Chapter 25: America Moves to the City Maddie Amsterdam, Mr. Cruz I. The Urban Frontier a.

By 1900, NYC was the second largest city in the world (next to London) with 3.5 million. b. 1885 The skyscraper first appeared as a 10-story building in Chicago. It was made usable by the perfection of the elevator. c. Louis Sullivan helped develop the skyscraper with his famous principle that form follows function. d. The urban lifestyle attracted many to cities. e. Department stores like Macy s attracted urban middle-class shoppers and provided many jobs for women. i. Carrie Meeber was a character in Theodore Dreiser s novel Sister Carrie. She escaped the country and came to Chicago where she discovered department stores and became a member of the urban middle class. f. Waste disposal became an issue due to the shift from thrifty reusing to convenient consumerism. g. The dumbbell tenement was a seven or eight story building where several families were packed into the same floor to live in terrible conditions. The New Immigration a. Before 1880, most immigrants came from the British Isles (Germany, Scandinavia, etc.). They were fair-skinned, mostly Protestant, literate, and used to representative gov t. b. In the 1880s, the New Immigrants arrived. They totaled 19% of immigrants in the 1880s, but jumped to 66% in the 1900s i. Italians, Croats, Slovaks, Greeks, Poles. ii. Many worshiped orthodox churches and synagogues. iii. Little history of democratic gov t. iv. Illiterate and impoverished, sought industrial jobs. Southern Europe Uprooted a. Immigration in America was a by-product of European urbanization. b. Many immigrants came because the population of Europe had nearly doubled in the 1800s; there was no room for them. c. American food imports and European industrialism left many peasants unemployed. d. America was painted as a land of opportunity, much due to America letters sent by friends and family. e. 1880s Russians persecuted its Jews, mostly in the Polish areas. Jews fled to America. Most came to NYC. Unlike most New Immigrants, they had experienced city life in Europe. f. Many immigrants never intended to stay in America, they wanted to get a job and return home with money. i. 25% between 1820 and 1900 were birds of passage who eventually returned home. g. Those who stayed struggled to preserve their culture.

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i. Schools, theatres, food stores, parishes, restaurants and social clubs all attested to the desire to maintain old ways. Reactions to the New Immigration a. The government did nothing to ease the assimilation of immigrants into society. The task fell into the hands of political machines like Boss Tweed. b. Protestant clergymen sought to apply Christianity to immigrants in slums and factories. i. Walter Rauschenbusch became pastor of a German Baptist church. Washington Gladden took over a Congregational church in Columbus, OH. ii. Both preached the social gospel, insisting that the churches tackle social issues of the day. iii. Many social gospelers, called Christian socialists, believed that socialism would be the logical outcome of Christianity. c. Jane Addams was a reformer who condemned war and poverty, eventually winning the Novel Peace Prize in 1931. Her antiwar views earned her bitterness from some Americans. d. In Chicago, Addams established the Hull House, the most prominent American settlement house. Located in a poor immigrant neighborhood, it offered instruction in English, counseling to help newcomers, childcares services, and cultural activities for neighborhood residents. i. 1893 women of the Hull House successfully lobbied for an Illinois antisweatshop law that protected women workers and prohibited child labor. They were lead by Florence Kelley. ii. Women founded settlement houses in other cities. Lillian Wald s Henry Street Settlement in NY opened in 1893. iii. Settlement houses became centers of women s activism and reform. e. The pioneering work of Addams, Wald, and Kelley helped to create the trail that many women later followed into careers in the new profession of social work. f. The urban frontier opened new possibilities for women. The vast majority of working women were single due to the fact that society considered employment for wives and mothers taboo. Narrowing the Welcome Mat a. 1880s Antiforeignism, or nativism, intensified. Nativists viewed the New Immigrants as culturally exotic. They worried that with their high birthrate, immigrants would outbreed and outvote the natives. b. They blamed the immigrants for the dreadful conditions of urban government. Trade unionists attacked the immigrants for their willingness to work for small wages. c. 1887 The American Protective Association (APA) was founded to pursue nativist goals. They urged voting against RCC candidates for office and sponsored the publication of lustful fantasies about runaway nuns. d. Organized labor leaders argued that if American industry was entitled to protection from foreign goods, American workers were entitled to protection from foreign laborers. e. 1882 Congress passed the first restrictive law against immigrants. It banished all paupers, criminals, and convicts back to their original countries.

