Changes for White Working Class Americans Between the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries
White working class Americans during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries found themselves in a social order that was fundamentally reorganizing itself. The railroads stitched the nation together at the same time as they began to wrench people and communities out of their rural or agrarian ways of life. The abolishment of slavery meant that agriculture needed to be altered within the south, and it drove many Americans to seek out new ways to reassert the racial hierarchies that had so long been the heart of America's social order. Some working class whites looked to new political movements to answer the emerging questions and difficulties of the changing times. Many acted to strengthen the labor movement, but found fierce and violent resistance from businessmen and corporations. Ultimately, it was a difficult and perilous time for the white working class, fraught with numerous failures and some successes. Essentially, the emergence of the industrial age restructured American society in ways that relied upon old class and ethnic divisions but in entirely new ways. One of the most significant ways in which the western world changed during after the Civil War is associated with transportation. Primarily, this change w
Still, Immigration racism also became a major issue for white Americans following the Civil War. By 1890 an enormous wave of immigration had begun, and the composition of this group was rather different than those that immigrated during and immediately after the war; they had been nearly fifty percent Irish. By this time, however, the anti-immigration sentiment had been brewing for half a century, and racial values played an even stronger role in the laws that came out of this age. This wave of immigrants was primarily made up of eastern and southern Europeans, whom many Americans looked down upon. Of course, this was during a time when extreme views like eugenics were being perpetuated by leading thinkers and governments. Many people firmly believed criminal behavior, laziness, stupidity, and allegiances to political parties were heritable traits passed on from generation to generation. This sort of mentality facilitated numerous anti-immigration policies and ideas like social Darwinism; this was because people felt that many foreigners and lower-class members of society were inherently anarchists and desired nothing less than to destroy the foundation of the American infrastructure and economic system. Overall, America changed drastically for white Americans between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Numerous attempts to restore tradition failed, and new battles emerged. Nevertheless, they acted both legally and illegally, morally and immorally to assert their interests. The Populist Party, however, failed under this ideological and social fragmentation. By 1890 many differing political and social factions had been pulled together under the same banner to such an extent that nothing decisive could ever be done to counteract the aims of the social elite. Ultimately, the issues of
Some common words found in the essay are:
Civil War, , Populist Movement, Pacific Railroads, Europeans Americans, Klux Klan, Industrial Revolution, Populist Party, Europe Americas, Overall America, civil war, agrarian myth, nineteenth twentieth centuries, industrial revolution, populist movement, individual farmers, white americans, industrial age, political social, class americans, nineteenth twentieth,
Approximate Word count = 1217
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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