Art that tickled my fancy (Public Domain)

‘Waiting to Die’ by Paul Krafft from Capital and Labor (1907)

The reverend William Schuler Harris’ Capital and Labor (1907) frames its titular subjects as locked in a perennial struggle, “dating back to the time when the Egyptians laid the lash upon their slaves”. Writing in the early twentieth century, Harris is skeptical of the “orator [who] frequently soars into ecstasies over the privileges of the American workers”, for he sees how the labor force is suffering under the “galling yoke” of trusts and monopolies. Substitute those scourges of the Gilded Age with unfettered multinational conglomerates and something similar holds true today. The author’s list of obstacles facing workers are as relevant now as they were more than a century ago: the needs of “civilized life” increase more rapidly than wages; the skilled worker remains at…

‘Snow Crystal I’ by Wilson Bentley (ca. 1910s)

Photograph by Wilson Alwyn "Snowflake" Bentley (1865–1931) one of the first known photographers of snowflakes. Each snow crystal was caught on a blackboard and transferred rapidly to a microscope slide where it was photographed through the microscope. He would capture more than 5,000 images of crystals in his lifetime.

Space Colony Art from the 1970s

The cylinder becomes a kind of Eden regained in O’Neill’s space fantasy, an Arcadia retrofitted with solar panels and cosmic-ray shields.

Mayday, Mayday: *Capital and Labor* (1907)

A treatise on the challenges facing workers — and potential solutions — that advocates socialism at the turn of the 20th century.