The growth of industry and commerce has changed the face of American society. The influence of cities was the most profound change. The United States was becoming an urban nation in the late 19th century.

The communities of Boss Tweed convicted 2,500 people or more.

The urban population was expanded by Chinese immigration.

Newly developing farmlands of the West were invented by some who moved to the Basketball.

Many moved to the growing cities of the East and Midwest.

The league founded servants.

Some came from Canada, Latin America, and the West Coast. Europe had the greatest number. Large numbers of people from southern and eastern Europe began arriving after 1880. By the 1890s, more than half of immigrants came from these regions.

Most new immigrants from Europe had at least some money and education when they arrived. Most of them arrived at one of the major port cities on the Atlantic Coast and then headed west. The new immigrants of the late 19th century didn't have the capital to buy farmland and didn't have the education to start their careers. Like Irish immigrants before the Civil War, they settled mostly in industrial cities where they worked in unskilled jobs.

The diversity of new immigrants was striking. Most of the new arrivals in other countries were from one or two sources. No single national group dominated in the United States.

The adjustment to city life was difficult for many of the new arrivals.

Newspapers and theaters in native languages, stores selling native foods, and church and fraternal organizations provided links to their national pasts were some of the things ethnic neighborhoods offered newcomers. Many immigrants kept in touch with their native countries. In the early years, they kept in touch with relatives who had remained behind, and perhaps as many as a third returned to their homelands after a short time. The rest of their families were brought to America by others.

The pain of separation from native lands was alleviated by the cultural cohesiveness of the ethnic communities. It's hard to say what role it played in helping immigrants become absorbed into American economic life. Immigrant groups tend to reinforce the cultural values of their previous societies by huddling together in ethnic neighborhoods. The high value Jews put on education may have helped mem bers of a group improve their lot. Economic progress could be less rapid when other values are more important.

Other factors were more important in determining how immigrants did.

Immigrants who aroused strong racial prejudice found it hard to advance. White immigrants who arrived with some capital did better than those who did not. The Irish in New York and Boston gained an advantage as they learned to exert their political power, while the Germans in Milwaukee gained an advantage as they learned to exert their political power.

Virtually all groups had the same things in common. Immigrants share the experience of living in cities. Most of the newcomers were between the ages of fifteen and forty-five. Ethnic ties had to compete against the desire to be accepted in most communities.

Many of the new arrivals had romantic visions of the New World. Second- generation immi grants were more likely to try to break with the old ways. Young women rebelled against parents who tried to arrange marriages or who opposed women entering the workplace.

In many ways, old-stock Americans encouraged or demanded assimilation. Employers often insist that workers speak English on the job, as public schools teach children in English. Most nonethnic stores sold mostly American products, forcing immi grants to adapt their lifestyles to American standards. Some embraced reforms to make their religion compatible with the new country.

Reform Judaism, imported from Germany in the late nineteenth century, was an effort by American Jewish leaders to make their faith less foreign to the dominant culture.

The way in which many of the new immigrants created distinctive communities provoked fear and resentment in some native-born Americans, the same way that earlier arrivals had done. The American Protective Association was founded in 1886 by a self-educated lawyer. The organization had 500,000 members by 1894, with chapters throughout the Northeast and Midwest.

The government responded to popular concerns about immigration. Congress imposed a tax of 50 cents on each person admitted in order to exclude the Chinese. The list of those barred from immigrating was enlarged in the 1890s.

Immigration provided a cheap and plentiful labor supply to the rapidly growing economy, despite the fact that these laws kept out a small number of aliens. America's industrial development would be impossible without it.

The great waves of immigration that tran and easier transportation--railroads, formed American society in the nineteenth steamships, and much later, airplanes-- and early twentieth centuries were not also aided large-scale immigration.

50 million Europeans migrated to new lands unprecedented in history, that affected overseas-- people from almost all areas of the world. Poor rural areas in the south and east contributed to the creation of the great migra.

The population of Europe grew faster than that of migrants in the second half of the 19th century. Almost two-thirds of these have happened before and almost two-thirds have happened since. Between 1850 and the beginning of World, 20 million Europeans migrated. The population grew because of other lands. Migrants from England and growing economies are able to support more people.

Rural people who were too numerous to live off the available land were affected by the rapid growth.

Many moved to other parts of the world where there was more land.

