America Moves to the City, 1865 -

1900AP U.S. History

Chapter 25

THE URBAN FRONTIER• Population in 1900 - 80 million (16.2

million were immigrants). 105 million by 1920 (40% in cities)

• Cities growing up and out • Skyscrapers

• Louis Sullivan – “form

follows function”

Buffalo, NY

Chicago

St. Louis

1st skyscraper - 1885

• Commuting increased - mass-transit – “Street car cities” – 1890s – electric trolleys,

elevated railroads, and subways– Brooklyn Bridge – John Roebling

• Segregate urban workers by income!!!

Residential Suburbs• Factors that promoted suburban growth:

– Abundant land, low cost– Inexpensive transportation– Low cost construction methods – wood framed

houses– Ethnic and racial prejudice– American fondness for grass, privacy, and

detached individual houses

3 Groups Moving TO Cities

1. Farmers

2. African Americans

3. Immigrants - largest

Rural to Cities • Industrial jobs

• Replaced by equipment

• entertainment, electricity, indoor plumbing, and telephones

• Department Stores

• women - career opportunities – 1890s – 1 million new workers– 1900 – 15 million

• Southern Blacks to cities (Great Migration biggest movement during WWI)

Immigration• “Old Immigrants”• 1860s – 1880s• Northern and Western

Europe• Language, level of

literacy, occupational skills similar – easily accepted

• Rural

• “New Immigrants”• After 1890• Southern and Eastern

Europe• Poor, illiterate, no

democratic traditions, Catholics, Jews – not accepted

• Urban

Most came through Ellis Island in New York harbor from 1882-1954 Most came through Ellis Island in New York harbor from 1882-1954 Most came through Ellis Island in New York harbor from 1882-1954 Most came through Ellis Island in New York harbor from 1882-1954

Other Cities: Boston, Philadelphia, Charleston, Baltimore, Mobile, New Orleans

1899 – 1910 ¾ were men.Many returned home.

Europeans made up ¾ of immigration

Push/Pull Factors• Economic: Push – farmlands worn out, large-scale commercial

farming drove them off their land, and low wages and unemployment due to machines. Also rising populations in Europe – doubled to 400 million. This led to competition for jobs in Europe. Pull – America seen as land of opportunity – fertile lands for little or no cost and expanding economy offered opportunities for jobs.

• Political: Push – European governments controlled by upper class with common people having no say so in political matters. Pull – America democratic with people having a strong voice in government.

• Social: Push – Europe – rigid class distinctions, few educational opportunities for poor, discrimination against religious minorities. Jew pushed out of Russia. Pull – America land of equality where they could rise in social status. “American Letters”

Immigrant Labor• 70% of workforce• Jews and Italians – garment

• Mexican – CA agriculture

• Children – 25% of boys and 10% of girls 10-15 employed– Injury, death

• 60 hr workweek

• 1900 - $400-500/year

Chinese and Japanese

• 1851 – 1883 – 300,000 Chinese to West Coast. Gold, RR

• 1884 – Japanese to Hawaii - plantations (sugar cane).

• 1898 annexation of HI led to Japanese immigration to the US.

• 1907 – 30,000 Japanese came to the US (peak).

Anti-Asian Sentiment

• low wages

• strikebreakers

• strange customs

• 1882 – Chinese Exclusion

Act – banned all Chinese

from entering the country

• Also scared Japanese and other Asian’s would take jobs. Japan had just defeated Russian and agitators used this – “Yellow Peril”

• 1906 – Asian children segregated in schools.

• 1907/08 – Gentlemen’s Agreement – TR and Japan – Japan limit immigration of unskilled workers, US repeal segregation order.

Urbanization and Industrialization

• Happened at same time

• Cities – cheap labor force, market for goods

• 1900 – 40% of Americans lived in towns/cities

• 1920 – more urban than rural

Challenges of Cities …

• Crime: prostitution, cocaine, gambling, violent crime.

• Unsanitary conditions

• "Dumbell" tenement (50%)

• Pages 559 – 560

Jacob Riis – “How the Other Half Lives”

http://www.authentichistory.com/postcivilwar/riis/33.html

Immigrant Cultures in America • As rich moved out to suburbs, immigrant poor

moved in

• Ethnic neighborhoods – “ghettos” – maintain own culture, language

• Foreign-language newspapers, theaters, food stores, restaurants, parishes, social clubs.

