Immigration, Urbanization, &
Everyday life ’60-1900
Chapter 19 outline
5 Major themes
• Everyday life in flux: new US cities
• Middle-Class Society and Culture
• Working class Politics and Reform
• Working class leisure in the
immigrant city
• Cultures in Conflict
Figure 19.1:
The
Changing
Face of U.S
Immigration,
1865-1920
Everyday life in Flux: introduction
Daily life changes in cities as population
increased: NY = 3.4 M
• Migration fr. Countryside + 11M foreigners
70-00
• Natives & immigrants compete for jobs &
power
• Urban growth strained city services, housing,
sanitation
• Natives fretted: squalid tenements, fondness
for drink, strange customs
– Set out to “clean” cities = destroy distinctive
Everyday life in Flux: Migrants & Immigrants
•
•
Industries in urban = demands for workers
Pull factors: promise of good wages & broad
range of jobs
– Some farm communities vanished
– Young farm women’s exodus as farming became
more male oriented
•
Immigrants ’60-’90: 10M northern Europeans
to join 4M who settled in ’40s & 50s
– 3M Germans = largest: midwest
– 2M English, Scottish, Welsh
– 1.5M Irish: N.E.
Map 19.1: Percent of Foreign-born Whites and
Native Whites of Foreign or Mixed Parentage in
Total Population, by Countries, 1910
Everyday life in Flux: New Immigrants
•
These old immigrants joined by new ones in
90s_ many fr. Peasant backgrounds
– Southern & eastern Europeans: Italian, Slavs,
Greeks, Jews, Armenians (M. East)
– Japanese to Hawaii
•
•
•
“push factors” of new immigrants:
overpopulation, crop failure, famine,
persecution, violence, economic depression
Many young men, particularly Italians &
Chinese, returned home
Many Irish women came & send $ home
Everyday life in Flux: Adjusting
•
•
Chain migration = settle among compatriots fr.
Original towns, village, regions
few problems in assimilating
–
–
Those w/ skilled trades & familiar w/ English has
Groups that formed large % of city population
•
•
•
•
Irish: 16% of NYC by ’80s; 17% of Boston
Dominated Democratic party & C. church
Nearly 50% Italians to NYC returned home
All faced hostility from white native-born, who
fear foreign influence, customs, loss of white
privilege
–
Campaigned to stigmatized them, even
Mediterranean people, as colored
Everyday life in Flux: slums & ghettos
•
Slums become locked in segregated ghettos:
laws, prejudice, pressure prevented
tenement inhabitants from renting elsewhere
–
–
–
–
•
Italians in NY ’90s
Blacks in Phila & Chicago (lack in numbers)
Mex-Americans in LA
Chinese in San Francisco
Slums: difficult on children
– Diseases: whooping cough, measles, scarlet
fever…high infant mortality
•
One immigrant ward in Chicago in ’00: 20% infants
died
(Chapter 19) Lower East Side
•
The tenements on New York City’s
lower East side were so crowded that daily life
spilled out onto the sidewalk and into the
street. Jacob Riis, in his expose, How the
Other Half Lives (1890), saw the congested
immigrant quarters as dirty dens of vice and
iniquity. With three of its wards averaging more
than 285,000 people per square mile, New
York epitomized the depths to which conditions
in urban America had sunk.
Riis’s grim view of life in the ghetto, which
reflected his secure middle-class position,
contrasted sharply with many immigrants’
memories of the tenement districts’ vibrant
street life, resonating with the melodies of
organ grinders and the cries of peddlers.
Although their apartments were crowded,
immigrants often congregated elbow-to-elbow
in the hallways; left apartment doors open to
invite visitors, and joked, sang, and played
music to recreate the village intimacy
remembered from their homelands. “How the
people did enjoy that music,” reminisced
Samuel Chotzinoff, an Eastsider from New
York. “ . . . It was inspiring in a neighborhood
like that.”
1.
Which opinion is more accurate?
2.
Examine the details in this photo. What is the
main form of transportation in this picture?
What is the condition of the buildings? What
can you say about sanitation in this part of
the city? Why the awnings? Why do many of
the women in the picture wear aprons?
(Chapter 19)
Lower East Side
Everyday life in Flux: fashionable avenues
•
Wealthy Americans lived in exclusive streets
–
–
–
–
•
Rockefeller & Jay Gould on Fifth Ave. in NC
Commonwealth Ave. in Boston
Euclid Ave. In Cleveland
Summit Ave. in St. Paul
In 70s & ’80s, the rich moved out to suburbs
– Distanced themselves fr. Tenements
– Played on rural nostalgia
•
Middle class followed precedents set by
wealthy
– Suburbs led to sprawl & informal residential
Middle Class Society & Culture: Intro
•
•
•
Victorian moral authority (Godkin & Henry
Beecher): financial success linked to one’s
superior talent, intelligence, morality, & selfcontrol
Embraced equal but separate spheres
Victorian ideals & privileged positions
reinforced by elegant department stores,
hotels, elite college & uni.