Industrialization brought millions of people out of the countryside and into cities in their own countries, but also into industrial cities in other, more economically advanced nations. Population movements are explained by "push" and "pull" factors, which are the pressure on people to leave their homes and the lure of new lands. The "push" for many nineteenth-century migrants was poverty and inadequate land at home; for others it was political and religious oppression. For some, the prospect of industrial jobs in other regions or lands was a pull.

Ireland moved to Cuba and Hawaii, as well as mines in Malaya, Peru, and South Africa, and the railroad with vast, seemingly open lands: Canada, projects in Canada, and the United Australia, New Zealand. Many Italians moved to Argentina and other parts of South America as African indentured servants. Many Pacific Islanders moved to open land in the coun islands or to Australia.

Most of the migrants brought to the United States were from Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, and South Africa. They created societies of the migration of non- European people. Many others settled in the indus were part of the trial cities that were growing up in all of the coercion and brought relatively small regions to the United States.

Europeans were not the only ones who moved to non- European countries in these years. Most of them could use some help. The various not able to afford the journey abroad on their forms of migration produced one of their own. They moved to America as indentured greatest population movements in the servants, agreeing to a term called the globe.

What about the Pacific Islands and India.

Europeans did more than African colonies.

The city was very different. It had homes that were almost unimaginable in size and grandeur. Problems that seemed beyond the capacity of society to solve were unknown to earlier generations.

Philadelphia and Washington were the most prominent of the early American cities. By the mid-nineteenth century, reformers, planners, architects, and others began to call for more ordered visions of many other cities.

The desire of urban leaders to provide an antidote to the con gestion of the city landscape was one of the most important urban innovations of the mid-nineteenth century. They argued that parks would allow city dwellers to escape from the stresses of urban life and return to nature. They wanted the public space to look like a small city. They created a space that was completely natural, unlike the formal spaces in some European cities.

Park is one of the most popular and admired public spaces in the world.

At the same time that cities were creating great parks, they were also creating great public buildings: libraries, art galleries, natural history museums, theaters, and concert and opera halls.

New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art was the largest and best known of many great museums taking shape in the late nineteenth century, but giant museums grew up quickly in Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and other places. As if to confirm the city's role as a center of learning and knowledge, new and lavish public libraries appeared in one city after another.

The great art museums, concert halls, opera houses, and even parks were created by wealthy residents. They wanted the public life of the city to match their expectations as their own material and social ambitions grew. Being an important patron of a major cultural institution was an effective route to social distinction.

Urban leaders launched mental projects to remake great cities as they became larger. Some cities began to clear away older neighborhoods and create grand, monumental avenues lined with new and more impressive buildings.

The first world's fair to honor the 400th anniversary of Columbus's first voyage to America was the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. There was a cluster of neoclas sical buildings at the center of the exposition.

The "city beautiful" movement was led by the architect of the Great White City. The movement wanted to impose order and symmetry on the life of cities. Only a small portion of planners' dreams were realized because of the obstacles of private land and city politics.

The effort to remake the city didn't just focus on redesigning existing landscapes. It resulted in the creation of new ones. Boston was not the only one. The city of Chicago reclaimed large areas from Lake Michigan and at one point raised the street level to help avoid the problems the marshy land created. In New York and other cities, the response to limited space was not so much to create new land as to annex adjacent territory. New York City's 1898 annexation of Brooklyn was one of many annexations that expanded the boundaries of American cities.

Providing housing for the thousands of new residents coming to the cities every day was one of the greatest urban problems. Housing was not a concern for the prosperous. Cheap labor made it possible for anyone with a moderate income to afford a house. Fifth Avenue in New York, Back Bay and Beacon Hill in Boston, Society Hill in Philadelphia, Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, and Nob Hill in San Francisco are some of the mansions that wealthy residents lived in.

The downtown of Chicago was connected by the railroad in the 1870s. Suburban communities were created to appeal to city dwellers' nostalgia for the countryside, with lawns, trees, and houses designed to look manorial.

Most urban residents can't afford to own a house in the city or move to the suburbs. They rented in the city centers. Landlords tried to squeeze as many rent-paying residents as possible into the smallest available space. In 1894, the average population density in Manhattan was more than triple that of any other American or European city. Poor African Americans lived in former slave quarters in the South. New arrivals crowded into narrow brick row houses in Baltimore and Philadelphia. They lived in tenements in New York.

The first tenements, built in 1850, were hailed as a great improvement in housing for the poor. The other half lives. The solution reformers often adopted was to raze slum dwellings and not build any new housing to replace them.

