Chapter 25 – America Moves to the City

1. The Urban Frontier

a. The first skyscraper was a 10 story building in Chicago in 1885. Louis Sullivan contributed to the design with “form
follows function.”
b. The compact “walking city” gave way to metropolises where people commuted via electric trolleys and were
divided into business, industry, and residential areas.
c. Rural America couldn’t compete – had industrial jobs, electricity, indoor plumbing, telephones etc. in the city.
d. Department stores like Macy’s and Marshall Field’s catered to the middle class, mainly women. The growing
consumerism accentuated class differences.
e. Before cities, rural life produced little waste. However, city life produced lots of waste, leading people to transition
from virtuous thrift to convenient consumerism.
f. Criminals flourished in this environment as well as waste, bad hygiene and poor sanitation.
g. In the city, the differences between the rich and poor were glaringly obvious.
h. Slums became human pigsties, especially after the “dumbbell” floor plan was perfected in 1879. One conspicuous
one was called New York’s “Lung Block” because people coughed away their lives. “Flophouses” were where the
poor could pay a few cents and sleep on a fetid mattress.
i. Slum dwellers strove to free themselves and largely succeeded, but new people continually replaced them. The
wealthiest settled outside the cities in suburbs.
2. The New Immigration
a. A stream of new immigrants continued to stream in during the 1880s. The Old Immigrants were generally western
European and fit in well. The New Immigrants were from southern and eastern Europe, generally orthodox and had
no history of democracy. They preferred to get industrial jobs in cities rather than strike out on their own.
b. They stayed together in “Little Italys” etc. and people began to wonder whether they would assimilate.
3. Southern Europe Uprooted
a. Europe seemed to have no room for the immigrants. The Industrial revolution had taken jobs traditionally for
peasants. Millions drained into cities and on to America.
b. “American fever” in Europe was widespread – relatives extolled the country.
c. Profit-seeking Americans wanted Europeans to immigrant in order to sell land and have cheap labor. Steam-
powered shipping helped the stream of immigration.
d. In the 1880s, Russia attacked its Jews, sending them to America. They had experience with city life, a rarity among
immigrants. Old-stock Americans and German Jews abhorred their presence.
e. 25% of the immigrants between 1820 and 1900 were “bird of passage” that only immigrated to America to make
money then return home.
f. Those who remained in America tried to preserve their culture. Schools and social societies were established.
However, the children of immigrants generally spurned the old culture.
4. Reactions to the New Immigration
a. The federal, state, and city governments were woefully ineffective at caring for the immigrants. By default, caring
for immigrants was left to bosses like “Boss Tweed.” The bosses would trade jobs and services that eased
assimilation for support at the polls.
b. Walter Rauschenbusch, a German Baptist pastor, and Washington Gladden, a Congregationalist preacher, both
preached the “social gospel” that socialism is the logical outcome of Christianity.
c. Jane Addams established the most prominent settlement house, the Hull House, in 1889. She condemned war as well
as poverty and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.
d. The Hull House offered services to immigrants to ease assimilation into society. Other settlement houses included
Lillian Wald’s Henry Street Settlement in New York in 1893.
e. Settlement houses became the center of women’s social reform. In 1893, Hull House, along with Florence Kelly,
lobbied successfully for an Illinois antisweatshop law that protected women and prohibited child labor.
f. The vast majority of women that joined in the 1890s were single because of strict codes of behavior for wives and
mothers. White-collar jobs were generally reserved for native-born women and black women had little opportunities
beyond domestic service. Immigrant women tended to cluster in specific industries. Nevertheless, working gave
women a small measure of economic independence that they used for social excursions.
5. Narrowing the Welcome Mat
a. Bouts of antiforeignism sprang up mostly because they view the southern and eastern European immigrants as
culturally and religiously separate. The high birthrate made the nativists fear that they would be outvoted/replaced.
b. Americans blamed immigrants for the degradation of the urban environment, lowering the wages, and importing
dangerous forms of government like socialism etc.
c. The American Protective Association (APA), created in 1887, urged voting against Roman Catholic candidates.
d. Immigrants were frequently used as strike-breakers and were hard to unionize because of the language barrier.
