “A body politic,” as aptly defined in the preamble of the Constitution of Massachusetts, “is a social compact by which the whole people covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people, that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good.”
This does not confer power upon the whole people to control rights which are purely and exclusively private… but it does authorize the establishment of laws requiring each citizen to so conduct himself, and so use his own property, as not unnecessarily to injure another. This is the very essence of government.

In other words, capitalism is all very fine and well, and the individual’s (or even the corporation’s) right to property and profit is important – but only because this economic approach presumably serves a larger good. The U.S. doesn’t practice a form of free market economics because it’s holy and just to do so – it’s a pragmatic decision based on the perceived shortcomings of alternative economic systems in comparison. (To paraphrase Winston Churchill, “Capitalism is the worst economic system except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”)

Munn marked as well as anything the birth of the idea that governments can and should regulate industries deemed essential to the general welfare. At the time, that primarily meant stuff related to farming and the distribution of crops, but it would eventually encompass any number of public “utilities” (electricity, water, gas, etc.) as well as some transportation systems, television and radio broadcasting, and even trash pickup.

Many would argue that as society and technology continue to evolve, the same sorts of regulation should apply to internet access, cell phone plans, and even health care and other medical services. While it’s usually pretty easy to find a new burger joint if the one you liked before starts skimping on fries or changes their menu, it’s harder to change gas companies. The local sewer service rarely competes for your business, and only a small percentage of American homeowners get to actually choose who provides their electricity – let alone at what rate. Anytime laissez-faire capitalism would result in an “essential” service being reserved for the elite few, government steps in and makes everyone play nice. Companies providing valuable services deserve to make a reasonable profit, but not at the cost of the larger social good – or so the reasoning goes.

In the late nineteenth century, however, it was primarily grain storage and railroad rates.

The Commerce Clause Wins Again

Not quite a decade after Munn, the Court revised its opinion while pretending it was simply picking up where it left off. Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Railway Company v. Illinois (1886) clarified that while states had the right to regulate industries within their borders, that power didn’t extend beyond state lines. Just because a railroad route began in Chicago, that didn’t mean the Illinois legislature could dictate shipping rates or other policies as it choo-choo-ed through Iowa or Missouri. This was “interstate commerce” in the truest sense of the term, making it the exclusive province of Congress – whether they chose to act on it or not.

Congress finally took the hint and created the very first federal “regulatory agency” – the Interstate Commerce Commission – in 1887. The ICC was charged with overseeing railroads and shipping of all sorts, and set strict guidelines for how the railroads could do business. Rates had to be the same for short trips as for long, and for all customers, however much or little they shipped. Railroads couldn’t even offer special packages for “preferred destinations.”

The specific rules weren’t the important part, however. These were modified or eliminated as technology, transportation, and society evolved. The important thing was the idea that government could and should set limits on important industries for the good of society. In practice, this usually means federal government. It’s nearly impossible today to find a good or service functioning purely “intrastate.” States can sometimes add to regulations while the good or service is withing their purview, but not beyond.

Over the next century, hundreds of federal agencies would be created in the image of the ICC. While Congress still established guidelines and priorities, agency directors and bureaucrats were left with the detail work – writing the actual rules and at times even taking part in enforcement. When you hear people complain about the unending nightmare of red tape, small print, and regulatory burdens on pretty much everything, this is what they mean. The positive side is that the meat you bought at the store today is probably not rotten and your kids’ clothes probably won’t burst into flames anytime the sun is too bright. The negative side is that unchecked bureaucracy tends to grow like the demonic kudzu and has proven nearly impossible to restrain, let alone prune back. No one can even agree on how many federal regulatory agencies there are, let alone which ones are necessary or what at each of them is actually in charge of.

The ICC was dissolved in 1995 after most of its regulatory power had been reduced or stripped away. Its few remaining functions were transferred to yet another agency – the “Surface Transportation Board” (as opposed to all those other sorts of transportation) which operates under the “U.S. Department of Transportation.” The Secretary of Transportation, in turn, reports directly to the President.

How Do I Remember This? (And Why It Matters)

Much of American history can be viewed as an ongoing struggle between freedom and security – nationally, locally, legally, socially, and – as in this case – economically. Just like in school, too little freedom stifles innovation and productivity; too much freedom leads to chaos, abuse, and a breakdown of the system.

