Chapter 21 Flashcards
Rise of Cities
America’s cities grew in all directions. Electric elevators and new steel-frame construction allowed architects to extend buildings upward. Mass transit allowed the middle class to retreat to suburbs. Crowded tenements bred disease and crime and created an opportunity for urban political bosses to accrue power, in part by distributing to the poor the only relief that existed
New Immigration
By 1900, 30 percent of Americans were foreign-born, with many immigrants coming from eastern and southern Europe rather than western and northern Europe, like most immigrants of generations past. Thus their languages and culture were vastly different from those of native-born Americans. They tended to be Catholic or Jewish rather than Protestant. Beginning in the 1880s, nativists advocated immigration laws to exclude the Chinese and the poor and demanded that immigrants pass a literacy test. A federal immigration station on Ellis Island, in New York Harbor, opened in 1892 to process immigrants arriving by ship from across the Atlantic.
Mass Entertainment
Cities began to create urban parks, like New York’s Central Park, as places for all citizens to stroll, ride bicycles, or play games such as tennis. Vaudeville shows emerged as a popular form of entertainment. Saloons served as local social and political clubs for men. It was in this era that football, baseball, and basketball emerged as spectator sports.
Social Darwinism
Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species shocked people who believed in a literal interpretation of the Bible’s account of creation. Darwin’s scientific theory was applied to human society and social institutions by Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner, who equated economic and social success with “survival of the fittest” and advanced the idea that government should not interfere to promote equality.
Rise of Realism
American literature responded to the changes in society at this time. Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) wrote humorously about his experiences and observations and later created masterpieces that playfully comment on social issues. The movement known as naturalism shocked many readers in the 1890s by depicting individuals as victims of a brutal world. Social critics such as Henry George were shocked by the vast disparities between rich and poor. Their social gospel movement, in which the religious community reached out to the poor, was another response to America’s poverty.
1858
Construction of the New York’s Central Park begins
1859
Darwin’s On the Origin of the Species is published
1882
Congress passes the Chinese Exclusion Act
1889
- Hull-House, a settlement house, opens in Chicago
2. Otis Elevator Company installs the first electric elevator
1890
National American Woman Suffrage Association is formed
1891
Basketball is invented
1892
Ellis Island, a federal center for processing immigrants, opens
1900
Baseball’s National League is formed
