1. Toward An Urban Society, 1877–1900

2. Context The Age of Monopolies, Trusts, Big Labor, and Big Cities
In the late nineteenth century, American Society was increasingly dominated by large urban centers. Explosive urban growth was accompanied by often disturbing changes, including the New Immigration, crowded slums, new religious outlooks, and conflicts over culture and values. Cities also offered new opportunities and new perspectives, especially to women.

3. 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

4. Urban and Rural Population, 1870–1900 (in millions)

5. 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

7. Tenements and the Problems of Overcrowding
Tenements house working class
James Ware and dumbbell design
Tenement problems:
Overcrowding
Inadequate sanitation
Poor ventilation
Polluted water

8. Jacob Riis “How the Other Half Lives”

9. Dumbbell Tenement

10. Strangers in a New Land 1890: 15% of U.S. population was foreign-born
Most immigrants moved for economic reasons and entered through Ellis Island
By 1900, most urban dwellers foreign-born or children of immigrants

11. Immigrants: Who are they?
Old Immigration = (Ireland + Germany)
VS.
New Immigration = (Southern Europe – Italians, Greeks + Central Europe – Slavs, Poles, Russians, Hungarians, etc. )
RESULT: US is increasingly diverse: we come from more countries and more religions, esp. Catholics and Jews

12. Immigration to the United States, 1870–1900

14. Foreign-born Population, 1890

15. ANGEL ISLAND VS. ELLIS ISLAND
1882: Congress starts to restrict immigration
 1883 Chinese Exclusion Act
1886: Statue of Liberty.
CONTRADICTION?

16. Strangers in a New Land
1880s: Eastern, southern European immigrants prompt resurgent nativism
Nativist organizations try to limit immigration

17. Immigrants and the City: Families and Ethnic Identity
Immigrants marry within own ethnic groups
More children born to immigrants than to native-born Americans
Immigrants establish religious, educational institutions, media to preserve culture/tradition
Immigrant associations:
Preserve old country language and customs
Aid the process of adjustment

18. The House That Tweed Built
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”
Why bosses stayed in power:
Good organizational skill
Helped immigrants
Most bosses improve conditions in cities

20. 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

21. 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

22. 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
Domesticity encouraged, women house-bound, child-oriented consumers
White middle-class birth rates decline

23. Manners and Mores Victorian morality dictates dress, manners
Protestant religious values strong
Reform underpinned by Protestantism

24. Changing Views: A Growing Assertiveness among Women
"New women”: Self-supporting careers
Demand an end to gender discrimination
Speak openly about once-forbidden topics

25. NEW MORALITY & THE NEW WOMAN MOVEMENT
Families in industrial era experience sharp increase in divorce rate
Birth Control developed  delayed marriage and dropping birth rate
Women challenge stereo-types limiting their roles in home and workplace

26. NEW MORALITY & THE NEW WOMAN MOVEMENT
1871: Victoria Woodhull argues for “free love”
1873: COUNTER-REACTION  Comstock Law
Targets “obscene pictures and photos”
1898: Charlotte Perkins Gilman publishes Women and Economics
1890: Foundation of National American Woman Suffrage Assoc. (NAWSA)

27. http://images. encarta. msn

28. EDUCATION Many colleges for women and minorities are established
Teacher colleges are formed
Philanthropists fund universities
i.e Johns Hopkins, Vanderbilt, etc.
Adult education begins
Chautaqua Movement

29. EDUCATION Americans believe education is
THE ANSWER to fixing problems of industrialization and urbanization
Public HIGH schools are built at this time
Attendance at school (truancy) is enforced
Catholic school systems are built

30. 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

31. Educating the Masses
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

32. Plessy v.Ferguson ( 7 to 1) P. 495
What did the majority of the Supreme Court give as its reason in deciding Plessy v. Ferguson?
What do you think of these reasons?
How do you think the majority reflected the climate of their times?

33. Higher Education Colleges and universities flourish
Greater emphasis on professions, research
More women achieve college education

34. Higher Education: African Americans
African Americans usually confined to all-black institutions like Tuskegee Institute in Alabama
Booker T. Washington and the practice of accommodation
Concentrate on practical education
W.E.B. DuBois: Demand quality, integrated education

35. 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

36. Progress and Poverty
Henry George: The rich getting richer, the poor, poorer
George’s solution: Tax land, wealth’s source

37. 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
Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class asserted that classic economic “laws” were masks for human greed

38. New Currents in Social Thought
Liberal Protestants preach “Social Gospel”
Purpose: Reform industrial society
Means: Introduce Christian standards into economic sphere

39. Religion in the Cities
Most mainstream or old line Protestant churches struggle to address plight of urban poor
Catholicism thrives, founds schools and parishes
Salvation Army, YMCA and Christian Scientists are formed in this milieu
Darwinism undermines literal interpretation of Bible, “modernist” clergy respond.

40. Important Folks to Remember:
Jane Addams: Reformer, studies social ills, founds Hull House in Chicago in 1889
Mary Baker Eddy: founds Christian Science
Ida Wells: writer, activist; tackles lynching and discrimination
Booker T. Washington: founds Tuskegee and argues for “accommodation” to white society
WEB Du Bois: helps found NAACP, demands equality for “talented tenth” = black community

41. Ida B. Wells
Ida B. Wells
Ida B. Wells was a well-known crusader against lynching. (Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations)
Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

42. W.E.B. Du Bois
W.E.B. Du Bois
A brilliant young intellectual, W.E.B. Du Bois had to choose between leading the life of a quiet college professor or challenging Booker T. Washington's claim to speak on behalf of all African Americans. (Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations)
Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

43. 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

44. The Settlement Houses Characteristics Many workers women
Classical, practical education for poor
Study social composition of neighborhood

45. 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

46. Growth (Rise?) of Cities
Booming population + immigration = explosive urban development
Cities hold best and worst of America: richest of the rich, poorest of the poor
Must solve problems of crowding, sanitation, education, and economic development/growth

47. Immigrants: Who are they?
Did Assimilation (“the melting pot”) happen?
COUNTER-ARGUMENT/EVIDENCE:
Many new immigrants form ghettos that preserve customs and languages. Takes several generations to “Americanize”
NATIVISM reemerges as a counter-reaction, forms American Protective Association (APA)

48. 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
Society experienced a crisis between 1870 and 1900
Reformers turned to state and federal government for remedies to social ills