The Age of the City
Chapter 18
The Urbanization of America

The Lure of the City
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population
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urban families
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1865-1910 urban population increases x 7
1920 consensus: first time a majority of Americans
were living in urban areas (2,500+)
New York: 1 million in 1860... 3 million 1900
Chicago: 100,000 in 1860... 1 million 1900
high infant mortality rate
declining fertility rate
high death rate from disease
why go?
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conveniences
entertainment
jobs
experiences unavailable in rural communities
transportation: trains and ocean liners
The Urbanization of America Cont’d
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Migrations
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women
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blacks
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opportunities on farm limited
results in fewer family units on farms than before
influence of mail-order catalogs
poverty, debt, oppression in rural areas
factory jobs rare... professional jobs non-existent
10,000+ communities in major cities by turn of 20th
Century
immigrants
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10 million between 1860-1890 / 18 million 1890-1920
Greatest number came from Eastern Europe
Early immigrants (Germans, not Irish) well educated
and financed = buy land, start business... not the case
with these immigrants... settled into urban areas to
work unskilled jobs
The Urbanization of America Cont’d
The Ethnic City
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1890 foreign-born population and their children dominate
urban centers
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87% of the population of Chicago (more Polish people
than in Warsaw)
80% of the population of New York (more Irish than in
Dublin / more Germans than Hamburg)
84% of the population of Milwaukee and Detroit
huge diversity
transition from native country to America
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rural life to urban “immigrant ghettos”
staying together
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fraternal organizations
native foods
newspapers and theaters
voting blocks
different values leading to different levels of
advancement: solidarity v. integration
impact of racism: Africans Americans, Asians and
Mexicans treated the worst
The Urbanization of America Cont’d
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Assimilation
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ethnic ties often “competed” against
desire/need to assimilate
women: from arranged marriages to
the workforce
Factors
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English taught in schools
English only on the job
large stores selling American food and
clothing
Church leaders encouraging parishioners
to adopt to American ways
The Urbanization of America Cont’d
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Exclusion
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Haymarket reaction
Native workers animosity
towards people willing to
work for less
Henry Bowers 1887:
American Protective
Association (Anti-Catholic)
Immigration Restriction
League: more
sophisticated nativism
Few laws passed by
Congress because many
powerful Native-born
Americans welcomed
Immigration... business
interests
The Urban Landscape
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The Creation of Public
Space
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urban parks: one of
the most important
innovations of the
Industrial Era
Frederick Law
Olmsted and Calvert
Vaux teamed up to
design Central Park
public buildings:
libraries, art galleries,
natural history
museums, theatres,
concert opera halls
rebuilding cities...
European competition
The Urban Landscape Cont’d
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Housing the Well-to-do
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fashionable districts
suburbs and the rise of “clean air” and front
lawns
Housing Workers and the Poor
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space scarce + demand high = little
bargaining power for renters = bad living
conditions
1894 Manhattan =143 people per acre
“Miserable Abodes”
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South (Charleston, New Orleans, Richmond)
= former slave quarters
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Boston = wooden “triple deckers”
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Baltimore and Philadelphia = brick houses
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New York (like most cities) = tenements
The Urban Landscape Cont’d
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Housing Workers and the
Poor Cont’d
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Tenement originally meant
“multiple family rental
building”, but by late 19th
century the word had
become synonymous with
“slum”
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windowless rooms
little/no heating
little/no plumbing
very crowded... three/four
people into each room
Jacob Riis How the Other
Half Lives ... solution = raze
the slum dwellings without
replacing
The Urban Landscape Cont’d
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Urban Transportation
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paved roads (blocks, bricks or
asphalt)
Streetcars drawn on tracks by
horses... not fast enough
Cable Cars (New York, Chicago, San
Francisco)
New York: filthy steam powered train
Boston: first American subway 1897
1880s: Brooklyn Bridge
The Urban Landscape Cont’d
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The “Skyscraper”
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no building taller than
five stories
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stairs
building techniques
Elevator and steel
beams / 1850s and
1870s
1870 The Equitable
Building in New York =
seven stories
steel girder construction
Louis Sullivan: large
windows, sheer lines,
limited ornamentation...
emphasis on height
Strains of Urban Life
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Fire and Disease
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“Great Fires”
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poor building planning
lack of public services... i.e. fire departments
1906 Earthquake in San Francisco*
Great Chicago Fire
Disease
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little understanding of the connection between
poor sewage disposal and water contamination
with outbreaks of diseases such as typhoid fever
and cholera
flush toilets and sewer systems did not appear in
cities until the 1870s... but the sewage went into
streams and open ditches....
Strains of Urban Life Cont’d
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Urban Poverty
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private philanthropic
organizations focus
on “deserving poor”
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Salvation Army in
America (1879)
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concentrated
more on religious
revivalism than on
relief
Protestants v.
