American Literature
1900-1945
Survey Course Instructor:
Mihai Mîndra
Lecture 1
Major Cultural and
Political Directions
Social Darwinism
coined in the late 19th century
humans, like animals and plants,
compete in a struggle for existence
in which natural selection results in
“survival of the fittest
Some social Darwinists: governments
should not interfere with human
competition by attempting to regulate the
economy or cure social ills such as poverty
Social Darwinism
advocate a laissez-faire political and
economic system competition and self-
interest in social and business affairs
Social Darwinist - applied loosely to anyone
who interprets human society primarily in
terms of biology, struggle,
competition, or natural law (a
philosophy based on what are considered the
permanent characteristics of human nature)
Social Darwinism
sociologist Herbert Spencer coined
the phrase “survival of the fittest” to
describe the outcome of competition
between social groups.
In Social Statics (1850) and other
works: through competition social
evolution would automatically produce
prosperity and personal liberty
unparalleled in human history
Social Darwinism
United States: Spencer gained
considerable support among
intellectuals and some businessmen,
incl. steel manufacturer Andrew
Carnegie (visit to the United States in
1883)
the most prominent American social
Darwinist of the 1880s William
Graham Sumner
Progressivism
U.S. Legislative Reforms
the early 20th century
combat social problems such as dangerous
working / living conditions > industrialization
& urbanization
Progressives turned to government to achieve
their goals; national in scope: included both
Democrats and Republicans.
Progressivism
embraced four types of reform:
Economic--"Monopoly“
Structural and Political--"Efficiency“
(“Taylorism”)
Social--"Democracy"
Moral--"Purity“
curb corporate power / end business monopolies
wipe out (political) corruption
democratize electoral procedures,
protect working people / bridge the gap between social
classes.
Progressivism
Examples:
Elkins Act (1903): railroads prohibited from giving
secret rebates and charging discriminatory rates
Meat Inspection Act (1906):inspection required
for cattle, sheep, goats, and hogs sold for meat in
interstate or foreign commerce.
Pure Food and Drug Act (1906): requirement to
use pure ingredients and list them on packaging.
Federal Farm Loan Act (1916): Congress provides
long-term credit at low interest for farmers.
18th Amendment (1919): Prohibition (outlawed
alcoholic drinks) [repealed in 1933 - 21st
Amendment]
19th Amendment (1920): Women are given the
right to vote etc.
Progressivism
1890s - 1910s: affected local, state, and national
politics; also left a mark on journalism, academic life,
cultural life, and social justice movements
Most of these reforms - triggered by
investigative/muckraking journalism & writers associated
with this movement:
Lincoln Steffens: The Shame of the Cities (1904) & The
Struggle for Self-Government (1906)
Thorstein Veblen: The Theory of the Leisure Class
(1899)
Ray Stannard Baker: Following the Color Line (1908)
Theodore Dreiser: The Financier (1912) & The Titan
(1914)
Upton Sinclair: The Jungle (1906)
Educator John Dewey: emphasized a child-centered
philosophy of pedagogy (known as progressive education)
Progressivism in the Cities and States
1889 - Jane Addams
founded Hull House
center for welfare work
in Chicago
championed the causes
of labor reform, public
education, and
immigrants’ rights
Addams’s book -
Twenty Years at Hull
House
Initiated the
social settlement
movement, which
originated in cities
in the 1890s
There were 100
settlement houses
in 1900, 200 in
1905, and 400 in
1910.
Hull House
Children
Hull House in the early 1900s.
provided nurseries,
adult education classes,
and recreational
opportunities for children
and adults
Progressivism in the Cities and States
Many reforms were first implemented at the
state level:
Elimination / regulation of child labor; by 1907: 30
states abolished child labor
cutting workers’ hours, particularly women (Muller v.
Oregon – 10 h day)
Establishing a minimum wage; endorsement of
workmen’s compensation (an insurance plan to aid
workers injured on the job) and an end to homework
(piecework done in tenements).
support from a broad section of the middle class—
editors, teachers, professionals, and business leaders
—who shared common values.
Progressivism at the National Level
major goal:
government
regulation of
business:
antitrust laws to eliminate
monopolies
lower tariffs
graduated income tax
system to control currency
Spokespersons:
President Theodore
Roosevelt (“New Deal”)
President William Howard Taft President Woodrow Wilson
(1909 -1913) (“New Freedom”) [1913 –
1921]
Progressive Party (ies)
name of three distinct political parties
in U.S. history
first Progressive Party: known colloquially
as the Bull Moose Party
founded by Theodore Roosevelt, after a bitter
fight for the Republican presidential nomination
among the president William H. Taft, the
Wisconsin senator Robert M. La Follette, in 1912.