Transport challenges were posed by urban growth. The development of mass transportation was influenced by a lot of people. Streetcars were introduced into some cities before the Civil War. Many communities developed new forms of mass transit because the horsecars were not fast enough. The first elevated railway in New York opened in 1870 and was powered by steam. New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, and other cities were experimenting with cable cars. Boston opened the first American subway in 1897 and the first electric trolley line in Virginia in 1888. New techniques of road and bridge building were being developed. The Brooklyn Bridge in New York was a dra matic steel-cable suspension span designed by John A. Roebling.

Cities grew outward as well as upward. The first modern "skyscraper" was built in Chicago in 1884, and it launched a new era in urban architecture. A new technol ogy of construction emerged as a result of several related developments, which was critical to the creation of the skyscraper. Steel girders could support more tension than the metals of the past. The passenger elevator made taller buildings possible. The search for ways to protect cities from the ravages of great fires, which caused such terrible destruction in wood-frame cities of the late nineteenth century, led to steel-frame construction that made cities more fireproof.

The early Chicago skyscrapers paved the way for some of the great construction achievements later in the twentieth century: the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building in New York, and ultimately the vast numbers of steel and glass skyscrapers of post-1945 cities around the world.

The lack of adequate public services made the city more dangerous. Both governments and private agencies were poorly equipped to respond to strains on the capacities of metro politan institutions due to crime, fire, disease, and indigence.

Large downtown areas were destroyed by fires in one major city after another. In 1871, Chicago and Boston experienced great fires.

The construction of fireproof buildings and the development of professional fire departments was encouraged by the terrible experience of the great fires. At a time when new technological and architectural innovations were available, they forced cities to rebuild. The high-rise downtowns of American cities were built out of the rubble of great fires.

Poor neighborhoods with inadequate Sanitation facilities were more at risk of disease than fire. An epidemic that began in a poor neighborhood could easily spread to other neighborhoods. Many cities lacked adequate systems for disposing of human waste until well into the twentieth century, despite the link between improper sewage disposal and water pollution. As long as sewage continued to flow into open ditches or streams,flush toilets and sewer systems couldn't solve the problem.

Most Americans didn't know much about modern notions of environmental science. The environmental degradation of many American cities was a disturbing fact of life. The environmental costs of industrializa tion and rapid urbanization were exemplified by the occurrence of great fires, the dangers of disease, and the crowding of working-class neighborhoods.

Most large cities had poor disposal of human and industrial waste.

Horses, cows, pigs, and other domestic animals are found in many places.

Many cities had poor air quality. The problems that London experienced in the late 19th century with the burning of soft coal were rare for Americans. Air pollution from factories and other sources was constant and at times severe. Respiratory infections were more common in cities than in rural areas in the late 19th century.

By the early twentieth century, reformers were beginning to achieve some notable successes. By 1910, most large American cities had constructed sewage disposal systems to protect the drinking water of their inhabitants and to prevent the great bacterial plagues that impure water had helped create in the past.

It tried to create common health standards for all factories, but since the agency had few powers of enforcement, it had limited impact. The Public Health Service's early work resulted in the creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in 1970.

It is possible that urban expansion spawned widespread and desperate poverty.

Some relief was offered by public agencies and private organizations. They were poorly funded and dominated by middle-class people who believed that too much assistance would breed dependency. The "deserv ing poor" were those who could not help themselves.

The Salvation Army, which began operating in America in 1879, concentrated more on religious revivalism than on relief of the home less and hungry.

Middle-class people were alarmed by the rising number of poor children in the cities. They received more attention from reformers than any other group.

Crime and violence were caused by poverty and crowding. The American murder rate went from 25 murders for every million people in the late 19th century to over 100 by the end of the century. In the American South, where lynching and homicide were high, and in the West, where the rootlessness and instability of new communities created much violence, that reflected in part.

Americans liked to believe that the rise of gangs and criminal organizations in various ethnic communities was a result of the violent proclivities of grant groups. Americans in the cities were more likely to commit crimes than immigrants. Many cities developed larger and more professional police forces because of the rising crime rates. Police forces could create brutality and corrup tion.

Some middle class people were afraid of urban insurrections and needed more substantial forms of protection. National Guard groups built armories on the outskirts of affluent neighborhoods and stored large quantities of weapons and equipment in preparation for uprisings that never happened.

