8 THE AGE OF THE CITY MQ] Focus Historical Thinking Patterns of Continuity and Change Over Time Arayze the crtntes and changes in immiraon pater by te cenury er the Ae response, Causation Aralyze the reasons fer the growth of urban problems are the success of manicial governments in desing with those problems, Contextualization Explain how the he of the cy influenced both ‘ternal and extemal migration pater, lang to urbarzation. Contextualization Explain how urban planners proposed to Pysicaly tor the eniroemertto improve the quay fo for urban resides Causation To what degree ad in what ways dd improvements in urban transpo nirfluence the setleent patterns ofthe rich and poor? Argumentation Ansyze the impact of soil ericism in art and Irerture on improving We fo the urban por: Contextualization | what vays did incoasad leisure ime uence rmoverert toward mass consumption? Key Concept Correlations ‘oatyae te ways the historcaldovoprts yo learn abu in is hepa co 10 ane or more ofthese hay concepts in AP US. Metory coursework GA..C As the price of many goods decreased, workers! real wages i creased, proving new access toa variety of goods a services; mery Americans’ scndards of Iving improved ile the gop between rch and poor grew 6.2.1.8 As cies became areas of ecotomic gronth eaurng new fact ries and businesses they atracted immigrants from Asia and irom south fem and eastern Europe. as wl as Arcan American migrants within and cut af the South Mary migrants moved to escape povesy recjous porse- cation, edited opportunities for soci mebil in thir Pome countries or regions. 6.2.1.8 Urban neighborhoods based on pavcur ebisties, races, and classes provided new culural opportunities for cky dwells 6.2.1.6 Increasing pubic debates over essiniaton and Americarzsion accompanied the growth of iteratonal migration, Mary iigrartsregot sted compromises betweon the cutures they brought ad the culture they found in the United States 6.2.LD In an urban atmosphere whore the acess to power was une aqualy datbuted, potcal machines thrived. part by providing immigrants andthe poor with social services. SNOW IN NEW YORK, 1902 Reber Herr Cad (1868-1829) wae an of ambar of painters ta, nthe early tert canury, created what became known as the "Ashea’ schoo of panting ‘These arte pines scenes ofthe urban underwerlé—tenemens, saloon, boxing ings. Cate Noa Eley of et Washing 6.2.LE Corporations’ need for managers and for male end feral ch workers as wel es increased acces to edcational ston fostered the growth of a datnetve mide class. A growing amcurt of leisure time also hoped expand consumer culture 6.34.C Arumrber of ertsts and crits incuding agrariens utopian, socal ists and advocates ofthe Social Gospel championed aera visions forthe conan and US, socaty Thematic Learning Objectives WXTA10, 20, 30; NAT40; MIG-0, 20; CUL10, 20,30; POL20IQ] CONNECTING CONCEPTS _ CHAPTER 18 discusses the urbanization of America, It focuses on the reasons for migration to cities ‘and the consequences of a rapidly expanding population, with governmental strutures incapable of dealing with the problems that growth created. Much attention is given to the sources of population growth and of rising natvist sentiment against rapidly increasing immigration, As a result of improved urban transportation, housing patterns became segregated according to class, race, and ethnicity. Cites faced groning probloms oferimo ire, cisease, and environmental degradation. Political machines and “boss rule" tended to take a benevolent turn toward the urban poor in return for politcal support. Chapter 18 also discusses the increase in leisure time and the rise of mass consumption. Finally, art and literature moved toward realistic depictions of urban if, which spurred reform eforts. As you read evaluate the following ideas: + Urban centers grew both in size and number during the Gilded Age. + The increasing efficiency of American industry made it a worldwide economic force + Social Darwinism was used to justify both the economic inequalities of the Gilded Age and the conspicuous ‘consumption ofthe upper class. + Improvements in urban transportation led to class cil and ethic segregeion in urban housing patterns. + Immigrants faced social prejudice and were conflicted betwoen Americanizing and maintaining their cultural ident + Political machines provided support services forthe poor in exchange for politcal suppor + Critics of the excesses ofthe capitalistic system emerged, offering alternatives to unfettered corporate power through government regulation and the Socal Gospel. THE URBANIZATION OF AMERICA ‘The great migration from the countryside to the city was not unique to the United States. It was ‘occurring simultaneously throughout much of the Western world in response to industrialization and the factory system, America, a society with lttle experience of great cities, found urbanization both jaring and alluring Tue Lure oF tHE City “We cannot all live in cities,” the journalist Horace Greeley wrote shortly after the Civil War, “yet nearly all seem determined to do so." The urban population of America increased sevenfold in the half century after the Civil War. And in 1920, the census revealed that for the first time, a majority of the American people lived in *urban’” areas- communities of 2,500 people or more, New York City and its environs grew from 1 million in 1860 to over 3 million in 1900, Chicago had 100,000 residents in 1860 and ‘more than 2 million in 1900. Cities were experiencing similar growth in all areas of the country. Natural increase accounted for only a small part of the urban growth. In fact, urban families experienced a high rate of infant mortality, a declining fertility rate, and a high death rate from disease, Without immigration, cities would have grown slowly, if at all. The city attracted people from the countryside because it offered conveniences, entertainments, and cultural experiences ‘unavailable in rural communities. Cities gave women the opportunity to act in ways that in smaller communities would have been seen to violate “propriety." They gave gay imen and lesbian ‘women space in which to build a culture (even if still a mostly hidden one) and experiment sex: ually at least partly insulated from the hostile gaze of others. But most of all, cities attracted people because they offered more and better paying jobs than were available In rural America or in the foreign economies many immigrants were fleeing. People moved to cities, 00, because new forms of transportation made it easier for them to get there. Railroads made simple, quick, and inexpensive what once was a daunting joumey from parts Ravip URBAN GRrowTH488. CHAPTER 18 Seed areas irae that? Desons pe suet mie) HB est ors Spry sete a a Phar te gon eo PACIFIC OCEAN Pals Fung Path TRAN POPUCATION CENTERS = #.000,000-5,000000, 9 50000-1.000.000 + 100,000-500,000 + Unde 100.000 THE UNITED STATES IN 1800 Ths mp tbsihsral te enrmausinrec ithe ars rr populaon inte canny. The ipa Arr o100, on 9,18 in Cat reves aon mith ery en sia cis awh plone ley og the ern ena By 1900, much gor re of he Ud Sts had consist rae ates, ‘nd many mare oho ars nt and tex ning re tes (Chg, Now York, rd Psp wih pont orr a illon anda ariel amber ler es ‘nth 100000 or mare page, lo lng wee tama of and ah Wet with ry sail rr elm Do cial ard gosrphy a expan the arable pater oslo? of the American countryside to nearby cities. The develop tment of lage, steam-powered ocean liners created a highly competitive shipping industry allowing Europeans and Asians tw cross the oceans ro America muuch more cheaply and quickly than they had in the past. Micrations ‘As a result of urbanization, the late nineteenth century became an age of unprecedented geographic mobility, as Americans left the declining agricultural regions of the East at a dramatic rate. Some who left were moving to the newly developing farmlands of the West. Bur many were moving to the cities of the East and the Midwest. GeocRapHic ‘Mosiuiry Among those leaving rural America for industrial cities in the late nineteenth century were young rural women, for whom opportunities in the farm economy were limited. AS farms grew larger, more commercial, and more mechanized. they became increasingly male preserves; and since much of the workforce on many farms consisted of unskilled and often transient workers, there were fewer family units than before. Farm women had once been essential for making clothes and other household goods, but those goods were row available in stores or through catalogs. Hundreds of thousands of women moved to the cities, therefore, in search of work and community. Southern blacks were also beginning what would be # nearly century-long exodus from the countryside into the cit fes, Their withdrawal was 2 testament to the poverty, debtPopulation (millions) 76.0 1860 1 "970 Tee 1869 108 E60 1609 00 POPULATION GROWTH, 1860-1900 ‘Ths chariots th rail ineeasein th e's paplonin te los ory yrs ot nee cry. s you can seh Anaican romion more thn dealin ae years. * What ware the principal factors Behind ths substantia population growth? (Cerepulaon increase (Caran igmton ‘Thousands of persons B14 7B 639 639 652 651 sot sa7 519 iil THE AGE OF THE CITY + 489 violence, and oppression African Americans encountered in the latenineteenth-century rural South. The opportunities they found in cities were limited. Factory jobs for blacks were tare, and professional opportunities almost nonexistent. Urban blacks tended to work as cooks, janitors, domestic servants, and in other low-paying service occupations. Because many stich jobs were considered women's work, black women often ‘outnumbered black men in the cities. By the end of the nineteenth century, chere were substan: tial African American communities (10.000 people or more) {in over thirty cities-many of them in the ArRIEAN south but some (New York City, chicago, Commustres Washington, D.C, Baltimote) in the North ~e or in border states. Much more substantial ‘African American migration would come during World War | and after; but the black communities established in the late rnineteenth century paved the way for the great population ‘movements of the future. ‘The most important source of urban population growth in, the late nineveenth century, however, was the arrival of great ‘numbers of new immigrants from abroad: 10 million between 1860 and 1890, 18 million more in the three decades after that. Some came from Canada, Mexico, Latin America, and- particularly on the West Coast-China and Japan. But by far the {reatest number came from Europe. After 1880, the flow of new arrivals began for the first time to include large numbers ‘of people from southern and eastern Europe: Italians, Greeks, Slavs, Slovaks, Russian Jews, Armenians, and others. By the 1890s, more than half ofall immigrants came from these new regions, as opposed to less than 2 percent in the 1860s. IMMIGRATION'S CONTRIBUTION TO POPULATION ‘GROWTH, 1860-1920 Inngraon most Fam Eros mas epnsbe or abou 20 parca rao’ ppt rom in ‘he einer and ety lets nari 1861 1866- 1871- 1876 1881~ 1886 1891- 1896 1901~ 1906- 1911- 1916— 1865 1870 1875 1680 1885 1890 1895 1900 1005 1910 1915 1920 YearWIM Buea Cel GLOBAL MIGRATIONS wor. lerge waves of iigration tht transformed American sac nth ate ninetoerth THE, ser teith ceres werent cue oth Untd Stes. Tey wre part oF a were movement of peoples that affected every coninen These epic migrations were the product of two related forces: population gronth and industrisization The popuaion of Europe grew faster inthe second hao the rnetoeth century than ithad ever aroun befoe—alnostdouting between 1850 and the begining of World War I. The poplaon growth was a resut of growing economies able fo support more people ad productive agriculture that helped end debasing fanines. But the rapid growth nevertheless strained the resources of mary parts of Europe and affected in pariclr, rural people, who were now too numerous to ve off he avalable land. Mary decided to move to ther parts ofthe word, where land was more ple tu or jobs were mere aval -Athe same tine, rdustriazaton drew ions of peopl rom rural reas et cies—semetines cies in ther own counres, but often industrial cies in ther, more econarcaly advanced nations From 1800 tothe start of World War | 50 millon Europeans migrated to new lands overseas— peopl rom anos l area of Europe, btn the ater years ofthe century (when migration reached its peak, most from poor rural areas in southern and easern Europe ty, Russia, and Polend were among the biggest sources of laterineteentroentuy migrants. Almost twoshicds ofthese immigrans came to the United States. But nearly 20 rion Europeans migrated to other lands, to Cana, Australia, Now Zedand South Arica, Argentina. and other pets of South America, Mery of these migrants moved to vast areas of open land in these counties and established themselves as farmers. Mary others sted nthe industrial cis that were growing wp in al hese regions It was not only Europeans who were transpaing thersehes in these years, Vast rombers of rigranis—sualy poor, desperate people—lit Asia, Arca, andthe Pacic islands in search of beter lives. Mest ofthe couldnt afford the journey abroad on ther ann. They moved instead as inden tured servants, agresing toa term af servitude in ther new ld in exchange for fod, ster, snd Fx SOURIOMEIV cay ks CANADIAN PACIFIC SPECIAL FARMS o*VIRGIN SOIL NEAR. THE RAILWAY ase 1OSERO0. AUNTS GRRCHES.. ‘ARE PRENRED EA TARAOR BRITISH EARNERS" YODERATE CAPA In earlier stages of immigration, most new immigrants from Europe (with the exception ofthe Irish) were atleast modestly prosperous and educated. Germans and Scandinavians in par ticular had headed west on their arrival, either to farm or to work as businessmen, merchants, professionals, or skilled laborers in midwestem cities such as St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Milwaukee. Most of the new immigrants ofthe late