Urbanization in the Gilded Age

1865-1900

What is this a map of?

I. Urbanization

A. The U.S. population in 1900 doubled to about 80 million since 1870 (105 million by 1920).

B. Skyscrapers: steel, and the Brooklyn bridge

C. Mass- Transit/ commuting: streetcar and suburbs

D. Megalopolis and internal division

E. Pull factors of the cities

• Commerce

• Entertainment and amenities

• Career opportunities for women

I. Urbanization

F. Class distinctions become worse

1. Nouveau riche- 1% owned 51%

2. Well to do- 12% owned 86%

3. Middle Class- WASP, wide range

4. Working Class- 23-30 % out of work, women and children working

G. Living in cities is awful

- crime, unsanitary conditions, “Dumbbell” Tenements

H. Political Machines

- What does this mean?

- Tammany Hall, Boss Tweed, “honest Graft”, V. Thomas Nast

II. The "New Immigration" occurred after 1880

A. “old immigration”: prior or 1880, British or western Europe,

B. “new immigration”: 27 mil. Eastern and southern Europe

C. Maintaining culture- catholic and Jews, foreign language maintained

D. Why southern and eastern Europe? Push factors?

E. Chinese immigration

- railroad, mines, eventually cooks and domestic servants

- Chinatown mostly single men

- 9% of California's pop.

- Persecution: Chinese exclusion act 1882

III. Reaction to the “New Immigration”

A. Political machines cater to “new immigrants”:

- Tammany hall and others use the immigrant vote

B. Social crusaders response

- Social gospel, salvation army

- Settlement movement: jane Addams, hull house, Lillian ward and Florence Kelly

C. Nativism: American protective association

D. Business favored immigration

“Old Immigration” “New Immigration” Post-1965 Immigration

British: 2/3 of U.S. population by 1776

British immigration peaked again between 1820-1840; many remained in agriculture or worked in textile towns

German: 6% of population by 1776; massive immigration during 1850s; largest European group in America by 1900; many went to farm in the Midwest or did skilled work in cities

Irish: less than 3% by 1776; massive immigration in 1840s & 50s due to Irish Potato Famine; 2nd largest European group in America by 1900

Nativism: “Know Nothings” opposed Catholic Irish and German influence on Protestant America

Southern and Eastern Europe between 1880 and 1925

Catholics from Italy and Poland

Hungarians, Czechs, and Slovaks from Austria-Hungary

Jews from Russia and eastern Europe

Eastern Orthodox Christians (e.g. Russia, Greece, and Serbia)

Southeastern Europe (Croatia, Slovenia, Bulgaria)

Immigration effectively ended by the National Origins Act of 1924

Nativism: American Protective Association in late 19th-century was essentially anti-Catholic; KKK from 1915-1925 was strongly nativist and boasted as many as 5 million people

Immigration Act of 1965 ends the quota system

Most immigrants henceforth come from Latin America (esp. Mexico) and Asia

Reagan gives amnesty to illegal immigrants, 1986

Whites become a minority in California by 2000

Recession of 1991 causes rise in nativism (e.g., Prop 187 in California, 1994)

L.A. Riots, 1992 (Asian businesses targeted in south- central LA)

2011, Supreme Court upholds an Arizona law penalizing businesses for hiring illegal immigrants

2014, President Obama issues executive order for deportation relief for undocumented immigrants (mostly from Latin America) after more than two million immigrants are deported during his term (2 million also deported under his predecessor, George W. Bush.)

2016, Donald Trump elected president, in part, due to strong anti-Mexican illegal immigration and anti-Muslim immigration positions.

IV. Crusade for the Prohibition of Alcohol

A. Liquor consumption increases

B. Women's Christian temperance union 1874: Francis Willard

C. Carrie nation

D. Anti-saloon league

E. Statewide prohibition laws thought the 1900’s

* 1919 18th amendment

V. Women’s fight for liberation and suffrage

A. Women more independent when urban

B. National American Women's Suffrage Association 1890- competitions between organizations

C. Women's Christian Temperance Union: hugely important for suffrage

D. Gains for women

• * Women increasingly voted in local elections, especially regarding schools.

• Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho granted full suffrage

• In California, the liquor lobby defeated suffrage; it believed (perhaps correctly) that women would seek to outlaw liquor.

• Most states by 1890 passed laws to permit wives to own or control their property after marriage (end of feme covert).

VI. The Reform Press

A. The nation:

B. Henry George: progress and poverty 1879

C. Edward Bellamy: Looking Backward 1888

D. Jacob A. Riis: how the other half lives 1890

E. Henry Demarest Lloyd: wealthy against commonwealth 1894

F. Thorstein Veblen: the theory of the leisure class 1899

G. Charlotte Perkins Gilman: women and economics 1898

H. New focus on specific issues towards the end