Beyond the Merchants of Death: the Senate Munitions Inquiry of the 1930s and its Role in Twentieth-Century American History (open access)

Beyond the Merchants of Death: the Senate Munitions Inquiry of the 1930s and its Role in Twentieth-Century American History

The Senate Munitions Committee of 1934-1936, chaired by Gerald Nye of North Dakota, provided the first critical examination of America's modern military establishment. The committee approached its task guided by the optimism of the progressive Social Gospel and the idealism of earlier times, but in the middle of the munitions inquiry the nation turned to new values represented in Reinhold Niebuhr's realism and Franklin D. Roosevelt's Second New Deal. By 1936, the committee found its views out of place in a nation pursuing a new course and in a world threatening to break out in war. Realist historians writing in the cold war period (1945-1990) closely linked the munitions inquiry to isolationism and created a one-dimensional history in which the committee chased evil "merchants of death." The only book-length study of the munitions investigation, John Wiltz's In Search of Peace, published in 1963, provided a realist interpretation. The munitions inquiry went beyond the merchants of death in its analysis of the post-World War I American military establishment. A better understanding emerges when the investigation is considered not only within an isolationist framework, but also as part of the intellectual, cultural, and political history of the interwar years. In particular, Franklin …
Date: May 1996
Creator: Coulter, Matthew Ware
System: The UNT Digital Library
Formal Education among the Siberian Yupik Eskimos on Sivuqaq, St. Lawrence Island, Alaska: an Ethno-Historical Study (open access)

Formal Education among the Siberian Yupik Eskimos on Sivuqaq, St. Lawrence Island, Alaska: an Ethno-Historical Study

The major focus of this study is the effect of formal education on individuals, communities, cultural traditions and values on Siberian Yupik Eskimos of Alaska. The first school on St. Lawrence Island (Sivuqaq), Alaska was founded in 1899 under the direction of Sheldon Jackson. The formal school curriculum for the next thirty years was secretarian. Upon the initial operation of formal schooling on the island, various other forms of schools have impacted the islanders of St. Lawrence. Chapter two is an overview of the background of education in Alaska from its beginning as a territory to its present status as the 49th state in the United States. Chapter three presents the history of formal schooling on St. Lawrence Island. Chapters two and three contain descriptions of various other forms of schooling within the state (i.e. Bureau of Indian Affairs, mission, state-owned) and when and how these forms either existed on the island or had an impact upon its villagers. Chapter four discusses the methodology utilized in conducting the research and fieldwork for this study. Research findings are discussed in chapter five and include verbatim transcriptions of interviews with villagers. These interviews are unedited in order for readers to draw their …
Date: December 1998
Creator: Powell, Pam, 1958-
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Agolmirth Conspiracy (open access)

The Agolmirth Conspiracy

Written in the tradition of the classic spy novels of Ian Fleming and the detective novels of Raymond Chandler, The Agolmirth Conspiracy represents the return to the thriller of its traditional elements of romanticism, humanism, fast-moving action, and taut suspense, and a move away from its cynicism and dehumanization as currently practiced by authors such as John Le Carre' and Tom Clancy. Stanford Torrance, an ex-cop raised on "old-fashioned" notions of uncompromising good and naked evil and largely ignorant of computer systems and high-tech ordinance, finds himself lost in a "modern" world of shadowy operatives, hidden agendas, and numerous double-crosses. He is nevertheless able to triumph over that world when he puts his own honor, his own dignity, and his very life on the line, proving to himself and to his adversaries that such things can still make things easier to see amid today's swirling moral fog.
Date: December 1996
Creator: Elston, James C. (James Cary)
System: The UNT Digital Library
After the Planes (open access)

