1. Life in the Big City Industrialization, Urbanization, and Immigration

2. A few revealing stats »Life expectancy »1900: »46.3 yrs for men »48.3 yrs for women »Family size »5.7 kids for laborers »5.2 children for skilled workers »Top 12% of nation controlled 86% of wealth in 1900; lowest 44% controlled 1.5%

3. Urbanization »Boston, NYC, Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis, Baltimore, etc. »From 1860 to 1910, city population grew sevenfold »By 1920, the majority of Americans lived in urban areas »Urban growth came from southern and eastern European immigrants; Southern African Americans who moved north »New innovations in transportation: cable cars, subways, trolley cars, Brooklyn Bridge, etc.

4. Immigration »“Push” and “pull” factors »1860-1890: Irish and Germans »After 1890: “New immigrants:” Italians, Poles, Greeks, Russians, Slovaks, Croats; Catholics and Jews; many were very poor and illiterate »1892: Ellis Island constructed »http://www.ellisisland.org/http://www.ellisisland.org/ »1910: Angel Island (California): Asian immigrants »Immigrants settle in ethnic neighborhoods, ghettos

5. Immigration (cont.) »15% of Americans in 1900 were immigrants »4 out of 5 New Yorkers were born abroad or were children of immigrants »Assimilate or stay true to your roots? »Discrimination by native-born Americans »Nativism: anti-Catholic organizations, immigration restriction groups like the Protective Association, Immigration Restriction League, etc. »1880s/90s: more restrictive immigration laws limiting Chinese, “undesirables,” etc.

6. Working class family life »Cooperative family effort: women take in laundry, boarders »Children went to work at age 10 and turned over earnings to parents »Most children stopped education after elementary school; Catholic immigrants founded their own schools separate from Protestant-controlled public schools

7. Urban Problem 1: Housing »Shortage of quality, affordable housing »Tenements »4-5 story buildings on 25x100 foot lots (500-800 people?) »4,000 people per block/700 per acre »Bordered industrial districts: noise, odor, smoke, coal dust »1879 NYC law: each bedroom must have a window; dumbbell tenements with an air shaft in the middle »http://www.tenement.org/http://www.tenement.org/ »Lively ethnic neighborhoods

8. Tenements

9. Urban Problem 2: Water »Skyrocketing population; not enough clean drinking water »Poor (or no) indoor plumbing »Disease (cholera, smallpox, diphtheria, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, whooping cough, measles, scarlet fever) »20% infant mortality rate in Chicago in 1900 »Filtration and chlorination introduced in late 19th and early 20th century

10. Urban Problem 3: Sanitation »Sewage flowed through open gutters, horse manure piled up on the streets, factories spewed foul smoke into the air; outhouses »In Chicago, only 25% had access to a bathroom with running water »No dependable trash collection »Early 1900s: many cities developed sewer lines and created sanitation departments

11. Urban Problem 4: Political corruption »Political machines fill the power vacuum »Precinct captains »Ward bosses »City boss »Tammany Hall, NYC: Boss Tweed (in the 1860s, 65% of public building funds went directly in his pocket) »New immigrants=new voters! »Bosses provide food, favors, and JOBS to immigrants »Graft and corruption

12. Urban Problem 5: Crime »Pickpockets and thieves, murder »Ethnic street gangs »NYC: first police department, 1853 »Widespread corruption and cooperation between criminals and police »Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt cleans NYC up: 1895-97

13. Urban Problem 6: Fire »Caused by limited water supply, wooden houses, use of candles »Absence of organized municipal fire departments »The Great Chicago Fire (1871) »The San Francisco Earthquake (1906)

14. Final question »Whose responsibility is it to deal with these problems?