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Chapter 21: The Emergence of Urban America Outline

I. America’s Move to Town


A. Explosive Urban Growth
1. 1860-1910 population grew from 6 million to 44 million
2. 1920- more than half of the nation’s population lived in urban
areas
3. Flow of population toward cities greater than the flow toward the
West westward migration= urban movement
4. Pacific coast had greater proportion of population more
urbanized than anywhere else
5. San Francisco and Los Angeles- boomtowns after the arrival of
the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe Railroads in the 1880s;
Seattle- city that grew quickly, first as the terminus of three
transcontinental railroad lines and, by the end of the century, as
the staging area for the Yukon gold rush
6. Minneapolis, St. Paul, Omaha, Kansas City, and Denver-
grew into big cities from mere villages in the 1860s; Durham,
North Carolina and Birmingham, Alabama- centers of
tobacco and iron production; Houston, Texas- handled cotton
and cattle, and later, oil
7. Heating- innovations in 1870s such as steam circulating through
pipes and radiators, contributed to the building of multiple-
apartment dwellings
8. Electric elevator- 1889, Otis Elevator Company- installed the
first electric elevator, which made possible the erection of taller
buildings cast-iron and steel-frame structures enabled the
construction of skyscrapers, which depend on steel frames and
girders
9. Steam-driven cables- 1873, San Francisco first city to use cars
pulled by steam-driven cables 1890s preferred electric trolleys
10. Subway systems- mass transportation; Boston, New York,
Philadelphia
11. “streetcar suburbs”- where the growing middle class retreated
from downtown and could travel into the central city for business
or entertainment (though laborers generally stayed put, unable to
afford the nickel fare)
B. The Allure and Problems of the Cities
1. Tenement houses usually six to eight stores tall and jammed
tightly against one another, housed twenty four to thirty two
families
2. Poorly heated and had communal toilets outside
3. Disease and odors rampant
4. Mortality rate among poor higher than that of general population
5. 1900- Manhattan’s 42,700 tenements housed almost 1.6 million
people
6. Unregulated urban growth created immense problems of health
and morale
C. City Politics
1. Local committeemen, district captains, and a political boss
2. Bosses granted patronage favor (awarding city jobs to
supporters) and engaged in graft, buying votes and taking
kickbacks, provided needed services
3. In return, felt entitled to some reward for having done grubby
work of local organization
D. Cities and the Environment
1. Overflowed with garbage, contaminated water, horse manure,
roaming pigs and untreated sewage
2. Water- related diseases caused by the raw sewage dumped into
streets and waterways; included cholera, typhoid fever and
yellow fever that ravaged populations
3. Animal waste-
a) Life expectancy of urban draft houses, only two years,
which meant that thousands of horse carcasses had to be
disposed of each year
b) 1900- 3.5 million horses which generated 20 lbs. of manure
and several gallons of urine each
c) Caused stench and bred countless flies that led to diseases
such as typhoid fever; benefits included fertilizer for hay
and vegetable crops
4. Development of public water and sewer systems and flush
toilets- ppl presumed that running water purified itself, so they
dumped waste into rivers/bays algae blooms
II. The New Immigration
A. America’s Pull
1. 1900- 30% of residents of major cities foreign-born
2. 8.8 million in 1900
3. Push factors- took flight from famine, cholera, lack of economic
opportunities in their native lands, compulsory military service or
racial, religious and political persecution
4. Pull factors- railroads, cheap labor sent recruiters abroad,
Contract Labor of 1864
5. Contract Labor Act of 1864-
a) Federal government itself encouraged immigration: it
allowed companies to recruit foreign workers by passing
for their passage and then recouping the money from the
immigrants’ wages
b) Law repealed in 1868, but not until 1885 did the
government forbid companies to import contract labor, a
practice that put immigrants under the control of their
employers
B. A New Wave
1. Proportion of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe rose
sharply
2. 70% of immigrants to U.S.