nineteenth century, however, lacked the capital to buy farmland and lacked the education to establish themselves in professions. So, like the poor Irish immigrants before the Civil War, they set tled overwhelmingly in industrial cities, where most of them took unskilled jobs. Tae Erunic City By 1890, the population of some major urban areas con- sisted of a majority of foreign-born immigrants and their children: 87 percent of the population of Chicago, 80 per- cent in New York City, 84 percent in Milwaukee and Detroit. (London, the largest industrial city in Europe, by contrast, had @ population that was 94 percent native) New York had more Irish than Dublin and more Germans 490 than Hamburg. Chicago eventually had more Poles than Warsaw. Equally striking was the diversity of the new immigrant populations. n ather countries experiencing heavy immigration ‘Tue Divease this period, most ofthe new arrivals were Memeeas, coming from one or two sources: Argentina, civ for example, was experiencing great migra: tons t00, but almost everyone was coming from Italy and Spain, In the United States, however, no single national group dominated. In the last four decades of the nine teenth century, substantial groups arrived from Italy, Germany, Scandinavia, Austria, Hungary, Russia, Great Britain, Ireland, Poland, Greece, Canad, Japan, China, Holland, Mexico, and many other nations. In some towns, a dozen different ethnie groups found themselves livin in close proximity. Most of the new immigrants were rural people, and theit adjustment to city life was often painful. To help ease the tram sition, many national groups formed close-knit ethnic comin nities within the cities Italian, Polish, Jewish, Slavic, Chinese: French-Canadian, Mexican, and other neighborhoods (ofte” called "immigrant ghettos’) that attempted to recreate in the New World many of the features of the Old.transportation. Recruters of indentured servants fanned out across China, Japan, areas of rca andthe Pacific islends, and, above all Inda. French and Beish recraters brought hundreds of thousands of Indan migrants to work n plantations in ther onn Asian and Africen calories. Chinese laborers were recruited to work on plantation in Cuba and Hewat mines in Maya, Per, Sout Afric, ond Austra: ad ralrod projects in Caneda, Peru, and the United States. African inderured servants moved in large numbers tothe Caribean, and Pacfic landers tended to move to other islands oro Austr aia “The migration of European peoples o new lands wes largely volun tary. Most migrants moved to the Urited States, where indentured servitude was legal. Nor-European migration brought relatively small rumbers of people tothe United States, but together, these various forms of migration produced one of he greatest population movernents inthe history of the world and transformed not ut the United States, tut much of the Jobe as wel. UNDERSTAND, ANALYZE, AND EVALUATE 44 What wore some of the negative factors that motivated European and non- Europeans to leave their home countries for the United Sttes? What were some ofthe postive factors inthe United Stats thet attracted ther? 2. Why di European erpires encourage and factate the migration of Europeans and nom Europeans to new lands? 3, Why did more Europeans than non Europeans migrate to the United Sttes? Some ethnie neighborhoods consisted of people who had migrated to America from the same province, town, or vil- lage. Even when the population was more diverse, how: ever, the Immigrant neighborhoods offered newcomers much that was familiar. They could find newspapers and theaters in their native languages, stores selling their native foods, churches or synagogues, and fra- BENEETTS OF ternal organizations that provided links Communres with their national pasts. Many immt SN grants also maintained close ties with their native countries. They stayed in touch with relatives Who had remained behind, Some (perhaps as many as a third in the early years) returned to Europe or Asia or Mexico after a short time; others helped bring the rest of| {hele families to America “The cultural cohesiveness ofthe ethnic communities clearly eased the pain of separation from the immigrants’ native lands ‘What role it played in helping immigrants become absorbed into the econome Ife of America is a more dificult question ‘© answer. It is clear that some ethnic groups (Jews and Germans in particular) advanced economically more rapidly {han others (for example, the inst). One explanation i that, by THE AGE OF THE CITY + 491 (ther Northwestern Eastem European Sey, 4% ‘SOURCES OF IMMIGRATION FROM EUROPE, 1860-1900 Thi pie chet shove the auc of European iran latent cer The ret unter lino cone come ram rational sores tal Gomany- Sera ‘atte grins tint ry tench any wad eae mail el iran om seats and entra Erp irre sd vl hr. ron tombe seares~Ni, Sth nd Cora Arti ar ees se cart rng Sis prod * Wy weuld these nener sources of European and ober Kinds of migration erate controversy among older stock Americans? hhuddling together in ethnic neighborhoods, immigrant groups tended to reinforce the cultural values of their previous soct- cries. When those values were particularly well suited to eco. nomic advancement in an industrial soclety-as was, for example, the high value Jews placed on education-ethnic identification may have helped members ofa group to improve their Jots. When other values predominated-maintaining com- munity solidarity, sustaining family ties, preserving order~ progress could be less rapid. ASSIMILATION Despite the substantial differences among the various immi grant communities, virwally all groups ofthe foreign-born had certain things tn common. Most immigrants, of course, shared the experience of living in cities (and of adapting fom a rural past to an urban present). Most were young; the majority of newcomers were between fifteen and forty-five years old. And in virtually all communities of foreign-born tmmigrants, the strength of ethnic ties had to compete against another power- ful force: the desire for assimilation. ‘Many of the new arrivals from abroad had come to America ‘with romantic visions of the New World. And however disilu- sioning they might find their first con- AMERICANIZATION, act with the United States, they usually492 . CHAPTER 18 Predominant Eni Group ems mt rma ne = rh a bs et Sendnain toa = Macs Sa Gaara a dlrs ETHNIC AND CLASS SEGREGATION IN MILWAUKEE, 1950-1690 Ths map teste cmp pen feet i Mee «pen hal sin my ye ‘yp fy indi ies int mse ating. Teo rated phan insane mes ate om aben—shape he nda yn ‘hee yours By 1890, fet an sean eeraton amir ade p64 perc the hy eatin Nat the competed dn eee rope nce ihr hreashouthe yd ate nthe wy in bch ill cla peel oscil ‘aver ideas peop hich inde ary orl of Geran eset wes aes hd ben isthe Unie Sate generis led temas om the ares in ich he wring ches ed * What were sone of the advantages and deadvanages of tis tis citring tothe inmigrants who lived in these communities? retained the dream of becoming true “Americans” Even some first generation immigrants worked hard to rid themselves of all vestiges of their old cultures, to become thoroughly Americanized, Second-generation immigrants were even more likely to attempt to break with the old ways, to try to assimi- late completely into what they considered the real American culture. Some even looked with contempt on parents and grandparents who continued to preserve traditional ethnic hhabies and values. ‘The urge to assimilate put a particular strain on relations between men and wotnen in immigrant communities. Many of the foreign-bom came from cultures in which women were ‘more subordinate to men, and more fully lodged within the family, chan most women in the United States. In some immi- ‘grant cultures, parents expected to arrange their children’s ‘marriages and to control almost every ‘moment of their daughters’ lives unt ‘marriage. But out of either choice or eco. hhomic necessity, many innmigrant women (and even more of the American-born daughters of immigrants) began working outside che home and developing friendships, interests, and attachments outside the family. The result was not the co. lapse of the family-centered cultures of immigrant communi, ‘es, those cultures proved remarkably durable. But there were adjustments to the new and more fluid life of the American city, and often considerable tension in the process Assimilation was not entirely a matter of choice. Native bom Americans encouraged it, both deliberately and inadver. tently, in countless ways, Public schools taught children in English, and employers often insisted that workers speak English on the job. Although there were merchants in imam grant communities who sold ethnically distinctive foods and clothing, most stores by necessity sold mainly American prod. ucts, forcing immigrants to adapt their diets, wardrobes, and lifestyles to American norms. Church leaders were often native-born Americans or assimilated immigrants who encour. aged theit parishioners to adopt American ways. Some even reformed their theology and liturgy to make it more compati ble with the norms of che new country. Reform judaism, imported from Germany to the United States in the mid- nineteenth cencury, was an effort by American Jewish leaders (@s it had been among German leaders) to make their faith less “foreign? to the dominant culture of a largely Christian nation CHANGING Gener Rotes ExcLusion ‘The arrival of so many new immigrants, and the way many of them clung to old ways and created culturally distinctive ‘communities, provoked fear and resentment among some native-born Americans, just a earlier atv als had done. Some people reacted against the immigrants out of generalized fears and prejudices, seeing J their “foreignness” the source of all the disorder and corrup tion of the urban world, “These people,” a Chicago newspaper wrote shortly after the Haymarket bombing, referring to stk ing immigrant workers, are not American, but the very scum and offal of Europe ... Europe's human and inhuman rubbish* Native-born Americans on the West Coast had a similar cub tural aversion to Mexican, Chinese, and Japanese immigrants. Other native laborers were often incensed by the willingness ofthe immigrants to accept lower wages and to take over the jobs of strikers. ‘The rising nativism provoked political responses, In. 1887: Henry Bowers, selFeducated lawyer obsessed with a hatred of Catholics and foreigners, founded. the American Protective Association, 2 group committed to stopping the immigrant tide By 1894, membership in the organization had reportedly reached 500.000, with chapters throughout the Northeast and Midwest. That same year a more genteel orga zation, the Immigration Restriction League, was founded | Narivism ImMicraTion [RESTRICTION LeaGueBoston by five Harvard alumni, It was dedicated to the belief that immigrants should be screened, through literacy rests and other standards designed to separate the desirable from the undesirable, The league avoided the crude conspiracy theories and the rabid xenophobia of the American Protective Association. Its sophisticated nativism made it possible for many educated, middle-class people to support the restrictionist cause. Even before the rise of these new organizations, politicians were struggling to find answers to the “immigration question.” THE AGE OF THE CITY + 493 PUSHCART VENDOR May inniyate Amazon ‘hes ped we ec By poli ach Tipe nln alee ry 2 nS i tbe scars ch ye ong hoe ro bo by ry wre Ts Posh me ptr wth ice ont Lane Eas ‘Sit Martin rn ad to ten cr. (TG Cc Ne Yo In 1882 Congress had responded to strong anti-Asian senti ‘ment in California and elsewhere and restricted Chinese imnt: gration, even though the Chinese made up only 1.2 percent of the population of the West Coast (See pp. 434-437). In the same year, Congress denied entry to “undesirables*-convicts, paupers, the mentally incompetent-and placed a tax of 50 cents on each person admitted. Later legislation of the 1890s enlarged the list of those barred from immigrating and increased the tax, PRO-IMMIGRATION Thi ase kom 1880, by Joep Keo, xrsses the von ht ele trom llr word shade cone othe cverexpandg Une Se, Whe pion Inigran fromthe eit camp ws ra ima er te by ary employers 3 lege ed hsp bo ey mca lo spe! ily (goving einem. (2 Th Gog at, New Ye)494 - CHAPTER 18 ‘These laws kept out only a small number of aliens, however, and more-ambitious restriction proposals ‘Apvanraces op Made little progress. Congres passed CueaP Lazo — aliteracy requirement for immigrants in 1897, but President Grover Cleveland vetoed it.The restrictions had limited success because many native-born Americans far from fearing ‘immigration, welcomed it and exerted strong political pressure against the restrictionists. Immigration was providing a rapidly growing economy with a cheap and plentiful labor supply; many employers argued that America’s industrial (and indeed agricultural) development would be impossible without it. THE URBAN LANDSCAPE ‘The city was a place of remarkable contrasts. It had hhomes of almost unimaginable size and grandeur, and hovels of indescribable squalor. It had conveniences unknown to earlier generations, and problems that seemed beyond society's capacity to solve. Both the attractions and the problems were a result ofthe stun: ning pace at which cities were growing. The expansion of the urban population helped spur important new technological and industrial developments. But the rapid growth also produced misgovermment, poverty, congestion, filth, epidemics, and great fires, Planning and building simply could not match the pace of growth. Tue CREATION oF PuBLic Space In the eighteenth and eatly nineteenth centuries, cities had generally grown up haphazardly, with little central planning. