America Moves to the City

Immigrants and Others Decide to Urbanize

Consequences of Urban Development

• Lure of industry jobs draws farmers and immigrants

• Mass transit in cities (trolleys, subways)– different social groups no longer

lived close together• Inadequate water and sewer systems• By the end of the 19c cities

– cities built better sewers and supplied purified water

– Death rate declined

Consequences of Urban Development cont.

• Outbreaks of deadly diseases such as cholera and tuberculosis

• Crowded tenements & ‘flophouses’

• Increasing segregation of social groups by income

• Poor treatment of water, sewage, and waste

Writing About the City• How the Other Half Lives

– Jacob Riis portrayal of American Urban Slums

• The Shame of the Cities – Lincoln Steffens muckraking

novel concerning the poor living conditions in the cities

– Muckrackers? Investigative journalists who worked to expose urban decay & corruption

JACOB RIIS: DOCUMENTING POVERTY AND HOPELESSNESS

Evicted

“New” Immigrant Origins• Most of the immigrants came from

southern and eastern Europe– Russian Jews escaping religious

persecution – Italian peasants– Greeks, Slovaks, and Poles– Unemployed Europeans seeking

factory jobs in U.S. cities

“Old Immigrants”?

-Irish & Germans of 1840/50’s also fled poverty of Europe, but culturally closer to being ‘American’

Immigration Characteristics

• most immigrants were unskilled day laborers.

• immigration increased steadily during these years.

• immigrants tended to be Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Jewish. (“Old Imm. were?”)

• Chinese immigrants were excluded by law during most of these years

Immigration Centers

• Ellis Island (European, mainly)- New York

• Angel Island (Asian, mainly- San Francisco

• Ellis Island- http://www.ellisisland.org/default.asp• Angel Island- http://www.angel-island.com/beck.html

Nativist sentiment against the New immigrants

• practiced different religions

• had different languages and cultures

• were willing to work for lower wages than were native born workers

• were not familiar with the United States political system

• Blamed by “Nativists” for degradation of the cities (they work for less, aren’t ‘American’ enough)

Immigration Restrictions• The Rise of Nativism

– Melting pot – in U.S. people blend by abandoning native culture

• New Immigrants don’t want to give up cultural identity

– Nativism – overt (obvious) favoritism torward native-born Americans

– Nativists believe Anglo-Saxons (whites) superior to other ethnic groups

– Some object to immgrts. religion; many imgrnts. are Catholic, Jewish

What group is targeted? What is the justification?

Immigration Advocates

• Tammany Hall– Political machine in New York, headed

by Boss Tweed • Runs on graft, corruption, $$$• PATRONAGE JOBS- only the well

connected get help/jobs• Trade $$ & favors for jobs

– Help immigrants adjust to city life • In return for votes and support

– poor urban immigrants biggest supporters

Immigration Advocates• Settlement Houses (Jane Addams and

Hull House)– Located in poor working-class and

immigrant neighborhoods– Staffed by college-educated, middle-

class men and women– Taught English to immigrants – Helped to educate immigrant children

Immigration Issues

• The American educational system could not absorb the numbers of immigrant children

• Chinese Exclusion Act 1882

– Denied citizenship to Chinese in the U.S. and forbid further immigration of Chinese

– Supported by American workers who worried about losing their jobs to Chinese immigrants who would work for less pay

• American Protective Association

– A Nativist group of the 1890s which opposed all immigration to the U.S

Who is the subject? What two groups are being depicted & how are they depicted? What purpose would this cartoon serve?