C. Ellis Island
1. 1892- opened its door to “huddled masses” of world
2. 1907, busiest year, more than 1 million new arrivals passed
through the receiving center
3. Average of about 5,000 per day
D. Making Their Way
1. Padrones- agents of immigrant-aid societies that would offer
men jobs in mines, mills, or sweatshops and some whiskey and
in return claimed a healthy percentage of their wages
a) Known by Italians and Greeks, came to dominate labor
market in NY
b) Others provided training tickets
2. Immigrant enclaves- immigrants practiced their religion, clung
to native customs and conversed in native tongue
a) Older residents typically moved out when new residents
moved in
b) Little Italy, Little Hungary, Chinatown
E. The Nativist Response
1. Expressed anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic sentiments
2. Assumption that Nordic peoples of old immigration superior to
Slavic, Italian, Greek and Jews of new immigration
3. Illiterate, couldn’t speak English
4. Henry Cabot Lodge-
a) Congressman from MA
b) 1891, took up causes of excluding illiterates, would have
affected much of new wave of immigrants even though
literacy in English not required
c) Passed many times but vetoed by Presidents Cleveland,
Taft and Wilson 1917, Congress overrode Wilson’s veto
5. Exclusion against Chinese: not white, not Christian; many
literate began in 1880 when urgent need for railway labor
ebbed
6. Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882-
a) Authorizing ten-year suspension of Chinese immigration
treaty with China permitted U.S. to regulate, limit and
suspend Chinese immigration
b) Periodically renewed before being extended indefinitely in
1902
c) Not until 1943 were barriers to Chinese immigration
removed
7. Angels Island-
a) West Coast counterpart to Ellis Island
b) Six miles offshore from San Francisco, tens of thousands of
Asian immigrants, most of them Chinese
c) Over 30 percent of arrivals denied entry
III. Popular Culture
A. Vaudeville
1. Derives from French word meaning play accompanied by music
2. Early “variety” shows featured comedians, singers, musicians,
blackface minstrels, farcical plays, animal acts, jugglers,
gymnasts, dancers, mimes and magicians
3. All social classes and types
B. Saloon Culture
1. Poor man’s social club in late nineteenth century
2. Offered free lunch and liquor
3. Public homes popular among male immigrants seeking friends
and companionship
4. Aligned with politics
5. Women and children occasionally entered through side doors,
“snugs” (small separate rooms for female patrons)
6. Anti-liquor societies- charged that saloons contributed to
alcoholism, divorce, crime and absenteeism from work;
Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon
League
C. Outdoor Recreation
1. Frederick Law Olmstead- 1850s, design and plan Central Park;
designed parks for Boston, Brooklyn, Chicago, Philadelphia and
SF
2. Public Parks- places where people could walk and commute;
offered vigorous forms of exercise and recreation; croquet lawns
and tennis courts
3. Cycling “wheeling”- 1870s, especially popular with women
who chafed at restricting conventions of Victorian era
4. Ethnic groups, especially Germans and the Irish, formed male
singing, drinking or gym clubs
5. Amusement Parks- provided entertainment for the entire
family; Brooklyn’s Coney Island
D. Workingwomen and Leisure
1. Married women had little free time washing clothes,
supervising children or shopping at local market provided
opportunities for fellowship with other women
2. Single women had more opportunities- dance halls, theaters,
amusement parks, picnic grounds, beaches
3. Movie theaters- most popular form of entertainment for women,
especially single women
4. Escape, pleasure, companionship and autonomy
E. Spectator Sports
1. Saloons posted scores, athletic rivalries by railroad systems,
unified diverse ethnic groups
2. Football
a) Modified form of soccer and rugby
b) First college football game between Princeton and Rutgers
in 1869
3. Basketball
a) Invented in 1891 by Dr. James Naismith when he nailed
two peach baskets to the walls of the YMCA in Springfield,
MA wanted to create an indoor winter game
b) All female Vassar and Smith Colleges added the sport in
1892
c) 1893, Vanderbilt became the first college to field a men’s
team
4. Baseball
a) Invented by Alexander Cartwright, a NY bank clerk and
sportsman; 1845- Knickerbocker Base Ball Club of NY
b) First professional baseball team= Cincinnati Red Stockings
in 1869
c) 1900- American League, 2 years later- World Series
d) People from all social classes (mostly men) attended games
e) only white players allowed in major leagues, African
Americans played on “minor league” teams or in all-black
Negro leagues
IV. Education and the Professions
A. The Spread of Public Education
a) Determination to “Americanize” immigrant children
b) By 1920, 21 million pupils in public school
c) 6,000 secondary schools by turn of century
B. Higher Education
