in the fall of 1899 Sigmund Freud was preparing the publication of his masterpiece the interpretation of Dreams though the book would come out in November of that year dr. Freud requested that the title page be dated with the year 1904 the book would be long he said to the new century the new century seemed at first much like the old in 1900 Queen Victoria still sat on the British throne a throne she had held for 62 years gas lamps lit the thoroughfares of major cities and the laws of Sir Isaac Newton still defined the universe in the United States Butch Cassidy the Sundance Kid and the rest of the Wild Bunch were robbing banks and trains in Colorado and Wyoming while Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show gave command performances all over the world in the summer of nineteen hundred thousands of prospectors who had failed to strike it rich in California Nevada and Colorado raced to the Yukon in the latest Gold Rush thirty-five years after the end of the civil war the letters GA are for Grand Army of the Republic still carried great weight in American politics President McKinley was a Civil War veteran as were presidents Harrison Arthur Garfield Hays and grant before him the English language was much smaller in 1900 people had never heard of radios movies or crossword puzzles there were no tractors trucks or tanks no amplifiers modulators no electronics of any kind there was no such thing as camouflage no propaganda no cafeterias or vaccinations there were no chauffeurs aviators Realtors or hijackers there was no income tax no primaries no referendums or recall votes no city managers no rotary or Kiwanis people were neither Bolshevist s-- modernists fascists nor feminists they didn't listen to jazz or gospel or bluegrass they had never seen a neon light they weren't schizophrenic or psychotic they didn't have neuroses or complexes they didn't wear polyester or synthetics of any kind nor sunglasses lipstick or bronze no one used pesticides or fluoride like no other time before it the history of the 20th century can be measured out in the sheer volume of words we had to invent to describe it the United States in 1900 was a vast and disparate country it would be impossible to describe an average American life no such thing existed though 250,000 miles of railroad lines were slowly tying the country together many Americans still lived hundreds of miles from the nearest rail line in the Northwest states of Oregon and Washington rivers were still the highways of the land in the western states of Wyoming Montana and the Dakotas where there was neither river nor railroad remote and isolated farming communities existed in conditions that would have amazed the city dwellers of the Northeast on the banks of Niagara Falls a great hydroelectric generator was being built that would turn nearby Buffalo into a city of lights but west of the Mississippi and south of the Ohio River Northeast the modern age was swinging into action millions of tons of steel poured out of mills in Ohio and Pennsylvania turning john d rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie into billionaires and turning cities into towering metropolis ease the Chicago architect Louis Sullivan devised a structural technique using steel to construct buildings of unheard-of height 30 and 40 stories high Sullivan the father of the skyscraper transformed the skylines of cities everywhere steel was also used to construct railroad tracks streetcar tracks and enormous bridges during the century's first decade New Yorkers saw the construction of the Williamsburg Brooklyn and East River bridges in Cincinnati construction was begun on a bridge that would span the ohio river leading south to kentucky mammoth engineering projects could be seen underground as well Boston and Paris had subway systems at the turn of the century now New York would have one as well in 1904 the Broadway subway line opened and a three mile trip uptown that had previously taken up to an hour could now be traveled in ten minutes meanwhile Thomas Edison was providing the world with inventions that amazed the public the electric light the record player the kinescope the list of wonders went on and on the modern age seemed to burst forth and mass from the front parlor of Edison's New Jersey home in 1900 there were only 8,000 automobiles in the United States and less than 10 miles of paved roads while tens of thousands would gather in Long Island early in the decade to watch the Vanderbilt Cup automobile races cars were thought to be toys for the rich Henry Ford would help to change that notion when in 1908 he introduced mass production which created more jobs and cheaper cards Ford wanted to make the automobile affordable to the average working man the idea made him a millionaire by decades end there were over 200,000 cars in the country and well over half were Fords for most of the country however the modern age seemed far away in the south the economy was still recovering from the Civil War there was virtually no industry in the deep south and construction even of private homes lagged far behind the rest of the country in 1909 out of every 10 African Americans still lived in the south and 80% of them worked as sharecroppers sharecropping was a lazy descent