C. K. JOHNSTON APR 2 1937 PREFACE A text in American history that has been in circulation for a considerable period of time cannot be properly revised and brought up to date simply by lopping off here and tacking on there in wholesale fashion. If nice proportions are to be preserved, there must be changes in space allotments that will affect the treatment in almost every part of the book. Accordingly when preparing this revised edition of my Advanced American History I thought it best to recast the work from beginning to end and write a book that in many of its features is entirely new. In the making of America, pioneers and farmers and inventors and business men and teachers and reformers, far removed from the scene of politics, worked with all their might to develop the resources of the nation and to lead the people toward higher things. If American history, therefore, is to be read aright it must give an account of our social and economic as well as of our political growth. This text accordingly is more than a narrative of the camp and the senate, more than a history of the Federal Government. Besides giving a liberal treatment to the political factor it tells the story of our social and industrial life. It shows how our religious and educational systems have come to be what they are; it follows the pioneer as he moves toward the West transforming the wilderness into an abode for man and bringing State after State into the Union; it gives the story of the corporation and shows how captains of industry marshaled the forces of capital and created the monopolistic giants called Trusts; it follows the efforts of working-men to match the combinations of their employers with combinations of their own; it describes the reforms which promoted the welfare of toilers and established |