Expanding Education
Most Americans in 1865 had attended school for an average of only four years. Government and business leaders and reformers believed that for the nation to progress, the people needed more schooling. Toward the end of the 1800s, the “treasure” of education became more widely available to Americans. By 1914 most states required children to have at least some schooling. More than 80 percent of all children between the ages of 5 and 17 were enrolled in elementary and secondary schools.
Public Schools
The expansion of public education was particularly notable in high schools. The number of public high schools increased from 100 in 1860 to 6,000 in 1900, and increased to 12,000 in 1914. Despite this huge increase, however, many teenagers did not attend high school. Boys often went to work to help their families instead of attending school. The majority of high school students were girls. The benefits of a public school education were not shared equally by everyone. In the South many African Americans received little or no education. In many parts of the country, African American children had no choice but to attend segregated elementary and secondary schools.
Progressive Education
Around 1900 a new philosophy of education emerged in the United States. Supporters of this “progressive education” wanted to shape students’ characters and teach them good citizenship as well as facts. They also believed children should learn through the use of “hands-on” activities. These ideas had the greatest effect in elementary schools. John Dewey, the leading spokes person for progressive education, criticized schools for overemphasizing memorization of information. Instead, Dewey argued, schools should relate learning to the interests, problems, and concerns of students.
Higher Education
Colleges and universities also changed and expanded. An 1862 law called the Morrill Act gave the states large amounts of federal land that could be sold to raise money for education. The states used these funds to start dozens of schools called land-grant colleges. Wealthy individuals also established and supported colleges and universities. Some schools were named for the donors—for example, Cornell University for Ezra Cornell and Stanford University for Leland Stanford.
Women and Higher Education
In 1865 only a handful of American colleges admitted women. The new land-grant schools admitted women students, as did new women’s colleges—Vassar, Smith, Wellesley, and Bryn Mawr—founded in the late 1800s. By 1890 women could attend a wide range of schools, and by 1910 almost 40 percent of all American college students were women.
Minorities and Higher Education
Some new colleges, such as Hampton Institute in Virginia, provided higher education for African Americans and Native Americans. Howard University in Washington, D.C., founded shortly after the Civil War, had a largely African American student body. By the early 1870s, Howard offered degrees in theology, medicine, law, and agriculture. Prominent graduates of Howard include Thurgood Marshall, who later became a justice of the Supreme Court, writer Toni Morrison, and political scientist Ralph Bunche, the first African American to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
One Hampton Institute student, Booker T. Washington, became an educator. In 1881 Washington founded the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama to train teachers and to provide practical education for African Americans. As a result of his work as an educator and public speaker, Wash ington became influential in business and politics. In 1896, scientist George Washington Carver joined the Tuskegee faculty. His research trans formed agricultural development in the South. From the peanut, which was formerly of little use, Carver developed hundreds of products, including plastics, synthetic rubber, shaving cream, and paper.
Schools for Native Americans
Reservation schools and boarding schools also opened to train Native Americans for jobs. The Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania was founded in 1879, and similar schools opened in the West. Although these schools provided Native Americans with training for jobs in industry, they also isolated Native Americans from their tribal traditions. Sometimes, boarding schools were located hundreds of miles away from a student’s family.
A Nation of Readers
As opportunities for education grew, a growing number of Americans became interested in reading. Public libraries opened across the nation, and new magazines and newspapers were created for the reading public. Public Libraries In 1881 Andrew Carnegie, the wealthy steel industrialist, made an extraordinary announcement. He pledged to build a public library in any city that would agree to pay its operating costs. In the next 30 years, Carnegie donated more than $30 million to found more than 2,000 libraries throughout the world. With gifts from Carnegie and others, and the efforts of state and local governments, every state in the Union established free public libraries.
Spreading the News
Technological advances in printing, paper making, and communications made it possible to publish a daily paper for a large number of readers. The growing cities provided readers for the newspapers. In 1883 Joseph Pulitzer purchased the New York World and created a new kind of newspaper. The paper grabbed the reader’s attention with illustrations, cartoons, and sensational stories with huge, scary headlines—such as
“ANOTHER MURDERER TO HANG.” Under Pulitzer’s management, the World built up its circulation to more than one million readers every day.
Other newspapers soon imitated Pulitzer’s style. William Randolph Hearst’s New York Morning Journal became even more succes sful than the World, attracting readers by exaggerating the dramatic or gruesome aspects of stories. This style of sensational writing became known as yellow journalism—a name that came from the paper’s popular comic strip, “The Yellow Kid.” Ethnic and minority newspapers thrived as well. By 1900 there were six daily Jewish language newspapers operating in New York City. African Americans started more than 1,000 newspapers between 1865 and 1900. More magazines took advantage of printing improvements and mass circulation techniques to reach a national market. Between 1865 and 1900, the number of magazines in the United States rose from about 700 to 5,000. Some magazines of that era—the Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s Magazine, and Ladies’ Home Journal—are still published today.
