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o Defined as the arid territory that included the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, and the Western Plateau

o Known as the “Great American Desert” by pioneers passing through

o There were few trees and small amounts of rain…made it difficult for farming

o The grasslands of the plains held many bison and buffalo that could be used for food, clothing, shelter and even tools

? Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma were the only territories that remained

o Gold and silver strikes caused many settlers to head west

o Colorado, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Arizona, and South Dakota kept a flow of people pushing into the mountains

o The Discovery of the Comstock Lode was responsible for Nevada entering the Union

o Placer mining, using simple tools was the first way for people to find gold

o Deep-shaft mining became more popular and more expensive

o Mining towns arose almost overnight and later became ghost towns within a few years after the gold and silver ran out

o Mining companies employed experienced miners from Europe, Latin America, and China

o About 1/3 of the western miners in the 1860s were Chinese immigrants

o Hostility to these foreign born workers was shown through the $20 fine placed and known as the Miner’s Tax

o Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 forbid the immigration of any more Chinese laborers to the US

o A vast increase in the supply of silver created a crisis over the value of gold and silver backed currency

o Many Native Americans lost their lands to the miners’ pursuit to instant riches

o Cattle had been earlier raised and round up in Texas on a small scale by Mexican cowboys, vaqueros

o Railroads were constructed into Kansas that would open up an eastern market for Texas cattle

o Joseph G. McCoy built the first stockyard made at the end of the line in Chicago

o The cowboys were mostly black and Mexican and received only $1 a day for their dangerous work

o The long cattle drives came to an end when overgrazing destroyed the grass and a winter blizzard and drought killed nearly 90% of the cattle

o Homesteaders used barbed wire fencing to cut off access to the formerly open range…limiting cattle

o The Homestead Act of 1862 encouraged farming on the Great Plains by offering 160 acres of public land free to any family that settled on it for a period of five years

o Promotions of railroads and land speculators induced native-born and immigrant families to attempt to farm the Great Plains

o Many families had to end up purchasing the land because the best public lands were generally put in the hands of the railroad companies and speculators

o Extremes of hot and cold, plagues of grasshoppers, and the lonesome life on the plains challenged the families

o Water was scarce, and wood for fences was almost nonexistent

? Barbed wire, invented by Joseph Glidden, helped farmers to fence in land

o Long spells of severe weather, together with falling prices for their crops and the cost of machinery, caused the failure of 2/3 of homesteaders farms

o Those who survived adopted “dry farming” and deep plowing techniques to get moisture

o Russian wheat was planted and dams and irrigation saved many western farmers

o Oklahoma Territory was opened for settlement in 1889 and hundreds of homesteaders swarmed there

o Jackson Turner wrote an influential essay, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”

? He argued that 300 years of frontier experience had played a fundamental role in shaping the unique character of American society

o The closing of the frontier trouble Turner because he saw the availability of free land as a safety valve for harmlessly releasing discontent in American society

o In New Mexico and Arizona, Pueblo groups like the Hopi and Zuni lived in permanent settlements

o The Navajo and Apache peoples of the Southwest were nomadic hunter-gatherers who adapted a more settled way of life

o In the Pacific Northwest, the Chinook and Shasta developed complex communities based on fish and game

o About 2/3 of the western tribal groups lived on the Great Plains

o Nomadic tribles…Sioux, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Crow, and Comanche became skilled horsemen and specialized hunters of buffalo

o Conflicts with the US Government came from the shites having little understanding of Plains people’s loose tribal organization and nomadic lifestyle

o The federal government assigned the plains tribes large tracts of lands known as reservations with definite boundaries

o Most Plains tribes refused to restrict their movements and continued to follow the migrating buffalo

o Colorado militia massacred an encampment of Cheyenne women, children and men at Sand Creek

o Sioux War, an army column was wiped out by Sioux warriors

o The government attempted to isolate the Indians on smaller reservations, however, gold miners rufused to stay off Indian’s lands

