Cover Slide

A History of Western Society

Chapter 23

Life in the Emerging Urban Society

Cover Slide

The Urban City

• Challenges of the growth of Cities – Northeast Europe was the most urbanized area

– Ignorance and Rural housing traditions were responsible for the poor conditions in the city

– Overall good news • Better wages / conditions overall

– Bad places / no infrastructure / • Poor / lack of sanitation / no government support

– Unknown causes of death / disease / health issues

"Doss House"Vladimir Egorovich Makovsky (Russian, 1846-1920) belonged to the powerful Association for Traveling Art Exhibits, whose members, called Peredvizhniks, took a socially critical stance in their paintings toward the plight of many of their fellow Russians. His painting The Doss House, 1889, depicts a street in St. Petersburg, where empty-handed people await shelter for the night.

"Doss House"

The Urban City

• Challenges of the growth of Cities – Walking cities

– Negative birth rate • Caused by pervasive poverty / no urban transportation /

no medical knowledge / overcrowding

– Steam engine / Industrial Revolution • More city –people concentration / more visible

• The most remarkable social phenomenon of the 19th century was the concentration of population

• Row houses / conditions / filth

"Life is Everywhere,“ Russia

The simple but profound joys of everyday life infuse this outstanding example of Russia's powerful realist tradition. Painted in 1888 by N. A. Yaroshenko, this representation of the mother and child and adoring men also draws on the classic theme of the infant Jesus and the holy family. (Sovfoto)

"Life is Everywhere," Russia

Public Health

• Bacterial Revolution – Edwin Chadwick - Administered the Poor

laws of 1834– As a follower of Jeremy Bentham, he believed

in science to discover causes of problems – Believed that disease and death was caused by

poverty • Too sick to work = poor • Sanitary idea = clean up urban environment to

prevent disease • Pushed for sewers / stopped cholera / became the basis of GBs public

health laws

Apartment living in Paris

This drawing shows how different social classes lived close together in European cities about 1850. Passing the middle-class family on the first floor of this Paris apartment, the economic condition of the tenants declined until one reached abject poverty in the garret. (Bibliotheque nationale de France)

Apartment living in Paris

Public Health

• Bacterial Revolution – Prevailing Miasmatic Theory

• Believed that people contract disease when they breathe in bad odors

– Observing bad drinking water led to suggestion that disease was spread through filth and not caused by it (weakened the Miasmatic Theory)

– Germ Theory • By Louis Pasteur used heat to kill off living organisms in

the fermentation process (Pasteurization)• Dr. Robert Koch developed cultures of harmful bacteria

and their life cycles / this broke everything wide open

Court for King CholeraThis 1852 drawing from Punch tells volumes about the unhealthy living conditions of the urban poor in London. In the foreground, children play with a dead rat and a woman scavenges a dung-heap. Cheap rooming houses provide shelter for the frightfully overcrowded population. (British Library)

Court for King Cholera

Public Health

• Bacterial Revolution – Germ Theory

• Changed everything / improved environment / hospitals / washing hands / surgery

• Joseph Lister – Antiseptic principle (chemical applied to open wounds would

kill all floating particles

– By 1900 death rates had gone down (especially in Cities)

Dore engraving of LondonThis engraving by the French artist Gustave Dore (1832-83, the most popular and successful French book illustrator of the mid-nineteenth century) depicts the overcrowded and unsanitary conditions in industrial London in the nineteenth century. Because municipal authorities were unable to cope with the rapid pace of urbanization, the working class was forced to live in dwellings such as these row houses, which did not have adequate sanitation or recreational facilities. (Courtesy, Dover Publications)

Dore engraving of London

Urban Planning / Transportation

• France took the lead – Provide employment / improve city

transportation no parks – Baron Haussman rebuilt Paris

• Model for urban planning / zoning laws made minority people improve their homes to help all

– Transportation • US horse drawn street cars copied • US Electric Street cars used • Massed transit helped in housing / access to

improved housing

Map: The Modernization of Paris, ca. 1850-1870

The Modernization of Paris, ca. 1850-1870Broad boulevards, large parks, and grandiose train stations transformed Paris. The cutting of the new north-south axis--known as the Boulevard Saint-Michel--was one of Haussmann's most controversial projects. It razed much of Paris's medieval core and filled the Ile de la Cite with massive government buildings.