The Interstate Commerce Act and ICC were the federal government’s first major effort to restrict what big business could and couldn’t do in an effort to ensure the results served everyone, not just those already at the top of the economic ladder. The resulting arguments would sound surprisingly familiar nearly a century-and-a-half later. Is it better to let big business run free or rein it in from time to time? Is government better or worse than raw capitalism at meeting the needs of the people as a whole over time? Do the basic rights guaranteed to American citizens as individuals apply to corporations as well?

If the answer to any of these questions seems obvious or easy, you’re doing it wrong.

The ICC, while no longer with us, remains the granddaddy of all federal bureaucracy and regulation. From the “alphabet agencies” of the New Deal to the half-dozen different agencies which today dictate the minutia of salmon treatment, processing, costs, transportation, and preparation long before you squeeze lemon on it at your local chain restaurant – they can all be traced back to the Interstate Commerce Commission… for better or worse.

What You’re Most Likely To Be Asked

It’s unlikely you’ll be asked to recognize or analyze the language of the Interstate Commerce Act itself (it’s not that readable). Instead, make sure you understand its connection to pretty much everything else going on at the time. It’s also a nice precursor to discussing populism (the late 19th century version) or even the Progressive movements of the early 20th century. They were all about using government to balance the power of big business against the needs of the “common man.”

In APUSH, Period 6 (1865-1898) is packed with standards related to economic development and industrial growth. The rest mostly involve westward expansion and the farmers movement (“populism”). The ICC is about both, particularly in relation to one another. Knowing the basics will help you add relevant details for any prompt related to government regulation, important Supreme Court decisions of the nineteenth century, or early efforts by farmers to push back against big businesses. It should always be mentioned when speaking or writing about railroads in this period as well. It may not be the single most important thing from this half-century, but it connects to almost everything else happening at the time – and that makes it mighty useful for making yourself look knowledgeable. (KC-6.1.III, KC-6.3, KC-6.3.II, and others)

Utah’s Core Social Studies Standards pose a question many teachers love asking in some form:

How could industrial leaders be considered both “captains of industry” and “robber barons”? (U.S. II Strand I – Industrialization)

It’s a topic typically addressed while covering the Gilded Age (closer to the start of the twentieth century), but it’s a great chance to reference events associated with the creation of the ICC. Railroads were essential to American growth and progress, as were grain storage facilities, banks, and other “wicked witch” industries of the late nineteenth century. At the same time, they tended to exploit and discard anyone non-essential to their continued growth and power. It was capitalism at its most dichotomous (the whole point of the question).

If you’re not feeling that bold, chances are good you’ll be asked something along the lines of this substandard from Utah. Some variation of this is present in over half of all state social studies standards:

Students will assess how innovations in transportation, science, agriculture, manufacturing, technology, communication, and marketing transformed America in the 19th and early 20th centuries. (U.S. II Standard 1.1)

At the very least you should recognize the ICC as the first federal regulatory agency and railroads as the first federally regulated industry.

Bonus Points: How To Sound Like You Know More Than You Do

Congress’s authority to regulate interstate commerce is found in Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. As a practical matter, this means that Congress can regulate almost anything by tying it in some way to interstate commerce – a power confirmed by the Supreme Court a half-century before in one of those “must know” cases, Gibbons v. Ogden (1824). Combined with the “Necessary and Proper Clause” (also in Article I, Section 8; confirmed by McCulloch v. Maryland, 1819), Congress and its regulatory power became virtually unchallengeable. Throw in details like what’s covered above, then thoughtfully note that this same basic tension – big government vs. small, the Hamiltonian approach vs. the Jeffersonian approach, etc. – is still a fundamental source of conflict between the two major parties today. (You’ll have literally covered the entire range of American history in a single observation.)

If your teacher seems to lean a bit conservative (they gripe about “those people” or refer to the Civil War as “the war of Northern Aggression,” etc.), you might ingratiate yourself by referring to the current web of federal regulations (which started with the ICC) as “Kafkaesque.” Kafka was a novelist who specialized in the bizarre, especially when it involved protagonists overwhelmed by systems or powers beyond their understanding or control but forced to go along with them anyway. Remember the guy who wakes up as a giant cockroach one day and we never find out why? That was his. “Kafkaesque” is a nice literary touch and should tingle their little conservative hearts without actually committing you to any particular worldview.

Above all else, avoid taking easy positions on the “good” or “bad” of railroads, regulation, farmers’ demands, or even the ICC itself. Always reference specifics while nevertheless acknowledging the inherent complexity and the valid claims of both (or all) sides – freedom, competition, and capitalism on one side and a reasonable opportunity for individuals to succeed (or at least survive) on the other. That’s what makes it interesting – the lack of easy answers.