into hell as one historian put it african-americans found themselves in economic relations which which differed in many ways very little from their experiences as slaves southern sharecroppers both black and white rented land seeds equipment homes and sustenance from local landowners by law these landowners could keep their books secretly so the tenants were never allowed to see the status of their own accounts nor questioned the prices they were given for their crops for sharecroppers each year's crop invariably fell just short of breaking even in the 1896 Plessy versus Ferguson case the Supreme Court ruled that separate facilities for black and white Americans did not violate the Constitution so long as the facilities were of equal quality the so called separate but equal precedent whites only signs appeared in restaurants hotels and bathrooms in the south white politicians enacted brutal legislation known as Jim Crow laws these laws legally established a segregated Society and informally turned a blind eye to white violence particularly lynchings against African Americans in the United States you had a situation in the 1890s were over a 200 African Americans were being lynched every year in the deep south where African Americans who had at least four black men had won the right to vote lost it in the 1890s and the turn of the century with the imposition of new white supremacy state constitutions throughout the region you had the imposition of racial segregation in public accommodations so that states and city councils passed laws ridiculous register of restrictions on interaction with blacks and whites of the city of Birmingham Alabama passed a local ordinance making it illegal for blacks and whites to play checkers together Jim Crow as many people know was a minstrel character and minstrel II minstrel see was very very popular going all the way back to the Jacksonian era White's like to dress up as blacks and they liked to portray an african-american character who was simple and comedic and childlike racial segregation was always a form of white control a form of reminder that White's had the power to exclude or deny and therefore Jim Crow of this minstrel character this caricature of african-americans seemed appropriate as an image to characterize this system of racial domination to protect themselves from Jim Crow Society african-americans began a slow migration out of the deep south and formed all black townships in Florida Missouri and Arkansas and on up the Mississippi throughout the decade black leaders started organizations aimed at improving african-americans economic and social standings Booker T Washington president of the new Tuskegee Institute in Alabama started the Urban League in 1907 the writer and scholar w eb Du Bois a former student of Booker T Washington founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People over the course of the century the n-double-a-cp emerged as one of the nation's most powerful voices of racial justice economically at least white farmers and workers throughout the great plains of the Midwest fared little better William Jennings Bryan the Nebraska Democrat who had unsuccessfully run for president in 1896 and 1900 the cause of the American farmer whom he called work Warren and dust begrimed like the southern sharecroppers miners and laborers in company towns across the country were economically trapped miners rented their homes and bought food and equipment from the company after working brutal 12 to 16 hour shifts six days a week they often found they still owed their employers money as the nation industrialized the lives of most Americans worsened workers had virtually no power and no voice in American industry Congress and presidents followed a strict laissez-faire or free-market philosophy standing squarely behind the interests of business and against workers wages were bad and working conditions were dangerous in many industries unions were illegal union organizers were treated as virtual criminals during the century's first decade labor unrest broke out across the country there were coal miner strikes in West Virginia Kentucky and Pennsylvania in 1900 and 1902 in 1903 miners in Cripple Creek Colorado and more NZ Arizona struck machinists went on strike in 1901 the New York building tradesmen in 1903 and the amalgamated Meat Cutters in 1904 Chicago Teamsters went on strike against Montgomery Ward in 1905 the amalgamated Association of iron steel and tin workers carried on a running battle with owners throughout the decade and bridge workers who lived an especially dangerous and migratory life waged a long and sometimes violent struggle against the National erectors Association from 1902 to 1910 most of these strikes were popular to an American public that resented the unbridled power of the capitalists and robber barons the late 19th century had seen a series of depressions that brought unemployment poverty and dislocation to hundreds of thousands of Americans although President William McKinley's first administration saw a return to prosperity civil unrest continued to grow McKinley won the 1900 presidential election but the performance of socialist candidate Eugene Debs who finished a strong third in the election came as a surprise to