Chapter 24 - America Moves to the City (1865-1900) Flashcards
New Immigrants (2nd wave) vs. Old Immigrants (1st wave)
- New immigrants: came from southern and eastern Europe: Italians, Jews, Croats, Slovaks, Greeks, and Poles (totaled 19 percent in 1880s but 66 percent by 1900s); came from countries with little history of democratic government
- Old immigrants: came from British Isles and western Europe, adjusted well to American life by building supportive ethnic organizations and combining into established farm communities or urban craft unions; largely accepted as “American” by the native-born
Both were attracted by industrial jobs and technology
- 1850-1870: 2 million immigrants, 1880s: more than 5 million (NEW) immigrants; more than 300,000 Chinese immigrants on West Coast
- Most new immigrants did not speak English and religions were Roman Catholic, Jewish, and eastern Orthodox
- American food products and rapid Europe industrialization created major unemployment and European diaspora in U.S. savage persecutions of minorities in Europe was a cause for immigration
- Children of immigrants grew up speaking fluent English
- Nativists alarmed of immigrants’ high birthrates (would outbreed or mongrelize Anglo-Saxon stock), for corruption of city governments, and also claimed immigrants imported dangerous ideas of socialism, communism, and anarchism
- By 1900, Roman Catholic Church became largest single domination in U.S.
Political Machines
- The business of ministering to the immigrants’ needs fell to their unoffical “governments”
- Traded jobs and services such as housing for immigrants in return for votes
Ex: New York’s Tammany Hall, long led by corrupt “Boss” Tweed
Also gave gifts of clothing and food, patch up minor scrapes with law, and built schools and hospitals for immigrants
Jane Addams
- One of the first generation of college-educated women
- Built a settlement house for immigrants
Sought outlets for her talent in teaching or charitable work
Dedicated herself to uplifting the urban masses
Settlement House
Offered instruction in English, counseling to help newcomers cope with big-city life, child-care services for working mothers, and cultural activities in immigrant towns
- Two prominent ones were Addams’ Hull House in Chicago and Lillian Wald’s Henry Street Settlement in New York
- Hull House prohibited child labor - led by Florence Kelly
Liberal Protestants
- Rooted in the Unitarian revolt against Orthodox Calvinism
- Adapted religious ideas to modern culture, attempting to reconcile Christianity with new scientific and economic doctrines (such as Darwinism)
- Rejected biblical literalism and stressed the ethical teachings of the Bible; allied with the reform-oriented “social gospel” movement, somewhat uncomfortably with evangelical urban revivalists
- Trusted community fellowship and focused on earthly salvation and personal growth
Fought with fundamentalists who believed in biblical authority
- Walter Rauschenbusch (German Baptist pastor) and Washington Gladdens preached “Social Gospel”
- Protestant churches suffered from urbanization
Charles Darwin
An English naturalist who broke ground with his idea of “natural selection”; believed that nature randomly selected organisms for survival or death based on random traits (rejected the “dogma of special creations)
- His writings theorized that higher forms of life had slowly evolved from lower forms, through a process or random biological mutation and adaption
- Harvard’s Louis Agassiz held fast to old doctrine of “special creations”
Tuskegee Institute
A black normal and industrial school headed by Booker T. Washington
Trained young blacks in agriculture and the trades
Ideal for George Washington Carver (developed peanut butter)
Booker T. Washington
- An ex-slave and champion of black education
- Avoided the issue of social equality and relunctantly accepted segregation in return for the right to develop economic and educational resources of the black community
Labeled “accommodationist” with his self-help approach to solving nation’s racial problems
W.E.B. Dubois
- A black leader who assailed Washington as an “Uncle Tom” who was condemning their race to manual labor and continual inferiority
- Demanded complete equality for blacks, socially and economically, and helped found the National Associagtion for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909
The first black man to receive a Ph.D. at Harvard
Believed in black empowerment through education and voting
Morrill Act of 1862
- Contributed to the rapid growth of higher education
- An enlightened law that provided generous grants of public land to the states for support of education
This act along with the Hatch Act helped spawn University of California (1868), Ohio State University (1870), and Texas A & M (1896)
Land-grant Colleges
Provided land to support institutions and in turn bound themselves to provide services such as military training
Most became state universities
- College education was necessary for success
- Key black colleges until 1960s civil rights movement made attendance at white institutions possible
Hatch Act of 1867
Provided federal funds for the establishment of agricultural experiment stations in connection with land-grant colleges
Extended the Morrill Act
Joseph Pulitzer
- A near-blind journalist tycoon born in Hungary
- A leader in the techniques of senastionalism through his owndership of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and New York World
- Used yellow journalism
Pragmatism
- The concept that the truth of an idea was to be tested, above all, by its practical consequences
- Pronounced as America’s greatest contribution of history of philosophy by WIlliam James
William Randolph Hearst
- A journalist tycoon, competitor of Pulitzer
- Both him and Pulitzer wrote scandals over education
- Drew on his California father’s mining millions to build a powerful chain of newspapers, beginning with the San Francisco Examiner in 1887
Expelled from Harvard College for a crude prank
Yellow Journalism
- Pulitzer’s use of yellow sheets of papers
- He used comic supplements featuring the “Yellow Kid”
John Dewey
not very important
- An educator and philosopher who joined “The Metaphysical Club” and emphasized pragmatism, experience, cooperation, and democracy
- Demonstrated his faith in the unity of theory and practice by becoming a public intellectual and social activist
