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AMERICA MOVES TO THE CITY1865-1900
The Urban Frontier
40% of people lived in cities
Louis Sullivan - perfecting skyscrapers
Commuting by electric trolleys.
Why? Electricity Indoor plumbing Telephones Sullivan’s skyscraper
City Life – The AllureDEPARTMENT STORES SISTER CARRIE Macy’s (in New York) Marshall Field’s (in
Chicago) working-class jobs attracted urban
middle-class shoppers.
Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie told of a woman’s escapades in the big city and made cities dazzling and attractive.
City Life - Problems
Criminals flourished Sanitary facilities couldn’t keep up Impure water Uncollected garbage Unwashed bodies Animal waste
City Life - Problems “Dumbbell tenements”
Gave a bit offresh air down their airshaft
worst since they were dark, cramped, and had little sanitation or ventilation.
Flophouses - half-starved and unemployed could sleep for a few cents
To escape, the wealthy of the city-dwellers fled to suburbs.
“Dumbbell Tenement”
Old v. New Immigration Old Immigrants
British Isles and Western Europe (Germany and Scandinavia)
quite literate and accustomed to some type of representative government.
New Immigrants 1880s and 1890s Baltic and Slavic people of
southeastern Europe Illiterate and not
accustomed to having a representative government
Stay in cities (Little Italy, Little Poland)
Southern Europe Uprooted
Why did they come? No room in Europe Unemployment People boasted of
eating everyday and having freedom and much opportunity
Profit-seeking Americans exaggerated the benefits of America to Europeans cheap labor and more
money.
“Birds of Passage” – returned home quickly
Those that remained (including persecuted Jews, who propagated in New York) tried very hard to retain their own culture and customs. However, the
children of the immigrants sometimes rejected this Old World culture and plunged completely into American life.
Immigration to America from 1890-1916
Reactions to the New Immigration
Federal government did little to help immigrants assimilate
Immigrants were often controlled by powerful“bosses” (New York’s Boss Tweed)
Provided jobs and shelter in return for political support at the polls.
Walter Rauschenbusch and Washington Gladden began preaching the “Social Gospel,” insisting that churches tackle the burning social issues of the day.
Settlement Houses
Jane Addams Founded Hull
House in 1889 English classes Counseling – help
newcomers cope with big city life
Child-care services for working mothers
Cultural activities
Settlement Houses
Florence Kelley fought for protection of women workers and against child labor.
Cities also gave women opportunities to earn money and support themselves mostly single
women
A young Florence Kelley
Narrowing the welcome mat
“Nativism” Feared being out-bred
and out-voted Blamed immigrants for
the degradation of the urban government
IRONIC!!!!!!!!! Unionists hated -
willingness to work forsuper-low wages
Narrowing the Welcome Mat
American Protective Association(APA) - against immigrants
1882 - Congress passed the first restrictive law againstimmigration, banned paupers,
criminals, and convicts 1885 - another law was
passed banning the importation of foreign workers under usually substandard contracts.
Literacy tests were proposed, but were resisted
Statute of Liberty
Ironically in this anti-immigrant climate, the Statue of Liberty arrived from France—a gift from the French to America in 1886.
Churches Confront the Urban Challenge
Protestant churches irrelevant in big cities
Urban revivalists - Dwight Lyman Moody, a man who proclaimed the gospel of kindness and forgiveness and adapted the old-time religion to the facts of city life.
Dwight Lyman Moody
Churches Confront the Urban Challenge Roman Catholics
New Immigration Largest denomination
By 1890, America - 150 religions, Salvation Army, which
tried to help the poor and unfortunate.
The Church of Christ, Scientist (Christian Science), founded by Mary Baker Eddy, preached a perversion of Christianity that she claimed healed sickness.
YMCA’s and YWCA’s
Darwinism Disrupts the churches
Charles Darwin On the Origin of
Species
Doctrine of evolution and attracted the ire and fury of fundamentalists.
