American Society in the
Industrial Age
African Americans Post
Reconstruction
• Army removed, Southern states
govern to oppress AfricanAmericans
– Hall v. DeCuir (1877)
– Civil Rights Cases (1883)
– Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
• “Separate but equal”
– Booker T. Washington
• Tuskegee Institute
• Atlanta Compromise
– Voting restrictions
• Poll taxes, Literacy tests, Grandfather
clauses
Native Americans
• Plains Indians and the Buffalo
• Destruction of the Buffalo
• Pacification of native Americans
– Concentration Strategy
– Reservations
– Dawes Severalty Act (1887)
• Helen Hunt Jackson – A Century of
Dishonor (1881)
• Wounded Knee (1890)
– Ghost Dance
“New” Immigration
• Between 1866-1915 about 25
million immigrated to the US
– Steam liner - passage safer,
quicker and cheaper
– Industrialization = opportunity
– Farming market in Europe crashed
• Mainly from Southern & Eastern
Europe
– Italy, Croatia, Poland, Russia
– Catholic, Jews
Once They Arrived
• Ellis Island (1892)
– Processed 12 million people in 60 years
• Pass the test
– Immigrants were inspected and interviewed
• Criminals or mentally deficient people were generally the
ones to go
• Not many rejected – maybe one in fifty
• Often names were butchered by over-worked
customs officials and family names lost.
Ellis Island
“The Gateway to America”
Angel Island
• Located in San
Francisco, CA
– The Ellis Island of the
West
– Predominantly
Chinese emigrants
Growth of cities
• Cities become overcrowded
– Sanitation issues
• sewers couldn’t keep up
• Garbage couldn’t be picked up fast enough
• City waterways became polluted from sewage
– Tuberculosis became common
– Housing
• Overcrowded
• No indoor sanitation, so people relieved themselves in outhouses in
court yards
– The smell was unbearable
• Jacob Riis – Wrote How the Other Half Lives
– Crime
• Conditions led to violence
• Street gangs formed from juvenile delinquents
Ethnic Neighborhoods
• Most immigrants created/moved into ethnic
based communities upon arrival.
• WHY?
• Life in urban centers
meant filth, poverty,
and the rampant
spreading of
disease.
• Early organized
crime emerged
• Ethnic
neighborhoods
abounded
Nativist Reaction
• Nativists did not
appreciate the influx of
immigrants
– Cities are already too
crowded
– Feared low wage workers
– Radicalism in the wake of
the Haymarket bombing
– Congress passed a literacy
test in 1897 for immigrants
upon arrival
• vetoed by President
Cleveland
City Improvements
• Once the connection was made
between filth and disease efforts
were made to clean things up
• Streets were paved
• Streetlights
• Trolleys improved public transport
in the late 1800s
– These streetcars made it easier for the
area of the city to increase. More folks
could live in the suburbs
• Suspension bridges increased
traffic flows to the suburbs as well
– Brooklyn Bridge (1883) – connected
Manhattan to Brooklyn
Labor Problems
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Long Work Days
Low pay
Poor working conditions
Industrial accidents
Dissatisfaction with work – Monotony
No benefits/sick leave/vacation
Child Labor
Working Women
• Worked more and more outside the home
• Textile mills employed a large % of women
• Paid lower wages than men
Upward Mobility
• American Dream - believed
society offered opportunity
– White collar jobs offered this
– Public Education system
– Work Ethic
• Rags to riches stories were
rare
• Horatio Alger
Labor Movements
• Labor begins to organize to combat industrialists
– Boycotts
– Picketing
– Strikes
•
•
•
•
•
Great Railroad Strike (1877)
Haymarket Square (1886)
Homestead Steel Strike (1892)
Pullman Strike (1894)
Coal Strike (1902)
Knights of Labor
•
•
•
•
Led By: Terence Powderly
Open to unskilled workers & artisans
Open to minorities, women, immigrants
What did they want?
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Eight-hour workday
Workers’ cooperatives.
Worker-owned factories.
Abolition of child and prison labor.
Increased circulation of greenbacks.
Equal pay for men and women.
Safety codes in the workplace.
Prohibition of contract foreign labor.
End of Knights of Labor
• Haymarket Square
• unions + violence +
strikes + socialists +
immigrants =
anarchists
• Americans turned
against labor as a
result
American Federation of Labor
(AFL) - 1886
• Led by: Samuel Gompers
• Catered to the skilled worker.
• Understood workers would remain
working class
– Promoted pride in being a worker
• Pushed for 8 hour days
• Worker’s safety laws
• Maintained a national strike fund.
• Mediated disputes between
management and labor.
Religious Answers to the Poor
• Urban religious leaders
– Asked what caused the problems with slums
– Henry Ward Beecher – liquor and tobacco
– Catholics aided poor but blamed their
conditions on their sins
• Did not recognizing the connection of
living conditions and poverty
Social Gospel
• Social Gospel – Some preachers believed
slum conditions caused sin and crimes
– Focused on improving living conditions rather
than saving souls
– Believed people must have enough to eat and
decent living conditions to behave properly
– Believed in civil service reform, child labor
laws, regulation of corporations, and taxing
the wealthy
Reformers
• Settlement Houses
– Located in poor districts – provided guidance and services to the
poor
– Workers were young idealists
– Some men, but many women – fresh from college
• Hull House – 1889 – Chicago
– Founded by Jane Addams
Reformers
• Henry George: Progress and Poverty
– Believed that those who create should reap the
benefits
– Disturbed by land owners profiting from workers
– Believed that land should belong to all humanity.
– Felt land owners should be heavily taxed
– His book is critical of the mal distribution of wealth
• Edward Bellamy: Looking Backward
– Believed in the socialization of America
– Book set in year 2000. America is socialist society
– Popular in underground circles