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”