Transcript Chapter

American Stories:
A History of the United States
Second Edition
Chapter
19
Toward an Urban
Society
1877–1900
American Stories: A History of the United States, Second Edition
Brands • Breen • Williams • Gross
Life in the Slums The kitchen of a tenement
apartment was often a multipurpose room. Here
the tenement dwellers prepared and ate their
meals; the room might also serve as a workroom,
and sleeping quarters for one or more members of
the family. (Source: © The Museum of the City of
New York, The Byron Collection).
Toward an Urban Society
1877–1900
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The Lure of the City
Social and Cultural Change, 1877–1900
The Spread of Jim Crow
The Stirrings of Reform
The Overcrowded City
• In late 19th century, people poured into
cities
• Many came form rural America, Europe,
Latin America, and Asia
• The city became the center of cultural,
economic, social life
The Lure of the City
The Lure of the City
• City becomes a symbol of the new
America between 1870–1900
• Explosive urban growth
 Sources included immigration, movement
from countryside
 Six cities over 500,000 by 1900
Skyscrapers and Suburbs
• Steel permits construction of
skyscrapers
• Streetcars allow growth of suburbs
• Streetcar cities allow more fragmented
and stratified city
 Middle-class residential rings surrounding
business and working-class core
Tenements and the
Problems of Overcrowding
• Tenements house working class
• James Ware and dumbbell design
• Tenement problems
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Overcrowding
Inadequate sanitation
Poor ventilation
Polluted water
Map 19.1 Foreign-Born Population, 1890
Immigrants tended to settle in regions where jobs
were relatively plentiful or conditions were similar
to those in their homelands. Cities of the
Northeast, Midwest, and West offered job
opportunities, while land available for cultivation
drew immigrant farmers to the plains and prairies
of the nation’s midsection.
Tenements and the
Problems of Overcrowding (cont’d)
• Urban problems
 Poor public health
 Juvenile crime
Strangers in a New Land
• Most immigrants were male, unskilled
laborers
• From 1880s, immigrants primarily from
southern and eastern Europe
• Resurgence of anti-Catholicism and
anti-Semitism
Figure 19.1 Immigration to the United States,
1870–1900 Note: For purposes of classification,
“Northern and Western Europe” includes Great
Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia, the Netherlands,
Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, France, and
Germany. “Southern and Eastern Europe” includes
Poland, Austria-Hungary, Russia and the Baltic
States, Romania, Bulgaria, European Turkey, Italy,
Spain, Portugal, and Greece. “Asia, Africa, and
America” includes Asian Turkey, China, Japan,
India, Canada, the Caribbean, Latin America, and
all of Africa. Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census,
Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial
Times to 1970, Bicentennial Edition, Washington,
DC, 1975.
Immigrants and the City
• Immigrants marry within own ethnic
groups
• More children born to immigrants than
to native-born Americans
• Immigrant associations
 Preserve old country language and
customs
 Aid the process of adjustment
Immigrants and the City (cont’d)
• Immigrants establish religious,
educational institutions, media which
preserve cultural traditions
Urban Political Machines
• Urban party machines headed by
“bosses”
 Some bosses notoriously corrupt, e.g.
William Tweed of New York City
 Most trade services for votes
 George Washington Plunkitt and “honest
graft”
Urban Political Machines (cont’d)
• Why bosses stayed in power
 Good organizational skill
 Helped immigrants
• Most bosses improve conditions in cities
Social and Cultural Change
1877–1900
Social and Cultural Change,
1877–1900
• End of Reconstruction marks shift of
attention to new concerns
• Population growth
 1877: 47 million
 1900: 76 million
 1900: population more diverse
• Urbanization, industrialization changing
all aspects of American life
Changing Styles for Women Victorian fashion
ideals for women emphasized elaborate, confining
dress styles with a tiny waistline and full skirts that
reached to the floor. Throughout the 1890s, as
women began to participate in sports or work in
factories, stores, or business offices, styles
gradually became less restrictive. This 1900 cover
of Ladies’ Home Journal shows women wearing
tailored jackets and simple pleated skirts hemmed
above the ankle, playing golf with men.
