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Book: A People's History of the United States
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  1. Howard Zinn _ A People's History of the

    The poet Archibald MacLeish, then an Assistant Secretary of State, spoke critically of what he saw in the postwar world: "As things are now going, the peace we will make, the peace we seem to be making, will be a peace of oil, a peace of gold, a peace of shipping, a peace, in brief . . . without moral purpose or human interest. . . .
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  2. Howard Zinn _ A People's History of the

    Murder has been plotted and is about to be executed in the name and under the forms of law…. It is a foul plot; a damnable conspiracy; a hellish outrage…. If they attempt to murder Moyer, Haywood and their brothers, a million revolutionists, at least, will meet them with guns…. Capitalist courts never have done, and never will do, anything for the working class…. A special revolutionary convention of the proletariat … would be in order, and, if extreme measures are required, a general strike could be ordered and industry paralyzed as a preliminary to a general uprising.
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  3. Howard Zinn _ A People's History of the

    Socialism moved out of the small circles of city immigrants-Jewish and German socialists speaking their own languages-and became American. The strongest Socialist state organization was in Oklahoma, which in 1914 had twelve thousand dues-paying members {more than New York State}, and elected over a hundred Socialists to local office, including six to the Oklahoma state legislature. There were fifty-five weekly Socialist newspapers in Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and summer encampments
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  4. Howard Zinn _ A People's History of the

    The members of a trades union should be taught . . . that the labor movement means more, infinitely more, than a paltry increase in wages and the strike necessary to secure it; that while it engages to do all that possibly can be done to better the working conditions of its members, its higher object is to overthrow the capitalist system of private ownership of the tools of labor, abolish wage-slavery and achieve the freedom of the whole working class and, in fact, of all mankind. . . . What
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  5. Howard Zinn _ A People's History of the

    The stock market crash of 1929, which marked the beginning of the Great Depression of the United States, came directly from wild speculation which collapsed and brought the whole economy down with it. But, as John Galbraith says in his study of that event {The Great Crash}, behind that speculation was the fact that "the economy was fundamentally unsound." He points to very unhealthy corporate and banking structures, an unsound foreign trade, much economic misinformation, and the "bad distribution of income" {the highest 5 percent of the population received about one-third of all personal income}. A socialist critic would go further and say that the capitalist system was by its nature unsound: a system driven by the one overriding motive of corporate profit and therefore unstable, unpredictable, and blind to human needs. The result of all that: permanent depression for many of its people, and periodic crises for almost everybody. Capitalism, despite its attempts at self-reform, its organization for better control, was still in 1929 a sick and undependable system. After the crash, the economy was stunned, barely moving. Over five thousand banks closed and huge numbers of businesses, unable to get money, closed too. Those that continued laid off employees and cut the wages of those who remained, again and again.
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  6. Howard Zinn _ A People's History of the

    If God had intended us to vote, he would have given us candidates
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  7. Howard Zinn _ A People's History of the

    No harm shall come to any business interest as the result of administrative policy so long as I am President
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  8. Howard Zinn _ A People's History of the

    relations and marriage. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, whose writing emphasized the crucial question of economic equality between the sexes, wrote a poem called "The Socialist and the Suffragist," ending with: "A lifted world lifts women up," The Socialist explained. "You cannot lift the world at all While half of it is kept so small," the Suffragist maintained. The world awoke, and tartly spoke: "Your work is all the same; Work together or work apart, Work, each of you, with
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  9. Howard Zinn _ A People's History of the

    Walk the good road, my daughter, and the buffalo herds wide and dark as cloud shadows moving over the prairie will follow you. . . . Be dutiful, respectful, gentle and modest, my daughter. And proud walking. If the pride and the virtue of the women are lost, the spring will come but the buffalo trails will turn to grass. Be strong, with the warm, strong heart of the earth. No people goes down until their women are weak and dishonored."
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  10. Howard Zinn _ A People's History of the

    In 1900 there were 500,000 women office workers-in 1870 there had been 19,000. Women were switchboard operators, store workers, nurses. Half a million were teachers. The teachers formed a Teachers League that fought against the automatic firing of women who became pregnant. The following "Rules for Female Teachers" were posted by the school board of one town in Massachusetts: Do not get married. Do not leave town at any time without permission of the school board. Do not keep company with men. Be home between the hours of 8 P.M. and 6 A.M. Do not loiter downtown in ice cream stores. Do not smoke. Do not get into a carriage with any man except your father or brother. Do not dress in bright colors. Do not dye your hair. Do not wear any dress more than two inches above the ankle. The
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  11. Howard Zinn _ A People's History of the

    The Albany police chief, after one of the mass arrests, was taking the names of prisoners lined up before his desk. He looked up and saw a Negro boy about nine years old. "What's your name?" The boy looked straight at him and said: "Freedom, Freedom.
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  12. Howard Zinn _ A People's History of the

    colonial office under England. When the Declaration of Independence was read, with all its flaming radical language, from the town hall balcony in Boston, it was read by Thomas Crafts, a member of the Loyal Nine group, conservatives who had opposed militant action against the British. Four days after the reading, the Boston Committee of Correspondence ordered the townsmen to show up on the Common for a military draft. The rich, it turned out, could avoid the draft by paying for substitutes; the poor had to serve. This led to rioting, and shouting: "Tyranny is Tyranny let it come from whom it may.
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