America Moves to the City, 1865-1900

The Urban Frontier

• From 1870 to 1900, the American population doubled and the population in the cities tripled.

• Department stores like Macy’s (New York) and Marshall Field’s (Chicago) provided urban working class jobs and also attracted urban middle-class shoppers.

• To escape the city, the Wealthy city dwellers fled to the suburbs.

The New Immigration

• Until the 1880’s, most of the immigrants had come from the British Isles and Western Europe. Most were quite literate.

• While the southeastern Europeans accounted for only 19 percent of immigrants to the U.S. in 1880. By the early 1900s, they were over 60 percent.

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• Those immigrants who came after 1880 were culturally different from previous immigrants.

• Poland and Italy were two of the countries where the “new immigrants” came from.

• Among the factors driving millions of European peasants from their homeland to America were American food imports and religious persecution.

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• Dumbbell tenement were high-rise urban buildings that provided barracks-like housing for urban slum dwellers.

• The “new immigrant” is referred to those who arrived after 1880 and came primarily from southern and eastern Europe.

• “Birds of Passage” were immigrants who came to America to earn money for a time and then return to their native land.

The Italians

• Most Italian immigrants to the U.S. between 1880 and 1920 came to escape the poverty and slow modernization of southern Italy.

Southern Europe Uprooted

• Many immigrants tried very hard to retain their own culture and customs.

• However, the children of the immigrants sometimes rejected this Old World culture and plunged completely into American life.

Reactions to the New Immigration

• Most new immigrants tried to preserve their Old Country culture in America.

• Two religious groups that grew because of new immigration were the Jews and Roman Catholics.

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• According to the social gospel, the lessons of Christianity should be applied to solve the problems of manifest in slums and factories.

• It is applying their religious beliefs to new social problems.

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• Jane Addams founded the Hull House (Chicago) in 1889 to teach children and adults the skills and knowledge that they would need to survive and succeed in America.

• Settlement houses demonstrated that the cities offered new challenges and opportunities for women.

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• The early settlement house workers, such as Jane Addams and Florence Kelley, helped to blaze the professional trail for social workers.

• Settlement houses offered services such as child care, instruction in English, and cultural activities.

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• The city offered the greatest opportunities for women in the period 1865-1900.

• In the 1890s, positions as secretaries, department store clerks, and telephone operators were largely reserved for native-born women.

Narrowing the Welcome Mat

• Nativists were U.S. citizens that opposed immigration.

• Trade unionists hated immigrants for their willingness to work for super low wages and for bringing in dangerous doctrines like socialism and communism to the U.S.

• Labor unions favored immigration restriction because most immigrants were used as strikebreakers, willing to work for low wages, or difficult to unionize.

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• The American Protective Association was a nativist organization that attacked “New Immigrants” and Roman Catholicism in the 1880s and 1890s.

• The APA supported immigration restrictions.

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• In 1882, Congress passed the first restrictive law against immigration.

• The one immigrant group that was totally banned from America after 1882 nativist restrictions was the Chinese.

• Literacy tests for immigrants were proposed, but resisted until they finally passed in 1917.

• In 1886, the Statue of Liberty arrived from France.

Churches Confront the Urban Challenge

• Roman Catholicism was the religious denomination that responded most favorably to the New Immigration.

• The Roman Catholic Church became the largest American religious group because of immigration.

• The YMCA and YWCA which was created before the Civil War grew by leaps and bounds.

Darwin Disrupts the Churches

• Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution cast serious doubt on a literal interpretation of the Bible.

• Darwin’s biological ideas caused turmoil in the traditional American Protestant Religion.

• Religious Modernists found ways to reconcile Christianity and Darwinism.

The Lust for Learning

• Americans began to support a free public education system because they accepted the idea that a free government cannot function without educated citizens.

• The post-Civil War era witnessed an increase in compulsory school-attendance laws.

Booker T. Washington and Education for Black People

• Booker T. Washington believed that the key to political and civil rights for African Americans was economic independence.

• The Tuskegee Institute was a black educational institution that was founded by Washington to provide training in agriculture and crafts.

continued• Unlike Booker T.

Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois advocated integration and social equality for blacks.

• He believed that a “talented tenth” of American blacks should lead the race to full social and political equality with whites.

• He demanded complete equality for African Americans.

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• Du Bois was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

• Many of Du Bois’s differences with Washington reflect the contrasting life experiences of southern and northern blacks.

