Chapter 25
America Moves to the
City, 1865 – 1900
The Urban Frontier
• 1890 – New York, Chicago, and
Philadelphia reached a population
greater than 1 million
• Louis Sullivan and the skyscraper
• City limits extended outward by
electric trolleys
• People attracted to the cities by
amenities such as electricity,
indoor plumbing, and telephones
• The New Immigrants of
the 1880s
• Southern and
Eastern Europe
• Americans feared
that the New
Immigrants would not
assimilate
• The United States
– melting pot or a
dumping ground
Southern Europe Uprooted
• "America fever"
• The United States – the
land of great opportunities
• Population of Europe
nearly doubled in the 19th
century
• Prosecution of minorities
Reactions to the New Immigration
• Federal government did nothing to
ease the assimilation of immigrants
• Jane Addams established the Hull
House
• Hull House offered instruction in
English
• Counseling to help immigrants deal
with American big-city life
• Childcare services for working
mothers
• Cultural activities for neighborhood
residents
• 1893 – Lillian Wald established Henry Street Settlement
in New York
• Settlement houses became centers of women's activism
and social reform
• Florence Kelley was a lifelong battler for the welfare of
women, children, blacks, and consumers.
Narrowing the Welcome Mat
• 1880s – Anti-foreignism arose with intensity
• Nativists feared that the original Anglo-Saxon
population would soon be outnumbered and outvoted
• 1887 – the American Protective Association (APA)
• Against Roman Catholic candidates for office
• Organized labor showed negative attitude towards
immigrants
• 1882 – Congress passed the first restrictive law against
immigrants
• Forced paupers, criminals, and convicts back to their
home countries
• 1882 – the Chinese Exclusion Act
Darwin Disrupts the Churches
• 1859 – Charles Darwin’s On
the Origin of the Species
• Humans had slowly
evolved from lower forms
of life
• Theory of evolution cast
serious doubt on the idea
of religion
• Conservatives versus
Modernists
The Lust for Learning
• Public education gathered
strength
• The New Immigration brought
new strength to the private
Catholic schools
• Public schools excluded
millions of adults
Booker T. Washington and Education for
Black People
• Booker T. Washington –
champion of black education
• Taught at the Tuskegee
Institute
• Favored tan self-help
approach
• “Accommodationist"
• George Washington Carver
• Famous agricultural
chemist
• W.E.B. Du Bois
• Favored racial equality
• Helped form the NAACP in
1910
The Hallowed Halls of Ivy
• Morrill Act of 1862
• Provided a generous grant of the public lands to the states for
support of education
• Hatch Act of 1887
• Federal funds for the establishment of agricultural experiment
stations
• Johns Hopkins University, 1876
• Maintained the nation's first high-grade graduate school
The March of the Mind
• New scientific gains
• Increase in public health
• William James made a
large impact in psychology
The Appeal of the Press
• 1897 – the founding of the Library of Congress from the
donations of Andrew Carnegie
• 1885 – the invention of the Linotype increased the
production of texts
• Joseph Pulitzer – a leader
in sensationalism
• William Randolph Hearst
builds a chain of
newspapers
• 1887 – beginning with
the San Francisco
Examiner
Postwar Writing
• Emergence of “Dime novels“
• General Lewis Wallace
• Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ
• Horatio Alger
• Wrote a 100 volumes of
juvenile fiction
Literary Landmarks
• 1899 – feminist Kate
Chopin wrote The
Awakening
• Mark Twain
• Journalist, humorist,
satirist, and opponent of
social injustice
• Stephen Crane
• Wrote about the unpleasant
side of life in urban, industrial
America
• Jack London
• Famous nature writer who
turned to depicting a possible
fascistic revolution in The Iron
Heel
• Paul Laurence Dunbar
• Black writer, who embraced the
use of black dialect and folklore
to capture southern black
culture
The New Morality
• 1872 – Victoria Woodhull wrote
the periodical, Woodhull and
Clafin's Weekly
• Proclaimed her belief in free
love
• Anthony Comstock fights the
immoral
• Comstock Law censored
"immoral" material
Families and Women in the City
• Urban life reduced the number
of children
• Women become more
independent
• Feminist Charlotte Perkins
Gilman called upon women
to abandon their dependent
status
• 1890 – the National American
Woman Suffrage Association
was founded
• Ida B. Wells helped to launch
the black women's club
movement
• Led to establishment of
the National Association of
Colored Women in 1896
Prohibition of Alcohol and Social Progress
• Liquor consumption had increased during the Civil War
• Prohibition Supporters
• 1869 – the National Prohibition Party was formed
• 1874 – the Woman's Christian Temperance Union
was formed
• The Anti-Saloon League
• 1919 – the national
prohibition amendment
was passed
Artistic Triumphs
• Music and portrait
painting gain popularity
• The phonograph,
invented by Thomas
Edison
• Enabled the
reproduction of music
The Business of Amusement
• The circus emerged in the
1880s
• 1870s – Baseball emerges
as the national pastime
• Professional league was
formed
• 1891 – Basketball was
invented by James
Naismith