Major Problems In The Gilded Age And The Progressive Era

Bodnar, John. “Families Enter America.” Major Problems in the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, ed. Leon Fink. D.C. Heath and Company, 1993. p. 279-292.

The essay Families Enter America is about the way that John Bodnar approaches the experience of European immigrants in American cities. He focuses on the social and economic structures that the immigrants' lives became entangled once they entered their new nation. The immigrants changed urban American life collectively, if not individually. A view of a large diversity, including "old" and "new" immigration, is being attempted. As a summary of urban America's immigrant experience, Bodnar asserts that immigration, emigration, and immigrant conduct in the new country are all accounted for by

Many ethnic groups immigrated to America for various reasons, and their experiences there were as varied. The immigrant experience was not homogeneous, for their interrelationship with capitalism and their need to provide for their own welfare and that of their family-household. Acceptance of the capitalist world, in large part with the newcomers from the home country, who were not clinging to the past, but forging into the present. In a capitalist economy, new immigrant groups dispersed as soon as they arrived. Some people rose from the lower class and into middle-class American society after acquiring riches and

He argues a dual thesis. The Populists leveled a profound critique against American society, yet they could never pierce to its core, which was industrial capitalism. Bruce uses a thorough review of all the existing written material to focus on what the Southern Populists' rank-and-file thought and believed. He describes a world of tangible things and personal relations, rooted in the rural experience in the South. Some Southern Populists held the failure of listing society to reflect this truth was responsible for many Americas problems.They did no hard work, produced no wealth, but yet controlled the country. I would probably not use this essay relating to my research question. As it points out a lot of things with capitalism, it doesn't really help me understand or answer my research question. Although it does say, the Southern Populists, drawing on their heritage and the lessons they learned. That it elaborated an analysis and critique of industrial capitalism in the country. It suggested a political solution to the poverty and exploitation it brought to rural and urban America. Palmer demonstrates the basic acceptance of capitalism, in the form of