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f. 1882 the Chinese exclusion act was passed. (see chapter 23) g. 1885 Congress prohibited the importation of foreign workers under contract. h. In later yeas, the list of undesirables lengthened to include alcoholics, anarchies, polygamists, prostitutes and people with contagious diseases. i. 1917 a literacy test was enacted after the veto of three presidents (they said literacy was a measure of opportunity, not intelligence). j. 1886 the Statue of Liberty arose in the NY Harbor. Inscribed at the base was a poem by Emma Lazarus, which spoke of welcoming immigrants. Churches Confront the Urban Challenge a. Urbanization posed challenges to churches, especially the Protestant churches. Many of their traditional doctrines and approaches became irrelevant. b. Dwight Lyman Moody was the most conspicuous urban revivalist. He preached a gospel of kindness and forgiveness, traveling to several American cities in the 1870s and 1880s. the Moody Bible Institute was founded in Chicago in 1889. c. Roman Catholics and Jews were gaining enormous strength from the New Immigration. i. By 1900, RCC was the single largest denomination with 9 million. ii. Cardinal Gibbons was an urban Catholic leader devoted to American unity. He was immensely popular with RCCs and Protestants. d. 1890 there were over 150 religious denominations in the United States. 2 of them were new the Salvation Army and the Christian Science. e. 1879 the Church of Christ, Scientist was founded by Mary Baker Eddy after she had suffered much ill health. i. Preached that the true practice of Christianity heals sickness. ii. Eddy s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures sold 400K copies before Eddy s death. f. The YMCA and the YWCA were founded before the Civil war and combined physical education with religious instruction. Darwin Disrupts the Churches a. On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin was a highly controversial volume which set forth the idea of evolution. b. Evolution cast serious doubt on the literal interpretation of the Bible Conservatives, or Fundamentalists, stood firmly on the Scripture and condemned the Darwinians, or Modernists. c. The most bitterly denounced skeptic was Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, who lectured widely on Some Mistakes of Moses and Why I am an Agnostic. The Lust of Learning a. By 1870, more and more states were making at least a grade-school education compulsory. This helped check the abuses of child labor. b. Public high schools were rare before the civil war. By 1900, there were six thousand high schools. c. Teacher training schools, or normal schools, expanded after the Civil War. They went from 12 in 1860 to over three hundred in 1910. d. The New Immigration brought new strength to the private Catholic parochial schools.

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e. The Chautauqua movement was launched n 1874 to educate adults. The organizers achieved success through public lectures and courses of home study. f. The illiteracy rate went from 20% to 10.7% from 1870 to 1900. Booker T. Washington and Education for Black People a. The South lagged behind in public education and African American suffered most severely; 44% of nonwhites were illiterate in 1900. b. Ex-slave Booker T. Washington was the champion of black education. He was called in 1881 to head the black normal and industrial school at Tuskegee, AL, where he began with 40 students i. His self-help approach was labeled accommodationist because it didn t challenge white supremacy. ii. He reluctantly agreed to segregation in return for the right to develop economic and educational resources of the black community. c. George Washington Carver taught and researched at the Tuskegee Institute. He boosted the southern economy by discovering new uses for the peanut, sweet potato, and soybean. d. Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois condemned Washington for objecting their race to perpetual inferiority; wanted complete equality. He demanded that the talented tenth of the black community be given full access to the mainstream of American life. i. The first black man to earn a Ph.D. at Harvard. ii. 1910 helped to found that National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The Hallowed Halls of Ivy a. By 1900 every fourth college graduate was a woman. i. Women s college like Vassar gained ground, coed schools were blossoming in the Midwest. b. Black colleges like Howard University, Hampton Institute, Atlanta University, etc. offered education for blacks. c. The Morrill Act of 1862 provided public lands to states for education. Land grant colleges became state universities. d. The Hatch Act of 1887, extending the Morrill Act, provided federal funds for the establishment of agricultural experiment stations in connection with land-grant colleges. e. New millionaires donated fortunes to educational enterprises. i. Cornell in 1865, Stanford in 1891, UChicago in 1892. ii. Johns Hopkins University (1876) was the first high-grade graduate school. The March of the Mind a. The old classical college curriculum was being replaced with demands for practical courses. The elective system permitted students to choose more courses. The system was boosted when Dr. Charles W. Eliot became president of Harvard. b. Medical schools and science after the Civil war prospered. i. Louis Pastuer and Joseph Lister ii. Mustaches became regarded as germ traps iii. Campaigns against public spitting c. William James made an impact in psychology through his numerous writings.