Taft won the internal elections but the Democrat
Woodrow Wilson won the presidential ones.
ended in 1917, as most of the party’s members
joined the Republican Party
Progressive Party (ies)
Second progressive party: 1924 - a liberal coalition,
frustrated by conservative domination of both major
parties the League for Progressive
Political Action (popularly called the Progressive
Party)
Senator La Follette for president and Montana
Democratic Senator Burton K. Wheeler for VP
third Progressive Party - 1948 by dissident
Democrats
nominated ex-VP Wallace for president and Idaho
Democratic senator Glen H. Taylor for vice president
Supported by the Communist Party; accused of being
communist-dominated during the ensuing Cold War,
stopped playing a political role after the 1948
elections.
End of 19th Century – Beginning of 20th
Century Journalism: Yellow & Muckraking
Yellow journalism
pejorative reference to journalism that
features scandal-mongering,
sensationalism, jingoism or other unethical
or unprofessional practices (by news media
organizations / individual journalists)
originated during the circulation battles
between Joseph Pulitzer's New York World
and William Randolph Hearst's New York
Journal (1895 – approx.1898)
can refer specifically to this period
Yellow Journalism
Both papers were accused by critics of
sensationalizing the news in order to drive
up circulation, although the newspapers did
serious reporting as well.
The New York Press coined the term "Yellow
Journalism" in early 1897 to describe the
papers of Pulitzer and Hearst.
The newspaper did not define the term, and
in 1898 simply elaborated, "We called them
Yellow because they are Yellow."[1]
Nasty little printer's
devils spew forth from
the Hoe press in this
Puck cartoon of Nov.
21, 1888, showing
that the evils
predated the Yellow
press.
Yellow Journalism
Pulitzer: newspapers were public institutions
with a duty to improve society, and he put
the World in the service of social reform.
During a heat wave in 1883, World reporters went
into the Manhattan's tenements, writing stories
about the appalling living conditions of immigrants
and the toll the heat took on the children.
Stories headlined "How Babies Are Baked" and
"Lines of Little Hearses" spurred reform and drove
up the World's circulation
Yellow Journalism
Hearst read the World while studying at Harvard
University and resolved to make the Examiner as bright
as Pulitzer's paper.[7].
Under his leadership, the Examiner devoted 24 percent of
its space to crime, presenting the stories as morality
plays, and sprinkled adultery and "nudity" (by
19th century standards) on the front page
also increased its space for international news
sent reporters out to uncover municipal corruption
and inefficiency
discovered that indigent women were treated with
"gross cruelty" in a San Francisco Hospital. The
entire hospital staff was fired the morning the piece
appeared
Yellow Journalism
Both were Democratic / sympathetic to labor and
immigrants (a sharp contrast to publishers like the
New York Tribune's Whitelaw Reid, who blamed
their poverty on moral defects) / both invested
enormous resources in their Sunday publications
functioned like weekly magazines, going beyond
the normal scope of daily journalism
included the first color comic strip pages
Pulitzer and Hearst are often credited (or blamed)
for drawing the nation into the Spanish-American
War with sensationalist stories or outright lying.
Yellow Journalism
In fact, the vast majority of Americans did
not live in New York City, and the decision
makers who did live there probably relied
more on staid newspapers like the Times,
The Sun or the Post.
The most famous example of the
exaggeration: apocryphal story that artist
Frederic Remington telegrammed Hearst to
tell him all was quiet in Cuba and "There
will be no war." Hearst responded "Please
remain. You furnish the pictures and I'll
furnish the war."
Rebellion broke out in Cuba in 1895 against the Spanish regime
Male Spanish officials strip search an American woman tourist in
Cuba looking for messages from rebels; front page "yellow
journalism" from Hearst
Rebellion broke out in Cuba in 1895 against the Spanish regim
Stories of Cuban virtue and
Spanish brutality dominated
Hearst’s pages; focused on
the enemy who set the bomb
Pulitzer's treatment in the World emphasizes
—and offered a huge reward
horrible explosion
Investigative/Muckraking Journalism
1880 Henry Demarest Lloyd - a series of articles
exposing corruption in business and
politics:
“The Story of a Great Monopoly” (1881) &
“The Political Economy of Seventy-Three Million
Dollars” (1882) in the Atlantic Monthly
“Making Bread Dear” (1883) & “Lords of Industry”
(1884) in the North American Review.
Articles caused a stir & Lloyd - described as the first
American investigative journalist.
Investigative/Muckraking Journalism
Nellie Bly - another important pioneer
in investigative journalism
an eighteen year old reporter with the Pittsburgh
Dispatch
first-hand tales of the lives of ordinary people
often obtained this material by becoming involved
in a series of undercover adventures: worked in a
Pittsburgh factory to investigate child labour, low
wages and unsafe working conditions.
Investigative/Muckraking Journalism
Nelly Bly (cont’d)
interested in writing about social problems &
suggested ways that they could be solved.