(Chapter 19)
Victorian Trade Card
(Chapter 19) Victorian Trade Card
Victorian houses often had a front parlor for
visitors and a back parlor, or sitting room, as depicted in
here, for the family. Heavy draperies served multiple
functions. First, they were a sign of family wealth and
sophistication. Crushed velvet and other heavy fabrics
were very expensive and an indication of the family’s
social status. Deep rich dark colors created a retreat and
protection. Sounds were dampened, light filtered, and cold
weather was excluded.
Fabric also served to soften and cushion the
spaces, providing a sense of comfort and relaxation. The
soft curves and folds were seen as feminine touches,
accentuating the curves of the female body. By draping the
doorway, a theatrical touch was given to the room. Visitors
entered suddenly upon the private spaces of the family, a
protected retreat whose safety and security were reflected
in the sleeping dog.
Both parlors were often labeled a “thicket” by
contemporaries. They were supposed to be artfully
decorated spaces whose walls were adorned with
paintings, fine hand-painted china plates, and souvenirs
from summer travels.
Dogs and other pets were highly valued by
Victorian Americans. They believed that learning to take
care of animals would help train children to be gentle and
kind. Very young children, who were widely viewed as
innocent and pure, were often seen as gentle spirits who
instinctively enjoyed the companionship of animals.
1.
How might the fabric on the woman’s dress
be interpreted?
2.
What is the image of nature portrayed by
the arrangement to the left of the door?
3.
In what ways could the toys here be seen
as symbolic?
Middle Class Society & Culture: Manners &
Morals
Victorian view emerged in ’30s & 40s rested on
these assumptions
1. Human nature is malleable: could improve
– Eager to reform practices considered evil/
undesirable
2. Emphasized social value of work
•
Hard work = discipline & self-control= advance
nation
3. Good manners & value of lit. & fine arts =
civilized society
•
Norm often violated by middle classes & rich but
widely preached
•
Middle Class Society & Culture: more
Manners & Morals
Henry Ward Beecher appealed to Victorian
morality on crusades of temperance and
abolition
– Slavery & intemperance threatened feminine
virtue & family
•
After war, he & others became more
interested manners & social protocol
– Social standing defined by not just $ but behavior
•
Catherine Beecher’s The American Woman’s
Home
– Meals as important rituals to differentiate social
Middle Class Society & Culture: Domesticity
•
Promoters of domesticity idealized home as
the woman’s spheres
– In ’40s: home = protected retreat for females
•
Maternal sensitivity & women as promoter of religion
– In ’80s & 90s: added role of director of household
•
•
•
Foster artistic environment
Women devoted time to decorate homes
Not all women agreed
Middle Class Society & Culture: Department
stores
Depart. Store as key agent in molding consumer
culture: emphasized
• Low prices & high quality
• Shopping as exciting, adventure: elegant
stores w/ marble & chandeliers
• End of yr, sales offere constant novelty
Middle Class Society & Culture:higher
educaton
By 1900, only 4% enrolled in higher learning
Capitalists endowed colleges & uni.
•
Leland Stanford & wife in ’85 $24M
•
Rockefeller $34M to Uni. Of Chicago
•
Forced business view on edu. Administrators
•
Advocated sports team as preparation for young men for business
& professions
–
•
•
•
’80-1900, 150 new colleges & uni. & +double enrollments
Other uni. Funded by state & religious affiliations
Structured medical school & reforms in other programs follow.
–
–
•
18 football players died in 1905
Gave rise to the research university
Pioneered by Pres. Andrew D. White of Cornell Uni. & Harvard’s Charles
Eliot
Still, higher edu. For only a few privileged at the turn of the
century
Working Class Politics & Reform: bosses &
machine politics
Urban poor gave rise to the “boss”
• Lobbied to help urban poor & Presided over city’s
“machine”
–
•
Unofficial political organization
Wielded enormous power in city gov’t, whether legit
mayor or not.
–
–
–
Former saloon keeper or labor leader
Controlled who will be hired for police/fire dep’t
Reward/punish through taxes, licenses, inspections
•
–
Acted as welfare agents to help needy & troubled
•
–
–
–
Ex: tax breaks to contractors for large payoffs/kickback
May give a few $ to pay fine of juvenile offenses, but raked in
millions fr. Public ulitility contracts & land deals
Entangled legit services w/ corrupt politics
Prevented gov’t fr. Responding to real problem
“machine” contributed to municipal gov’t
Working Class Politics & Reform: Tweed
NYC’s boss William Marcy Tweed
Tammany Hall
•
•
•
’69-71: Tweed gave $50,000 to poor & $2.2M
to schools, BUT raked up 70M city’s debt
Satirized by cartoon Thomas Nast—German
immigrant
Bosses got assaulted by organized power
toward ’00.
