Chapter 25

New Immigrants

1. In 1880, new type of immigrants coming to US

2. Came from southern + eastern europe

3. Italians, Jews, Croats, Slovaks, Greeks, and Poles

4.  Came w/ little history on democratic govt, ppl grown used to despotism, opportunities for advancement = small

5. 19% of immigrants in 1880, 66% in 1910

6. NY, Chicago, ethnic urban neighborhoods

7. Worried many native born americans → nativist anti-immigrants campaigns

8. Introduces urban reforms to help immigrants assimilate

9. America fever: US painted as land of opportunity + letter from US

10. Profit seeking americans went thru europe and promised land

11. Savage persecutions of minorities in Europe led people to US

political machines

1. Fed govt didn;t help at all to help assimilate immigrants → ministering immigrants’ needs fell to unofficial "governments" → urban political machines

2. Example: Tamanny Hall, led by BOs Tweed

   1. Trading jobs + services for voters

   2. Claimed loyalty of thousands of followers

   3. In return for vote, he provided jobs on city’s payroll, found housing for new arrivals, helped the poor w/ gifts + clothing

3. Reformers angry at exploitation of immigrant vote

4. “Tweed ring” known for sleazy political shenanigans

5. Still provided social welfare + invaluable assistance to struggling people

settlement house

1. Run by middle class native born women

2. Provided housing, food education, child care, cultural activities, social connections for new immigrants

3. Many women, native born and immigrant, developed passions for social activism in settlement houses

4. Jane Addams’ Hull House

   1.  Poor immigrant neighborhoods of Greeks, Italians, Russians, and Germans, provided English education, counseling for big city life, child care services, cultural activities

   2. Successfully lobbied anti-sweatshop law that protected women workers in Illinois, 1893 → led by Florence Kelley, later went to wokr for Henry Street

5. Lillian Wald’s Henry Street

   1. In NY, opened in 193 in the footsteps of Jane Addams

6. Became centers of women' s activism + social reform

7. Work of Addams, Wald, Kelley helped blaze trail of urban reform + social work

8. New opportunity for women

liberal Protestants

1. Changes of urban population affected churches → especially Protestant denominations, many traditions doctrines were seen as irrelevant

2. Many large houses of worship became sacred diversions/amusements

3. Many old-line churches slow to raise voices

4. New generations of liberal protestants

   1. Roots in unitarian revolt against orthodox calvinism

   2. Liberal ideas became mainstream between 1875-1925

   3. Adapted religious idea to modern culture, attempting to reconcile CHristianity with new scientific economic rules

   4. Rejected biblical literalism → looked  at biblical stories as models for Dhristian behavior rather than truth

   5. Ethical teachings of bible + allied with “social gospel” movement and evangelical urban revivalists

   6. Trust in community fellowship, earthly salvation, personal growth → attracted many followers

Tuskegee Institute

1. Industrial school led by Booker T. Washington in Tuskegee, Alabama

2. Trained young black students in agriculture + trades to help achieve economic independence

3. Washington justified segregated vocational training as first step to racial equality → critics blamed him for being too "accommodationist"

4. Slave born George Washington Carver taught +researched → became internationally famous agricultural chemist

5. Attacked + critiqued by Dr. W. E. Du Bois → condemning blacks to manual labor + inferiority 

land-grant colleges

1. Morrill Act of 1862: provided generous grants of public lands to states for support of education

2. Hatch Act of 1887: extension of Morrill Act, provided federal funds for establishment of agricultural experiment stations in connection to land grant colleges

3. Land-grant colleges created by funds from this law, helped fuel higher education in late 19th century, many on today’s public university derive from them

pragmatism

1. American philosophy emerged in late 19th century

2. WIlliam James pronounced in his book, Pragmatism (1907), that it is America's greatest contribution to philosophy

3. Theory that the true value of an idea is in its ability to solve problems

4. Pragmatists embraced provisional, uncertain nature of experimental knowledge

5. Well known advocators: John Dewey, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., William James

yellow journalism

1. Way to describe practice of journalism with unethical, unprofessional standards

2. Emerged in NY, Gilded Age, mainly in fight between Pulitzer’s NY World and Hearst’s NY Journal

National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)

1. Founded in 1890 by militant suffragists for vote for women

2. Argued that women should vote bc their responsibilities on home made them important + indispensable in public decision-making process

3. During WW1: supported war effort + admired women’s role in Allied victory

Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)

1. Founded in Ohio, 1870

2. Combat excessive alcohol consumption

3.  White ribbon = symbol of purity

4. Led by Frances E. Willard

5. Embrace broad reform agenda → campaigns, to abolish prostitution, women’s right to vote

Realism

1. Dominated post-civil war literature

2. Depicted contemporary life/ life as how it was

3. William Dean Dowells: father of American realism

4. Subjects were usually about material drama of the world or coarse human comedy

5. Left the idealism + romanticism of the earlier century

6. Authors: Mark Twain, Henry James, Edith Wharton

Naturalism

1. An intense literary response to the social dislocations and scientific tumult of the age

2. Emphasized how heredity + social environments impacts one’s character

3. Naturalistic portrayals of normal human life

4. Tried to apply detached scientific objectivity to the study of human character

5. Placed lower class into sordid environments

6. Authors: Stephen Crane, Jack London, Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser

Regionalism

1. Chronicle peculiarities of human life before industrialization

2. Aspired to capture America’s various regions amidst modernization and the industrial revolution

3. Helped demystify regional differences post-Civil war in hopes of reuniting the nature

4. Local color writing about the south

5. Women also contributed

6. Authors: Twain, London, Bret Harte, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Charles W. Chesnut, Kate Chopin, Henry Adams, etc.

