Comparative Questions

COMPARATIVE QUESTIONS

Document Links

Document 21-1: Jane Addams on Settlement Houses

Document 21-2: A Sociologist Studies Working-Class Saloons in Chicago

Document 21-3: Mother Jones on the Futility of Class Harmony

Document 21-4: Marie Jenney Howe Parodies the Opposition to Women's Suffrage

Document 21-5: Booker T. Washington on Racial Accommodation

Document 21-6: W. E. B. Du Bois on Racial Equality

  1. How did the views of Mother Jones, Marie Jenney Howe, and Mrs. Potter Palmer about the possibility of harmony between classes compare with those of Jane Addams?
  2. How did Addams's views of the necessity of settlement houses compare with Royal Melendy's description of working-class saloons? To what extent were the two institutions similar or different?
  3. To what extent did Booker T. Washington's ideas about progress for black Americans differ from Howe's characterization of anti-suffrage arguments? In what ways did W. E. B. Du Bois's beliefs about the necessity of equality and political conflict compare with Howe's depiction of anti-suffragist arguments?
  4. The documents in this chapter provide evidence of both the aspirations and limitations of progressivism. Judging from these documents, to what extent did the limitations of progressive reforms arise from the character of progressive aspirations? In what ways, if at all, did the commonly held aspirations of progressives differ from those of capitalists, working people, suffragists, and African Americans?