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, reformers, planners, architects, and others began to call for a more ordered vision of the city. The result was the self'conscious creation of public spaces and public services, ‘Among the most important innovations of the mid-nineteenth ‘century were great urban parks, which reflected che desire of a ‘growing number of urban leaders to provide an antidote to the congestion of the city landscape. The most successful American promocers f this notion of the park as refuge were the landscape designers Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, who teamed up in the late 1850s to design New ‘York Citys Central Park. They deliberately created a public space that would look as little like the city as possible. Instead of the ‘ordered, formal spaces common in some European cities, chey created a space that seemed to be entirely natural-even though almost all of Central Park was carefully designed and constructed Central Park was from the start one of the most popular and admired public spaces in the world, and as a result Olmsted and Vaux were recruited to design great parks and public spaces in other cities: Brooklyn, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Washington, DC. Frepertck Law OtmsteD AND VERT VAUX ‘CENTRAL PARK BAND CONCERT Byte la siaeen crtay Now Yor Cy Cel Park was aay cased ne egret urban landscapes lhe worl To Now Yorkers was nese fseapelrom the roel He eet the ey Bt tp ul saris became ea a rode ew, isl rsd uence at band cones mia ce, The Gg Clin Nwrted ‘At the same time thar cities were creating great parks, they ‘were also creating great public buildings: libraries, art galleries, natural history museums, theaters, concert halls, and opera houses. New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art was only the largest and best known of many great museums taking shape in the late nineteenth century; others were created in such cities as Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC. In one city after another, new and lavish public libraries appeared as if to confirm the city’s role as a center of learning and knowledge. ‘Wealthy residents of cies were the principal force behind the creation of the great public buildings and at times even parks, As their own material and social aspirations grew, they ‘wanted the public feof the city to provide them with ame: nities to match their expectations. Becoming an important patron of a major cultural institution was an especialy effec tive route to social distinction. But this philanthropy, what ever the motives behind it, also produced valuable assets for the city as a whole As the size and aspirations of the great cities increased, urban leaders launched monumental projects to remake the way thelr Cities looked. Inspired by massive city rebuilding projects #0 Paris, London, Berlin, and other European cities, some American cities began to clear away older neighborhoods and streets and create grand, monumental avenues lined very Beauriru” With new, more impressive buildings. A par Movestext ticularly important event in inspiring this effort to remake the city was the 1893 ‘Columbian Exposition in Chicago, a world’s fair constructed 10 hhonor the 400th anniversary of Columbus's frst voyage t ‘America. At the center of the wildly popular exposition was 2cluster of neoclassical bulldings-the "Great White City’ constructed in the fashionable “beaux-arts” style of the time, arranged symmetrically around a formal lagoon, It became the inspiration for what became known as the “city beautiful” movement, led by the architect of the Great White City, Daniel Burnham, The movement aimed to impose a similar order and symmetry on the disordered life of citles around the country. “Make no litle plans” Burnham liked to tell city planners. is influence led to the remaking of cities all across the country- fiom Washington, D.C. to Chicago and San Francisco. Only rarely, however, were planners able to overcome the obstacles of private landowners and complicated urban politics. They rarely achieved more than a small portion of their dreams. There "were no reconstructions of American cities to match the elabo rate nineteenth-century reshaping of Paris and London. ‘The effort to remake the city did not just focus on redesign: ing the existing landscape. It occasionally led to the creation of entirely new ones. In Boston in the late 1850s, a large area of ‘marshy tidal land was gradually filed in to create the neigh: ‘borhood known as “Back Bay.” The landfill project took more ‘Tur Back Bay ‘#30 forty years to complete and was one BACKONS of the largest public works projects ever undertaken in America to that point, But Boston was not alone. Chicago reclaimed large areas from Lake Michigan as it ‘expanded and at one point ralsed the street level for the entire city to help avoid the problems the marshy land created. In ‘Washington, DC, another marshy site, large areas were filled tn and slated for development. In New York and other cities, the response to limited space was not so much creating new land as annexing adjacent territory. A great wave of annexa tions expanded the boundaries of many American cities in the 1890s and beyond. Housine THE WeLL-to-Do ‘One of the greatest problems of this precipitous growth was finding housing for the thousands of new residents who were Pouring into the cities every day. For the prosperous, however, housing was seldom a worry. The availability of cheap labor and the reduced cost of building let anyone with even a mod- erate income afford a house Many of the richest urban residents lived in palatial man- sions in the heart of the city and created lavish “fashionable discricts-Fifth Avenue in New York City, Back Bay and Beacon Hill in Boston, Society Hill in Philadelphia, Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, Nob Hill in San Francisco, and many others. ‘The moderately well-to-do (and as time went on, increas tng numbers of wealthy people as well) took advantage of the less expensive land on the edges of the city and settled in Grown or Rew suburbs, linked to the downtowns by ‘Susunes, trains or streetcars or improved roads. Chicago in the 1870s, for example, boasted neatly 100 residential suburbs connected with the city by railroad and offering the joys of ‘pure alr, peacefulness, 4 etude, and natural scenery.” Boston, too, saw the develop- ‘ment of some of the earliest “streetcar suburbs’—Dorchester, THE AGE OF THE CITY + 495 Brookline, and ochers-which catered to both the wealthy and the middle class. New Yorkers of moderate means settled in new suburbs on the northern fringes of Manhattan and com- muted downtown by trolley or riverboat. Real estate develop- ers worked to create and promote suburban communities that ‘would appeal to nostalgia for the countryside that many city dwellers felt. Affluent suburbs, in particular, were notable for lawns, tres, and houses designed to look manorial. Even mod- est communities strove to emphasize the opportunities sub- _urbs provided for owning land. Housine Workers AND THE Poor Most urban residents, however, could not afford either to own a house in the city or to move to the suburbs. Instead, chey stayed in the city centers and rented. Because demand was so high and space so scarce, they had little bargaining power in the process. Landlords tried to squeeze as many rent-paying residents as possible into the smallest available space. In Manhattan, for example, the average population density in 1894 was 143 people per acre-a higher rate than that of the ‘most crowded cities of Europe (Paris had 127 per acre, Berlin 101) and far higher than in any other American city then or since. In some neighborhoods-the Lower East Side of New York City, for example-density was more than 700 people per acre, among the highest levels in the world Landlords were reluctant to invest much in immigrant hous: ing, confident they could rent dwellings fora profit regardless of their conditions. In the cities of the South-Charleston, New ‘Orleans, Richmond-poor African Americans lived in crumbling former slave quarters. In Boston, they moved into cheap three- story wooden houses (‘triple deckers’), many of them decaying fire hazards. in Baltimore and Philadelphia, they crowded into narrow brick row houses. And in New York, as in many other cities, more than a milion people lived in tenements, ‘The word “tenement” had originally referred simply to a ‘multiple-amily rental building, but by the late nineteenth cen- tury it was being used to describe slum dwellings only. The first tenements, builtin New York City in 1850, Jad been hailed as a great improvement in housing for the poor. “itis built with the design of supplying the laboring people with cheap lodgings” a local newspaper com ‘mented, “and will have many advantages over the cellars and ‘other miserable abodes which too many are forced to inhabit.” But tenements themselves soon became “miserable abodes,” ‘with many windowless rooms, litle or no plumbing or central heating, and often a row of privies in the basement. A New York stare law of 1870 required a window in every bedroom of rene: rents built after that date; developers complied by adding small, sunless air shafts to their buildings. Most ofall, enements ‘were incredibly crowded, with three, four, and, sometimes ‘many more people crammed into each stall room. Jacob Riis, a Danish immigrant and New York newspaper reporter and photographer, shocked many Jacom RNS ipiddle-class Americans with his sensa- tional (and some clattned sensationalized) descriptions and TeNeMENts496 CHAPTER 18 [A TENEMENT LAUNDRY Innis ving in toons ia New Yrk rin may ater ies, carted ei leds a they col This woman. show are wi sae ar is ‘vet pea my wchingclas mater no fun neon prodigal thy cn pra Ind ath ri ome, cr nd rogues mse Baan pictures of tenement life in his 1890 book, How the Other Half Lives. Slum dwellings, he said, were almost universally sunless, practically airless, and “poisoned” by "summer stenches” "The hall is dark and you might stumble over the children pitching pennies back there.” But the solution many reformers (includ: ing Riis) favored, and that governments sometimes adopted, ‘was to raze slum dwellings without building any new or bet ter housing to replace them. URBAN TRANSPORTATION ‘Urban growth posed monumental transportation challenges, Old downtown streets were often too narrow for the heavy traffic that was beginning to move over them, Most were with cout a hard, paved surfice producing elther a sea of mud or a cloud of dust. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, more and more streets were paved, usually with wooden blocks, ‘TRANSPORTATION Prosems ithe hein his ee, ry) Tio amined by gy as pl ier pols or asphalt; but paving could not keep up with the nunt new thoroughfares the expanding cities were creating By 1890, Chicago had paved only about 600 of its more than 2,000 miles of streets. But it was not simply che conditions of the streets that impeded urban transportation. it was the numbers of people ‘who needed to move every day from one part of the city «0 another, numbers that mandated the development of mass transportation, Streetcars drawn on tracks by horses had been introduced into some cities even before the Civil War. But the horsecars were not fast enough, so many communities devel oped new forms of mass transit. In 1870, New York opened its first elevated railway, whose noisy, filthy steam-powered trains moved rapidly above the city streets on massive iron structures. New York, Chicago, S27 Francisco, and other cities also experimented with cable a's towed by continuously moving underground cables. Richmond, Virginia, introduced the Mass TRANSITTHE AGE OF THE CITY + 497 ‘STREETCAR SUBURBS IN NINETEENTH: CENTURY NEW ORLEANS This map of seccar Tres in New Grea reves 3 pters repeated al ie imany des chngeg resents ereging in ‘espns oon fre of rsporaion, The map reel {heron of epn ata om he cata ely 2 aaa Coes ererge ak ces othe orton ter Nob raat gro fein ain the otf hn cory in pau ° Wht ether forms of mss transportation were emerging in Amorican ees in these years? ‘iow Care oncuare) TE tastes corer a __— svoetar nes =e soo Paty ny sae uit up by 1878 /Butup by 1900, first electric trolley line in 1888, and by 1895 such systems were operating in 850 towns and cities. In 1897, Boston opened the first American subway when it put some of its uolley lines underground. At the same time, cities were devel oping new techniques of road and bridge building. One of the great technological marvels of the 1880s was the completion fof the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City, a dramatic steel cable suspension span designed by John A. Roebling. fae “SKYSCRAPER” Cities were growing upward as well as outward, Until the mid-nineteenth century, almost no buildings more than four or five stories high could be constructed. Construction tech: niques were such that it was difficult and expensive to build adequate structural supports for tall buildings. There was also 4 limit to the number of flights of stairs the users of buildings could be expected to climb. But by the 1850s, there had been successful experiments with machine-powered passen- ger elevators, and by the 1870s, new methods of construc ton using cast iron and steel beams made it easier to build tall buildings. Not long after the Civil War, therefore, tall buildings began to appear in the major cities. The Equitable Building in New ‘York City, completed in 1870 and rising seven and a half floors above the street, was one of the first in the nation to be built ‘with an elevator, A few years later, even taller buildings of ten and twelve stories were appearing elsewhere in New York, in Chicago, and im other growing citles around the country. With each passing decade, the size and number of tall buildings increased until, by the 1890s, the cerm “skyscraper” became a popular description of them. STRAINS OF URBAN LIFE ‘The increasing congestion ofthe cities and the absence of ade quate public services produced many hazards. Crime, fie, dis ease, indigence, and