American Stories
THIRD EDITION
By: Brands •
Chapter
19
Toward an Urban
Society
1877‒1900
Toward an Urban Society, 1877‒1900
19.1
The Lure of the City
Why did cities in the United States grow
between 1880 and 1900?
19.2
Social and Cultural Change, 1877‒1900
How did growth of American cities affect
social, cultural, and political life?
Toward an Urban Society, 1877‒1900
19.3
The Spread of Jim Crow
Why did Jim Crow laws spread across the
South after the end of Reconstruction?
19.4
The Stirrings of Reform
How did life in the growing cities lead to
ideas of reform?
Video Series:
Key Topics in U.S. History
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4.
An Urban Society
The New American City
Boss Tweed
Plessy v. Ferguson
Home
The Overcrowded City
• Cities grew
• People lured by glitter and excitement,
friends and relatives already there, and
jobs and higher wages
• Size increased sevenfold, compared to rural
growth, which doubled
• Became center of American economic,
social, and cultural life
Home
Home
The Lure of the City
• Skyscrapers and Suburbs
• Tenements and the Problems of
Overcrowding
• Strangers in a New Land
• Immigrants and the City
• Urban Political Machines
Home
The Lure of the City
• City - symbol of the new America
between 1870–1900
• Similar to the symbol of the factory
• Explosive urban growth
• Sources included immigration, movement
from countryside
• Six cities over 500,000 by 1900
• One third of American population by 1900
The Lure of the City
Skyscrapers and Suburbs
• Skyscrapers
• Replaced small buildings – twelve or fewer
stories
• Design changes
• Streetcars
• Allowed growth of suburbs
• More fragmented and stratified city
The Lure of the City
The Lure of the City
Tenements and the Problems of
Overcrowding
• Tenements housed working class
• James Ware and dumbbell design
• City problems
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Overcrowding
Inadequate sanitation
Poor ventilation
Polluted water
Crime
• Street gangs
The Lure of the City
What Characterized U.S. Population
Patterns in 1900?
• What were the population densities of
various U.S. regions?
• Where had members of major
immigrant communities settled by
1900?
• In what parts of the United States were
African Americans concentrated at this
point?
The Lure of the City
The Lure of the City
Strangers in a New Land
• Immigrant rates grew
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From Europe
New immigrants
Demographics
Port of entry
Increasing percentages
• Resurgence of anti-Catholicism and
anti-Semitism
The Lure of the City
The Lure of the City
Figure 19.1 Immigration to the United
States, 1870–1900
The Lure of the City
Immigrants and the City
• Immigrant families
• Family structure similar to native-born
• Growing families
• Immigrant associations
• Preserved old-country language and
customs
• Aided the process of adjustment
The Lure of the City
Urban Political Machines
• Urban political party machines
• Provided services for cities
• Headed by “bosses”
• Model: William Tweed, New York City
• Role of political bosses
• Why bosses stayed in power
• Role of bosses can be overemphasized
• Many people and institutions involved in
governing cities
The Lure of the City
The Lure of the City
Discussion Question
• Why did cities in the United States grow
between 1880 and 1900?
