JM

OpenStax US History: Urbanization and the Gilded Age (Ch.1-7)

19.1 Urbanization and its challenges

  • Opening vignette: Sadie Frauen arriving in the United States; similar stories of immigrants arriving in New York; promise of “land of opportunity” often met with grim urban realities (language barriers, class, race, and ethnicity) and harsh living conditions (low wages, overcrowding, poor sanitation, disease).
  • Learning objectives for 19.1: explain growth of American cities in the late 19th century; identify key urbanization challenges; outline possible solutions.
  • Rapid urbanization after the mid- to late-1800s driven by industrialization and new technologies:
    • New electric lights and machinery enabled factories to run 24/7 (twenty four hours a day, seven days a week).
    • Workers lived close to factories due to long shifts (12 hours).
    • Immigration from Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe increased urban populations; many settled near arrival points and later near city centers.
    • Immigrants sought communities with shared language and customs; cities became major economic and cultural resources.
  • Industrial shift and city growth:
    • Before the mid-1800s, factories near rivers/seaports due to water power and transport needs; river transport limited by seasonal flow.
    • Steam engine enabled location of factories near urban centers.
    • Urban centers developed distinct identities by core industries (e.g., Pittsburgh → steel; Chicago → meat packing; New York → garments/finance; Detroit → autos).
  • Universal urban challenges across rapidly growing cities:
    • Housing shortages and substandard living conditions; crowding; poor ventilation; inadequate plumbing and sanitation.
    • Transportation and communication strains.
    • Deep class inequalities shaped by race, religion, and ethnicity; local politics often corrupt.
  • Four innovations that shaped turn-of-the-century urbanization:
    • Electric lighting
    • Communication improvements
    • Intracity transportation
    • Rise of skyscrapers
  • Electric lighting details:
    • Thomas Edison patented the incandescent light bulb in 1880.
    • First commercial power plants opened in 1882; Nikola Tesla’s AC helped cover greater urban areas.
    • Electric lighting enabled 24/7 factory operations and nighttime street illumination, extending economic activity after sunset.
  • Communications improvements:
    • Telephone patented in 1876; rapidly supplanted the telegraph.
    • By 1900, over 1{,}500{,}000 telephones were in use nationwide (private lines and party lines).
    • Instant communication supported by telephone helped sustain urban growth and more continuous business demand.
  • Intracity transportation developments:
    • Pre-1880s urban transport included the omnibus (horse-drawn carriage) and horse car; both struggled with congestion and manure problems.
    • 1887: Frank Sprague invents the electric trolley, powered by electricity along tracks; usable day and night; helped spread to smaller centers like Richmond.
    • 1873: San Francisco adopts pulley technology from mining to create cable cars for steep hills.
    • 1868: Elevating trolley lines above streets (elevated trains, or L trains) began in New York; later in Boston (1887) and Chicago (1892).
    • Late 1890s: Subways begin to rise; Boston’s subway opened in 1897; others soon followed.
  • Skyscrapers and vertical growth:
    • Eastern cities faced geographic limits to outward growth (rivers, coastlines) and rising land costs; skyscrapers offered more usable space.
    • First skyscraper in Chicago: 10-story Home Insurance Building (1890s era; completed in 1885 in Chicago as noted).
    • Elevator: 1889 Otis Elevator Company installed the first electric elevator, enabling taller buildings.
    • Steel construction techniques allowed taller structures; elevators made them viable, spurring a skyscraper craze in urban cores.
  • Riis and the visual record of urban poverty:
    • Jacob Riis, a Danish immigrant and police reporter, documented slums and tenements in How the Other Half Lives (1890).
    • Used dramatic photography to reveal living conditions; his work spurred public reform and tenement legislation.
    • Riis’s work highlighted the role of media in reform and the potential tension between reformers and immigrant communities.
  • Immediate challenges of urban life (summary): congestion, pollution, crime, and disease; poor housing; fragile sanitation; increasing fire hazards; overcrowding in tenements.
  • Health and sanitation milestones:
    • Typhoid and cholera were common epidemics; Yellow fever in Memphis in 1878–79; resulting deaths in the thousands.
    • By the late 1880s, major cities (NYC, Baltimore, Chicago, New Orleans) introduced sewage pumping systems for waste management.
  • Tenement housing and density:
    • A typical working-class family of six (two adults, four children) often lived in two-bedroom tenements with poor ventilation and sanitation.
    • By 1900, Manhattan reportedly had nearly 50{,}000 tenement houses.
    • NY slums were among the most densely populated globally (e.g., over 800 residents per square acre in the Lower East Side’s wards Eleventh and Thirteenth).
  • Civic and religious responses to urban chaos:
    • Churches and civic organizations promoted social gospel: Christians should address secular life issues, not only spiritual concerns (Washington Gladden was a major advocate).
    • YMCA and Men’s Christian Association expanded urban outreach.