pollution all placed strains on the capacities of metropolitan institutions, and both governments and private institutions were for a time poorly equipped to respond to them. Fire and DISEASE (One serious problem was fires. In one major city after another, fires destroyed large downtown areas, where many buildings ‘were still constructed of wood. Chicago and Boston suffered “great fires" in 1871. Other cities-among them Baltimore and San Francisco, where a tremendous earthquake produced a498 . CHAPTER 18 catastrophic fe in 1906-experienced similar disasters. The great fires were terrible and deadly experiences, but they also encouraged the construction of fireproof buildings and the development of professional fire depart: DEVELOPMENT OF rent They alo fared ils fold Tras’ Gea ume when new technological and Deraetnents architectural Innovations were 2vall 7 able. Some of the modern, high-rise downtowns of American cities arose out of the ubble of rede fires ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION Modern notions of environmentalism were unknown to most ‘Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centu- ries, But the environmental degradation of many American cities was a visible and disturbing fact of life in those years The frequency of great fires, the dangers of disease and plague, the extraordinary crowding of working-class neighborhoods were all examples of the environmental costs of industrializa tion and rapid urbanization. Improper disposal of human and industrial waste was a com- ‘mon feature of almost all large cities in these years. Such prac- tices contributed to the pollution of rivers and lakes and als, in many cases, to the compromising of the city’s drinking water. ‘This was particularly true in poor neighborhoods with primitive plumbing (and sometimes no indoor plumbing), outdoor privies that leaked into the groundwater, and overcrowded tenements, ‘The presence of domestic aniimals-horses, which were the prin- cipal means of transportation until the late nineteenth century, ‘but in poor neighborhoods also cows, pigs, and other animals~ contributed as well to the environmental problems. Air quality in many cities was poor as well. Few Americans had the severe problems that London experienced in these ‘Aim Poruurion Yeas with its perperual "fogs" created by = the debris from the burning of soft coal But air pollution from factories and ftom stoves and furnaces 4n offices, homes, and other buildings was constant and at times severe. The incidence of respiratory infection and related diseases was much higher in cities chan it was in nonurban areas, and it accelerated rapidly in the late nine- teenth century. By the early twentieth century, reformers were actively ‘crusading to improve the environmental conditions of cities and were beginning to achieve some notable successes. By 1910, most large American cities had constructed sewage disposal systems, often at great cost, to protect the drinking ‘water of thelr inhabicants and to prevent the great bacterial plagues that impure water had helped create in the past-such as the 1873 yellow fever epidemic in Memphis that killed ‘more than 5,000 people. Alice Hamilton, a physician who became an investigator for the US. Bureau of Labor, was a pioneer in the identification of pollution in the workplace. She documented ‘ways in vhich improper dispasal of such potentially dangerous substances as lead Pusuic Heattn, ‘SERVICE THE GREAT FIRE IN CHICAGO This honing photograph sone nerscion ‘Ste ard Madison Sees, nich Chicopee tcl he were boset tren in the ermah of the gear of 07K desboyed much lhe ts dowmown Hase dr seers ae show here weg te got il emi ares tps dette nw ealn panda elies—gronpg te plese to ‘iach the opti ile "Bakin Buns otis mag. eh Psay Is) (he was one of the first physicians to identify lead poisoning), chemical waste, and ceramic dust was creating widespread sick ness. And despite considerable resistance from many factory ‘owners, she did bring such problems to public attention and, in some states atleast, inspired legislation to require manufacturers to solve them. In 1912, the federal government created the Public Health Service, which was charged with preventing such ‘occupational diseases as tuberculosis, anemia, and carbon diox- ‘de poisoning, which were common in the garment industry and other trades. I attempted to create common health stan- dards for all factories, but since the agency had few powers of ‘enforcetnent, it had limited impact. Ic did, however, establish the protection of public health asa responsibility of the federal government and also helped bring to public attention the env: ronmental forces that endangered health. The creation of the (Occupational Health and Safety Administration in 1970, which gave government the authority to require employers to create safe and healthy workplaces, was a legacy of the Public Health Service's early work. Urban Poverty Above all, perhaps, the expansion of the cities created wide spread and often desperate poverty. Despite the rapid growth of urban economies, the sheer number of new residents censured that many people would be unable to eam enough for a decent subsistence Public agencies and private philanthropic organizations offered very limited relief. They were generally dominated bY middle-class people, who tended to believe that too much assistance would breed clependency and that poverty was the fault of the poor themselves-a result of laziness or alcoholismcor other kinds of irresponsibility. Most tried to restrict aid to the “deserving poor’-those who truly could not help them: selves (at least according to the standards of the organizations themselves, which conducted elaborate “investigations” to separate the “deserving” from the "undeserving’) (Other charitable societies-for example, the Salvation Army. which began operating in America in 1879, one year after It was founded in London-concentrated ‘more on religious revivalism than on the relief of the homeless and hungry. Tensions often arose between native Protestant philanthropists and Catholic immigrants over religious doctrine and standards of morality. Middle-class people grew particularly alarmed over the rising number of poor children in the cities, some of them orphans or runaways, living alone or in small groups scroung- ing for food. These “street arabs,” as they were often called, attracted more attention from reformers than any other group-although that attention produced no serious solutions to their problems. SALVATION ‘ARMY CRIME AND VIOLENCE Poverty and crowding naturally bred crime and violence. Much of it was relatively minor, the work of pickpockets, con arcists, swindlers, and petty thieves. But some was more dangerous. The American ‘murder rate rose rapidly in the late nine- teenth century (even as such rates were declining in Europe), from 25 murders for every million people in 1880 to over 100 by the end of the century-a rate slightly higher than the rela tively high rates of the 1980s and 1990s. That reflected in part a very high level of violence in some nonurban areas: the ‘American South, where rates of lynching and homicide were particularly high; and the West, where the rootlessness and instability of new communities (cow towns, mining camps, and the like) created much violence. But the cities contrib tuted their share to the increase in crime as well, Native-born “Americans liked to believe that crime was a result of the vio lent proclivities of immigrant groups, and they cited the rise of gangs and criminal organizations in various ethnic communt- ties. But native-born Americans were a5 likely to commit crimes as immigrants. ‘The rising crime rates encouraged many cities to develop larger and more professional police forces. n the early nineceenth century, police forces had often been private and informal ‘organizations; urban governments had resisted profession- alized law enforcement. By the end of the century, how- ever, professionalized public police departments were a part of the life of virtually every city and town. They worked closely with district attorneys and other public prosecutors, who ‘were also becoming more numerous and more important in city life, Police forces themselves could also spawn corruption and brutality, particularly since jobs on them were often filled through political patronage. And complaints about police dealing differently with white and black suspects, or with Hich Crime Rares ‘THE AGE OF THE CITY - 499 rich and poor communities, were common in the late nine teenth century. Some members of the middle clas, fearful of urban insur- rections, felt the need for even more substanttal forms of pro: tection. Urban national guard groups (many of them created and manned by middle-class elites) built imposing armories on the outskirts of affluent neighborhoods and stored large sup- plies of weapons and ammunition in preparation for uprisings that, in fact, never occurred. THe MACHINE AND THE Boss Newly arrived immigrants, many of whom could not speak English, needed help in adjusting to American urban life: its Jaws, its customs, usually its language. Some ethnic communt- es created their own selfhelp organizations. But for many residents of the inner cities, the principal source of assistance ‘was the political machine. ‘The urban machine was one of America’s most distinctive political institutions. I owed its existence to the power vacuum that the chaotic growth of cities (and the Boss RULE ery limited growth of city governments) PUCK MAGAZINE Pack waste rt aces hana mga publi nh ied ‘Sues ses ere publ rs 1871 10 96 Kets pie coon, airs. a ir onthe sua ft dy Tiscover akan te eal nd cerrapn ef Tamany A Phe brary ef Conese LCUSZT 7884)500 . CHAPTER 18 had created, It was also a product of the potential voting power of large immigrant communities. Any politician who could mobilize that power stood to gain enormous influence, if not public office. And so thete emerged a group of urban “bosses,” ‘themselves often of foreign birth or parentage. Many were Irish, because they spoke English and because some had acquired previous political experience from the long Irish struggle against the English at home. Almost all were men (in most states women could not yet vore). The principal function of the polit fcal boss was simple: to win votes for his organization, That meant winning the loyalty of his constituents. To do so, a boss might provide potential voters with occasional relief baskets of| _groceries, bags of coal. He might step in to save those arrested for petty crimes from jail. He rewarded many of bis followers ‘with patronage: with jobs in city government or in such city agencies as the police (which the machine's elected officials often controlled), with jobs building or operating the new tran sit systems; and with opportunities to rise in the political orga nization itself. ‘Machines were also vehicles for making money. Politicians ‘entiched themselves and their allies through various forms of graft and corruption. Some of it might be fairly open-what George Washington Plunkite of New York City’s Tammany Hall called “honest graft” For example, a politician might discover in advance where a new road or streetcar line was to be built, buy an interest in the land near it, and profit when the city had to buy the land ftom him or when property values rose as a result of the construction. But there was also covert graft: kickbacks from contractors in exchange for contracts to build streets, sewers, public buildings, and other projects; the sale of franchises for the operation of such public utilities as street rallways, waterworks, and electric light and power systems ‘The most famousty corrupt city boss was William M. Tweed, boss of New York City’s Tammany Hall in the 1860s and 1870s, ‘whose excesses finally landed him in jail in 1872. Midale-clas critics saw the corrupt machines as blights on the cities and obstacles to progress. in fact, political organiza- tions were often responsible not just for corruption, but also for modernizing city infrastructures, for expanding the role of government, and for creating stability in a politcal and soctal ‘climate that otherwise would have lacked a center, The motives of the bosses may have been largely venal, but their achieve- ‘ments were sometimes greater than those of the scrupulous ‘reformers who challenged them. Several factors made boss nule possible. One was the power cof immigrant voters, who were less concemed with middle-class Re {ideas of political morality chan with obtain: "Boss RULE ing che services that machines provided and — reformers did not. Another was the link between the politicat organizations and wealthy, prominent citizens who profited from their dealings with bosses. Still ‘another was the scructural weakness of city governments, The ‘boss, by virtue of his control over his machine, formed an “invs {ble government” that provided an altemative to what was often the inadequacy of the regular government. GRAFT AND ‘CorRuPtioN ‘The urban machine was not without competition. Reform groups frequently mobilized public outrage at the corruption of the bosses and often succeeded in driving machine politicians from office. Tammany, for example, saw its candidates for mayor and other high city offices lose almost as often as they won in the last decades of the nineteenth century. But the reform orga nizations typically lacked the permanence of the machine ‘Thus, many critics of machines began to argue for more basic reforms: for structural changes in the nature of city governmeny, THE RISE OF MASS CONSUMPTION For urban middle-class Americans, the last decades of the nine teenth century were a time of dramatic advances. Indeed, it ‘was in those years that a distinctive middle-class culture began to exert a powerful influence over American life. Much of the rest of American society-the majority of the population, which was neither urban nnor middle