Why did people move to the cities American families Problems with urbanization

Early America 1700 - 1840 Farms, Large families, economics, no schools

American Industrial Revolution Mccormick’s reaper, John Deere Steel plow Need less people on the farm, more to the factories

Factories in the Cities Steam powered equipment, jobs for women, children 1938 Federal regulation of child labor Fair Labor Standards Act (minimum age)

Race to the Cities Immigrants Farmers African-Americans from the Southern States Why? Cheap and most convenient place to live Jobs Ethnic communities for social support

Problems of Urbanization

Excerpt from How the Other Half Lives, by Jacob Riis Be a little careful, please! The hall is dark and you might stumble over the children pitching pennies back there. Not that it would hurt them; kicks and cuffs are their daily diet. They have little else. Here where the hall turns and dives into utter darkness is a step, and another, another. A flight of stairs. You can feel your way, if you cannot see it. Close? Yes! What would you have? All the fresh air that ever enters these stairs comes from the hall-door that is forever slamming. That was a woman filling her pail by the hydrant you just bumped against. The sinks are in the hallway, that all the tenants may have access--and all be poisoned alike by their summer stenches. In summer, when a thousand thirsty throats pant for a cooling drink in this block, it is worked in vain. But the saloon, whose open door you passed in the hall, is always there. The smell of it has followed you up. Here is a door. Listen! That short hacking cough, that tiny, helpless wail--what do they mean? They mean that the dead baby by the door downstairs we passed will have another story to tell--Oh! a sadly familiar story--before the day is at an end. This child is dying with measles. With half a chance it might have lived; but it had none. That dark bedroom killed it.

City Streets

Tenements

"Everybody works but. " A common scene in the tenements "Everybody works but....." A common scene in the tenements. Father sits around. "Sometimes I make $9, sometimes 10 a week, sometimes nottin'." All work together, they make 4 dollars a week. Work until 9 P.M. New York City., 12/12/1911

Police

Subways & Streetcars

School Room 1890’s

Typhoid Mary

Cholera

Settlement Houses Hull House

Jane Addams movement

Disasters Chicago Fire Oct. 8-10 1871 300 died 100,000 homeless 17,500 buildings destroyed $200 million damage

Disasters San Francisco Earthquake Apr 18, 1900 1000 people died 200,000 homeless 28,000 buildings destroyed $500 million damage

Working Class Family

Housing

Housing Overcrowding No windows or windows nailed shut Keep out smell of garbage, dead animals Keep out rats

Sanitation

Sanitation On the streets Polluted Air Horse manure Garbage Dead animals Polluted Air

Transportation

Transportation People have to walk to work Not enough Street Cars Subways

Crime

Crime Population ↑ = Crime ↑ Many cities could not afford police

Water

Water Often no indoor plumbing Contaminated Typhoid Cholera

Fire

Fire Wooden buildings Lack of waterlines Candles and Kerosene (flammable) Only volunteer firefighters