The Hallowed Halls of Ivy

• The Morrill Act of 1862 granted public lands to states to support higher education.

• Many American colleges and universities benefited from federal “land-grant” assistance and private philanthropy.

• The following schools were academic institutions for African Americans at the turn of the century: Howard University, Hampton University, and Atlanta University.

The March of the Mind

• Medical school and medical science prospered after the Civil War.

• The philosophy of pragmatism maintains that the practical application of an idea is important.

The Appeal of the Press

• David Copperfield and Ivanhoe were bestsellers in the 1880s.

• The Linotype was invented in 1885.

• The country was hungry for news and American newspapers became sensationalist.

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• Joseph Pulitzer was a leader in the techniques of sensationalism in St. Louis and especially with the New York World.

• Pulitzer used a colored comic strip featuring the “Yellow Kid.”

• Randolph Hearst was a competitor that began the San Francisco Examiner in 1887.

Apostles of Reform

• Henry George was a controversial reformer whose book Progress and Poverty advocated solving problems of economic inequality by a tax on land.

• He found the root of social inequalities in the behavior of landowners who provided the space for the production of goods.

• Edward Bellamy was another journalist reformer who wrote Looking Backward.

Postwar Writing

• General Lewis Wallace’s book Ben Hur defended Christianity against Darwinism.

• Lewis supported the Holy Scriptures and was against the beliefs of Charles Darwin.

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• Horatio Alger was a popular writer who wrote about success and honor as the products of honesty and hard work.

• Walt Whitman was a poet who wrote two moving poems after the Civil War. “O Captain! O Captain!” and “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”

Literary Landmarks

• Mark Twain was a Midwestern-born writer and lecturer who created a new style of American literature based on social realism and humor.

• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) are two American masterpieces.

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• William Dean Howells wrote about contemporary social problems like divorce, labor-strikes, and socialism.

• Stephen Crane wrote The Red Badge of Courage about a Civil War recruit.

• Jack London wrote The Call of the Wild in 1903.

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• Two black writers, Paul Laurence Dunbar and Charles W. Chesnutt, brought another kind of realism to late-nineteenth-century literature.

The New Morality

• Anthony Comstock waged a lifelong war on the “immoral.”

• The Comstock Law was intended to advance the cause of sexual purity.

• The “new morality” was reflected in soaring divorce rates, the spreading practice of birth control, and increasingly frank discussion of sexual topics.

Families and Women in the City

• In the late nineteenth century, family size gradually declined.

• One of the most important factors leading to an increased divorce rate was the stresses of urban life.

• Late nineteenth century feminists advocated an early version of day care centers.

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• National American Woman Suffrage Association was organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in 1890.

• The association limited its membership to whites only.

members of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, photographed in 1913

(Source: Library of Congress)

Continued• Carrie Chapman Catt was a

leader of the new generation of women activists.

• Wyoming Territory was the first to offer women the right to vote in 1869.

• Ida B. Wells rallied toward better treatment of Blacks as well as formed the National Association of Colored Women in 1896.

Prohibition of Alcohol and Social Progress

• National Prohibition Party formed in 1869 because they were concerned over the popularity and dangers of alcohol.

• Women’s Christian Temperance Union rallied against alcohol.

• 18th Amendment – deals with prohibition.

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• The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was formed in 1866 to discourage the mistreatment of livestock.

• The American Red Cross was formed by Clara Barton in 1881.

Artistic Triumphs

• Art was suppressed during the early and mid 1800s, so many artist had to study in Europe.

• Henry H. Richardson popularized a distinctive, ornamental style of design called Richardsonian (buildings).

• The Marshall Field Building in Chicago was his most famous building.

The Business of Amusement

• Phineas T. Barnum and James A. Bailey teamed in 1881 to stage the “Greatest Show on Earth” (now called the Ringling Bros. And Barnum and Bailey Circus).

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• Wild West shows like those of “Buffalo Bill” Cody and Annie Oakley became popular.

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• Many Americans spent their leisure playing organized sports.

• The first professional baseball team, which began playing ball in 1869, was the Cincinnati Red Stockings.

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• Football which is similar to soccer and the British game of rugby, developed during the late 1800s on the college campuses of upper class New England schools.

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• James Naismith invented the game of basketball in 1891.

• Basketball was the one of the few sports during the late 1800s in which women’s participation was encouraged.

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• Wrestling also became popular and gained respect.

• The various racial and ethnic groups in large cities, through living in different neighborhoods, shared the following activities: shopping, reading and playing.