? Before the went down to defeat, they ambushed and destroyed Colonel George Custer’s command at Little Big Horn

o Chief Joseph attempted to lead a band of Nez Perce into Canada

o Helen Hunt Jackson wrote A Century of Dishonor about the injustices done to Indians

o Emphasized formal education and training and conversion to Christianity

o Board schools such as the Carlisle School in Pennsylvania were set up to segregate Indian children from their people and teach them white culture and farming and industrial skills

o Divided the tribal lands into plots of 160 acres or less, depending on family size

o US citizenship was granted to those who stayed on the land for 25 years and adopted the habitats of civilized life

o As a result, however, what was often considered the best land, was later sold to whites and speculators

o Sioux medicine man Sitting Bull was killed during his arrest

o Over 200 Native Americans were gunned down by the US Army in the “battle” (massacre) of Wounded Knee in the Dakotas

o Federal government granted US citizenship to all Native Americans

? Promoted the reestablishment of tribal organization and culture

o Henry Grady was the editor of the Atlanta Constitution

? Spread the gospel of the New South that argued for economic diversity and laissez-faire capitalism

o Local governments hoped to spur the movement by offering tax exemptions to attract investors to start new industries

o Cheap labor was another incentive for businesses to locate in the New South

o Birmingham, Alabama developed into the nation’s leading steel centers

o Memphis, Tennessee prospered as the center of the South’s growing lumber industry

o Richmond became the capital of the nation’s tobacco industry

o Cheaper labor rates helped some southern states to become the chief producers of textiles

o Railroads gave a boost to the emergence of the New South

o The South remained a largely agricultural region…and the poorest region as well

o Northern financing dominated much of the southern economy

o Northern investors control ¾ of the southern railroads and all of the South’s steel industry

o Two factors were chiefly responsible for the poverty of the majority of southerners:

o Postwar economy remained tied mainly to growing cotton

o The increase in the production of cotton actually provided a bigger problem

o Over half of the region’s white farmers and ¾ of black farmers were tenants (or sharecroppers)

o George Washington Carver promoted the growing of such products as peanuts, sweet potatoes, and soybeans to diversify the southern economy

o The Colored Farmers’ National Alliance had about 250,000 members

o The Redeemers (Democratic politicians who came to power in the South) attracted two groups:

o The latter group favored policies of separating public facilities for blacks and whites

o Civil Rights Cases of 1883 the Court ruled that Congress could not legislate against the racial discrimination practiced by private citizens, which included railroads, hotels, and other businesses used by the public

o Plessy v. Ferguson said that because the railroad provided “separate but equal” facilities that Plessy was guilty

o Jim Crow laws were put into place by Southern states that required segregated washrooms, drinking fountains, park benches, and other facilities

o Literacy tests, poll taxes, and political party primaries were put into place to keep blacks from voting

o Grandfather clauses allowed a man to vote only if his grandfather had cast ballots in elections before Reconstruction

o African Americans were barred from serving on juries in southern courts

o Lynch mobs killed over 1400 African Americans during the 1890’s

o African Americans could not raised out of dead-end farming and low-paying domestic work

o Some black leaders advocated leaving the oppression behind by migrating to Kansas, Oklahoma, or even to Africa

o Bishop Henry Turner formed the International Migration Society to help American blacks emigrate to Africa

o Ida B Wells devoted her efforts to campaigning against lynching and the Jim Crow laws

o Booker T. Washington established an industrial and agricultural school at Tuskegee, Alabama

o Washington argued that blacks should get the same skills and opportunities as whites

o He organized the National Negro Business League, which established the country to support businesses owned and operated by African Americans

o W.E. DuBois would demand an end to segregation and the granting of equal civil rights to all Americans

o Northern and western farmers concentrated on growing single cash crops for both national and international markets

o As consumers farmers began to land their food from the stores in town and their manufactured goods from the mail order catalogs

o As producers, farmers became more dependent on large and expensive machines

o Small, marginal farms could not compete, and, in many cases, were driven out of the business

o The static money supply in the US had a deflationary impact on prices

o AS prices fell farmers needed to grow 2 or 3 times as much to pay off old debts

o Industrial corporations were able to keep prices high on manufactured goods by forming monopolistic trusts

o Railroads, warehouses, and elevators took what little profit remained by charging high or discriminatory rates for the shipment and storage of grain

o Taxes seemed unfair to farmers because they did not tax stocks and bonds

o The National Grange Movement of Husbandry was organized by Oliver H. Kelley as a social and educational organization for farmers and their families

o Greatest strength was in the region formerly known as the Old Northwest, now more commonly called the Midwest

o Grangers in every part of the country established cooperatives…businesses owned and run by farmers to save the costs charged by middlemen

o Storage fees assessed by grain elevators and freight rates charged by railroads became the next targets