capitalists and political leaders the Socialists elected mayors in some 50 60 cities they had hundreds literally hundreds of publications all over the country the labor movement itself was quite active especially surprising was the Socialist Party's popularity amongst farmers throughout the plains states who were notorious for their staunch conservatism the Socialist Party was when you think about it's kind of mind-blowing they had 5000 locals throughout the country they had about a hundred and twenty thousand members at their high point but they had a press that one weekly for example the Appeal to Reason had seven hundred and sixty thousand subscribers was published in Garrard Kansas a town of 3,000 people adding to the tensions of the era was the dramatic increase and changing nature of immigration from 1882 to 1910 the u.s. underwent the greatest wave of immigration it had ever seen at its peak in 1907 1.3 million foreigners arrived through the gates of Ellis Island in New York Harbor for the decade more new Americans came through immigration then through childbirth in 1900 almost nine out of every ten Americans were Caucasian and most Americans considered themselves Native white stock the majority were descended from British settlers the new wave of immigrants were mostly from the Mediterranean and Slavic regions of Eastern Europe although they came from Europe they were not considered to be part of the white race they spoke no English almost entirely Catholics and Jews they came into an America dominated by a stringent Protestantism unlike previous generations of immigrants these newcomers didn't head out for the territories to claim farmland even though they were mostly farmers instead they concentrated in city centers and industrial capitals a large percentage of them stayed in the dense Lower East Side of New York City whose population was exploding once they got here what they found often was that they were segregated into different ethnic ghettos for example in Chicago and Detroit and in New York and Philadelphia and other places around the factories in which they worked and there was a not much chance of them to break out of these ghettos unless they were willing to divorce themselves from their culture and try to blend in with the larger American society but that usually took about two generations to be able to do that for the most part people were relegated to a certain role here and they played that role Americans were suspicious of the newcomers and their loyalty to their new country was constantly in question in addition epidemics such as smallpox and influenza increasingly plagued the growing cities and many blame what they called the dirty immigrants for the spread of disease you despite these troubles America considered itself a nation on the move in 1901 a great International Exposition was held in Buffalo New York to showcase the nation's potential the dramatic and innovative use of electricity dazzle visitors turning night into day exhibitions demonstrated the latest developments in agriculture forestry engineering and transportation on September 5th President McKinley came to the exposition and a special reception for the president and his wife drew 50,000 spectators to the temple of music at his speech that day McKinley spoke of the success of his open-door policy which he believed would stabilize the country's economy and lead us to a glorious new age the time had come McKinley proclaimed when isolation is no longer possible or even desirable one of the things that had been a common factory throughout the 19th century for the United States economy was these constant booming bust cycles in the most severe being in the 1890s so with with the progression of industrialization these boom and bust cycles proved to be very problematic because these cycles often caused serious social dislocations in problems in the United States and so the open door policy fundamentally proposed that all nations of the world of drop all tariffs and open their doors to each other for the sale of raw materials as well as investment but even as he spoke McKinley's open door policy was being tested in the Philippines during the spanish-american war in 1898 US forces had fought alongside Filipino guerrillas to liberate the islands from the Spanish with the old tyrants now gone the u.s. became the new invader and Philippine rebels fought on this time against the Americans the one hand the United States with his open door policy argued against the Imperial policies of his competitive European competitors in that sense looking like an anti-imperialist power itself but on the other hand at the same time by pushing you open to our policy the United States is doing the same thing that its competitors were doing and that is pushing their own economic and cultural values on other people's the fighting in the Philippines was Savage the Philippine insurrection cost many more lives than the spanish-american war 4,000 Americans and more than 16,000 Filipinos died in battle another 100,000 Filipinos died of famine caused by the burning of crops though the insurrection essentially ended in 1902 fighting would continue for 3 more years in the end it wasn't military superiority that suppressed the Philippine rebels but