•
•
•
•
•
Working Class Politics & Reform: Battling
poverty
Reformers Jacob Riis blame poverty on
poor’s lack of self-discipline/control
Later, Jane Addams, Florence Kelley &
others examined how low wages &
dangerous working conditions impacted
lower class…sympathy
Robert Harley & Charles Brace: helping
urban youth
Other organ.: Children’s Aid Society, YMCA,
YWCA:
All too narrowly focused; lack major impact
•
Working Class Politics & Reform: New
Approaches to Social Work
“General” William Booth started the Salvation
Army ’65 in England
–
–
•
NY Charity Organ. (COS) ’82 by Josephine
Lowell
–
–
•
Uniformed volunteers to US ’80 to provide food,
shelter, & temp. employment
Provide support & teach poor the middle-class
virtues of temperance, hard work, & self-discipline
Divied NY’s districts, compiled data, sent counselors
Critics: controlling the poor rather than helping
All failed to see fr. Vintage of the poor; all tried
to convert
•
•
Working Class Politics & Reform: Moralpurity Campaign
Failure of social reformers to eradicated
poverty led to tougher measures against sin
& immorality
NC Society for the Suppression of Vice ’72
by Anthony Comstock
– Call for closing down gambling & lottery
operations, brothels, plus censor obscene
publication
– Reformers labeled immigrants as source of
prostitution albeit not majority
•
•
Charles Parkhurst: City Vigilance League
Reform efforts failed: large, diverse
population
Working Class Politics & Reform: social gospel
Protestant ministers as reformers started new
• William Rainsford (NY) provided social services
& place to worship
• Got JP Morgan to help organize boys’ club &
training centers
• Washington Gladden (OH): call church leaders
to mediate conflict between bus. & labor…no
success
• Walter Rauschenbusch: Christian unity & in’l
peace; attacked Christians’ complacent support
of status quo
all argued the rich & privileged deserve part of
blame for urban distress
Working Class Politics & Reform: settlement
house movement
Settlement house movement derived fr. Belief that relief
workers should see firsthand the struggle of the
poor
Jane Addams bought old mansion in Chicago in ’89 =
1st experiment = opened as Hull House
• Social center for recent immigrants
• Pressured politicians to enforce sanitation
regulations
• Florence Kelley: worked at settlement houses
became chief factory inspector for Illinois in ’93
• Many other veterans played crucial role in
Progressive movement
• Mixed success: overlooked immigrant
organization/leaders
Working Class Leisure in the immigrant city
•
•
•
•
Deep-seated suspicion of leisure since
colonial time
New patterns of leisure rose: immigrants
came, urban pop. Increased, new rich
entrepreneur rose
Workers sought relaxation after long work hrs
Museums & concert halls vs. saloons, dance
halls, boxing, baseball, picnics, holiday cele.
– More: parks, vaudeville theater, race tracks
– Catered mass entertainment rather than elite
Working-Class: Streets, saloons, & boxing
•
•
•
•
Enjoyed grinders & buskers (street musicians)
Cheap street food & heat relief fr. Crowded
tenements
Old world cultural traditions: Turnverein &
Gesangverein
Saloons attracted workmen: 5c beer + free lunch
–
–
–
–
–
•
Enforced group identity & center for immigrant politics
Patrons/ local bosses: write letters & find jobs for illiterate
Prostitution & crime flourished in rough ones
Alcoholism
Temperance movement targeted saloons
Bare-knuckled prizefighting popular
Working-Class: professional sports…baseball
Baseball derived fr. English game called rounders
• Informal children’s game to professional
• Not fr. Abner Doubleday
• Rules codified in ’60s: as seen today
• 9 innings; bases 90ft apart
• Team owners organized Nat’l Leagues in ’76
• Became big bus. In ’90s
• Attracted all classes, but working class particularly
• Newspaper thrived on baseball; created sport
section
–
NY Staats Zeitung for German immigrants
Working-Class: professional sports…boxing
Boxing aroused more devotion fr. working class
• John L. Sullivan: most popular sports hero of
19th C.