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i. Principles of Psychology (1890) behavioral psychology ii. The Will to Believe (1897) and Varieties of Religious Experience religion philosophy and psychology. iii. Pragmatism (1907), his most famous work, described the concept of pragmatism, which held that truth was to be tested by the practical consequences of an idea, by action rather than theories. The Appeal of the Press a. 1897 The Library of Congress was opened with the help of Andrew Carnegie s donations. b. 1885 the invention of the Linotype helped spur the production of books and newspapers. c. Sensationalism (features, human interest stories) in newspapers was gaining popularity. i. Joseph Pulitzer was a leader in the techniques of sensationalism with the NY World; yellow journalism. ii. William Randolph Hearst built a powerful chain of newspapers, beginning with the San Francisco Examiner in 1887. iii. The Associated Press was founded in the 1840s. Apostles of Reform a. Edwin L. Godkin launched the New York Nation in 1865. It was the most influential journal, and was read by high intellectuals. b. Henry George wrote Progress and Poverty. He said that the pressure of growing population on a fixed supply of land unjustifiably pushed up property values, showing unearned profits on owners of land. He supported a single 100% tax. c. Edward Bellamy published a socialistic novel Looking Backward, in which the year 2000 contained nationalized big business to serve the public interest. Postwar Writing a. Dime novels were paperbacks that usually depicted the wilds of the West. Harlan F. Halsey made a fortune by writing 650 of these novels. b. General Lewis Wallace attempted to combat Darwinian skepticism with Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1880). c. Horatio Alger wrote more than a hundred volumes of juvenile fiction that sold over 100 million copies. He said that virtue, honesty, and industry are rewarded by success, wealth, and honor. d. Walt Whitman wrote the poems O Captain! My Captain! and When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom d e. Emily Dickinson s poems were not discovered until after her death f. Sidney Lanier was most famous for The Marshes of Glynn, a poem inspired by the current clash between Darwinism and orthodox religion. Literary Landmarks a. In novel writing, the romantic sentiment of a youthful era was giving way to the crude human comedy and drama of the world. b. Kate Chopin wrote about adultery, suicide, and women s ambitions in The Awakening (1899). c. Mark Twain teamed with Charles Dudley Warner to write the Gilded Age (1873), a satire on post-Civil War politicians and speculators.