Catholics
poor starving
children “street
arabs”... focus of
reformers, but no
lasting solutions to
problems
Strains of Urban Life Cont’d
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Crime and Violence
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Poverty and overcrowding = increase in crime
25 murders per million in 1880 / 100 murders
per million in 1900... West and South...
Native born Americans likely to commit crimes
as immigrants
Public officials recognize need for larger police
force
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rise of detectives
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corruption and brutality
“Urban National Guard” build armories (?!)
Strains of Urban Life Cont’d
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The Machine and the Boss
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large/chaotic immigrant growth created a large,
powerful political base
“The Boss” was chief organizer and ensured loyalty
through many different means
Graft and corruption abundant
William M. Tweed (notorious boss/mayor) and
Tammany Hall (New York machine)
corrupt... but accomplished
How it worked
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power of organized, immigrant voters
connection to the wealthy who profited from their
dealings with the bosses
structural weakness of government
“invisible government” provided an alternative to the
inadequacy of the regular government
Turn of the century people began to call for structural
changes in the nature of the city government
The Rise of Mass Consumption
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Patterns of Income and Consumption
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growth of middle class “white collar” workers...
sharp increase in salary
working class incomes rose... but from a lower base
and more slowly
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male dominated labor (steel) salaries rose 1/3 from
1890 to 1900
female, Mexican and Black dominated areas saw
very little increases
supplemental incomes and boarders
ready made clothes = rise in personal style and
fashion
improved diets = better health = life expectancy
rose six years from 1900-1920
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tin cans and food
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refrigerated railroad cars
iceboxes
The Rise of Mass Consumption Cont’d
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Chains Stores and Mail-Order
Houses
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Chain Stores
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Woolworths and A&P able to sell
manufactured goods at lower prices than
the local, independent stores with which
they competed
many feared they would jeopardize the
character of their communities
Mail-Order Houses
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Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck
isolated people now on the cutting edge of
fashion and technology
The Rise of Mass Consumption Cont’d
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Department Stores
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Marshall Field in
Chicago... Macy’s in
New York... Jordan
Marsh in Boston... etc...
transformed the concept
of shopping
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brought together
under one roof and
enormous array of
products
stove to create and
atmosphere of wonder
and excitement and to
make it social
economics of scale to
lower costs against
the individual shops
they competed with
The Rise of Mass Consumption Cont’d
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Women as Consumers
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more job opportunities for women...
retail clerks, waitresses...
Florence Kelly & The National
Consumes League... took the stance
that women as consumers should be
entitled to more rights
wages and working conditions
 public life
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Leisure and the Consumer Society
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Redefining Leisure
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Leisure previously scorned in America (Puritan
culture) connection to laziness and sloth
Middle Class, Laborers and Farmers all found
themselves with more time in the weekends
and/or evenings (8 + 8 + 8)
Simon Patten goal of economy “should be an
abundance of goods and the pursuit of
pleasure”
intensely public character and the importance
of “going out”
Leisure and the Consumer Society
Cont’d
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Spectator Sports
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Baseball ... Alexander
Cartwright v. Abner Doubleday
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by the end of the Civil War
200 amateur teams existed
first salaried team was the
Cincinnati Red Stockings in
1869
1903 First World Series...
Boston Red Sox defeat the
Pittsburgh Pirates
important business
attracted crowds as large as
50,000 (men)
most baseball players were
laborers... almost all teams
were in industrial cities
where they could draw an
audience from workers
Leisure and the Consumer Society
Cont’d
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Spectator Sports
Cont’d
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Football
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originated in
college scene
first game was
between Princeton
and Rutgers 1869
similar to Rugby
use of “ringers”
leads to
establishment of
Big Ten in 1896
18 College
Students died and
over 100 seriously
hurt... NCAA
formed 1910
Leisure and the Consumer Society
Cont’d
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Spectator Sports Cont’d
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Basketball
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Boxing
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long been a disreputable activity
adoption of Marquis of Queensberry rules (gloves and three
minute rounds)
John L. Sullivan... heavyweight champion of the world in 1882
Horse Racing (Kentucky Derby)
Gambling
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Canadian Dr. James Naismith 1891 in Springfield,
Massachusetts
“throwing” of 1919 World Series by the Chicago “Black” Sox
“fixed” boxing
horse racing
Women in Sports
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limited early: tennis, golf, croquet
later: track, crew, swimming... challenged notion that vigorous
exercise was dangerous to women
Leisure and the Consumer Society
Cont’d
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Music and Theater
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many ethnic communities
maintained their own
theaters
distinctive American
entertainment: the musical
comedy
George Cohen, an Irish
entertainer wrote songs
such as “You’re a Grand
Old Flag”
Irving Berlin, an Yiddish
entertainer wrote songs
such as “God Bless
America”
Vaudeville entertainment...
