Immigration, Urbanization, and Everyday Life
1860-1900

 1.) How did immigrants help shape the cities?
 2.) What were political bosses, and why did they gain power in post-Civil War cities?
 3.) Why did tensions develop between civic reformers and the urban poor?
 4.) How did new consumer products and greater leisure time reinforce awareness of class and ethnic differences?

 5.) What was “ Victorian morality ” , and why was it under attack by the late 19th century?
 6.) How did economic and educational transformations affect the social roles of women?

 Introduction
 In the post-Civil War years, the U.S. experienced rapid urbanization
 By 1900, 40% of all Americans lived in cities
 NY, Chicago, and Philly each had more than 1 million inhabitants
 Cities attracted thousands from the surrounding rural districts and most of the 11 million immigrants who arrived between 1870 and 1900
 Offered work and other opportunities

 The population growth:
 swamped municipal services
 caused terrible housing and sanitary conditions
 aggravated class differences and conflicts
 The physical deterioration, ethnic diversity, and social instability alarmed native-born reforms who tried to clean up cities and quickly “ American ” immigrants

 In the post-Civil War years, thousands of young people, especially women, moved from farms to cities to find employment
 Between 1860 and 1890 about 10 million
Northern European immigrants settled in East
Coast and Midwestern cities
 Germany
 English
 Irish

 In the late 19th century, “ new immigrants ” from southern and eastern Europe arrived
 Italians
 Slavs
 Greeks
 Jews
 Armenians (from the Middle East)
 By 1890, the foreign-born and their children accounted for 4/5 ’ s of the population of Great New York

 Most who disembarked on the East Coast came through the immigration reception centers at
Castle Garden (1855-
1890) or Ellis Island (1892 on)
 Ellis Island photo albums

 After 1910, Angel Island in SF served as the main West
Coast reception center
 Angel Island photo gallery

 German and Scandinavian newcomers tended to migrate to Midwestern cities and to farms on the prairie beyond
 Italians and Irish took the first jobs they found in eastern cities

Adjusting to an Urban Society
 To ease their adjustment, immigrants clustered together in ethnic neighborhoods
 They could speak their native language
 Buy their traditional foods
 Celebrate traditional holidays

Adjusting to an Urban Society
 The various immigrant groups improved their social and economic status at different rates
 Those who came with a skilled trade or spoke some
English generally did well
 The Irish came in such great numbers, that they were able to dominate the Democratic Party and
Catholic Church leadership in NY and Boston
 They accounted for 16-17% of the population in each city

Adjusting to an Urban Society
 Nationality groups that had high rates of return to their homelands experienced slower upward mobility and assimilation
 Italians
 Chinese
 By the end of the 19th century, resentment of the newcomers (from whatever country) was growing

 Neighborhoods deteriorated into slums
 landlords packed more and more people into their buildings
 The poorer the residents, the greater the crowding and the faster the area declined

 Ethnic slum neighborhoods became ghettos when discrimination and law kept members of the minority group from obtaining housing elsewhere
 Black ghettos in Chicago and Philadelphia
 Mexican in Los Angeles
 Chinese in San Francisco

 Slums and ghettos were usually adjacent to industrial cities
 were filled with soot, coal dust, noise, and foul oders
 Pollution and crowding were especially hard on the young
 Had very high infant mortality rates

 In contrast to slums, grand millionaires ’ mansions lined Fifth
Avenue in New York,
Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, and fashionable boulevards in other cities

 The wealthy and the middle class also moved to newer, more desirable suburbs on the edges of the old, compact cities
 American cities became increasingly segregated along class as well as ethnic and racial lines

 Manners and Morals
 The 19th century Victorian worldviews preached to make personal and national progress an individual must:
 work hard
 exercise self-discipline
 display good manners
 cultivate an appreciation of literature and the arts

 To the highly moralistic Victorians, status was conferred by possessing abundant amounts of the right material goods
 The Victorian code served to heighten the visible gap between classes

 Victorian morality assigned a special place to women
 Used the domestic sphere to provide the genteel, sensitive, and spiritual influences that moved society toward higher civilization
 They decorated their homes as richly and artistically as their means permitted
 Fostered the family ’ s sense of cultural appreciation

 At no time, however, were all middle-class women satisfied with devoting their whole life to this cult of domesticity

 Innovative entrepreneurs developed urban department stores that appealed particularly to the Victorian outlook of the upper and middle echelons
 Rowland H. Macy
 John Wanamaker
 Marshall Field

 These giant emporiums advertised:
 high-quality goods at low cost
 encouraged buyers to believe that owning the right material possessions contributed to civilized living
 The department stores were designed to look like palaces:
 Marble staircases
 Sparkling chandeliers
 Thick carpet

 For the middle-and upper-classes shopping “ became an adventure, a form of entertainment, and a way to affirm their place in society.
”