The city was a great place to live. It was also a place of degradation and exploitation. Carrie was 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217

Newly arrived immigrants needed institutions to help them adjust to American life.

The power vacuum created by the growth of cities and the potential voting power of large immigrant communities made the urban machine.

The function of the political boss was to win votes.

Political cartoons, caricatures, and satire were offered. A boss might give them a basket of groceries or a bag of coal. He could save people from jail if he stepped in. He was able to find work for the unemployed.

He rewarded many of his followers with patronage, which included jobs in the police, new transit systems, and opportunities to rise in the organization itself.

Machines were used to make money. Politicians enriched themselves and their allies through various forms of corruption. A politician might discover in advance where a new road or streetcar line would be built, buy land near it, and sell it at a profit when property values rise as a result of the construction. There was also covert corruption.

In exchange for contracts to build public projects, officials received kickbacks from contractors and sold franchises to operate public utilities. His extravagant use of public funds and kickbacks landed him in jail in 1872.

Competition was present in the urban machine. Reform groups often succeeded in driving machine politi cians from office because of public outrage at the corruption of the bosses. The reform organizations did not have the permanence of the machine.

A distinctive middle-class culture began to exert influence over the whole of American life in the last decades of the nineteenth century. The rise of the new urban consumer culture began to shape a new image of the nation as other groups in society advanced less rapidly.

Incomes increased for almost everyone in the industrial era. Between 1890 and 1910, clerks, accountants, middle managers, and other white-collar workers saw their salaries increase by an average of third. Doctors, lawyers, and other professionals experienced an increase in prestige and profitability. In those years, working-class incomes rose, although from a much lower base. The wages of iron and steel workers increased by a third between 1890 and 1910, but industries with large female workforces saw more modest increases. African Americans, Mexicans, and Asians saw their wages rise more slowly than whites.

The emergence of ready-made clothing was an example of such changes. Most Americans made their own clothing in the early 19th century. The invention of the sewing machine and the Civil War demand for uniforms spurred the manufacture of clothing and helped create an enormous industry devoted to producing ready-made garments. Most Americans bought their clothing from stores by the end of the century. A lot of people became concerned with their personal style. Interest in women's fashion used to be a luxury reserved for wealthier people. Middle-class and even working-class women could try to develop a distinctive style of dress.

The development and mass production of tin cans led to the creation of a new industry devoted to packaging and selling canned food. It was possible for food to be transported over long distances without spoiling. Many households were able to afford iceboxes because of artificially frozen ice. Improved diet and better health were brought about by the changes. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, life expectancy increased.

Department stores created events to promote their wares. In 1907, the Strawbridge and Clothier store created a stir on Market Street in Philadelphia. The way Americans buy goods changed as a result of marketing changes. New "chain stores" could usually offer a wider array of goods at lower prices than the small local stores with which they competed. The A&P started a national network of grocery stores in the 1870s. A chain of dry goods stores was built by F. W. Woolworth.

Sears and Roebuck had a large market for mail-order merchandise.

The emergence of great department stores made shopping more attractive in larger cities. New York, Brooklyn, Boston, Philadelphia, and other cities had similar stores.

American women were particularly affected by the rise of mass consumption.

Women's clothing styles changed more quickly than men's. The availability of new food products made it easier for women to shop and cook for their families.

There are new employment opportunities for women in the consumer economy.

We will steer our craft warrantee. The FULL GUARANTEE CASH PAYMENT will be honored as quickly as a good draft of the Government of the United States. The sample of the full guarantee is contained in this one price cash return.

The prices of our goods shall be bad debts, interest on long-standing ac as low as the same quality of material and counts, capital locked up, and so on. The losses would drive them out of the United States.

Second, that prices are precisely the price of each article sold to cover this same to everybody for the same quality, on leakage, and cash buyers, whether they same day of purchase.

The printed labels were resented under the cash payment.

We say cash throughout. "CASH RETURNED" is simply a concession on our part to it at prices that are impossible under any other plan.

It's simply treating all of them the same--exacting nothing cause.

There might be a reason why these assurances have not been fulfilled.

In 1874, this advertisement was published. There is a location in Regina Lee Blaszczyk and Philip B. Scranton.

Kelley wanted to use the power of women as consumers to force retailers and manufacturers to improve wages and working conditions. The NCL encouraged women to buy only products with the League's "white label," which indicated that the product was made under fair working conditions.

