America Moves to the City

1
America Moves to the City

• Chapter 25

2
Urban Frontier

• Cities tripled in size from Civil War until end
  of century
• By 1900 New York second largest city in world
• 1880s cities limited in size because people
  had to walk to work
• Skyscrapers
• Cheap steel allowed for steel skeleton buildings
  designed by people like Louis Sullivan
• Otis invented elevator to make access to
  skyscrapers easier
• Electric light, plumbing and telephones
• Transportation
• Electric trolleys, elevated trains allowed for
  cities to expand beyond walking boundaries
• Suspension Bridges (Brooklyn Bridge) connected
  areas
• Employment
• Immigrants and rural residents attracted by
  factories and jobs
• Department Stores (Marshall Fields, Macys)
• Allowed for a mixing of social classes and
  development of fashion and consumerism

Chicago, Illinois 1890
3
Problems in City

• Cities grew faster than people could handle
• Sanitation
• In rural areas, materials were repaired or
  reused, urban environments generate waste
• Consumerism from mass production also led to
  waste
• Animals left waste throughout the city
• Police
• Criminals and con-men were common throughout
  cities
• Fire
• Overcrowded cities, tenements made fires
  especially dangerous
• Dumbbell Tenements
• Were overcrowded, poorly ventilated, had a shared
  bathroom
• Slums developed of extremely poor

4
Ethnic neighborhoods

• Collection of people in one area by language or
  nationality
• Were mostly poor and consisted of tenements
• Very overcrowded
• Suburbs
• Transportation improvements allowed wealthier
  people to move away from dirt, crime overcrowded
  of the city

5
Old immigration

• Original settlers English, Scots, Germans,
  Irish, Scandinavians
• Africans were brought to America through slavery
• Immigration slows with industrial revolution

6
New Immigration (1880-1920)

• 24 million immigrants
• mostly from Eastern, Southern Europe and
  Mediterranean, were illiterate and poor
• Came from countries with no democratic or
  capitalist traditions

7
Push Pull of Immigration

• Push factors reasons why someone wanted to
  leave Europe (famine, war, disease, unemployment,
  poverty, oppression)
• Pull factors reasons that attracted someone to
  America (jobs, freedom, land, family, new start)
• America Letters
• Told of opportunity in America that encouraged
  immigrants to come
• Steamship
• Some had to work way across the ocean
• Were strong so ocean travel was safer
• Were faster than wooden ships
• Did not rely on winds
• Could operate on schedule
• Allow people to work for a little while in
  America than return to homeland

8
Ellis Island Gate to America

• Ellis Island Immigration center in New York
  Harbor
• Went through medical check up
• Questioned on name, where going, job etc
• Sometimes people given new names because
  inspectors couldnt understand the old one

9
Where Immigrants Settled

• Half went to NY, MA, PA, IL
• cities grew fast
• Went where they could find work
• Went where family was
• Many had family members pay for trip
• Get jobs in similar areas that family members had

10
Assimilation and challenges

• Many new immigrants were resisted by existing
  populations
• Immigrants were also given hard time from members
  of same nationality that had been here earlier
• Catholic schools created to deal with prejudice
  and preserve heritage
• birds of passage many immigrants returned to
  homeland after earning some money
• Generation gap created between European parents
  and American children
• Old values and cultures were replaced by new
  American values
• Government did little to protect immigrants.
  State governments were dominated by rural areas

11
Jobs for Immigrants

• Labor bosses
• Would stay around Ellis Island and give jobs to
  low skilled workers off the boats
• Would give jobs, shelter, food
• Worker would give boss part of wages
• Unskilled labor
• Work with hands that doesnt require much
  training, education or language skills
• Dug sewers, subways, built buildings etc.
• New Immigrants replaced earlier generations of
  immigrants
• Created tensions between ethnic groups
• Italians replaced Irish

12
Support for Immigrants

• Religious leaders advocated support for the poor
  based on social Gospel from Sermon on the Mount
• Walter Rauschenbusch, Washington Gladden
• Inspired middle class reform movements
• Provided daycare, adult education and social
  clubs for poor
• Encourage playgrounds to be built
• Improve education
• Provide social services to the poor
• Jane Addams
• Created Hull House in Chicago
• help immigrants in the city
• provide place for educated women to do useful
  work
• Florence Kelley
• Led movement against sweatshops and child labor

13
Prejudice in America

• Nativists
• Opposed immigration, feared higher birthrate and
  immigration would cause Anglo Saxons to be out
  numbered. Also did not want mixing of races
• American Protective Association voted against
  Catholic politicians had support of unions to
  limit immigrant workers
• Catholics
• Anti-Catholic groups feared Catholics were taking
  over US
• Catholics denied housing, jobs, education
• Parochial schools created to avoid prejudice
• Jews
• Anti-Semitism Leo Frank was lynched
• Mexicans
• immigrated to avoid Revolution in 1910
• Moved to barrios in big cities
• Japanese
• Came for economic opportunity
• Were not allowed to go to school
• Gentlemans agreement
• Japan would stop allowing new immigrants
• US would let wives of existing residents to enter

14
Churches Confront the Urban Challenge

• Life in cities begin challenging traditional
  values increase crime, poverty and immoral
  behaviors
• Some churches supported laissez-faire and status
  quo
• Baptist Church was supported by Rockefeller
• Episcopal Church supported by JP Morgan
• Liberal Protestantism
• Inspired by social gospel led by Dwight Lyman
  Moody
• Balanced capitalism, science and faith
• Focus on personal growth and earthly salvation
• Christian Science
• Created by Mary Baker Eddy
• Believed that disease and social ills can be
  healed with prayer
• Salvation Army
• Created to address hunger and poverty
• YMCA
• Combined physical education with religious
  education

