CHAPTER
16
Life at the Turn of the Century
Overview
Time Lines
SECTION
1 Science and Urban Life
SECTION
2 Education and Culture
SECTION
3 Segregation and Discrimination
SECTION
4 Dawn of Mass Culture
Chapter Assessment
Transparencies
CHAPTER
16
Life at the Turn of the Century
“Every nation should be judged by the best it
has been able to produce, not by the worst.”
James Weldon Johnson, lawyer and writer
THEMES IN CHAPTER 16
Science and Technology
Immigration and Migration
Civil Rights
Women in America
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CHAPTER
16
Life at the Turn of the Century
“Every nation should be judged by the best it
has been able to produce, not by the worst.”
James Weldon Johnson, lawyer and writer
What do you know?
• What do you already know about American
life a hundred years ago? How did Americans
work and play? What new inventions were
changing people’s ways of life?
Read the quote above and answer the following:
• Do you agree with the quotation? Why or why
not?
• If you applied the quotation to America today,
what would you offer as the best or worst?
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CHAPTER
16
Time Line
The United States
1879 F.W. Woolworth opens his “five-and-ten-cent”
store.
1883 Construction of the Brooklyn Bridge is
completed.
1884 Mark Twain publishes The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn.
1891 Ida B. Wells crusades against lynching.
James Naismith invents basketball.
1903 The Wright Brothers successfully
complete the first airplane flight.
W.E.B. Du Bois publishes The Souls of
Black Folk.
1915 D.W. Griffith’s epic film, The Birth of a Nation,
is released.
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CHAPTER
16
Time Line
The World
1882 Triple Alliance between Italy, Austria-Hungary,
and Germany is formed.
1884 A 14-nation conference on the division of
Africa is held in Berlin.
1894 The African nation of Uganda becomes
a British protectorate.
1900 German psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud
publishes The Interpretation of Dreams.
1904 Russo-Japanese War breaks out.
1910 Japan annexes Korea.
1914 World War I begins in Europe.
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SECTION
1
Science and Urban Life
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Learn About
developments in architecture, transportation, and
communication.
To Understand
how technological changes at the turn of the century
affected American cities.
SECTION
1
Science and Urban Life
Key Idea
Advances in science and technology address
urban problems, including lack of space and
inadequate systems of transportation and
communication.
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SECTION
1
Science and Urban Life
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Section 1 Assessment
SUMMARIZING
What are three examples of urban changes for each of the
following topics?
Suspension bridges
City Design
Skyscrapers
Urban planning
Street cars
Urban Transportation
Commuter trains
Subways
Web-perfecting press
Communications
Linotype machine
Photography
SECTION
1
Science and Urban Life
Section 1 Assessment
FORMING OPINIONS
Which development in science and technology described in
this section had the greatest impact on American culture?
THINK ABOUT
• short-term and long-term effects of each development
• how each development affected the attitudes and lives of
people at the time
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SECTION
1
Science and Urban Life
Section 1 Assessment
SYNTHESIZING
If you had been an urban planner at the turn of the century,
what new ideas would you have included in your plan for the
ideal city?
THINK ABOUT
• Olmsted’s plans for Central Park and the Fenway in
Boston
• Burnham’s ideas for Chicago
• the concept of the garden city
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SECTION
2
Education and Culture
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Learn About
changes in education and the promotion of high
culture.
To Understand
how these developments affected America’s changing
identity.
SECTION
2
Education and Culture
Key Idea
The impulses of moral uplift and economic
necessity spur changes in education, a rise
in national literacy, and the promotion of
high culture.
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SECTION
2
Education and Culture
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Section 2 Assessment
SUMMARIZING
What were some major educational developments from the
turn of the century and what were their results?
DEVELOPMENT
RESULT
Compulsory education laws
Literacy increased.
Increase in the number of
kindergartens
Immigrants became
“Americanized.”
Growth of high schools
College enrollments increased.
Discrimination against African
Americans
All-black colleges founded.
New curricula
Led to advances in science and
medicine.