City Beautiful movement

1. A movement started by progressive architects to promote harmony + order

2. Copied European styles (classicalism)

3. Wanted to assert America's prominence as one of the leading urban cultures of the western world

4. Constructed sites like the Grand Central Terminal

World’s Columbian Exposition

1. Held in Chicago in 1893

2. Was Daniel Burham’s first major project

3. The fair honored art, science, and architecture

4. Built a mini-city to show the ideals of city planning at that time

5. Wanted to use this to show that America was one of the most “civilized” societies

6. Peak for City Beautiful movement

Jane Addams

1. Started the Hull House in Illinois

2. Provided resources + centers for new immigrants to use (english classes, childcare, cultural activities, etc.)

3. Part of one of the first generation of college educated women

4. Sought for work in either teaching or charitable work 

5. Inspired by a settlement home she had seen in England

6. Started the US’s first settlement house

7. Condemned war + poverty → her anti-war position got her kicked out of the Daughters of the American Revolution organization

Charles Darwin

1. English naturalist

2. Spread the idea that organism evolved from lower forms, through mutations + adaption

3. “Natural selection” → random variations selected for the survival or death of an organism

4. At first many clergymen + theologians rejected his idea, however over time many came to embrace evolution splitting the religious community into two groups

5. These “liberals” began to not take the bible as literal, an rather coupled their religious beliefs with evolution

6. Many also feared that evolution was corrupting the idea that the Bible was truth

Booker T. Washington

1. An ex-slave; champion for black education 

2. Up From Slavery → a book telling of his story of how he slept on the sidewalk saving pennies just to go to school

3. Headed a black normal + industrial school in Alabama

4. He taught black students agriculture + basic trades so that they could be respectable in society

5. “Accommodationist”; he avoided the idea of “social equality”

6. He believed in the self-help approach, and didn’t see it fit to fight against the white supremacy of his times

7. He believed that education → economic independence → ticket to civil rights for blacks

W. E. B. Du Bois

1. Believed that Booker T. Washington was an “Uncle Tom”

2. French, Dutch, African, + Indian (from Massachusetts)

3. He was the first black man to receive a PHD at Harvard

4. Historian, sociologist, + poet

5. Founded NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People)

6. Wanted economic + social equality

7. Died in self-exile in Africa

8. His and Washington’s differences in beliefs highlighted the contrast between southern + northern blacks

Joseph Pulitzer

1. Immigrated from Hungary

2. Owner of two newspapers: St. Louis Post-Dispatch and New York World

3. His newspapers were known as the “yellow paper”, with his use of colored comics with the “yellow kid”

4. His competitor was William Randolph Hearst 

5. Spread propaganda + exaggerated news to gain more circulation

William Randolph Hearst

Newspaper magnate 

Inherited his father’s business the San Francisco Examiner 

Owned newspapers and magazines published across the U.S cities 

Exaggerated many of the events to “Spread of sensational news”

Drew on his fathers mining millions 

Was a very sneaky person with his competitor 

To this day still owns a lot of media outlets 

John Dewey

Leader of the pragmatist movement 

The pragmatist movement was a movement that supported the use of practical ideas and solving problems 

Advocated for education and social reform and showing importance to using experience and learning 

Emphasized using real world applications to solve problems 

Carrie Chapman Catt

Leader of the revived women's suffrage movement 

President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)

Active internationally 

Helped women in other countries

Helping gain suffrage and advocating for peace 

Horatio Alger

Puritan, New Englander 

Wrote novels for children 

Popularized the notion “rags to riches”

Mark Twain

Satirist and writer 

Wrote books like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 

His writing critiqued American politics 

Talked especially about economic justice and racism 

He was part of the new group of american writers who strived away from the old traditional writing styles taught in new england schools

Christened Samuel Langhorne Clemens, but took pen name Mark Twain

Henry James

 A master of "psychological realism,"

 Major theme—confrontation of innocent Americans with subtle Europeans

Made women his central characters

One of his first’s books “The Bostinions” was about the feminist movement 

Winslow Homer

Boston-born artist who excelled in portraying New England’s pastoral farms and swelling seas in the native realist style.

Reveled in rugged realism and boldness of conception-- Means being unapologetically truthful with the art and with the bold concept 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Irish born Sculptor who immigrated to america 

Earned a lot of money by doing a lot of art to commemorate the civil war

Made Robert Gould Shaw Memorial on Boston Common.

Frederick Law Olmsted

Sought to foster virtue and egalitarian values----practice equality among all people

Journalist and leading American landscape architect

 His landmark designs include New York’s Central Park, 

Boston’s "Emerald Necklace,"

 and the campuses of Stanford University 

University of California at Berkeley

Karl May

German author best known for his adventure novels set in the American Old West and the Orient

He wrote about the American West 

He traveled around the world a lot 

His writings were more fanciful than actually being factual