Immigration, Urbanization, and Everyday Life

1
Chapter 19

• Immigration, Urbanization, and Everyday Life
• 1860-1900

2
Introduction

• 1.) How did immigrants help shape the cities?
• 2.) What were political bosses, and why did they
  gain power in post-Civil War cities?
• 3.) Why did tensions develop between civic
  reformers and the urban poor?
• 4.) How did new consumer products and greater
  leisure time reinforce awareness of class and
  ethnic differences?

3
Introduction (cont.)

• 5.) What was Victorian morality, and why was it
  under attack by the late 19th century?
• 6.) How did economic and educational
  transformations affect the social roles of women?

4
The New American City

• Introduction
• In the post-Civil War years, the U.S. experienced
  rapid urbanization
• By 1900, 40 of all Americans lived in cities
• NY, Chicago, and Philly each had more than 1
  million inhabitants
• Cities attracted thousands from the surrounding
  rural districts and most of the 11 million
  immigrants who arrived between 1870 and 1900
• Offered work and other opportunities

5
Introduction (cont.)

• The population growth
• swamped municipal services
• caused terrible housing and sanitary conditions
• aggravated class differences and conflicts
• The physical deterioration, ethnic diversity, and
  social instability alarmed native-born reforms
  who tried to clean up cities and quickly
  American immigrants

6
Migrants and Immigrants

• In the post-Civil War years, thousands of young
  people, especially women, moved from farms to
  cities to find employment
• Between 1860 and 1890 about 10 million Northern
  European immigrants settled in East Coast and
  Midwestern cities
• Germany
• English
• Irish

7
Migrants and Immigrants (cont.)

• In the late 19th century, new immigrants from
  southern and eastern Europe arrived
• Italians
• Slavs
• Greeks
• Jews
• Armenians (from the Middle East)
• By 1890, the foreign-born and their children
  accounted for 4/5s of the population of Great
  New York

8
Migrants and Immigrants (cont.)

• Most who disembarked on the East Coast came
  through the immigration reception centers at
  Castle Garden (1855-1890) or Ellis Island (1892
  on)
• Ellis Island photo albums

9
Migrants and Immigrants (cont.)

• After 1910, Angel Island in SF served as the main
  West Coast reception center
• Angel Island photo gallery

10
Migrants and Immigrants (cont.)

• German and Scandinavian newcomers tended to
  migrate to Midwestern cities and to farms on the
  prairie beyond
• Italians and Irish took the first jobs they found
  in eastern cities

11
Adjusting to an Urban Society

• To ease their adjustment, immigrants clustered
  together in ethnic neighborhoods
• They could speak their native language
• Buy their traditional foods
• Celebrate traditional holidays

12
Adjusting to an Urban Society (cont.)

• The various immigrant groups improved their
  social and economic status at different rates
• Those who came with a skilled trade or spoke some
  English generally did well
• The Irish came in such great numbers, that they
  were able to dominate the Democratic Party and
  Catholic Church leadership in NY and Boston
• They accounted for 16-17 of the population in
  each city

13
Adjusting to an Urban Society (cont.)

• Nationality groups that had high rates of return
  to their homelands experienced slower upward
  mobility and assimilation
• Italians
• Chinese
• By the end of the 19th century, resentment of the
  newcomers (from whatever country) was growing

14
Slums and Ghettos

• Neighborhoods deteriorated into slums
• landlords packed more and more people into their
  buildings
• The poorer the residents, the greater the
  crowding and the faster the area declined

15
Slums and Ghettos (cont.)

• Ethnic slum neighborhoods became ghettos when
  discrimination and law kept members of the
  minority group from obtaining housing elsewhere
• Black ghettos in Chicago and Philadelphia
• Mexican in Los Angeles
• Chinese in San Francisco

16
Five Points, New York City
17
Slums and Ghettos (cont.)

• Slums and ghettos were usually adjacent to
  industrial cities
• were filled with soot, coal dust, noise, and foul
  oders
• Pollution and crowding were especially hard on
  the young
• Had very high infant mortality rates

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19
Fashionable Avenues and Suburbs

• In contrast to slums, grand millionaires
  mansions lined Fifth Avenue in New York,
  Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, and fashionable
  boulevards in other cities

20
Fashionable Avenues and Suburbs (cont.)

• The wealthy and the middle class also moved to
  newer, more desirable suburbs on the edges of the
  old, compact cities
• American cities became increasingly segregated
  along class as well as ethnic and racial lines