A Lust for Learning
Tax supported elementary schools
Grade school and high school education = birthright
Free textbooks “Normal schools” –
teacher training schools Catholic schools grew in
popularity and in number. Chautauqua movement –
help working adults Americans began to
develop a faith in formal education as a solution to poverty.
Booker T. Washington v. W.E.B Du Bois
Booker T. Washington - ex-slave
Tuskegee Institute black normal (teacher)
and industrial school useful skills and trades.
Avoided the issue of social equality
Believed in Blacks helping themselves first before gaining more rights.
One of Washington’s students was George Washington Carver,who later discovered hundreds of new uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes,and soybeans.
Du Bois - the first Black to get a Ph.D. from Harvard University
Demanded complete equality for Blacks
Founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1910
Ivy Leagues Colleges and universities
sprouted after the Civil War
Morrill Act of 1862 - grant of the public lands to the states for support of education
Hatch Act of 1887 - provided federal funds for the establishment of agricultural experiment stations in connection with the land-grant colleges.
Newspaper growth Libraries such as the
Library of Congress also opened across America, bringing literature into people’s homes.
“Yellow journalism,” – newspapers reported on wild and fantastic stories that often were false or quiteexaggerated: sex, scandal, and other human-interest stories.
Journalistic tycoons emerged Joseph Pulitzer (New York
World) William Randolph Hearst
(San Francisco Examiner)
Postwar Writing “Dime-novels” -
depicted the Wild West and other romantic and adventurous settings.
Harland F. Halsey – king of Dime Novels (650)
General Lewis Wallace wrote Ben Hur: reaffirmed thetraditional Christian faith
Horatio Alger - rags-to-riches books
Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass.
Emily Dickinson -poet whose poems were published after her death.
Literary Landmarks Mark Twain (Samuel
Clemens) The Adventures of
Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn, The Gilded Age
Stephen Crane The Red Badge of
Courage Theodore Dreiser
Sister Carrie
The New Morality Victoria Woodhull
proclaimed free love, and with her sister, Tennessee
Claflin, wrote Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly
Comstock Law - made it illegal to send any "obscene, lewd, and/or lascivious" materials through the mail, including contraceptive devices and information.
The “new morality” reflected sexual freedom in theincrease of birth control, divorces, and frank discussion of sexualtopics. Ms. Woodhull
Families and Women in the City
Urban life stressful on families Fathers, mothers,
and children worked
Charlotte Perkins Gilman Women and
Economics called for women
tobecome independent
She also advocated day-care centers and centralized nurseries and kitchens.
Feminist Activism
National American Woman Suffrage Association led by
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Ms. Stanton
Feminist Activism Carrie Chapman Catt
Woman’s suffrage The Wyoming Territory
was the first to offer women unrestricted suffrage in 1869.
Ida B. Wells rallied toward better
treatment for Blacks a formed the National
Association of Colored Women in 1896.
Ms. Wells
Temperance and Prohibition
National Prohibition Party in 1869.
Women’s Christian Temperance Union Called for a
national prohibition of the beverage.
Leaders included Frances E. Willard and Carrie A. Nation who literally wielded a hatchet and hacked up bars.
Social Progress
The American Red Cross, formed by Clara Barton, a Civil War nurse, wasformed in 1881.
Artistic Triumphs Art was largely
suppressed James Whistler and John
Singer Sargent to go to Europe to study art.
Mary Cassatt - painted sensitive portraits of women and children
George Inness - America’s leading landscapist.
Thomas Eakins - great realist painter
Winslow Homer - most famous and the greatest of all. painted scenes of
typical New England Augustus Saint-Gaudens
- sculptor
Artistic Triumphs
Music reached new heights
Erection of opera houses and the emergence of jazz.
Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, which allowed the reproduction of sounds that could be heard by listeners.
Amusements Phineas T. Barnum
and James A. Bailey “There’s a sucker
born every minute,” and “People love to be humbugged.”
“Greatest Show on Earth”
“Wild West” shows, like those of “Buffalo Bill” Cody
baseball and football
National Pastime
Baseball emerged as America’s national pastime.
Wrestling gained popularity and respectability.
In 1891, James Naismith invented basketball.