APUSH - Topic 6.11 Reform in the Gilded Age

Explain how different reform movements responded tot he rise of industrial capitalism in the Gilded Age.

Books of Social Criticism

• Progress and Poverty (1879)

  • Henry George

  • criticized laissez-faire

  • proposed replacing taxes with a singular tax on land as a solution to poverty

• Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (1888)

  • Edward Bellamy

  • envisioned life in 2000 as a society without poverty, greed, crime

Religion and Society

• Roman Catholicism grew bc of many immigrants

• some protestants helped city people adapt to religion in the city

  • Salvation Army

    • helped poor while preaching Christianity

Social Gospel

• applying Christian principles to social problems

  • fixing poverty would lead to individual salvation (rather than finding individual salvation to fix poverty)

• Walter Rauschenbusch wrote books telling religions to take up social justice

Social Workers

• Jane Addams, Hull House

• others advocated for child-labor laws, housing reform, women’s rights

Families in Urban Society

• parents and children were isolated from extended family and support

• gov expanded ground for divorce to cruelty and desertion → divorce rates increased

• family sizes became smaller → children were a liability rather than a help on the farm

Women’s Voting Rights

• NAWSA co-founded by Susan B. Anthony

  • secure vote for women

• Wyoming first state to grant full suffrage to women (1869)

• some states allowed women to vote in local elections, and most allowed land owning (1900)

Temperance Movement

• caused by excessive drinking of male factory workers

• Woman’s Christian Temperance Union

• Anti-Saloon League convinced 21 states to close all saloons and bars

Realism and Naturalism

• novels depicting real, difficult life rather than romantic novels with heroes

  • Mark Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)

• naturalism: showed how emotions and experience shape a person

Painting

• painting of people in everyday scenes

• new abstract art → upset many in the artistic community

Architecture

• architects often focused on function over beautiful Greek and Roman styles previously used

Frederick Law Olmsted

• planned parks, scenic boulevards

  • Central Park

  • US capitol

• established basis for urban landscaping