The Transformation of Higher Education
 Higher education was still restricted to the upper and upper-middle class
 By 1900, only 4% of youths between 18-21 were enrolled in colleges and universities
 These institutions were seen as the training schools for the future business and professional elites
 Wealthy capitalists made large donations to already existing universities or started new ones
 John D. Rockefeller and Leland Stanford

 With private contributions and state support, more than 150 additional colleges and universities were founded between 1880 and 1900

 Higher education for upper-and upper-middleclass women as grew impressively
 Some eastern elite universities established affiliated schools for women
 Columbia=Barnard (1889)
 Harvard=Radcliffe (1894)
 More all-female colleges were founded
 Wellesley
 Smith

 By 1900, women made up 1/3 of the nation ’ s college students
 In this period, the research university was developed and major reforms were instituted in medical and other professional training

 Political Bosses and Machine Politics
 Urban political machines emerged to govern the unwieldy cities and their many competing interests
 Headed by powerful political bosses
 The machines gave tax breaks and awarded contracts to favored businessmen
 In return received a payoff
 Machines also gathered the votes of poor immigrants
 Provided them with relief, legal help, and city jobs

 Most famous is Tammany
Hall
 Led by William Tweed
 Between 1869 and 1871,
Tweed gave $50,000 to the city ’ s poor and built new school, hospitals,and other facilities
 Tammany Hall cost taxpayers about $70 million through graft and padded contracts

 Tweed was finally toppled from power with the help of Thomas Nast ’ s political cartoons in
Harper ’ s Weekly

 By the late 19th century, middle-and upperclass good-govt. reformers had begun their drives against the bosses
 The bosses and machines attempted to hold on to power by providing more public services and improved urban facilities
 Better sewer systems
 More parks

 Middle-class reformers also set out to relieve poverty
 They often tended to blame:
 the problem on character flaws of the poor
 “ self-destructive ” cultural practices of the immigrants
 Reformers concentrated on moral uplift and
Americanization campaigns among the needy

 New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor
 AICP
 Robert M. Hartley
 New York Children ’ s Aid Society
 Charles Loring Brace
 Founded dormitories, reading rooms, and workshops for indigent boys
 Sent thousands of them to live with and work for families in the Midwest

 Young Men ’ s and Young Women ’ s Christian
Associations offered rural young people arriving in the cities temporary housing, recreation, and moral strictures against alcohol and other vices

 By the 1880 ’ s, the Salvation Army and Charity
Organization Society (COS) joined the fight against poverty
 COS preached a tough-minded approach to charity
 Insisted that the needy must meet the standards of responsibility and morality set by the COS ’ s “ friendly visitors ” to receive aid
 Critics charged that the COS was more interested in “ controlling the poor than in alleviating their suffering ”

 Middle-and upper-class reformers attacked what they considered urban vice
 Crusaders demanded that city officials close down gambling dens, saloons, and brothels and censor obscene publications
 Anthony Comstock and Charles Parkhurst

The Moral-Purity Campaign
 In 1894, the nonpartisan Committee of Seventy elected a NYC mayor committed to moral purification
 But within 3 years the effort failed
 The more tolerant political machine was back in power

 The Social Gospel movement developed in the 1870’s and 1880’s among a small group of
Protestant clergymen
 Founded by Washington
Gladden
 Congregational minister

 The movement preached that urban poverty was caused in part by actions of the rich and well-born
 “ that true Christianity commits men and women to fight social injustice head on, wherever it exists ”

 Walter Rauschenbusch
 Baptist pastor in NY’s
“ Hell ’ s Kitchen ” slums
 Made the clearest statement on the movement ’ s philosophy
(Christian unity)
 Led to the founding of the Federal Council of
Churches

 Settlement-House founders blamed poverty not on the poor but on social and environmental causes
 Leaders believed that middle-class relief workers must reside among the immigrant masses and learn what services they needed
 Firsthand experience

 Jane Addams
 Hull House in Chicago
 Day-care nursery
 Legal aid
 Health aid
 Help find jobs
 Offered classes in English and other subjects for immigrants

 Settlement-house workers also published studies of the terrible housing and corrective laws
 By 1895, more than 50 settlement houses in various cities were training a young generation of students
 Many would become state and local govt. officials
 Applying the lessons they had learned
 Florence Kelly became a factory inspector for IL in 1893

Working-Class Leisure in the
Immigrant City
 Streets and Saloons
 The neighborhood streets served as the area of social life and free entertainment for shop girls, laborers, and poor immigrant families
 For workingmen the saloons offered male companionship, reinforced group identity, and were centers for immigrant politics

 Baseball
 Americans were the first to turn what had been a children ’ s game into the professional sport of baseball
 By 1890 ’ s, baseball had become a big business
 It appealed to members of all social groups, particularly workers
 Horse racing
 often a social event for the rich
 Boxing
 Spectators from all social levels

