1. APUSH: Chapter 18 THE AGE OF THE CITY pp. 487 - 494 pp. 494 - 500

2. Snow in New York, 1902 – painting by Robert Henri Cozad → a scene of urban life

3. The Urbanization of America
Great migration from rural to urban is a central response to industrialization and the factory system Urbanization in America → alluring and jarring

4. The Lure of the City Urban pop increased seven fold 1850-1900
By 1920 majority of people lived in urban areas
Conveniences
Entertainments and culture
More and better paying jobs was key
New transportation made it easier to get there

5. Migrations Geographic mobility Young rural women
Southern blacks → escape rural poverty, debt, violence and oppression in the South
Establishment of African American communities in cities
Greatest urban growth came from new immigrants from abroad
New Immigrants after 1880 → Eastern and Southern European
Orthodox, Jewish, or Catholic
Illiterate
Used to City Life

6. The Ethnic City
Diversity of the immigrant populations → no single group or country dominated
People banded together w/their own people → immigrant ghettos → native newspapers, theaters, food, worship
Cultural cohesiveness
By 1890 the majority pop in some cities was foreign-born immigrants and children
New York → more Irish than Dublin → more Germans than Hamburg
Chicago → more Poles than Warsaw

7. Assimilation Ethnic ties v. desire for assimilation
Dream of becoming true “Americans” → break w/the old ways
Changing gender roles → traditional female subordination v. work and relationships outside the family
Americans encouraged immigrants to assimilate → English taught at school, req’d on the job, consumption of American goods

8. Nativism Fear and resentment of foreigners → nativism
Mafia, anarchists, socialists
Fear and resentment of foreigners → nativism
Disorder, corruption, work for low wages, scabs or strike breakers
American Protective Association → rabid xenophobia
Immigration Restriction League → screening of immigrants
Chinese Exclusion Act 1882
Support for immigration came from those who wanted cheap labor

10. The Urban Landscape
Great contrasts in the cities → wealth and poverty → attractions and problems
Rapid growth of cities led to → misgovernment, poverty, congestion, filth, epidemics, and fires
Building and planning could not match the pace of growth

11. The Creation of Public Space
Public buildings → libraries, art galleries, museums, theaters, concert halls → the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC
Wealthy patronage and philanthropy
Chicago’s “Great White City”
Impose order and symmetry →“City Beautiful Movement” → Daniel Burnham
Creation of whole new neighborhoods → Boston’s “Back Bay”
Cities had grown up haphazardly
In mid century → the creation of public spaces and public services
Great urban parks → antidote to congestion
Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux → design NYC’s Central Park

12. Housing the Well-to-Do
Fashionable districts:
NYC → 5th Avenue
Boston → Back Bay and Beacon Hill
Philly → Society Hill
San Fran → Nob Hill
New suburbs → linked to downtowns by trains and improved roads
Affluent surburbs → lawns, trees, manorial homes → opportunity to own land

13. Housing Workers and the Poor
Most people → stayed in city centers and rented
High density housing
“tenements” → urban slum dwellings → cheaply made, crowded, dirty

14. Tenements

16. Jacob Riis: How the Other Half Lives
New York reporter and photographer → shocked middle class w/his descriptions of tenement and slum life in his book How the Other Half Lives

19. Urban Transportation Lack of paved roads
Masses of people need to move around in the city
Mass transit → elevated trains, cable cars, electric trolleys, subways
1880’s completion of the Brooklyn Bridge → George Washington Roebling
The “Skyscraper” → powered elevators, steel beam construction

21. Strains of Urban Life
Congestion + absence of adequate public services =
crime
Fire
Disease
Indigence
pollution

22. Fire and disease
“Great Fires” in Chicago and Boston in 1871
Earthquake and fire in San Francisco in 1906
Development of professional fire departments
Rebuilding

23. Environmental Degradation
Early 20th century brings sewers and piped water
1912 the Public Health Service is created → first example of the fed govt taking responsibility for protection of public health
Improper disposal of human and industrial waste
Water pollution
Animals in the city
Air pollution → burning of soft coal

24. Urban Poverty Widespread and desperate urban poverty
Limited relief agencies → middle class saw helping the poor as encouraging laziness and irresponsibility
The “deserving poor”
The Salvation Army 1879 → combined religious revivalism and relief work
“street arabs” → orphans, runaways, delinquents
Urban Poverty

25. Salvation Army

26. Crime and Violence
Rising crime rates in the cities → development of larger and more professional police forces
District attorneys and public prosecutors
Police corruption and brutality
Racial and economic discrimination in enforcement of laws
National guard units

27. The Machine and the Boss
For many residents of the inner cities the political machine was main source of assistance
Urban bosses → function was to win votes for his organization
Boss Rule
Machines bribed voters with groceries, bags of coal, intervention w/legal authorities, patronage jobs in city govt or construction jobs