o With the help from local businesses, they successfully lobbied their state legislatures to pass laws regulating the rates charged by railroads and elevators

o Munn v. Illinois – the Supreme Court upheld the right of a state to regulate business of a public nature, such as railroads

o The Supreme Court ruled in Wabash v. Illinois – individual states could not regulated interstate commerce…the court’s decision nullified many of the state regulations set by Grangers

o The Interstate Commerce Act of 1886 required railroad rates to be “reasonable and just”

o Set up the first regulatory agency, the Interstate Commerce Commission to investigate and prosecute pools, rebates, and other discriminatory acts

o Were formed to serve farmers’ needs for education in the latest scientific methods as well as for organized economic and political action

o Unlike the Grange, the alliance movement had serious potential for turning into an independent political party on a national level

o National organization of farmer met in Ocala, Florida to address the problems of rural America

? A new banking system regulated by the federal government

o Demanded the Treasury notes and silver be used to increase the amount of money in circulation…which would hopefully create inflation and raise crop prices

o Federal storage for farmers’ crops and federal loans which would free farmers from dependency on middlemen and creditors

• By 1900, the US was the leading industrial power in the world, beating out Britain, France, and Germany

o Its vast resources including raw materials essential to industrialization – coal, iron, ore, copper, lead, timber + oil

o An abundant labor supply, supplemented yearly by the arrival of hundreds of thousands of immigrants

o A growing population, combined with an advanced transportation network

o The development of laborsaving technologies increased productivity

o Businesses benefited from friendly government policies that protected private property, subsidized railroads with land grants and loans, supported US manufacturers with protective tariffs, and refrained from either regulating business operations or heavily taxing corporate profits

o After the Civil War, railroad mileage increased more than fivefold in a 35-year period

o Had the greatest impact on American economic life than all other technological innovations

o Materials used in building railroads aided the growth of other industries – coal and steel

o The American Railroad Association divided the country into four time zones and created a standard time for all Americans

o Created the modern stockholder corporation and finance system in tact today

o In the early decades of railroading there were lots of small companies with problems

o After the Civil War there was a consolidation of competing railroads into integrated trunk lines

o “”Commodore” Cornelius Vanderbilt used his millions from a steamboat business to merge local railroads into the New York Central Railroad

o Railroads promoted the development of the trans-Mississippi West by:

? Linking the West with the East (creating a national market)

o Government provided railroads with huge subsidies in the form of loans and land grants

o Land was given in alternative mile-square sections in a checkerboard pattern along the proposed route of the railroad

o It was hoped that the completed railroad would increase both the value of government lands and provide preferred rates for carrying the mails and transporting troops

o The Negative consequences to land grants and cash loans were:

? Led to widespread corruption in all levels of government

o Protests began when citizens discovered that the railroads controlled half o the land in some western states

o Government authorized the building of a railroad to tie California to the rest of the Union

o The Union Pacific was to build westward across the Great Plains starting form Omaha, Nebraska

o The Central Pacific took on the formidable challenge of laying track across the mountain passes in the Sierras by pushing eastward from Sacramento, California

o General Grenville Dodge directed construction of the Union Pacific using thousands of war veterans and Irish immigrants

o Before 1900, 4 other transcontinental railroads were constructed

? The Southern Pacific (1883) tied New Orleans to Los Angeles

? Northern Pacific (1883) tied Duluth, Minnesota with Seattle, Washington

? Fourth one completed in 1893 tied St. Paul, Minnesota and Seattle

o The building of too many railroads led to many unprofitable companies

? Frequently suffered from mismanagement and outright fraud

o Jay Gould and other speculators sold off assets and watering stock which led to the inflation of the value of a corporation’s assets

o Railroads offered rebates and kickbacks to favored shippers while charging large freight rates to smaller customers

o Railroads also formed pools that agreed to fix rates and share traffic to increase profits

o J. Pierpont Morgan and other bankers moved to take control of the bankrupt railroads and consolidate

o A negative side was that the system was controlled by men who controlled the boards of competing railroad corporations