The Lure of the City
Social and Cultural Change,
1877‒1900
Manners and Mores
Leisure and Entertainment
Changes in Family Life
Changing Views: A Growing
Assertiveness Among Women
• Educating the Masses
• Higher Education
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Home
Social and Cultural Change,
1877‒1900
• Industry and cities brought change
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Cultural changes
Population growth
Rural population still higher than urban
Changing eating habits
Medical science
Social and Cultural Change,
1877‒1900
Manners and Mores
• Victorian morality
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Dictated dress, manners, sexual behavior
Children to be seen and not heard
Uniformity in middle-class clothing
Strong patriotic and religious values
• New moral and political issues
• Mugwumps
• Women’s Christian Temperance Union
(WCTU)
Social and Cultural Change,
1877‒1900
Leisure and Entertainment
• Domestic leisure
• Gathered in the “second parlor”
• Games popular
• Music – ballads, ragtime, classical
• Entertainment outside home
• Fairs, horse races, balloon ascensions,
bicycle tournaments
• Organized spectator sports
• Street lights and streetcars
Social and Cultural Change,
1877‒1900
Changes in Family Life
• Working-class families
• Work life changed
• On farm, worked together
• In city, worked separately for long hours
• Lived in complex units
• Relatives and boarders taken in to help with
rent
• Retained strong family ties
• Fostered by need to survive in industrial
Social and Cultural Change,
economy
1877‒1900
Changes in Family Life (continued)
• Middle-class families
• Women and children grew isolated
• Suburban commute took fathers from
middle-class homes
• Formal schooling lengthened
• Domesticity encouraged
• White middle-class birth rates declined
Social and Cultural Change,
1877‒1900
Changing Views: A Growing
Assertiveness Among Women
• “New women”
• Seen as corruption of ideal vision
• Changes in legal codes
• Demand for changes
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Fight for vote and equal payment
Wanted self-fulfillment
Supported by psychology and medicine
National American Woman Suffrage
Association
Social and Cultural Change,
1877‒1900
Educating the Masses
• Trend toward universal education
• Grew from changing role of children
• Purpose of education
• To train people for life and work in
industrializing society
• Variations in schooling
• Boys and girls - differences
• North and South - differences
Social and Cultural Change,
1877‒1900
Educating the Masses (continued)
• Segregation in education
• 1883 - Civil Rights Cases
• 1896 - Plessy v. Ferguson
• 1899 – Cumming v. County Board of
Education
Social and Cultural Change,
1877‒1900
Higher Education
• Colleges and universities flourished
• Greater emphasis on professions and
research
• More women achieved college education
• African Americans usually confined to allblack institutions
• Tuskegee Institute in Alabama
Social and Cultural Change,
1877‒1900
Higher Education (continued)
• Booker T. Washington
• Atlanta Compromise
• W.E.B. DuBois
• Studied sociology
• Disagreed with Atlanta Compromise
• Demanded quality, integrated education
• Trend toward careers in professions
• Medicine, dentistry, law
Social and Cultural Change,
1877‒1900
Social and Cultural Change,
1877‒1900
Social and Cultural Change,
1877‒1900
Discussion Question
• How did the growth of American cities
affect social, cultural, and political life?
Social and Cultural Change,
1877‒1900
The Spread of Jim Crow
• Segregation and disfranchisement grew
• Voting, education, housing, jobs
• North and federal government did little to
stem the tide
• Jim Crow laws - all aspects of the South
• Violence also spread
• Lynching increased
• Convict lease system
• Racism also in North
• Blacks called it James Crow
Home
Table 19.1 Supreme Court Decisions
Affecting Black Civil Rights, 1875–1900
The Spread of Jim Crow
The Spread of Jim Crow
Discussion Question
• Why did Jim Crow laws spread across
the South after the end of
Reconstruction?
The Spread of Jim Crow
The Stirrings of Reform
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Progress and Poverty
New Currents in Social Thought
The Settlement Houses
A Crisis in Social Welfare
Home
The Stirrings of Reform
• Social Darwinism
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Argued against usefulness of reform
Applied natural selection to society
Influential followers
Came under increasing attack
The Stirrings of Reform
Progress and Poverty
• Henry George’s Progress and Poverty
• Saw modern society as flawed
• Proposed solution: Tax the land, as it is
source of wealth
• Analysis had more impact than solution
• Raised questions for next generation
The Stirrings of Reform
New Currents in Social Thought
• Clarence Darrow
• Rejected Social Darwinism
• Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward
• Socialist utopia
• Social Gospel
• Challenged traditional doctrines that poor
to blame for own poverty
• Focused on improving living conditions as
well as saving souls
The Stirrings of Reform
The Stirrings of Reform
The Settlement Houses
• Settlement houses
• Social workers provided community services
in slum areas
• Famous houses
• Characteristics
• Many workers women
• Classical and practical education for the poor
• Social services
• Limits - resentment
• Black settlement houses
The Stirrings of Reform
The Stirrings of Reform
A Crisis in Social Welfare
• Depression of 1893 revealed
insufficiency of private charity
• New professionalism in social work
• New efforts to understand poverty’s sources
• Increasing calls for government
intervention
The Stirrings of Reform
Discussion Question
• How did life in the growing cities lead to
ideas of reform?
The Stirrings of Reform
Conclusion: The Pluralistic Society
• Immigration and urban growth reshaped
American politics and culture
• By 1920, most Americans lived in cities
• Culturally pluralistic society emerging
• Society experienced a crisis between
1870 and 1900
• Reformers turned to state and federal
government for remedies to social ills