A Sunday between wars

The half century between the end of the Civil War and the Declaration of War in 1917 was quiet only in the general misconception. From the ordinary nineteenth-century American's point of view, it was extraordinarily bloody. There were military expeditions against Indian tribes and against Cuba and the Philippines. There was the general strike of 1877, the cruel failure of the unions, and the ides of immigration and their furious personal energy. There was the repeated quest for the Grail of materialism--gold and silver hidden in rock. This book examines, over all, and with some awe, the building of the great pyramid of American industrialization and measures its even more immense--and almost forgotten--human cost. Because it is written from the vantage point of those below, of those new to America and still poor, much of the text is taken from diaries, letters, and contemporary accounts by authors who will forever be unknown.