APUSH Chapter 18: The Age of the City

Alice Hamilton

-a physician who became an investigator for the US Bureau of Labor

-and a pioneer in identifying pollution in the workplace

-documented ways in which improper disposal of such substances as lead, chemical waste, and ceramic dust was creating widespread sickness

-brought the problems to public attention

Armory Show

-staged by the Ashcan School, and displayed works of French postimpressionists and of some American moderns

-1913 in NYC

Ashcan School

-members produced work startling in its naturalism and stark in it portrayal of the social realities of the era

-members among the first to appreciate expressionism and abstraction

Assimilation

-immigrants tried to rid themselves of all vestiges of their old culture

-Native born Americans encouraged it, public schools taught in English, and employers insisted workers speak English on the job

-church leaders were often native born or assimilated immigrants

Boss Rule

-any politician who could mobilize that power stood to gain enormous influence, if not public office

-a group of urban "bosses" emerged, and the principal function of the boss was to win votes for his organization

-the boss would reward followers with patronage or opportunities

-made possible by the power of immigrant voters, the link between the political organizations and the wealthy

"City Beautiful" Movement

-urban leaders launched monumental projects to remake the way their cities looked

-some cities began to clear away older neighborhoods and streets and create grand, monumental avenues lined with new buildings

-at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the "Great White City" arranged symmetry around a lagoon and became the inspiration

-lead by architect Daniel Burnham, cities like San Francisco, Washington DC, and Chicago

Darwinism

-argued that the human species had evolved from earlier forms of life through natural selection

-challenged creationism

-suggested history was a random process dominated by the fiercest and luckiest competitors

Department Stores

-Marshall Field, Macy's, Abraham and Straus, Jordan Marsh and Filene's, Wanamaker's

-transformed the concept of shopping, brought together an enormous array of products under one roof, sought to create an atmosphere of wonder and excitement- they were elaborately decorated and salesclerks were well-dressed- and they sold merchandise at lower prices than the individual stores they competed with

D.W. Griffith

-carried the motion picture into a new era with silent epics

-The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance

-however The Birth of a Nation also contained racist messages

-motion pictures were the first mass entertainment medium

Edward Hopper

-an artist of the Ashcan School

-explored the starkness and loneliness of the modern city (the diner painting)

Henry James

-published a classic autobiography in which he portrayed himself as a man disillusioned with and unable to relate to his society

-lived the majority of his life in England and Europe and wrote The American, Portrait of a Lady, and The Ambassadors

Jacob Riis

-a Danish immigrant and New York newspaper reporter and photographer

-sensational descriptions and pictures of tenement life in his book How the Other Half Lives

-slum dwellings were almost sunless, and practically airless

Kate Chopin

-a southern writer who explored the oppressive features of traditional marriage, encountered widespread public abuse after publishing The Awakening

-described a young wife and mother who abandons her family in search of personal fulfillment

Mass Transit

-New York opened its first elevated railway, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco experimented with cable cars

-Richmond introduced the first electric trolley line, Boston opened the first American subway when it put some trolley lines underground

-new techniques of road and bridge building, like the Brooklyn Bridge

Modernism

-a movement that had counterparts in many other areas of cultural and intellectual life as well

-rejecting the heavy reliance on established forms that characterized the tradition (emphasized the dignified and elevated aspects of civilization) of the 19th C art world

-looked to the future and gloried in the new

Movies

-the most important form of mass entertainment

-started as short films that became available through "peep shows" in pool halls then larger projectors made it possible to project the images on to big screends

National Consumers League

-founded under Florence Kelley, a prominent social reformer

-attempted to mobilize the power of women as consumers to force retailers and manufacturers to improve wages and working conditions for women workers

-the mobilization of women behind consumer causes

Newspaper Chains

-national press services made use of the telegraph to supply news and features to papers throughout the country

-William Randolph Hearst's controlled nine newspapers and two magazine

-he and Pulitzer popularized "yellow journalism" -a deliberately sensational and graphic reporting

Social Realism

-the effort to recreate urban social reality

-examples include Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, a grim picture of urban poverty and slum life

Stephen Crane

-wrote The Red Badge of Courage about the Civil War

-Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, a grim picture of urban poverty and slum life

Tammany Hall

-a political organization led by corrupt city boss William M. Tweed who was boss of this hall

Tenements

-by the late 19th century, the term was used to describe slum dwellings only

-the first tenements had been hailed as housing for the poor, but many became windowless rooms with little or no plumbing or central heating

Theodore Dreiser

-influential in encouraging writers to abandon the genteel traditions of earlier times and turn to the social dislocations and injustices of the present

-Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy

Upton Sinclair

-socialist writer that published The Jungle in 1906

-revealed the depravity of capitalism

-exposed the meatpacking industry and helped produce legislative action to deal with the problem

William James

-a Harvard psychologist

-pragmatism- modern society should rely for guidance not on inherited ideals and moral principles but on the test of scientific inquiry

-no idea or institution was valid unless it worked and unless it stood the test of experience

William M. Tweed

-boss of New York City's Tammany Hall in the 1860s and 70s

Women's Colleges

-proponents of women's colleges saw the institutions as places where female students would not be treated as "second-class citizens" by predominantly male student bodies and faculties

-the life of the college produced a spirit of sorority and commitment

Yellow Journalism

-a deliberately sensational, often lurid style of reporting presented in bold graphics and designed to reach a mass audience

Yiddish Theater

-built on the experiences of American Jews, and was the training ground for a remarkable group of musicians and playwrights who later went on to play a major role in mainstream theater

-Irving Berlin wrote more than 1,000 songs for musical theater