1. The Industrial Workers

2. Industrial Workers Industrial work was hard:
Laborers worked long hours & received low wages but had expensive living costs
Industrial work was unskilled, dangerous, & monotonous
Gender, religious, & racial biases led to different pay scales
These conditions led to a small, but significant union movement
Low wages ($ /year but living cost $600); railroad injury rate 1 in 26, death rate 1 in 399; Composition of work force in 1900: 20% women (in 296 of 303 jobs) 10% of girls & 20% of boys had jobs (“child labor” meant ↓14 yrs)
all children poorly paid, but girls less than boys; Earning comparisons: Adults > Children; Men > Women; Skilled > Unskilled; Protestants > Catholics or Jews; Whites > Blacks & Asians; Blacks worked menial jobs; Chinese worked on Pacific Coast; often discriminated against (Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882)

3. Early American Labor Unions
In 1868, Knights of Labor formed to help all type of workers escape the “wage system”
The most successful union, the American Federation of Labor (1886) led by Samuel Gompers:
Made up only of skilled labor & sought practical objectives (better pay, hours, conditions)
Included 1/3 of all U.S. laborers
Membership regardless of skill, race, or sex
The KoL lacked organization to survive
Excluded women, blacks, unskilled laborers 17

4. The U.S. experienced an “era of strikes” from 1870-1890
The Great RR Strike of shut down railroads from WV to CA & resulted in hundreds of deaths
During the Chicago Haymarket Strike (1886), unionists demanded an 8-hr day; led to mob violence & the death of the Knights of Labor
The Homestead Strike (1892) resulted from a 20% pay cut at one of Carnegie’s steel plants

5. Essential Question: Reading Quiz Ch 19 A (648—663)
How did the industrialization of the Gilded Age transform cities & immigration in America?
Reading Quiz Ch 19 A (648—663)
Lesson Plan for Wednesday, December 3, 2008: RQ 19A, Urbanization notes & Immigration activity

6. Urbanization:

7. Gilded Age Urbanization
From 1870 to 1900, American cities grew 700% due to new job opportunities in factories:
European, Latin American, & Asian immigrants flooded cities
Blacks migrated into the North
Rural farmers moved from the countryside to cities

8. The Lure of the City
By 1920, for the 1st time in U.S. history, more than 50% of the American population lived in cities

9. Skyscrapers and Suburbs
By the 1880s, steel allowed cities to build skyscrapers
The Chicago fire of 1871 allowed for rebuilding with new designs:
John Root & Louis Sullivan were the “fathers of modern urban architecture”
New York & other cities used Chicago as their model

10. Louis Sullivan “Form follows function”
John Root “Simple & Dignified”

11. Grand Central Station in NYC
Western Union Building, NYC
Wadsworth Building, NYC

12. Skyscrapers and Suburbs
Cities developed distinct zones:
Central business district with working- & upper-class residents
Middle-class in the suburbs
Electric streetcars & elevated rapid transit made travel easy

13. Tenements & Overcrowding
½ of NYC’s buildings were tenements which housed the poor working class
“Dumbbell” tenements were popular but were cramped & plagued by firetraps
Slums had poor sanitation, polluted water & air, tuberculosis
Homicide, suicide, & alcoholism rates all increased in U.S. cities
Jacob Riis “How the Other Half Lives” (1890)

14. Jacob Riis’ “How the Other Half Lives” (1890) exposed the poverty of the urban poor

15. Strangers in a New Land
From , 23 million immigrants came looking for jobs:
These “new” immigrants were from eastern & southern Europe; Catholics & Jews, not Protestant
Kept their language & religion; created ethnic newspapers, schools, & social associations
Led to a resurgence in Nativism & attempts to limit immigration
Resurgence of the Nativism of the 1850s
4 of every 10 Americans today can trace their ancestry through Ellis Island’s gates