The Urban World

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The Urban World

• From1865 to 1900, Americans living in cities
  doubled, from 20 to 40
• steel used to build skyscrapers
• Elisha Otiss invented elevator
• buildings could be much taller than the previous
  5 story limit

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Mass Transit

• Before 2nd industrial revolution, most cities
  covered about 3 square miles (distance a person
  could walk in a few hours)
• Mass transit allowed cities to cover as much as
  20 square miles
• Workers did not have to live within walking
  distance of their jobs
• Public transport
• Electric commuter trains
• Subways
• Trolley cars

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The suburbs

• Transportation to suburbs
• Cost about .15-.25
• Wealthy residents settled outside of the city
  core
• The poor could not afford to live outside the
  city

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Upper class life

• Nouveau riche newly rich
• Huge fortunes
• Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt
• Practiced conspicuous consumption spending
  tons of money so everyone could see how rich they
  were
• Cared about proper social behavior
• imitated the manners of nobles in Victorian
  England

from Harper's Bazaar, showing an 1868 idea of
how the hemline should descend towards the ankle
as a girl got older
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Middle Class Life

• Modern businesses
• middle class jobs in accounting, engineering,
  managing and sales.
• Professional Associations
• established education and certification
  requirements for certain jobs
• Almost all married women did not work
• ran the household with help of servants.
• Young, single women
• found jobs as secretaries, salesclerks, and
  operators
• Innovations made home-life better
• hot and cold running water, sewage systems,
  ready-made clothes

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The life of the poor

• large number of willing workers meant wages were
  low
• 43,000 tenements housed 1.6 million poor in New
  York
• Housed up to 12 families per floor
• Raw sewage ran in the streets. No garbage
  service
• Near dirty, smelly factories
• Demand for housing made rent increase.

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Reform Movements

• Settlement Houses
• offered education, skills training, cultural
  events in poor neighborhoods
• Settlement House movement Led by Jane Addams
  (Hull House) middle class women helped the poor
• Social Gospel movement
• Protestant ministers called for Christian
  principles to be applied to social problems
• Church had a moral duty to confront social
  problems and improve conditions for workers