the relatively liberal policies of the new Philippine governor William Howard Taft he gave Philippine citizens the right to vote and elect their own officials in franchising them to run their own country in doing so he was able to undermine the revolutionary fervor that guns had been unable to suppress President McKinley who had overseen the start of the Philippine war would not live to see its conclusion the day after his Presidents Day speech at the buffalo exposition the president was shot the assassin was an anarchist named Leon's olga's doctors were unable to remove the bullet but announced their confidence that the president would recover a week later McKinley died within eight weeks Zoll Goss would be tried convicted and executed the new president was 45 year-old Theodore Roosevelt the youngest president in American history child of privilege hero of the Battle of San Juan Hill in the spanish-american war enthusiastic outdoorsman one-time police commissioner of New York City and former governor of New York State Roosevelt was not popular amongst the political boss in New York Roosevelt had earned a reputation as the avowed enemy of political corruption and leaders of New York's political machine had pushed for his nomination to get him out of their state now as New York Senator Mark Hannah put it that damned cowboy is President Roosevelt claimed he would continue McKinley's economic policies for peace and prosperity but his actions worried many capitalists only months after Roosevelt assumed the presidency 50,000 coal miners walked out demanding better pay shorter hours and recognition as a union in an unprecedented move Roosevelt threatened to send the US Army in to run the mines until the dispute was settled the owners were forced into labor arbitration before a presidential commission and the workers won a ten percent pay increase a staunch conservationist Roosevelt also earned the enmity of the logging industry spurred on by his good friend John Muir he more than doubled the number of national parks during his administration Theodore Rosen was passionate about conserving America's beautiful natural resources you established 51 national bird sanctuaries for national game parks 16 national monuments and those monuments included the Grand Canyon mur Woods in California Devil's Tower and Petrified Forest he also added 40 million acres to the National Forest and I think it's very key to know why he did this he did it for the generations that were unborn people that were going to come long after even you and I are here Roosevelt was blunt and straightforward speak softly he said and carry a big stick unlike past presidents who had allowed the robber barons and big trusts to operate as they saw fit Roosevelt spoke passionately of what he called the public interest as Roosevelt saw it the president's job was to use any and all power at his disposal to protect this interest despite an almost universal dislike by political and business leaders Roosevelt won re-election in 1904 by a landslide and was encouraged by many to run for a third term in office he didn't like the name Teddy but that's what the public called him and they bought new teddy bears by the millions to demonstrate their ardour for their president it wasn't just Roosevelt's policies that the public enjoyed it was his youth and vigor the president had six children who enliven the White House and were the delight of many Americans the marriage of his daughter Alice was an occasion of national celebration the ethics of Roosevelt's actions were sometimes questionable especially when it came to Latin America an attempt by France to join the Pacific and Atlantic oceans through Panama failed due to malaria and bankruptcy Roosevelt thought the United States could do the job the President of Colombia didn't agree however and Panama belonged to Colombia Roosevelt sent troops to Panama to liberate the region from Colombia and then promptly claimed the Canal Zone for the United States I took the canal Roosevelt claimed and let Congress debate Roosevelt's intention was to make the United States a world power on the same level as the great European empires South America and Asia would be the dominions of the United States I wish to see the United States the dominant power on the shores of the Pacific Ocean he said in 1907 Roosevelt sent a group of battleships known as the Great White Fleet around the world as a show of strength during his years in the White House the Navy doubled in size and became second only to Great Britain in the number of ships and Men Roosevelt's politics were called progressive allowing the business trusts unlimited power provoked civil unrest Roosevelt felt and drove Americans to radical solutions like Eugene Debs and the Socialist Party he believed he said in giving all Americans capital and labor a square deal and he wasn't alone under the Roosevelt administration the progressive coalition thrived this was the era of the so-called muckrakers industrial progress had brought with it a host of social evils social surveys of the era documented links between rapid industrialization and such ills as poverty alcoholism syphilis tuberculosis suicide and what were called emotional pathologies wealthy industrialists seemed to thrive