Urban Social structure

• Life in Europe in the nineteenth century reflected considerable changes.– Social classes became more distinct.

• Husbands and wives only worked together in small retail shops.

• Higher wages improved the standard of living for many workers.

• The gap between rich and poor widened.

• There developed a coalition between the upper middle class and the aristocracy.

• Skill specialization and diverse lifestyles resulted in little unity among the members of the working class.

• White collar workers were committed to the middle class and idea of moving up

Working class homeThis charming engraving Sunday Morning, Workman's Home, Leather Lane depicts a new emphasis on emotional ties within ordinary working-class homes in 1875. Parents gave their children more love and better care.

Working class home

Middle Class Social Structure

• Was united by common aspects – Behavior / commitment to work / belief in education

/ idea of keeping servants • Ate better / spent a lot of money on food • Dinner party became favorite social occasion • Keystone of Middle Class was books / music /

travel • Shared a code of morality and behavior

– Drunkenness / gambling = Bad – Purity / fidelity = Good

Paris lit up by electricityThe electric light bulb was invented in the United States and Britain, but Paris made such extensive use of the new technology that it was nicknamed the "City of Lights." To mark the Paris Exposition of 1900, the Eiffel Tower and all the surrounding buildings were illuminated with strings of light bulbs while powerful spotlights swept the sky. (Civica Raccolta delle Stampe Achille Bertarelli, Milanoi)

Paris lit up by electricity

Working Class Social Structure

• 80% were working class • Highly skilled workers became the Labor

Aristocracy– Declined due to mass production / technology – Defended positions – Developed their code of morality and behavior

• Again drunkenness / gambling = Bad • Again purity / fidelity = Good

• Not unified but divided –only thing in common was poor wages

• Working class leisure included – Drinking / Sports / Music hall programs / Gambling.

School for servants

Although domestic service was poorly paid, there was always plenty of competition for the available jobs. As this photo shows, schools sprang up to teach young women the manners and the household skills that employers in the "servant-keeping classes" demanded.

School for servants

Working Class Social Structure

Aristocracy

Middle Classes•Upper •Middle •Lower

Working Classes• Highly Skilled: Labor Aristocracy• Semi-skilled • Unskilled

The Family

• Industrialization and increased urbanization influenced ideas about family matters.– Both premarital sex and illegitimacy increased.

– Marriage was now the result of romantic love not economic necessity.

– Family life was strengthened.

– Church attendance declined because • Religion was a part of the elite

• Not enough churches in the city

• Decline in religious beliefs

• The Growth of Secularism

Perry, A Bill-poster's FantasyThis illustration by John Perry, entitled A Bill-poster's Fantasy (1855), explores the endless diversity of big-city entertainment.

Perry, A Bill-poster's Fantasy

The Family

• Prostitution – My Secret Life written about sex / revealed the dark

side of sex and class in the urban world • Showed many classes looked at marriage as money /

privilege and got sex elsewhere

• Kinship – Was strong / used / helped families

• Women became the manager of the household

Gender and Women

• The status of women changed during the nineteenth century.– Improved economics led to expectations that married

women would not work outside the home. – The division of labor became more defined by gender

(Separate Spheres).– Economic inferiority led some women to organize for

equality and women’s rights.– Inspired by Marxist and socialist ideas, some women

equated women’s rights with the proletarian revolution. (Many followed Mary Wollstonecraft)

• Socialist women called for the liberation of working-class women through revolution.

• Women’s control and influence in the home increased.