15
Social Darwinism

• Darwins Theory
• Charles Darwin wrote On the Origin of the
  Species
• Nature had law of natural selection
• Rejected doctrine of special creations which
  established that value of species was determined
  by God
• Was challenged by both religious and scientific
  communities
• Strongest religious opponents evolve into the
  fundamentalist movement in 20th century
• Religion became more for faith and private life
• Survival of the Fittest
• Only the strong survive
• Social Darwinism
• Applied theory to businesses and poor
• Justified harsh tactics in business and not
  helping poor

16
Education and Literacy

• Secondary Education
• Free public high schools were more popular as
  well as teacher training programs
• Chautauqua movement encouraged adult education
  through lectures on science, government,
  literature founded by John Vincent
• Colleges
• Became more popular including colleges for women
  (Vassar) and Blacks (Howard, Hampton, Atlanta)
• Morrill Act (1862) Hatch Act (1887) created land
  grant state universities
• Popular Press
• 1880s papers designed to entertain as well as
  inform people
• better technology allow for increase in
  circulation
• makes newspapers big business
• Joseph Pulitzer
• Popularized newspapers with sensationalism,
  comics (Yellow Kid), human interest stories,
  simple language, sports
• William Randolph Hearst (San Francisco Examiner)
• Hearst and Pulitzer both used yellow journalism

17
Education and Literacy

• Medicine
• Medical schools and new ideas about health
  develop
• Louis Pasteur, Joseph Lister, William James
  (psychology)
• Magazines
• Harpers Weekly Atlantic Monthly Scribners
  Nation
• Nation focused on intellectual leaders and
  advocated reform of society
• Progress and Poverty (Henry George)
• Sought to end connection between progress and
  poverty
• Wanted to tax land to prevent economic
  inequalities
• Influenced Fabian socialism
• Edward Bellamy wrote utopian vision of America
  where problems of society were fixed
• Novels
• dime novels were popular gun fighters and
  wild west
• Ben Hur by General Lewis Wallace
• Horatio Alger stories
• Walt Whitman Leaves of Grass Emily Dickinson
  (poets)

18
Education and Literacy

• Literature
• Kate Chopin The Awakening (1899) feminist writer
  of the Gilded Age
• Mark Twain The Celebrated Jumping Frog of
  Calaveras County (1867) Innocents Abroad (1869)
  The Gilded Age (1873) The Adventures of Tom
  Sawyer (1876) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
  (1884)
• Captured frontier realism, political satirist
• Bret Harte wrote gold rush stories
• William Dean Howells wrote about controversial
  social themes such as divorce and socialism
• Stephen Crane wrote about life in industrial
  America and also Red Badge of Courage
• Charles Francis Adams wrote historical books
• Henry James wrote Daisy Miller was master of
  psychological realism
• Jack London Call of the Wild wrote about nature
• Frank Norris The Octopus realist writer wrote
  about corruption of railroads
• Theodore Dreiser Sister Carrie graphically
  realistic social portrayal of America

19
Changing role of Women

• Changing Sexual Roles
• Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Clafin argued for
  free love and openness in sexuality
• Comstock Law allowed Anthony Comstock to
  investigate people for obscene behaviors and
  sexual promiscuity
• New morality and freedom of women increased
  divorce rate and use of birth control
• Family
• Urbanites lose community as social support so
  family becomes only support
• Family size shrinks because kids become financial
  liability instead of asset
• Feminism
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1898)
• Called on women to be independent and play a
  larger role in society
• Advocated daycares and cooperative kitchens to
  free women to work
• National Woman Suffrage Association
• Led to cause for suffrage. Elizabeth Cady Stanton
  and Carrie Chapman Catt
• Catt argued suffrage necessary to allow women to
  protect traditional values

20
African Americans Organize

• Booker T Washington
• Leading African American politician
• Believed blacks should focus on occupational
  training, not legal equality
• When whites realize how valuable blacks are,
  whites will give equality
• Washington founded Tuskegee Institute (1881) to
  train African Americans
• George Washington Carver was famous scientist and
  researcher
• WEB DuBois
• Blacks should focus on immediate legal equality
• Rejected gradual approach
• Must be able to vote, equal education, end
  discrimination
• NAACP
• Founded 1909
• Work to get equal rights for blacks
• Tried to end segregation using legal means

21
Temperance Movement

• Temperance
• Crusade to end alcohol use
• Alcohol kept poor in poverty, ruined families and
  communities
• Partially motivated by nativism opposition to
  Germans and Irish
• National Prohibition Party (1869)
• Called on women to pressure men not to drink
• Womans Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)
• Frances Willard and Carrie Nation were aggressive
  in fighting against alcohol
• Anti-Saloon League (1893)
• 18th Amendment (1919)
• Begins Prohibition banned sale and consumption
  of alcohol

22
Entertainment

• Sports
• Professional baseball begins in 1869
• Immigrants biggest fans
• Rooting for team gave people sense of belonging
  or identity
• Football first started in 1869
• Rutgers v Princeton
• Basketball begin in Massachusetts in 1891
• Provide indoor sport for winter
• Bicycles
• Were cheaper, more maneuverable than a horse
• Was fun and easy way to get around
• Vaudeville Theatre
• variety show with many different types of
  entertainment
• Dance, comedy, gymnastics, juggling
• Allow theatre for everyone
• Movies
• 1890s first movies start being developed
• nickelodeons showed short silent simple films
  for a nickel