? Railroad service was now provided by regional monopolies

o Public, local communities, states, and the federal government invested in the development of railroad

o Early attempts to regulate railroads did little good because the Granger laws were overturned in courts

o Henry Bessemer (England) and William Kelly (US) discovered that blasting air through molten iron produces high-quality steel

o The Great Lakes region, including Minnesota’s Mesabi Range, emerged as the leading steel producer

o Worked his way from being a poor Scottish immigrant to becoming the superintendent of a Pennsylvania railroad

o Carnegie employed vertical integration (company would control every stage of the industrial process)

o Carnegie sold his company for over $400 million to a new steel combination headed by J.P. Morgan

o First billion-dollar company that was the largest enterprise in the world

o The first US oil well was drilled by Edwin Drake in Pennsylvania

o Rockefeller took charged of the oil refinery business by applying the latest technologies and practices

o He got rebates from railroad companies and temporarily cut prices for Standard Oil to force rival companies to sell out and buy them

o Standard Oil had a horizontal integration of an industry and had a board of trustees

o The Standard Oil monopoly was able to keep prices low for consumers by eliminating waste

o Middleclass citizens feared the trusts’ unchecked power

o Reformers moved Congress to pass the Sherman Antitrust Act prohibited any contract, combination, in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy in restraint of trade or commerce

o In United States vs. Knight Co., the Supreme Court ruled that the Sherman Antitrust Act applied only to commerce, not to manufacturing

o Adam Smith argued in The Wealth of Nations that business should be regulated by the law of supply and demand

o In theory, if government laid their hands off controlling businesses, corporations would offer improved goods and services at low prices

o Herbert Spencer agreed with Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection and survival of the fittest for the marketplace

? Concluded money in the hands of the fit was a benefit to all humans

o Professor William Graham Sumner believed that by helping the poor we were going against nature

o In the lecture “”Acres of Diamonds”, Reverend Conwell preached that everyone had a duty to become rich

o Andrew Carnegie argued that the wealthy had a God-given responsibility to carry out projects of civil philanthropy and gave money to the building of institutions

? Made it possible to send messages across the seas in an instant’s time

o After creating a machine for recording votes, Thomas Edison established a laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey

o Introduced the world to teams rather than individuals working together to create inventions

o Edison’s lab produced over a thousand patented inventions incuding:

o George Westinghouse held more than 400 patents and developed an air brake for railroads and a transformer for producing high-voltage alternating current

? The second one led to the operation of electric streetcars, subways, machinery…

o R.H. Macy and Marshall Field made the large department store the place to shop

o Frank Woolworth’s Five and Ten Cent Store brought nationwide chain stores

o Two mail order companies – Sears, and Roebuck and Montgomery Ward used the railroads

o Packaged food items went under the names Kellogg and Post

o Refrigerating railroad cars and canning enabled Gustavus Swift to change the eating habits of American by provided mass-produced meat and veggies

o By the 1890’s, the richest 10% of Americans controlled 9/10’s of the nation’s wealth

o The Vanderbilts had summer homes that rivaled the villas of European royalty

o Alger wrote books about a young man of modest means who became rich and successful through honesty, hard work, and a little luck

o The typical wealthy businessperson of the day was a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant male who came from an upper or middle-class background and whose father was in business or banking

o The growth of corporations called for the labor of thousands of white-collar workers (salaried works whose jobs usually didn’t include manual labor)

o Industrialization created jobs for accountants, clerical workers, and salespersons

o These middle-class workers increased the demand from professionals (doctors, lawyers), public employees, and storekeepers

o The increase in the number of good-paying jobs after the Civil War increased the income of the middle class

o By 1900, 2/3 of Americans were wage workers who were at jobs that required them to work 10 hours a day, 6 days a week

o David Ricardo argued that raising wages arbitrarily would increase the working population, and the availability of more workers would in turn cause wages to fall, thus creating a cycle of misery and starvation

o Real wages (income adjusted for inflation) rose during the 19th century

o Factory work for women was usually limited to the textile, garment, and food-processing industries

o As the demand for clerical workers increased, women moved into previous male positions (secretaries, bookkeepers, typists, telephone operators)

o In many industries, such as railroads and mining, working conditions were dangerous

o Many workers were exposed to chemicals and pollutants that were later learned to lead to early death

o Industrial workers changed jobs on average every 3 years

o Absenteeism and quitting were the most common forms of protest against intolerable work conditions

o 20% of those who worked in factories dropped out rather than continued … much more than joined labor unions

o Strikers could be easily replaced by brining in strikebreakers or scabs – unemployed desperates

? The lockout: closing the factory to break a labor movement before it was organized

