William Jennings Bryan, the Railroads, and the Politics of Workingmen

Early in his career as a lawyer William Jennings Bryan took a principled position that set him apart from many of his colleagues at the bar. When he teamed up with Dolph Talbot in a law practice in Lincoln in 1887, the state was growing faster than any other in the nation in that decade, catapulting from 450,000 residents to over 1 million. It was a promising field for the law business by any measure. Talbot took on a wide spectrum of clientele and represented the Missouri Pacific Railroad, but Bryan refused to accept money from a railroad company. This in itself was remarkable, as attorneys in fast-growing towns and cities across the west and south vied for the opportunity to claim such a steadily lucrative client. The list of prominent railroad attorneys who made their way into politics was long and distinguished, from Abraham Lincoln of Illinois to Thomas S. Martin of Virginia. As the bar became increasingly professionalized, and at the same time increasingly split between trial and corporate lawyers even in the small towns and cities of the west, Bryan stood squarely on the side opposed to the corporation. His law practice featured a handful of cases in which he opposed the railroads-a tort case representing a seven-year-old girl struck by a Missouri Pacific train in Lincoln, a case for a contractor who had put a lien on the railroad company for payment of services, and a case involving the validity of votes to move a county seat from one railroad line to another. Bryan, it seemed, went out of his way to maintain his political purity and to keep his distance from the largest special interests of the day-the railroads

William Jennings Bryan, the Railroads, and the Politics of Workingmen

Early in his career as a lawyer William Jennings Bryan took a principled position that set him apart from many of his colleagues at the bar. When he teamed up with Dolph Talbot in a law practice in Lincoln in 1887, the state was growing faster than any other in the nation in that decade, catapulting from 450,000 residents to over 1 million. It was a promising field for the law business by any measure. Talbot took on a wide spectrum of clientele and represented the Missouri Pacific Railroad, but Bryan refused to accept money from a railroad company. This in itself was remarkable, as attorneys in fast-growing towns and cities across the west and south vied for the opportunity to claim such a steadily lucrative client. The list of prominent railroad attorneys who made their way into politics was long and distinguished, from Abraham Lincoln of Illinois to Thomas S. Martin of Virginia. As the bar became increasingly professionalized, and at the same time increasingly split between trial and corporate lawyers even in the small towns and cities of the west, Bryan stood squarely on the side opposed to the corporation. His law practice featured a handful of cases in which he opposed the railroads-a tort case representing a seven-year-old girl struck by a Missouri Pacific train in Lincoln, a case for a contractor who had put a lien on the railroad company for payment of services, and a case involving the validity of votes to move a county seat from one railroad line to another. Bryan, it seemed, went out of his way to maintain his political purity and to keep his distance from the largest special interests of the day-the railroads

What is Digital History? A Look at Some Exemplar Projects

Both of us came into the history profession in the early 1990s and went through graduate school just before the remarkable emergence of the World Wide Web. Of course, we can see now that a communication revolution was taking place during those years and that it was changing the way we do historical scholarship and teaching. After the development of browsers like Mosaic Netscape and Netscape Navigator in 1994, the web grew at an astonishing rate into a global information network. Even at the early stages of the web’s growth, history was all over the web. Amazingly, people rushed to put their own histories on the web and to create sites dedicated to their favorite subjects. Big organizations, such as the National Park Service and the Library of Congress, put up web sites on major historical places and topics. Eventually, new tools, such as JSTOR and ProQuest, opened up full-text facsimiles of journal articles and major newspapers. Research libraries took the lead in developing their catalogs and collections for online access. Teaching everything from the U.S. history survey to specialized research seminars became more dynamic and student-centered. The primary sources of the past were open for students in ways unimaginable only a decade earlier. But just as research techniques and tools were being transformed by the new media, would scholarship also change? If so, how, and in what ways? A whole new field opened up around the concept of digital history as historians tried to experiment with the new medium. They began using new tools that computational systems and networked information made available. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have become prominent because of the wide interest in more spatial approaches to the past, but a whole range of technologies proved useful: Flash animation, XML coding, digital video, blogs, and wikis. Because the medium is still so new in comparison to traditional modes of communication, and the technology is still rapidly changing, we historians have only just begun to explore what history looks like in the digital medium. Increasingly, university departments are seeking scholars to translate history into this fast-paced, widely accessible environment and to work in digital history; however, they have found that without well-defined examples of digital scholarship, established best practices, and, especially, clear standards of review for tenure, few scholars have fully engaged with the digital medium. So, what is digital history and how should we understand its characteristics

