The Age of the City

Chapter 18

Characteristics of Urbanization During the Gilded Age

• Megalopolis• Mass Transit• Economic & Social Opportunities• Pronounced Class Distinctions• New Opportunities for Women• Squalid living conditions for many• Political machines• Ethnic Neighborhoods

The Age of the City

A Nation of Immigrants

Reason for Immigration During the Gilded Age

1. Poverty of displaced farm workers driven from the land by the mechanization of farm work

2. Overcrowding and joblessness in European cities

3. Religious persecution of Jews in Russia4. Introduction of large steamships and

relatively inexpensive one-way passage

“Old” Immigrants and “New Immigrants”

Old Immigrants:

• Came from northern and western Europe

• Most Protestant• Mostly English-speaking• High level of literacy and

occupational skills

New Immigrants:

• Came from southern and eastern Europe

• Many poor and illiterate peasants

• Largely Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, and Jewish

• Crowded into ethnic neighborhoods in NYC & Chicago

Ellis Island

• Opened in 1892 to handle the large numbers of people arriving in the country

• Located on a small island near the Statue of Liberty in New York

• Diversity at the island inspired the phrase “melting pot” to describe the American population

• Cultural pluralism – presence of many different cultures within one society

Restricting Immigration

• Feelings of nativism grew -> foreign immigrants often victims of violence and discrimination

• US government attempted to pass legislation restricting immigration

• Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882• Immigrants had to pass rigorous medical

and document examinations and pay an entry tax

Support of Immigration Restrictions

1. Labor unions -> immigrants used to depress wages and break strikes

2. Nativist societies3. Social Darwinists -> viewed new

immigrants as biologically inferior to English and Germanic stocks

The Age of the City

Urbanization

Urbanization

• Urbanization and industrialization developed simultaneously

• Cities provided central supply of labor for factories & market for factory-made goods

• By 1900, 40% of Americans lived in towns and cities

• Millions of young Americans from rural areas joined immigrants seeking new economic opportunities in cities

Streetcar cities• Improvements in urban transportation led to

growth of cities• Allowed people to live in residences many miles

from their jobs• Massive steel suspension bridges such as the

Brooklyn Bridge made possible longer commutes

• Result -> segregated urban workers by income; Upper & Middle classes moved to streetcar suburbs to escape pollution, poverty, and crime

Brooklyn Bridge (1883)

Skyscrapers• Cities expanded both outward and upward• Rising land values in central business districts

dictated the construction of taller and taller buildings

• 1885 -> William Le Baron Jenny built the 10 story Home Insurance Company Building in Chicago – the first true skyscraper with a steel skeleton

• Structure made possible by such inventions as the Otis elevator and central-steam heating system

Ethnic Neighborhoods

• As more affluent citizens moved to suburbs, poor moved in

• To increase profits, landlords divided up inner-city houses into small, windowless rooms known as tenaments

• Different immigrants created distinct ethnic neighborhoods where each group could maintain its own language, culture, church or temple, and social club

Tenement Conditions

• Landlords crammed up to 4,000 people into one city block

• Overcrowding and filth promoted the spread of deadly diseases such as cholera, typhoid, and tuberculosis

Labor Laws and Living Conditions

• Jacob Riis exposed living conditions of poor, urban laborers in How the Other Half Lives

- Revealed the danger and filth of inner-city tenements

Factors that Promoted Suburban Growth

1. Abundant land available at low cost2. Inexpensive transportation by rail3. Low-cost construction methods4. Ethnic and racial prejudice5. American fondness for grass, privacy,

and detached individual houses

Strains of Urban Life

• Fire• Disease• Inadequate Sanitation• Air Pollution

“City Beautiful Movement”Frederick Law Olmstead

Frederick Law Olmstead teamed with Calvert Vaux in the 1850’s to design New York City’s Central Park

Boss and Machine Politics

• Political parties in major cities came under control of tightly organized group of politicians, known as political machines

• Each machine had a boss (ex. Boss Tweed in New York City)

• Included Tammany Hall in New York City• Positive -> helped find jobs and

apartments for recently arrived immigrants• Negative -> graft and fraud

The Age of the City

Awakening of Reform

Books of social criticism

• Henry George published Progress and Poverty in 1879 -> proposed placing a single tax on land as the solution to poverty

• Succeeded in calling attention to the alarming inequalities of wealth caused by industrialization

• Encouraged a shift in American public opinion away from pure laissez-faire and toward greater government regulation

Settlement houses

• Jane Addams opened Hull House, a settlement house to aid the poor- served as launching pad for investigations into city conditions- Helped fight for and win new child labor laws

Social Gospel

• Importance of applying Christian principles to social problems

• Leading the movement was New York minister Walter Rauschenbusch

• Linked Christianity with Progressive reform and encouraged many middle-class Protestants to attack urban problems

• Salvation Army (1879)

The Age of the City

Intellectual and Cultural Movements

Public Schools• Schools continued to teach the 3 R’s – reading,

writing, arithmetic• Compulsory School Attendance laws

dramatically increased number of children enrolled in public schools

• Practice of sending children to Kindergarten (concept borrowed from Germany) became popular

• Growing support for tax-supported public high schools

Reasons for Increase in Higher Education

1. Land grant colleges established under the Morrill Act of 1862

2. Universities founded by wealthy philanthropists –> ex. Vanderbilt University

3. Founding of new colleges for women, such as Smith and Bryn Mawr

Literature and the Arts

• American writers and artists responded in diverse ways to industrialization and urban problems

Realism in American Literature

• Revealed the greed, violence, and racism in American society

• Mark Twain (pen name for Samuel L. Clemens) became the first great realist author -> The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)

Naturalism in American Literature

• Described how emotions and experience shaped human experience

• Stephen Crane -> Red Badge of Courage (1893)

• Jack London -> Call of the Wild (1903)• Theodore Dreiser -> Sister Carrie (1900)

Painting

• Group of social realists known as the “Ashcan School” painted scenes of everyday life in poor and urban neighborhoods

• Other painters, like Winslow Homer, continued to cater to the popular taste for romantic subjects

Music

• Every city or town had a symphony orchestra, an opera, or an outdoor bandstand -> played popular marches by John Philip Sousa

• Jazz -> originated in New Orleans and combined African rhythms with western-style instruments

• Blues -> originated in South and expressed the pain of the black experience

The Age of the City

Leisure in the Consumer Society

The Rise of Mass Consumption• Rising Income• New Merchandising Techniques

- ready-made clothing- canned foods

• Chain Stores & Mail-Order Houses- F.W. Woolworths- Montgomery Ward- Sears Roebuck

• Department Stores- Marshall Field- Macy’s- Filene’s

Reasons for the Growth of Leisure Activities

1. Gradual reduction in the hours people worked

2. Improved transportation3. Promotional billboards and advertising4. Decline of restrictive Puritan and

Victorian values that discouraged “wasting” time on play

Amusements

• Drinking and talking at the corner saloon• Vaudeville• Barnum & Bailey’s Circus – the

“Greatest Show on Earth• “Buffalo Bill” Cody’s Wild West Show

featuring Sitting Bull and Annie Oakley

Growth of Spectator Sports & Gambling

• Boxing, Baseball, Basketball, Football• From the beginning spectator sports

closely associated with gambling• “Throwing” of 1919 World Series by the

Chicago White Sox• Boxing troubled by efforts to “fix” fights• Major spectator sports of era were open

almost exclusively to men