After the Planes

The dissertation consists of a critical preface and a novel. The preface analyzes what it terms “polyvocal” novels, or novels employing multiple points of view, as well as “layered storytelling,” or layers of textuality within novels, such as stories within stories. Specifically, the first part of the preface discusses polyvocality in twenty-first century American novels, while the second part explores layered storytelling in novels responding to World War II or the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The preface analyzes the advantages and difficulties connected to these techniques, as well as their aptitude for reflecting the fractured, disconnected, and subjective nature of the narratives we construct to interpret traumatic experiences. It also acknowledges the necessity—despite its inherent limitations—of using language to engage with this fragmentation and cope with its challenges. The preface uses numerous novels as examples and case studies, and it also explores these concepts and techniques in relation to the process of writing the novel After the Planes. After the Planes depicts multiple generations of a family who utilize storytelling as a means to work through grief, hurt, misunderstanding, and loss—whether from interpersonal conflicts or from war. Against her father’s wishes, a young woman moves in with her nearly-unknown grandfather, …
Date: May 2012
Creator: Boswell, Timothy
System: The UNT Digital Library

The Crater of Diamonds: A History of the Pike County, Arkansas, Diamond Field, 1906-1972

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
The first diamond mine in North America was discovered in 1906 when John W. Huddleston found two diamonds on his farm just south of Murfreesboro in Pike County, Arkansas. Experts soon confirmed that the diamond-bearing formation on which Huddleston made his discovery was the second largest of its kind and represented 25 percent of all known diamond-bearing areas in the world. Discovery of the field generated nearly a half century of speculative activity by men trying to demonstrate and exploit its commercial viability. The field, however, lacked the necessary richness for successful commercial ventures, and mining was eventually replaced in the early 1950s by tourist attractions that operated successfully until 1972. At that time the State of Arkansas purchased the field and converted it to a state park. Thus this work tell the rich and complicated story of America'a once and only diamond field, analyzes the reasons for the repeated failures of efforts to make it commercially viable, and explains how it eventually succeeded as a tourist venture.
Date: May 2002
Creator: Henderson, John C.
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Rio Grande Expedition, 1863-1865 (open access)

The Rio Grande Expedition, 1863-1865

In October 1863 the United States Army's Rio Grande Expedition left New Orleans, bound for the Texas coast. Reacting to the recent French occupation of Mexico, President Abraham Lincoln believed that the presence of U.S. troops in Texas would dissuade the French from intervening in the American Civil War. The first major objective of this campaign was Brownsville, Texas, a port city on the lower Rio Grande. Its capture would not only serve as a warning to the French in Mexico; it would also disrupt a lucrative Confederate cotton trade across the border. The expedition had a mixed record of achievement. It succeeded in disrupting the cotton trade, but not stopping it. Federal forces installed a military governor, Andrew J. Hamilton, in Brownsville, but his authority extended only to the occupied part of Texas, a strip of land along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. The campaign also created considerable fear among Confederate soldiers and civilians that the ravages of civil war had now come to the Lone Star State. Although short-lived, the panic generated by the Rio Grande Expedition left an indelible mark on the memories of Texans who lived through the campaign. The expedition achieved its greatest …
Date: May 2001
Creator: Townsend, Stephen A.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Reactions of Regular Personnel to Junior Executive Training Programs in Selected Oil Companies (open access)

Reactions of Regular Personnel to Junior Executive Training Programs in Selected Oil Companies

This thesis has as its primary purpose determining what, if any, resentment toward junior executive programs may exist among regular or "old" employees of a selected group of petroleum companies in the Port Arthur, Beaumont, and Port Neches area of Texas. At the same time, measures taken in these companies to cope with the problem will be studied and appraised.
Date: August 1952
Creator: Lumbley, John H.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Retro (open access)

Retro

"Retro" is a novel which attempts to depict the psychological reality of the spiritually isolated individual characterized in traditional gothic novels, in this case the alienated individual in the contemporary American South. The novel follows the doctrine set down by Roland Barthes, Frank Kermode, and other postmodern critics, which holds that, as Kermode puts it, "all closure is in bad faith." Therefore, rather than offering resolution to the problems and events presented in the text, the novel attempts instead to illustrate the psychological effects its main character experiences when confronted with a world that offers only irresolution and uncertainty. The novel's strategy is to depart from conventional, realistic modes of narration and to adopt instead certain characteristics of satire, surrealism, and the type of grotesque often associated with the gothic novel.
Date: August 1992
Creator: Norwood, Robert N. (Robert Nicholas)
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Invisible Dragon (open access)