? Blacklists: names of prounion workers circulated among employers

? Yellow-dog contracts: workers being told, as a condition for employment, they must sign an agreement not to join a union

? Calling in private guards and state militia to put down strikes

o If violence developed, employers could almost always count on the government for support

o Railroad companies cut wages in order to reduce costs during a depression

o A strike spread across 11 states and shut down 2/3 of the country’s rail trackage

o President Hayes used federal troops to end the labor violence

o Some employers improved wages and working conditions, while others took a hard line by busting workers’ organizations

o Desired higher wages and an 8 hour work day along with a equal rights for women and blacks, monetary reform, and worker cooperatives

o Terence V. Powderly led the union that opened its membership to ALL workers including women and blacks

? Worker cooperatives “” to make each man his own employer”

o Declined rapidly after the violence of the Haymarket riot in Chicago

? 200 anarchists that wanted to overthrow all government

o in response to the May Day movement calling for a general strike to achieve an 8 hour labor day, violence broke out in Chicago’s McCormick Harvester plant

o as police attempted to break up the meeting someone threw a bomb which killed 7 police officers

o 8 anarchist leaders were charged for the crime and 7 were sentenced to death

o many American concluded that the union movement was radical and violent

o Samuel Gompers went after the basics of higher wages and improved working conditions

o Directed to local unions to walk out until the employer agreed to negotiate a new contract

o Henry Clay Frick, the manger of Andrew Carnegie’s Homestead Steel plant cut wages by nearly 20%

o Frick used the lockout, private guards, and strikebreakers to defeat the steelworkers’ walkout

o The failure of the Homestead strike set back the union movement in the steel industry until the New Deal

o Pullman manufactured the famous railroad sleeping cars

o Announced a general cut in wages and fired the leaders in the workers’ delegation that came to bargain with him

o The workers appealed for help from the American Railroad Union

o Eugene B. Debs, leader of the association, directed railroad workers not to handle any trains with Pullman cars

o Grover Cleveland then said for the union to stop their strike, however, they did not and Debs and other union leaders were arrested and jailed

o In the case of In re Debs, the Supreme Court gave employers a powerful tool to break up unions

o Debs concluded that more radical solutions needed to cure labor’s problems

o By 1900, only 3% of American workers belonged to unions

o In 1893 Chicago, the White City, hosted the World’s Columbian Exposition

o 12 million people went to see the progress Americans had made through new industrial technologies and architects’ grand visions of an ideal urban environment

o In less than half a century, Chicago’s population grew to over one million

o Central business district – modern urban structures (skyscrapers, department stores, and theaters)

o Outside was the worker’s housing for the city’s factories and warehouses

o Behind that were tree-lined suburban retreats for the wealthier class

o Chicago was also a “gray city” because of its pollution, poverty, crime, and vice

o More than ¾ of Chicago were either foreign-born or the children of them

o In the last half of the 19th century the population increased more than threefold

o 16.2 million immigrants arrived in the US between those years

• Poverty of displaced farm workers driven from land because of machinery

• Overcrowding and joblessness in European cities because of population boom

o Forces that were attracting immigrants to the US were:

• The US’s reputation for political and religious freedom

• Economic opportunities afforded by the settling of the Great Plains

o Large steamships and relatively inexpensive passage made it possible for millions to emigrate

o Through the 1880’s the majority of immigrants came from northern and western Europe:

o They were mostly Protestants, although a small minority were Irish and German Catholics

o Beginning in the 1890’s, the “new” immigrants came from southern and eastern Europe

o They were Italians, Greeks, Croats, Slovaks, Poles, and Russians

• Many poor and illiterate peasants who had left autocratic nations and now lived in a country with democracy

o Mostly Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, and Jewish

o Most new immigrants crowded into poor ethnic neighborhoods

• Young men contracted for unskilled factory, mining, and construction jobs, who would return back to their native lands once they had saved a fair sum to bring to their families

o In the 1870’s, when Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi began working on the Statue of Liberty there were few legal restrictions on immigration

o By 1886 Congress passed a number of new laws restricting immigration. They include:

• Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 – placed a ban on all immigrants from China

• Restrictions on the immigration of “undesirable” (aka criminals or mentally incompetent individuals)

• 1885 – law prohibited contract laborers to protect American workers

o Ellis Island was opened as an immigration center in 1892

• New arrivals had to pass rigorous medical and document examinations and pay an entry tax before entering the US

