1. Urbanization
AIM: How did the rapid urbanization of the Gilded Age affect the lives of Americans?

2. I. Urbanization during the Gilded Age
Urbanization is the growth of an urban area (city) as a result of immigration and migration from rural areas.
Typically due to industrialization.

3. Positive Impact
Efficiency – research and recycling, easy to supply – Frederick Taylor
Convenience – access to education, social services, health care, etc.
Social integration – assimilation of cultures
Industry – high-tech factories; stock

4. New Technology
Elisha Otis creates elevator brakes, making elevators prevalent
Modern typewriter – Scholes
Telephone – Alexander Grahm Bell
Car and motor improvements

6. Skyscrapers and Buildings
Term first used in 1880’s – buildings stories and over
Combined the newest innovations
Boasted steel structure, central heating, electric pumps, lighting, telephone

7. Cultural Benefits New middle class sparked rise of consumer culture
Printing cheaper,
newspaper prices
slashed, paper back
books, etc.

8. Department stores – consumer culture spread by mass media
Saloon culture – combined music, comedy, culture, specialty acts

9. Cultural Benefits Bicycle riding, camping, public parks
Frederick Law Olmsted – designed many parks in Boston, NYC (Central Park)
Cheap entrance to museums, amusement parks as more time made available
Roller coasters, dancing, music halls all popular forms of entertainment

13. Negative Impact Development of slums Unemployment Crime
Poor living conditions
Pollution
Poor working conditions

14. Slums and Tenements
Crowded urban areas with substandard housing and poor living conditions
Housing can be taken away at any time
Scarcity of utilities
Overcrowding
Low rise houses were divided into family apartments
Often too small, lacking ventilation, etc.

15. "It is generally a brick building from four to six stories high on the street, frequently with a store on the first floor which, when used for the sale of liquor, has a side opening for the benefit of the inmates and to evade the Sunday law; four families occupy each floor, and a set of rooms consists of one or two dark closets, used as bedrooms, with a living room twelve feet by ten. The staircase is too often a dark well in the centre of the house, and no direct through ventilation is possible, each family being separated from the other by partitions. Frequently the rear of the lot is occupied by another building of three stories high with two families on a floor.“
- Jacob Riis

17. Pollution and Health Increase of factories and automobiles
Air pollution leads to respiratory issues
Diseases spread fast in tenements (scarlet fever, influenza
Contaminated water
Epidemics unavoidable and inevitable

18. Working Conditions Hazardous and persistent
Fires likely occurences in textile industry: Triangle Shirtwaist Incident of 1911
Life threatening injuries from machines
Long hours, low pay
No worker benefits (compensation)
Child labor prevalent (lower wages, easily managed)

20. Puritan Work Ethic Sociologist Max Weber coined the term.
Explains American’s belief in hard work.

21. Social Darwinism
Theory that the strongest should survive and flourish, and the weak and poor allowed to die – Herbert Spencer
Justified exploitative forms of capitalism
Horatio Alger Myth: “Rags to Riches” via hard work, labor, good character

22. Political Corruption
Federal Corruption 1. Whiskey Ring Affair. 2. Credit Mobilier Scandal
Local Corruption 1. Political Machines 2. Able to win votes by offering services: giving out jobs, homes, government contracts

23. Political Machines

24. Tammany Hall Democratic party- William March Tweed
Control NY city politics
Combatting Political Corruption!!!!!
Pendelton Act – establishes Civil Service

25. II. Social Reformers: Opposition to the “Evils” of Industrialism
A. Henry George, Progress and Poverty, 1879
B. Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward, 1888

26. C. Jane Adams, Settlement Houses 1892 “Hull House”

27. D. Walter Rauschenbusch on the Social Gospel