21
Middle-and Upper-Class Society and Culture

• Manners and Morals
• The 19th century Victorian worldviews preached to
  make personal and national progress an individual
  must
• work hard
• exercise self-discipline
• display good manners
• cultivate an appreciation of literature and the
  arts

22
Manners and Morals (cont.)

• To the highly moralistic Victorians, status was
  conferred by possessing abundant amounts of the
  right material goods
• The Victorian code served to heighten the visible
  gap between classes

23
The Cult of Domesticity

• Victorian morality assigned a special place to
  women
• Used the domestic sphere to provide the genteel,
  sensitive, and spiritual influences that moved
  society toward higher civilization
• They decorated their homes as richly and
  artistically as their means permitted
• Fostered the familys sense of cultural
  appreciation

24
The Cult of Domesticity (cont.)

• At not time, however, were all middle-class women
  satisfied with devoting their whole life to this
  cult of domesticity

25
Department Stores

• Innovative entrepreneurs developed urban
  department stores that appealed particularly to
  the Victorian outlook of the upper and middle
  echelons
• Rowland H. Macy
• John Wanamaker
• Marshall Field

26
Department Stores (cont.)

• These giant emporiums advertised
• high-quality goods at low cost
• encouraged buyers to believe that owning the
  right material possessions contributed to
  civilized living
• The department stores were designed to look like
  palaces
• Marble staircases
• Sparkling chandeliers
• Thick carpet

27
Department Stores (cont.)

• For the middle-and upper-classes shopping became
  an adventure, a form of entertainment, and a way
  to affirm their place in society.

28
The Transformation of Higher Education

• Higher education was still restricted to the
  upper and upper-middle class
• By 1900, only 4 of youths between 18-21 were
  enrolled in colleges and universities
• These institutions were seen as the training
  schools for the future business and professional
  elites
• Wealthy capitalists made large donations to
  already existing universities or started new ones
• John D. Rockefeller and Leland Stanford

29
The Transformation of Higher Education (cont.)

• With private contributions and state support,
  more than 150 additional colleges and
  universities were founded between 1880 and 1900

30
The Transformation of Higher Education (cont.)

• Higher education for upper-and upper-middle-class
  women as grew impressively
• Some eastern elite universities established
  affiliated schools for women
• ColumbiaBarnard (1889)
• HarvardRadcliffe (1894)
• More all-female colleges were founded
• Wellesley
• Smith

31
The Transformation of Higher Education (cont.)

• By 1900, women made up 1/3 of the nations
  college students
• In this period, the research university was
  developed and major reforms were instituted in
  medical and other professional training

32
Working-Class Politics and Reform

• Political Bosses and Machine Politics
• Urban political machines emerged to govern the
  unwieldy cities and their many competing
  interests
• Headed by powerful political bosses
• The machines gave tax breaks and awarded
  contracts to favored businessmen
• In return received a payoff
• Machines also gathered the votes of poor
  immigrants
• Provided them with relief, legal help, and city
  jobs

33
Political Bosses and Machine Politics (cont.)

• Most famous is Tammany Hall
• Led by William Tweed
• Between 1869 and 1871, Tweed gave 50,000 to the
  citys poor and built new school, hospitals,and
  other facilities
• Tammany Hall cost taxpayers about 70 million
  through graft and padded contracts

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35
Political Bosses and Machine Politics (cont.)

• Tweed was finally toppled from power with the
  help of Thomas Nasts political cartoons in
  Harpers Weekly

36
Political Bosses and Machine Politics (cont.)

• By the late 19th century, middle-and upper-class
  good-govt. reformers had begun their drives
  against the bosses
• The bosses and machines attempted to hold on to
  power by providing more public services and
  improved urban facilities
• Better sewer systems
• More parks

37
Battling Poverty

• Middle-class reformers also set out to relieve
  poverty
• They often tended to blame
• the problem on character flaws of the poor
• self-destructive cultural practices of the
  immigrants
• Reformers concentrated on moral uplift and
  Americanization campaigns among the needy

38
Battling Poverty (cont.)

• New York Association for Improving the Condition
  of the Poor
• AICP
• Robert M. Hartley
• New York Childrens Aid Society
• Charles Loring Brace
• Founded dormitories, reading rooms, and workshops
  for indigent boys
• Sent thousands of them to live with and work for
  families in the Midwest

