ABSTRACT
Van Hise and Wisconsin were, in many respects, ideally suited for John R. Common's own sense of mission. Van Hise, an internationally recognized geologist, an early conservationist, had offended the business community by opposing, on conservation grounds, the construction of a dam. He would not buckle to outside pressure. Richard T. Ely was responsible for the period before the Civil War, socialism, and "great thought currents"; John R. for events after the Civil War and "the organization of industry and labor"; and Ulrich Phillips, a historian recommended by Frederick Jackson Turner, for the Southern states. The Carnegie Foundation would finance publication of the Documentary History, and John R. together with Helen Sumner would complete the Carnegie labor history project. For the long-term framework in the introduction to volumes three and four, John R. introduced a slight revision of an earlier article, "The American Shoemakers".
