Chapter 25: America Moves to the City (1865 - 1900)

 

Introduction

• Americans would have a new way of living.

 

Urban Frontier

• Inustrial jobs, electricity, plumbing, telephones drew country folks off farms and to the city.

 

City Problems:crowded, filthy, and rat-infested. (especially after 1879 when the dumbbell tenement was perfected.) Flophouses were places where half-starved people could sleep for a few cents a night. The mattresses they slept on were usually verminous.

• In cities there were often issues with garbage disposal.
• Criminals flourished.
   

The New Immigration.

 

• In 1880's, "new immigrants" came to U.S. including Italians, Croats, Slovaks, Greeks, and Poles.
• They were largley illiterate and impoverished, took up industrial jobs.
   

 

Causes: came to make money to bring back to their country,

to gain new oportunities, or to escape persecution

• by-product of Europe urbanization, overpopulation.

 

 

 

 

 

Reactions to:

• Federal government did virtually nothing to ease the assimilation of immigrants into American society
• State governments did even less
• Immigrants' needs fell to the unofficial "governments" of he urban political machines, led by "bosses" like New York's notorious Boss Tweed
• Many bosses got immigrants votes by offering them jobs on the city's payroll
• Reformers were not pleased with the cynical exploitation of the immigrant vote

 

 

Jane Addams:

• established Hull House in Chicago in 1889, which was one of the first prominent American settlement house
• won the Nobel Peace prize of 1931.

 

 

 

Nativism:

• also called antiforeignism.
• Nativists viewed the eastern and southern Europeans as culturally and religiously exotic.
• Blamed the immigrants for the degradation of urban government.
• Paid immigrants poor wages.

 

 

 

APA:(American Protection Agency)

• created in 1887 and claimed a million members
• pursued nativist goals such as voting against Roman Catholics for office.

 

 

Congressional legislation:

• Created Some laws to prevent the influx of immigrants
• Law of 1882- allowed no paupers, criminal, or convicts, this included the chinese
• Law of 1885- prohibited importation of foreign workers under contract

 

 

 

Churches Confront the Urban Challenge

 

• A lot of churches were rural and because more people were moving to the cities, there was less and less church attendance.
• The mounting emphasis was on materialism.
• Money was accepted as the measure of achievement, and the new gospel of wealth proclaimed God caused the righteous to prosper.
• Out of this era came the liberal Protestants. They adapted religious ideas to modern culture.

 

Darwin Disrupts the Churches

 

 

"natural selection" - nature blindly selects organisms for survival or death based on random, inheritable variations that they happened to possess.

 

 

 

 

Reactions:Louis Agassiz held fast to the old doctrine of "special creations." Split between conservitives who were against it and accommodationists who supported it.

• Most believers along with scientists rejected Darwin's ideas.

 

 

 

Education in the late 19th Century

•  on the rise
• slowed child labor
• started training people for jobs
• seperated facts and values

 

 

 

Blacks in Education

 

Booker T. Washington:

• ex-slave who taught blacks useful trades to earn self-respect, thought blacks could get their "rights" through a solid labor force.
•  Started the Tuskegee Institute for blacks.
• Helped students gain respect, economic security, and get a better place in society.
• thought blacks shouldn't challange white supremecy; just go w/ the flow

 

 

George Washington Carver:

• slave-born chemist who helped south economy by creating new uses for the peanut, soybeans, and the sweet potatoe.
• Taught at Tuskegee Institute and became an internationally famous agriculture chemist.

 

 

 

 

W.E.B. DuBois: demanded complete equality for blacks was the first black to earn a Ph.D. at Harvard, wanted to take political action to achieve black rights

 

 

 

NAACP: (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People)

Wanted immediate equality, economically and socially.

 

 

 

Higher Education

 

Morrill Act of 1862: Gave land grants for support of schools

 

Hatch Act of 1887: Gave grants for ag. labs in schools

 

Both gave way to hundreds of colleges!

Ex: University of California (1868), Ohio State University (1870), Texas A&M (1876) and also many more.

 

 

Appeal of the Press

 

Yellow Journalism:journalism that features scandal-mongering, sensationalism, or other unethical or unprofessional practices.

 

Hearst/Pulitzer:

• ruthless newspaper competitors that used sensationalism, scadal, and rumors to attract readers
• overall, these two had a negative influence in the newspaper industry
• Hearst used his father's money to create a chain of newspapers, and build the Hearst Castle in San Simeon, CA

 

Apostles of Reform

 

Magazines:

Harper's

Atlantic Monthly

Scriner's Monthl

Nation

 

 

Henry George:

• poor in formal schooling, idealism
• saw poverty at its worst in California
• Wrote Progress and Poverty to solve "the great enigma of our times"
• According to George, the pressure of growing population fixed on land, pushed up property values, showering profits on land owners.
• Soon became controversial figure.
• Single tax idea
• People wouldnt publish his book because of tax idea

 

 

Post-War Writing

 

"dime-novels"

 

"Ben-Hur"

 

Horatio Alger

 

 

Literary Landmarks

 

Mark Twain:

• Humanist
• wrote many stories such as "the adventures of huckleberry finn" and also "the adventures of tom sawyer"
• real name is Samuel Clemens.
• he is called the father of american literature

 

 

Stephen Crane:

• wrote about the underside of life in urban, industrial America
• died at age 29 from Tuberculosis (TB)

 

Henry Adams

 

Frank Norris

 

Paul Dunbar/Charles Chestnutt

 

 

The New Morality

 

Woodhull Sisters

 

Comstock Laws

 

 

Family and Women in the City

Women:

Divorce rates went up drastically because women were being put under a lot more stress and had to work out of the homes and find new jobs.

Became emotionally stressed also becasue they were so close to their families and they didn't have any support from anyone outside of their house.

Less children because they didn't need as many children because didn't need them around the farm.

 

 

 

 

National American Woman Suffrage Association

• wanted voting rights
• excluded blacks

 

National Association of Colored Women

 

 

 

Prohibition of Alcohol and Social Progress

 

 

 

Women's Christian Temperance Union (1874)

 

Anti-Saloon League

 

American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (1866)

 

American Red Cross (1881)

 

 

Artistic Triumphs

•  Richardson was an architect who created the high vaulted arches

 

 

American Amusement

• Baseball, basketball(1891), football,
• bikes and croquet
• people had more free time