The Invisible Dragon

This collection of memoir essays chronicles the author's 19 year struggle with chronic depression. "The Invisible Dragon" explores the onset of the disease and its cure. "The Silent Typewriter" looks at how it affected the author as a writer. "Roses for Trish" discusses how it affected his wife. "My Mother's Son" explores the possibility that he inherited depression from his mother. The final essay, "The Dragon Returns" probes the author's life in 2012 with the probability that he has a personality disorder. The preface examines several depression memoirs and explores the strategies used by William Styron, Elizabeth Wurtzel and Kay Redfield Jamison to prevent sliding into the pitfalls inherent in a linear structure. Among these are the use of alternative structures, language, characterization, focus and imagery.
Date: December 2012
Creator: Boutwell, Nathan
System: The UNT Digital Library
Defense Industries in North Texas, 1941-1965: the Social and Economic Impact on Bowie County (open access)

Defense Industries in North Texas, 1941-1965: the Social and Economic Impact on Bowie County

World War II was a watershed in American history, altering Americans' perceptions of their place in society. This study focused on Bowie County, Texas, during the twenty-five-year period that began with America's entry into the war. The construction of two defense plants there, Red River Army Depot and Lone Star Army Ammunition Plant, brought immediate changes to surrounding communities, and local residents faced many challenges as they struggled to adjust. This study used extensive primary sources, including archival materials from Red River and Lone Star, oral histories from former employees, census information, minutes from the Texarkana Chamber of Commerce, and local newspapers, to document the social and economic impact of these plants on Bowie County. The body of this dissertation contains nine chapters. Chapters two and three describe how Bowie County obtained and constructed its defense plants, and chapters four through six focus on changes precipitated by the plants during the war years. Chapters seven through nine explore the social and economic impact of the defense presence on Bowie County through 1965. The impact of the defense industries on Bowie County was significant. Plant construction brought thousands of workers into the county, and local residents faced housing, transportation, and sanitation …
Date: August 1995
Creator: Brantley, Janet G.
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Morality and Wit of Congreve and Sheridan in the Comedy of Manners (open access)

The Morality and Wit of Congreve and Sheridan in the Comedy of Manners

Considering the comedies of the Restoration, and those of Congreve in particular, as the prototype of the comedy of manners and as the model for Sheridan later to revive and emulate, this thesis proposes to point out how the concepts of morality and wit have been a major obstacle to literary critics in analyzing the comedy of manners from its very beginnings, to discuss morality and wit as the basis of a proper evaluation of the comedy of manners both from the standpoint of seventeenth-century precepts and those of a century later, and, finally, to show how, during the early periods in which the comedy of manners flourished,--that of Congreve, 1693-1700; and of Sheridan, 1775-1779--morality and wit were modified and used to suit the divergent sociological and psychological conditions of each period.
Date: 1958
Creator: Williams, Samuel Richard
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Dynamic Encounter: Shakespearean Influence on Structure and Language in Moby-Dick (open access)

The Dynamic Encounter: Shakespearean Influence on Structure and Language in Moby-Dick

An understanding of the influence of Shakespeare on the structure and language of Moby-Dick is important because the plays of Shakespeare gave Melville a sudden insight into the significance of form and because his absorption of Shakespearean rhetoric enabled him to solve a serious artistic problem. In Moby-Dick Melville wished to write a work of symbolic fiction which would have both epic scope and tragic depth, but his difficulty lay in finding a structural and stylistic method which would provide the amplitude necessary to epic and at the same time could achieve the compression and verbal economy necessary to tragedy. He solved this problem by learning from Shakespeare to create a multi-layered dramatic structure and to use a dramatic language which becomes one layer of that structure. In Shakespeare's greatest plays there is a virtual fusion of form and meaning, and it is this fusion which, in its greatest moments, the language of Moby-Dick achieves.
Date: May 1981
Creator: Smith, Marion L. (Marion Lynch), 1937-
System: The UNT Digital Library
Livestock Legacy: A History of the Fort Worth Stockyards Company 1893-1982 (open access)