A growing interest in leisure time was related to the rise of consumption. The urban middle and professional classes had large blocks of time where they were not at work. In the 19th century, the working hours in many factories decreased from over seventy hours a week to under sixty. The mechanization of agriculture gave farmers more time to work. With clear distinctions between work and leisure, many Americans began to search for new forms of recreation and entertainment.

Americans used to think leisure was a valuable thing. Many thought it was lazy. The beginnings of a redefinition of leisure appeared in the late 19th century. He challenged the idea that the normal condition of civilization was a scarcity of goods. Fear of scarcity has caused people to place a high value on thrift, self-denial, and restraint. In modern industrial societies, new economies could create enough wealth to satisfy both the needs and desires of everyone.

Americans began to look for new experiences and entertainments as they became more accustomed to leisure as a normal part of life. Mass entertainment can sometimes bridge differences of class, race, and gender. Some sporting events and saloons were male preserves. Female leisure included shopping and going to tea rooms. Theaters, pubs, and clubs were often specific to particular ethnic communities. There was often conflict over what constituted appropriate public behavior when the classes met in public spaces. Working-class people in New York City wanted to use the public spaces for sports and entertainments, while elite people tried to prevent quiet activities in Central Park.

In the early 19th century, the game of "rounders" had limited popularity in Great Britain. The game began to appear in America in the 1830s. By the end of the Civil War, interest in the game had grown rapidly.

More than 200 amateur or semiprofessional teams and clubs existed, many of which joined a national association and proclaimed a set of standard rules. There were opportunities for profit as the game grew. The Cincinnati Red Stockings formed in 1869. The teams banded together in the National League in 1876. The American Association collapsed and was replaced by the American League in 1901. The first modern World Series was played in 1903, and the American League's Boston Red Sox beat the National League's Pittsburgh Pirates. Baseball became an important business and a national preoccupation by then.

Baseball was popular with working-class males. The second most popular game, football, appealed to a more elite segment of the male population because it originated in colleges and universities. The first intercollegiate football game in America took place in 1869. Early intercollegiate football was more similar to rugby than it was to the modern game. The game was taking on the outlines of its modern form by the late 1870s.

Basketball was invented in Massachusetts.

Boxing, which had long been a disreputable activity, became more popular in the late 19th and early 20th century.

The major sports were mostly for men, but women became involved in some of them. Both golf and tennis attracted wealthy men and women. Bicycling and croquet were popular among women and men in the 1890s. Track, crew, swimming, and basketball were introduced to students at women's colleges in the late 1890s.

In the cities, other forms of popular entertainment were developed. Many ethnic communities had their own theaters where plays were presented in their own languages. In the heart of the cities, there are urban theaters.

It was inexpensive to produce and had a variety of acts. The economic potential of vaudeville grew and so did the number of elaborate shows.

Vaudeville was one of the few entertainment media open to black performers, who brought to it elements of the minstrel shows they had earlier developed for black audi ences. Most of the singers were black, but some were white. Entertainers of both races played music based on the classics of the plantation and the jazz and ragtime of black urban communities. Performers of both races act out stereotypes in order to rid themselves of white prejudice.

The emergence of motion picture shows transformed American popular entertainment. The motion picture was underpinned by technology created by Thomas Edison and others. Soon after that, individual viewers were able to watch peepshows in pool halls, penny arcades, and amusement parks. Sub stantial audiences were able to see films in theaters because larger projectors made it possible to display the images on big screens. The first mass entertainment medium was motion pictures.

The quality of popular entertainment in the late 19th and early 20th century was striking. Many Americans spent their leisure time in places where they could find entertainment and other people. Thousands of working-class New Yorkers spent their evenings in dance halls. The most popular attractions in Central Park were seeing other people and being seen by them. Sports fans were drawn by the crowds as well as by the games, just as movie goers were drawn by the energy of the audiences at lavish new "movie palaces."

Luna Park, the greatest of the Coney Island attractions, opened in 1903 and provided rides, stunts, and extravagant adventures: Japanese gardens, Venetian canals with gondoliers, a Chinese theater, and reenactments of the moon. The popularity of Coney Island was very high. The large resort hotels lined the beaches. After 1920, many thousands of people made day trips out of the city by train and subway. In 1904, the average daily attendance at Luna Park was over 100,000.

Coney Island provided an escape from the genteel standards of American life that most people found appealing. In the amuse ment parks of Coney Island, people were happy to find themselves in situations that in any other setting would have been embarrassing or improper: women's skirts blowing above their heads with hot air; people being hit with water and rubber paddles by clowns; hints.

