Chapter+19+Reading+Objectives+and+Notes

= Learning Objectives = After mastering this chapter, you should be able to:
 * 1) Trace the journeys of the new immigrants from their places of origin to America and explain their adaptation to urban stresses and their effect on American cities.
 * 2) Specify the role of skyscrapers, suburbs and tenements in the rise of the city.
 * 3) Identify and describe the major problems of American central cities in the Victorian era.
 * 4) Explain and evaluate the operation of the early political "machines."
 * 5) Describe the most common form of food, housing, and medical care in 1877 and trace the changes through 1900.
 * 6) Identify and describe the principal moral values and issues of Victorian America.
 * 7) Describe the most popular pastimes and forms of entertainment in Victorian America.
 * 8) Delineate the changing roles of both women and the family in America from 1877 to 1900.
 * 9) Describe the changes taking place in public education between 1877 and 1890.
 * 10) Describe the major changes taking place in American higher education between 1877-1900.
 * 11) Compare and contrast the educational and civil rights policies of Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois.
 * 12) Describe the principal tenets of Social Darwinism and the opposing reform theory, including some of the specific arguments of major proponents of each view.
 * 13) Trace the rise of professional social workers in the settlement houses and in the depression of 1893.

= Chapter Summary = The development of American cities radically altered the nation's social environment and problems. In the late nineteenth century, the city became a symbol of American life and people flocked to it, drawn by the hope of economic opportunity and the promise of a more exciting life. By 1900, the U.S. had three cities with over one-half million and three more with more than one million people. Between 1870 and 1900, cities expanded upward and outward on a base of new technologies including metal-frame skyscrapers, electric elevators, streetcar systems, and outlying green suburbs. Cities were no longer “walking cities.” As the middle class moved out, immigrants and working class people poured in, creating urban slums through overcrowding. The city produced what was an increasingly stratified and fragmented society Immigrants from abroad joined rural Americans in search of jobs in the nation’s cities. These newcomers to the city were often forced to live in hastily constructed and overcrowded tenement houses with primitive, if any, sanitation facilities. The “dumbbell tenement” was the most infamous housing of this type. The “new” immigrants, mostly poor, unskilled, non-Protestant laborers between the ages of 15 and 40, clung to their native languages, religions, and cultural traditions to endure the economic and social stresses of industrial capitalism. Between 1877 and 1890, 6.3 million people immigrated to the United States, most from southern and eastern Europe. Much of mainstream society found these “new immigrants” troubling, resulting in a rise in anti-immigrant feeling and activity. Immigrant families were mostly close-knit nuclear families, and they tended to marry within their own ethnic groups. They depended on immigrant associations for their social safety net, native language newspapers for their news and political views, and community-based churches and schools. Political “machines” provided some needed services for these immigrants while also enriching themselves by exploiting the dependency of the cities’ new residents. William “Boss” Tweed and his Tammany Hall in New York was the most infamous of the political machines. The rapid development of an urban society transformed America. How people lived, what and how they ate, and how they took care of their health all changed. Victorian morality, epitomized by strict rules of dress, manners, and sexual behavior, set the tone for the era, but adherence to such prescriptions often declined in the face of rapid social change brought on by industrialization and urbanization. There were vast differences in the manners and mores adhered to by the middle and upper classes and the lower socio-economic classes. These differences often caused social tension as the former tried to control the behavior of the latter. This period saw the rise of organized spectator sports, which supplemented traditional leisure activities such as concerts, fairs, the circus, and even croquet. Technology brought a variety of new forms of leisure and entertainment, and the use of gas and electric street lights ensured that fewer people stayed home at night. Economic changes also produced new roles for women and the family. Working-class families rarely toiled together, but did maintain the strong ties needed to survive the urban industrial struggle. Middle-class women and children became more isolated, and homemakers attempted to construct a sphere of domesticity as a haven from rampaging materialism. Families, especially White families, became smaller as the birthrate fell dramatically. Americans also began to change their views about women, demonstrating a limited but growing acceptance of the “new woman.” Important changes included a rise in working and career women, more liberalized divorce laws, an increasingly frank discussion of sexuality, and a growing women’s rights movement. With the development of childhood as a distinct time of life, Americans placed greater emphasis on education as the means by which individuals were prepared for life and work in an industrial world. Schools instituted a structured curriculum, a longer school day, and new educational techniques that varied according to the gender of the student. The South lagged behind in such educational changes primarily because of its Jim Crow laws. Colleges grew in number, expanded in size, broadened their curriculum, developed the first American graduate schools, and provided more educational opportunities for women. They provided few prospects for African Americans and other minorities, however, forcing men like W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, who differed in their methods, to develop independent schools to train Black students. In spite of the period’s adherence to the beliefs of “Social Darwinism,” increasing numbers of Americans in fields that varied from religion and economics to politics, literature, and the law proposed the need for reforms. Henry George launched critical studies of the new urban America with his book //Progress and Poverty.// While his reforms were not adopted, many began to ask the same questions and recognize, as George did, the need for reform. Social thinkers challenged the tenets of “Social Darwinism,” arguing the importance of environmental influences on people’s behavior, the exploitation of labor by a “predatory” business class that was allowed by laissez-faire economic policies, and the societal value of cooperation over competition. Churches established missions in the inner-cities and began to preach the “Social Gospel” to encourage those with means to help those in need. New professional social workers, many of them middle-class women, established settlement houses in inner cities allowing them to experience the slum conditions of lower-class life firsthand. As residents they could then provide education, training, and other social services within their neighborhoods. Settlement house workers also tried to abolish child labor. The settlement house movement had its limits, mostly racial and ethnic. Best known among the settlement movement workers is Jane Addams of Hull House in Chicago. In responding to the depression of 1893, professional social workers introduced new methods of providing assistance that would also allow them to study the poor in order to alleviate their condition. Such efforts approached poverty as a social problem rather than an individual shortcoming. By 1920 most Americans lived in cities rather than rural areas. Almost half of the population were descended from immigrants that arrived after the conclusion of the American Revolution, creating a society that was a jumble of ethnic and racial groups of varying class standing. Social changes wrought by industrialization and urbanization created tension and often open conflict, initiating the beginning efforts at reform.
 * //The Lure of the City//**
 * Skyscrapers and Suburbs**
 * Tenements and the Problems of Overcrowding**
 * Strangers in a New Land**
 * Immigrants and the City**
 * The House That Tweed Built**
 * //Social and Cultural Change, 1877-1900//**
 * Manners and Mores**
 * Leisure and Entertainment**
 * Changes in Family Life**
 * Changing Views: A Growing Assertiveness Among Women**
 * Educating the Masses**
 * Higher Education**
 * //The Stirrings of Reform//**
 * Progress and Poverty**
 * New Currents in Social Thought**
 * The Settlement Houses**
 * A Crisis in Social Welfare**
 * //Conclusion: The Pluralistic Society//**

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