Readings and Discussions
Tuesday September 2: Introduction
Tuesday September 9: Industrial America
"Homestead and its Perilous Trades..."(1894)
Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management
"The Lords of Industry" (1884)
Child Labor Legislation, 1867 - 1889
Tuesday September 16: Urban America
"The Life of Street Rats"(1872)
"The Tenement House Exhibit of 1899"
"Pullman: A Social Study" (1885)
The Gilded Age and the Making of Bar Harbour (pdf)
Children of the Tenements (1900)
"Buy Much for a Penny...." (1896)
"The Crowded Conditions of New York Dwellings" (1883)
Tuesday September 23: Ethnicity and America
Oath of the American Protective Association
Chinese Exclusion Act (1892)
Howells, "An East Side Ramble" (1896)
"Our Russian Exhiles...." (1891)
Tuesday September 30: Issues of Race
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
Discussion Questions
Tuesday October 7: Class and Working Class
"The Gospel of Wealth "(1889)
The Gilded Age (1874)
"On Strike!" (1900)
Working Conditions at the Westinghouse Works
Quittin' Time: A Visit to Chicago's Saloons (1901)
Tuesday October 14: Labour and the Working Class
"The Life of a Coal Miner" (1902)
"A Miner's Story" (1902)
"American Working Class Living Standards" (pdf)
Six Families Budget Their Money (1884)
"Balls and Dinner Dances..." (1893)
The Boys Life on the Streets (1911)
Tuesday October 21: Imperialism/Anti-imperialism
The Open Door Note (1899)
"The Breakup of China..."(1899)
"The Chinese Boycott"(1906)
"Our Country"(1885)
Twain, "To the Person Sitting...."(1901)
Tuesday October 28: Regions in America
The Dawes Act (1887)
"The Rush to Oklahoma" (1889)
"The Industrial Far West" (pdf)
Tuesday November 4: Gender; Image and Reality
"The Bicycle and Health" (1894)
"Why Women Do Not Wish the Suffrage"(1903)
"Why Women Should Vote"(1915)
"The Progress of Fifty Years"(1893)
"The Century's Progress...."(1901)
"Status of Married Women" (1898)
"Solitude of Self"(1892)
"Woman Suffrage" (1906)
Tuesday November 18: Culture and Society
"Coney Island Frolics"(1883)
"The American Bicycle Craze of the 1890s" (pdf)
"Black Market Birth Control" (pdf)
Discussion Questions
Tuesday November 25: Progressives and the Reform Impulse
The Bitter Cry of Children (1906)
The Boys in the Breakers (1906)
"Baby Farming in Late Nineteenth Century Philadelphia" (pdf)