on the misery of the masses the muckrakers believed that exposure could lead to reform Theodore Roosevelt coined the term muckrakers and when he did so as many of the phrases that he coined in American politics it was not exactly a compliment he thought that they had their purpose but that sometimes they over stretched their boundaries and their influence on the system was not as great as it could be because they tend to be too negative so he valued the role to press but he felt sometimes they over stretched they did today what we would call investigative reporting they studied issues for a long time and came up with with massive expose and no doubt I think in a general way you can say the muckrakers certainly were catalysts to the reform impulse that reform many avenues in American society and culture at that time Rea standard Baker exposed corruption in the mines and railroads the journalist Lincoln Steffens wrote a book on urban conditions called the shame of the city looking into slum conditions many cities took notice New York City passed a housing inspection law early in the decade and many other eastern cities soon followed suit one of the most famous muckrakers was novelist upton sinclair his book the jungle exposed the unsanitary practices of the Chicago meatpacking industry which packaged rotting meat and garbage into its products when health officials confirmed Sinclair's claim the public was outraged I aim to the public's heart Sinclair said and by accident I hit it in the stomach health officials also turned their attention to the patent medicines and drugs that claimed to cure every ailment a sixty million dollar industry in 1900 analysis revealed that many contained poison most contained alcohol another major concern of muckrakers and progressives was the conditions of laborers particularly children in 1900 one-quarter of all boys aged 12 to 16 were laborers most working 12-hour shifts under wretched conditions progressives work to pass child labor laws and spoke out against the rich who earned their millions on the sweat and blood of children unsafe labor practices were another target of concern the Industrial Revolution produced machinery that maimed and killed workers who were then cast aside as an alternative to the Heartless ways of modern society the era also saw the formation of utopian societies and settlement houses these altruistic havens functioned as communes as sources of information and adjustment for confused immigrants and is a refuge for alternative lifestyles one of the most famous was whole house in Chicago founded by the social reformer Jane Addams who would win a Nobel Peace Prize for her social activism Adams wasn't the only woman challenging the traditionally masculine society during this time the great heroine of miners and laborers around the country was the 70 year old agitator mother Jones whom Teddy Roosevelt once called the most dangerous woman in the country others might have nominated Carrie nation for that honor she was convinced that a direct link lay between alcoholism and domestic abuse she waged a long war against the evils of alcohol often going into saloons with an axe and chopping the bars into pieces the work of nation and others like her would ultimately lead to both prohibition and women's right to vote it was an era of change and uncertainty and of can-do optimism science medicine and technology were advancing at an unbelievable rate with new discoveries coming one after another in 1900 the Kodak Brownie brought photography to the masses by making cameras cheap and simple in 1901 the Italian physicist Guglielmo Marconi sent the first radio signal from England to Newfoundland at the time it was a breakthrough with little practical applicability but within five years of flurry of discoveries made the radio possible in 1904 experiments in upstate New York had begun on electric railroad trains those steam engines would continue to pull trains for another half century but already electric streetcars were showing up in every major city it wasn't electronics but mechanics that allowed man to take to the sky in 1903 Orville and Wilbur Wright bicycle mechanics from Dayton Ohio were ready to experiment with a flying machine made of bicycle parts stretch muslin and a gasoline engine oval Wright was at the controls on December 17th when the airplane lifted off the ground at Kitty Hawk North Carolina he flew the plane for 12 and a half seconds the events of that momentous day made few headlines only three American papers carry the story but the Wright brothers had flown into history in Switzerland in a matter of months an obscure postal worker named Albert Einstein produced three mathematical formulas that shocked the scientific world Einstein's formulas established an equation to calculate the size of atoms posed his famous special theory of relativity and effectively ended the reign of Sir Isaac Newton's concept of the universe taken together they established quantum theory as a real science leading to most of the centuries scientific breakthroughs the one science that seemed to lag behind was medicine and the consequences were becoming dire as more and more people moved to urban industrial centers disease and epidemics were ravaging the population