28. Graft and Corruption
The most famously corrupt city boss was William Tweed/Boss Tweed who ran the Tammany Hall machine in the 1860’s – 1870’s
Inside information for profit
Kickbacks for building contracts/projects
Sale of franchises and city contracts

29. Reasons for Boss Rule:
Power of immigrant voters
Machines provided needed services
Wealthy benefited from political connections and corruption
Weakness of city govt → political machines and boss rule served as an invisible government

30. Thomas Nast

31. The Rise of Mass Consumption
New merchandising techniques
Ready made clothes, canned food, refrigerated transportation
Chain Stores and Mail-Order Houses and catalogs
Department stores in big cities → Marshall Field in Chicago, Macy’s in NYC → vast variety under one roof → shopping as a glamorous activity → lower prices
Late 19th century → rise of a new urban, middle class culture
Patterns of Income and Consumption → rising incomes → rising consumer demand and consumption

32. Women as Consumers
Mass consumption affected women → shopping, dressing, cooking
New employment for women in stores
National Consumers League → mobilize the power of women as consumers

33. Leisure in the Consumer Society
More interest in leisure → more time available for leisure
Decline of working hours
Clear distinctions between work and leisure
Redefining Leisure → time amusing yourself was not a bad thing
Entertainment meant “going out” → amusement parks, dance halls, vaudeville, concerts, public parks
Movie palaces
sports → playing and spectating
Drinking → bars, pubs, saloons

34. “rounders” → derived from cricket → creation of baseball credited to Abner Doubleday
National League 1876
American League 1901
1st World Series 1903
Football → originated in colleges
Amos Alonzo Stagg → the Big Ten 1896 → eligibility
NCAA → National Collegiate Athletic Association 1910
Basketball → Dr. James Naismith 1910
Boxing
Horse Racing
Spectator Sports

35. The Growth of College Football

36. Gambling and Sports Sports was associated with betting
The “Black Sox Scandal” → the “throwing”/rigging of the 1919 World Series
Sports and betting → male domains

37. Music and Theater
Ethnic communities maintained their own theaters → The Yiddish theater built on the experiences of American Jews
Musical theater
George M. Cohan → “Yankee Doodle”, “Over There”
Irving Berlin → “God Bless America”
Vaudeville → most popular urban form of theater → musicians, comedians, magicians, jugglers, song and dance routines
Vaudeville was open to black performers

38. ← the Follies
Vaudeville → urban theater → variety shows

39. The Movies The most important form of mass entertainment
Peep shows and penny arcades → then projectors and big screens
Silent epics → D.W. Griffiths film The Birth of a Nation

40. Working-Class Leisure
Workers spent their time “hanging out” on the streets
The neighborhood saloon → gathering place for friends → ethnic orientation → political centers for machine politics

41. The 4th of July Mass Communication
One of the few full days of leisure for many workers
4th of July celebrations → highlights of the year in many working class, ethnic neighborhoods
Picnics, games, parades
Daily newspapers
Emergence of newspaper chains
William Randolph Hearst
Joseph Pulitzer
“yellow journalism”

42. High Culture in the Age of the City
“High Culture” → the ideas and activities of intellectuals and elites
Late 19th century → elites develop a cultural and intellectual life separate from popular amusements of the urban masses

43. The Literature of Urban America
Frank Norris → The Octopus → farmers versus RR’s
Upton Sinclair → The Jungle → abuses in the meatpacking industry
Kate Chopin → The Awakening → young woman abandons her family
American literature tried to re-create urban social reality → realism
Stephen Crane → The Red Badge of Courage, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
Theodore Dreiser → Sister Carrie, An American Tragedy

44. Social Realism

45. Art in the Age of the City
By the early 20th century Americans artists were turning away from the traditional academic style
Ashcan School of Art → naturalism and social realities
John Sloan → urban slums
George Bellows → prize fighting
Edward Hopper → the loneliness of the modern city
The Armory Show 1913 → the beginnings of “modernism” → rejected the past and embraced new subjects and forms
Art in the Age of the City

48. Edward Hopper → the loneliness and isolation of modern urban

49. The Impact of Darwinism
The most profound intellectual development of the late 19th century → widespread acceptance of the theory of evolution
Human evolution → natural selection
Challenged biblical creation and the tenets of traditional faith
Schism between new, cosmopolitan culture city and traditional rural culture

50. Pragmatism William James and later John Dewey
Society should be guided by the test of scientific inquiry
Ideas and institutions were only valid if they worked and stood the test of experience

51. Toward Universal Schooling
Late 19th century → rapid expansion and reform of American schools and universities
Spread of free public primary and secondary education
Morrill Land Grant Act → “land grant” institutions
Business tycoons donate to universities

52. Education for Women Expansion of educational opportunities for women
1880’s → creation of women’s colleges → Vassar, Wellesley, Smith, Bryn Mawr