Transcript Changes in America at the Turn of the Century

Changes in America at the Turn of
the Century
AP US – Unit 9
Chapter 26.2 (578-596)
The Social Gospel Movement
 Causes:
 The Protestant Church was suffering as it lost
membership and moral clout during urbanization.
 As materialism became the morality of the moment, the
church was losing sway (Trinity Episcopal in NYC actually
owned some of the worst slums in the city)
 Catholic and Jewish faiths were gaining members as
members of their faiths were immigrating rapidly.
The Social Gospel Movement
 This of course led to a new urban religious revival
 Dwight Lyman Moody
 Gospel of kindness and forgiveness
 1870’s-1880’s
 Known as the Social Gospel Movement
 Use the “helping others” part of Christianity to assist
the urban poor and needy
 Feeds into Progressivism
The Social Gospel Movement
 By 1890 there were 150 denominations in America
 including the new Salvation Army and the Church of
Christ, Scientist
 YMCA and YWCA merged exercise and religious
learning in new urban centers
Darwin Disrupts the Churches
 Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859
 Sends shockwaves through American fundamentalist
religion
 Some reconcile evolution with the Bible
 Others hold it as blasphemy and fire those teachers
who teach it and ministers who refer to it
The Lust for Learning
 Tax based public education was growing
 More states made grade-school education
compulsory, which at least helped fight child labor
 Even high schools were being created by states
 Some states were even paying for text books
The Lust for Learning
 Teacher-training schools
increased as well as
kindergartens
 Private Catholic schools also
grew during this time (because
of Catholic immigration)
 These are then attacked by
Nativist groups
 Chautauqua courses and
lecture series also reached out
to the adults of the time
Booker T. Washington and Education
for Blacks
 Washington attacked racism by
attacking economic problems
 He believed that educating the
black communities and helping
them help themselves to better
work would naturally fight against
segregation
Booker T. Washington and Education
for Blacks
 Headed the normal and industrial
school at Tuskegee, Alabama in 1881
 Focused on agriculture and the trades
 George Washington Carver began
teaching there in 1896
W.E.B. Du Bois
 Called Washington “Uncle Tom”
 Born in Massachusetts – exemplified the difference between
Northern and Southern black experiences
 PhD from Harvard
 Believed in complete social and economic equality for the
black - founded the NAACP in 1910
 Was against Washington’s gradualism and demanded that the
“talented tenth” of the black population be given immediate
full access to American life
 Died at 95 as a self-exile in Ghana in 1963
The Hallowed Halls of Ivy
 The Morrill Act of 1862 (continued by the Hatch
Act of 1887) provided land grants to states in
support of higher public education
 Mainly agricultural colleges like Texas A&M and OSU
 Philanthropists (made from the recent millionaires)
also supported new centers of higher learning like
Stanford, Cornell, University of Chicago, and Johns
Hopkins
The Hallowed Halls of Ivy
 This increase in education led to changes in thinking
 Elective system in college
 More medical schools and learning
 Led to the realization that America and Americans
needed better sanitation
 Psychology and philosophy also came to America
 Pragmatism was considered America’s contribution to
philosophy:
 Truth was to be tested by the practical consequences of
an idea; action rather than theory
The Appeal of the Press
 Books continued to be popular both as entertainment
and as education
 The Library of Congress was reorganized in 1897 and
numerous other libraries spread across the country
 Many with the help of Carnegie
The Library of
Congress’ newly built
home was completed
in 1897
The Appeal of the Press
 Linotype, invented in 1885, increased
newspaper production
 Good for news
 Bad in regards to sensationalism and
yellow journalism (news based on
sensationalism)
 Pulitzer
 Hearst
 Also bad because papers and magazines
wrote softer editorials because they were
afraid of offending advertisers
Reform Writers
 Magazines provided more enlightened reading than
newspapers
 Henry George
 Progress and Poverty
