Page images
PDF
EPUB
[graphic][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

tion. Under the leadership of Charles William Eliot, who for forty years was the president of Harvard, the rigid curriculum that had come down from the Middle Ages (p. 3) was discarded and in its place was adopted an elective system whereby the student was given large freedom in the choice of subjects to be studied. Under the leadership of Daniel Coit Gilman, the president of Johns Hopkins, universities began to emphasize the value of graduate work and to encourage advanced students to make original contributions to knowledge. Alice Freeman Palmer, as the president of Wellesley, by insisting upon high standards, demonstrated that colleges for women can attain a grade of scholarship as advanced as that attained by colleges for men.

The progress made in literature during this period fell short of that made in other directions. Literary productions after the war did not maintain the high level reached by 1860. The Literature great authors of the earlier period (p. 293) continued their excellent work, but books of real genius by new writers were few. Still, many volumes of solid worth appeared. By 1890 William Dean Howells, Bret Harte, F. Marion Crawford, Henry James, and George W. Cable had told many of their best stories; Sidney Lanier, Eugene Field, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, James Whitcomb Riley, C. H. (Joaquin) Miller, and R. W. Gilder had published many of their entertaining poems. Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) and E. W. (Bill) Nye had delighted millions of readers with their inimitable humor; John Fiske, Henry Adams, and John Bach McMaster had made scholarly contributions to American history.

THE GROWTH OF CITIES

We saw (p. 358) that by 1860 manufacturing in the United States had almost overtaken agriculture. The table on page 464 shows that by 1890 manufacturing in the value of its products had not only passed agriculture but had left it far in the rear. In fact by 1890 we had become a great manufacturing and a great commercial nation. One result of this growth was to bring larger numbers of people together in

The Presidential Candidates in 1884

1

cities. In 1890 we were no longer a distinctly rural people, for we had many great cities, and nearly thirty per cent of our entire population was urban. In 1870 the number of towns and cities that had a population of over 8000 was 226; in 1890 it was 447. New York, which owed its growth chiefly to commerce, had in 1890 a population of nearly 2,500,000 and was ranking with the very largest cities of the world. Chicago, whose growth was also largely due to commerce— that of the Great Lakes-had outstripped all the cities of the West and contained more than a million souls. Philadelphia, known as the Manchester of America because of its vast manufactures, had also a population of over a million. St. Louis, Boston, and Baltimore each had a population of nearly half a million. Nine other cities-Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Buffalo, San Francisco, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, New Orleans and Washington-had passed the two-hundred-thousand mark, while Newark and Minneapolis were rapidly approaching that mark. Cities grew wherever trade and manufacturing flourished, and this was in nearly every section of the country. In New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, where manufactures were most highly developed, more than half the population lived in cities.

THE DEMOCRATS RETURN TO POWER

Turning from the social and economic aspects of the period now under consideration and reverting to political matters, we find that the Arthur administration remained uneventful to the end. The affairs of the country were well administered by Arthur, and the country was prosperous while he was President, yet he reaped no political advantage from the favorable condition of things. He failed to secure the support and confidence of his party, and when the Republicans made their nomination for President in 1884 their choice fell upon James G. Blaine of Maine. Blaine was one of the most

1 This number includes the population of Brooklyn, which, however, in 1890 was a separate municipality. In 1898 Brooklyn and several other suburbs were annexed to New York proper, the newly incorporated city being commonly known as Greater New York. In 1910 Greater New York contained nearly 5,000,000 inhabitants and was the largest city in the world except London.

« PreviousContinue »