Cultural and Social Transformation Chapter 8

When the industrial growth started urban areas in the late 1800 became a host of other changes. More children began to attend school and colleges. A recreation industry, which borrowed heavily from African Americans culture, emerged to meet the needs of the new urban workers. People were starting making as a goal in life going to school and preparing them to have a good job. A part of society remained in the same discriminatory attitudes.

       People starts going to public schools. By the time of the Civil War, half of the nations white children received formal education. Only 2% of all 17 year olds graduated from high school. Few went to college, In the postwar era, young people knew they needed more skills to survive. The Government was pressured by parents to lengthen school years, and to limit child labor.1 out of 10 African American went to school. Almost all of the Immigrants in the 1890s went to America due to its public education. Public schools promoted the American way of life to immigrants, they were Americanized. Some children were sent to religious schools to prevent Americanization. Immigrants also made contributions to American culture. Compared to white schools, African American schools recieved less money from the Government. Besides the African Americans, Mexican Americans had also an unequal education to the white children.

       Between 1880 and 1900, more than 250 American colleges and Universities opened. After the Civil War middle-class women were given better educational opportunities. This motivated Philanthropists and educators to establish private women’s colleges with high academic standards. The first one was New York’s Vassar College. Pressure was implemented in only men Colleges to admit women in the 1880s and 1890s. 

        The history of the United States from 1865 until 1918 covers Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, and the Progressive Era, and includes the rise of industrialization and the resulting surge of immigration in the United States. This article focuses on political, economic and diplomatic history; for more on social history see Gilded Age.This period of rapid economic growth and soaring prosperity in North and West (but not the South) saw the U.S. become the world's dominant economic, industrial and agricultural power. The average annual income (after inflation) of nonfarm workers grew by 75% from 1865 to 1900, and then grew another 33% by 1918.

          With a decisive victory in 1865 over Southern secessionists in the Civil War, the United States became a united and powerful nation with a strong national government. Reconstruction brought the end of slavery and citizenship for the former slaves, but their political power was later rolled back and they became second-class citizens under a "Jim Crow" system of segregation. Politically the nation in the Third Party System and Fourth Party System was mostly dominated by Republicans. After 1900 and the McKinley assassination, the Progressive Era brought political and social reforms, such as new roles for education and a higher status for women, and modernized many areas of government and society. The progressives worked through new middle class organizations to fight against the corruption. They demanded and obtained in 1920 votes for women and the prohibition of alcohol.

     Roosevelt, a progressive Republican, called for a "Square Deal", and initiated a policy of increased Federal supervision in the enforcement of antitrust laws. Later, extension of government supervision over the railroads prompted the passage of major regulatory bills. One of the bills made published rates the lawful standard, and shippers equally liable with railroads for rebates. Following Roosevelt landslide victory in the 1904 election he called for still more drastic railroad regulation, and in June 1906, Congress passed the Hepburn Act. This gave the Interstate Commerce Commission real authority in regulating rates, extended the jurisdiction of the commission, and forced the railroads to surrender their interlocking interests in steamship lines and coal companies. 

       In an unprecedented wave of European immigration, 27.5 million new arrivals between 1865 and 1918 provided the labor base for the expansion of industry and agriculture and provided the population base for most of fast-growing urban America. By the late nineteenth century, the United States had become a leading global industrial power, building on new technologies (such as the telegraph and steel), an expanding railroad network, and abundant natural resources such as coal, timber, oil and farmland, to usher in the Second Industrial Revolution. With all the technology a new reforms people were heard with their rights. Although many people continue to have problems such as: discrimination.