Public events are not all popular entertainment.

The decades following the Civil War saw dramatic change in American journalism.

The rate of population increase was three times greater than the rate of daily newspaper circulation. American journalism was developing the beginnings of a professional identity while standards varied from paper to paper. Newspapers became important businesses due to the salaries of reporters increasing, as well as the separation of the reporting of news from the expression of opinion.

The transformation was a result of new technologies. The emergence of national press services was a result of the tele graph, which made it possible to supply papers with news and features from around the nation and the world. By the turn of the century, important newspaper chains had emerged as well, linked together by their own internal wire services. By the end of the century, new printing technologies were making it possible for more elaborate layouts, the publication of color pictures, and the printing of photographs. The advances made it possible for publishers to attract more advertisers.

Alexander Graham Bell first demonstrated the telephone in 1876. The telephone was impractical in its first years. Direct wire links were required for those who used telephone service. The first switchboard opened in New Haven, Connecticut, in the 19th century. When there was a switchboard, a subscriber only needed a line to the central office to make calls. The "telephone operator" was born. The Bell System, which controlled all American telephone service, hired young white women to work as operators, hoping that a pleasant female voice would make the experience of using the telephone less annoying to customers. Telephone signals were weak at the beginning, and callers couldn't reach anyone more than a few miles away. Engineers created the "repeater" to strengthen the signal when it moved over distances in an effort to increase the range of telephones. It was practical to envision a transcontinental line by 1914 because the repeaters had improved.

The telephone was a commercial instrument in its early days. In the New York-New Jersey area in 1891, 6,000 businesses and organizations used the telephone. The residential telephones were usually used by doctors or business managers.

Executives made a decision early on that the company would build and own all telephone instruments and then lease them to subscribers. It was possible for AT&T to control both the equipment and the telephone service, and to exclude any competitors in either field. It gave AT&T effective control over the local telephone companies allied with it and made the nation's telephone system into an effective Cartel.

The difference between highbrow and lowbrow culture was new to the industrial era. Most cultural activities in the early 19th century targeted people of all classes. By the late 19th century, elites were developing a cultural and intellectual life separate from the popular amusements of the urban mass.

Theodore Dreiser was drawn to social issues as a theme.

The American art of the 19th century was overshadowed by Europe. By 1900, a number of American artists were experimenting with new styles. The approach to his paintings of New England maritime life was unique. One of the first Western artists to introduce Asian themes into American and European art was James McNeil Whistler.

By the first years of the new century, some American artists were turning away from the traditional academic style. Edward Hopper explored the starkness and loneliness of the modern city while George Bellows depicted the dreariness of American urban slums.

The widespread acceptance of the theory of evolution was one of the most profound intellectual developments of the late nineteenth century. Darwin said that history was not working out of a divine plan. The process was dominated by the luckiest competitors.

The theory of evolution met resistance from many people. Most members of the urban professional and educated classes were deceived by the evolutionists by the end of the century. The doctrine was accepted by many middle class Protestant religious leaders. The late nineteenth century saw the rise of a liberal Protestantism in tune with new scientific discoveries and the beginning of an organized Protestant fundamentalism.

Other new intellectual currents were spawned by Darwinism. The industrialists used the Social Darwinism of William Graham Sumner to justify their favored position in American life.

According to the pragmatists, modern society should rely on scientific inquiry for guidance instead of relying on inherited ideals and moral principles. They claimed that no idea or institution was valid unless it stood the test of experience.

The social sciences were influenced by a similar concern for scientific inquiry. The scientific method should be used to solve social and political problems. Historians such as Frederick Jackson Turner and Charles Beard argued that economic factors were more important than spiritual ideals in historical development. John Dewey proposed a new approach to edu cation that placed less emphasis on traditional knowledge and more on flexible, democratic education.

The growth of anthropology was encouraged by the implications of Darwinism, and some scholars began examining other cultures in new ways. White Americans began to see Indian society as a coherent culture with its own values that were worthy of respect and preservation even though they were different from white society.

The demand for education was created by the growing demand for specialized skills and scientific knowledge. The late nineteenth century saw rapid expansion and reform of American schools and universities.

Thirty-one states and territories had compulsory school attendance laws by 1900. Education was not universal. Rural areas don't give as much money to public education as urban-industrial ones. Many African Americans in the South didn't have access to schools. Educational opportunities were growing rapidly for many white men and women.