39
Battling Poverty (cont.)

• Young Mens and Young Womens Christian
  Associations offered rural young people arriving
  in the cities temporary housing, recreation, and
  moral strictures against alcohol and other vices

40
New Approaches to Social Reform

• By the 1880s, the Salvation Army and Charity
  Organization Society (COS) joined the fight
  against poverty
• COS preached a tough-minded approach to charity
• Insisted that the needy must meet the standards
  of responsibility and morality set by the COSs
  friendly visitors to receive aid
• Critics charged that the COS was more interested
  in controlling the poor than in alleviating
  their suffering

41
The Moral-Purity Campaign

• Middle-and upper-class reformers attacked what
  they considered urban vice
• Crusaders demanded that city officials close down
  gambling dens, saloons, and brothels and censor
  obscene publications
• Anthony Comstock and Charles Parkhurst

42
The Moral-Purity Campaign (cont.)

• In 1894, the nonpartisan Committee of Seventy
  elected a NYC mayor committed to moral
  purification
• But within 3 years the effort failed
• The more tolerant political machine was back in
  power

43
The Social Gospel

• The Social Gospel movement developed in the
  1870s and 1880s among a small group of
  Protestant clergymen
• Founded by Washington Gladden
• Congregational minister

44
The Social Gospel (cont.)

• The movement preached that urban poverty was
  caused in part by actions of the rich and
  well-born
• that true Christianity commits men and women to
  fight social injustice head on, wherever it
  exists

45
The Social Gospel (cont.)

• Walter Rauschenbusch
• Baptist pastor in NYs Hells Kitchenslums
• Made the clearest statement on the movements
  philosophy (Christian unity)
• Led to the founding of the Federal Council of
  Churches

46
The Settlement-House Movement

• Settlement-House founders blamed poverty not on
  the poor but on social and environmental causes
• Leaders believed that middle-class relief workers
  must reside among the immigrant masses and learn
  what services they needed
• Firsthand experience

47
The Settlement-House Movement (cont.)

• Jane Addams
• Hull House in Chicago
• Day-care nursery
• Legal aid
• Health aid
• Help find jobs
• Offered classes in English and other subjects for
  immigrants

48
Hull House in 1890s
49
Hull House today
50
The Settlement-House Movement (cont.)

• Settlement-house workers also published studies
  of the terrible housing and corrective laws
• By 1895, more than 50 settlement houses in
  various cities were training a young generation
  of students
• Many would become state and local govt. officials
  
• Applying the lessons they had learned
• Florence Kelly became a factory inspector for IL
  in 1893

51
Working-Class Leisure in the Immigrant City

• Streets and Saloons
• The neighborhood streets served as the area of
  social life and free entertainment for shop
  girls, laborers, and poor immigrant families
• For workingmen the saloons offered male
  companionship, reinforced group identity, and
  were centers for immigrant politics

52
The Rise of Professional Sports

• Baseball
• Americans were the first to turn what had been a
  childrens game into the professional sport of
  baseball
• By 1890s, baseball had become a big business
• It appealed to members of all social groups,
  particularly workers
• Horse racing
• often a social event for the rich
• Boxing
• Spectators from all social levels

53
Vaudeville, Amusement Parks, and Dance Halls

• Vaudeville shows, amusement parks and dance halls
  were popular with working-class men and women
• Coney Island in Brooklyn was most famous
  amusement park of the time
• Coney Island video--History Channel
• Coney Island video--History Channel--3 minutes

54
Ragtime

• The middle class preferred hymns or songs that
  carried a moral lesson
• The masses became fans of ragtime
• Originated with black musicians in the saloons
  and brothels of the South and Midwest
• In the 1890s, honky-tonk players introduced its
  syncopated rhythms to a wide national audience

55
Cultures in Conflict

• The Genteel Tradition and Its Critics
• In the 1870s and 1880s a group of upper-class
  writers and magazine editors attempted to set
  standards for fine writing and art
• Charles Eliot Norton
• E.L. Godkin
• They insisted that literature must avoid sexual
  allusions, vulgar slang, disrespect for
  Christianity, and depressing endings

56
The Genteel Tradition and Its Critics (cont.)

• High-toned journals like The Century and the
  North American Review upheld this genteel
  standard by banishing from their pages authors
  who violated these rules

57
The Genteel Tradition and Its Critics (cont.)

• Many emerging writers refused to fit into the
  mold
• Sara Orne Jewett
• regionalist
• William Dean Howells
• realist
• Stephen Crane
• Naturalist
• Mark Twain
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
• Theodore Dreiser
• Sister Carrie (1900)