in 1900 doctors had no real understanding of how diseases like cholera diphtheria and yellow fever were contracted and spread smallpox epidemics became a recurring nightmare in big cities like New York Boston and Philadelphia help in solving some of these diseases would come from an unlikely source the construction of the Panama Canal previous attempts to forge a passage through Panama had largely been defeated by the 50 miles of swampland rife with malaria and yellow fever learning that British scientists had successfully eliminated mosquitoes on the Nile using drainage systems American engineers spent nearly two years digging drainage ditches throughout the Canal Zone nearly 500 miles of ditches and all by the time the project was completed the Canal Zone had a better health record than New York City or Washington DC but the use of drainage ditches would soon be felt in these and other American cities as sewage and sanitation systems were built to fight against the spread of disease during the century's first decade the rush and blur of the modern age excited most people the century ahead seemed full of promises and hope electric lights were turning cities into wondrous playgrounds boxing baseball horse-racing and other sporting spectacles were drawing larger and larger crowds teams searched for larger venues to play in and new stadiums like the Polo Grounds in New York and Shibe Park in Philadelphia were built to satisfy the public's hunger for baseball the first World Series was played in 1903 with the Boston Red Sox defeating the Pittsburgh Pirates five games to three the year before Pasadena California hosted the first Rose Bowl and college football attracted the nation's attention entertainment was becoming a booming business New York had become the Center for American high society the 400 they were called because mrs. Astor's ballroom only held 400 people families such as the Vanderbilts felt that New York had evolved into a world-class Centre for culture to prove it they enticed the renowned Italian opera singer Enrico Caruso to America to perform Rigoletto at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1903 while the 400 summered in Newport Rhode Island and wintered in Palm Beach Florida the less money Don the eastern seaboard spent their leisure time at the beaches and boardwalks of the Jersey Shore thousands took trains to Atlantic City on summertime weekends to splash in the warm ocean waves a popular new feature at the boardwalks were colored tinted picture postcards that visitors could send to friends or relatives back home to provoke good-natured Envy in New York City Coney Island had turned into a gigantic amusement park featuring over a million electric bulbs lighting the night sky Luna Park steeplechase Park and dreamland boasted arcades water sports carousels and slides to amuse the masses all for 10 cents arrived the parts included vaudeville tents jugglers wrestlers contortionists animal acts boxing matches and bodybuilding Champions producing shows of strength there were violin playing monkeys waterskiing elephants and performing bears sideshow freaks and boxing horses amusement parks in our cage were opening all over the country though few could compete with the grandeur of Coney Island in regions too sparse for amusement parks traveling arcades and circuses brought their fun to the countryside in the western United States where the Cowboys still roamed rodeos were the spectacle of choice part Buffalo Bill Wild West Show and part cowboy skill and daring do rodeos kept the tradition of the Old West alive in the new century the decade also saw a new interest in providing recreation for children playgrounds and parks appeared in the inner cities providing children with a wholesome environment in which to play books aimed specifically at children grew in popularity during this decade l frank Baum wrote his novels on Dorothy's adventures in Oz in England Helen Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit and Rudyard Kipling's jungle books were published the biggest new attraction however was the Nickelodeon moving pictures were called flicks because of the flickering image and the houses where they were seen were called Nickelodeon's after their 5 cent admission movies entranced the masses people watched vaudeville acts news items pictures of the Roosevelts or daily life on a city street moving pictures of cities in India and Asia were a big hit as were sporting events at Coney Island a film on the execution of a circus elephant gone wild was one of the most popular attractions film in the 20th century seemed to be made for each other not only because film is invented just a few years before the turn of the century but also because 20th century is the century of Technology in many ways and film is of course the art form at least the first art form that is most involved in in technology and film is the first art form that is widely successful that is aimed at everybody because it's expensive because its technological it has to have an enormous audience and in that way both as the mass art form and as the technological art form film is is most certainly the art of the 20th century vaudeville and live theatres couldn't compete with a dazzling optical tricks and