Ch. 25 Notes America Moves to the City

The Growth of Cities 1.During the Gilded Age, U.S. cities grew at a rapid pace, mainly for two reasons: 1.As industry surpassed agriculture as the main economic activity of the nation many people living in rural areas left their farms for the industrial jobs in the city. 2.Large numbers of immigrants continued to arrive in the U.S. and the majority of these immigrants settled in cities because of the industrial jobs available.

Conditions in the Cities 1.Hundreds of people were packed into places intended for only a few families – immigrants especially lived in tenements – areas of overcrowding, filth and crime. 2.Trees and grass disappeared and soot from factories filled the air. 3.City governments could do little because of the rapid pace of growth so it was often left to the political machines to provide for the immigrants. 4.With the development of trollies, trains and subways, the more affluent residents of the cities moved out to the suburbs, leaving the lower classes to inhabit the inner cities. 5.With the development of the skyscraper, more and more people could be packed into smaller areas of land. 6.After the Chicago fire of 1871, cities began requiring brick and steel for city construction instead of wood to prevent another disaster of that magnitude from reoccurring.

Tenements

Push/Push Factors of U.S. Immigration 1.These immigrants were drawn to the U.S. by the promise of jobs, land, and political freedoms. 2.They were often-times fleeing their homelands because of famine, racial/religious/political persecution and lack of economic opportunity.

Push/Pull Factors of Immigration

Old Immigrants vs. New Immigrants 1.The Old Immigrants arrived in the U.S. before the 1880’s and came mainly from northern and western Europe – they faced nativist feelings from U.S. citizens at first but by the 1880’s had generally been accepted into U.S. society. 2.The New Immigrants arrived after the 1880’s and came from southern and eastern Europe – these immigrants created new nativist attitudes in the U.S. because they couldn’t speak English, settled in ethnic neighborhoods and didn’t try to assimilate into U.S. culture, practiced different religions and were sometimes political radicals (socialists, communist and anarchists). 3.These new immigrants will lead to more restrictions being put on immigration into the U.S. – even labor unions favored these restrictions because the new immigrants couldn’t speak English so they were difficult to bring into the unions, they would work for lower wages and were often used as strikebreakers (scabs).

Nativism

Immigration Restriction

The Social Gospel 1.As problems with the cities grew, Protestant pastors like Walter Rauschenbusch and Washington Gladden began to put forth the theory of the Social Gospel. 2.This theory (also known as the Christian Gospel) required that churches and individual Christians apply their Christian principles to social problems such as poverty.

Rauschenbusch and Gladden

Jane Addams and the Hull House 1.Jane Addams was a middle class, college educated woman who became a champion for the urban masses, especially immigrant women. 2.She opened the Hull House, which was a settlement house. 3.Its goal was to provide services such as child care, job training, English instruction and cultural activities for immigrant women. 4.She (along with other settlement house leaders) actively lobbied the government for social reform – to little avail at that time. 5.These services to immigrant women were desperately needed because jobs available to women during that time (outside of the factory) were typically reserved for native born women.

Jane Addams and the Hull House

The U.S. Education System 1.More and more Americans will support free public schools during this time, realizing that a free government cannot function without educated citizens. 2.Normal schools will be created to train teachers and kindergartens will be introduced as well (along with compulsory school attendance!!!). 3.Higher education also improved, largely due to the Morrill Act of 1862, which provided for land grant universities and the philanthropy of wealthy industrialists. 4.American universities became more research-oriented during this time and began to favor the teaching of practical subjects and professional specialization instead of the religious and moral instruction of the past. 5.The more rural, fundamentally religions regions of the country resisted this, especially when it came to the teachings of Charles Darwin. 6.More women and African Americans will also begin attending college.

Booker T. Washington vs. W.E.B. Du Bois 1.The most prominent African American leader in the southeast was Booker T. Washington, the founder of the Tuskegee Institute. 2.Washington believed that African Americans should be taught useful trades so that they gain economic security and through this economic security would eventually gain social and political equality. 3.He didn’t challenge segregation – instead he asked white business leaders to just make sure African Americans actually had access to the separate facilities promised (called accommodationism). 4.Du Bois (from Massachusetts and a Harvard graduate) disagreed with Washington’s approach and believed that the most “talented tenth” of African Americans should lead the rest of the race to full social and political equality. 5.Du Bois will later go on to help form the NAACP – National Association for the Advancement of Colored PeopleB.

Washington and Du Bois

U.S. Social Changes 1.American newspapers became more popular and practiced yellow journalism – sensationalized headlines and stories – in an effort to sell more papers. 2.American novelists turned from romanticism and transcendentalism and to rugged social realism to reflect the materialism and conflict of the industrial age. 3.Sexual attitudes and practices were changing as more women worked outside of the home - families grew smaller as more people practiced birth control, there were more frank discussions of sexual topics and divorce rates grew. 4.Women also began advocating for suffrage again (and were going to begin getting it out west), led once again by Elizabeth Caddy Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and now Carrie Chapman Catt, who changed the argument, saying that women needed to vote to extend their roles as mothers and homemakers. 5.Prohibition – the banning of alcohol – becomes more socially acceptable (among the middle classes). 6.A shared common and standardized popular culture begins to develop, largely around sporting events.