Baltimore Polytechnic Institute
February 8, 2012
A.P. U.S. History
Mr. Green
Objectives: Students will:
Describe the rise of the American industrial city, and place it in the
context of worldwide trends of urbanization and mass migration (the
European diaspora).
Describe the New Immigration, and explain how it differed from the
Old Immigration and why it aroused opposition from many native-born
Americans.
Discuss the efforts of social reformers and churches to aid the New
Immigrants and alleviate urban problems, and the immigrants’ own
efforts to sustain their traditions while assimilating to mainstream
America.
AP Focus
Industrialization sparks urbanization, and cities become magnets
for immigrants. Those who can afford to leave behind the hustle and
bustle of urban life move to the budding suburbs. See the table in The
American Pageant (13th ed., p. 560/14th ed., p. 598). Demographic
Changes is an AP theme.
The late nineteenth century sees a surge of immigration, now from
eastern and southern Europe. Most encounter living and working
conditions not appreciably better than what they had left. The tenement
floor plan (13th ed., p. 561/14th ed., p. 599) shows typical living
conditions for impoverished urban workers.
CHAPTER THEMES
In the late nineteenth century,
American society was increasingly dominated
by large urban centers. Explosive urban
growth was accompanied by often disturbing
changes, including the New Immigration,
crowded slums, new religious outlooks, and
conflicts over culture and values. While many
Americans were disturbed by the new urban
problems, cities also offered opportunities to
women and expanded cultural horizons.
Focus Questions Chapter 25-Due Today
Hand-in Now!!!!!
Growth of the public library
Carnegie contributed $60 million for 1,700 libraries
By 1900-9,000 free circulating libraries in U.S.
Causes for demand in literature
Linotype
Sensationalism
sex, scandal human-interest stories
Yellow Journalism
William Randolph Hearst
Joseph Pulitzer
Henry George
single-tax idea
100% tax on windfall profits from selling
property
Edward Bellamy
“Looking Backward”
Main character wakes up in the year 2000
to see America a socialist state
“Dime novels” or paperbacks
virtue triumphed
General Lewis Wallace
Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ
anti-Darwinist crowd
Horatio Alger
juvenile fiction
survival of the purest
non-drinkers, non-smokers, nonswearers
Walt Whitman
“O Captain! My Captain!”
Emily Dickinson
published after her death
Samuel Langhorne
Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Stephen Crane
“Red Badge of Courage”
Charles Francis Adams
History of the US. During the Admin of Jefferson and
Madison
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Charles W. Chesnutt
realism
black dialect
“Sister Carrie”
Anthony Comstock
“Comstock Law”
sexual purity-confiscated “obscene
pictures, items used for abortions
Increases in divorce rates
Women had a sense of a new morality as a
result of working women’s independence
Emotionally isolated places
increase divorce rate
work habits
family size
National American Woman Suffrage Association
Linked suffrage to traditional definition of
women’s roles
Most states by 1890 permitted wives to
own/control property after marriage
Excluded African-Americans
Increase in liquor consumption after the Civil
War
immigrants accustomed to the Old
Country
Women’s Christian Temperance Union
Frances E. Willard
Carrie Nation
Anti-Saloon league
American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Animals
Red Cross-1881
Vaudeville
Minstrel shows
Circus
Baseball
Basketball
Football
Boxing
Croquet
condemned for showing female ankles and
flirtation
Safety Bicycle
1. What new opportunities and social problems
did the cities create for Americans?
2. In what ways was American urbanization
simply part of a worldwide trend, and in what
ways did it reflect particular American
circumstances? How did the influx of millions of
mostly European immigrants create a special
dimension to America’s urban problems?
3. How did the New Immigration differ from the
Old Immigration, and how did Americans
respond to it?
4. How was American religion affected by the
urban transformation, the New Immigration, and
cultural and intellectual changes?
6. How did American social criticism, fiction writing, and art
all reflect and address the urban industrial changes of the
late nineteenth century? Which social critics and novelists
were most influential, and why?
7. How and why did women assume a larger place in
American society at this time? (Compare their status in this
period with that of the pre–Civil War period described in
Chapter 16.) How were changes in their condition related
to changes in both the family and the larger social order?
8.What was the greatest single cultural transformation of the
Gilded Age?
9.In what ways did Americans positively and enthusiastically
embrace the new possibilities of urban life, and in what
ways did their outlooks and actions reflect worries about
the threats that cities presented to traditional American
democracy and social ideals?
Begin Reading first ½ of Chapter 26
Chapter 25 Focus Questions Due on Monday.
No late assignments will be accepted.