Manners and Mores
• Victorian morality dictates dress,
manners
• Protestant religious values strong
• Reform underpinned by Protestantism
Leisure and Entertainment
• Domestic leisure: card, parlor, yard
games
• Sentimental ballads, ragtime popular
• Entertainment outside home
 Circus immensely popular
 Baseball, football, basketball
• Street lights, streetcars make evening
a time for entertainment and pleasure
Changes in Family Life
• Urbanization, industrialization alter
family
• Family life virtually disappears among
poorly paid working class
• Suburban commute takes fathers from
middle-class homes
Changes in Family Life (cont’d)
• Domesticity encouraged, women
housebound, child-oriented consumers
• White middle-class birth rates decline
Changing Views: A Growing
Assertiveness Among Women
• "New women”: Self-supporting careers
• Demand an end to gender
discrimination
• Speak openly about once-forbidden
topics
Educating the Masses
• Trend is toward universal education: By
1900, 31 states and territories had
compulsory education laws
• Purpose of public education was to train
people for life and work in industrial
society
Educating the Masses (cont’d)
• Teaching unimaginative, learning
passive, Webster’s Spellers and
McGuffey’s Readers
• Segregation, poverty compound
problems of Southern education
• 1896: Plessy v. Ferguson allows
"separate but equal" schools
A Regimented Education Schools, regarded
primarily as training grounds for a life of work,
stressed conformity and deportment—feet on the
floor, hands folded and resting atop the desk. The
teacher was drillmaster and disciplinarian as well
as instructor.
Higher Education
• Colleges and universities flourish
• Greater emphasis on professions,
research
• More women achieve college education
• African Americans usually confined to
all-black institutions like Tuskegee
Institute in Alabama
Growth in Higher Education A physics lecture
at the University of Michigan in the late 1880s or
early 1890s. The land-grant university admitted
women, but seating in the lecture hall was
segregated by gender—although not by race. Note
that both whites and African Americans are seated
in the back rows of the men’s section.
Higher Education (cont’d)
• Booker T. Washington and the practice
of accommodation
 Concentrate on practical education
• W.E.B. DuBois: Demand quality,
integrated education
Educational Opportunities for African
Americans Booker T. Washington, who served as
the first president of Tuskegee Institute, advocated
work efficiency and practical skills as keys to
advancement for African Americans. Students like
these at Tuskegee studied academic subjects and
received training in trades and professions.
The Spread of Jim Crow
The Spread of Jim Crow
• Separation and exclusion took firm hold
in the 1890s—voting, education,
housing, jobs
• The North, federal government did little
to stem the tide
• Jim Crow laws penetrated all aspects of
the South
Lynching Perhaps no event better
expresses the cruel and barbaric nature of
the racism and white supremacy that swept
the South after Reconstruction than
lynching. Although lynchings were not
confined to the South, most occurred there,
and African American men were the most
frequent victims. Here two men lean out of
a barn window above a black man who is
about to be hanged. Others below prepare
to set on fire the pile of hay at the victim’s
feet. Lynchings were often public events,
drawing huge crowds to watch the victim’s
agonizing death.
The Spread of Jim Crow (cont’d)
• Lynchings also spread
• Racism also in North–blacks called it
James Crow
TABLE 19.1 Supreme Court Decisions Affecting
Black Civil Rights, 1875–1900
The Stirrings of Reform
The Stirrings of Reform
• Social Darwinists see attempts at social
reform as useless and harmful
• Reformers begin to seek changes in
U.S. living, working conditions
Progress and Poverty
• Henry George: The rich getting richer,
the poor, poorer
• George’s solution: Tax land, wealth’s
source
New Currents in Social Thought
• Clarence Darrow rejected Social
Darwinism, argued poverty at crime’s
root
• Richard T. Ely’s “Younger Economics”
urged government intervention in
economic affairs
New Currents in Social Thought
(cont’d)
• Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the
Leisure Class asserted that classic
economic “laws” were masks for human
greed
• Liberal Protestants preach "Social
Gospel"
 Purpose: Reform industrial society
 Means: Introduce Christian standards into
economic sphere
The Settlement Houses
• Famous Houses
 1886: Stanton Coit’s Neighborhood Guild,
New York
 1889: Jane Addams’ Hull House, Chicago
 1892: Robert A. Woods’ South End House,
Boston
 1893: Lillian Wald’s Henry Street
Settlement, New York
The Settlement House, a Revolution and
Social Reform Jane Addams founded Chicago’s
Hull House in 1889. The settlement house provided
recreational and day-care facilities; offered
extension classes in academic, vocational, and
artistic subjects; and, above all, sought to bring
hope to poverty-stricken slum dwellers.
The Settlement Houses (cont’d)
• Characteristics
 Many workers women
 Classical, practical education for poor
 Study social composition of neighborhood
A Crisis in Social Welfare
• Depression of 1893 reveals
insufficiency of private charity
• New professionalism in social work
• New efforts to understand poverty’s
sources
• Increasing calls for government
intervention
• Social tensions engender sense of crisis
Conclusion: Pluralistic Society
Conclusion:
The Pluralistic Society
• Immigration and urban growth
reshaped American politics and culture
• By 1920, most Americans lived in cities
and almost half of them were
descendants of people who arrived
after the Revolution
Conclusion:
The Pluralistic Society
• Society experienced a crisis between
1870 and 1900
• Reformers turned to state and federal
government for remedies to social ills
Timeline (continued)