Chapter 19 Notes
● The Growth of Cities
○ Statistics:
■ Beginning of the Civil War: ⅙ American people lived in cities of 8,000+
● 1900: ⅓ American people lived in cities of 8,000+
● 1920: ½ American people lived in cities of 8,000+
■ Cities with more than ½ million people:
● US 6 cities
● Over 1 million:
○ NYC
○ Chicago
○ Philadelphia
○ Technology
■ Skyscrapers
● Revolution in technology
○ Masonry with walls supporting all their own weight resulted
in small buildings
○ The movement towards steel frames and girdles allowed
buildings to soar higher
■ Curtain walls (concealed steel framework) no
longer load-bearing → many windows allow
natural light & fresh air
● Home Insurance Building in Chicago 1885 = first metal frame
structure
■ Electric Elevators (1871)
■ Streetcars
● Cable Lines
● Electric surface lines
● Elevated rapid transit
● Result:
○ Middle class moves more into suburbs and working-class
moves more into city
○ Stratifies society with middle-class residential rings
surrounding a business and a working-class core
■ John Root and Louis Sullivan
● Want to rebuild Chicago after the great fire of 1871
● John Root
○ Plain, stripped-down style, bold in mass and form
○ Keynotes of modern age of business
○ Thought office tower symbolized society
● Louis H. Sullivan
○ Studied at MIT & Paris
○ Chicago Auditorium (1886)
■ One of the last great masonry buildings
○ Developed new forms
■ Wainwright Building in St. Louis (1890)
■ Schiller Building (1892)
■ Carson, Pirie, and Scott department store
(Chicago, 1899)
■ Prudential Building (Buffalo, 1895)
○ Disciple: Frank Lyold Wright
○ Tenements
■ Jacob Riis How the Other Half Lives (1890)
■ Dumbell Tenement
● James E. Ware, 1870s
● Characteristics:
○ 7-8 Stories
○ 30 rooms in 25 x 100 feet
○ 4-16 families lived on a floor
○ Indented middle gave a small air shaft btw buildings that
gave little light & ventilation
○ Firetraps
● Statistics:
○ 1890:
■ ~½ buildings in NYC were tenements
■ 1.4+ million people lived on Manhattan Island
■ 334,000 people per sq mi
○ Problems
■ Statistics:
● 1900: less than 1/10 city dwellers drank filtered water
● 1880s: Homicide rate triples
■ Water Pollution & Drinking Water
● Dumping their waste into the nearest body of water and
using the same water source for drinking water → polluted
water & stinky
● Modern purified waterworks couldn’t keep up
■ Air Pollution
● Factories polluted urban air ‘
● Pittsburg
○ 73 glass factories
○ 41 iron + steel mills
○ 29 oil refineries
■ Crime
● Slum youths formed street gangs
○ Hayes Valley Gang, San Francisco
○ Baxter Street Dudes
○ Daybreak Boys
○ Alley Gang, NYC
■ Suicide
■ Alcoholism
● Immigration
○ Characteristics:
■ ⅔ males
■ Ages 15-40
■ Unskilled laborers
■ Most settled in the eastern seaboard
■ Most through Ellis Island
● Alternative: Industrial Relocation (1901)
○ Created to relieve overcrowding in eastern
○ cities
○ Opened Galveston, TX as pt of entry
○ Attracted many Russian Jews to Texas and Southwest
■ Beginning in the 1880s: chief source of immigrants from southern &
eastern Europe: Italy, Greece, Austria-Hungary, Poland, and Russia
■ ‘New immigrants’ tended to be Catholics or Jews
● Creation of Anti-Immigrant Groups
○ American Protective Association
■ Midwest anti-Catholic organization that expanded in the 1890s
■ Aimed to limit or end immigration
○ Immigration Restriction League, 1894
■ Demanded literacy test for immigrants from southern and eastern Europe
■ Congress passed a law in 1896 but President Cleveland vetoed it
● Immigrant Families
○ Nuclear: 2 parents and their children
○ Men were wage owners & women were housekeepers and mothers
○ Father had a small role in rearing children and managing family finances
○ Married more within group
○ Married at later age
○ Had more children
○ Spoke native language
○ Practiced own religion
○ Read their own newspapers
○ Established special parochial or other schools
○ Observed traditional national holidays
○ Formed a myriad of social organizations
● Immigrant Associations
○ Helped immigrants find jobs and homes and provided important services like
unemployment insurance and health insurance
■ Ex. MA Irish Benevolent Society
○ Deutsch-Amerikanisher Nationalbund, 1914
○ Women-only
■ Polish Women’s Alliance
