America Moves to
the City, 1865 1900
AP U.S. History
Chapter 25
THE URBAN FRONTIER
• Population in 1900 - 80 million (16.2
million were immigrants). 105 million by
1920 (40% in cities)
• Cities growing up and out
• Skyscrapers
• Louis Sullivan – “form
follows function”
Chicago
1st skyscraper - 1885
Buffalo, NY
St. Louis
• Commuting increased - mass-transit
– “Street car cities” – 1890s – electric trolleys,
elevated railroads, and subways
– Brooklyn Bridge – John Roebling
• Segregate urban workers by income!!!
Residential Suburbs
• Factors that promoted suburban growth:
– Abundant land, low cost
– Inexpensive transportation
– Low cost construction methods – wood framed
houses
– Ethnic and racial prejudice
– American fondness for grass, privacy, and
detached individual houses
3 Groups Moving TO Cities
1. Farmers
2. African Americans
3. Immigrants - largest
Rural to Cities
• Industrial jobs
• Replaced by equipment
• entertainment, electricity, indoor plumbing,
and telephones
• Department Stores
• women - career opportunities
– 1890s – 1 million new workers
– 1900 – 15 million
• Southern Blacks to cities (Great Migration
biggest movement during WWI)
Immigration
• “Old Immigrants”
• “New Immigrants”
• 1860s – 1880s
• Northern and Western
Europe
• Language, level of
literacy, occupational
skills similar – easily
accepted
• Rural
• After 1890
• Southern and Eastern
Europe
• Poor, illiterate, no
democratic traditions,
Catholics, Jews – not
accepted
• Urban
1899 – 1910 ¾ were men.
Many returned home.
Most came through Ellis Island in
New York harbor from 1882-1954
Other Cities: Boston,
Philadelphia, Charleston,
Baltimore, Mobile, New
Orleans
Europeans made up ¾ of immigration
Push/Pull Factors
• Economic: Push – farmlands worn out, large-scale commercial
farming drove them off their land, and low wages and
unemployment due to machines. Also rising populations in
Europe – doubled to 400 million. This led to competition for jobs
in Europe. Pull – America seen as land of opportunity – fertile
lands for little or no cost and expanding economy offered
opportunities for jobs.
• Political: Push – European governments controlled by upper
class with common people having no say so in political matters.
Pull – America democratic with people having a strong voice in
government.
• Social: Push – Europe – rigid class distinctions, few educational
opportunities for poor, discrimination against religious
minorities. Jew pushed out of Russia. Pull – America land of
equality where they could rise in social status. “American
Letters”
Immigrant Labor
• 70% of workforce
• Jews and Italians – garment
• Mexican – CA agriculture
• Children – 25% of boys and 10% of girls
10-15 employed
– Injury, death
• 60 hr workweek
• 1900 - $400-500/year
Chinese and
Japanese
• 1851 – 1883 – 300,000 Chinese to West Coast.
Gold, RR
• 1884 – Japanese to Hawaii - plantations (sugar
cane).
• 1898 annexation of HI led to Japanese
immigration to the US.
• 1907 – 30,000 Japanese came to the US (peak).
Anti-Asian Sentiment
•
•
•
•
low wages
strikebreakers
strange customs
1882 – Chinese Exclusion
Act – banned all Chinese
from entering the country
• Also scared Japanese and other Asian’s
would take jobs. Japan had just defeated
Russian and agitators used this – “Yellow
Peril”
• 1906 – Asian children segregated in
schools.
• 1907/08 – Gentlemen’s Agreement – TR
and Japan – Japan limit immigration of
unskilled workers, US repeal segregation
order.
Urbanization and
Industrialization
• Happened at same time
• Cities – cheap labor force, market for goods
• 1900 – 40% of Americans lived in
towns/cities
• 1920 – more urban than
rural
Challenges of Cities …
• Crime: prostitution, cocaine, gambling,
violent crime.
• Unsanitary conditions
• "Dumbell" tenement (50%)
• Pages 559 – 560
Jacob Riis –
“How the
Other Half
Lives”
Immigrant Cultures
in America
• As rich moved out to suburbs, immigrant poor
moved in
• Ethnic neighborhoods – “ghettos” – maintain
own culture, language
• Foreign-language newspapers, theaters, food
stores, restaurants, parishes, social clubs.