Organized labor argued that the immigrants were depressing wages.
 e. The first restrictive law against immigrants was in 1882 and it stopped paupers, criminals and convicts from entering
the country, to be returned at the owner’s expense. The second in 1885 prohibited the importation of foreign workers
under contract, usually for substandard wages.
f. The federal laws eventually excluded the insane, polygamists, prostitutes, alcoholics, anarchists and people carrying
contagious diseases. A literacy test was not enacted until 1917 as 3 presidents vetoed it on the grounds that it was a
measure of opportunity, not intelligence.
g. In 1882, Congress officially banned the Chinese from entering America.
6. Churches Confront the Urban Challenge
a. Churches found most doctrine irrelevant in the city. Churches reflected the wealth of the parishioners. Religious
leaders came to worry about the struggle between God and the devil – people were greedier.
b. The most famous urban revivalist was Dwight Lyman Moody who preached kindness and forgiveness. He became
immensely popular in the 1870s and 1880s. The Moody Bible Institute was founded in 1889 to carry on his work.
c. By 1990, the Roman Catholics had solidified their lead as the most popular domination. Roman Catholic and Jewish
churches kept their parishioners better than Protestant denominations.
d. 1 new denomination was the Salvation Army that travelled from England and appealed to the down-and-outers.
e. The Christian Science faith founded by Mary Baker Eddy in 1879 preached that the true practice of Christianity
heals sickness.
f. YMCAs and YWCAs were established in the US before the Civil War, growing by leaps and bounds in this time
period. They combined religious instruction with physical and other kinds of instruction.
7. Darwin Disrupts the Churches
a. In 1859, Darwin published On the Origin of the Species and “survival of the fittest.” This contradicted the Bible
which described the earth as made in seven days. “Fundamentalists” stood firmly behind a literal interpretation of
the Bible while “Modernists” refused to take the Bible as history or science.
b. The battle over Darwinism created rifts in society. Eventually, liberal thinkers began to believe Darwinism was just
a grander revelation of God’s design, but the ordeal loosened many believers’ faith. Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll was
a famous skeptic of the era.
8. The Lust for Learning
a. Beginning in 1870, states were requiring compulsory grade-school education, incidentally checking child labor.
b. In the 1880s and 1890s, public high schools had spread to most states with tax-paid books.
c. Teacher-training schools called “normal schools” had spread post-Civil War. Kindergartens gained public support.
The private Catholic schools became a cornerstone of education.
d. Public schools ignored adults. The Chautauqua movement was launched in 1874, meant to rectify that.
e. Crowded cities provided better educational opportunities for students.
9. Booker T. Washington and the Education for Black People
a. Washington was charged with running a normal school in Tuskegee, Alabama. Washington taught his students
useful skills for economic security and self-respect. His approach was “accommodationist” because it stopped short
of advocating social reform. He traded that for economic and educational resources.
b. The Tuskegee Institute was an ideal place for George Washington Carver to teach and research. He became
internationally famous for boosting the southern economy with uses for peanut, sweet potato and soybean.
c. Other black leaders like Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois condemned Washington for keeping their race in manual labor. He
fought for an education at Harvard and demanded complete equality for black. He helped found the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1910.
10. The Hallowed Halls of Ivy
a. There was an upsurge of colleges, esp. the women’s and black colleges.
b. The Morrill Act of 1862 provided a grant of the public land the support of education. In return, the colleges they
turned into had to provide military training.
c. The Hatch Act of 1887 provided federal funds for agricultural experience stations with land-grant colleges.
d. Millionaire philanthropists donated generously to higher education. Among the most famous are Cornell, Leland
Stanford Junior, and the University of Chicago.
e. There was a sharp increase in professional and technical schools. Johns Hopkins followed the tradition of good
German schools and achieved greatness. People no longer needed to go abroad.
11. The March of the Mind
a. Charles W. Eliot became president of Harvard and extolled the “elective system” which allowed students to select
additional courses. New courses were demanded for the industrial environment.
b. New medical discoverers like Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister affected America in a fundamental way. Health-
related campaigns led to the extension of the lifespan.
c. William James in Principles of Psychology established the principles of behavioral psychology. His book
Pragmatism exemplified Americans as a whole. Truth should be tested with action rather than ideas.
