This text presents a carefully selected group of readings that allow students to evaluate primary sources, test
the interpretations of distinguished historians, and draw their own conclusions.
Table of Contents
1. Introducing the Gilded Age and Progressive Era
ESSAYS
Sean Dennis Cashman, Industrial Spring: America in the Gilded Age
John Milton Cooper, Jr., Pivotal Decades, 1900-1920
2. The Price of Progress: Capitalism and Its Discontents
DOCUMENTS
1. Andrew Carnegie Hails the Triumph of America, 1885
2. Henry George Dissects the Paradox of Capitalist Growth, 1879
3. The Reverend Alexander Lewis Offers an Ode to Upward Mobility, 1902
4. Mark Twain Satirizes the Great American Myth, 1879
5. The Purposes and Program of the Knights of Labor, 1878
6. A Trade Union Official Enunciates a Restrictive AFL Policy Toward Women Workers, 1897
ESSAYS
Alan Trachtenberg, The Machine as Deity and Demon
Leon Fink, Class Consciousness American-Style
3. Behind the Bravura of the Wild West
DOCUMENTS
1. A Buffalo Hunter Describes His Business, c. 1875
2. President Chester A. Arthur Aims to Turn Indians into U.S. Citizens, 1881
3. A Popular Account of the Death of Jesse James, 1882
4. Miguel Antonio Otero Remembers the Land Wars of the 1880s
5. Black Elk Remembers the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890
6. Frederick Jackson Turner Praises the Frontier as the Source of American Democracy, 1893
7. Catharine Calk McCarty Meets Her Cattlemen Neighbors, 1916
ESSAYS
Richard White, Outlaw Gangs and Social Bandits
Robert L. Griswold, Western Women and the Uses of Domestic Ideology
David Rich Lewis, Farming and the Northern Ute Experience
4. Trials of the New South
DOCUMENTS
1. Sharecroppers' Contracts, 1876-1886
2. Atlanta Constitution Editor Henry W. Grady Heralds the New South, 1886
3. Historian Broadus Mitchell Describes a Benevolent Cotton-Mill Campaign of the 1880s
4. Labor Organizer Mother Jones Compares Southern Mill Life to Serfdom, 1901
5. Frederick Douglass Describes a Legacy of Race Hatred, 1883
6. A Teacher and Two Pupils Outline the Problems of a "Colored" School, 1883
ESSAYS
Edward L. Ayers, Mill and Mine
Jacqueline Jones, Bent Backs in the Rural South
5. Rise of the Industrial City: New Places, New Peoples
DOCUMENTS
1. Population Growth in Select U.S. Cities, 1870-1920
2. Immigrant Distribution in Six Cities, 1870-1920
3. A Visiting Rudyard Kipling Returns, Unimpressed, from Chicago, 1899
4. Poet Carl Sandburg Extols the City of Big Shoulders, 1916
5. Congress Takes Aim at the "Chinese Menace," 1892
6. Huang Zunxian Expresses the Chinese Perspective in Poetry, c. 1884
7. W.E.B. Du Bois Denounces Racial Prejudice in Philadelphia, 1899
8. An Advice Column for Jewish Immigrants, 1906,1907
ESSAYS
Maury Klein and Harvey A. Kantor, Technology and the Treadmill of Urban Progress
John Bodnar, Families Enter America
George J. Sanchez, Americanization of the Mexican Immigrant
6. Politics in the Gilded Age: Mainstream and Periphery
DOCUMENTS
1. Three Cartoonists Interpret the Political Scene, 1880, 1888: Thomas Nast Attacks the Democrats, 1880; Joseph
Keppler Ridicules the Third-Term Aspirations of President Grant, 1880; Watson Heston Lampoons Parties and Their
Corporate Patrons, 1888
2. Free-Thinker Robert G. Ingersoll Waves the Bloody Shirt, c. 1880
3. Virginia Activist Live Pryor Seeks Help for Her Downtrodden Black Sisters, 1880
4. Elizabeth Cady Stanton Demands Suffrage as the Protection of Selfhood, 1892
5. Elizabeth Cady Stanton Justifies the Woman's Bible, 1895
ESSAYS
Charles W. Calhoun, Political Culture: Public Life and the Conduct of Politics
Ellen Carol DuBois, The Limitations of Sisterhood
7. The 1890s: Economic Depression and Political Crisis
DOCUMENTS
1. John W. Holway, a Pinkerton Guard, Views the Battle of Homestead, 1892
2. Eugene V. Debs Denounces the Role of Corporations and the Courts in the Pullman Strike, 1895
3. Populist Principles: The Omaha Platform, 1892
4. William Jennings Bryan Scorns Advocates of the Gold Standard: The "Cross of Gold" Speech, 1896
5. The Republican Party Platform, 1896
6. Puck Assails William Jennings Bryan and the "Popocrats," 1896
7. McKinley Takes Credit for New Prosperity, 1900
ESSAYS
Nell Irvin Painter, The Depression of the 1890s
Michael Kazin, The Righteous Commonwealth of the Late Nineteenth Century
8. Professionalism and the Uses of New Knowledge
DOCUMENTS
1. John Fiske Reconciles Evolutionism and Christian Doctrine (1882), 1902