inexpensive variety show...
could be shown in saloons
“blackface” performers
Leisure and the Consumer Society
Cont’d
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The Movies
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Thomas Edison and
others create technology
of motion pictures in
1880s
Early movies plotless
D.W. Griffith (MGM)
started silent epics such
as The Birth of a Nation
audiences
overwhelmingly white
Leisure and the Consumer Society
Cont’d
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Working-Class Leisure
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street camaraderie
ethnically specific saloons
bare knuckle boxing... *opportunity to show strength
and courage... something that the working world did not
always provide them with
The Fourth of July
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one of the few full days of leisure for working-class
Americans
day of celebrating not just US independence, but the
culture of individual groups
wealthy middle class stayed away from festivals
In the South
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post-Civil War 4th celebrations were held by blacks in
Charleston celebrating the Union
Once Reconstruction efforts failed, laws passed restricting
blacks celebration redefining the meaning of the day to the
Southern cause
Leisure and the Consumer Society
Cont’d
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Private Pursuits
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Reading
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dime novels (fiction...
Wild West, scientific
adventure)
novels of “moral uplift”
(Horatio Alger)
women: romance,
animals and children
growing up (Little
Women)
Music
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middle class families
placed high value on
learning to play an
instrument
sales of sheet music
soared
classical v. ragtime
Leisure and the Consumer Society
Cont’d
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Mass Communication
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newspapers become and important business
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1870 to 1910 the circulation of newspapers
increased nearly nine fold... from under 3
million to more than 24 million...a rate 3x
times as great as the pop. increase
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reporters salaries increase
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opinion separated from fact
telegraph and the national press service
yellow journalism
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William Randolph Hearst controls 9
newspapers and two magazines
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Joseph Pulitzer
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deliberately sensationalized information in an
effort to reach a mass audience
High Culture in the Age of the City
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Separation into wealthy “high-brow” and
working-class “low-brow” cultures
The Literature of Urban America
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Mark Twain Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn...
evoked an older more natural world
Stephen Crane The Red Badge of Courage and
Maggie: A Girl of The Streets... powerful
portrayal of the plight of the working class
Theodore Dreiser Sister Carrie exposed
hardships of single women struggling in the city
details of hard labor and prostitution
Upton Sinclair The Jungle reveal the horrors of
industrial capitalism
Kate Chopin The Awakening explored the
oppressive features of traditional marriage
High Culture in the Age of the City
Cont’d
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Art in the Age of the City
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Winslow Homer... vigorously American
Neil Whistler... one of the first Western
Artists to incorporate Oriental concepts into
American and European art
Ashcan school – captured realistic struggle of
American life
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John Singer Sargent - portraits
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John Sloan – dreariness of American slums
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George Bellows – vigor and violence of prize
fights
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Armory Show in New York City...
“controversial”
High Culture in the Age of the City
Cont’d
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The Impact of Darwinism
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Natural Selection as a challenge to the biblical story
of Creation... attested that history was not the
working out of some divine plan, but rather it was a
random process dominated by the fiercest or
luckiest competitors
Lead to two major divisions in American culture
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Urban education vs. Christian (Protestant)
Fundamentalists
Rich vs. Poor (Social Darwinism)
Lead to other major theories
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Pragmatism: no idea or institution was valid unless
it worked and unless it stood the test of experience
Edward Ross and Frank Ward urged applying the
scientific method to the solution of social and
political problems
growth of anthropology (and preservation of
American Indians)
High Culture in the Age of the City
Cont’d
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Toward Universal Schooling
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late 19th century was a time of rapid reform and change in
American schools and universities
spread of free public primary and secondary education
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Rural Areas and the South (blacks) lagged far behind
Morrill Land Grant of the Civil War Era: federal gov. donated
land to states for the establishment of colleges
1865 states in the South and the West took advantage of the
law
69 “land grant” institutions were established in the last
decades of the century
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California (UC), Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin
Other Universities benefited from millions of dollars
contributed by business tycoons
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1860 there were only 100 public high schools in all of the USA
1900 the number had reached 6,000
1914 12,000
Columbia, Chicago, Harvard, Northwestern, Princeton and Yale
Other Philanthropists founded Universities in their name

Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins, Cornell, Duke, Tulane, Stanford,
Creighton
High Culture in the Age of the City
Cont’d
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The Education of Women
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public high schools
accepted women... but opportunities for higher
education were rare
proponents of women’s colleges saw the
institutions as places where female students
would not be treated as “second-class” citizens,
by predominantly male student bodies and
faculties
women’s college = emergence of women’s
community
education as liberating
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college-aged women married later
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continued professional carriers after marriage
and motherhood