    • Settlement house movement (1890s) offered direct relief through child care, classes, libraries, gym facilities, and health care; led by women reformers like Jane Addams (Hull House, Chicago, 1889) and Lillian Wald (Henry Street Settlement, NYC, 1895).
    • Settlement houses served as hubs for social work education and employment for educated women; they also faced friction with immigrant communities who held different reform ideas.
  • Legislation and reform aftermath (Riis-linked reform context):
    • Success of settlement house movement contributed to housing laws, child labor laws, and workers’ compensation movements.
    • Florence Kelley and Jane Addams later helped form the National Child Labor Committee and the Children’s Bureau (US Department of Labor, 1912); Julia Lathrop became the first female head of a federal agency (appointed by Taft).
  • Jane Addams’s perspective on settlement houses (quote-influenced synthesis):
    • Emphasizes cooperation across political lines and social classes; the settlement’s aim is to socialize democracy and provide accessible education and culture to improve urban life.
  • 19.2 The African American Great Migration and new European immigration
  • Learning objectives for 19.2: identify push/pull factors for African American and European immigration; explain discrimination and anti-immigration legislation.
  • The African American Great Migration:
    • Between the end of the Civil War and the early 20th century, about 2{,}000{,}000 African Americans left the rural South for urban opportunities in the Northeast and Upper Midwest.
    • Primary destinations included New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Indianapolis (these eight cities accounted for over two thirds of the Black south-to-north migration population).
    • Push factors: continued racial violence (KKK rise post-Civil War; lynchings; threats); discrimination; lack of political protection.
    • Pull factors: job opportunities in factories with wages higher than rural systems, and the possibility of voting (for men) in the North.
    • Economic realities: Black workers were concentrated in low-wage, unskilled or semi-skilled jobs (e.g., steel mills, mines, construction, meatpacking; porters/servants in railroads; maids/domestics in other sectors).
    • Housing and living conditions: although wages were higher than in the South, many Black migrants and families faced overcrowded, unsanitary housing; racial discrimination persisted in the North (housing covenants, redlining by banks).
    • Education and personal freedoms: North offered greater educational opportunities and less overt social deference pressures; anonymity in urban settings allowed greater personal freedom to move, work, and speak up.
  • New European immigration after 1880s:
    • Surge of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe (Italy, Greece, Slavic countries including Russia) as opposed to earlier Northern/Western European immigration.
    • Push factors: famines, religious/political persecution, and conscription; pull factors: steady wages, opportunity to work.
    • Settlement patterns: newcomers tended to settle in port cities rather than moving West; by 1890, >80\% of New York’s population was foreign-born or children of foreign-born parents.
    • Ellis Island began operation as the primary port of entry in 1892; the immigration processing center screened for disease; about 2\% denied entry due to medical or criminal history; majority admitted.
    • Ethnic enclaves formed (Little Italy, Chinatown, etc.) to provide community and familiar services, though they contributed to dense, segregated neighborhoods and added to urban congestion.
  • Demographic shift and federal responses to immigration:
    • The Dillingham Commission (formed by Congress in 1907) reinforced the ethnic distinctions among immigrants and highlighted perceived differences in appearance, language, and religion (Judaism and Catholicism).
    • Anti-immigrant backlash emerged; organizations like the American Protective Association advocated restrictions.
    • Legislation pursued included a literacy test (passed in 1917) and the Chinese Exclusion Act (already discussed in a previous chapter); later legislative steps would lead to Emergency Quota Act (1921) and the Immigration Act (1924), culminating in the National Origins Act.
  • 19.3 Relief from the chaos of urban life
  • Learning objectives for 19.3: identify how different classes responded to urban life; explain machine politics and settlement-house-based relief; assess middle-class and upper-class responses.
  • Class-based responses to urban life:
    • Working class: relied on machine politics as a rapid relief mechanism; popular culture and entertainment as diversions; formation of civic machines and entertainment economies.
    • Middle class: sought education and suburbanization; rising professional class (managers, engineers, doctors, accountants) sought safer, more comfortable living environments; valued public education expansion.
    • Upper class: maintained elite status within cities; focused on refined cultural activities (classical music, art) and social networks; used social registers to monitor status (e.g., New York’s Blue Book, annual social register).
  • Machine politics (urban political machines):
    • Concept: ward-based representation where aldermen addressed local problems in exchange for votes; the boss ensured quick solutions through graft (kickbacks) and control of city contracts.
    • Example: Tammany Hall in NYC led by William Tweed (with George Washington Plunkitt); other major cities (Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland, St. Louis, Kansas City) also used machines.
    • Pros and cons: quick, practical relief for urban residents; often corrupt and nontransparent, undermining democratic processes.
  • Popular culture and entertainment as relief:
    • Amusement parks (e.g., Coney Island, opened 1895) offered rides, attractions, and stage productions; some acts drew scrutiny from reformers (e.g., ASPCA criticized animal acts).
    • Vaudeville served as a major entertainment form; Harry Houdini rose from vaudeville to fame.
