Tuesday, January 15, 2008

1874

Society
1874. Massachusetts enacts the first effective 10-hour-day-law for women, May 8.

1874. New York gets its first electric streetcar but the system invented by Stephen Dudley Field is hazardous and presents no immediate threat to the horsecar.

1874. The U.S. public high school system wins support from the Supreme Court which rules against a citizen of Kalamazoo, Mich., who had brought suit to prevent collection of additional taxes. The court upholds the city's right to establish a high school and to levy new taxes to support the school.

1874. The Chautauqua movement in U.S. education has its beginnings that will develop into a traveling tent show of lecturers that will bring culture to small-town America.

1874. The Remington typewriter introduced by F. Remington and Sons Fire arms Co. begins a revolution in written communication.

1874. French "impressionists" rejected by the Salon hold their first exhibition at Paris in an "independent" show of canvases which include a harbor scene entitled, "Impression: Sunrise" by Claude Monet. Others of the group include Paul Cezanne, Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Gerthe Morison, Camille Pissarro, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and American emigre painter Mary Cassatt.

1874. New York's Madison Square Garden opens in April under the name Barnum's Hippodrome.

1874. The Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) is founded at Cleveland where 135 women meet November 18 at the Second Presbyterian Church and dedicate themselves to ending the traffic in liquor.

Literature
"Merlin." Ralph Waldo Emerson. American. 1874. Poetry. Analyzes methods of the poet. Wait for inspiration, don't merely devise form.

Far from the Madding Crowd. Thomas Hardy. British. 1874. Novel. Bathsheba's relationship to three suitors; two die tragically; she marries the steadiest of the three.

"The City of the Dreadful Night." James Thomson. British. 1874. Poetry. Imaginary city of misery and horror created out of the author's own sense of despair.

Daniel Deronda. George Eliot. British. 1874/76. Novel. High-spirited Gwen marries mean-spirited and tyrannical Grandcourt to avoid poverty. He drowns because she hesitates in throwing him a rope. Feels guilty. Daniel Deronda, a man with high ideals, offers her advice. She develops finer qualities. Deronda, however, marries another.

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