History: Chapter 18 Outline

Chapter 18: The Growth of Cities and American Culture, 1865-1900

1.   Industrialization, immigration, and urbanization

2.   A Nation of Immigrants

a.    Growth of Immigration

                                              i.     US population from 23.2 million to 76.2 million in 1900.  16.2 immigrants.

                                            ii.     Push factors

1.   Poverty of displaced farmworkers driven from the land by the mechanization of farmwork

2.   Overcrowding and joblessness in European cities as a result of a population boom

3.   Religious persecution- Jews in Russia

                                          iii.     Pull factors

1.   Opportunities afforded by the Great Plains

2.   Abundance of industrial jobs in the US cities

3.   Large steamships and cheap tickets made it possible

b.   “Old” Immigrants and “New” Immigrants

                                              i.     Before 1890s

1.   From Northern and Western Europe (British Isles, Germany, Scandanavia)

2.   Protestants, English, skilled

                                            ii.     1890s to outbreak of WWI

1.   Southern and Eastern Europe (Italy, Greece, Croatia, Slovakia, Poland, Russia)

2.   Poor, illiterate, unskilled, Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Jewish, not used to democracy.

a.    Went to poor ethnic neighborhoods in big cities (NYC, Chicago, etc)

b.   “Birds of passage”- young men contracted for unskilled factory, mining, and construction jobs, returned to native lands when they saved up money to bring to family.

c.    Restricting Immigration

                                              i.     1870s- no immigration laws yet (Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi started Statue of Liberty)

                                            ii.     1886- Congress had immigration laws

1.   Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

2.   Restricted “undesirables”

3.   No contract labor- 1885

4.   Ellis Island- Immigration Center

a.    Stricter medical and document exams

b.   Pay entry

                                          iii.     Groups who opposed immigration

1.   Labor unions (scared for jobs)

2.   Nativist society- American Protective Association, against Roman Catholics

3.   Social Darwinism- immigrants biologically inferior

3.   Urbinization

a.    By 1920 more people in urban areas than rural areas

b.   Changes in the Nature of Cities

                                              i.     Streetcar cities

1.   Horse-drawn streetcars and cable cars

2.   By 1890s being replaced by eletric trolleys, elevated RxR, and subways.

3.   Suspension bridges- Brooklyn Bridge (1883)

a.    Longer commutes

4.   Separated by income

                                            ii.     Skyscrapers

1.   1885- William Le Baron Jenny built first true skyscraper w/ steel skeleton in Chicago.

a.    Home Insurance Company

b.   10 stories high

                                                                                                    i.     Otis elevator, central steam-heating system

2.   By 1900= skyscrapers replaced church spires

                                          iii.     Ethnic neighborhoods

1.   NYC law for each room to have a window in slums

a.    Dumbbell tenements

2.   Overcrowding, filth- disease (cholera, typhoid, and TB)

3.   Different locations could support different ethnic groups (Little Italy, China Town)

a.    Maintain language, culture, religion

                                          iv.     Residential suburbs

1.   Wealthier moved away from city- maybe escape problems that came w/ it.

2.   Suburban growth: abundant land for low cost, cheap transportation by rail, low-cost construction methods such as the wooden halloon-frame house, ethnic and racial prejudice, American fondness for grass,privacy and detached individual houses.

3.   Frederick Law Olmsted- built suburban community- “a village in the park”

4.   By 1900, suburbs spread- suburban nation

                                            v.     Private city vs. public city

1.   Dirty, diseased cities unexpected

a.    Slowly advocated for more sanitary cities

c.    Boss and Machine Politics

                                              i.     Powerful urban politics

1.   Political machines- group of politicians, had a boss, supporters

2.   Started as social clubs dev’p into coordinate needs of businesses, immigrants, and underprivileged.

a.    Asked for votes in return.

3.   Greedy too- stole millions from taxpayers and fraud.

a.    Boss Tweed

                                            ii.     Tammy Hall in NYC

4.   Awakening of Reform

a.    Reform movements began in 1880s and 1890s

b.   Books of social criticism

                                              i.     San Fran journalist Henry George published provocative book in 1879

1.   Progress and Poverty

a.    Proposed a single tax on land as the solution to poverty

b.   Brought attention to inequalities in wealth b/c of industrialization.

                                            ii.     Looking Backward, 2000-1887

1.   By Edward Bellamy in 1888.

2.   Envisioned elimination of poverty, greed, and crime.

                                          iii.     Readers joined movements and orginizations

c.    Settlement houses

                                              i.     Middleclass people try to help poor- lived and worked in settlement houses.