special effects of this new medium in 1902 effects pioneer and former magician George Melly a wowed audiences with the film classic a trip to the moon the fantastic story involving Victorian astronauts landing on the moon used many innovative camera tricks such as slow motion fade outs and dissolves the programs were short they're about half an hour long they didn't have to get dressed up and so this became a movement that just transformed everything in 1903 Edwin s Porter devised an innovative use of film editing to tell a dramatic story the result was the eight-minute feature the Great Train Robbery based on an infamous robbery committed by Butch Cassidy in the Wild Bunch only two years earlier the Great Train Robbery became a box-office sensation and paved the way for modern movies The Great Train Robbery was made by the edison studio and it's significant in a lot of ways it was enormous ly popular I mean in fact in an era in which films probably were designed to be shown for about six months we have evidence that was still being shown in 1980 it was very popular because it was one of the first films to really tell a coherent story and also one of the first films to make action at the very center of a bit storytelling the middle class and the kind of guardians of culture became rather disturbed and thought what is this kind of working-class entertainment that's grown up without us giving it you know our approval or our guidance the possibility of a whole other culture in America that was no longer under the control or the sponsorship of the traditional guardians of culture worried people very much and in fact in nineteen eight the mayor of York City demanded that all Nickelodeon's be closed as a menace to public safety and health the Nickelodeon's weren't the only concern of the guardians of culture in st. Louis a piano maker named gh stark used the mass publication of sheet music as an incentive for the public to buy his pianos in the fall of 1899 he published a new composition by Scott Joplin called the Maple Leaf Rag cultural critics complained that ragtime music was dangerous and degraded American society a Saturday Evening Post article warned of a plague of Coon songs skirt dances and all the rest of the tawdry crew but the popularity of the new music grew and like the movies technology made popularity profitable phonograph records were sold for the first time in 1901 and ragtime and jazz music soon dominated record sales the debate over the social evils of popular culture would continue on through the century many critics warned of mixing what they called high and low cultural forms but for wev Du Bois the issue was quite different it isn't the mix of high and low that scares these people he wrote but the mix of black and white in 1904 Du Bois wrote the problem of the 20th century will be the problem of the color line Dubois said that at a moment in history at the end of the 19th century where the status of people of African descent throughout the world was defined by two fundamental political economic social institutions or systems in the United States Jim Crow segregation defined the oppressed existence of black people outside of the United States it was European colonialism the two systems of economic political and racial domination had many parallels around the world violence was flaring up at the color line as it had in the Philippines in 1900 a popular rebellion in China had broken out against foreign domination the Boxer Rebellion was quickly and brutally suppressed by an alliance of European nations but colonies were beginning to show more willingness to revolt against their imperialist overlords the world had been broken up at the spheres of influence there was the the British Empire the French had their sphere of influence throughout North Africa and Southeast Asia the Germans had begun to carve up parts of Africa as well as the Italians coming in as a matter of fact by 1914 about 85 percent of the globe surface was under the control of some European power in 1904 Japan provoked Russia into a war by annexing Korea and taking control of much of Manchuria Russia was beaten badly in the three-year russo-japanese war all of Europe was shocked by the defeat of a white nation at the hands of one of the so called mud races back in America Dubois wrote the word White has overnight lost its magic for Russian czar nicholas ii the embarrassment of losing a war to japan wasn't the only concern the climate was already revolutionary in in the russian cities and the Russian countryside as well with the whole thing being triggered into open rebellion by the russo-japanese war and the Russians defeats at the hands of the Japanese and the Far East the war effort had caused a severe downturn in the Russian economy and millions had been thrown out of work with winter approaching Russians were cold hungry and angry on a Sunday night in October 1905 a group of several thousand approached the gates of the Imperial Palace the palace guard opened fire on it Bloody Sunday as it was called sparked a widespread revolt the revolution was so spontaneous and so short-lived that Vladimir Lenin leader of the radical Bolsheviks wasn't even in the country to see it hearing about the events in Geneva Lenin rushed back