• Labor unions (feared employers would use immigrants to depress wages and stop strikes)

• Nativists society called the American Protective Association

• Social Darwinists who viewed the new immigrants as biologically inferior to English and Germanic stocks

o At the turn of the century almost 15% of the population were immigrants

o 1920’s – Quota Acts almost closed Liberty’s golden door

o Cities provided for a central supply of labor for factories and a principal market for factorymade goods

o By 1900 almost 40% of Americans lived in towns or cities…changing to urban setting

o People moving into cities included immigrants and native-born Americans

o In the late 19th century, millions of young Americans (including African Americans from the South) decided to seek economic opportunities in the cities

o People began living in residences miles away from their jobs, using horse-drawn streetcars

o By the 1890’s, most horse-drawn cars and cable cars were replaced by electric trolleys, elevated railroads, and subways

o The building of massive steel suspension bridges (Brooklyn Bridge) made possible longer commutes

o Mass transportation had the effect of segregating urban workers by income

• Upper and middle class moved to streetcar suburbs to escape pollution, poverty, and crime of the city

o In 1885, William Le Baron Jenny built the 10-story Home Insurance Company Building in Chicago…the first true skyscraper with a steel skeleton

o Structures of this size were made possible by inventions such as the :

• Central steam-heating system with radiators in every room

o To increase their profits, landlords divided up their inner-city housing into small, windowless rooms

o New York City passed a law in 1879 that required each bedroom to have a window

o The landlords reacted by building the so-called dumbbell tenements

• Ventilation shafts in the center of the building to provide windows for each room

o Overcrowding and filth spread deadly diseases, such as cholera, typhoid, and tuberculosis

o In crowded tenement quarters, different immigrant groups created distinct ethnic neighborhoods where each group could maintain its own language, culture, church or temple, and social club

• Many groups supported their own newspaper and schools

o In Europe the wealthiest people live near the business districts of modern cities, the opposite of the US standards

o During the 19th century, upper and middle class citizens decided to move out to the suburbs to escape the problems of the cities

• Low-cost construction methods such as the wooden, balloon-frame house

• An American fondness for grass, privacy, and detached individual houses

o In the late 1860’s, the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead designed a suburban community with graceful curved roads and open spaces

o At first, residents tried to carry on life in large cities like they had in small villages

o However, this led to a build up of waste, pollution, disease, crime and other hazards because of a lack of public services from municipal governments

o Slowly advocates convinced citizens and city governments of the need for water purification, sewerage systems, waste disposal, street lighting, police departments, and zoning laws

o Political parties in major cities came under the control of tightly organized groups of politicians, known as political machines

• Boss – the top politician who gave orders to the rank and file and doled out government jobs to loyal supporters

o Tammany Hall in New York City, a political machine, started social clubs and later developed power centers to coordinate the needs of businesses, immigrants, and the underprivileged

o Political machines brought modern services to the city including a crude form of welfare for immigrant

o Would find jobs and apartments for recently arrived immigrants and show up at a poor family’s door with baskets of food during the hard times

o Political machines often stole millions from taxpayers in the form of graft and fraud

o Henry George published a provocative book that jolted readers to look more critically at the effects of laissez-faire economics (Progress and Poverty)

• His book proposed placing a single tax on land as the solution to poverty

o He succeeded in calling attention to the alarming inequalities in wealth caused by industrialization

o Edward Bellamy (Looking Backword) envisioned a future era in which a cooperative society had eliminated poverty, greed, and crime

o Both books encouraged a shift in American public opinion away from pure laissez-faire and toward greater government regulation

o A number of young, idealistic, and well-educated women and men of the middle class settled into immigrant neighborhoods to learn about the problems of immigrant families at first hand

o They lived and worked in places called settlement homes

o Hoped to relieve the effects of poverty by providing social services for people in the neighborhood

o Hull House in Chicago (started by Jane Adams) taught English to immigrants, pioneered childhood education, taught industrial arts, and established neighborhood theaters and music schools

o Settlement workers would provide the foundation in a later era for the professional social worker

o Crusaded for child-labor laws, housing reform, and women’s rights

o Frances Perkins and Harry Hopkins went on to leadership roles in President Roosevelt’s reform program, the New Deal in the 1950’s

