504 Chapter 18 American Society in the Industrial Age
A football game pits Yale and Princeton in 1879. The field was not lined or bounded, and play consisted mostly of disorganized scrums.
Princeton in 1869, and by the 1880s college football
had become extremely popular.
Much of the game’s modern character, however,
was the work of Walter Camp, the athletic director
and football coach of Yale. Camp cut the size of
teams from fifteen to eleven, and he invented the
scrimmage line, the four-down system, and the key
position of quarterback. He publicized the game in a
series of books, ranging from How to Coach a Team
(1886) to Jack Hall at Yale(1909). Camp’s prestige
was such that when he named his first All-American
team after the 1889 season, no one challenged his
judgment. Well into the twentieth century, the play-
ers that Camp selected were the All-Americans.
Spectator sports had little appeal to women at
this time and indeed for decades thereafter. And few
women participated in organized athletics. Sports
were “manly” activities; a woman might ride a bicy-
cle, play croquet, and perhaps play a little tennis, but
to display any concentrated interest in excelling in a
sport was considered unfeminine.
Fox, from Coney Island Frolicsat
http://www.myhistorylab.com
ReadtheDocumentChristianity’s Conscience and the Social Gospel
The modernization of the great cities was not solv-
ing most of the social problems of the slums. As this
fact became clear, a number of urban religious lead-
ers began to take a hard look at the situation.
Traditionally, American churchmen had insisted that
where sin was concerned there were no extenuating
circumstances. To the well-to-do they preached the
virtues of thrift and hard work; to the poor they
extended the possibility of a better existence in the
next world; to all they stressed one’s responsibility
for one’s own behavior—and thus for one’s own sal-
vation. Such a point of view brought meager com-
fort to residents of slums. Consequently, the
churches lost influence in the poorer sections.
Furthermore, as better-off citizens followed the
streetcar lines out from the city centers, their church
leaders followed them.
In New York, seventeen Protestant congrega-
tions abandoned the depressed areas of Lower
Manhattan between 1868 and 1888. Catering there-
after almost entirely to middle-class and upper-class