Chapter 18 APUSH - The Age of the City

New immigrants

People from Canada, Mexico, Latin America, China, Japan, and primarily Italians, Greeks, Russians, and other Europeans

“Immigrant ghettos”

Close - knit ethnic communities within cities that attempted to re-create in the new world many features of the old

American Protective Association

Founded in 1887 by Henry Bowers (HATE foreigners). A group committed to stopping the immigrant tide

Xenophobia

A general fear or dislike of foreigners

Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaus

Landscape designers who teamed up in the late 1850’s to design NYC’s Central park

The 1893 Columbian Exposition

A world’s fair in Chicago constructed to honor the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s first voyage to America

Suburbs

Linked to downtowns by trains or streetcars or improved roads. The moderately wealthy people settled in these

Tenements

Originally referred simply to multiple-family rental buildings but was later used to describe slum dwellings only

“How the other half lives”

Written by Jacob Riis, a Danish immigrant and NY journalist and photographer. It described slum dwellings as sunless, airless, and poisoned

The Great Fires (1871)

Huge and destructive fires in Chicago and Boston. Encouraged the construction of fireproof buildings and the development of professional fire departments

Louis Sullivan

An American architect who used steel frames to design skyscrapers. Coined “form follows function”

The “deserving poor”

Those who truly could not help themselves (at least according to the standards of the organizations which conducted elaborate “investigations” to separate the “deserving poor” from the “undeserving”)

The Salvation Army

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

“Street Arabs”

Poor children in the cities, some orphans or runaways

The Urban Machine

The BTS of politics

Urban “bosses”

Often of foreign birth or parentage. Almost all were men. The principle function was to win votes for an organization, usually through acts of service to poor people

Honest graft

A form of political corruption defined as the unscrupulous use of a politician’s authority for personal gain

William M. Tweed

The most famously corrupt city boss, boss of NYC’s Tammany Hall in the 1860’s and 70’s

“Chain stores”

National networks of stores that challenged small local stores

“Five and ten cent store”

Created by F.W. Woolworth in Utica, NY, in 1879, and became a national chain

Catalogs

Allowed people in rural areas to see and buy consumer goods

Department stores

Emerged and helped transform buying habits and turn shopping into an alluring activiy

The National Consumers League

Formed in the 1890’s under the leadership of Florence Kelley. Attempted to mobilize the power of women as consumers to force retailers and manufacturers to improve wages and working conditions for women workers

“Leisure”

Refined by the growth of free time. Became a normal aspect of the lives of many people

The national pastime

Baseball

The Carlisle Indian Industrial School

Forced native Americans to assimilate and separate from their tribes

Had the purpose of “killing the Indian, saving the man”