Transcript The Rise of the American City

The Rise of the
American City
Hmm would you want to
live here?
New York City
Immigrants at Ellis Island in the early 1900s wait to have a
physical examination. Doctors and inspectors decided who was
healthy enough to be allowed to stay in the United States.
Ellis Island in the early 1900s. Ellis Island was the landing point
for immigrants in the early 1900s. They would be examined, and
then continue on into New York. The immigration of many different
nations to the United States eventually gave it the name “The
melting pot of the world”. This term is formed with the cultures of
all the different nations coming together to form one new culture,
or a “melting pot”. Although the idea seems interesting, there
were cases of nationalism and racism during the early 1900s, as
many native Americans were in favor of keeping their native
culture and way of living.
From 1910 to 1940, immigrants arriving on the West Coast of the United
States had to pass through the Angel Island Immigration Station. East
Indians had to endure questions and medical examinations before gaining
admittance into the United States. Many were sent back to India.
Sources of Urbanization
• Steam replace water power for mills,
industries concentrated
geographically
• Large-scale production instantly
created small cities of workers –
company towns dominated by one
industry.
(New York,
• Gateways for immigrants provided
Boston, San
abundant cheap labor
Francisco)
Hastings, Colorado, circa 1900-1910.
Showing Victor Coal Company (later the Victor
American Fuel Company) mining town, mine buildings,
railroad, residential housing for miners
sad-faced young boy sweeps the floor of the spinning room while a man,
presumably his supervisor, and two other boys look at the camera. Possibly a
photo. taken by Lewis Wickes Hine, the sociological photographer and child
labor reformer, during a 1908 investigation of child labor practices in the
Carolinas. Note that all of the children appear younger than 12, the legal
working age in South Carolina and other localities.
The Everett
Massacre
Sunday, November 5, 1916 marked the bloodiest battle in Pacific
Northwest labor history. On that day, about 300 members of the
Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.) boarded the steamers
Verona and Calista from Seattle and headed north toward Port
Gardner Bay.
The I.W.W. (or Wobblies) planned a public demonstration in
Everett that afternoon, to be held on the corner of Hewitt and
Wetmore, a spot commonly used by street speakers. Hoping to
gain converts to their dream of One Big Union, the Wobblies
began street speaking in Everett during a local shingleweavers'
strike, encountering brutal suppression by local law officers. Free
speech soon became the dominant issue. The number of
demonstrators and the violence of the response from law
enforcement grew as the weeks wore on.
The Disgrace of Child Labor
"The worst conditions," according to Harold
Faulkner,"prevailed in manufacturing in which
about 16% of the child workers were engaged.
The picture of children kept awake during the
long night in a Southern mill by having cold
water dashed on their faces, of little girls in
canning factories 'snipping' sixteen or more
hours a day or capping forty cans a minute in
an effort to keep pace with a never exhausted
machine, of little ten-year-old breaker boys
crouched for ten hours a day over a dusty coal
chute to pick sharp slate out of the fast moving
coal, of boys imported from orphan asylums
and reformatories to wreck their bodies in the
slavery of a glass factory, or a four-year old
baby toiling until midnight over artificial flowers
in a New York tenement-these were conditions
which might well shame a civilized people into
action."
Problems of Cities
• Mass Transit
• Cable Cars replace
horses in many
– Until 1890 the
horse car accounted
cities
for 70% of city
traffic.
– Limitations:
• Slow Limited pulling
power
• Left piles of manure
– First used in San
Francisco 1873
– Electric trolley cars
Corruption in the Cities
• Police Forces
• Political Bosses
– Control city
“machines”
– Ward captains
turned out voters
on election day
– Jobs handed out
as political favors
– Some provide
welfare services,
opportunities for
corruption were
great
– Poorly defined
duties
– Ineffective in
controlling theft,
Can
prostitution,
you say, gambling
– Symbiotic
“
Graft?” relationship
between police
and institutions
they were to
Boss Tweed controlled 60,000 jobs!!!!
oversee
Battling City’s Problems
• Reformers sought to counter poverty and
other urban problems by focusing on
moral uplift
– YMCA and YWCA formed to provide housing
and recreational opportunities
– Salvation Army effective in providing
emergency aid, housing, street kitchens
– Comstock laws sought to close down gambling,
pornography, prostitution, and Sunday liquor
sales.
Battling the City’s Problems
• Social Gospel sought to apply teachings of
Jesus to the problems of urban society.
Blame for problems did not rest with the
poor, but with society.
– Washington Gladden – true Christianity
requires churchgoers to fight social injustice
– Walther Rauschenbusch – Christianity and the
Social Crisis Churches should unit to reform
the abuses of industry and fight for peace.
Battling the City’s Problems
• Settlement Houses
– Jan Addams designed these to offer
literacy classes, crafts classes, job
training, and a sense of dignity to urban
dwellers, particularly immigrants.