1887 recruited by Joseph Pulitzer to write for his
newspaper, the New York World; wrote about
poverty, housing and labour conditions in New
York
feigned insanity to get into New York's insane
asylum on Blackwell's Island. Bly discovered that
patients were fed vermin-infested food and
physically abused by the staff.
Investigative/Muckraking Journalism
Another early example of investigative journalism:
Jacob A. Riis’s work.
1899 - Scribner's Magazine published a series of
articles by Riis entitled How the Other Half Lives.
December 1899 - Benjamin Flower established The
Arena (magazine) specialized in this type of
journalism.
articles on poverty, sweatshops, slum clearance,
unemployment and child labour
proclaimed that his intention was to create a movement
that would "agitate, educate, organize and move
forward, casting aside timidity and insisting that the
Republic shall no longer lag behind in the march of
progress."
Investigative/Muckraking Journalism
Investigative journalism became a
movement in 1902
magazines such as McClure's Magazine &
Everybody's Magazine joined Arena in
the struggle for social reform.
magazines became extremely popular & other
mainstream publications - Cosmopolitan &
the Saturday Evening Post began publishing
articles exposing corruption in politics and
business.
Investigative/Muckraking Journalism
By 1906 - combined sales of the ten magazines that
concentrated on investigative journalism reached a
total circulation of 3,000,0000.
Some of these journalists used the material they had
obtained and turned them into novels:
Charles Edward Russell wrote several
novels based on journalistic research and each one
sold over 30,000 copies
Upton Sinclair was the most successful of
these novelists;The Jungle and The Brass Check,
were both best-sellers with sales of over 100,000.
Investigative/Muckraking Journalism
Writers and publishers associated with this movement
(1900 – 1914) included:
Frank Norris
Ida Tarbell
Charles Edward Russell
Lincoln Steffens
David Graham Phillips
C. P. Connolly
Benjamin Hampton
Upton Sinclair
Thomas Lawson
Alfred Henry Lewis
Ray Stannard Baker
Investigative/Muckraking Journalism
President Theodore Roosevelt - initiated legislation
that would help tackle some of the problems
illustrated by these journalist (Pure Food and Drugs
Act [1906] & the Meat Inspection Act [1906])
Following their attack (initiated by David Graham
Phillips in Cosmopolitan) on some of Roosevelt’s
political allies, he called them “muckrakers”
/muckraking journalism:
"the man who could look no way but downward with
the muck-rake in his hands; who would neither look
up nor regard the crown he was offered, but
continued to rake to himself the filth on the floor."
Populism
agrarian movement of the late
19th century
developed mainly in the area from Texas to
the Dakotas
grew into a Farmer-Labor political coalition
began during the economic depression of
the 1870s: sharp decline in the income of
farmers / their living and operating costs
were rising.
Populism
The farmers began to organize; a large
numbers of them joined the National
Grange, the Farmers' Alliances etc
cooperative organizations – purposes:
lower farmers' costs by selling supplies at
reduced prices
loaning money at rates below those charged
by banks
building warehouses to store crops until
prices became favorable
taking political action to achieve these goals.
Populism
By 1891, movement gained sufficient strength;
the alliances joined the Knights of Labor a.o. the
People's Party; members called Populists
Principal objectives:
free coinage of silver
issuance of large amounts of paper currency
(inflationary measures tended to raise farm
prices & enable farmers to pay off their debts)
to replicate their cooperative system on a
national scale
Populism
Objectives (cont’d)
to lower transportation costs by
nationalizing the railroads
to achieve a more equitable distribution of
the costs of government by means of a
graduated income tax
to institute direct popular elections of U.S.
senators
to inaugurate the 8-hour workday.
Populism
Populist influence peaked in 1896 when William
Jennings Bryan, a Democrat who sympathized with
the Populists' agenda, won his party's presidential
nomination.
The Populists endorsed Bryan, sacrificing their
independent identity.
After he was defeated, the Populist Party faded
steadily from the political scene, disappearing
about 1908
Populist movement exercised a profound influence on
subsequent U.S. political life: almost all the original
Populist demands eventually enacted into law
Pragmatism
philosophical movement that has had
a major impact on American culture
from the late 19th century to the
present
calls for ideas and theories to
be tested in practice
all claims about truth, knowledge,
morality, and politics must be tested as
such
Pragmatism
critical of traditional Western
philosophy, especially the notion that
there are absolute truths and absolute
values
Ongoing efforts to improve society,
through such means as education or
politics = problem-solving approach
emphasis on connecting theory to
practice
Pragmatism
pragmatists’ denial of absolutes, moreover,
challenged the foundations of religion,
government, and schools of thought
pragmatism influenced developments in
psychology, sociology, education, semiotics
(the study of signs and symbols), and scientific
method, as well as philosophy, cultural
criticism, and social reform movements
three most important pragmatists: American
philosophers Charles Sanders Peirce,
William James, and John Dewey
