U.S. History 2

Characters and Key Terms for Urbanization Growing Pains.html

Unit 1:  Reconstruction

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Characters and Key Terms for Growing Pains of Urbanization

Characters

Keep this list of major characters in mind in order to follow the action more easily.  Click on each person or Key Term to see his/her/its corresponding description and/or definition. You can also click the "Show All" button to expand all characters and descriptions at once.   Jacob Riis, a poor Danish immigrant, arrived in the U.S. in 1870 at age 21. After a period of dire economic circumstances, he became a reporter in New York City. Frustrated by his inability to reach people through words, he turned to photography to convey the poverty and crime faced by the urban poor. How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York (1890) was an effective piece of progressive “muckraking” and an early example of photojournalism. Jane Addams, founder of Hull House in Chicago in 1889, was the best-known figure in the American settlement house movement (see below). She also advocated for woman suffrage and supported the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. Kate Chopin was a realist writer whose attention to women’s issues drew contemporary criticism. Her proto-feminist work, The Awakening (1899), focuses on a woman’s struggles with marriage and sexual desire. Edward Bellamy, in response to the plight of the urban poor, wrote the best-selling Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (1888) with a vision of a utopian socialist future, in which a strong, central entity guided production and distribution of goods. All workers and professions were valued. Hugely popular, the books spawned dozens of “Bellamy” or “Nationalist” clubs. Henry George’s Progress and Poverty (1879) criticized wealth inequality and proposed a “single land tax” as a solution. In this arrangement, the government would receive all rent from land (but not its improvements). Without wealth through landownership, wealth inequality would decrease. Thorstein Veblen, economist and sociologist, criticized the growing gap between the rich and the poor in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899). Coining the phrase “conspicuous consumption,” Veblen called out the banal materialism of the wealthy as well as their exploitation of the working classes.

Key Terms

The electric elevator and technological advancements in steel allowed cities to be built upward as they became more crowded. Louis Sullivan and the Chicago school of architecture paved the way, but New York took the lead after the mid-1890s. Andrew Carnegie’s adaption of social Darwinism. He celebrated competition, but argued that the most successful in society should live modest lives and use their wealth for the broader good. Because the wealthy were the “fittest,” they could use their money and power to bring order to the chaos of rapid industrialization. a progressive-era reform movement focused on bettering the lives of the urban poor, especially immigrants. Practitioners tended to be middle-class, white women who focused on health, hygiene, and cultural education in crowded immigrant neighborhoods. the first mass movement, ca. 1916 to 1930, of African Americans out of the rural South to the urban Northeast. Pushed by racism, violence, and poverty, they were also pulled by the promise of better jobs and housing. Redlining was an illegal practice in which banks and insurance companies refused to offer or insure home mortgages in certain areas, thereby maintaining segregation in the suburbs and reducing opportunities for black homeownership. Ellis Island opened in 1892 and became the busiest entry point for immigration into the U.S. It was the first federal immigration station and processed over 12 million immigrants before it closed in 1954. established in 1887 by Protestants, was one of many nativist groups of the era that worried that the new waves of non-protestant, namely Catholic and Jewish, immigrants coming from eastern and southern Europe would not assimilate into American society and thus degrade it. Tammany Hall of New York City was the most famous nineteenth-century political machine. Run by Boss William Tweed in the 1860s, Tammany’s corruption was legendary. As cities grew, local government expanded in power and numbers. Traditional elites bowed out of local politics, replaced by city bosses. Although built on corruption and graft, political machines provided needed social services for the urban poor, including immigrants.Coney Island, accessible by a short train ride from New York City, housed amusement parks, an example of new industrialized forms of entertainment that reflected or mimicked industrial society. It showed the growing specialization and centralization of entertainments and provided an outlet for millions of workers and their families who were crammed into the crowded streets and tenements of Manhattan. Social Register began publication in 1887. In an era in which lots of “new money” was being made in a dynamic industrial society, the Social Register validated those who, according to elites, truly belonged to the upper echelons of society. This typically excluded the newly rich and Jews.Ladies Home Journal, first published in 1883, was one of several new magazines targeting middle-class women. Under separate-sphere ideology, women’s roles were confined to the home, but rising wealth put pressure on women to present perfect homes and exert proper moral and spiritual influence on their families.Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890: granted land (and later cash) to states to facilitate public higher education. The goal was to broaden educational opportunities and foster technical and scientific expertise. The 1890 amendments targeted southern states and required them to show non-discrimination based on race or establish separate land-grant institutions for people of color.a response to health and pollution issues of urban industrialization in the late nineteenth century. Reformers advocated for more and better urban park spaces. Although Charles Darwin intended his theories to be applied solely to plants and animals, English philosopher Herbert Spencer applied them to human society. Spencer believed human progress resulted from relentless competition, and any interference in economic structures – including aid to the poor – would slow positive social evolution.Instrumentalism, championed by educational philosophy John Dewey, held that the value of scientific and philosophical theories was measured by the degree to which they helped solve real-world problems. best expressed in the U.S. through literary works, held that natural laws guided human society, just as they guided nature. One of the best-known examples of American literary naturalism is Jack London’s Call of the Wild (1903).An artistic and intellectual rebellion against the prevailing idealism of the nineteenth-century middle and upper classes. Realism focused on the details of everyday life, no matter how difficult or distasteful. It embraced representation of social problems previously snubbed by middle- and upper-class patrons.