a) Colleges- discipline and morality with curriculum heavy on
math and classics, along with ethics and rhetoric
b) History, language, literature and some science tolerated, lab
science limited
c) 600,000 students and 1,000 institutions by 1920
d) Elective systems
e) State universities in West more open to women
f) Vassar= first women’s college to teach by same standards
as men’s college
g) Wellesley and Smith- 1870s, women’s schools in MA;
Smith being first to set admission requirement same as
men’s colleges
h) Graduate school- German system; 1890s, doctorate degree
became requirement for professorship
V. Realism in Thought, Culture, and Literature
- Realism- last half of nineteenth century; focus on emerging realities of
scientific research and technology, factories and railroads, cities
and immigrants, wage labor and social tensions; horrors of civil
war
- Empirical science- second half of nineteenth century; breakthroughs in
chemistry, discoveries of fossils and geology and paleontology and
improved microscopes and zoology
A. Darwinism and Social Darwinism
1. Darwinism: Charles Darwin
a) On the Origin of Species (1859)
b) “natural selection”
c) Idea of evolution shocked people who held conventional
religious views in that it contradicted literal interpretation
of creation stories in Bible
d) Eventually people reconciled science and religion
2. Social Darwinism: Herbert Spencer
a) First major prophet of social Darwinism
b) Believed human society and institutions, like plant and
animal species; passed through process of natural selection,
“survival of fittest
c) Individual freedom inviolable and government interference
with competitive process of social evolution mistake
d) Endorsed hands-off government
e) Charity= voluntary
f) Successful businessmen and corporations were engines of
social progress
g) No trusts or monopolies
B. Reform Darwinism
1. Lester Frank Ward- Dynamic Sociology (1883)
2. Human brain could plan for and shape future, unlike animal’s
3. Humanity could actively shape process of societal improvement
4. Reform Darwinism held that cooperation, not competition would
best promote progress
5. Government is best agency of progress by striving first to rid of
poverty
6. Promoted education of masses
C. Pragmatism
1. William James- Harvard professor; Pragmatism: A New Name
for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907)
a) Shared with Ward’s concern with role of ideas in evolution
b) Pragmatism believes that ideas gain validity not from
inherent truth but from social consequences and practical
applications
c) Inventive, experimental spirit that recognize science and
society are characterized by change rather than fixity
2. John Dewey- chief philosopher of pragmatism
a) Instrumentalism- ideas were instruments for actions,
especially for promoting social reform
b) Unlike James, threw himself into movements for rights of
labor and women, promotion of peace and reform of
education
c) Believed education to be process through which society
would gradually progress toward greater social equality and
harmony
VI. Realism in Fiction and Nonfiction
A. Mark Twain
1. Native of MI; printer, MS riverboat pilot, Confederate
militiaman
2. Moved to CA, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras
County” (1865)
3. Roughing It (1872), moved to Hartford, CN and became full-time
author
4. First significant writer born and raised west of Appalachian
Mtns.
5. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)
6. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1844)
B. Literary Naturalism
1. Scientific determination into literature, viewed people as pretty
to natural forces and internal drives without control or full
understanding of them
2. Frank Norris- McTeague (1899)- madness of SF dentist and
wife, driven by greed, violence and lust
3. Stephen Crane-
a) Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893)- tenement girl driven
to prostitution
b) The Red Badge (1895)- evokes fear, nobility, and courage
amid the carnage of the Civil War
c) Both portrayed people caught up in environments beyond
control
4. Jack London-
a) Socialist and believer in German philosopher Friedrich
Nietzsche’s doctrine of superman
b) The Call of the Wild (1903) and The Sea Wolf (1904)- brute
force and will to survive
5. Theodore Dreiser-
a) Dissected celebration over the power of social and
biological forces, disturbing to readers
b) Shocked public with protagonists who sinned without
remorse and without punishment
c) Sister Carrie (1900)- survives illicit loves and goes on to
success on stage
C. Social Criticism
1. Henry George-
a) Critic of naturalists, set out to protest and reform
b) Vowed to seek out cause of poverty in midst of industrial
progress he saw around him
c) Basic social problem= “unearned increment” in wealth
d) Progress and Poverty (1879)
e) Held that everyone had a basic right to the use of land
f) Proposed to tax the “unearned” increment in value of land
or rent
2. Thorstein Veblen-