class-advanced less rapidly or not at all; but almost no one was unaffected by the rise of a new urban, consumer culture. Muppte-Ciass CULTURE PATTERNS OF INCOME AND CONSUMPTION ‘American industry could not have grown as it did without the expansion of markets, The growth of demand occurred at almost all levels of society, a result not just of the new techniques of production and mass distribution that were making consumer goods less expensive, but also of rising incomes. Incomes in the industrial era were rising for almost everyone, although at highly uneven rates. The most conspicuous result of ‘he new economy was the creation of vast fortunes. But more important for society as a whole were the growth and increasing prosperity of the middle class. The salaries of Clerks, accountants, middle managers, and ‘other “white collar” workers rose on average by a thitd between 1890 and 1910-and in some parts of the mile clas, salaries rose by much more. Doctors, lawyers, and other professionals {or example, experienced a particularly dramatic increase in the prestige and profitability of their professions ‘Working-class incomes rose too in those years although from a much lower base and considerably more slowiy. Iron- and steelworkers, despite the setbacks their unions suffered, saw ‘their hourly wages increase by a third between 1890 and 1910; ‘but industries with large female, African American, or Mexicat ‘workforces-stoes, textiles, paper, laundries, many areas of com ‘mercial agriculture-saw very small increases, as did almost all industries in the South, ‘Also important to the new mass market were the develop” ment of affordable products and the creation of new mer cchandising techniques, which made many consumer goods available to a broad market for the first time. A good example Risin INcomer New of such changes was the emer- MERCHANDISING — gence of ready-made clothing. ‘TECHNIQUES. In the early nineteenth century, ‘most Americans had made their own clothing-usually from cloth they bought from merchants, at times from fabrics they spun and wove themselves. Affluent people contracted with private tailors to make thelr clothes. But che invention of the sewing machine and the spur that the Civil War (and {ts demand for uniforms) gave to the manufacture of clothing created an enormous industry devoted to producing ready-made garments. By the end of the century, almost all Americans bought their clothing from stores, Partly a8 a result, much larger numbers of people became concerned with personal style, Interest in ‘women's fashion, for example, had once been a luxury reserved for the affluent. Now middleclass and even ‘working'class women could sttive to develop a distinc: tive style of dress. New homes, even modest ones, now included clothes closets. Even people in remote rural areas could develop stylish wardrobes by ordering from the new mailorder houses. ‘Another example of the rise of the mass market was the way Americans bought and prepared food. The develop: ment and mass production of tin cans in the 1880s created a large new industry devoted to packaging and selling canned food and (as a result of the techniques Gail Borden, an inventor and politician, developed in the 1850s) con densed milk. Refrigerated railroad cars made it possible for perishables-meats, vegetables, dairy products, and other foodstuffs—to travel long distances without spoiling. The development of artificially frozen ice made it possible for many more households to afford iceboxes. Among other things, the changes meant improved diets and better health; life expectancy rose six years in the first two decades of the twentieth century, Cain STORES AND Mai-Orver Houses ‘Changes in marketing also altered the way Americans bought Cun Stones goods Small cal stores fced competition from new “chain stores” The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (A & P) began creating a national network of srocery stores as early asthe 1850s and expanded it rapidly after the Civil War. FW. Woolworth opened his first “Five and Ten Cent Store” in Utica, New York, in 1879 and went on to build a national chain of dry goods stores. Chain stores were able to sell manufactured goods at lower prices than the local, inde- pendent stores because the chains had so much more volume, From the beginning, the chains faced opposition from the established merchants they threatened to displace, and from others who feared that they would jeopardize the character of their communities. (Similar controversies have continued ‘THE AGE OF THE CITY + Ot DEPARTMENT STORES Deptt tres ance een tl prone sas ftir mary ws Here Sranrige nl Clair pete treat qe a an Mahl Stn Paden e807, (0 Cos) into the twenty-first cencury over the spread of large chains such a WalMart and Barnes & Noble) But most customers, however loyal they might feel to a local merchant, found it difficult to resist the greater variety and lower prices the chains provided them. ‘Chain stores were slow to reach remote, rural areas, which, remained dependent on poorly stocked and often very expen: sive country stores, But rural people gradually gained access to the new consumer world through the great mailorder houses. In 1872, Montgomery Ward-2 Chicago-based traveling salesman-distributed a catalog of consumer goods in associa: tion with the farmers’ organization, the Grange (ee p. 520). By the 1880s, he was olfering thousands of Cont ces ems at low pices to farmers hough oe Ma-Onner oUt the Midwest and beyond. He soon CataLocs faced stiff competition from Sears Roebuck, first established by Richard Sears in Chicago in 1887. Together, the bulky catalogs from ‘Ward and Sears changed the lives of many isolated people introducing them to (and explaining for them) new trends of fashion and home decor as well as making available new tools, rmachinery, and technologies for the home. DepaRTMENT STORES tn larger cities, the emergence of great department stores (which hhad appeared earlier in Europe) helped transform buying habits and tur shopping into an alluring and glam: ‘orouis activity. Marshall Field in Chicago cre ated one of the fitst American department stores, and others soon followed: Macy's in New York City, Abraham and Straus in Brooklyn, Jordan Marsh and Filene’s in Boston, Wanamaker’ in Philadelphia, Impact OF THE ‘DEPARTMENT Store502 . CHAPTER 18 Department stores transformed the concept of shopping. in several ways. Fist, they brought together under one roof an enormous array of products that had previously been sold in separate shops. Second, they sought to create an atmosphere of wonder and excitement, to make shopping a glamorous activity. Department stores were elaborately dec orated to suggest great luxury and elegance. They included restaurants and rearooms and comfortable lounges, to sug- gest that shopping could be a social event as well as a prac tical necessity. They hired well-dressed salesclerks, mostly women, to provide attentive service to their mostly female ‘customers. Third, department stores-like mail-order houses~ took advantage of economies of scale to sell merchandise at lower prices than many of the individual shops with which they competed. Women As CoNsuMERS ‘The rise of mass consumption had particularly dramatic effects ‘on American women. Womens clothing styles changed much ‘more rapidly and dramatically than men’s, which encouraged frequent purchases, Women generally bought and prepared {food for their families, o the availability of new food products changed not only the way everyone ate, but also the way ‘women shopped and cooked. The consumer economy produced new employment ‘opportunities for women as salesclerks in department stores and as waitresses in the rapidly prolifer: Nartonat Consumers ating restaurants. And it spawned the creation of a new movement in which Leacue = ‘women were to play a vital role: the con sumer protection movement. The National Consumers League, formed in the 1890s under the leadership of Florence Kelley, 2 prominent social reformer, attempted to mobilize the power of women as consumers to force retailers and manufacturers to improve wages and working conditions for women workers. By defining themselves as consumers, many middle-class women were able to find a stance from ‘which they could become active participants in public life Indeed, the mobilization of women behind consumer causes-and eventually many other causes-was one of the ‘most important political developments of the late nine: teenth century. LEISURE IN THE CONSUMER SOCIETY Closely related to the growth of consumption was an increas- ing interest in leisure, in part because time away from work ‘was expanding rapidly for many people. Members of the urban ‘middle and professional classes had increasingly large blocks of time in which they were not at work-evenings, weekends, even vacations (previously almost unknown among salaried workers), Working hours in many factories declined, from an average of nearly seventy hours a week in 1860 to under sixty in 1900. Industrial workers might still be on the jab six days 4 week, but many of them had moze time off in the evening, ven farmers found that che mechanization of agriculture gave them more free time. The lives of many Americans Were becoming compartmentalized, with clear distinctions between work and leisure REDEFINING LeIsuRE ‘The growth of fee time produced a redefinition of the idea of “leisure.” In earlier eras, relatively few Americans had consid ‘ered leisure a valuable thing. On the con New Conceptions a", many equated it with laziness of OF Leisure sloth. “Rest,” as in the relative inactivity many Americans considered appropriate for the Sabbath, was valued because i offered time for spiritual reflection and prepared people for work. But leisure-time spent amusing oneself in nonproductive pursults-was not only tunavallable to most Americans, bu faintly scomed as well But with the rapid expansion of the economy and the increasing number of hours workers had away from work, it bbecamne possible to imagine leisure time asa normal par of the lives of many people. Industrial workers, in pursult of shorter hours, adopted the slogan “Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, and eight hours for what we will” Others were equally adamant in claiming that leisure time was both a right and an ‘important contribution to an individual's emotional and even spiritual health ‘The economist Simon Patten was one of the frst intellect als o articulate this new view of leisure, which he tied closely to the rising interest in consumption, Patten, in The Theory of Prosperity (1902), The New Basis of Civilization (1910), and other works, challenged the centuries-old assumption that the normal condition of civilization was a scarcity of goods. “We are now in the transl tion stage," he wrote, “ftom this pain economy [the economy of scarcity] to a pleasure econemy” The principal goal of such an economy, he claimed, “should be an abundance of goods and the pursuit of pleasure” ‘As Americans became more accustomed to leisure 35 a normal part of their lives, they began to look for new exper: ences with which to entertain themselves. Entertainment usually meant “going out” spending leisuretime in public places where there would be not only entertainment, but also other people ‘Thousands of working-class New Yorkers flocked to the amuse- tment park at Coney Island, for example, not just for the rides and shows, but for the excitement of the crowds as well. 50 did the thousands who spent evenings in dance halls, vaude- ville houses, and concert halls. Affluent New Yorkers enjoyed aftemoons in Central Park, where a principal attraction was seeing other people (and being seen by them). Moviegoets were attracted not Just by the movies themselves, but also by the energy of the audiences at the lavish "movie palaces” that began to appear in cities in the early qwentieth century: ‘Simon PATTEN Pupuic LeIsuREr- just as sports fans were drawn by the crowds as well as by the games. Mass entertainment did not always bridge differences of class race, or gender. Saloons and most sporting events tended fo be male preserves. Shapping (Itself becoming a valued jeisure‘time activity) and going to tearooms and luncheon- utes were more characteristic of female leisure. Theaters, pubs, and clubs were often specific to particular ethnic com: nantes or particular work groups. There were, in fact, rela tively few places where people of widely diverse backgrounds gathered together. ‘When the classes did meet in public spaces-as they did, for example, In city parks-there was often conflict over what constituted appropriate public behavior. Elites in New York City, for example, tied to prohibit anything buc quiet, “gen. teel” activities in Central Park, while working-class people wanted (0 use the public spaces for sports and entertait ments. But even divided by class, ethnicity, and gender, let. sure and popular entertainment did help sustain a vigorous public culture. SPECTATOR SPORTS ‘The search for forms of public leisure hastened the rise of organized spectator sports, especially baseball, which by the end of the century was well on its way to becoming the national pastime (see “Patterns of Popular Culture,” pp. 384-385). A game much like baseball, known as "round- cers” and derived from cricket, had enjoyed limited popular ity in Great Britain in the early nineteenth century, Versions of the game began to appear in America in the early 1830s, well before Abner Doubleday supposedly invented” baseball, (Doubleday, in fact, had little to do with the creation of baseball and actually cared little for THE AGE OF THE CITY 503 sports, Alexander Cartwright, a member of a New York City baseball club in che 1840s, defined many of the rules and features of the game as we know it today) By the end of the Civil War, interest in baseball had grown, rapidly. More than 200 amateur or semiprofessional teams or clubs existed, many of which joined a