to Moscow just in time to see order restored to Russia he was immediately arrested for treason and exiled to Siberia then the Czarist government of nicholas ii felt it was forced to make concessions had been an absolute monarchy and they agreed to grant a constitution although it turned out to be a very limited nuts a phony constitution but it was enough to split the Liberals and the radicals in the revolution and to restore order for the time being Nicholas's announcement of a russian constitution quelled the uprising but the scent of revolution remained in the air in england two signs of the decay of the British Empire were evident though few could yet believe it the empires had seen their heyday in 1901 when Queen Victoria died the British poet rupert brooke's wrote it seemed as though the Keystone had fallen from the arch of heaven even London prostitutes wore black for the Queen's funeral a new breed of political activists could be heard in London female suffragettes like Emmeline golden Pankhurst staged protests and agitated for women's right to vote in a show of civil disobedience Pankhurst would be arrested nearly a dozen times like their contemporaries in the United States the British suffragettes displayed a scandalously non Victorian attitude towards sex they advocated women's use of birth control and practiced it was whispered open marriages and other outrages of natural law at the same time the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw along with friends Sidney and Beatrice Webb organized a society of socialist activists called the Fabian's the Fabian's were dedicated to the reform of British society and their platform would ultimately be adopted by the British Labour Party one of Shaw's favorite and most shocking themes was the evils of the Empire signs of the Empire's demise came even before the death of Victoria on January 1st 1901 England granted the former penal colony of Australia its independence the British were less willing to allow self-determination for the African provinces of Transvaal and the Orange Free State those regions had been settled by Dutch colonists known as bores the Dutch word for farmers rich in gold and diamonds the board territories were contested in 1880 by the British but they were defeated militarily by the boards in October 1899 war broke out in the region again provoked by Great Britain the Boers went on the offensive and scored several early successes but the British changed their tactics sent in heavy reinforcements burned crops and put Boer women and children into concentration camps in 1902 the Boers finally capitulated but the war had cost the British nearly six thousand lives and much of its international reputation England which had historically not wanted to commit itself to permanent alliances on the continent had to reassess its its position in European affairs and did so largely as a result of the unfavorable the negative opinion regarding England's conduct during the Boer War as with William Howard Taft in the Philippines England was finally able to end the war only through compromise Boers and British both became full citizens of the new Union of South Africa of course neither citizenship nor any other rights in the new country were extended to the African natives of the region still even this amount of flexibility was unusual in the politics of imperialism the greatest threat to the European Way of life came not from the colonies but from within Europe itself the austro-hungarian Empire had for decades maintained informal control over border regions in the Balkans nominally a province of the decaying Turkish Ottoman Empire in 1905 the austrian government decided to make its control formal and announce the annexation of bosnia herzegovina anger and fear swept through the capitals of Europe over the impudence of the act Kaiser Wilhelm was angry that he hadn't been consulted in the matter beforehand as were the leaders of France and England Russia which felt a bond of kinship with the Slovak Serbs was angry that the action had taken place at all the threat of war was imminent with Russian backing the Serbs prepared to declare war but the backing would not come nicholas is set by domestic troubles was sympathetic but would not commit to another war so soon after the defeat by Japan instead Serbs formed a militant group called mulatto Bosna or young Bosnia dedicated to disrupting Austrian rule they used any and all means at their disposal though they favored bombings and assassinations the sentries first group of terrorists freedom fighters the mulatto Bosna would soon drag Europe into a great and calamitous war the storm clouds of two world wars were gathering over Vienna on a holiday in 1909 the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph paraded his horse through a cheering crowd that included Leon Trotsky Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin the trio went entirely unnoticed that day it was almost as if the young century patiently awaiting its hour to come was content to watch the grandeur of the old century pass by demon things well I guess you call it that all along it was a certain illusion and indifference that just seemed puzzling and by Easter Friday police decide to end the game Scott people