 Private ownership of and therefore profit from land is root
of economic disparity
 Edward Bellamy
 Looking Backward
 In 2000 everyone is living in a utopia
 Muckrakers were the Progressive reform writers
Popular Writing at the time still had a
message
 Dime novels
 Wild West
 General Lewis Wallace
 Ben Hur
 Against Darwinism
 Horatio Alger
 Moral stories about
virtue and hard work
 Rags to Riches
 Walt Whitman
 Still around, though
sickly, after working
as a nurse during the
Civil War
 Emily Dickinson
 Not known until her
death in 1886 when
her poetry was
published
 Sidney Lanier
 Marshes of Glynn
Realism
 “American authors now turned increasingly to the coarse
human comedy and drama of the world around them to find
their subjects”
 Mark Twain
 Racism and inequities of the time
 Stephen Crane
 The Red Badge of Courage
 Henry James
 Feminist movement
 Jack London
 Call of theWild
Mark Twain 1871
New Morality
 Woodhull and Claflin’sWeekly
 Magazine by two sisters who believed in free love
 Attacked by crusader Anthony Comstock
 Comstock law of 1873
 No sale or shipping of obscene or lewd materials
o Somehow applied to contraception
o And info about abortion
 The “New Morality” was reflected in rising divorce rates,
increase in use of birth control and the discussion of sexual
topics
Families and Women in the City
 Depending on families for social needs in the new and
“alone” urban environment put too much strain on some
families
 Increase in divorce rate
 Urban life created changes in work habits and family
lives
 Dad, mom, and kids worked
 Marriages later
 Smaller families
Families and Women in the City
 New demands by feminists
 Charlotte Perkins Gilman
 Women and Economics
 Women should be productive in the economy
 Centralized nurseries and kitchens were necessary
to help women with that
 Interesting because America still does not have
nationalized daycare…
Women’s Suffrage
 NAWSA formed in 1890
 Segregated
 Ida B. Wells fought for black women’s rights
 Formed the National Association of Colored Women
in 1896
 Changed movement to suggest that voting would better
help women to carry out their housewife duties
 Some reformers believed that morality,
not economics, was at the root of urban
problems. Many of these people felt that
alcohol was at the heart of these moral
issues.
 Therefore, these reformers worked for
Prohibition, or the legal banning of
alcohol.
 In 1869 the National Prohibition Party,
the Women’s Christian Temperance
Union in1874, and the Anti-Saloon
League in 1893 were founded to
crusade for prohibition.
Prohibition
Prohibition
 Members of the group would enter
saloons, scold customers, pray, and
Carrie Nation even destroyed
bottles of liquor with her hatchet.
 In 1920, the eighteenth
amendment was passed; it made
the transportation, manufacture, or
sale of alcohol illegal in the U.S.
Carrie Nation with her
hatchet
Anti-Alcohol Cartoon
Prohibition
 While prohibitionists finally
got their wish, crime grew
worse during prohibition
and the eighteenth
amendment was repealed in
1933 by the twenty-first
amendment.
Bootleggers with their alcohol
Reform
 Other Reform groups were also
founded at this time:
 The American Red Cross created
by Clara Barton in 1881
 The Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals created in
1866
Clara Barton c. 1866
Artistic Triumphs
 Painting still focused on
portraits, but finally began to
develop further during this
period
 Winslow Homer and the
ocean
 Many American artists stayed
in Europe
 Music improved as symphony
orchestras in Boston, Chicago,
and the Opera in New York
gained popularity and talent
Winslow Homer, The Gulf Stream
1899
Artistic Triumphs
 Homegrown American music came out of the African
American musical traditions in the south – blues and
ragtime would soon become jazz in the 1920’s
 Jazz is the first truly American music
 Phonograph allowed people to listen to recorded
music in their homes
The Business of Amusement
 More time to play
 Vaudeville, Minstrel Shows (now performed by actual
African Americans), and true theater flourished
 Circus and P.T. Barnum and James A. Bailey
 Wild West Shows with Buffalo Bill Cody
 Baseball and other spectator sports took off
 Football gained popularity and basketball was invented in
1891
 Croquet and the bicycle swept the nation at the turn of
the century