national association and agreed on standard rules. The first salaried team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, was formed in 1869, Other cities soon fielded profes sional teams, and in 1876, at the urging of Albert Spalding, they banded together in the National League. ‘A tival league, the American Association, soon appeared. It eventually collapsed, but in 1901 the American League emerged to replace it. In 1903, the first modern World Series was played, in which the American League Boston Red Sox beat the National League Pittsburgh Pirates. By then, baseball hhad become an important business and a great national pre: ‘occupation (at least among men), attracting paying crowds in the thousands. ‘The second most popular game, football, appealed at first to an elite segment of the male population, in part because it originated in colleges and universities. The first intercollegiate football game in America occurred between Princeton and Rutgers in 1969, and soon the game became entrenched as part of collegiate life. Barly intercollegiate football bore only an indirect relation to the modern game; it was more similar to ‘what is now known as rugby. By the late 1870s, however, game was becoming standardized and was taking on the out: lines of its modern form, {As college football grew in popularity, it spread to other sections of the country, notably to the midwestern state ‘Major Leacue BASEBALL GrowTH oF universities, which were destined soon to COLLEGE replace the eastern schools as the great, Footsatt powers of the game. It also began to exhibit, THE AMERICAN NATIONAL GAME Lay rte nr lees gi ea bl hb ere acne th macht Utd Stes, essing the goon a hn rte ine srl ad ‘oth eh capa pes an 5 ane Bsn Fl pop pak cree rome Yr (iy Noy. Mind Buea andtheConey ISLAND vaho lived inthe crowed ces of marly wersih-cerury America yearned at fines for ways to escape the noise, small, hast an stress ofthe urban world, Weathy feries could travel to resorts or couy houses. But mest cty dels cou not atford to venture far and for them ambitious entrepreneurs tried to provide dazelngescap to ome, The most celebrated such escape was Coney Islnd in Braokly, New York—which became foe atime the most famous and popular urban resort in America With its broad oceanfront beach, Coney Island, located in Brooklyn, had been an attractive Aestnation for visors since the early rinetoenth century. Inthe 1870s and 188Os iwestors built riroad lines irom the city tothe beach and began t create spectacular amusements to induce New Yorkers to vs, But the real success of Coney sind began in the 1890s, when the amuse iments and spectacles reached @ new level, Sea Lion Park, which opened in 1885, showcased trained sea fons and exctic water rides. Steeplechase Park opened two yesrs later attracting vistors with @ mechanical steeplechase ride in which vistors could pretend to be jockeys, and stunt rooms wth moving lors and powerful blasts of compressed air. By then, Coney Island was @ popula ste for rea horse cng, boring matches, end olher sports, was POSTCARD FROM LUNA PARK Vices Cony tt para onds nd lne ly hilo rd thse care were antag he mea fle pen eens forthe amare pr Ths on ws the bei trance La Par, Cray ans os poplar ara fr may yar, (Banana, the taints of professionalism that have marked It ever since. Some schools used “ringers,” tramp athletes who were not even registered as students. In an effort co eliminate such abuses, Amos Alonzo Stagg, athletic director and coach at the University of Chicago, led in forming the Western Conference, or Big Ten, in 1896, which established rules governing eligibility Football also became known for a high level of vielence on the field; eighteen college students died of football elated injuries and over a hundred were seriously hurt in 1905, The carnage prompted a White House conference on organized 504 ‘THE ELEPHANT HOTEL One ts erty strats of Cony Wanda becone a apr resort wa hi, ak fide ge node doh Tipit 890, ‘shove anata pit whe eegen a tne, (Ph Cen Nenad Aa SC) sports convened by President Theodore Roosevelt, As a result of its deliberations, a new intercollegiate association (which in 1910 became known as the National College Athletic Association, the NCAA) revised the rules and the required equipment of the game in an effort to make it more honest and safer. Other popular spectator sports were emerging at about the same time. Basketball was invented in 1891 at Springfield, Massachusetts, by Dr. James A, Naismith, a Canadian working as athletic ditector for a local college. Boxing, which had long been a disreputable activity concentrated primarily amongSTEEPLECHASE PARK ‘Stophciose Park peel in 1897 nd madly bse aca cro cage ode be shark eect sown hore. (2 UGIGey he to arcing ganing casinos, salon, ard brahes, Frm the bring, anor fun ride ss epee, Cony ard adaptation a arog nd tery pace Bt te torkrss ngs an over ide dass peopl “Te rest Comy Wada, Lina Park opened 1903 provided out des ad suns, it esh epreicons of xtc pces and epeacsr adverires Japaece gordon \eneian anal wi once, 9 Chiese teat sine othe mon, renee dlnuch dears as burning tings ergs, ard even he cane spon Set cesryed Parodi A year later, corpolng company opened Deoian hich ed oot even Lina Park ith 2 375fou tower threerng ots chat races, anda ipa vile nspred by Gav's Tov re estoy Dream n The pope of Cony ann these years vas peroneal, Thousands fp ced tlre resort hth edhe bethes,Many Husds more made cy pst othe cy by ean ad (er 20) sna. 904 the everage aly lunes ot Lira Park lowe wos 80.000 peel. On wears, he Cony Wn pos fice handed oer 250000 poser trough wich sur heed pres he repaint cso ares maton Camels poplar reflect a nao! perl ines among ban Ria he ture he cru roel iors an excape From hw heat and erowdng le vs raropis rend gee pope wo ad ew eparantes or rave a sinstdpse fexctic tcc and es aly woud never be el expec realy. For agromary ‘om Wed haere cnmunte, Cone sed proved way of exprerng rncan mes eile on ane oi ipl bacgends ere ram too. lr eveyone who found Coney island appealing di so in part because it provided an escape from the gente! standards of behavie that govern so much of American fe at the time, nthe amusement parks of Coney island, people Aeighted in finding themselves in tuations thot any ther seting would have seemed embarrassing or improper: wemen’s skirts blown above their heads with hot air; people pummeled wth water and rubber paddles by clons; hints of sewal freedom as strangers were forced to come into physical contact wih one anather fon rides and amusements and as men and women ‘revealed themselves lo each other wearing bathing suits on the beach Coney isand remained popular throughout the frst half of the twentieth century, end 2 continues to tract visitors today (although in much smaller numbers). But its heyday was in the years before World War I when the exotic sights and trling adventures it offered had ‘most no counterparts elsewhere in American culture When rad, movies, and eventually television began to offer their onm kind of mass escapism, Coney Islnd gradualy ceased tobe the dang urmatchable marvel ithad seemed to earier generaiors. @ UND’ AND EVALUA’ STAND, ANALYZE, “1. How did Coney Island reflect the new culture of mass consumption? 2. What new ideas about leisure help account for the popuariy of Coney Islan the early wentith century? ‘3, What forms of popular culture loday continue the Coney island traon offering escapism, advanture, and excitement to @ mass aucienco? the urban working classes, had become by the 1880s a more popular and in some places more reputable sport, particu larly after the adoption of the Marquis of Queensberry rules (by which fighters wore padded gloves and fought in three minute rounds). The first modern boxing hero, John L Sullivan, became heavyweight champion of the world in 1882, Even 50, boxing remained illegal in some states until after World War I Horse racing, popular since colonial rimes, became increasingly commercialized with the construction of large tracks and the establishment of large-purse races Such a8 the Kentucky Derby. Even in their infancy, spectator sports were closely ass0° lated with gambling. There was elaborate betting-some of it organized by underground gambling syndicates-on baseball and football almost from the start. One of the most famous incidents in the history of baseball was the alleged “throw: ing” of the 1919 World Series by the Chicago White Sox because of gambling (an incident that became known as the "Black Sox Scandal’). That event resulted in the banning of some of the game's most notable figures from the sport for life and the establishment of the office of commissioner of baseball GAMBLING AND ‘SPORTS 505506 - CHAPTER 18 to “clean up” the game. Boxing was troubled throughout its history by the influence of gambling and the frequent efforts of managers to “fix” fights in the interests of bettors. Horse racing as it became commercialized was openly organized around betting, with the race tracks themselves establishing oclds and taking bets ‘The rise of spectator sports and gambling was largely a response to the desire of men to create a distinctively male culture in cities. But not all sports were the province of men. ‘A number of sports were emerging in which women became important participants. Golf and tennis seldom attracted crowds in the late nineteenth century, but both experienced 2 rapid increase in participation among relatively wealthy ‘men and women. Bicycling and croquet also enjoyed wide. spread popularity in the 1890s among women as well as men. ‘Women’s colleges were beginning to introduce their stu- dents to strenuous sports as well-track, crew, swimming, and (beginning in the late 1890s) basketball-challenging the once prevalent notion that vigorous exercise was dangerous to women, Music AND THEATER ‘Many ethnic communities maintained their own theaters, in which immigrants listened to the music of thelr homelands and heard comedians making light of their experiences in the New Werld. Italian the- aters often drew on the traditions of Ktalian opera to create sentimental musical events. ‘The Yiddish theater built on the experiences of American Eric THEATER Jews-and was the training ground fora remarkable group o¢ misiclans and playwrights wino later went on to play major role in mainsteam, English speaking theater. Urban theaters also introduced one of the most distinc. tively American entertainment forms: the musical comedy, which evolved gradually fiom the comic operettas of European theater. George M. Cohan, an irish vaudeville enter tainer, became the fist great creator of musical comedies j, he early twentieth century; in the process of creating hi many shows, he wrote a series of patriotic songs-"Yankee Doodle Dandy: ‘Over There." and "Youre a Grand Old Flags hat remained popular many decades later. ving Berlin, 2 veteran of the Yiddish theater, wrote more than 1,000 songs for the musical theater during his long carer, including suc popular favorites a8 “Alexanders Ragtime Band” and “God Bless America" Vaudeville, a form of theater adapted from French model, was the most popular urban entertainment in the fist deeades of the rwencith century. Even saloons and small community theaters cout afford to offer their customers vaudeville, which consisted ofa variety of acts (musicians, comedians, magicians, jugglers, and other) and was at leas in the beginning, inexpensive to produce. As the economic potential of vaudeville grew, some promoters~ most prominently Florenz Ziegfeld of New York-staged much more elaborate spectaces. Vaudeville was also one of the few entertainment media open to blick performers. They brought to Ie elements ofthe minstrel shows they had earlier developed for black audiences in the late nineteenth century. (ee “Paxers of Popular Culture pp. 420-421) Vaupevinie, ‘THE FLORADORA SEXTET The Frere Sent ss poplar clap ft lieth ery et emia became iron th adr and ales tags nny ces dear. Thy arson rao Jabra sed produon name te amos Wars Pls Ms ln New Yk Cy whch opeedin 96. 