Chapter 18

Key Questions:What technological and organizational innovations were behind the emergence of large industrial corporations?What were the changes in the workforce in the urban-industrial economy and the reaction of organized labor?What was the impact of the new immigration and the start of African American migration to the cities of the North?What characterized the changing physical and social structure of the industrial city?What were the new patterns of residence and recreation in the consumer society?

New IndustryInventing technology: the electric age

Technology played a major role in transforming factory work and increasing the scale of production as steam and later electricity freed manufacturers from dependence on water power.In the late 19th century, the United States became a technological innovator. Between 1870 and 1900, 900,000 patents had been issued in the United States.Thomas Edison’s success stimulated research and development in Europe and the United States.Invention gave the United States a commanding technological lead.

New Industry, cont’d.The corporation and its impact

The modern corporation supplied the structural framework for the transformation of the American economy.The corporation became a significant factor in the American economy in the 1850s when railroad companies grew.The two major advantages of the corporation were that a corporation can outlive its founders and its officials and shareholders are not personally liable for its debts.Large corporations changed the nature of work and stimulated urban growth.Vertical and horizontal integration helped successful corporations reduce competition and dominate industries.

New Industry, cont’d.The changing nature of work

By 1906, industrial labor had been reduced to minute, low-skilled operations, making skilled artisans obsolete.Mechanization and technological innovation did not reduce employment but they did eliminate some jobs.Industrial workers shared little of the wealth generated by industrial expansion. They labored under unsafe conditions, generally working 10 hours a day, six days a week for low wages.Workers lived close to factories in poor environments.Many workers labored in small, cramped, poorly ventilated sweatshops.

New Industry, cont’d.Child labor

Many industries employed children, including mining, garment trades, and textile mills.

Working WomenLow wages for men often required women to work.Women earned lower wages than men and while more job opportunities opened, low wages and poor working conditions continued.Women also found employment in downtown department stores.By the beginning of the 20th century, women had gained increased access to higher education.

New Industry, cont’d.Responses to poverty and wealth

The growing gap between rich and poor and concerns about working women led to reform movements.Tenement apartments crammed the urban poor into crowded apartments in urban slums. The settlement house arose to deal with the wretched conditions under which the urban poor lived.Industrialists, intellectuals, and some politicians supported the Gospel of Wealth theory that helping the poor was of doubtful value. Social Darwinism was a flawed attempt to apply Charles Darwin’s theories to human society with wealth reflecting fitness and poverty weakness.

New Industry, cont’d.Workers organize

Economic cycles combined with the growing power of industrial corporations and the decreasing power of workers created social tensions. The Great Uprising of 1877 was a railroad strike notable for the way workers cooperated with one another.The Knights of Labor was founded in 1869 and led the movement for an eight-hour day but employers responded with court orders and arrests.The American Federation of Labor became the major union for skilled workers and stressed collective bargaining.Violent strikes at Homestead and Pullman were major setbacks for unions. Immigrants also weakened labor radicalism.

New ImmigrantsOld-World backgrounds

Economic hardship and religious persecution triggered migration from central and southern Europe.Economic hardship prompted Chinese immigration while a land shortage drove Japanese immigration.Initially most immigrants were young men but by 1900 the number of women immigrants equaled men.Chain migration involved the migration of an entire village that followed a small number of early migrants to a location.

Map: Patterns of Immigration, 1820–1914

New Immigrants, cont’d.The neighborhood

Except for the Chinese, rarely did a single ethnic group comprise more than half the population of a neighborhood.Most immigrants identified with their villages more than their ethnicity.Immigrants maintained their cultural traditions through religious and communal institutions.Immigrant communities insisted on controlling their religious institutions.Ethnic newspapers, theaters, and schools supplemented associational life for immigrants.

New Immigrants, cont’d.The job

Immigrants perceived the job as a way to independence. Typically, immigrants received their first job with the help of a countryman.Skills, the local economy, and local discrimination often determined the type of work available.Stereotypes also channeled immigrants into certain jobs and industries.The goal of most immigrants was to work for themselves.

New Immigrants, cont’d.Nativism

Antiforeign sentiment resurfaced when immigration swelled after the Civil War.Post-Civil War nativism targeted southern and eastern European Catholics and Jews and had a pseudoscientific underpinning.Nativism stimulated proposals to restrict immigration, leading to bans on Asian citizenship and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.Immigrants fought attempts to restrict immigration.The immigrant experience of the late 1800s and early twentieth century involved a process of adjustment between the old and new.

New Immigrants, cont’d.Roots of the Great Migration

Between 1880 and 1900, African Americans began moving into the industrial cities of the Northeast and Midwest.Economic promise and appeals of black Northerners, especially the Chicago Defender, combined with increasing persecution in the South, stimulated African American migration north.Immigrants took over many traditional black jobs. Black women had few job options outside of domestic service.African American migrants were restricted to segregated urban ghettos.

New CitiesCenters and suburbs

Downtowns extended up and out pushing residential neighborhoods out and leaving the center dominated by corporate headquarters and retail and entertainment districts.The residential neighborhood emerged as homes were crowded out of the city center. Advances in rapid transit technology eased commuting for workers.Suburbs became the preferred residence of the urban middle class after 1870. Privacy, aesthetics, and home ownership stimulated suburban growth.

Map: The Growth of American Cities, 1880–1900, p. 589.

New Cities, cont’d.The new middle class

The traditional urban middle class included professionals, doctors, lawyers, educators, editors, and ministers, as well as merchants and shopkeepers. Artisans had dropped out in the late 1800s. The new urban middle class expanded to include salespeople, factory supervisors, managers, civil servants, technicians, and white collar office workers performing various jobs.The wealthier members of the new middle class lived in the suburbs.

New Cities, cont’d.A consumer society

The new middle class changed American into a consumer society and goods became a symbol of prestige.Technology stimulated numerous household appliances and new products eased food preparation.Advertising created demand and helped develop loyalty for brand-name products.The department store was a middle-class retail establishment that became a center of urban downtowns after 1890.

New Cities, cont’d.The growth of leisure activities

Leisure and recreation both separated and cut across social class divisions.College football was popular among the elite, but baseball was the spectator sport of the middle class, which took it over after the Civil War.The tavern was the workingman’s club.Amusement parks were another hallmark of the industrial city.

ConclusionThe United States changed in the late 19th century as industrialization and urbanization proceeded at a rapid pace.Immigrants came to America to realize dreams of freedom and did so to some degree, but many also experienced the dark side of American life. A variety of organizations and institutions had emerged to address the worst abuses of the new urban, industrial order.