                                            ii.     Hull House in Chicago- Jane Addams in 1889

                                          iii.     Taught English to immigrants, pioneered early childhood education, est. neighborhood theaters and music schools.

                                          iv.     Child labor laws, housing reform, women’s rights.

d.   Social Gospel

                                              i.     Importance of applying Christian principles to social problems.

                                            ii.     Led by Walter Rauschenbusch who worked in NYC

e.    Religion and society

                                              i.     Roman Catholics grew in numbers

                                            ii.     James Gibbons- Kingths of Labor

                                          iii.     Dwight Moody and Moody Bible Institute

                                          iv.     Salvation Army

f.     Families and women in urban society

                                              i.     1/12 marriages divorced in 1900 b/c new laws

                                            ii.     Smaller families- not practical to have kids

                                          iii.     Seneca Falls- 1848

                                          iv.     1890- Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susand B. Anthony helped found National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).

                                            v.     Wyoming- first state to let women vote in 1869.

g.    Temperance and morality

                                              i.     Women have a problem w/ drinking

1.   Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (1874)

a.    Total abstinence of alcohol.

                                            ii.     Moralists thought cities were breeding ground for vice, obscenity, and prostitution.

1.   Anthony Comstock- Society for the Suppression of Vice

2.   Comstock Law- prohibited the mailing or transportation of obscene and lewd material and photographs.

5.   Intellectual and Cultural Movements

a.    Changes in Education

                                              i.     Public schools

1.   Reading, writing, and arithmetic

2.   New compulsory laws- more go to school, increased literacy rate to90% of the population by 1900.

3.   Tax supported public high schools

                                            ii.     Higher education

1.   Number of US colleges increased b/c:

a.    Land grand colleges est. under the Morrill acts of 1862 and 1890

b.   Universities founded by wealthy philanthropists

                                                                                                    i.     University of Chicago by John D. Rockefeller

c.    Founding of new colleges for women

                                                                                                    i.     Smith, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke

2.   71% of colleges admitted women by 1900

                                          iii.     Social sciences and the professions

1.   Psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science.

2.   Richard T. Ely of Johns Hopkins attacked laissez-faire economic thought as dogmatic and outdated.

3.   Lester F Ward, Woodrow Wilson, Frederick Johnson Turner to study dynamic process of human behavior, not logical abstractions.

b.   Literature and the Arts

                                              i.     Realism and naturalism

1.   Romantic novels that depicted ideal heroes and heroines (realism)- Bret Harte, Mark Twain, William Dean Howells

2.   Naturalism- described how emotions and experience shaped human experience.  Stephen Crane, Jack London, Theodore Dreiser

                                            ii.     Painting

1.   Mostly realists and romanticists

2.   Abstract rare until 1950s

                                          iii.     Architecture

1.   1870s- Henry Hobson Richardson

a.    Based on Romanesque style of massive stone walls, rounded arches

2.   Louis Sullivan of Chicago

a.    Tall, steel-framed buildings

b.   Aesthetic unity

3.   Frank Lloyd Wright in 1890s

a.    Organic style

b.   Most famous of 20^th century

4.   Daniel H. Burnham

a.    Revived classic Greek and Roman

5.   Frederick Law Olmsted

a.    City parks, scenic boulevards

                                                                                                    i.     Central Park

                                          iv.     Music

1.   1900- most cities had symphony orchestra, opera house, or both.

2.   Smaller towns- bandstands like John Philip Sousa.

3.   New Orleans/south- Jelly Roll Morton, Buddy Bolden

a.    Jazz, ragtime, blues

b.   Scott Joplin- MLR (1899)

c.    Popular Culture

                                              i.     Popular press

1.   New York World- exceed 1 million in circulation- Joseph Pulitzer

2.   Magazines gaining popularity

a.    Ladies’ Home Journal

                                            ii.     Amusements

1.   Promotion of leisure time activites:

a.    A gradual reduction in the hours people worked

b.   Improved transportation

c.    Promotional billboards and advertizing

d.   Decline of the restrictive Puritan and Victorian values that discouraged “wasting” time on play

e.    Most popular: drinking and talking at a saloon.

f.     Theatres, circus, parks

                                          iii.     Spectator sports

1.   Boxer John L. Sullivan

2.   Baseball- national pastime

3.   Basketball invented in 1891 @ Springfield College in Massachusettes.

                                          iv.     Amateur sports

1.   Many participated in physical activites

a.    Women kept out for most, but cycled and played croquet.

b.   Gold and tennis grew, but mainly for those in sports clubs.

2.   Wealthy participated in polo and yachting.

3.   Jews, Catholics kept out sometimes, but Af. Ams. Had it the worst.

a.    Jim Crow Laws

b.   No MLB until 1940s.