Urban growth, ViennaThis 1873 chromolithograph by G. Veith gives a panoramic view of the Ringstrasse, a broad and handsome boulevard that had replaced the old ramparts of Vienna after they were pulled down in 1857. Within the Ring--which was lined with public buildings--lay the old city, clustered round the cathedral of St. Stephen.

Urban growth, Vienna

Child Rearing

• Attitudes toward children also changed during this period.– Emotional ties between mothers and infants deepened.

• There was more breast-feeding and less swaddling and abandonment of babies.

• The birthrate declined, so each child became more important.

– Families became more intimate and protective.• Many children suffered the effects of excessive parental concern.

– Children went to work earlier and as a result were independent earlier than before

– Sigmund Freud • Psycho-analysis and unconscious emotional needs

Scientific thought and technology

• Advances in scientific thought and technology were significant during this period.– Scientific knowledge expanded rapidly– The triumph of science improved the lives of many people.– Thermodynamics –relationship between heat and mechanical

energy • Law of conservation of energy – says that

– Energy can be converted but not created or destroyed

• Theoretical discoveries resulted in practical benefits, as in chemistry and electricity.

• Dmitri Mendeleev / periodic laws and table • Organic Chemistry –compounds containing carbon • Michael Faraday / electromagnetism –led to dynamo /motor • Opened up devices such as telegraph /phone/ light / streetcar • Scientific achievements gave science considerable prestige.


• New social sciences were used to gather data and scientifically test theories.

• Attempt to use science to explain / solve society issues – Auguste Comte – systems builder (Positivism)

• System of positive Philosophy (Stages of conceiving ideas)

• Scientific method (Positivist method) used to discover the eternal laws of human relations (took religion explanations out / science became religion (Marx and Lenin bought into)


• Jean Lamarck– Biology evolution –all forms of life arise through

process of continual adjustment to the environment – Thought these evolutionary traits were inherited

• Darwin believed that all life had evolved gradually from a common origin.– Greatest of all evolutionary thinkers – Described how bio evolution may have occurred – Origins of the Species / Natural Selection – Reinforced Marx and Comte that science was God

• Social Darwinists – such as Herbert Spencer applied Darwin’s ideas to

human affairs.

Nast satirizing Darwin's ideasCharles Darwin (1809-1882) was the most influential of all nineteenth-century evolutionary thinkers. The heated controversies over his theory of evolution spawned innumerable jokes and cartoons. This cartoon, by Darwin's contemporary Thomas Nast, depicts Darwin with the president of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Nast satirizing Darwin's ideas

Realism

• The Realist Movement in literature reflected the ethos of European society.– This was an expression of writers who sought to

depict life as it really was.• Realism stressed the hereditary and environmental

determinants of human behavior.• Realists recorded and observed / let the facts speak for

themselves

– Realist writers focused on middle class and working class lives.

• The realists believed that human actions were caused by unalterable natural laws.

Urban landscape, MadridThis wistful painting of a square in Madrid on a rainy day, by Enrique Martinez Cubella y Ruiz (1874-1917), includes a revealing commentary on public transportation. Coachmen wait atop their expensive hackney cabs for a wealthy clientele, while modern electric streetcars that carry the masses converge on the square from all directions.

Urban landscape, Madrid

Realism

• Began in France – Honore de Balzac

• Human Comedy –books that portrayed real life as brutral / amoral / grasping (A Darwinian society)

– Emile Zola• Articulated realism

• Famous for seamy animalistic view of working class life

– Theodore Dreiser (USA) • Kept Realism alive in US after it faded in Europe

• Published Sister Carrie about a good farm girl who goes wrong in Chicago

Map: Cities Reaching Population Level of 100,000 by 1750, 1800, and 1850

Cities Reaching Population Level of 100,000 by 1750, 1800, and 1850In 1750 the largest cities owed their existence to factors other than industry, but thereafter the development of industry often determined the growth of cities. England, the leading industrial nation, contained many of the largest cities.

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Cover Slide