■ Jednota Cekyck Dam (Society for Czech Women)
■ National Council for Jewish Women
○ Polish National Alliance (PNA), 1880
■ Helped new immigrants with arrival
■ Offered insurance plans
■ Established libraries and museums
■ Sponsored youth programs
■ Fielded baseball teams
■ Organized trips back to Poland
● Ethic Theaters
○ Yiddish (Jewish) Theater, 1880s NYC
● Importance of Church & School
○ Eastern European Jews established synagogues
■ Taught Hebrew language
○ Irish and Poles
■ Roman Catholic Church provided emotional and spiritual guidance
■ Parish Schools: Polish priests and nuns taught
● Rise of ‘Bosses’
○ City government becomes vulnerable to corruption and greed
■ Political Machines play an important role
■ Traded services for votes
○ “Boss” tied together a network of ward and precinct captains, each of whom
looked over his local constituents
○ Led Tammy Hall (Famous Democratic Party Organization that dominated city
politics from 1850s-1930s)
■ “Honest” John Kelly, NY
■ Richard Crooker
■ Charles Murphy
○ Other bosses:
■ “Hinky Dink” Kenna
■ “Bathhouse John” Coughlin, Chicago
■ James McManes, Philadelphia
■ Christopher Buckley, “Blind Boss”, San Francisco
■ Willaim M. Tweed, NY
● Head of Tweed Ring in NY
● Served as City alderman and NY State Assemblyman
● Headed a ring that plundered NY for tens of millions of dollars
● NY City Courthouse
○ Power structures are complex
■ Banks
■ Real Estate Investors
■ Insurance Companies
■ Architects
■ Engineers
○ Boss Issues
■ Differed from city to city
● Buckley stayed in San Francisco power by keeping tax rates low
● John Kelly earned his nickname as a watchdog over NY treasury
● Tweed Brooklyn Bridge
■ Corrupt v Honest graft
● “Legitimate” profits made from advanced knowledge of city
projects
○ Kept in power by paying attention to the needs of less privileged voters
● Victorian Morality
○ Prescribed strict standards of dress, manners, and sexual behavior that were
both obeyed and disobeyed but reflected the tensions of a generation that was
undergoing a change in moral standards
○ Children are seen not heard
○ Pride in virtue
○ Middle-Class Dress
■ Gentlemen: Heavy black suits, derby hats, white shirts, and paper collars
■ Women:
● Tight corsets, long dark dresses, and black shoes above the
ankles
● 1890s: tailored suit or dark shirt and a blouse called a shirtwaist
modeled after men’s shirts
○ Religious values are strong
■ 1880s: 8/10 church members were Protestants
■ Evangelists create mass revival movements
● Dwight Moody
● Ira Stankey
● Mugwumps
○ What? Wanted to end corruption in politics
○ Who? Educated and upper class
■ Thomas Nast: political cartoonist
■ George William Curtis: editor Harpers weekly
■ E.L Godkin: editor of the Nation
● Women’s Christian Temperance Movement (WCTU)
○ When? 1874
○ What? Advocated total abstinence
■ 1879-1898: 10,000 branches and 50,000 branches
○ Who? Led by Francis Willard
● Society for Suppression of Vice
○ Where? NYC, 1873
○ What? Comstock Law: prohibited the mailing or transporting if “obscene” articles
○ Result: Not successful
● Leisure and Entertainment
○ Popular games:
■ Cards
■ Dominoes
■ Backgammon
■ Chess
■ Checkers
■ Author Cards
■ Croquet: First outdoor game for both sexes
○ Music:
■ Ballads
● ‘Silver Threads Among the Gold’ (1873)
■ Ragtime
● Scott Joplin
● ‘Maple Leaf Rag’ (1899)
■ Classical Music
● The New England Conservatory (1867)
● Cincinnati College of Music (1878)
● Metropolitan Opera (1883)
○ Circuses
■ Small Towns of America
○ Fairs
○ Horse Races
○ Balloon Asencions
○ Bike Tours
○ Football
○ Baseball
○ Sports
■ Baseball
● Cincinnati Red Stockings (1869): First professional team
● American League, 1901
■ Football
● 1869: Princeton & Rutgers, first intercollegiate football game
■ Basketball
● 1891
■ Boxing
● Saloons & Schoolyards
● Outlawed in most states
● Prizefights
● Families
○ Creation of ‘separate sphere of domesticity’: fewer middle-class wives
participated in their husband’s work
○ Magazines ‘Ladies’ Home Journal’ (1889): glorified motherhood and the home
○ Major decline in fertility
■ Abstinence & Family Planning
● Women’s Rights
○ Femme Ciuvuture: Wives had been chattel of their husbands; couldn’t control
their own earnings, property, or children before marriage.
