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Hog Chains And Mark Twains: A Study Of Labor History, Archaeology, And Industrial Ethnography Of The Steamboat Era Of The Monongahela Valley 1811-1950, Marc Nicholas Henshaw

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

This dissertation examines a unique working class in the United States, the men and women who worked on the steamboats from the Industrial Revolution until the demise of steam-powered boats in the mid-20th century. The steamboat was the beginning of a technological system that was developed in America and used in such great numbers that it made the rapid population of the Trans-Appalachian West possible. The steamboat was forever romanticized by images of the antebellum South or the quick wit of Samuel Clemens and his sentimental book, Life on the Mississippi. The imagination swirls with thoughts of boats, bleach …