12. The Appeal of the Press
a. Public libraries became abundant with donations from Carnegie. The Library of Congress was established in 1897.
 b. With the invention of the Linotype in 1885 spurred new newspapers to read. However, the high cost of machinery
made journalists more concerned with offending their readers.
c. Simply written news became popular with the semiliterate immigrants. Sex, scandal, and other human interest
stories were used to make people read the paper.
d. Joseph Pulitzer led the techniques of sensationalism in the New York World and his comic strips of “Yellow Kid”
gave his newspaper the name yellow journalism. William Randolph Hearst was a competitor who drew on his
mining millions to build a chain of newspapers beginning with the San Francisco Examiner in 1887.
e. Both prostituted the press in their struggle for increased circulation.
13. Apostles of Reform
a. The most influential journal was New York Nation by Edwin L. Godkin. It crusaded for civil-service reform,
honesty in government and a moderate tariff. It had a small circulation but Godkin believed it could affect more.
b. Henry George’s Progress and Poverty suggested that there be a 100% tax on windfall profits by owners of land
because this only drove up prices. The tax would redistribute wealth.
c. His single-tax ideas were rejected by the propertied classes but fundamentally changed Fabian socialism.
d. Edward Bellamy published Looking Backward in 1888. His main character fell asleep and reawakens in 2000. He
looks back, seeing that the injustices of this period melted into nationalized big business that served the public
interest. This book inspired reform movements at the end of the century.
14. Postwar Writing
a. As literacy increased, so did book reading. “Dime” novels emerged, usually describing the west. These were
generally frowned on by the older generations.
b. General Lewis Wallace wrote Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ in order to combat social Darwinism.
c. Horatio Alger wrote the first popular juvenile fiction that propagated the myth that virtue, honesty, and industry
were rewarded with success, wealth and honor.
d. Walt Whitman revised his Leaves of Grass to exclude the controversial elements. He was inspired by Lincoln’s
death to write two poems: “O Captain! My Captain!” and “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.”
e. Emily Dickinson didn’t emerge until 1886 after her death. She wrote short poems on scraps of paper.
f. Sidney Lanier of the South was a tragic figure, dying young. He was well known for “The Marshes of Gynn.”
15. Literary Landmarks
a. Writers now increasingly turned to coarse human comedy and drama of the world around them for topics.
b. Kate Chopin wrote The Awakening in 1899 about adultery, suicide and women’s ambitions.
c. Mark Twain gained fame with The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and The Innocents Abroad. Mark
Twain and Charles Dudley Warner wrote The Gilded Age, an acid satire that named the age.
d. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn were originally considered trash by the
snobby European writers. Bankruptcy later in his life led his to take to the lectern.
e. Bret Harte achieved temporary fame when he wrote stories of the Gold Rush based on his experiences in California,
including “The Luck of Roaring Camp” and “The Outcasts of Poker Flat.”
f. William Dean Howells became the editor in chief of the Atlantic Monthly. He wrote about contemporary and
controversial social themes including A Modern Instance about divorce, The Rise of Silas Lapham about the caste
systems of New York, and A Hazard of New Fortunes about the strikers and employers of the Gilded Age.
g. Stephen Crane wrote about the seamy underside of life in urban, industrial America including Maggie: A Girl of the
Streets and The Red Badge of Courage.
h. Henry James wrote predominantly about the confrontation of innocent Americans with subtle Europeans, including
novels such as Daisy Miller, The Portrait of a Lady, and The Wings of a Dove. The Bostonians was the first on the
feminist movement.
i. Portrayals of contemporary life were popular. Jack London wrote The Call of the Wild and The Iron Heel. Frank
Norris wrote The Octopus and The Pit.
j. Two black writers were Paul Laurence Dunbar (Lyrics of Lowly Life) and Charles W. Chesnutt (short stories in
Atlantic Monthly and The Conjure Women).
k. A new popular “social novelist” Theodore Dreiser wrote Sister Carrie about a poor working girl in big cities.
Carrie’s disregard for moral standards offended the publisher but it reemerged as an American classic.
16. The New Morality
a. Victoria Woodhull proclaimed her belief in free love in 1871. Together with her sister Tennessee Claflin, she
published the controversial periodical Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly. In 1872, the revealed that Henry Ward
Beecher, an influential preacher, was carrying on an affair.
b. Anthony Comstock led the resisters to these affronts. He used the “Comstock Law” of 1873 to drive out immorality.
c. These two revealed the current battle of “new morality.” This influenced the use of birth control, soaring divorce
rates, and frank discussion of sexual topics.
