America Moves To The City

1. America Moves To The City Urbanization, Immigration

2. The Urban Frontier • 1870-1900- Amer Pop doubled; pop in cities tripled • Cities grew up & out • Louis Sullivan: skyscrapers (Chi 1885) • From walking cities - commuting cities • Electric trolleys • Electricity • Indoor plumbing • Telephones • Department stores: Macy’s (NY) Marshall Field’s (Chi) • Jobs • Attracted shoppers

3. City life • Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser: woman’s adventures in Big City • Cities: dazzling, attractive • Cities also produced lots of trash • Farmers reused everything; fed ‘trash’ to animals • City dwellers: mail order houses (Montgomery Ward; Sears)- throw old things out

4. City problems • Crime • Impure water • Uncollected garbage • Unwashed bodies • Animal waste • Cities: smelly, unsanitary • Slums: crammed w/ people • Dumbbell tenements: dark, cramped, unventilated, filthy • Jacob Riis: How The Other Half Lives

5. Reaction • People move to suburbs… if they can afford to • Immigrants looking for cheap housing move to inner ring of city

6. New Immigration • Before 1880s: from England, W. Europe • Germany, Scandinavia • Literate • Tradition of some representative gov • Protestants • After 1880s: Southern, Eastern Europe • Baltic, Slavic- opposite

7. Reasons to emigrate • No room in Europe, no employment • Displaced by industrialization • Letters from America: • People ate daily • Freedoms • Opportunities • Jobs…. Wealth exaggerated by people seeking cheap laborers • Many ‘birds of passage’ • Many tried to hang on to their cultures, customs • Children generally rejected old world culture: Americanized

8. Reactions to New Immigration • No system for New Immigrants to assimilate • Political bosses provided jobs, shelter in return for political support • Awareness of slums, conditions grew • Walter Rauschenbusch, Washington Gladden preached Social Gospel • Insisted Churches attack social problems • Jane Addams founded Hull House 1889: to teach skills, info needed to succeed in America • Nobel Peace Prize 1931 • Pacifist • DAR revoked membership! • Lillian Wald’s Henry St. Settlement, NY 1893 • Settlement Houses: centers for women’s activism, reform • Florence Kelley et al: fought to protect women workers, against child labor

9. Nativism • Back in 1880s • Germans, W. Europeans looked down on Slavs, Baltic peoples • Feared mixed blood w/ Anglo-Saxons • “Native” Amers blamed immigrants for problems of cities • Trade Unionists hated them for willingness to work for less pay & bringing in dangerous doctrines • Socialism, communism

10. Anti Foreign groups • APA: Amer Protective Association • w/ labor leaders tried to stop immigration • 1882 law: barred entrance to paupers, criminals, convicts • 1885 law banned importing foreign workers • Literacy tests proposed, resisted until 1917 • 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act passed • 1886 Statue of Liberty arrived from France (gift)

11. Churches • Many people worried that Churches’ avoidance of plight of poor in cities meant Satan winning battle of good v. evil • Urban revivalists: • Dwight Lyman Moody • Gospel of kindness, forgiveness: old time religion applied to city life • Moody bible institute 1889, Chi • Cardinal Gibbons preached Amer Unity • 150 religions in US • Newest: Salvation Army: helped poor, indigent • Church of Christ, Scientist (Mary Baker Eddy) taught Christianity heals sickness • YMCA, YWCA founded

12. Fundamentalism • 1859 Charles Darwin: On The Origin of Species • Doctrine of evolution • Modernists step away from fundamentalism • Hard to believe in face of science: bible is literal • Col. Robt Ingersoll denounced creationism • Others combine the two

13. Education • New trend: creation of more public schools • Free textbooks funded by taxpayers • By 1900: 6k HSs • More kindergartens, Catholic schools • Chautauqua movement: follow up to lyceums • 1874: included public lectures by famous writers, many at home studies • Formal education seen as answer to poverty

14. Booker T. Washington • Ex slave- headed a black normal and industrial school: Tuskegee, AL • Avoided issue of social equality • Focus: economic equality first: learn trade, help yourself • George Washington Carver (student) disc’d hundreds of uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes, soybeans • W.E.B. Du Bois: 1st black w/ Ph.D. from Harvard • Demands complete equality & action NOW • Founded NAACP 1910 • Talented 10th • Reflects Differences between life for N. blacks vs. S. blacks

15. The Ivy Halls • Colleges and universities grow in number too post Civil War • Colleges for both genders grew • Black colleges est’d; notably Howard U, D.C.; • Atlanta U • Hampton Institute, VA • Morrill Act 1862- granted public land to states for support of education • Hatch Act-1887- $$ for est. agricultural experiment stations

