The Stories Make The History-Jennifer

"The Weavers" chapter of Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class is just simply horrifying to read. I'm sure everyone has read of the atrocities for the working class during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries during the hight of the Industrial Revolution both in Europe and in America, but the stories never seem to make the events less shocking to me. I feel that Thompson is one of the few authors thus far that we have read that have included some of these stories to support their more economic and theoretical evidence. I have always been a part of the group that thinks the stories are what makes us remember history, that although the dates and chronology are important, what will make the Civil War memorable is to remember the stories that accompanied these dates for example.

In this case The Making of the English Working Class is not a history book in the sense of one that tells one more confined story as many more recent history books do such as Meet You in Hell that tells the story of Carnegie and Frick and their feud. Thompson gives us more facts and figures than I would like to see recounted in a book classified as "history" but he does give us the real life examples that I think are crucial to a history text. For example he recounts a tale of a woolcomber and his family that showcases the atrocities of their everyday lives (283). He puts many of these types of accounts into this chapter to intermingle the facts of the political and economic factors of the time with the actual people these choices affected. This is a crucial addition to such facts and can make anyone recount past experiences reading and learning about these horrific conditions because although I may not have remembered the exact date of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City (it's March 25, 1911) I certainly remember the events of such a tragedy, and it's that really the point?