The New South: How Much Like the Old?

Because we had an exam yesterday, we had time in the 11:00 am section only for a ten-minute or so introduction to the story of the New South, the South between 1865 and 1914. This podcast is that introduction, recorded as an audio podcast only. While many economic indicators support the idea that there was indeed a New South characterized by widepread industrialization and economic change, the New South turned out to be much like the old in all the most important areas. Certainly if one defines the New South as a society of "wealth and prosperity based on industry," there was no New South after the Civil War.

Introducing the "New South" (audio podcast)

Poverty and Immigration Restriction, 1882-1910

To many Americans there was an imagined link between poverty and immigration. Since most immigrants were poor, Americans made the false leap to the conclusion that most poor people were immigrants, or that their poverty was caused by immigration. In today's lecture, captured below as an audio podcast, we look at how Americans viewed the "Old" and the "New" immigrants and recoiled at the sources of immigration between 1882 and 1910. The organizations and legislation that resulted are reviewed.

"Golden Door" No More: Poverty and Immigration in the late Nineteenth Century Lens(audio podcast)

Lecture 04: Poverty and its Fatal Diagnosis

Yesterday we introduced the topic of poverty in the late nineteenth century and looked at its dimensions and diagnosis. We saw that the poor were blamed for their own poverty, an insensitivity that only made problems worse. Because the battery failed on my microphone and the lecture was not recorded, I made this special podcast providing a condensed (in fourteen minutes) overview of the lecture. Next time we will look at a case study of tenement house reform and the discovery of poverty in the 1890s to round out our look at the topic of poverty. it was a problem that would have to await the progressive reformers after the turn of the century to be seriously addressed.

The Dimensions and Diagnoses of Poverty in the Age of Excess (video iPod format)

Lecture 03: Introducing the Age of Excess, 1877-1900

Today we talked about the age of the Economic Revolution in America, what is sometimes described accurately as an "age of excess." Overproduction of goods, oversupply of labor and a mania to organize privately to solve problems (usually with conflict as the result if not the goal) rendered it a time of suffering bereft of reform. I explain how America was growing rich as a nation and poor as a people. Next time we will look at specicic examples of the organizations for conflict that passed for the reform spirit of the "Gilded Age."

Introducing the Age of Excess (video iPod format)