Chapter 18 Objectives

1. Many people after the Civil War decided to move to the cities due to its large amount
of jobs and industry. Many moved to the cities because of new forms of transportation
which made it easier to get there. Railroads made simple, quick, and relatively
inexpensive trips to nearby cities.

2. The large group of immigration that transformed American society in the nineteenth
and early twentieth century was not unique to the United States. People throughout the
world were moving. The migration of European people to new lands was largely
voluntary and brought most immigrants to the United States.

3. The arrival of many new immigrants and the ways in which many of them clung to
their old ways and created culturally distinctive communities, provoked fear in the
Native-Born Americans. Nativism provoked political responses, Henry Bowers founded
the American Protective Association, which was a group committed to stopping the
immigrant tide.

4. The urban machine was one of America’s most distinctive political institutions. It owed
its existence to the power vacuum that the chaotic growth of cities had created. The
principle function was to win votes for their organization. Party bosses would provide
immigrant families with money, coal, or groceries in order to gain their vote.

5. The Rise of mass consumption had dramatic effects on American women, who were
generally the primary consumers within families. Women’s clothing styles changed more
rapidly than men’s which encouraged more frequent purchases. Women also bought and
prepared food for their families, so the availability of new food products changed the way
everyone ate, shopped, and cooked.

6. Among the responses to the search for public forms of leisure was the rise of spectator
sports, especially baseball. Other forms of popular entertainment developed such as the
Ethnic Theater and the Vaudeville.

7. One of the strongest impulses in the late nineteenth century was the effort to re-create
urban social reality which inspired the trend of realism. As for art, many Americans were
turning away from traditional academic style; many young painters were exploring some
of the grim aspects of modern life that were becoming part of American literature.

8. During the end of the 1800’s, Social Darwainism played a large role in America. It was
the idea that only the strongest survived in the marketplace. This meant that in order to
survive in America, you had to make money and be successful.

9. A society that was coming to depend on specialized skills and scientific knowledge
was a society with a high demand for education. The post-Civil-War era also saw an
important expansion in educational opportunities for women such as exclusive women’s
colleges.