Henry Smith is proud of the life he has been able to provide for his family. He lives with his wife, Mary, his 13-year-old daughter, Anna and his 10-year-old son Joseph in Field, IL-- 200 miles south of Chicago. They have lived in the city of Field for over 14 years. Both Mary and Henry grew up in the middle of Pennsylvania but when they got married they decided to move out west and built their home in the growing town of Field. Henry found a job as an apprentice bricklayer and now is one of the master bricklayers in the city. He earns $20 per week and the family lives in a modest one-story home right on the edge of town.

The day began when Henry woke up to the sound of the rooster crowing at the nearby farm. He washed his face at the basin in his bedroom and combed his hair while looking at the mirror hanging on the wooden wall. By the humidity hanging in the air he could tell that this early September day was going to be hot and sticky. For breakfast Mary served him eggs and bread with milk or water, the morning staple. He picked up his lunch pail packed with a delicious meal of an apple, salted fish and crackers. As he walked out the door he glanced at the coal stacked near the house. In the winter he would have had to get up even before the sun rose to put coal in the stove to warm the house up. Those cold winter morning chills never left until he had a hot cup of tea with breakfast. He quickly walked the half-mile into town. The dirt road was dusty as horse and carts rattled past on the washboard bumps. There were none of the new automobiles in town and everyone walked or had a horse. Henry could smell the rain in the air and knew that on his walk home in the evening the rain would have turned the road into one big mud puddle.

When he got into town he heard the newspaper boys shouting out the latest headlines. He stopped paid the $.03 cents and continued on his way, paper and lunch pail in hand. The morning passed quickly as the people of Field were well aware that winter was approaching and they wanted to get their building projects, including the brickwork, finished as soon as possible. At lunchtime Henry paused under the shade of a porch. He tipped his hat to the ladies coming in and out of the store. Everyone knew that you were not a true gentleman unless you wear a cap of some sort. Henry could have worn a derby hat like many of the middle-class men wore, but he preferred his working-class flat hat. And of course, every man in town admired the tall, silk hats that the gentlemen’s clothier in town displayed in their window, but those were only available for the very rich.

After his lunch he and his fellow workers hid a little longer from the afternoon heat to read the newspaper and talk about the happenings in the world. The leaders of America called the 1900’s The Age of Optimism or The Age of Innocence. As Henry glanced through the newspaper he saw stories about immigrants from Russia, Italy and Ireland coming to America and how they had to live in crowded, dirty tenement housing in the big cities like New York. He read about the efforts to settle even further west into the areas of Colorado and Montana. Teddy Roosevelt being elected president in 1901 and the railroad successfully crisscrossing America were helping all kinds of new land conservation and settlement projects get started.

As Henry and his co-workers returned to work their conversation continued on with events that happened in the past few years. They talked about the coal strike of 1902 and how that was one of the first times workers had successfully united together against big business to get better wages and working conditions. Their talk drifted towards the Spanish-American War and the acquisition of the Philippians by the U.S. The men disagreed about whether or not it was good to give Cuba its independence from Spain or if America should have kept it for themselves. They talked about the trusts being formed all across America, specifically U.S. Steel and its monopoly. One of the men brought up the hurricane and tidal wave in Texas three years earlier. Henry remembered that storm, which killed 6,000 people, was the talk of Field for two weeks.