– Popular among immigrants
– Refused to fight blacks (deference to fan);
avoided finest boxer of ’80s, Australian black,
Peter Jackson
– Fought w. Jake Kilrain & won belt w/ diamonds &
gold
Working-Class: Vaudeville
Vaudeville revolved out of prewar minstrel shows (white
comedians made up as blacks to perform)
• Mass appeal; animal routine; dance; musical
interlude; then comic skits ridiculing urban life &
making fun of inept cops & county officials…made
fun of immigrant accents; then magicians & others,
end w/ flying trapeze
• Fascination w/ black faced actor: reinforced
prejudice against blacks; poked fun of middle class
white ideals
• Psychological escape
Working-Class: Amusement Parks, & Dance
Halls
Amusement park as physical escape
• Attracted young female wage earners
• Meet friends & spend time w/ young men
• Decorated pavilion & exciting music
Working-Class: Dance Halls
•
•
Blacks made major contribution to popular music of the
19thC.
Middle- & working classes differed in styles of music
–
•
Ragtime: fr. Traditions of sacred & secular Afr. Amr.
Songs
–
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–
•
•
•
Hymns & moral songs vs. ragtime (fr. ’80s by black musicians
in saloons & brothels)
Syncopated rhythms & complex harmonies & blended these w/
marching-band songs
Became nat’l sensation in ’90s
Often interpreted as freer, wilder
Whites used it to confirm blacks as sexual, wild, &
primitive
Stark contrast to repressive Victorian culture
Scott Joplin = brilliant composer
Cultures in Conflict
•
•
US embroiled in class & cultural unrest; even w/in
middle class itself
Some middle-class women expressed dissension of
Victorian morality
–
•
Middle class saw rowdy street s, saloons, boxing,
dance halls, & amusement parks as threat to their
culture
–
•
“New Woman” derived fr. Colleges, social clubs, bycicle
fad
Tried to impose middle-class value in schools
By ’00 Victorian value began to crumble
Cultures in Conflict: Genteel tradition & critics
Upper class editors/ writers/professors codified Vict.
Standards
• Charles Eliot Norton (Harvard) & Richard Watson
Gilder, & Godkin
• Campaigned to improve US taste in interior
furnishings, textiles, ceramics, books…etc
• Set up guidelines for lit. & lectured about fine arts
• Censored all sexual allusions, vulgar slang,
unfriendliness to Christianity, & unhappy endings
• Editor William Dean Howells & novelist Henry
James
Regionalist authors: Sarah Orne Jewett, Stephen
Crane, William Dean Howells
Cultures in Conflict: Genteel tradition & critics
Twain = Huck. Finn; Dreisler = Sister Carie
• expressed human impact of social change
• Broke w/ genteel on manners & decorum
Regionalist authors: Sarah Orne Jewett, Stephen Crane,
William Dean Howells
Henry George, Lester Ward, Edward Bellamy: cooperative
& harmonious society
Thorstein Bleben: critical of life style of new capitalist
•
lamented on economic game
Annie McClean exposed exploitation of dept. store clerks
Walter Wyckoff uncovered hand-to mouth existence of
unskilled laborers
WEB Dubois documented suffering by blacks in Phila.
These writers made it difficult to accept the belief in
progress & gentility
Cultures in Conflict: modernism in Archi. &
Painting
Architects & painters challenged genteel tradition
William Holabird & John W. Root broke w/ European
designs (Richard M. Hun = old school)
•
followed Louis Sullivan: form follows function
–
Banks should not look like temples
Frank Lloyd Wrights “prairie school” houses
modern, broke w/ past; rejected Victorian tradition
Winslow Homer: water colorist show nature as brutal
Thomas Eakin’s canvases captured vigorous physical
exertion of swimmer, boxers, rowers in daily life
Distrusted Victorian assumptions & ideals but disagreed on
how to replaced them
Until Progressive Era: reforms based on social research
& enlisted gov’t power to break these assumptions
Cultures in Conflict: Vict. Lady to new woman
Frances Willard shows cult of domesticity can evolve
into women’s social & pol. Responsibility
• Temperance; pres. Of Woman’s Christian Temp.
• Had traditional belief: women had unique moral
virtues
• Using crusade of home (white ribbon) to win
franchise for women to vote to outlaw liquor
• College women expanded roles for women
• ’80-90, female enrollment rose fr. 30% to 71%
• Bycicle fad help losen Vict. Contraints on women
–
•
Vict: proper ladies don’t sweat
Feminist writer: Kate Chopin in “the Awakening”
Cultures in Conflict: public Education as
conflict
Debates among all classes about education highlight
divisions
Most states had public edu. By Civil War due to Horace
Mann
William T. Harris: increased # of yrs. In school to increase
knowledge of public affairs & function (labor)
•
instill order, punctuality, to prepare for industrial
age… led to required attendance
• Joseph M Rice, pediatrician, protested the prisonlike
discipline
• Pos.: real advances in reading & computation &
illiteracy dropped
• Challenge: parents sent them to work instead
• Catholics protested against Protestant orientation
–
parochial school shot up