Founded the Laboratory School at the University of Chicago in 1896 to experiment with an educational philosophy rooted in “learning by doing”
Carrie Chapman Catt
- The most effective leader of a new generation of suffragist women
- A pragmatic reformer
- Deemphasized argument that women deserved vote as a matter of right because they were equals of men
- Stressed desirability of giving women the vote to continue their traditional duties
- Responsible for bringing the 19th Amendment to Congress for ratification with the help of President Woodrow Wilson in 1920
- First husband died of alcoholism
- With her hatchet smashed saloon bottles and bars
- Her “hatchetations” brought disrepute to Prohibition Movement because of violence of her one-woman crusade
- Her Temperance Movement eventually inspired the Prohibition Amendment (18th Amendment) passed 1920-33
National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)
Formed by militant suffragists, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony
Dmeanded the vote for women
19th Amendment
Guaranteed the right to vote for women
Ida B. Wells
- A notable journalist and teacher
- Helped found the National Association of Colored Women in 1896
- Inspired black women to mount a nationwide anti-lynching crusade
Francis Willard/Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)
- Willard was a champion of planned parenthood
- Women protested for the abstinence from alcohol and organized WCTU in 1874
18th Amendment
Prohibited the sale and manufacture of alcohol nationwide
A temporary triumph in 1919 for temperance supporters
Horatio Alger
A Puritan-reared New Englander and a writer
Dubbed “Holy Horatio”
- Wrote more than 100 volumes of juvenile fiction that sold over 17 million copies
- Taught moral lessons and the conviction that there is always room at the top
Realism
Movement in literature and the arts that responded to the Gilded Age’s urban, industrial transformation
Quickly dominated post-Civil War American literature
- Authors used human comedy and material drama of the world around them
- William Dean Howells (1837–1920) - celebrated “father of American realism” and wrote about contemporary and sometimes controversial social themes such as divorce, reformers, strikers, and socialists
Mark Twain
- Persuaded American authors to revolt against the elegant refinements of the old New England school of writing
- Christened Samuel Langhorne Clemens, but took pen name Mark Twain
Henry James
not very important
A New Yorker who turned from law to literature and spent most of his life in Europe
Became a British subject before death
- Dominant theme—confrontation of innocent Americans with subtle Europeans
- The Bostonians (1881) - one of first novels about rising feminist movement
Edith Wharton
not very important
Studied the inner psychological turmoil and moral shortcomings of post-Civil War high society
Focused more on naturalism
The House of Mirth (1905) and The Age of Innocence (1920) exposed futile struggles and interior costs of striving characters stuck on social ladder
Naturalism
A ore intense literary response than mainstream realism to social dislocations and scientific tumult of the late 1800s
- Writers emphasized the determinative influence of heredity and social environments in shaping character and sought to apply detached scientific objectivity to the study of human beings—or “human beasts”:
- Placed lower-class, marginal characters in extreme or sordid environments, including urban jungle
- Subjected characters to cruel operations of brute instinct, degenerate heredity, and pessimistic determinism
Stephen Crane
- Used naturalism in his writing
- Rose to prominence with The Red Badge of Courage (1895)
Jack London
A famous naturalist writer
- Wrote The Iron Heel (1907) which depicted a future fascistic revolution
- Showed his socialist leanings
- Frank Norris - also portrayed contemporary life and social problems
Theodore Dreiser
- A prominent naturalist “social novelist” from Indiana
- Write the graphic narrative, Sister Carrie, which depicted a poor working girl adapting to urban life in Chicago and New York
- Carrie’s disregard for moral standards offended Dreiser’s publisher, but work reemerged as American classic
Regionalism
A movement sought to chronical differences of local ways of life before industrialization
Authors made (to some extent) regional differences larger
- Had commonality with realist and naturalist fiction
- Their works demystified (made clearer) regional differences, especially among national audiences bent on postwar reunification
Winslow Homer
- An artist born in Boston
- Painted pastoral farms and seas of the Northeast
Reveled in rugged realism and boldness of conception
- Other artists: Thomas Elkins (1844-1916), James Whistler (1834-1903), and John Singer Sargent (1856-1925)
Augustus Saint-Gaudens
- One of the most gifted sculptors in America
- National urge to commemorate Civil War brought him a number of commissions, including the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial
City Beautiful Movement
- A new generation of architects and planners reshaped American urban space and cities
- Proponents wanted city to not only look beautiful but to convey sense of harmony, order, monumentality
Copied European styles of beaux arts classicism and planning ideas
- Music also gained popularity as famed Metropolitan Opera House was built in New York (1833), homegrown American music, and black folk traditions like spirituals and “ragged music” evolved into blues, ragtime, and jazz, which transformed popular music in twentieth century
Frederick Law Olmsted
An American architect
- Built the New York’s Central Park (1873), Boston’s “Emerald Necklace” (1896), and Stanford University’s campus
- Sought to foster virtue and egalitarian values with his designs
World’s Columbian Exposition (1883)
David Burnham’s first major project which came to symbolize the City Beautiful movement
- Imposing landscape of pavilions and fountains honored 400th anniversary of Columbus’s first voyage
- 27 million visited the so-called dream of loveliness
- Chicago exposition did much to raise American artistic standards and promote city planning
Phineas T. Barnum
A master circus showman
Joined hands with James A. Bailey in 1881 to stage the “Greatest Show on Earth”
William (“Buffalo Bill”) Cody
Headed colorful “Wild West” shows
His cast included war-whooping Indians, live buffalo, and deadeye marksmen/markswomen (such as Annie Oakley)
