more H. Adams relevance? Misc.

[alice wellintown]

Mark Kohut wrote:
> somewhere in the Education, he mentions explosives/dynamite as one of history's
> ways of 'educating"...
> couple times uses the word traverse when a simpler one would do.....

That somewhere is Chicago, world columbus exposition, 1893, white
city, and dynamite is not merely ONE of the ways history educates, it
teaches most. In the same paragrpah Adams sez, the dynamo teaches
least.

Why, at this point in american exceptionalism, do explosives teach
most and dynamos teach least? Well, it has much to do with the war,
labor, and the fact that the dynamo is only finished its slouching
toward the cradle.

The force that Henry encounters when he returns to America is
pragmatic labor--no intellectuals or society snobs need apply. The
irish on th railroads the negro, the indian, the jew, the dust of coal
and the explosive blasts. Henry can only play his part; he becomes a
spy. Yes a spy. But he is never happier, for the war, all that waste,
has left a nation with no society, no system. It is a jumble. And the
men of the army, not Grant eventually, but the spirit of these men who
volunteered to fight, these pragmatic men who abhor system and being
told what or how to do their dirty work, are building a new nation
with pragmatic determination and immigrant energy. Henry finds he too
is a new american.

But explosives and anarchists; that is is subject next, then the
Virgin, then mechanical history.