SECTION
2
Education and Culture
Section 2 Assessment
DEVELOPING HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Compare the impact of museums, libraries, and other cultural
institutions on early-20th-century society with their impact
on today’s society.
THINK ABOUT
• the audience museums and libraries reached then and now
• the role of museums and libraries in modern mass culture
then and now
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SECTION
2
Education and Culture
Section 2 Assessment
HYPOTHESIZING
How might the economy and culture of the United States
have been different without the expansion of public schools?
THINK ABOUT
• the goals of public schools and whether those goals have
been met
• why people supported expanding public education
• the impact of public schools on the development of private
schools
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SECTION
3
Segregation and Discrimination
Learn About
racial tensions in the late 19th century.
To Understand
the persistence of racial discrimination in America.
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SECTION
3
Segregation and Discrimination
Key Idea
African Americans lead the fight against
institutionalized racism in the form of voting
restrictions and Jim Crow laws.
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SECTION
3
Segregation and Discrimination
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Section 3 Assessment
SUMMARIZING
What people, places, legal issues, and events related to
discrimination at the turn of the century?
Legal Issues
•
•
•
•
•
People
• Ida B. Wells
• Booker T. Washington
• W.E.B. Du Bois
Literacy tests
Poll tax
Jim Crow laws
Segregated schools
Plessy v. Ferguson
RACIAL
DISCRIMINATION
Places
• The Southwest
(Mexican peonage)
• California (the
Chinese)
Events
• Lynchings
• Wells’s anti-lynching
campaign
SECTION
3
Segregation and Discrimination
Section 3 Assessment
3
IDENTIFYING PROBLEMS
Explain how segregation and discrimination affected the
lives of African Americans at the turn of the century.
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SECTION
3
Segregation and Discrimination
Section 3 Assessment
CONTRASTING
How did the challenges and opportunities for Mexicans in
the United States differ from those of African Americans?
THINK ABOUT
• the type of work each group did
• the wages paid to each group
• the effects of government policies on each group
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SECTION
4
Dawn of Mass Culture
Learn About
transformations in leisure activities, shopping, and
advertising.
To Understand
the emergence of modern mass culture.
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SECTION
4
Dawn of Mass Culture
Key Idea
Americans have more time for leisure
activities and a modern mass culture emerges,
especially through newspapers and retail
advertising.
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SECTION
4
Dawn of Mass Culture
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Section 4 Assessment
SUMMARIZING
What are some of the ways that leisure time and shopping
changed as modern mass culture emerged?
Amusement parks
Bicycling
Vaudeville
Movies
Modern mass
culture emerges.
Mail-order catalogs
Department stores
Advertising
Shopping centers
SECTION
4
Dawn of Mass Culture
Section 4 Assessment
SYNTHESIZING
Write an advertisement for one of the leisure activities
described in this section.
THINK ABOUT
• the audience you are trying to appeal to
• the image you want to create
• the place or publication in which your advertisement will
appear
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SECTION
4
Dawn of Mass Culture
Section 4 Assessment
FORMING OPINIONS
Do you think the publication of sensational stories in
newspapers is justified? Why or why not?
THINK ABOUT
• the reasons Hearst and Pulitzer included those stories
• the effect that adding sensational stories had on the
newspapers’ circulation
• the purpose that you believe newspapers should serve
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Chapter
16
Assessment
1. How did new technology promote urban growth around
the turn of the century?
2. In what ways did methods of communication improve
in the late 19th and early 20th centuries?
3. How did public schools change during the late 19th
century?
4. Why did some immigrants oppose sending their
children to public schools around the turn of the
century?
5. How were the paintings of Thomas Eakins and the
literature of Mark Twain similar?
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Chapter
16
Assessment
6. In what ways was racial discrimination supported by
federal government actions and policies?
7. How did Mexicans help make the Southwest prosperous
in the late 19th century?
8. Why did a mass culture develop in the United States in
the late 19th century?
9. What leisure activities flourished at the turn of the
century?
10. What innovations in retail methods changed how
Americans shopped during this time period?
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