Livestock Legacy: A History of the Fort Worth Stockyards Company 1893-1982

This dissertation outlines the creation and history of the Fort Worth Stockyards Company from its conception to the time of this dissertation's publication. The Fort Worth Stockyards Company was created by Greenleif W. Simpson and Louville V. Niles. This company would soon cement Fort Worth as the premier livestock producer in America, soon surpassing Chicago.
Date: August 1982
Creator: Pate, J'Nell L.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Singing for Blaine and for Logan! Republican Songs as Campaign Literature in the 1884 Presidential Race (open access)

Singing for Blaine and for Logan! Republican Songs as Campaign Literature in the 1884 Presidential Race

During the presidential contest of 1884, Republicans used singing as a campaign tactic at rallies, meetings, and parades. Their songs may be divided into several categories, such as rally songs, songs of praise for the party and its candidate, "bloody shirt" songs, mudslinging songs, and issue-based songs. Songs provide a perspective on the overall tenor of the campaign, while a lack of songs on certain topics, such as temperance, reflects the party's reluctance to alienate voters by taking a strong stand on controversial issues. Although the campaign has often been called one of the dirtiest in American history, this negativity is not reflected in the majority of the songs.
Date: December 2000
Creator: Madding, Carol Ann
System: The UNT Digital Library
Eating from the Tree of Knowledge: The Impact of Visual Culture on the Perception and Construction of Ethnic, Sexual, and Gender Identity (open access)

Eating from the Tree of Knowledge: The Impact of Visual Culture on the Perception and Construction of Ethnic, Sexual, and Gender Identity

This study explores the way that visual culture and identity creates understanding about how the women in my family interact and teach each other. In the study issues of identity, liminality, border culture, are explored. The study examines how underrepresented groups, such as those represented by Latinas, can enter into and add to the discourses of art education because the women who participated have learned to maneuver through the world, passing what they have learned to one another, from one generation to the next. Furthermore, the study investigates ways in which visual cues offer a way for the women in my family to negotiate their identity. In the study the women see themselves in signs, magazines, television, dolls, clothing patterns, advertisements, and use these to find ways in which to negotiate the borderlands of the places in which they live. Although the education that occurred was informal, its importance is in creating a portal through which to self reflect on the cultural work of educating.
Date: December 2010
Creator: Peralta, Andrés
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Origination and Evolution of Double-Entry Bookkeeping to 1440 (open access)

The Origination and Evolution of Double-Entry Bookkeeping to 1440

The problem of this investigation is that of determining how double entry bookkeeping originated and evolved during the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth century in mediaeval Italy and its influence on capital formation. The methodology of this study included the use of both primary and secondary sources of information. Great reliance was placed upon a direct examination of original documents found mainly in the State Archives of Genoa, Florence, Milan and Venice. Because this is basically a historical research, particular emphasis was given to the study and criticism of economic, political and religious conditions that most likely had a considerable influence on the creation and evolution of bookkeeping techniques and methods.
Date: May 1974
Creator: Martinelli, Alvaro
System: The UNT Digital Library
A Historical Study of the Paris Small Business Development Center in Paris, Texas: 1986-2006 (open access)

A Historical Study of the Paris Small Business Development Center in Paris, Texas: 1986-2006

This historical study chronicled events of the development and implementation of the Paris Small Business Development Center at Paris Junior College in Paris, Texas from 1986-2006. Data was collected from primary and secondary sources and oral histories through personal interviews. The analysis included a brief history of higher education and the service mission and situated the study in the broader context as an extension program in higher education. This study provided a brief history of the U.S. Small Business Administration and America’s Small Business Development Center Network as a background for the study. This study is significant to scholars in the field of higher education for a number of reasons. It provides a historical analysis of a service program that extends the college to the community and demonstrates higher education and its role in economic development. It adds to the current body of research by advancing an understanding of a past to contemporary knowledge. Finally, by integrating historical perspectives from multiple disciplines in higher education, what happened and the context in which it happened can be more fully appreciated. This study also contributes to practical knowledge as it deepens the understanding of significant events and processes that contributed to the …
Date: December 2014
Creator: Smith, Donna Gayle
System: The UNT Digital Library

