AP Ch. 18 The Age of the CityUrbanization-the process to moving to

cities. During the three decades following the

Civil War, the US transformed rapidly from a rural nation to a more urban

nation.The urban population grew from about 10 million in 1870 to over 30 million by

1900

By 1890, most of the population of some major urban areas consisted of

foreign born immigrants : • 87% of Chicago• 80% of New York• 84% of Detroit• New York had more Irish than Dublin• New York had more Germans than Hamburg• Chicago had more Poles than Warsaw

What was the reason?

• Reproduction?• Demographics?

Migration—Who was going Where?

• From eastern farms Western Cities• From farms to cities• African Americans North• Southern and Eastern Europeans •

The Ethnic City

• Most of the new immigrants were rural people who had a difficult time adjusting to city life. Close knot ethnic communities developed in cities—provided a smoother transition to the new world.

What factors determined how well an ethnic assimilated?

These were not W.A.S.P

Factors for assimilating

• $$$$$• Skills• American values—Education• Jews and Germans advanced economically• Italians and Irish less so• Balancing wanting to blend in and at the same

time preserve traditional ethnic habits and values

Assimilation not always a choice

• Public schools• Employers• Stores• Churches and synagogues

Nativism

The Rise of Nativism

• http://websupport1.citytech.cuny.edu/Faculty/pcatapano/lectures_immigration/endofopenimmigration.10.html

Immigration under Attack

Xenophobia

• Economic reasons• Social reasons• Religious reasons

• American Protective Association• Immigration Restriction league• Congress denied entry to “undesirables”• The Chinese Exclusion Act

The Urban Landscape

• Cities were a place of contrast—size and grandeur or hovels and squalor.

• The expanse help create new technological and industrial development.

• There was also corruption in government, poverty, congestion filth, epidemics and fires.

Housing for the well to do

• Growth of suburbs

Housing the Workers and the PoorTenements-large multi-family apartments

Jacab Riis documented the slum life in his now famous book

• “How the Other Half Lives”

Urban Transportation

• Roads were not always surfaced, traveling and muddy and difficult. Horse manure created its own set of problems.

• Mass transit was created to address these problems—elevated railways, cable cars, electric trolleys and the first subways were built.

The Brooklyn Bridgehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WA47Y6em8M&feature=player_detailpage

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tsi95z1Nmhg&feature=related

As city populations grew, demand raised the price of land, giving owners

greater incentive to grow upward rather outward.

2 Major inventions helped with this problem:

-Bessemer Steel process-Safety Elevator

Bessemer Steel Process-a way to blow air into iron ore and make

steel cheaplyAndrew Carnegie

Between the new steel process and the invention of the safety

elevator, new buildings began to appear on American skylines:

The skyscrapersThe Flatiron Building

At 21 stories and 307 ft (93 meter), it was

one of the city‘s most interesting buildings

The Chrysler BuildingBuilt from 1929 to 1930

Constructed of steel with brick and stainless steel on

the exteriorHeight: 1046 ft

Number of Floors: 77Height Record: Tallest building in the world at

completion, overtaken by the Empire State Building just one year later. Currently the third tallest building in New

York City.

The Empire State Building--one year and 45 days to build--There are 102 floors--There are 1,860 steps from street level to 102nd floor.--only five workers werekilled

What does Laissez Faire government look like?

Strains of Urban Life

• Fires• Disease• Inadequate Sanitation

Urban Poverty

• “deserving poor”—those caught up in unfortunate circumstances

• “undeserving poor”—laziness, etc.• Salvation Army-mix of gospel and relief•

High Crime Rates

• With crime , major and minor on the rise, many cities developed bigger and more professional police forces.

• Theodore Dreiser wrote about the fear in the city in his novel Sister Carrie—about a young women making a life for herself in the city.

“Distinctive Political Institutions”

• When there is a power vacuum that the rapid growth of cities established and city government could not keep up, the end result is a need for a “political machine”--

The Machine and the Boss Urban Politics

The new immigrant needed jobs, housing, heat and police protection.

• A new kind of political system developed to meet the needs of the new urban immigrant.

• The Political Machine—a political group designed to gain and keep power

• Party Bosses-those who ran them• In exchange for votes, party bosses provided

the immigrant with necessities.

Tammany Hall, in NYC, was the most famous of the Political machines

and William M. “Boss” Tweed was the most notorious of the Party

Bosses.

Graft

• Honest Graft—Read excerpt

• Middle class saw the Machines and political bosses as dishonest and un-democratic. But in fact they did provide services, expand the role of government in an otherwise vacant structure. Bosses served as the “invisible government”

• The power of the immigrants made it possible.

The Rise of Mass Consumption

• American industry could not have grown as it did without the expansion of markets for the goods it produced. Incomes were rising on all levels albeit unevenly, but mainly the Middle Class.

• Who were the Middle Class?

Patterns

• Clothing • Food• Chain Stores and Mail-Order Houses• A&P stores• Woolworth• Sears• Montgomery Wards• Macy’s

Leisure

• “Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, and eight hours for what we will”

• This new economy produced new forms of recreation and entertainment and also redefined the idea leisure. Simon Pattern

• “Going out”• Coney Island

Popular Culture

• People had more money so what were they doing?• Coney Island in NYC• Boxing• Baseball• Going to Vaudeville-a cross between theatre and a circus• Listening to Ragtime-a new music that echoed the hectic

pace of the city life. Syncopated rhythms-grew out of the honky-tonk, salon pianists and banjo players using the patterns of African American music-Scott Joplin

Scott Joplin The Entertainer

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPmruHc4S9Q

• Ziegfeld Follies• Black entertainers—Al Jolson• –Thomas Edison had created the technology

of the motion picture• The Movies—Birth of a Nation• http://youtu.be/k57rt58vUYw

• George Cohan— “Yankee Doodle Dandy”• Irving Berlin– “God Bless America”

Working Class Leisure

• Saloons• The 4th of July

New movements in Art

• Realism: portrayed people realistically instead of idealizing them

• Thomas Eakins• He considered no day to day subject beneath

his interest. He painted with realistic detail young men swimming, surgeons operating and scientists experimenting. He even painted President Hayes working in shirtsleeves instead of in more traditional formal dress.

The Gross Clinic

• Winslow Homer• John Singer Sargent

Ashcan School

• Not a school but an idea—painting the social realities of the era

John SloanDreariness of American slums

George Bellowsvigor and violence of prize fights

Edward Hopperstarkness and loneliness of the modern city

Birth of Modernism

• 1913 The Armory Show in NYC—beginning of modernism in America art

Literature Social Realism

• Mark Twain- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer

• Stephen Crane- The Red Badge of Courage• Theodore Dreiser- Sister Carrie