Chapter 9 Sec 3

Reforming Society

Reforming City Life

  • By 1920 50% of Americans lived in urban areas.
  • Cities struggled to provide:
  • Garbage collection
  • Safe and affordable housing
  • Health care
  • Police and fire protection
  • Adequate public education

Cleaning up the City

  • Various women’s and men’s clubs and reform societies asked for help to clean up cities.
  • Lawrence Veiler- Head of N.Y. State Tenement House Commission
  • Interviewed residents and discovered problems.
  • 1901 passed N.Y. Tenement House Act
  • new tenements built around open courtyards
  • contain/bathroom for each apartment or every 3 rooms
  • National Tuberculosis Association
  • Fun, special hospitals to treat disease
  • By 1915 death rate dropped significantly
  • 1908 Massachusetts Law Required cities with 10,000 hold election to pay for at least one playground.
  • 41 of 42 cities passed it.
  • Some critics from middle and upper class objected to using taxes to pay for poor.

City Planning

  • First National Conference on City Planning was held in 1909
  • Cleaner cities would produce better citizens
  • Beautiful cities would inspire patriotism.
  • Daniel Burnham was first to redesign a major city-Chicago 1909
  • Other cities hired him
  • Only successful and fully built design was in Washington D.C.
  • City planning was necessary function
  • Parks
  • Building codes
  • Sanitation standards
  • Zoning

Moral Reform

  • Prohibition – ban on the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages and closing of saloons
  • Reduce crime and breakup of families
  • McClure’s Magazine- George Kibbe Turner
  • “The Story of an Alcohol Slave, as Told by Himself.”
  • To truly reform U.S. cities, saloons must be closed
  • Colleges did not allow student athletes to drink
  • Industrialists tried to get workers not to drink
  • Text books had info on dangers of alcohol

Passage of Prohibition

  • Anti-Saloon League (ASL) and Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)
  • By 1902 ASL has branches in 39 states with 200 paid employees.
  • Many ministers spread message in church
  • Billy Sunday saloons were “the parent of crimes and mother of sins”
  • France Willard red WCTU from 1879-1889 force for temperance, moral purity, and women’s rights.
  • During WWI prohibitionists drew on patriotic sacrifice
  • U.S. Navy banned consumption of alcohol in 1914
  • 1917 Congress passed 18th amendment states ratified in 1919
  • proved unpopular and hard to enforce
  • repealed in 1933 with 21st amendment

Movie Going

  • Urban reformers believed movies were a threat to morality
  • “Great Train Robbery” first movie to tell a story- 1903
  • by 1910 millions were going to movies each week
  • In 1916 NY times reported movies were 5th largest industry in U.S.
  • Nickelodeons provided cheap entertainment
  • Many mid class believed movies were immoral and sources of temptation
  • Reformers demanded censorship
  • States and cities set up censorships boards to ban movies they considered immoral
  • By 1909 movie industry censored itself

Progressivism and Racial Discrimination

  • Concerned about Plight of Poor
  • Few devoted much energy to Racial discrimination and prejudice
  • Some expressed open prejudice against Blacks and Native Americans

Views of W.E.B.DuBois

  • Influential Black leaders emerged
  • Born 1886 in Massachusetts.
  • Attended mixed Sunday school classes
  • Not until high school did he realize his skin color caused people to dislike him.
  • Attended Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee.
  • In 1895 he became the first black to earn a PHD from Harvard.
  • Taught at Atlanta University until 1910
  • Strong supporter of civil rights
  • Access to college and vocational schools offered best chance
  • Blacks should be politically active

Booker T. Washington-opposing views

  • Blacks should not fight discrimination
  • Focus on education and economic prosperity
  • Throughout career DuBois maintained interest in Africa.
  • 1920’s organized series of Pan African congresses that attracted black leaders from around world.
  • By 1950’s embraced socialism for its promise of social justice
  • In 1961 at age of 93, joined Communist Party and moved to Ghana- Died in 1963

African Americans Organize

  • In 1909 DuBois and a group of black and white progressives met in N.Y. City
  • Discussed lynching of 2 men in Springfield, Illinois
  • NAACP- National Association for the Advancement of colored people was formed
  • Dubois edited The Crisis which publicized cases of racial inequality
  • By 1918 magazines circulation rose to 100,000
  • Used court system to fight civil rights restriction
  • 1915-Guinn v. U.S.
  • outlawed “grandfather” clause
  • This freed men from other voting requirements if their father or grandfathers had voted.
  • 1917 Buchanan v. Warley overturned a Louisville, Kentucky law requiring racially segregated housing.
  • National Urban League-1911
  • Improve job opportunity and housing for urban African Americans

American Indians Organize

  • Dawes Act of 1887-Indians lost land to speculators and fell deeper in poverty by 50 middle class professional
  • Improve civil rights
  • Education
  • Health
  • Local government
  • Publicized accomplishments of Jim Thorpe
  • Some wanted strong native cultures while other favored assimilation
  • Some criticized Bureau of Indian Affairs for Mismanaging Reservations

Immigrants and Assimilation

  • Lobbied for improving immigrants lives as well as conditions in workplace and slums.
  • Some criticized immigrants for immoral behavior.
  • 1916 Madison Grant publishes “The Passing of the Great Race”
  • Expressed racist opinions about blacks, Jews, and immigrants from south and eat Europe
  • Americanization-process of preparing foreign born residents for citizenship
  • Focus was on educating immigrants
  • Learn to read, write, and speak English.
  • Also U.S. history and government
  • Cities and states passed Americanization measures
  • 1924 Horace Kallen Wrote Culture and Democracy in U.S.
  • Supports pluralism or home to a number of distinctive cultures
  • Some immigrants supported Americanization without giving up ethnic identities.