1. Expansion and Ethnic Transformation II

2. A Changing Nation
The years of the Progressive era (roughly 1890 to 1920) were years of unprecedented change. The technological advances of the day, industrialization, the closing of the frontier, immigration, and urbanization may have made for exciting times, but they were also troubling ones. Longstanding traditions were overturned, political corruption and labor strife were rampant, and issues such as overcrowding and pollution were becoming critical.
The reformers who would eventually become known as Progressives considered industrialization, urbanization, and immigration to be the key issues of the day, containing most of the potential problems for America.
What was the Progressives’ attitude toward progress—how optimistic were they that they would find solutions to these problems?

3. The Americanization of Edward Bok (1920)
Edward William Bok was born in the Netherlands, but emigrated to the United States with his family in As a young man, he became involved in publishing, working as an editor for a Brooklyn magazine and later The Ladies Home Journal. In the process, he became a rags-to-riches success story, and also may have first used the phrase “living room” to denote what was then called a “parlor.”
What was one of the first differences Bok noticed as a boy between American and Dutch society? What seemed to be paramount in the American work ethic?
What is the difference in Dutch and American attitudes toward the law and policemen?
Why does Bok feel that many native born Americans need “Americanization” as much or more than immigrants?
For all the problems he noticed with American society and experienced as an immigrant, Bok still felt that the opportunity afforded to him and other immigrants was absolutely priceless.
What did he feel was the key element of this opportunity, and what does Bok ask in return?

4. Immigrants and America
While immigration was a vital component in America’s industrial expansion in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was also one of the most controversial issues of the day, and a key topic for the reformers who would give their name to the Progressive era.
Had immigration ever before sparked controversy in the United States?
If so, what groups and issues were involved?
Many of the immigrants at the turn of the century were from Southern and Eastern Europe, areas which had not previously seen large numbers of people emigrating to the United States.
What about these immigrants was so troubling to many native born Americans?
What similar controversy ended American enthusiasm over imperialism at roughly the same time?

5. Sources of European Immigration to the United States 1870-1890

6. The Old World in the New (1914) “Democracy Versus the Melting Pot” (1915)
Edward Alsworth Ross was a sociologist and one of the pioneers of criminology; he also argued that law should not be seen as fixed and unchanging, but instead as evolving along with society. In The Old World in the New, Ross examined the effect the current wave of immigration was having on American society.
According to Ross, what will the presence of so many immigrants do to American literacy? What other ills and “steps backward” will it cause?
When the public education system does succeed in Americanizing immigrant children, how does Ross argue that immigrant parents respond?
How does Ross see American society evolving in the future? What unspoken reason may lay at the heart of this forecast (hint: Ross was a good friend of Frederick Jackson Turner)?
In “Democracy Versus the Melting Pot,” Horace Kallen took a point of view opposite that of Ross. He is sometimes credited with inventing the term “cultural pluralism.”
According to Kallen what development among immigrants and their descendants has Ross ignored in his forecast?
Why is Kallen optimistic about the future of American society?
Do you agree with Ross or Kallen?

8. New York’s
Lower East Side,
1910

9. Race Relations at the Turn of the Century
While the Progressives wanted to improve society and eliminate the evils of the day, for many of them, racism, discrimination, and prejudice were not among those evils.
Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to dinner at the White House, but also harshly punished African-American troops after a racial incident in Brownsville Texas.
While reforming municipal, state, and federal institutions, Progressives also extended Jim Crow not just across the South, but throughout much of the rest of the United States as well.
Lynching became a widespread means of keeping black Americans down during this era.
Even so, some significant steps were taken regarding race relations during this period.
For example, in 1908, the NAACP was formed.
Also, a new generation of African-American leaders was stepping to the fore.

10. The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
W.E.B. DuBois was the first black American to receive a PhD from Harvard, and he was also one of the founders of the NAACP. In The Souls of Black Folk and in his other work, DuBois took a very different approach to improving race relations than that preferred by Booker T. Washington.
According to DuBois, what is the goal toward which black Americans should be striving?
How does he describe the period of Reconstruction?
Why does DuBois express contempt for the “accommodationist” approach espoused by Booker T. Washington?
What are the three things that African-Americans must attain simultaneously, and why?

11. Settlement Houses and Social Work
Settlement houses were first developed in Great Britain as a response to the appalling conditions often faced by working-class families in the industrial cities of Britain. Upper- and middle-class American women who became aware of these houses decided to set up similar ones in the United States.
The women who worked in these settlement houses were America’s first social workers, determined, in the words of Jane Addams, “to aid in the solution of social and industrial problems which are engendered by the modern conditions of life in a great city.”
What were the services provided by settlement houses to poor and working-class city dwellers?
Can you think of any other significant achievements of this movement?
Do you see any problems with settlement houses and their mission?

12. Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910)
Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr founded Hull House in 1899, in an effort to improve conditions for the city’s poor. Hull House and the entire settlement house movement was in many ways an expression of belief in the “Social Gospel,” the popular belief that well-to-do Americans had a Christian duty to improve conditions in American cities and thus improve American society.
What does Addams wonder about immigrant children when they are brought into juvenile court?
How does she think public education affects immigrant families?
Why does Addams think that immigrants might be able to help improve race relations in the United States?
Who does she echo in her hope that American citizenship and “the fraternity of nations” will eventually go hand in hand?

13. The Expansion of Chicago, 1865-1902

14. Next Class
Topic: Who Were the Progressives?
Read: Gilmore