 Vaudeville shows, amusement parks and dance halls were popular with working-class men and women
 Coney Island in Brooklyn was most famous amusement park of the time
 Coney Island video--History Channel
 Coney Island video--History Channel--3 minutes

 The middle class preferred hymns or songs that carried a moral lesson
 The masses became fans of ragtime
 Originated with black musicians in the saloons and brothels of the South and
Midwest
 In the 1890 ’ s, honky-tonk players introduced its syncopated rhythms to a wide national audience

 The Genteel Tradition and Its Critics
 In the 1870 ’ s and 1880 ’ s a group of upperclass writers and magazine editors attempted to set standards for fine writing and art
 Charles Eliot Norton
 E.L. Godkin
 They insisted that literature must avoid sexual allusions, vulgar slang, disrespect for
Christianity, and depressing endings

 High-toned journals like The Century and the North
American Review upheld this genteel standard by banishing from their pages authors who violated these rules

 Many emerging writers refused to fit into the mold
 Sara Orne Jewett
 regionalist
 William Dean Howells
 realist
 Stephen Crane
 Naturalist
 Mark Twain
 Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn (1884)
 Theodore Dreiser
 Sister Carrie (1900)

 Huck Finn and Sister Carrie were both condemned by proponents of Victorian ideals

 Socialist scientists criticized the business elite and challenged middle-class notions about the link between moral worth and economic standing
 Thorstein Veblen
 W.E.B. DuBois

The Genteel Tradition and Its
Critics
 The depression and labor unrest of the 1890 ’ s further undermined the smug Victorian outlook and its genteel culture

 Some architects and artists began questioning Victorian ideals of beauty
 Modernists architects refused to copy European design
 William Holabird
 John Wellborn Root
 Louis Sullivan
 Frank Lloyd Wright

Modernism in Architecture and
Painting
 They looked to their vision of the future for inspiration and argued that a building ’ s form should follow its function

 Painters often times rejected sentimentality in favor of tough realism
 Winslow Homer
 Thomas Eakins
 Mary Cassat was one of the first American artists to paint in the French Impressionist style

 Women ’ s Christian Temperance
Union
 Led by Frances Willard
 WCTU
 Founded in 1874
 Broadened the scope of women ’ s social responsibilities
 WCTU.org
 150,000 members by 1890

From Victorian Lady to New
Woman
 WCTU was the first American mass organization of women
 Crusade against liquor
 Experience as lobbyists, organizers, and lecturers

From Victorian Lady to New
Woman
 General Federation of Women ’ s Clubs
 Founded in 1892
 Middle-and upper-class women
 Social welfare projects
 Tenement reform
 The so-called new woman broke Victorian restraints about dress and exercise
 The most advanced advocated women ’ s economic independence from men through work outside the home

From Victorian Lady to New
Woman
 Charlotte Perkins Gilman
 The new-woman emphasis on economic and social independence and equality had little impact on the lives of working-class women

 In the 1870 ’ s middle-class reformers campaigned:
 To expand public schools
 Bring them under central control
 Make attendance mandatory

Public Education as an Arena of
Class Conflict (cont.)
 William Torrey Harris
 Public schools were instruments for indoctrinating the masses with middleclass values and outlook

Public Education as an Arena of Class
Conflict
 By 1900, as a result of the work of education advocates, 31 states passed laws requiring school attendance for all children from 8-14
 The illiteracy rate dropped
 More than 500,000 students were attending some
5,000 high schools

 Centralized urban public-school systems aroused opposition from various quarters
 Poor immigrant parents objected to laws that kept youngsters in school beyond the elementary level
 Needed the wages of their children to survive
 Catholics disliked the Protestant orientation of the public schools
 Organized their own parochial school system
 Upper-class parents preferred to send their kids to exclusive, private academies

 Between 1860 and 1900 class and ethnic conflicts appeared in almost every area of city life
 To distinguish themselves from the exploited working class immigrants, native-born elite and middle-class Americans embraced Victorian moral codes
 The upper and middle classes, with their genteel
Victorian morality and ideals, were dismayed by the raucous, vibrant culture of the working masses

 “ Respectable ” people periodically attempted to suppress “ indecent ” lowerclass enjoyments such as gambling; gathering in dance halls, saloons, and amusement parks, listening to ragtime, attending Sunday baseball games, and bare-knuckle prizefights

 However, Victorian standards of decency were weakening by the 1890’s as they came under attack from:
 younger middle-class writers, artists, social scientists
 “ new women ”
 the working masses
 the immigrants

 By 1900, the 2 cultural traditions were reaching an accommodation that blended elements of both:
 National pastimes became highly commercialized
 working-class amusements of the 19th century evolved into the mass culture of sports spectaculars, movies, and other entertainments of modern America