Changes in Literature
Many writers of the era explored new themes and subjects. Their approach to literature was called realism because they sought to describe the lives of people. Related to realism was regionalism, writing that focused on a particular region of the country. Mark Twain was a realist and a regionalist. Many of his books, including Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, are set along the Mississippi River, where Twain grew up.
Stephen Crane wrote about city slums in Maggie and about the Civil War in The Red Badge of Courage. In books such as The Call of the Wild and The Sea Wolf, Jack London portrayed the lives of miners and hunters in the far Northwest. Edith Wharton described the joys and sorrows of the upper-class Easterners in The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence.
Paul Laurence Dunbar, the son of former slaves, wrote poetry and novels that used the dialects and folktales of Southern African Americans. Dunbar was one of the first African-American writers to gain fame worldwide. Paperback books appeared for the first time in the late 1800s, and these inexpensive books helped expand the reading public. Many paperbacks featured lively adventure tales or stories of athletic boys and girls.
Horatio Alger wrote a successful series of young adult books with such titles as Work and Win and Luck and Pluck. Based on the idea that hard work and honesty brought success, Alger’s books sold millions of copies.
Art, Music, and Leisure
For most of the 1800s, the work of American artists and musicians reflected a European influence. After the Civil War, Americans began to develop a distinctively American style. American Artists Some American painters pursued realist themes. Thomas Eakins painted the human anatomy and surgical operations. One of Eakins’s students, Henry Tanner, depicted warm family scenes of African Americans in the South. Frederic Remington portrayed the American West, focusing on subjects such as cowhands and Native Americans. Winslow Homer painted Southern farmers, Adirondack campers, and stormy sea scenes. James Whistler’s Arrangement in Grey and Black, commonly known as “Whistler’s Mother,” is one of the best-known American paintings. Mary Cassatt was influential in the French Impressionist school of painting. Impressionists tried to capture the play of light, color, and patterns as they made immediate impressions on the senses.
Music in America
More distinctively American kinds of music were also becoming popular. Bandleader John Philip Sousa composed many rousing marches, including “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” African American musicians in New Orleans in the late 1800s developed an entirely new kind of music—jazz. Jazz combined elements of work songs, gospel music, spirituals, and African rhythms. Related to jazz was ragtime music. For about 20 years, beginning around the turn of the century, ragtime—with its complex rhythms— was the dominant force in popular music. One of the best-known ragtime composers is Scott Joplin. He wrote “Maple Leaf Rag” and many other well-known works. The symphony orchestras of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia—all founded before 1900— were among the world’s finest. Great singers and conductors came from all over the world to perform at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House.
Leisure Time
Although sweatshop workers labored long hours for six or even seven days a week, middle-class people and even some factory workers enjoyed increasing amounts of leisure time.
Unlike round-the-clock farm work, professional and industrial jobs gave people hours and even days of free time. Americans developed new forms of recreation. A favorite leisure-time activity for many people was watching and following sports. Baseball became the most popular spectator sport in America. By the turn of the century, both the National and American Leagues had been founded—each made up of teams from major cities. Their games drew large crowds of enthusiastic fans, and in 1903 the first World Series was held.
Another popular spectator sport was football, which developed from the English game of rugby. By the 1890s college games were drawing huge crowds. Basketball, invented by Dr. James Naismith of Springfield, Massachusetts, also became popular. Naismith developed the game in the 1890s as an indoor winter sport for the boys in his YMCA physical education classes. Considered the only major sport that is completely American in origin, basketball soon spread to other countries. Americans not only watched but also participated in sports. Tennis and golf were enjoyed by the wealthy, usually in exclusive private clubs.
Bicycling grew in popularity after the “safety” bicycle was developed. Older bicycles had metal-rimmed wheels—a large one in front and a small one in back—while the new ones hadtwo air-filled rubber tires of the same size. These improvements helped bicycle riding take the country by storm.
One romantic song celebrated the bicycle:
“It won’t be a stylish marriage, I can’t afford a carriage,
But you’ll look sweet on the seat of a bicycle built for two.”
Large cities had many theaters. Plays performed ranged from serious dramas by Shakespeare to vaudeville shows, which were variety shows with dancing, singing, comedy, and magic acts. Many people could afford the price of a ticket, and in the early 1900s, vaudeville offered the most popular shows in town. The circus also attracted large crowds. In 1910 the United States had about 80 traveling circuses.
Thomas Edison invented “moving pictures”in the 1880s. The “movies” soon became enormously popular. Some theaters, called nickelodeons, charged five cents to see short films. The nickelodeons were the beginning of today’s film industry.