Immigration, Urbanization Lecture Notes
Urbanization:
1820 – less than 1 in 20 lived in city of 10,000 or more
1900 – 1 in 5
New immigrants 1/3 of city dwellers
Urbanization linked to industrialization
Urban innovations: mass transit, skyscraper (Chicago, then NYC) – from Jenney’s 10story Home Insurance Building, 1885, in Chicago to 55- story Woolworth Building,
1913, in NYC
Electrification, urban lighting, Wannamaker’s in Philly (1878), then outside in street
lighting; Edison’s incandescent bulb in 1879 for indoor lighting
1876 Bell telephone
Private city, funded, led, constructed by private interests with profit motive vs. public
city, with public projects (NYC subway), regulation, growth in public governance, public
space
Urban environment: garbage build-up, bad air quality, bad streets, mud, tenements
Lack of solutions to these problems
1901 NYC Tenement House Law, far-reaching, mandated courtyard, toilets, but did not
affect existing housing stock
Rural ideal for cities, Frederick Law Olmsted, City Beautiful Movement inspired by 1893
Columbian Expo, parks, boulevards, planned suburbs
Social Class
Urban elite: new ways of class distinction, not so much dress, but conspicuous
consumption, wealthy neighborhoods, clubs
Differences of old and new wealth; only one or more difference in generation between
merchant wealth and new industrial wealth, but much more difference in social status
Movement of new elite to New York (and other urban centers) forced reconstruction of
elite class distinctions and relationships – Ward McAllister’s “Social Register” set out
standards of conduct, balls, how to be a proper young woman and enter society correctly
Pics of Newport, RI mansions, Mrs. William Astor’s 1892 gala
Suburbanization: New middle-class, white collar workers in industry and finance
Growth of middle-class suburbs
Many attracted to rural ideal, suburban living
Streetcar suburbs: 25% of urban population lived in suburbs by 1910
Geography of urban life: as one went further from city center = larger homes, larger lots,
more trees, higher income, less wage earners per household, higher percentage of home
ownership
Home ownership espoused in Rev. Russell H. Conwell’s “Acres of Diamonds” sermon
on godliness of earning money: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5768/ (audio and text)
New suburban developments were not conducive to community: grid layout, developerimperatives, lack of town center
Middle-class work and family
Movement of work outside of home (diff. than earlier household economy)
Man outside home more, children in school more
Goods bought outside home, ready-made
Home primarily for affectionate relationships
Cult of domesticity for women, virtue
Ladies Home Journal and Good Housekeeping appeared in 1880s: sensibility, beauty,
and love to the household
Family wage paid to man
Many women rejected cult of womanhood; 10 percent remained single; high rate of nonmarriage among college grads and professionals
Cult of masculinity
Many more bachelors; could live in comfort with urban amenities without women
But felt loss of patriarchal household economy: anxiety of being feminized by new work
relationships (no independence, under power of boss); turned to masculinity: outdoors,
TRoosevelt, reading adventure novels, Tarzan and westerns
Changing attitudes towards sexuality
Single, urban, even middle-class women, doctors, started to see sexuality as valid beyond
procreation
But Victorian standards forced on them by Anthony Comstock, anti-birth control forces
1890s Charles Dana Gibson, Gibson girls were tall, athletic, spirited, chastely sexual,
wearing shirtwaist, revealing body shape, not hoops or Victorian dress
John Singer Sargent, Mr. and Mrs. John Phelps Stokes
Corresponding change in attitudes towards children: no longer seen as economic asset to
family in household economy; encouraged to go to school; longer development period
and affectionate attachment to family
Urbanization a result of migration and immigration
Rural to urban migrants
Immigrants
Little choice of where to live in sprawling city (diff. than earlier walking cities); had to
find cheap places to live near work, either in outlying factory districts or city center
ghettos – little chance of living or mixing with other classes or established groups (unlike
previous walking cities which were intermixed)
Settled in neighborhoods with similar ethnic bonds
Creation of ethnic institutions: newspapers, mutual aid, parades, theater, unions
Urban black migration to city centers: DC, then NYC, had largest black populations
Concentration, lower jobs, creation of institutions like immigrants; centrality of churches
Urban politics: political machines, ward politics, brought diff. ethnic groups into wider
political/social organization
Machines provided social services in exchange for votes, support, and money
Orthodox Jews and Catholics had to make choices about how to adapt to new settings;
should they Americanize or recreate religion of old world?
Pushed for own language churches
Protestant revivalism; declining urban Protestant churches, encrusted with wealth, turned
to new forms of evangelism and unchurched: YMCA, YWCA, Dwight Moody, Billy
Sunday
Ideology of Individualism and Social Darwinism
Carnegie and Horatio Alger, humble men can rise by own effort, contribute to the whole
Social Darwinism, corruption of scientific theories of Darwin; Herbert Spencer, “survival
of the fittest”; William Graham Sumner, sociology professor at Yale, was American
proponent, wealth and classes reflected survival of the fittest, no one should mess with
social processes that were taking their natural course
The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame,
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
by Emma Lazarus, New York City, 1883