9 SetTHE Movies The most important form of mass entertainment (until the invention of radio and television) was the movies. Thomas Edison and others had created the technology of the motion picture in the 1880s. Not Jong after, shore films became available to individual viewers through “peep shows" in pool halls, penny arcades, and amusement parks. Soon larger projectors made it possible to project the images onto big screens, which permitted substantial audiences to see films in theaters. By 1900, Americans were becoming attracted in large numbers to these early movies-usually plotless films of trains or waterfalls oF other spectacles designed mainly to show off the technology. D. W. Griffith car vied the motion picture into a new era with his silent epies-The Birth ofa Nation (1915), Intolerance (1916), and others-which introduced serious plots and elabo- rate productions to filmmaking. Some of these fllms~ ‘most notably The Birth of a Nation, with its celebration of the Ku Klux Klan and its demeaning portralts of Aftican ‘Americans-also contained notoriously racist messages, an ind cation, among other things, that the audiences for these early films were overwhelmingly white, Nevertheless, motion pic tures were the frst cruly mass entertainment medium, reach ing all areas of the country and almost all groups in the population. Tas Birth oF ‘A NATION Workine-Ciass Leisure Leisure had a particular importance to working-class men and women-In part because it was a relatively new part of their lives and in part because it stood in such sharp contrast to the grueling environments in which many industrial workers labored. More than most other groups in society, workers spent thelr leisure time on the streets-walking alone or in groups, watching street entertainers, meeting ftiends, talking and joking. For people with time but little money, the life of the street was an appealing source of camaraderie and energy. Another important setting for the leisure time of working: class men was the neighborhood saloon, which became a place where a worker could be sure of encoun- tering a regular circle of friends, Saloons were often ethnically specific, in part because they served particular neighborhoods dominated by particular national groups. They also became political centers Saloonkeepers were especially important figures in urban political machines, largely because they had regular contact With so many men in a neighborhood. When the AntiSaloon League and other temperance organizations attacked the saloon, one of the reasons they cited was that eliminating saloons would weaken political machines. Opponents also noted correctly that saloons were sometimes places of crime, IMPORTANCE OF ‘THE SALOON THE AGE OF THE CITY + 507 [ANICKELODEON afr thie th get movi ples, ran oie Nad oka salts tht charge fie cat adie ad showed mary {valcrames tha draw ares back are dy ar dy wth ew pode arog sory. [2 The Gg Cli New Yr refs each iris violence, and prastitution-an entryway into the dark under ‘world of urban life Boxing was a particularly popular sport among working class men, Many workers could not afford to attend the great public boxing matches pairing such popular heroes as John Sullivan and ‘Gentleman Jim” Corbett. But there were less glitcering boxing matches in small rings and even in saloons~ bare-knuckled fights organized by ethnic clubs and other groups that gave men an opportunity to demonstrate their strength and courage, something that the working world did not always provide them. Tue Four oF Juty ‘The Fourth of July payed lage role In the ives of many working clase Ameriann Tat ws in par because in an age of six-day (and sometimes seven-day) work Imnomtance OF ects and before regular vacation eas t Four any decades one ofthe few fll ye ( —Stlmuresther tun dhe sabbath, during which avis were often retcwed by law-that many work tro had. Fourth of aly celebrations were one ofthe highlights Sf the "yar In many ete, working ass communis: In Worcester Masicheset for example. the Ancient Order of ‘ibertns (nich oganzaion) sponsored boserouspleics forthe lish working els of the cy. Competing with them. tree igh temperance ogenlaatons, which efered moe sober jaa yesporeatierenetedcncant Pomel fu ar tis whe woshed to avo the heavy drinking atthe Hiberaan “fas Other ethnle groups organized thelr own Fourth o july events picnics, gumes, parses making the day a celebration oc ja of the ations Independence but ofthe culeares of508. CHAPTER 18 Jmmigrant communities. The city's affluent middle class in the ‘meantime, tended to stay away, remaining indoors or organiz: ing family picnics at resort areas outside the city. Mass Communications Urban industrial society created a vast market for new methods of transmicting news and information. Between 1870 and 1910, the circulation of daily newspapers increased nearly ninefold (Gom under 3 million to more than 24 million) a rate three times as great as the rate of population increase. And while standards varied widely from one paper to another, American journalism began to develop the beginnings of a professional ‘dentty. Salaries of reporcers increased; many newspapers began separating the reporting of news from the expression of opin: fon; and newspapers themselves became important businesses. One striking change was the emergence of national press services, which made use of the telegraph to supply news and features to papers throughout the country and which contrib- uted as a result to the standardization of the product. By the ‘um of the century, important newspaper chains had emerged as well. The most powerful was William Randolph Hearst's, which by 1914 controlled nine newspapers and two maga zines. Hearst and rival publisher Joseph. Pulitzer helped popularize what became known as “yellow journalisir’-a deliber ately sensational, often lurid style of report: ing presented in bold graphics, designed to reach 2 mass audience. (See "Patterns of Popular Culture,” pp. 836-537.) Another major change occurred in the nature of American ‘magazines. Beginning in the 1880s, new kinds of magazines appeared that were designed for a mass audience. One of the pioneers was Edward W. Bok, who took over the Ladies’ Home Journal in 1899 and, by targeting a mass female audience, built {ts circulation to over 700,000, EMERGENCE OF NEWSPAPER CHamns HIGH CULTURE IN THE AGE OF THE CITY Im addition to the important changes in popular culture that accompanied the rise of cities and industry, there were pro- found changes in the realm of “high culture"-in the ideas and activities of incellectuals and elites. Even the notion of a distinction between “highbrow” and “lowbrow” culture was relatively new to the industrial era. In the early nineteenth century. many cultural activities attracted people of widely varying backgrounds and targeted people of all classes. By the late nineteenth century, however, elites were developing a cultural and intellectual life quite separate from the popu lar amusements of the urban masses, The LiteRaTURE OF URBAN AMERICA Some writers and artists-the local color writers of the South, for example, and Mark Twain, in such novels as Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer-responded to the new industrial civiliza tion by evoking an older, more natural world. But others grap. pled directly with the moder order. One of the strongest impulses in late-nineteenth- ang early-twentieth-century American literature was the effort tp Soca, _fecreate urban social reality. This trend Reausm toward realism found an early voice in, = Scephen Crane, who-although best known for his novel of the Civil War, The Red Badge of Courage (189)- ‘was the author of an earlier, powerful indictment of the plight of the working class. Crane created a sensation in 1893 when he published Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, a grim picture of urban poverty and slum life, Theodore Dreiser was even more {influential in encouraging writers to abandon the genteel tra ditions of earlier times and turn to the social dislocations and {injustices of the present. He did so both in Sister Carrie and in other, later novels (including An American Tragedy, published in 1925). ‘Many of Dreiser's contemporaries followed him in chroni cling the oppression of America's poor. in 1901 Frank Norris published The Octopus, an account of a struggle between oppressed wheat farmers and powerful railroad interests in California. The socialist writer Upton Sinclair published The Jungle in 1906, a novel designed to reveal the depravity of capitalism, It exposed abuses in the American meatpacking industry; and while it did not inspire the kind of socialist response for which Sinclair had hoped, it did help produce legislative action to deal with the problem. Kate Chopin, a southern writer who explored the oppressive features of 13 ditional marriage, encountered widespread. public abuse after publication of her shocking novel The Awakening in 1899. It described a young wife and mother who abandons heer family in search of personal fulfillment. It was formally banned in some communities. William Dean Howells, in The Rise of Silas Lapham (1884) and other works, described what he considered the shallowness and corruption in the search for wealth. Other critics of American society responded to the new civilization not by attacking it but by withdrawing from i. ‘The historian Henry Adams published a classic autobiography in 1906, The Education of Henry Adams, in which he portrayed himself as a man disillusioned with and unable to relate to his society, even though he continued to live in it. The novelist Henry James lived the major part of his adult fife in England and Europe and produced a series of coldly realistic novels The American (1877), Portrait of a Lady (1881), The Ambassadors (1903), and others-that showed his ambivalence about the character of modem, industrial civilization. ‘The growing popularity of literature helped spawn a remark able network of clubs, mostly formed and populated by women. to bring readers together to talk about books. Reading clubs proliferated rapidly in cities and even small towns, among African American as well as white women. They made liter ture a social experience for hundreds of thousands of women and created a tradition that has continued into the twenty-fitst century,ART IN THE AGE oF THE CITY ‘American art through most of the nineteenth century had been overshadowed by the art of Europe. Many American art ists studied and even lived in Europe. But others broke from the Old World traditions and experimented with new styles. ‘Winslow Homer was vigorously American in his paintings of New England maritime life and other native subjects. James McNeil Whistler was one of the first Western artists to appre: ciate the beauty of Japanese color prints and to introduce Oriental concepts into American and European art By the first years of the new cencury, some American artists ‘were turing decisively away from the traditional academic style, a style perhaps best exemplified in America by the brilliant portratist John Singer Sargent. Instead, many younger paint cers were exploring the same grim aspects of modem life that ‘were becoming the subject of American literature. Members of the so-called Ashcan school produced work startling in its nat uralism and stark in its portrayal of the social realities of the cera. john Sloan portrayed the dreariness of American urban slums; George Bellows caught the vigor and. violence of his time in paintings and drawings of prize fights; Edward Hopper explored the statkness and loneliness of the modern city. The Ashcan art- {sts were also among the first Americans to appre: ciate expressionism and abstraction; and they showed their interest in new forms in 1913 when. they helped stage the famous and controversial Armory Show in New York City, which displayed ‘works of the French Postimpressionists and of some American moderns. ‘The work of these and other artists marked the beginning in America of an artistic movement known as modernism, a movement that had counterparts in many other areas of cultural and intellectual life as well. Rejecting the heavy reliance on established forms that characterized the "genteel tradition” of the hineteenthcentury art world, modernists rejected the grip of the past and embraced new subjects and new forms, Where the gentee! tradition emphasized the “dignified” and "elevated" aspects of civilization (and glorified the achievements of gifted elites), mod: femism gloried In the ordinary, even the coarse. ‘Where the genteel tradition placed great importance on respect for the past and the maintenance of "tan: dards” modernism looked to the furure and gloried Jn the new. Eventually, modemism developed strict, onhodoxies of its own. But in its early stages, it seemed to promise an escape from rigid, formal trad ‘dons and an unleashing of individual creativity. ASHCAN ScHoot ‘THE AGE OF THE CITY + 509 acceptance of the theory of evolution, associated most promt nently with the English naturalist Charles Darwin, Darwinism argued that the human species had evolved ftom earlier forms of life {and most recently from simian creatures similar to apes) through a process of “natural selection.” Ic challenged the biblical story of the Creation and almost every other tenet of traditional American religious faith. History, Darwinism suggested, was not the working out of a divine plan, as most Americans had always believed. It was a random process dominated by the fiercest ot luckiest competitors, ‘The theory of evolution met widespread resistance at first from educators, theologians, and even many scientists. By the end of the century, however, the evolutionists had converted ‘most members of the urban professional and educated classes. Even many middle-class Protestant religious leaders had accepted the doctrine, making significant alterations in theology to accommodate it. Evolution had become enshrined in schools “NATURAL. SeLECTiON” (OW THE STEPS ‘Ths xing iby Geary as [1867-1802 Aric art ho bene othe soca Tue Impact oF DARWINISM ‘The single most profound intellectual development im the late nineteenth century was the widespread ‘hor chs La and ether reve nist wht by cae he sere alm of wading a ches tend pry ete sn ‘New Yarns he Ary Sho oy Spe 5. ov Wk Wich as eal avers ‘ncgo senses Sign sce fs bt he werk nore Eurpean ei ho Storey begin tere nh om ait ems © Dai Os Glery/SxeSch of rye nf thy kdb ter ith rng wtb in510 . CHAPTER 18 and universities; few serious scientists any longer questioned its basic validity, Unseen by most urban Americans at the time, however, the rise of Darwinism was contributing to a deep schism between the new, cosmopolitan culture of the city-which was recep: tive to new ideas such as evolution-and a traditional, provin- cial culture located mainly (although not wholly) in rural areas-which remained wedded to fundamentalist religious belief and older values. Thus the late nineteenth century saw not only the rise of a liberal Protestantism in tune with new sclentific discoveries but also the beginning of an organized Protestant fundamentalism, rejecting evolution, which would take its presence felc politically in the 1920s and again in the late twentieth century and beyond. Darwinism helped spawn other new intellectual currents. There was the Social Darwinism of William Graham Sumner “Pracmansm” and others, which industrialists used so enthusiastically to justify their favored position in American life. But there were also more sophisti cated philosophies, among them a doctrine that became known as “pragmatism,” which seemed peculiarly a product of America's changing material civilization. William James, a Harvard psychologist (and brother of the novelist Henty James), was the most prominent publicist of the new theory, although earlier intellectuals such