■ Revised doctrine: Allow wives to control their own earnings and
inheritance property & divorce, new laws also recognized women’s rights
to custody or joint custody of their children
○ Assert their own humances
■ Charlotte Perkins Gilman, author of ‘Women and Economics’ (1898)
● Joined other women in questioning the ideal of womanly
‘innocence’
○ National American Woman Suffrage Association
■ Susan B. Anthony
○ Ladies Anti-Beef Trust Association
■ NY Lower East Side
■ Protest increases in the price of meat
■ Established a boycott of butcher shops
● School
○ Reform
■ Attendance Compulsory (mostly until age 14)
● 1900: 31 states of 51
■ 1870: 160 public schools 1900: 6000 public schools
■ Education focused
● Basic skills
○ Reading
○ Mathematics
● Values
○ Obedience
○ Attentiveness to clock
○ Characteristics:
■ High Structured Curriculum
■ Many children dropped out early
■ Boys attend
■ Girls left after lunch
■ Textbooks
● Webster’s Spellers
● McGuffey’s Eclectic Readers
○ South so far behind
■ Effect of southern Jim Crow Laws, 1890s
● Kept African Americans from voting, serving on juries, &
participating in other aspects of Southern life
● Maintain separate schools
■ Plessy v. Ferguson
● Court case involved a train in New Orleans
● Who? Homer Plessy
○ Was sitting in a train car reserved for white people. Train
conductor asked him to move to the train car for blacks.
○ Was 1/8th black. Reported to the train conductor that he
was black.
○ One drop rule: if you had any black blood, you were
considered black no matter how white you looked
○ War part of group that was setting up a test case to
challenge the court
■ Problem: Supreme Court was controlled by
southern democrats
● Has to deal with the 14th Amendment
○ Not constitutional if there’s a white train car and a black
train car
● Court said :
○ Two things can be separate as long as they’re equal and
it’s not unconstitutional
○ Separate but equal was constitutional according to the
court
● Plessy v Ferguson was reversed in Brown v Board in 1954
● When the Supreme Court got political
■ Civil Rights Cases (1883)
● Fourteenth Amendment barred state governments from
discriminating on account of race but did not prevent private
individuals or organization from doctrine
■ Cumming v. County Board of Education (1899)
● Approved the creation of separate schools for white, even if there
were no comparable schools for blacks
● Higher Education
○ Land Grant Act of 1862: Large grants of land to states for the establishment of
colleges to teach “agriculture and mechanical arts”
■ 69 institutions universities Wisconsin, California, Minnesota, and Illinois
○ Private Philanthropy
■ Standford
■ UChicago
■ MIT
■ Cornell
■ Vanderbilt
■ Tulane
○ Women form study clubs
■ Decatur (Illinois) Art Class
■ Boston History Class
■ Barnesville (GA) Shakespeare Club
○ Post Civil War educational opportunities increased for women
■ Vassar
■ Wellesley
■ Smith
■ Byrn
■ Mawr
■ Barnard
■ Radcliffe
● W.E.B Debois versus Brooker T. Washington
NAME IDEOLOGY IMPORTANT
EVENTS/RESEARCH
Booker T. Washington ● Stressed patience, ● Atlanta Exposition in
manual training, & 1895 ‘the agitation of
hard work questions of social
● Blacks should focus equity is the
on economic gains -- extremest folly’
learn new skills and
work way up
● Atlanta Compromise
● Many whites & some
blacks welcomed
● White domination and
calling for slow
progress through self-
improvement, not
lawsuits or agitation
● Worked behind the
scenes to organize
black voters and lobby
against harmful laws
W.E.B Debois ● Aggressive strategy ● Used new discipline of
● Integrated with sociology,
schools with equal emphasized factual
opportunity observation in the
field to study condition
of blacks
○ The
Philadelphia
Negro (1898):
crime from
environment
NOT inborn
degeneracy
○ Souls of Black
Folk (1903):
urged to aspire
to professional
careers, fight
