The Challenge of the CitiesCh.8, Section 3

WARM UP 11/1/10

Define the following;

steerage

quarantine

subsidies

Expanding Cities

•Why did the nation’s urban centers grow so rapidly?–Foreign immigrants settled in port cities

–1880 – 1920: 11 million American farmers left their farms and moved to the city

Expanding Cities

•Why?–Economic hardships on their farms

– less need for labor – factory-made products and new farming equipment

–boll weevil destroyed many cotton crops in Alabama and Mississippi

How Cities Grew

•Motorized methods–Elevated trains (1868, New York City)

–Cable cars (1873, San Francisco)

–Electric trolleys (1888, Richmond)

–Subway trains (1897, Boston)–Automobile (1890’s; mass-produced in 1910’s)

Chicago’s Home Insurance Company Building

•Buildings–Elevators (1857)–Skyscrapers

Urban Living Conditions

•Tenements: high volume, low-cost apartment buildings–Create slums: poverty-stricken, overcrowded, neglected neighborhoods

Urban Living Conditions

•Problems: – Open sewers = spread disease easily– no ventilation = fires

•Reforms:– 1879: New York required an outside

window in every room– Dumbbell Tenement: Apartment

buildings shaped like a dumbbell•Problems: rotting garbage collected at the

bottom of the shaft; contaminated drinking water; poor sanitation

Sewage dumped into same water that provided drinking water

How the Other Half Lives

•How the Other Half Lives, published by Jacob Riis

•Effort to generate public support for reform of the tenement system

•Used new technology to pull supporters in – flash photography

•Result: New York State passed the nation’s first meaningful laws to improve tenements

Results of City Growth

•Middle and upper classes moved to the suburbs in the late 1800’s

•Result: Gap between rich and poor widened

Political Divisions

•Cities are overwhelmed•Pressure coming from rapid amount of urban growth

•Political Machines take over

Political Divisions•An unofficial city organization designed to keep a particular party or group in power

•Headed by a “boss”•Worked through the exchange of favors

•Hand out jobs/contracts – In return, residents give them votes

Political Machines• Graft: use of one’s job to gain profit

– Ex: companies wanting a favor from the city could get it by paying money to the machine

• People blamed immigrants for political machine’s success– Corrupt politicians took advantage of

poorly educated immigrants– Immigrants supported them b/c they

helped them find jobs and a place to live

Political Machines

•“Boss” Tweed–Controlled Tammany Hall – Political club that ran the NY Democratic Party–Ripped off city government

•City Hall: designed to cost $250,000, it cost $13 million

Thomas Nast exposes him in numerous political cartoons

Warm-Ups

• During the latter part of the 19th century, Americans known as nativists began to resent the foreign immigrants who were flooding the country. Some nativists even formed ant-foreigner organizations such as the American Protective Association (APA).

• Why do you think these nativists resented foreigners?

Ideas of ReformCh.8, Section 4

Helping the Needy

•Want to fight poverty & improve unwholesome social conditions in cities

•Social Gospel Movement: sought to apply the gospel of Jesus directly to society– Supported providing improved

living conditions

The Settlement Movement

•Settlement House: kind of community center, offered social services

–Hull House: opened by Jane Addams–Offered education, culture, and hope to slums

Controlling Immigration & Behavior

•Nativism: favoring native-born Americans over immigrants–American Protective Association•called for teaching of only American culture & English language

Prohibition

• Temperance Movement: organized to eliminate alcohol consumption– Prohibition Party, Woman’s Christian

Temperance Union, and the Anti-Saloon League

– Opposed drinking b/c it led to personal tragedies - Blue laws

• Prohibition: ban on the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages

Purity Crusaders•Vice: immoral or corrupt behavior•Comstock Law: prohibited sending any obscene materials through the mail

–Ex: descriptions of methods to prevent unwanted pregnancy