The Urban World• From1865 to 1900, Americans living in cities doubled, from 20% to 40%• steel used to build skyscrapers• Elisha Otis’s invented elevator

– buildings could be much taller than the previous 5 story limit

Mass Transit• Before 2nd industrial revolution,

most cities covered about 3 square miles (distance a person could walk in a few hours)

• Mass transit allowed cities to cover as much as 20 square miles

• Workers did not have to live within walking distance of their jobs

• Public transport:– Electric commuter trains– Subways– Trolley cars

The suburbs• Transportation to suburbs

– Cost about $.15-$.25

• Wealthy residents settled outside of the city core

• The poor could not afford to live outside the city

Upper class life

• Nouveau riche – newly rich• Huge fortunes

– Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt

• Practiced “conspicuous consumption” – spending tons of money so everyone could see how rich they were

• Cared about proper social behavior –– imitated the manners of

nobles in Victorian England

from Harper's Bazaar, showing an 1868 idea of how the hemline should descend towards the ankle as a girl got older

Middle Class Life• Modern businesses

– middle class jobs in accounting, engineering, managing and sales.

• Professional Associations– established education and

certification requirements for certain jobs

• Almost all married women did not work – ran the household with help of

servants.

• Young, single women – found jobs as secretaries,

salesclerks, and operators

• Innovations made home-life better – hot and cold running water,

sewage systems, ready-made clothes

The life of the poor• large number of willing

workers meant wages were low

• 43,000 tenements housed 1.6 million poor in New York

• Housed up to 12 families per floor

• Raw sewage ran in the streets. No garbage service

• Near dirty, smelly factories• Demand for housing made

rent increase.

Reform Movements• Settlement Houses –

– offered education, skills training, cultural events in poor neighborhoods

– Settlement House movement Led by Jane Addams (Hull House) – middle class women helped the poor

• Social Gospel movement – Protestant ministers called for Christian principles to be applied to

social problems– Church had a moral duty to confront social problems and improve

conditions for workers