City of Denton Municipal Solid Waste Characterization and Management Strategies

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
Due to concern about diminishing landfill space, the City of Denton contracted a municipal solid waste characterization study in 1999 that would identify materials for diversion. This paper describes the results of 5 1-week waste sorting events, a scale-house analysis, a recycling participation study, a recycler profile and a similar city study. The results of the characterization studies suggest that at least 50% of each waste stream is recyclable or divertible though paper products accounted for no more than 45% by weight of any waste stream. Curbside recycling participation rate was 71% during the 6-week study period though the average weekly set-out rate was 37%. Recycling participation rates varied significantly by zip code and by home value categories but not by gender. Denton is fairly progressive in its waste management approach when compared to demographically similar cities on a 15-question assessment though recommendations for improvement have been identified.
Date: May 2004
Creator: Brady, Patricia D.
System: The UNT Digital Library
A Prototypical Pattern in Dreiser's Fiction (open access)

A Prototypical Pattern in Dreiser's Fiction

Beginning in 1911 with Jennie Gerhardt and continuing through the publication of The "Genius" in 1915, all of Dreiser's major fiction is curiously marked by the same recurring narrative pattern. The pattern is always triangluar in construction and always contains the same three figures-- a vindictive and vengeful parent, outraged by an outisder's violation of personal and societal values; an enchanted offspring; and a disrupted outsider who threatens established order. In spite of each work's different characterization, setting, and episode, the narrative conflict invariably arises from the discovery of an illicit relationship between offspring and outsider, and the narrative climax involves a violent clash of wills, with victory sometimes going to the parent and sometimes to the outsider. The denouement is consistently sorrowful and pensive in tone, with a philosophical epilogue which speculates on man's melancholy and puzzling fate. As both a guide to personal therapy and a key to the work with which Dreiser established his artistic identity, the recurring narrative pattern is important. Its examination (1) illuminates an obscure period in Dreiser's life, (2) reveals his personality priorities as he turns the kaleidoscope of introspection to observe the Cudlipp crisis from various angles, and (3) offers to the …
Date: December 1974
Creator: Wood, Bobbye Nelson
System: The UNT Digital Library
Unlike Things Must Meet: Metaphor in the Novels of Herman Melville (open access)

Unlike Things Must Meet: Metaphor in the Novels of Herman Melville

For the purpose of this study, metaphor is defined as a comparison which is not literally true. Such a comparison may be explicitly stated, as in a simile, or it may merely be implied, as in synecdoche, metonymy, hyperbole, or personification. In each case the primary or tenor image, a person, place, object, or idea in the novel, is compared to a secondary or vehicle image, a person, place, object, or idea not literally the same as the tenor image. The body of data on which this investigation is based consists of over fourteen thousand metaphors taken from Melville's nine novels. Each of these metaphors has been classified on the basis of its vehicle image. There are eight general categories, and tables are provided which show the number of metaphors in each category in each novel and the frequency with which the metaphors in each category occur in each novel. Overall, his metaphors suggest that Melville's vision of life was more often pessimistic than optimistic. They also reveal his growth as a writer. In the later novels, metaphors generally are more original than those in the early novels and are more skillfully related to his major themes.
Date: May 1980
Creator: Gongre, Charles E.
System: The UNT Digital Library

Ecological Enhancement of Timber Growth: Applying Compost to Loblolly Pine Plantations