• Catholic parochial schools
REACTIONS TO THE NEW
IMMIGRATION
• Political machines catered to new
immigrants
• Bosses traded jobs and services for votes
(creating powerful immigrant voting blocks)
• Tammany Hall – New York City, “Boss
Tweed”
– Provided services to city
• Thomas Nast – political cartoonist who
brought attention to the Tweed Ring –
finally broken in 1871.
Social Crusaders
• Reformers hated these practices; wanted to curb
power of political machines
• Social Gospel
– Christianity - improve life on earth
– improve problems of alcoholism &
unemployment
– sparks Progressive Movement
• Washington Gladden: open churches in working
class districts.
• Salvation Army – aid to homeless/poor
Settlement House
Movement
• Women’s movement, northern, white, middleclass
• Jane Addams
– Hull House (Chicago) – immigrants taught English,
classes in nutrition, health, and child care, social
gatherings.
• Helped immigrants cope with American big-city
life
• Lillian Wald -- Henry Street Settlement in NY.
• Settlement houses - centers of women’s
activism/social reform.
• Florence Kelly – Illinois Factory Law
• Red Cross (1881)
• YWCA (1858)
NARROWING THE
WELCOME MAT
• Nativists – New Immigrants – culturally/religiously
inferior.
– high birthrates
– "starvation" wages.
• American Protective Association (APA) 1887 –
supported immigration restrictions
• Congress – 1882 – banned paupers, criminals, and convicts.
1885 – banned foreign workers under contract (usually
working for substandard wages).
• Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)
DARWIN DISRUPTS THE CHURCHES
• Churches confront urban challenge
• Origin of the Species (1859) theory that
humans had slowly evolved from lower life
forms -- Cast serious doubt on the literal
interpretation of the Bible, esp. creationism.
• Created rifts in the churches and colleges of
post Civil War era.
• “Fundamentalists" VS."Modernists"
THE LUST FOR LEARNING
•
•
•
•
•
•
Tax-supported elementary schools
Grade-school education compulsory
Public high schools increased
Kindergarten
Private Catholic parochial schools grew
Chautauqua movement -1874 in NY to educate
adults
• 90% literacy rate
• WHY??? Free government can not function
without educated citizens!!!
Higher Education
• Morrill Act (1862) - public lands to states
for support of education.
• Philanthropists
• Women’s Colleges
BTW vs. WEB
• Booker T. Washington
– Tuskegee, AL
– Useful trades as a
means towards selfrespect and economic
equality
– Accommodation –
accept segregation for
now
• GRADUAL!!!!!
• W.E.B. DuBois –
opposed BTW –
demanded
IMMEDIATE social
and economic equality
for Af – Am, led by
“Talented 10th”
– Niagara Movement –
immediate end to
segregation
– NAACP
The Press
• Joseph Pulitzer: Yellow Journalism
attributed to his newspapers
• William Randolph Hearst also built up a
powerful chain of newspapers
The New Morality
• Victoria Woodhull’s periodical Woodhull and Clafin’s Weekly
included feminist propaganda for women’s suffrage, equal
rights, and "free love."
• Comstock Law (1873) - forbade publishing of “provocative”
sexual material (e.g. discussion of birth control)
• New Urban environment hard on families – separated from
families, subjected to stress. Launched the era of divorce
• Birthrates continued to drop, marriages delayed.
• Voting – Carrie Chapman Catt
• Women - right to vote in local elections (WY – first state to give
women unrestricted suffrage).
Crusade for the Prohibition of
Alcohol
• Liquor consumption increased in years following Civil War.
1. Immigrant groups resisted temperance or prohibition laws.
2. Saloons in late-19th century were exclusively male.
• Woman’s Christian Temperance Union
(WCTU) organized in 1874
– Led by Francis Willard - Increasingly saw alcoholism as result of
poverty, not the cause. Put enormous pressure on states to abolish
alcohol; somewhat successful.
• Carrie A. Nation
• Anti-Saloon League formed in 1893
• Statewide prohibition laws now sweeping new states during the
Progressive Era.
-- In 1919, 18th Amendment made alcohol illegal (lasted only 14
years).
Women’s Rights
• National American Women’s
Suffrage Association (formed in
1890) – NAWSA – equal rights (esp
right to vote)
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton
• Susan B. Anthony
• American Women Suffrage
Association led by Lucy Stone.