17. Families and Women in the City
a. Urban families were isolated from kin on the outside. Families were the only arena for companionship and some
cracked under the pressure. The urban era was also the beginning of the divorce era.
 b. Urban life also affected child birth. In rural areas, more children meant more hands in the field. In urban areas, more
children meant more mouths to feed. Marriages were delayed and more couples used birth control.
c. In 1898, Charlotte Perkins Gilman published Women and Economics which called upon women to abandon their
dependent status and get involved in the community through the economy. She advocated day-cares and pre-
prepared food.
d. In the 1890s, women formed the National American Woman Suffrage Association with pioneers like Elizabeth Cady
Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. By 1900s, Carrie Chapman Catt and others took over leadership. Catt stressed that if
women were to continue their moral duties, they needed the vote to enforce these changes.
e. Suffragists now registered gains. Local elections allowed women to vote and Wyoming first granted women the
right to vote in 1869. Other states soon followed and included laws about women’s property ownership. Women’s
organizations in the cities began to grow.
f. The National American Woman Suffrage Association didn’t allow black women to join their ranks as they were
fearful it would damage their cause. Ida B. Wells inspired the black women’s movement beginning with an anti-
lynching crusade. She also launched the black women’s club movement which led to the National Association of
Colored Women in 1896.
18. Prohibition of Alcohol and Social Progress
a. Alcohol consumption under the stresses of the Civil War had risen and foreigners were accustomed to drinking.
Temperance reform was often accused of being a middle-class assault on the working-class lifestyles.
b. The National Prohibition party, organized in 1869, polled some votes in the following elections.
c. Women formed the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in 1874. Frances E. Willard and the much less
saintly Carrie A. Nation led the organization. Nation made the movement lose credibility as she violently attacked
saloons in her one-woman’s crusade.
d. The Anti-Saloon League formed in 1893 sung catchy songs. A temporary gain in 1919 was the ratification of the
18th amendment banning liquor.
e. Other social crusaders including The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was created in
1866. The American Red Cross was formed in 1881 by Clara Barton.
19. Artistic Triumphs
a. James Whistler, an American painter, moved to England did most of his painting there, as typical of the era. John
Singer Sargent also moved to England and painted the royalty. Mary Cassatt, an exile in Paris, painted portrayals of
women and children.
b. George Inness became a famous American landscapist. Thomas Eakins was a realist, unappreciated at the time.
Winslow Homer revealed a rugged realism of America.
c. Augustus Saint-Gaudens was a gifted sculptor who erected the Robert Gould Shaw memorial.
d. America in the 1880s and 1890s was focused on bringing European music to the American audiences. However,
black folk music flourished in the South.
e. The phonograph invented by Edison contributed to spread of music in America.
f. Henry H. Richardson was an architect that settled in New England and had an enormous influence with his
“Richardsonian.” His most famous work was the Marshall Field Building in Chicago.
g. The great Columbian Exposition propagated classical architectural forms like Richardson’s.
20. The Business of Amusement
a. Americans inconsistently sought to escape democracy for aristocracy in their free time. Vaudeville, a lodge of the
time, became particularly popular when minstrel shows were performed by blacks.
b. The circus emerged full blown. Phineas T. Barnum and James A. Bailey founded the “Greatest Show on Earth.”
c. “Wild West” shows first emerged around 1883 heralded by William F. (“Buffalo Bill”) Cody. Annie Oakley was the
female rifle-shooter.
d. Baseball emerged as a national pastime. A professional league was formed in the 1870s.
e. Spectator sports became popular, especially football begun by Walter C. Camp. The Yale-Princeton game of 1893
drew a large group of fans while foreigners jeered the country.
f. Wrestling became a nationally acceptable sport in 1892 when “Gentleman Jim” Corbett wrestled John L. Sullivan,
“Boston Strong Boy.”
g. Croquet swept the nation, but it was condemned by moralists because it bared women’s ankles and promoted
flirtation.
h. Low-seated “safety” bicycles swept the nation by 1893and thousands of women used the bike.
i. Basketball was invented in 1891 by James Naismith, a YMCA instructor. It was designed to be a active indoor sport
for the winter months.
j. Urban living led to increased common popular culture.