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This study explored the application of compost onto a small loblolly pine tree forest in northeast Texas. Its purpose was to determine if the application of various amounts of compost would provide for accelerated rates of growth for the trees. Soil parameters were also monitored. A total of 270 trees were planted and studied in a northeast Texas forest ecosystem. Compost rates of 5, 25, and 50 tons per acre with either soil or compost backfill were utilized and compared to a control without compost. Nonparametric and parametric ANOVA and Chi-Square tests were utilized. The results indicated that greater application rates retained greater moisture and higher pH levels in the soil. Compost applications also yielded a greater survival rate as well as larger tree height and diameter when compared to the control. The 25 ton/acre application backfilled in native soil achieved the greatest average in height and diameter when compared to the averages for the control plot. Greater growth differences for the 25S application can be attributed to additional nutrients coupled with a stable pH consistent with native soil acidity.
Date: December 1999
Creator: Stuckey, Harold Troy
System: The UNT Digital Library
Interweaving History: The Texas Textile Mill and McKinney, Texas, 1903-1968. (open access)

Interweaving History: The Texas Textile Mill and McKinney, Texas, 1903-1968.

Texas textile mills comprise an untold part of the modern South. The bulk of Texas mills were built between 1890 and 1925, a compressed period of expansion in contrast to the longer developmental pattern of mills in the rest of the United States. This compression meant that Texas mill owners benefited from knowledge gained from mill expansion elsewhere, and owners ran their mills along the same lines as the dominant southeastern model. Owners veered from the established pattern when conditions warranted. This case study focuses on three mills in Texas that operated both independently and as a corporation for a total of sixty years. One mill in McKinney dominated the economy of a small town and serves as the primary focus of this paper. A second mill in Waco served a diversified economy in the center of the state; and the third mill, built in Dallas was concentrated in a major city in a highly competitive job market. All three of these mills will illuminate the single greatest difference between Texas mills and mills elsewhere, the composition of the labor force. Women did not dominate the mill labor force in Texas nor did children, except in limited cases, make-up a …
Date: August 2009
Creator: Kilgore, Deborah Katheryn
System: The UNT Digital Library
Consumer-Buying Objectives in Homemaking Courses in High Schools of the Southern Region (open access)

Consumer-Buying Objectives in Homemaking Courses in High Schools of the Southern Region

For the past few years the homemaking courses has shifted its emphasis from cooking and sewing skills to the solving of managerial problems of the individual and the family of today. Each person who is taking an active part in living is constantly purchasing and consuming goods and services and must realize that his welfare depends upon the relation between the satisfactions that he receives from the things he buys and the price that he pays for them. Since every one must purchase goods, the high school student needs to learn how to buy wisely. The executive committees of the homemaking divisions in the different states which are revising the courses of study realize that management of money from the consumer-buying view point is important and needs a place in meeting the needs and interests of the high school student of today. The problem in this study is to determine the adequacy of the objectives on consumer-buying in the homemaking courses in high schools of the Southern Region. This study is made for the purpose of determining the adequacy and extent of consumer-buying teaching objectives in homemaking education in the high schools of the Southern region. in order that way …
Date: June 1938
Creator: Wilson, Charles Aldredge, Mrs.
System: The UNT Digital Library
A.P. Giannini, Marriner Stoddard Eccles, and the Changing Landscape of American Banking (open access)

A.P. Giannini, Marriner Stoddard Eccles, and the Changing Landscape of American Banking

The Great Depression elucidated the shortcomings of the banking system and its control by Wall Street. The creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913 was insufficient to correct flaws in the banking system until the Banking Acts of 1933 and 1935. A.P. Giannini, the American-Italian founder of the Bank of America and Mormon Marriner S. Eccles, chairman of Federal Reserve Board (1935-1949), from California and Utah respectively, successfully worked to restrain the power of the eastern banking establishment. The Banking Act of 1935 was the capstone of their cooperation, a bill that placed open market operations in the hands of the Federal Reserve, thus diminishing the power of the New York Reserve. The creation of the Federal Housing Act, as orchestrated by Eccles, became a source of enormous revenue for Giannini. Giannini's wide use of branch banking and mass advertising was his contribution to American banking. Eccles's promotion of compensatory spending and eventual placement of monetary control in the hands of the Federal Reserve Board with Banking Act of 1935 and the Accord of 1951 and Giannini's branch banking diminished the likelihood of another sustained depression. As the Bank of America grew, and as Eccles became more aggressive in …
Date: May 2000
Creator: Weldin, Sandra J.
System: The UNT Digital Library