In an effort to help the Indian tribes adapt to white society, educational reformers tried to extend educational opportunities to them as well. reformers recruited small groups of Indians to attend a black college in the 1870s. The Carlisle Indian Industrial School was founded in 1879.

Many black colleges emphasize practical "industrial" education. The reform efforts failed because they were unpopular with their intended beneficiaries.

In the late 19th century, colleges and universities expanded rapidly. The Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862 led to the creation of sixty-nine "land grant" institutions in the last decades of the century, including the state university systems of California and Illinois. Rockefeller and Carnegie contributed millions of dollars to other universities, including Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, Northwestern, Princeton, Syracuse, and Yale.

The economic development of the United States in the late nineteenth century and beyond was greatly aided by these and other universities. They were committed to making discoveries that would be useful to farmers and manufacturers from the beginning. Many of the great discoveries that helped American industry and commerce were made at great state universities. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, founded in 1865, soon became the nation's premier engineering school, as did the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York. By the early twen tieth century, older and more traditional universities were beginning to form relationships with the private sector and the government, doing research that did not just advance knowl edge for its own sake but that was directly applicable to practical problems of the time.

The scientific basis for medical care was changing rapidly in the early twentieth century. Doctors were beginning to accept the idea that a symptom was not a disease because there were underlying causes. New or improved technologies such as the X-ray, improved microscopes, and other diagnostic devices made it possible to classify and distinguish different diseases. Laboratory tests can identify infections. These technologies were the beginning of the treatment of diseases. Some important new medicines were produced by pharmaceutical research. Aspirin was first made in 1899. The various forms of chemotherapy that are still widely used in treating cancer are a result of researchers experimenting with chemicals that might destroy diseases in the blood.

In 1906, an American surgeon, G. W. Crile, became the first physician to use blood trans fusion in treatment. Patients used to lose so much blood during surgery that it could be fatal. It was possible to conduct more elaborate operations with the help of transfusions.

The acceptance of the germ theory of disease by the end of the 19th century had important implications. General health, previous medical history, diet and nutrition, and eventually genetic predisposition were some of the factors they discovered. Doctors were encouraged to use surgical gloves and sterilize their instruments because of the importance of spreading disease.

Improvements in medical knowledge and training, along with improvements in public health, helped to reduce infections and mortality in most American communities.

The post-Civil War era saw an expansion of educational opportunities for women, but they were almost completely denied to black women.

Most public high schools accepted women, but there were less opportunities for higher education. Three American colleges were coedu cational at the end of the Civil War. After the war, many of the land-grant colleges and universities in the Midwest began to admit women along with men. The creation of a network of women's colleges was more important to women's education in this period. At the same time that new female institutions like Wellesley, Smith, and Goucher were emerging, Mount Holyoke began its life as a "seminary" for women. Some of the larger private universities created separate colleges for women on their campuses.

The emergence of distinctive women's communities outside the family was an important phenomenon in the history of modern American women.

Most faculty members and administrators were women. College life produced a spirit of commitment among educated women that had important effects in later years. Most female college graduates marry at an older age than their noncollege counterparts. A significant minority of people did not marry but devoted themselves to careers.

The growth of female higher education convinced some women that they had roles other than those of wives and mothers to perform in their rapidly changing urban-industrial society.

The growth of American cities in the last decades of the 19th century led to great achievements and enormous problems. Cities became centers of learning, art, and commerce and produced advances in technology. People left the countryside to move to the city because of their varied and dazzling experiences.

Cities were also places of disease and corruption. Most American cities in this era struggled with makeshift techniques to solve the basic problems of providing water, sewage, building roads, running public transportation, fighting fire, and preventing or curing disease, because of the rapid expansion of popula tions. City governments that were dominated by political machines and ruled by party bosses were often models of inefficiency and corruption, but they also provided substantial services to the working-class and immigrant populations who needed them most. They man aged to oversee great public projects: the building of parks, museums, opera houses, and theaters, usually in partnership with private developers.

The great department stores were one of the temples of consumerism that the city spawned. It created forums for public recreation and entertainment: parks, theaters, athletic fields, amusement parks, and, later, movie palaces.

People who lived in the cities and people who watched them from afar were both affected by urban life. Over time, American cities adapted to the great demands of their growth and learned to govern themselves if not completely honestly and efficiently, at least enough to allow them to survive and grow.