After mastering this chapter, you should be able to:
- Trace the journeys of the new immigrants from their places of origin to America and explain their adaptation to urban stresses and their effect on American cities.
- Specify the role of skyscrapers, suburbs and tenements in the rise of the city.
- Identify and describe the major problems of American central cities in the Victorian era.
- Explain and evaluate the operation of the early political "machines."
- Describe the most common form of food, housing, and medical care in 1877 and trace the changes through 1900.
- Identify and describe the principal moral values and issues of Victorian America.
- Describe the most popular pastimes and forms of entertainment in Victorian America.
- Delineate the changing roles of both women and the family in America from 18771900.
- Describe the changes taking place in public education between 18771890.
- Describe the major changes taking place in American higher education between 1877-1900.
- Compare and contrast the educational and civil rights policies of Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois.
- Describe the principal tenets of Social Darwinism and the opposing reform theory, including some of the specific arguments of major proponents of each view.
- Trace the rise of professional social workers in the settlement houses and in the depression of 1893.