• Catholic parochial schools

REACTIONS TO THE NEW IMMIGRATION

• Political machines catered to new immigrants • Bosses traded jobs and services for votes

(creating powerful immigrant voting blocks) • Tammany Hall – New York City, “Boss

Tweed”– Provided services to city

• Thomas Nast – political cartoonist who brought attention to the Tweed Ring – finally broken in 1871.

Social Crusaders • Reformers hated these practices; wanted to curb

power of political machines • Social Gospel

– Christianity - improve life on earth– improve problems of alcoholism &

unemployment– sparks Progressive Movement

• Washington Gladden: open churches in working class districts.

• Salvation Army – aid to homeless/poor

Settlement House Movement

• Women’s movement, northern, white, middle-class

• Jane Addams– Hull House (Chicago) – immigrants taught English,

classes in nutrition, health, and child care, social gatherings.

• Helped immigrants cope with American big-city life

• Lillian Wald -- Henry Street Settlement in NY.

• Settlement houses - centers of women’s activism/social reform.

• Florence Kelly – Illinois Factory Law

• Red Cross (1881)

• YWCA (1858)

NARROWING THE WELCOME MAT

• Nativists – New Immigrants – culturally/religiously inferior. – high birthrates– "starvation" wages.

• American Protective Association (APA) 1887 – supported immigration restrictions

• Congress – 1882 – banned paupers, criminals, and convicts. 1885 – banned foreign workers under contract (usually working for substandard wages).

• Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)

DARWIN DISRUPTS THE CHURCHES

• Churches confront urban challenge • Origin of the Species (1859) theory that

humans had slowly evolved from lower life forms -- Cast serious doubt on the literal interpretation of the Bible, esp. creationism.

• Created rifts in the churches and colleges of post Civil War era.

• “Fundamentalists" VS."Modernists"

THE LUST FOR LEARNING

• Tax-supported elementary schools • Grade-school education compulsory • Public high schools increased • Kindergarten • Private Catholic parochial schools grew • Chautauqua movement -1874 in NY to educate

adults• 90% literacy rate• WHY??? Free government can not function

without educated citizens!!!

Higher Education • Morrill Act (1862) - public lands to states

for support of education.

• Philanthropists

• Women’s Colleges

BTW vs. WEB

• Booker T. Washington – Tuskegee, AL

– Useful trades as a means towards self-respect and economic equality

– Accommodation – accept segregation for now

• GRADUAL!!!!!

• W.E.B. DuBois – opposed BTW – demanded IMMEDIATE social and economic equality for Af – Am, led by “Talented 10th”– Niagara Movement –

immediate end to segregation

– NAACP

The Press • Joseph Pulitzer: Yellow Journalism

attributed to his newspapers

• William Randolph Hearst also built up a powerful chain of newspapers

The New Morality • Victoria Woodhull’s periodical Woodhull and Clafin’s Weekly

included feminist propaganda for women’s suffrage, equal rights, and "free love."

• Comstock Law (1873) - forbade publishing of “provocative” sexual material (e.g. discussion of birth control)

• New Urban environment hard on families – separated from families, subjected to stress. Launched the era of divorce

• Birthrates continued to drop, marriages delayed.

• Voting – Carrie Chapman Catt

• Women - right to vote in local elections (WY – first state to give women unrestricted suffrage).

Crusade for the Prohibition of Alcohol

• Liquor consumption increased in years following Civil War.         1. Immigrant groups resisted temperance or prohibition laws.         2. Saloons in late-19th century were exclusively male.

• Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) organized in 1874

– Led by Francis Willard - Increasingly saw alcoholism as result of poverty, not the cause. Put enormous pressure on states to abolish alcohol; somewhat successful.

• Carrie A. Nation • Anti-Saloon League formed in 1893 • Statewide prohibition laws now sweeping new states during the

Progressive Era.          -- In 1919, 18th Amendment made alcohol illegal (lasted only 14 years).

                              

Women’s Rights• National American Women’s Suffrage

Association (formed in 1890) – NAWSA – equal rights (esp right to vote)

• Elizabeth Cady Stanton• Susan B. Anthony• American Women Suffrage Association

led by Lucy Stone.