i. Twain was a journalist, humorist, satirist, and opponent of social injustice. He recaptured the limits of realism and humor in the authentic American dialect. d. Bret Harte wrote California gold rush stories, The Luck of Roaring Camp and The Outcasts of Poker Flat. e. William Dean Howells became the editor of the Atlantic Monthly. He wrote about ordinary people and social themes. A Modern Instance (1882), The Rise of Silas (1885), Hazard of New Fortunes (1890). f. Stephen Crane wrote about the underside of industrial America. Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893) was a tale about a poor prostitute driven to suicide. The Red Badge of Courage (1895) was about a Civil War recruit under fire. g. Henry James turned law into literature. He wrote of the confrontation of innocent Americans with subtle Europeans. The Bostonians (1886) was one of the first novels about the rising feminist movement. He was a master of psychological realism. h. Jack London was a famous nature writer (The Call of the Wild, 1903) who turned to depicting a possible fascistic revolution in The Iron Heel (1907). i. Frank Norris wrote The Octopus (1901) about corrupt RR owners and ranchers. A sequel, The Pit (1903) was about the Chicago wheat exchange. j. Black writers Paul Laurence Dunbar and Charles W. Chestnut embraced the use of black dialect and folklore to capture the richness of southern black culture. k. Theodore Dreiser wrote with disregard for prevailing moral standards. Sister Carrie was a narrative of a poor working girl in Chicago who has an affair and finds a career on stage. XVI. The New Morality a. 1871 Victoria Woodhull proclaimed her belief of free love. She published Woodhull and Claflin s Weekly with her sister, Tennessee Claflin. b. Anthony Comstock was a crusader of pure-minded morals. With the Comstock law, he confiscated obscene photos, abortionists pills, and other immoral material. XVII. Families and Women in the City a. From the late 19th century dates the beginning to the divorce revolution b. Birthrates dropped as the 19th century lengthened. Marriages delayed, more couples used birth control techniques. c. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a major feminist prophet, published Women and Economics (1898). In it, she called on women to abandon their dependent status and contribute to the larger life of the community through involvement in the economy. d. 1890 suffragists formed the National American Woman Suffrage Association. e. Carrie Chapman Catt was the most effective leader of women s suffrage. She focused on the desirability of giving women the vote if they were to continue to discharge their traditional duties as homemakers and mothers in the city; they needed to have a say in public health, police commissions, and school boards. f. 1869 WY was the first state to grant unrestricted suffrage to women. g. Women s organizations excluded black women. They feared that an integrated campaign would compromise their efforts to get the vote.

h. Ida B. Wells inspired black women to mount a nationwide antilynching crusade. She also helped launch the black women s club movement, which culminated with the establishment of the National Association of Colored Women in 1896. XVIII. Prohibition of Alcohol and Social Progress a. Liquor consumption had increased during Civil War days, immigrants were hostile to restrains on alcohol. b. 1869 The National Prohibition party formed. c. 1874 the Woman s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) formed. i. Francis E. Willard was its leading spirit. ii. Mentally deranged Kansas Cyclone Carrie A. Nation smashed saloon bottles and bars. d. 1893 the Anti-Saloon League was formed. e. 1919 the 18th Amendment called for national prohibition. f. 1866 the ASPCA was created. g. 1881 the American Red Cross was formed with the help of Clara Barton. XIX. Artistic Triumphs a. Many of America s finest portrait painters, like James Whistler, John Singer Sargent, and Mary Cassatt, made their living abroad. b. George Inness was America s leading landscapist. c. Thomas Eakins used realism in his paintings. d. Winslow Homer painted canvases of the ocean. e. Augustus Saint-Gaudens was America s most gifted sculptor. He made the Robert Gould Shaw memorial f. 1883 the Metropolitan Opera House of NY opened. g. Edison s phonograph allowed for reproduction of music mechanically. h. Henry H. Richardson was a famous architect who popularized a Richardsonian style of similar to that of Gothic churches. His most famous was Marshall Field Building in Chicago. i. 1893 the Columbian Exposition was held in Chicago and honored the 400th anniversary of Columbus s first voyage this raised American artistic standards and promoted city planning. XX. The Business of Amusement a. The circus emerged full-blown. Phineas T. Barnum joined with James A. Bailey in 1881. b. William F. Buffalo Bill Cody headed the Wild West shows. Annie Oakley was one of the most famous marksmen. c. A league of professional baseball players was formed in the 1870s, in 1888 an allstar team toured the world. d. Football and boxing also gained popularity. e. Croquet and bicycle riding became popular in the 1890s. f. 1891 basketball was invented by James Naismith, a YMCA instructor.