2. William Graham Sumner Elaborates the Principles of Social Darwinism, 1885
3. Lester Frank Ward Attacks Laissez Faire in the Name of Reform Darwinism, 1884
4. A Day in the Life of Thomas Alva Edison, 1885
5. Jane Addams Explains the Need for Social Settlements, 1892
6. F. W. Taylor Recruits the Ideal Worker with the Principles of Scientific Management, 1910
ESSAYS
Burton J. Bledstein, The Culture of Professionalism
Robyn Muncy, The Female Dominion of Professional Service
Edward Caudill, Social Darwinism: Adapting Evolution to Society
9. The Language of Empire
DOCUMENTS
1. Alfred T. Mahan Proclaims the Importance of Sea Power, 1890
2. Theodore Roosevelt Links War in the Philippines to the Ideal of the Strenuous Life, 1899
3. William Jennings Bryan Opposes U.S. Occupation of the Philippines, 1900
4. Alfred Beveridge Defends U.S. Imperialism, 1900
5. The Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, 1904
ESSAYS
Paul Kennedy, The United States as New Kid on the Block, 1890-1940
Louis A. Perez, 1898: The Meaning of the Maine
Gail Bederman, Theodore Roosevelt and the Strenuous Life
10. Race and Power Under Jim Crow
DOCUMENTS
1. The U.S. Supreme Court Upholds Segregation: Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896
2. Congressman Frank Clark Praises Segregation, 1908
3. Booker T. Washington Advocates Self-Help, 1895
4. W.E.B. Du Bois Rejects Washington's Strategy of Accommodation, 1903
5. Mary Church Terrell Praises the Club Work of Colored Women, 1901
ESSAYS
Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Whiteness and Manhood
Kevin K. Gaines, Uplift and the Decline of Black Politics
11. Consumer Culture and Commercialized Leisure
DOCUMENTS
1. Theodore Dreiser's Carrie Discovers the Department Store, 1900
2. Charlotte Perkins Gilman Seeks to Extricate Women from the Trap of Consumption, 1899
3. Amusement Park Promoter Frederic Thompson Creates the Carnival Spirit, 1908
4. Democracy at the Movies, 1910
5. Ring Lardner's Baseball "Busher" Writes Home, 1914
ESSAYS
Gunther Barth, Baseball and the Values of Industrial America
Lewis A. Erenberg, Steppin' Out
12. Progressivism: The Roots of the Reform Vision
DOCUMENTS
1. John Dewey Advocates a Democratic Schoolroom, 1900
2. Lincoln Steffens Exposes the Corruption of Municipal Politics, 1904
3. New York City's Boss Plunkitt Defends "Honest" Graft, 1905
4. Socialist Reformer Robert Hunter Decries Murder by Tenement, 1907
5. Baptist Clergyman Walter Rauschenbusch Seeks a Social Christianity, 1912
6. Two Suffrage Cartoons: "The Corn or the Cob--Which?" 1911; "Double the Power of the Home,"
1915
ESSAYS
Richard L. McCormick, Evaluating the Progressives
Robert Westbrook, Lewis Hine and the Two Faces of Progressive Photography
13. Progressivism: Foundations for a New American State
DOCUMENTS
1. The Supreme Court Accepts Limits on Working Women's Hours: Muller v. Oregon, 1908
2. Charles McCarthy Inventories Wisconsin's La Follette-Era Reforms (1909-1911), 1911
3. Theodore Roosevelt Announces the New Nationalism, 1910
4. Woodrow Wilson Proclaims the New Freedom, 1913
5. The Clayton Anti-Trust Act, 1914
ESSAYS
Alan Dawley, Progressive Statecraft
Eric Foner, Freedom and the Progressive State
14. Nature Without Nurture: Progressives Confront Environmental Destruction
DOCUMENTS
1. President Theodore Roosevelt's Conservation Message, 1907
2. A Lumberer's Perspective on the California Redwoods, 1884
3. Enos Mills Mourns the Death of a One-Thousand-Year-Old Pine, 1914
4. The Pros and Cons of the Great Hetch Hetchy Dam Debate, 1913
5. Jane Addams Offers an Example of Municipal Housekeeping in Chicago, 1910
ESSAYS
William J. Cronon, Economic Gain and Environmental Loss: Lumber
Roderick Nash, The Hetch Hetchy Controversy
Martin V. Melosi, Responding to the Urban Environmental Crisis
15. America and the Great War
DOCUMENTS
1. President Woodrow Wilson's War Message, 1917
2. Senator Robert M. La Follette's Antiwar Dissent, 1917
3. George Creel Looks Back on the Selling of the War, 1920
4. A Wobbly Testifies to Vigilante Attack, 1917
5. The U.S. Government Punishes War Protesters: The Espionage Act, 1918
6. Two Treatments of the Color Question During Wartime, 1918: A U.S. Divisional Commander in Kansas Counsels Against
Race Discussions; German Propaganda Circular Targes the African-American Soldier
7. Wilson's Fourteen Points for World Peace, 1918
ESSAYS
Barry D. Karl, Managing War
David M. Kennedy, Over There: Interpreting Wartime Experiences Abroad
Arthur S. Link, Wilson and the War for Democracy