a) Critic of naturalists
b) Background of formal training in economics and purpose of
making subject into an evolutionary or historical science
c) The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)- conspicuous
consumption and conspicuous leisure: showy display of
money and property became conventional basis of social
status
VII. The Social Gospel
A. The Rise of the Institutional Church
1. Reverend Henry Ward Beecher- pastor of the Plymouth
Congregational Church in Brooklyn preached material success,
social Darwinism and unworthiness of poor
2. Churches followed to the streetcar suburbs
3. Fell under the spell of complacent respectability and do-nothing
social Darwinism
4. Acquired gyms, libraries, lecture rooms, and other facilities in an
effort to draw working-class people back to organized religion
5. Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA)- created in
response to dangers of Protestantism losing working-class
consistency in 1850s from England; grew rapidly after 1870
6. Salvation Army- created in response to dangers of Protestantism
losing working-class consistency in 1850s from England in 1879
B. Religious Reformers
1. Church reformers who feared that Christianity was becoming
irrelevant to the needs and aspirations of the working poor began
preaching social gospel
2. Washington Gladden-
a) From Columbus, Ohio
b) Preached the social gospel- true Christianity resided not in
rituals, dogmas, or even the mystical experience of God but
in principle to love others as one’s self
c) Christian law should govern workplace
d) Attacked social Darwinism and argued labor’s right to
organize, supported maximum-hours laws and factory
inspections, and endorsed anti-trust legislation
VIII. Early Efforts at Urban Reform
A. The Settlement House Movement
1. Staffed mainly young middle-class idealists, many of them
college-trained women who had few other outlets for meaningful
work
2. Sought to broaden horizons and improve lives of slum dwellers
in diverse ways
3. Provide workingmen with alternative to saloon as place of
recreation and alternative to neighborhood political boss as
source of social services
4. Organized political support for tenement laws, public
playgrounds, juvenile courts, mothers’ pensions, workers’
compensations laws and legislation prohibiting child labor
5. By 1900, 100 in US, best known= Jane Addams and Ellen Starr’s
Hull-House in Chicago and Lillian Wald’s Henry Street
Settlement in NYC
B. Women’s Employment and Activism
1. With the rapid population growth in the late nineteenth century,
number of employed women increased as did percentage of
women in labor force
2. Susan B. Anthony-
a) Veteran of women’s rights movement
b) Demanded Fifteenth Amendment guarantee vote for
women as well as black men after Civil War
c) Founded National Woman Suffrage Association to support
suffrage amendment to Constitution with Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, but they looked upon suffrage as but one among
many feminist causes to be promoted
3. National Woman Suffrage Association- founded to support
suffrage amendment to Constitution by Susan B. Anthony and
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, but they looked upon suffrage as but one
among many feminist causes to be promoted
4. American Woman Suffrage Association- formed by Lucy
Stone, Julia Ward Howe and other leaders which focused single-
mindedly on vote as first and most basic reform
5. National American Woman Suffrage Association-
combination of National Woman Suffrage Association and
American Woman Suffrage Association in 1890 after three years
of negotiation; Elizabeth Cady Stanton= president, then Susan B.
Anthony till 1900; carried after by Anna Howard Shaw and
Carrie Chapman Chatt
6. Wyoming- provided full suffrage to women in 1869 as a
territory and after 1890 retained women’s suffrage when it
became a state
7. Idaho, Utah and Colorado- granted full suffrage to women
after Wyoming
8. New York- granted full suffrage to women in 1917, first in state
east of MS River to adopt universal suffrage
9. Young Women’s Christian Association- 1866, parallel to
YMCA, appeared in Boston and spread everywhere else
10. New England Women’s Club- 1868, Julia Ward Howe and
others; early example of women’s clubs that proliferated to such
an extent that a General Federation of Women’s Clubs was
established in 1890 to tie them together nationally
11. New York Consumer’s League, National Consumer’s
League- 1890; 1899- sought to make buying public, chiefly
women, more aware of degrading labor conditions
C. Toward a Welfare State
1. Laws passed by state to regulate railroads and working
conditions poorly enforced or overturned by states
2. Government steps in to help those who are suffering
3. Supplied temporary jobs, food, or other necessities; precursors to
modern welfare state
4. 1880s- slow erosion of free-market values, dependence on
government

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