6.11 Reform in the Gilded Age

LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Explain how different reform movements responded to the rise of industrial capitalism in the Gilded Age.

INTRODUCTION

• Early efforts for regulation of railraods and estabishment of labor unions failed

  • Many reform ideas and movements gained strength

    - educated middle class joined organizations to bring change

    - literature, arts, and architecture responded to challenges of urban life

AWAKENING REFORM

• Urban problems (poverty of working-class families)

  • Inspired new social consciousness

    - reform movements began to strengthen

BOOKS OF SOCIAL CRITICISM

• Henry George published Progress and Poverty

  • Called attention to effects of laissez-faire

    - demonstrated inequalities of wealth caused by industrialization

    - proposed solution of replacing taxes with single tax on land

• Edward Bellamy published Looking Backward

  • Envisioned life w cooperative society, no poverty, greed, and crime

• Both authors were citicized as utopians and socialist

  • Inspired enthusiatic followers

    - encourgaed shift in American public opinion away from capitalism

RELIGION AND SOCIETY

• All religion adapted to modern urban living

  • Roman Catholics

    - grew rapidly (influx of new immigrants from Eastern Euope)

    - Catholic leaders like Cardinal James Givvons (drew support from old and new immigrants by defending organized labor)

  • Protestants

    - Dwight Moody found the Moody Bibile Institute (helped urban evangeltist adapt to traditional Christianity to city life)

    - Salvation Army (provided basic necessities while preaching Christianity)

THE SOCIAL GOSPEL MOVEMENT

• Protestant clergy supported cause for social justic of urban poor

  • Preached the Social Gospel

    - importance of applying Christian principles to social problems

    - improving housing, higher wages, & public health measures

    - believed addressing poverty would lead to individual salvation

  • Walter Rauschenbusch

    - leader of the Social Gospel movement

    - worked in poverty-stricken neighborhoods (Hells Kitchen)

    - wrote books urging organized religions to join cause

    - encouraged Progressive reform movements and middle-class to join

SOCIAL WORKERS

• Settlement workers created foundations for jobs of social workers

  • Many were civic-minded volunteers or poltical activist

    - advoated for child-labor laws, housing reform, womens rights

    - Jane Addams (founded the Chicago Hull House)

    - Frances Perkins and Harry Hopkins (part of New Deal program)

FAMILIES IN URBAN SOCIETY

• Urban life placed severe strains on parents and children

  • Isolated from extended families

  • Increase in divorces

    - state legislature expanded grounds for divorce

  • Reduction in family sizes

    - Shift from rural to urban—→ children became more of a liability than asset (labor was needed at an early age on farms)

    - national average for birthrates and family size continued to drop

VOTING RIGHTS OF WOMEN

• Womens sufferage was launced at the Seneca Falls Convention

  • Elizabth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony

    - helped found the National American Woman Sufferage Association

    - Advoated for the securement of votes for women

    - Wyoming became first to allow women to vote

TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT

• Excessive drinking from male factory workers (thought of as cause for poverty)

  • Womens Christian Temperance Movement (WCTU)

    - advoated for total abstinence from alcohol

    - led by Frances E. Willard

  • Anti-Saloon League

    - powerful political force urging states to close down saloons and bars

  • Carry A. Natuon

    - Raided saloons and smashed barrels of beer

URBAN REFORMS

• Efforts arose to combat corruption in city governments

  • Theodore Roosevelt

    - tried to clean up New York City Police Department

    - efforts allowed him to to become president

  • Reform movements did not see momentum until 20th century

LITERATRE AND THE ARTS

• American writers and artist responded to industrailization and urban provlems

  • Work of best known innovators reflected new realism

    - attempted to express authentic American style

REALISM AND NATURALISM

• Popular works of lit include romantic novelsdepicting ideal heroes and heroines

  • Bret Harte

    - depicted life in rough mining camps of west

  • Mark Twain

    - first great realist author

    - wrote Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (revealed greed, violence, and racism in American society)

• Younger generations of writiers focused on naturalism (emotions & experience)

  • Stephen Crane

    - A Girl of the Streets (told how brutal urban environment could destroy lives of youn people)

    - Red Badge of courgae (described fear & human nature of civil war)

  • Jack London

    - Call of the Wild (portrayed conflict between nature and civilization)

  • Theodrore Dreiser

    - Sister Carrie caused sensation and shocked moral sensivilities (told of poor working girl in Chicago)

PAINTING

• American painters catered to romanticism, but some responded to new realism

  • Winslow Homer

    - American apinter of seascarpes and watercolors

    - rendered scenes of nature in a matter-of-a-fact way

  • Thomas Eakins

    - included paintings of surgical scenes and everyday lives of working

    - used new technology of photographs to study anatomy for realism

  • James McNeill Whistler

    - Arragement in Grey and Black, No. 1 (“Whistler’s Mother”)

    - focused on color instead of subject matter

    - influenced the development of modern art

  • Mary Cassatt

    - learned techniques of impressionism in use of pastel colors

  • Ashcan School

    - group of social realist, such as George Bellows

    - painted scnes of everyday life in poor urban neighborhoods

• Nonrepresentational paintings upset romanticist and realist

  • Armory Show

    - exhibit of abstrat non-representational work

    - rejected by most Americans until the 1950s

ARCHITECTURE

• Henry Hobson Richardson alterd American architecture

  • Focused on Romanesque style instead of classical Greek & Roman

    - massive stone walls and rounded arches

  • Highlighted functional commercial buildings

• Louis Sullivan

  • Rejected historical styles—→ tall, steel framed office buildings

    - achieved aesthetic unity (building flowed from its function)

• Frank Lloyed Wright

  • Developed “organic” style of architecure in harmony w surroundings

    - exemplified vision of long, horizontal, prarie-style homes

• Fredrick Law Olmsted

  • Specialized in planning of city parks and scenic boulevards

    - orginator of landscapre architecture, and later urban landscaping

    - worked on Central Park, New York city, & US Capitol

PREPARATION FOR CHANGE

• Foundations for cultural change and reforms were established during the 1880s and 1890s (despite dominant laissez-faire policies)

  • Critics and artist informed expanding middle class on alternative visions for the economy and society.