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TESH: The second Chapter 19 which is totally not funny.
AN: We're skipping ahead to second semester stuff, because we're having a test on this soon. We'll go back and fill in the huge, gaping hole in the space-time continuum later. So for now, the Civil War doesn't exist.
In the later 19th century
The Chautauqua movement taught everybody
There was more education
All over the nation
And Darwin said fish had feet
Joseph Pulitzer then wrote stuff about crimes and scandals. Everyone loved it. Then his rival William Randolph Hearst wrote the New York Journal and stole Pulitzer’s ideas. Everyone loved it more.
Meanwhile, some people were having arguments about evolution and religion.
RELIGIOUS PEOPLE: Fish don’t have legs, you silly Darwin believers.
EVOLUTIONISTS: Well at least we don’t believe everything we read.
PRAGMATISTS: Hey! Maybe God made the fish have legs! biggrin
EVERYONE ELSE: …Nah. You’re just crazy.
PRAGMATISTS: The end justifies the means! The truth is relative!
EVERYONE ELSE: …What the hell does that mean?
Then Charles C. Pierce wrote “Great Men and Their Environment.” It was about putting great men in zoos and seeing what environment made their greatness better. But then he realized that it was society that was influenced by great men, and not the other way around. Oh, and there were a bunch of magazines all over the place suddenly. The magazines had this hierarchy too. The ones for upper middle class people were all elitist and shunned the magazines for the middle class.
The 1862 Morrill Act set aside land for colleges. They were supposed to be for education, but people mostly went there to get drunk and party and play videogames where their parents couldn’t see them. There were some advances in women’s education too, with the Seven Sisters. Not the constellation. >> And the colleges stressed extracurricular activities like putting helmets on a bunch of manly men and making them run into each other a lot. Meanwhile, the scientists and mathematicians were off doing actually useful things, like measuring the speed of light.
SOCIAL SCIENTISTS: OMG Darwin is great! Every problem can be solved by putting legs on them! (Proceed to put legs on everything.)
RANDOM PERSON: Hey, my dish just ran away with my spoon!
OTHER RANDOM PERSON: There is no spoon!! D:
Education emphasized the three R’s. Garaty doesn’t actually tell us what they stand for. Geez, that’s helpful. Stupid Garaty. Jane Addams made some settlement houses for poor immigrants. John Dewey said education should be centered around the child, and he was Progressive. This is the boring-est chapter in history.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR: The law should stress stuff. Yeah.
Then Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, and Henry James wrote some realist books. The Republicans stole all the elections, and most Northerners, Protestants, and Scandinavians were Republicans. The middle class moved to the suburbs because the cities had so many peasants in them.
Elections were all full of bribery. …Wait. Garaty just said “Sometimes the dead rose from the grave to cast ballots.” There were zombies casting votes?? HOLY CRAP! Where are the shotguns??
Hey…we got past all that social reform crap. Maybe this will be more interesting.
RUTHERFORD B. HAYES: I was pwnsome in the Civil War, and that’s why I’m president. Let’s avoid controversy!
No, I guess not. Any president that avoids controversy is a boring one. Garfield, who came after Hayes, was the same way.
RANDOM PERSON: Damn, these people are boring. Let’s shoot them.
(Big ole argument between two Republican factions, Stalwarts and the Half-Breeds. Garfield is assassinated.)
DEMOCRATS: (Sit there and twiddle thumbs)
CHESTER A. ARTHUR: (Becomes president) I hereby sign the Pendleton Act, which classifies about 10 percent of government jobs and creates a bipartisan Civil Service commission.
THE AUTHOR: …Why don’t I remember any of this from our lectures?
RANDOM PERSON: Probably because this is social stuff, and social stuff just sucks like that.
THE AUTHOR: Dammit. Where are the wars??
1884. Grover Cleveland becomes president. He was nice to public administration. The Mugwumps were disgruntles eastern Republicans. They were disgruntles because they were called the Mugwumps. You would be too if you were a Mugwump.
CLEVELAND: Lower the tariffs!
James Blaine, who is not related to David Blaine, was in the House and Senate. Farmers lost money because their wheat ran away with the dish and the spoon. There was also the subtreasury plan, which had to do with farmers. “Sockless Jerry” was someone from the Populist movement.
Bland-Allison act did stuff about silver, William Jennings Bryan made a Cross of Gold speech, and Republicans who were in favor of silver voted for Bryan while the gold people voted for McKinley. So did business interests. And farmers.
MCKINLEY: Lolz I r president naow.
The author apologizes for this utterly crappy chapter, and promises that the next one will be better.
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