for the
restoration of
their civil
rights, get
college
education
● Books
AUTHOR BOOK(S) SIGNIFICANCE/CONTENTS
Herbert Spencer ● Applied Dawrnian
Principals of natural
selection to society
William Graham Sumner ● What Social Classes ● Influential follower of
Owe to Each Other Social Darwinism
● The Absurd Effort to ● Professor at Yale
Make the World Over ● Argued that
government action on
behalf of weak or poor
interfered with
evolution and sapped
species
Henry George ● Progress and Poverty ● Jolted traditional
thought
● Child of poor, self-
educated economist
● Argued that it has
become harder for
people to make a
living
● Solution: ‘Single Tax’
○ Increment,
replacing other
taxes
○ Wasn’t very
successful;
clubs sprang
but solution
was simple &
unappealing
Clarence Darrow ● Criminals were made
not born
● Poverty = root of
crime
● Rejected Social
Darwinism
Richard T. Ely ● Attacked dogmatism,
laisse faire, and
reliance on self-
interest
● American Economic
Association, 1885:
linked economics to
social problems and
urged government
intervention
John R. Commons ● History of Labour in
the United States
Thorstein Veblen ● The Theory of the ● Analyzed ‘predatory
Leisure Class wealth’ and
‘consumption’ of
business class
Edward Bellamy ● Looking Backward, ● Dreamed of a
2000-1887 cooperative society
○ Julian West with no poverty,
wakes up in greed, or crime
2000 and is in ● MA Lawyer
a socialist ● Book sold rate of
utopia: 10,000 weekly
Government ● Followers formed
owns means of Nationalist Club to
production and work on objectives
citizens share ○ 1890: 27
materials and states
rewards
Walter Rauschenbusch ● Saw slum
environment working
in Hells Kitchen, NY
● Professor at
Rochester Theology
Seminar: expounds
on the responsibility of
organized religion on
social justice
● Social Darwinism versus Social Gospel
GOSPEL OF WEALTH SOCIAL GOSPEL
FIGURES Carnegie Walter Rauschen Buche
Washington Gladden:
Congregational Minister and
prolific writer
● ‘Applied Christianity’
Missions in Slums:
● William Dwight Porter
Bliss: Church of the
Carpenter, Boston
● Lewis M. Pease: NY
● Alexander Irvine:
bowery, Jewish
Missionary
CHARACTERISTICS God rewards those who work Focused on society and
hard (the Puritans would be individuals on improving living
proud) conditions and saving souls.
Wealthy have a Church members fill their
responsibility to carry out social obligations.
philanthropy to benefit
society (libraries,
universities, etc.) →
Opportunities
“The man who dies wealthy,
dies disgraced”
● Settlement Houses
CHARACTERIS EXAMPLES HULL HOUSE SOUTH END LIMITATIONS
TICS HOUSE
Wanted to Jane Addams Stressed Focused on Attracted a
eradicate the Hull-House education: high school fraction of
conditions that Chicago, 1889 offered classes dropouts people living
in elementary in slums →
underlayed
Robert A Woods English and Offered manual some
the poor → South End Shakesphere, training, immigrants
lived in slums House in Boston lectures in ethics formed clubs to resented
to experience (1892) and history of get young middle-class
the problems art, courses in people off the strangers
they were Lillian Wald’s cooking, sewing, street, cheap teaching them
Henry Street and manual restaurant how to live
trying to solve
Settlement in skills where hungry
NY, 1893: health could eat Black reformers
Bridge care Infant Welfare open own
socioeconomic Clinic and Free settlements
gap between Bronson House, Medical since white
LA 1900 Dispensary reforms didn’t
rich and poor
have programs
and bring Installed for blacks
education, showers in the
culture, and basement of
hope to slums house +
bathtubs for
Many Settlement neighbors
workers were
women college Reading Room
graduates who
found society Dozen buildings
had little use for over city block
their talents and
energy Taught and
history +
English
Language but
encouraged to
preserve own
culture