The Untold Truth Of The Pinkerton National Detective Agency
By Marina Manoukian/Jan. 20, 2021 11:27 pm EDT
For over 75 years, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency terrorized workers who were trying to organize in the United States. Although they re often lauded for their diverse hiring practices, more often than not these practices were carried out for the purposes of class warfare.
A Pinkerton agent was responsible for testifying at the sham trial after the bombing of Haymarket Square, but despite the fact that the Illinois governor called the Pinkertons unreliable narrators and pardoned the living Haymarket anarchists, their reputation held strong. And in 1914, the Pinkertons were also part of the Ludlow Massacre, where 66 people died after Pinkertons and the Colorado National Guard set fire to a miners camp.
How The Vanderbilt Family Lost Their Entire Fortune
By Therese Nguyen/Dec. 28, 2020 11:01 am EDT/Updated: Jan. 29, 2021 9:54 am EDT
In the late 19th century, social and technological changes allowed thousands of families to get ridiculously rich and prosper in a period called the Gilded Age, as described by Time. It was an era where flaunting your wealth publicly was all the rage, even in the face of income inequality as millions of other Americans struggled day to day. The Gilded Age was when many of the infamously wealthy families got their start, from the Rockefellers to the Carnegies to the Vanderbilts (via ThoughtCo). But while their legacy is still recognizable today, with their names plastered on universities and cultural landmarks, for many, their fortune has been gone for some time now.
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From the pages of novels such as
Oliver Twist, Dickens savaged the injustices meted out to the impoverished – and at the top of his hit-list was the infamous New Poor Law
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“Please, Sir, I want some more.” Charles Dickens’ portrayal of Oliver Twist approaching the master and asking him, timorously, for a second helping of gruel is surely one of the most famous scenes in all of 19th-century literature.
When Dickens wrote these words in the 1830s, huge celebrity and vast fortune still lay in the future. Instead the author was thinking of the here and now – in particular, the plight of the most impoverished Britons. Dickens was determined to savage the terrible injustices he saw unfolding around him, and did that so effectively that he soon secured a reputation as a spokesman for the poor.
Moments In Swedish History That Went Horribly Wrong Chris Jackson/Getty Images
By Jeff Somers/Dec. 21, 2020 10:14 am EDT/Updated: Dec. 21, 2020 10:21 am EDT
If you live outside northern Europe, you probably think of Sweden as a sleepy Scandinavian kingdom where they make boxy cars and furniture that arrives with incomprehensible instructions. You might (mistakenly) believe it has a very high suicide rate, or that it s freezing and covered in snow all the time, or that meatballs are the national cuisine.
While modern-day Sweden one of the most prosperous countries in the world is famous for its neutrality through two world wars and has a reputation as a placid, well-functioning modern socialist state, Sweden is actually just as tense and fractured as any other country. The country has seen its share of economic and social unrest in modern times and things were much worse if you go a little further back in its history. Sweden was once a mighty empire and has