Chapter 17

To the Cities-massive
increase in population
 Rural to Urban
 Great Migration of African
Americans
 Immigrants- “Push” & “Pull”

Ethnic Enclaves- Urban
neighborhoods dominated
by one particular immigrant
group
 Germantown-Little ItalyChinatown
 Comfortable & Secure


Troubled City
 Overcrowding, turmoil, filth and despair
 Tenements-slums
 Against the odds

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High rent (25%-40% of skilled salary)
High Crime Rate (young unemployed men)
Prostitution
Anonymity (Puritans would not have
approved)
Political Machine “Boss Rule”
 Large cities/ Large immigrant
population
 Candidates strategy to winning
 Need large turn outs to win
 Reward supporters with jobs & contracts
(Police & inspectors)
 Increase immigrant- denounce Nativist and
anti-immigration laws
 Handouts-Giveaways
 Intimidation
 Seen as corrupt by wealthy and Nativist
 Seen as honest graft by immigrants
Trash piled up on Varick Street in 1893
New York City, before sanitation reform.
Harper's Weekly

Nativist Impulse
 Suspicion and hatred for immigrants

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
Over populated cities/Labor Strikes
Irish and German Catholics
“New” Immigrant
 Successful
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Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882
Anti- Immigration Organizations formed
Literacy tests for admittance
Federal govt. created depots for processing
immigrants
 Ellis Island- 1892
 Angel Island- 1910

Urban Reform-Solutions NY Style
 Untrained/unpaid police with Police
Departments
 Volunteer fire fighters with Fire
Departments
 Sanitation Crews
 Public Spaces

Central Park
 Public School

Compulsory Laws
 6.9 million to 17.8 million 1870 to 1910


Parochial Schools
Created Productive and Informed Citizen
 Americanizing the new immigrants
5-Cent Lodgings
Men’s Lodgings
Women’s Lodgings
“Bandits’ Roost”
Mullen’s Alley ”Gang”

New View of Poverty
 Horatio Algers – Jacob
Riis View

Living Among the Poor
 Settlement House
 Middle Class & Educated
Women
 Provide Services not
available in urban poor
neighborhoods
 Jane Addams- Hull House

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Advocated for poor
Educated
Trained
Meeting Place

New Urban Landscape
 Mass Transit
 Urban centers-Skyscrapers
 Suburbs-Escape filth of city and
live among like minded
 Rise of the middle class
 Smaller
 Wealthier
 More purchasing power

New Roles for Women
 Higher Education- 13% to 20% of
college grad in 1900
 Allowed Freedom from norms
 Exchange Ideas with other women
 Charity and Social Reform Clubs
Increase
 Women’s Christian Temperance Union
 National American Woman Suffrage
Association
 Achieved Suffrage in Colorado and
Idaho
 19th Amendment in 1920
Mass Transit

Leisure & Popular Culture
 Demand of eight hour work
day results
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Baseball
College Football
Vaudevilles
Opera Houses
Lifestyles of the Rich and
Famous
 “Conspicuous Consumption”
 Gilded Age at it’s best and worst
 Mansions
 Grand Balls
Andrew Carnegie 5th Ave Mansion

Out of Touch Politics
 Electorate evenly divided
 Laissez-faire/change was socialistic
and harmful to $ & democracy
 High Tariffs
 Currency Reform
 Sherman Silver Act 1890 (replaced in ‘93)
 Civil Service Reform
 Pendleton Act of 1883
 Civil service exam/not connections

The People’s Party
 Granger Movement-concern farmer’s
plight/ railroads cause of plight
 Munn v. Illinois (1877) &Wabash v. Illinois
(1886) established the principle of
regulation of interstate transportation
 Farmers’ Alliances-successors of
Granger & concern of falling and rising
costs due to bankers
 CO-OP’s
 People’s Party /Populist (1892)
 Platform mostly for farmers but also for
industrial workers
“The popular mind is agitated with
problems that may disturb social order,
and among them all none is more
threatening than… the concentration of
capital into vast
combinations….Congress alone can deal
with them and if we are unwilling or
unable there will soon be a trust for
every product and a master to fix the
price for every necessity of life.”
Senator John Sherman of Ohio


Homestead Strikeunsuccessful
Chicago’s World’s Fair
Closed
 Opened Panic of 1893 to
showcase America
 Closed with Homeless
living in complex-Fire

Pullman Strikeunsuccessful

Panic of 1893
 Worst up to that time…
 20 % unemployed
 Coxey’s Army- A protest
march from Ohio to
Washington, D.C., in 1894
organized by Jacob Coxey
to publicize demands for
the federal government to
alleviate the suffering
brought on by the Panic of
1893.

Election of 1896
 William J. Bryan runs for
President on antiexpansion/free silver
campaign/loses to McKinley
½ million from
Rock, A.G., and
J.P. Morgan