as Charles S. Peirce and later ones such as John Dewey were also important to ts development and dissemination. According to the pragma: tists, modem society should rely for guidance not on inher: ited ideals and moral principles but on the test of scientific DEMPSEY AND FIRPO The att Guorge Bons bg inn Fh sans inte it yrs lhe jet ery, han axing pee primary ovr clss rancomuies By 124, he pn tis iow ofthe Depp he pretghing hed become ae of he mat opr prs Arar. TO Witney Mauna ner Ar, No Yr USABrigean a inquiry. No idea or institution (not even religious faith) was valid, they claimed, unless it worked and unless it stood the test of experience. “The ultimate test for us of what a truth means,” James wrote, “Is the conduct it dictates or inspires ‘A similar concern for scientific inquiry was intruding into the social sciences and challenging traditional orthodoxies, Economists such as Richard T. Ely and Simon Patten argued for 3 ‘more active and pragmatic use of scientific discipline. Sociologiss such as Edward A. Ross and Lester Frank Ward urged applying the scientific method to the solution of social and political prob. lems. Historians such as Frederick Jackson Turner and Charles Beard argued that economic factors more than spiritual ideals had been the governing force in historical development. John, Dewey proposed a new approach to education that placed less ‘emphasis on the rote learning of traditional knowledge and more ona flexible, democratic approach to schooling, one that enabled students to acquire knowledge that would help them deal with the realities of their society. ‘The relativistic implications of Darwinism also promoted the growth of anthropology and encour. aged some scholars co begin examining other cultures-most significantly, perhaps, the culture of American Indians-in new ways. A few white Americans began to look at Indian saciety as a coherent cul ‘ture with its own norms and values that were worthy of respect and preservation, even though different from those of white society. But such ideas about Native Americans found very little support outside a few comers of the intellectual world until much later in the twentieth century. Grown oF ANTHROPOLOGY Towaro UNIVERSAL SCHOOLING A society that was coming to depend increasingly on specialized skills and scientific knowledge was, of course, a society with a high demand for educe- tion, The late nineteenth century, therefore, was a ‘ime of rapid expansion and reform of American schools and universities. One example was the spread of free public primary and secondary education. In 1860, there were only 100 public high STA OF schools in the entire United Epucarion States. By 1900, the number had reached 6,000, and by 1914 over 12,000. By 1900, compulsory school attendance laws were in effect in thirty-one states and territories. But education was still far from universal. Rural areas lagged far behind urban-industrial ones in funding public educt tion. And in the South, many blacks had no access to schools, Educational reformers, few of whom shared the relativistic views of anthropologists, sought to pro- ‘vide educational opportunities for the Indian tribes as well, in an effort to ‘civilize’ them and helpWILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER Wiliam Grebe Sune nasa neni chor who ‘ws append th et profs acigy at Yale A aici nace: be est trom fos jrnction "Soci Darwnisn’a neared ary th sede ary teen olan tones ana peoples. (©The ge Caen New Yor) ‘them adapt to white society. In the 1870s, reformers recruited small groups of Indians to attend Hampton Institute, a primar: iy black college. In 1879, Richard Henry Pratt, a former army officer, organized the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. in Pennsylvania. Calisle emphasized the kind of practical “indus- tal? education that Booker 'T. Washington had urged at his school at Tuskegee. Equally important, it isolated Indians from their tribes and tried to force them to assimilate to white norms, The purpose, Pratt said, was ro “kil the Indian and save the man’ Carlisle inspired other, similar schools in the West. Ultimately, the reform efforts failed, both because of indian resistance and because of inadequate funding, incompetent administration, and poor teaching. Colleges and universities were aso proliferating rapidly in the late nineteenth century. They benefited particulaly from the Morrill Land Grant Act of the Civil War er, by which the federal “Lap-Grane” government had donated land to states for Insrrrunions the establishment of colleges. After 1865, states in the South and West took particular xivantage of the law. In all, sixty-nine “land grant” institutions THE AGE OF THE CITY + St ‘were established in the last decades of the century-among them the state university systems of California, llinois, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, Other universities benefited from millions of dollars contrib ‘uted by business and financial tycoons. Rockefeller, Camegie, and others gave generously to such schools as the University of Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, Northwestern, Princeton, Syracuse, and Yale, Other philanthropists founded new universities or reorganized and renamed older ones to perpetwate their family rnames-Vanderbil, Johns Hopkins, Comell, Duke, Tulane, and Stanford, Ebucation For WoMEN “The post-Civil War era saw, too, an important expansion | of educational opportunities for women, although such ‘opportunities continued to lag far behind those available to men and were almost always denied to black women. Most public high schools accepted women readily, but ‘opportunities for higher education were few. At the end of, the Civil War, only three American colleges were coeduca’ tional. In the years after the war, some of the land-grant col- leges and universities in the Midwest and such private universities as Cornell and Wesleyan began to admit women along with men. But coeducation provided fewer opportunities than the creation of a network of women’s colleges. Mount Holyoke, which had begun its life in 1836 as a ‘seminary” for women, became a full-fledged college in the 1880s. At about the same time, new female institutions were emerging: Vassar, Wellesley, Smith, Bryn Mawr, Wells, and Goucher. few of the larger private universities created separate colleges for women on their cempuses (Bamard at Columbia and Radcliffe at Harvard, for example). Proponents of women's colleges saw the istitu tions as places where female students would not be treated as “second-class citizens’ by predominantly male student bodies and faculties. The female college was part of an important phenomenon {im the history of modern American women: the emergence of a distinctive women's community. Most faculty members and ‘many administrators were women (often unmarried). And the life of the college produced a spirit of sorority and commit ‘ment among educated women that had important effects in later years, as women became the leaders of many reform activities, Most female college graduates eventually married, but many married at a later age than their non-college- educated counterparts and in some cases continued to pursue careers after marriage and motherhood. A significant minority, perhaps over 25 percent, did not marry, but devoted them- selves exclusively to careers, A leader at Bryn Mawr remarked, “Our failures marry? That was surely thetorical excess. The growth of female higher education clearly became for some women a liberating experience, persuading them that they had roles to perform in society in addition to those of wives and mothers. Women’s Cources512 - CHAPTER 18 A CONNECTING THEMES Chapter 18 focused on the reason for urban growth and the consequences of a rapidly increasing urban population. As you review Chapter 18, you should focus on why cities appealed to various groups of people and the factors influencing migration patterns. The increase in immigration and the changing sources of immigration provoked a nativist response, while many other Americans welcomed the new immigrants as a source of labor. The wave of immigration also affected urban groweh, spurting a growth in ethnic communities and neighborhoods, Patterns of settlement and urban growth were also affected by improve- ‘ments in urban transportation. Be able to discuss urban prob: lems of poverty. crime, fire, disease, and pollution and assess the success of municipal governments in overcoming those prob- lems. Lastly, Chapter 18 discussed the causes and effects of ‘increased leisure time and movernent toward a mass consump- tuon society. Art and literature began to emphasize a style of “social realism,” which had an effect of promoting calls to improve urban conditions, particularly for the poor. The following themes have heightened importance Chapter 18, You should now be able ta do the following for each listed theme: American and National Identity: Analyze the ways iq ‘which migration led to changes in American identity for itm: grants, working class people, and first-time urban residents. Work, Exchange, and Technology: Explain the reasons for ‘movement to a mass consumption society and the impact of increased lelsure time on American society. ‘Migration and Settlement: Analyze the sources of urban population growth by examining migration patterns during the Gilded Age. Politics and Power: Explain the positive and negat aspects of machine polities and boss rule on urban residents, Geography and the Environment: Analyze the impact of urbanization and industralization on the American environment, @ SUGGESTED STUDY PEOPLE/PLACES/EVENTS As you study these items, think about how they demonstrate or relate to key concepts and historical themes from this chapter and previous chapters. Auce Hawttow 498 ARMORY SHOW 509 AsHcaN ScHooL 509 ASSIMILATION 491 Boss Rute 499 “CITY BEAUTIFUL” MOVEMENT 494 Darwinism S09 Departmen storrs 501 D.W. Grrr 507 Epwap Horrer 509 Jacon Rus 495 ‘Mopernism 509 Movies 507 Henay James 508 Karte Cuopny 508 ‘Mass rranstr 496 NATIONAL Consumens Leacur S02 NEWSPAPER CHAINS 508 SOCIAL REALISM. 508. STEPHEN CRANE S08 TAMMANY HALL $00 TENEMENTS 495, THEODORE DREISER 508 Urron SINCLAIR 508 WrraM James 510 Witiam M. Twero 500 Women’s coutecrs 511 ‘Yettow jourvauism 508 Yippis THEATER 506 2 TEST PRACTICE Questions assume cumulative content knowledge from this chapter and previous chapters. MULTIPLE CHOICE Use the graph on page 491 and your knowledge of US. history to answer questions 1-3, 4. What was a direct effect of the immigration pattern shown in the graph on urban centers in America by the tum of the 20th century? (A) Dramatic slowing of migration of native-born Americans from rural areas to urban centers (©) Greater independence for immigrant women (©) Growth of distinct, ethnic neighborhoods (©) City governments subsidizing housing for the new arrivals 2. What trend developed in reaction to the events depicted in the graph, reflecting a similar trend to similar events in ‘the eatlier part of the 19th century? (A) Movement of African American women to urban centers in large numbers (8) A tise in nativist sentiment (©) A sharp drop in jobs available for the newly-artived immigrants (©) The growth of suburbs43, Some Americans in the late 19th century welcomed the events depicted in the graph because they allowed for (#) a great deal of cultural diversity to experience in the cities (6) 2 plentiful source for cheap labor (©) a sharp increase in housing demands (©) development of mass transit within urban areas, as ‘more people needed to move about within the city MULTIPLE CHOICE Use the map on page 488 to answer questions 4-5, 44, Which was a notable aspect of the population trend depicted by the map? (4) Great numbers of Aftican Americans moved from the South to the northern cities (6) Few immigrants in the late 19th century settled in cities, upon their arrival in America, (©) Greater numbers of the elderly left the hardships of farm life for the cities. (0) Greater numbers of young, rural women and of African ‘Americans were migrating to the cities. 5. Which best describes the cause for the settlement patterns shown in the map? (4) Availability of new lands in the West (2) Industralization and mechanized farming (©) Increased diversity of immigrants to America (0) The sharp rise in cotton and tobacco production SHORT ANSWER Use your knowledge of US. history to answer questions 6-8. 6. Answer a,b, and c a) There were two very large surges in immigrants coming to America-one in the 1840s and 1850's and the other {in the 1880s and 1890s, Briefly explain ONE major difference in these groups of people. THE AGE OF THE CITY » 513, by Briefly explain ONE important similar effect of these two ‘immigration surges on American society. ¢) Briefly explain ONE negative response to these surges in etther period. 7, Use the photograph on page 501 to answer a,b, and c. ) Briefly explain how the photograph demonstrates the changing nature of American society by the turn of the 2oth century. ) Briefly explain ONE development berween 1860 and 1910 that led to or contributed to this change in ‘American society. ) Briefly explain ONE development between 1860 and 1910 that was a soclal consequence of this change in ‘American society. 8. Answer a,b, and c. 4) For one of the areas below, briefly explain an intellec- ‘wal development in American culture at the turn of the 20th cencury, + At + Literature + Science ») Provide an example of the intellectual development you explained above, €) Briefly explain the social commentary your example is asserting relating to the modem American society of the tun of the 20th century. LONG ESSAY Develop a thoughtful and thorough historical argument that answers the question below. Begin your essay ‘with a thesis statement and support it with relevant histor! cal evidence. 9. Analyze the extent to which industriaization caused soctal and cultural changes, leading to increased urbanization.