Search Results

This chapter examines schooling in the Appalachian region. Schooling features in many of the correspondent columns as well as in pieces written by the editors. In particular, the newspapers illustrate that a thriving industry of ad hoc private education institutions was active in eastern Kentucky, a fact seldom recognized in histories of the area. While modern studies of schooling and literacy frequently cite public school data to suggest that Kentuckians were not supportive of schooling, the newspapers demonstrate that many of these supposedly unschooled children were in fact receiving an education from privately run institutions that some of the editors touted as superior to public schools. The newspapers also demonstrate vibrant community support for education.

The world of publishing has changed considerably over the past 20 years. Who can view published material, who pays for content and alternative models to classic peer reviewed journals are all important in considering where to publish your work. This chapter presents choices in publication venue and discusses the pros and cons of each.

This chapter focuses on the Henry Subscription, which was organized by the antisemitic daily La Libre Parole at the end of 1898 and the start of 1899. The subscription list, which the newspaper published, provides a unique sample of antisemitic and anti-Dreyfusard opinion. The interpretation of this subscription list raises the problem of spontaneity. How far can it be taken as a genuine expression of popular attitudes? How far was it a simple propaganda exercise on the part of La Libre Parole? The state of symbiosis between subscriber and newspaper does not simply call into question the value of the subscription list as an expression of “spontaneous” opinion. It accurately reflects a fundamental characteristic of antisemitism, and of other sets of attitudes, in this period. Antisemitism was becoming more structured, and found its most developed expression in the press and in books, which were the agents of the transformation of scattered popular attitudes into a more coherent body of ideas. The subscription list illustrates a significant stage in this process, and is valuable as such. It should be pointed out, moreover, that a significant gap still remained between antisemitic ideology, as expressed in the press and in books, and the more directly “popular” expression of opinion in the subscription list, for the latter was both less explicitly coherent and its tone was often considerably more extreme than that of La Libre Parole's editorial and news copy.

This chapter outlines three major transformations in how consumers acquire copyrighted content, and the gradual erosion of ownership rights that accompanied them. Historically, copyrighted works were distributed through tangible copies. In the early 2000s, the first transformation took place through the rise of digital downloads. Second, remote cloud storage allowed consumers to access remote copies through high-speed data connections. The third major shift, to subscription streaming services, is now underway. With each step in this progression, consumers have sacrificed permanence and stability for lower prices and convenience. More importantly, copyright law has failed to keep up with the development of these new technologies. Copyright law has focused on the copy/work distinction to delineate the rights of copyright holders and consumers, but the traditional tangible copy is disappearing from the marketplace.

This chapter explores the various ways in which Scots demonstrated their loyalty to the British state in the 1790s. It is argued here that loyalism, and not patriotism, is the better term to use when assessing Scottish support for the government and the British state in the 1790s, and a main theme explored in this analysis is the question of what constitutes genuine loyalty, and how this can be measured. The evidence on loyalism is extensive, and it is clear that the Scots demonstrated their loyalty to the state in a number of different ways, such as loyalist resolutions, suggestions for policy initiatives, offers of personal service to the state, and a variety of voluntary financial contributions. A main argument in this chapter is that, in general terms, loyalism in Scotland comes across as very constructive in its outlook – that it was loyalism on the government’s terms.

Chapter 3 describes Headen’s life in Jersey City, NJ, from 1903 to 1911, a period in which he worked as a Pullman porter and as a dining car waiter for the Erie Railroad. It documents his life as a trainman, his growing interest in aviation, his frustrations at being locked out of skilled work, and his initial forays into invention. The chapter examines how Headen’s wife, Tena Drye Headen, and other African American migrants active in Lafayette Presbyterian Church and the Railroad Porters’ and Waiters’ Voluntary Subscription Fund, expanded social networks critical to Headen, and on the specific strategies that Headen observed other African American inventors employ to circumvent segregation and raise capital in a time when funding for independent inventors was waning.

Dissenters within Britain had to face a range of challenges when it came to their relationship with the state. While the Toleration Act (1689) allowed Dissenters in England willing to subscribe to the doctrinal components of the Thirty-Nine Articles and swear allegiance to the monarch freedom of worship, they, like their counterparts elsewhere, still laboured under a series of legal restrictions that rendered them second-class citizens. Attempts were made throughout the period to remove these legal restrictions and organizations, such as the London-based Dissenting Deputies, were eventually successful in repealing the Test and Corporation Acts. The length of time that this took reflects the uncertainty about how easily the state could combine a desire for order with a divergence of opinions, religious or otherwise, within it.