o A number of Protestant clergymen preached the Social Gospel – the importance of applying Christian principles to social problems

o Walter Raushenbusch worked in NYC’s Hell’s Kitchen and wrote several books urging organized religions to take up the cause of social justice

o Encouraged many middle-class Protestants to attack urban problems

o Roman Catholics gained enormous amounts from the influx of new immigrants

o Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore inspired the devoted support of old and new immigrants alike by defending the Knights of Labor and the cause of organized labor

o Dwight Moody (Protestant) and his Moody Bible Institute would help generations of urban evangelists to adapt traditional Christianity to city life

o The Salvation Army, imported from England, provided the basic necessities for the homeless and poor while also preaching the Christian Gospel

o Mary Baker Eddy was supported by the urban middle class who taught that good health was the result of correct thinking about “Father Mother God”

o Thousands joined her church -the Church of Christ, Scientist --- popularly known as Christian Science

o Urban life isolated families from the extended family and village support

o Divorce rates incread to 1 in 12 marriages by 1900 partly because a number of state legislatures had expanded the grounds for divorce to include cruelty and desertion

o a reduction of family size also occurred (children were valuable on farms)

o Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony helped found the Nation American Women’s Suffrage Association to secure the vote for women

o Wyoming was the first state to grant full suffrage to women

o By 1900 some states allowed women to vote in local elections, and most allowed women to own and control property after marriage

o Women were convinced that excessive drinking of alcohol by male factory workers was a principal cause of poverty for immigrant and working-class families

o The Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) advocated complete abstinence from alcohol

o Led by Frances E. Willard, had over 500,000 members by 1898

o The Antisaloon League became a powerful political force and by 1916 had persuaded 21 states to close down all saloons and bars

o Carry A. Nation of Kansas, created a sensation by raiding saloons and smashing barrels of beer with a hatchet

o Anthony Comstock formed the Society for the Suppression of Vice to watch American morals

o Persuaded Congress to pass the “Comstock Law” which prohibited the mailing or transportation of obscene and lewd material and photographs

o Elementary schools after 1865 taught the 3 R’s (reading, writing, and arithmetic) and traditional values

o New compulsory laws drastically increased the number of children enrolled in public schools

o AS a result the literacy rate rose to 90% of the population by 1900

o The practice of sending children to kindergarten (from Germany) became popular

• At first they followed the college preparatory curriculum of private academies

• Soon the public high schools became more comprehensive and began to emphasize vocational and citizenship education for a changing urban society

o Number of US colleges increased in the late 1800’s because of:

• Land grant colleges established under the Morrill Act of 1862

• Universities founded by wealthy philanthropists – The University of Chicago (Rockefeller)

• The founding of new colleges for women, such as Smith, Bryn Mawr, and Mount Holyoke

o By 1900, over 100 coeducational colleges had been founded

o Charles W. Eliot reduced the number of required courses and introduced electives to accommodate the teaching of modern languages and sciences: physics, chemistry, biology, and geology

o The US produced its first generation of scholars who could compete with the intellectual achievements of Europeans

o At the same time some college life got tied over by social activities, fraternities, and intercollegiate sports

o Richard T. Ely of John Hopkins attacked laissez-faire economic thought as dogmatic and outdated and used economics to study labor unions, trusts, and other existing economic institutions

o Evolutionary theory influenced Lester F. Ward (sociologist), Woodrow Wilson (political scientist), and Frederick Jackson Turner (historian) to study the dynamic process of actual human behavior

o Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. taught that the law should evolve with the times in response to changing needs and not remain restricted by legal precedents and judicial decisions of the past

o Clarence Darrow, argued that criminal behavior could be caused by a person’s environment of poverty, neglect, and abuse

o W.E.B. Du Bois was the first African American to receive a doctorate from Harvard

• Used statistical methods of sociology to study crime in urban neighborhoods

o He advocated full equal rights for blacks, integrated schools, and equal access to higher education for the “talented tenth” of African American youth

o Romantic novels that depicted ideal heroes and heroines

o The first break with this tradition came with regionalist writers like Bret Harte who depicted life in the rough mining camps of the West

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn revealed the greed, violence, and racism in American society

o William Dean Howells considered the problems of industrialization and unequal wealth in his novels The Rise of Silas Lapham and A Hazard of New Fortunes

o A generation of authors in the 1890’s became known for their naturalism, which described how emotions and experience shaped human experience