What is Digital History? A Look at Some Exemplar Projects

Both of us came into the history profession in the early 1990s and went through graduate school just before the remarkable emergence of the World Wide Web. Of course, we can see now that a communication revolution was taking place during those years and that it was changing the way we do historical scholarship and teaching. After the development of browsers like Mosaic Netscape and Netscape Navigator in 1994, the web grew at an astonishing rate into a global information network. Even at the early stages of the web’s growth, history was all over the web. Amazingly, people rushed to put their own histories on the web and to create sites dedicated to their favorite subjects. Big organizations, such as the National Park Service and the Library of Congress, put up web sites on major historical places and topics. Eventually, new tools, such as JSTOR and ProQuest, opened up full-text facsimiles of journal articles and major newspapers. Research libraries took the lead in developing their catalogs and collections for online access. Teaching everything from the U.S. history survey to specialized research seminars became more dynamic and student-centered. The primary sources of the past were open for students in ways unimaginable only a decade earlier. But just as research techniques and tools were being transformed by the new media, would scholarship also change? If so, how, and in what ways? A whole new field opened up around the concept of digital history as historians tried to experiment with the new medium. They began using new tools that computational systems and networked information made available. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have become prominent because of the wide interest in more spatial approaches to the past, but a whole range of technologies proved useful: Flash animation, XML coding, digital video, blogs, and wikis. Because the medium is still so new in comparison to traditional modes of communication, and the technology is still rapidly changing, we historians have only just begun to explore what history looks like in the digital medium. Increasingly, university departments are seeking scholars to translate history into this fast-paced, widely accessible environment and to work in digital history; however, they have found that without well-defined examples of digital scholarship, established best practices, and, especially, clear standards of review for tenure, few scholars have fully engaged with the digital medium. So, what is digital history and how should we understand its characteristics

Infrared Surface Brightness Distances to Cepheids: a comparison of Bayesian and linear-bisector calculations

We have compared the results of Bayesian statistical calculations and linear-bisector calculations for obtaining Cepheid distances and radii by the infrared surface brightness method. We analyzed a set of 38 Cepheids using a Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo method that had been recently studied with a linear-bisector method. The distances obtained by the two techniques agree to 1.5 \pm 0.6% with the Bayesian distances being larger. The radii agree to 1.1% \pm 0.7% with the Bayesian determinations again being larger. We interpret this result as demonstrating that the two methods yield the same distances and radii. This implies that the short distance to the LMC found in recent linear-bisector studies of Cepheids is not caused by deficiencies in the mathematical treatment. However, the computed uncertainties in distance and radius for our dataset are larger in the Bayesian calculation by factors of 1.4-6.7. We give reasons to favor the Bayesian computations of the uncertainties. The larger uncertainties can have a significant impact upon interpretation of Cepheid distances and radii obtained from the infrared surface brightness method.Comment: 27 pages with 9 figure

Black and on the Border

The civil war is often understood in terms of stark oppo¬sites. It seems only natural to think of North and South, of Union and Confederacy, of freedom and slavery. But the habit of thinking in opposites often extends to other parts of the war where it serves us less well: battlefield and homefront, soldier and civilian, male and female, and black and white, as if these places, people, and ex¬periences were not swept up in the same all-consuming war

Black and on the Border

In an attempt to bring together aspects of the war that are often kept separate, this essay focuses on the region of the United States that is often ignored when explaining the onset of the Civil War: the border where the upper South met the lower North. This area--a third of the nation--went into the war with uncertainty but then gave itself over to the conflict, playing a crucial role start to finish as battlefield and supplier of soldiers, materiel, and leaders. Specifically, this essay looks at the border between Virginia and Pennsylvania, a region almost arbitrarily divided by the Mason-Dixon Line. People in this area had much in common--from their ethnic heritage to the crops they grew--but were divided profoundly by slavery. This division made all the difference

Dietary Methionine Restriction Regulates Liver Protein Synthesis and Gene Expression Independently of Eukaryotic Initiation Factor 2 Phosphorylation in Mice

Background: The phosphorylation of eukaryotic initiation factor 2 (p-eIF2) during dietary amino acid insufficiency reduces protein synthesis and alters gene expression via the integrated stress response (ISR).Objective: We explored whether a Met-restricted (MR) diet activates the ISR to reduce body fat and regulate protein balance.Methods: Male and female mice aged 3-6 mo with either whole-body deletion of general control nonderepressible 2 (Gcn2) or liver-specific deletion of protein kinase R-like endoplasmic reticulum kinase (Perk) alongside wild-type or floxed control mice were fed an obesogenic diet sufficient in Met (0.86%) or an MR (0.12% Met) diet for ≤5 wk. Ala enrichment with deuterium was measured to calculate protein synthesis rates. The guanine nucleotide exchange factor activity of eIF2B was measured alongside p-eIF2 and hepatic mRNA expression levels at 2 d and 5 wk. Metabolic phenotyping was conducted at 4 wk, and body composition was measured throughout. Results were evaluated with the use of ANOVA (P < 0.05).Results: Feeding an MR diet for 2 d did not increase hepatic p-eIF2 or reduce eIF2B activity in wild-type or Gcn2-/- mice, yet many genes transcriptionally regulated by the ISR were altered in both strains in the same direction and amplitude. Feeding an MR diet for 5 wk increased p-eIF2 and reduced eIF2B activity in wild-type but not Gcn2-/- mice, yet ISR-regulated genes altered in both strains similarly. Furthermore, the MR diet reduced mixed and cytosolic but not mitochondrial protein synthesis in both the liver and skeletal muscle regardless of Gcn2 status. Despite the similarities between strains, the MR diet did not increase energy expenditure or reduce body fat in Gcn2-/- mice. Finally, feeding the MR diet to mice with Perk deleted in the liver increased hepatic p-eIF2 and altered body composition similar to floxed controls.Conclusions: Hepatic activation of the ISR resulting from an MR diet does not require p-eIF2. Gcn2 status influences body fat loss but not protein balance when Met is restricted