16. Colleges (2) • Private donations est’d colleges too • Cornell, Leland Stanford Jr, U of Chi (Rockefeller) • John Hopkins U: 1st high grade grad school • Elective system of college • Dr. Charles W. Eliot (pres Harvard) • Medical Schools & Science prospered post CW • Louis Pasteur, Joseph Lister: discovered germ theory, disease transmission, pasteurization etc • William James est’d behavioral psychology • Pragmatism, preached that everything has a purpose

17. Appeal of the Press • Library of Congress opened • Linotype invented 1885 • Yellow Journalism developed • Sensationalism over facts • Sex, scandal, human interest • New tycoons: • Joseph Pulizer (NY World) • Wm Randolph Hearst (SF Examiner) • Associated Press (AP) est 1840- offset some bad journalism

18. Reformers & Muckrakers • Magazines: • Harper’s, Atlantic Monthly, Scribner’s Monthly, NY Nation (Edwin L. Godkin, merciless critic) • Edward Bellamy published Looking Backward 1888 • Criticized social injustices of the day • Envisioned a utopian society • Which would nationalize big businesses for the public good

19. Post War Writing • Dime novels • Wild West • Romance • Adventures • General Lewis Wallace: Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Written to combat Darwinism • Horatio Alger- • Rags to riches tales • Virtue, honesty & industry leads to wealth, success and honor • Walt Whitman- • Revised, republished ‘Leaves of Grass’

20. Literary Landmarks • Emily Dickinson- poet, hermit- poems published post humously • Mark Twain- (Samuel Clemens)- wrote about the west and far west as well as life on the MS river. Many books, short stories. • Bret Harte- CA gold rush stories • William Dean Howells- Ed in Chief: Atlantic Monthly • Topics: ordinary people in controversial situations

21. Literary (2) • Stephen Crane- life in urban America- esp prostitution “Maggie: Girl of the Street” • Also Civil War: “Red Badge of Courage” • Henry James- novels about women & their personalities (Character studies) • Jack London- novels of wilderness adventures “Call of the Wild” • Frank Norris- “The Octopus” corruption in RRs • Paul Laurence Dunbar & Charles W. Chesnutt- black writers w/ dialect & fokelore in poems, stories

22. New Morality • Victoria Woodhull- • Free love • Published Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly w/ sister: • Exposes of affairs, etc • Anthony Comstock- • Battled immorality (blue laws) • New morality: sexual freedom in increase of birth control, divorces, frank discussion of sexual topics • All relative: Post Victorian Age

23. Families & Women in the City • Urban life: stressful on families • Often separated • Everyone worked, even children above age 10 • Farms: more children= more help for harvest • Cities: more children= more chance of poverty • Charlotte Perkins Gilman: “Women & Economics”- 1898 (feminist) called for women to abandon dependent status • Go work • Advocated day care centers, centralized nurseries, kitchens

24. Feminists • National American Woman Suffrage Assoc 1890 • Led by Eliz Cady Stanton • Who org’d 1st women’s rts convention 1848 • Susan B Anthony • 1900- new generation included Carrie Chapman Catt: • Give women the vote so they can function in increasingly public world of the city • WY Terr: first to grant suffrage 1869 • General Federation of Women’s Clubs • Ida B. Wells- National Association of Colored Women 1869- better treatment for black women

25. Prohibition of Alcohol • National Prohibition Party 1869 • Women’s Christian Temperance Union • Called for national prohibition • Leaders: Carrie A. Nation, Frances E. Willard • Anti Saloon League 1893 • American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (1866) • Discouraged mistreatment of livestock • Red Cross, Clara Barton (civil war nurse, founder) 1881

26. Artistic Triumphs • Art: suppressed in early & mid 1800s, mostly European • Mary Cassatt: sensitive portraits of women, children • George Inness: leading landscape artist • Thomas Eakins: realist painter • Winslow Homer: most famous, greatest • Augustus Saint-Gaudens, sculptor

27. Amusements • Columbian Exposition, 1893- huge displays of modern achievements • Vaudeville shows: jokes, acrobats, singers • Phineas T. Barnum & James A. Bailey- • “Ringling Bros.” and “Barnum and Bailey” Circuses • The Greatest Show on Earth • Buffalo Bill Cody, Annie Oakley (Wild West Shows) • Baseball, football • Wrestling • Pugilism- “Gentleman Jim Corbett”; scientific boxer • Beat John L. Sullivan (Boston Strong Boy) **aging alcoholic • 1891- Basketball (James Naismith) YMCA instructor, Springfield, MA • Indoor sport for winter months • Bicycle riding • Croquet (though naughty bcs it exposed the ankles, promoted flirtation