58
The Genteel Tradition and Its Critics (cont.)

• Huck Finn and Sister Carrie were both condemned
  by proponents of Victorian ideals

59
The Genteel Tradition and Its Critics (cont.)

• Socialist scientists criticized the business
  elite and challenged middle-class notions about
  the link between moral worth and economic
  standing
• Thorstein Veblen
• W.E.B. DuBois

60
The Genteel Tradition and Its Critics (cont.)

• The depression and labor unrest of the 1890s
  further undermined the smug Victorian outlook and
  its genteel culture

61
Modernism in Architecture and Painting

• Some architects and artists began questioning
  Victorian ideals of beauty
• Modernists architects refused to copy European
  design
• William Holabird
• John Wellborn Root
• Louis Sullivan
• Frank Lloyd Wright

62
Modernism in Architecture and Painting (cont.)

• They looked to their vision of the future for
  inspiration and argued that a buildings form
  should follow its function

63
Modernism in Architecture and Painting (cont.)

• Painters often times rejected sentimentality in
  favor of tough realism
• Winslow Homer
• Thomas Eakins
• Mary Cassat was one of the first American artists
  to paint in the French Impressionist style

64
From Victorian Lady to New Woman

• Womens Christian Temperance Union
• Led by Frances Willard
• WCTU
• Founded in 1874
• Broadened the scope of womens social
  responsibilities
• WCTU.org
• 150,000 members by 1890

65
From Victorian Lady to New Woman (cont.)

• WCTU was the first American mass organization of
  women
• Crusade against liquor
• Experience as lobbyists, organizers, and lecturers

66
From Victorian Lady to New Woman (cont.)

• General Federation of Womens Clubs
• Founded in 1892
• Middle-and upper-class women
• Social welfare projects
• Tenement reform
• The so-called new woman broke Victorian
  restraints about dress and exercise
• The most advanced advocated womens economic
  independence from men through work outside the
  home

67
From Victorian Lady to New Woman (cont.)

• Charlotte Perkins Gilman
• The new-woman emphasis on economic and social
  independence and equality had little impact on
  the lives of working-class women

68
Public Education as an Arena of Class Conflict

• In the 1870s middle-class reformers campaigned
• To expand public schools
• Bring them under central control
• Make attendance mandatory

69
Public Education as an Arena of Class Conflict
(cont.)

• William Torrey Harris
• Public schools were instruments for
  indoctrinating the masses with middle-class
  values and outlook

70
Public Education as an Arena of Class Conflict
(cont.)

• By 1900, as a result of the work of education
  advocates, 31 states passed laws requiring school
  attendance for all children from 8-14
• The illiteracy rate dropped
• More than 500,000 students were attending some
  5,000 high schools

71
Public Education as an Arena of Class Conflict
(cont.)

• Centralized urban public-school systems aroused
  opposition from various quarters
• Poor immigrant parents objected to laws that kept
  youngsters in school beyond the elementary level
• Needed the wages of their children to survive
• Catholics disliked the Protestant orientation of
  the public schools
• Organized their own parochial school system
• Upper-class parents preferred to send their kids
  to exclusive, private academies

72
Conclusion

• Between 1860 and 1900 class and ethnic conflicts
  appeared in almost every area of city life
• To distinguish themselves from the exploited
  working class immigrants, native-born elite and
  middle-class Americans embraced Victorian moral
  codes
• The upper and middle classes, with their genteel
  Victorian morality and ideals, were dismayed by
  the raucous, vibrant culture of the working masses

73
Conclusion (cont.)

• Respectable people periodically attempted to
  suppress indecent lower-class enjoyments such
  as gambling gathering in dance halls, saloons,
  and amusement parks, listening to ragtime,
  attending Sunday baseball games, and bare-knuckle
  prizefights

74
Conclusion (cont.)

• However, Victorian standards of decency were
  weakening by the 1890s as they came under attack
  from
• younger middle-class writers, artists, social
  scientists
• new women
• the working masses
• the immigrants

75
Conclusion (cont.)

• By 1900, the 2 cultural traditions were reaching
  an accommodation that blended elements of both
• National pastimes became highly commercialized
• working-class amusements of the 19th century
  evolved into the mass culture of sports
  spectaculars, movies, and other entertainments of
  modern America