    • Nickelodeons emerged as precursors to modern movie theaters (first opened in 1905 in Pittsburgh).
    • Baseball provided affordable, unifying entertainment; professional leagues emerged by the 1870s; ballparks like Fenway Park (opened 1912), Forbes Field (opened 1909), and the Polo Grounds (opened 1890) became civic touchstones.
    • Other popular forms: prizefighting; college football with corporate-like organization and time-management ethos.
  • The dime novel and women’s engagement:
    • Beginning in 1860, dime novels offered inexpensive, escapist reading; marketed to urban readers; women readers and some women authors helped shape the genre.
    • Protagonists often featured women as heroines in moral, virtuous roles; later expansions included mystery and detective genres; nickel weeklies broadened formats.
  • The American upper class in cities:
    • While the working class was drawn to the city’s energy, and the middle class to access to jobs and services, the wealthy often preferred cultural and social prestige.
    • Notable landmarks: Carnegie Hall (opened 1891) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (opened 1872).
    • Elite life included luxury travel (vacations to Newport, Florida winters, steamship trips to Europe) and social directories like the annual Social Register (also called the Blue Book), begun in 1886 by Lewis Keller.
  • The new middle class and suburbanization:
    • Middle class included managers, engineers, doctors, teachers, accountants, etc.; they sought relief via education and suburban living.
    • Suburbs expanded as transportation improved (electric railways) and as more people could afford to live away from the city while commuting to work.
    • Henry Ford’s popularization of the automobile later contributed to suburban growth; the interstate highway system and low-interest loans would accelerate this trend in the 20th century.
  • New roles for middle-class women:
    • Social norms promoted women’s roles as homemakers for working husbands and school-age children; magazines like Ladies’ Home Journal and Good Housekeeping gained popularity.
    • Some women gained access to higher education via newly established women’s colleges (Mount Holyoke, Vassar, Smith, Wellesley; 1865–1880 openings); some colleges offered affiliated women’s colleges (Radcliffe, Pembroke).
    • Public higher education expansion accelerated; public schools grew rapidly (enrollment tripled from 7{,}000{,}000 in 1870 to 21{,}000{,}000 by 1920, though the exact formatting in the source may read differently here).
    • Higher education and professional preparation opened doors for women as teachers, professors, and settlement workers.
  • Education and the middle class: expansion of public schooling and higher education provisions:
    • Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890 created land-grant colleges; these institutions offered affordable education focused on professions, trades, agriculture, and industry.
    • Iowa was among the earliest adopters (Iowa State University); other states followed; enrollment rose from about 50{,}000 students nationwide in 1870 to over 600{,}000 by 1920.
    • Curricula shifted toward practical, work-related skills rather than purely liberal arts, including professional schools in medicine, law, and business.
  • City Beautiful movement (urban planning reform):
    • Responded to urban sprawl, aesthetics, and quality of life concerns; leaders like Frederick Law Olmsted and Daniel Burnham promoted design reforms.
    • Colubmbian Exposition (1893) showcased the White City; emphasized harmonious urban design with green space, efficient transportation, and sanitation.
    • White City served as a model for future city planning; 1901 modernization of Washington, DC; three tenets:
    • Increase park spaces in cities; ext{(tenet 1)}
    • Build wider boulevards with tree lines to reduce congestion; ext{(tenet 2)}
    • Expand suburbs to relieve central city density; ext{(tenet 3)}
  • 19.4 Change reflected in thought and writing
  • Learning objectives for 19.4: explain how American writers (fiction and nonfiction) depicted late 19th/early 20th century changes; identify influential women and African American writers.
  • Intellectual currents and social theory in late 19th century America:
    • Darwinian ideas and social Darwinism:
    • Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) popularized evolution via natural selection; controversy persisted about religion and science.
    • Herbert Spencer coined ‘survival of the fittest’; popularized social Darwinism (the view that society evolves like a natural organism with success tied to inherited traits and adaptation).
    • William Graham Sumner advanced social Darwinism; supporters linked wealth to biological fitness; critics argued unequal opportunities blocked a level playing field.
    • Realism and pragmatism:
    • Realism sought to portray social realities honestly (urban life, the poor, racial and gender issues).
    • William James (pragmatism) argued ideas should be tested by practical consequences; truth derived from experiential verification.
    • John Dewey’s instrumentalism: education as a vehicle for social reform via scientific method and reform-minded pedagogy.
  • Visual arts and literature of realism:
    • Ashcan School (George Bellows, Edward Hopper, Robert Henri) depicted urban life, slums, tenements, and everyday working-class leisure.
    • Novelists and journalists popularized realism; writers like Stephen Crane (slums, Civil War), Rebecca Harding Davis (Iron Mills, 1861) and Mark Twain (e.g., The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1884) highlighted social realities and urban corruption.
    • Naturalism (Jack London) argued that nature/biology and environment governed human life; Kate Chopin offered feminist perspectives and explored race relations and Creole culture (e.g., Daisy Rays Baby); Chopin’s The Awakening (1899) challenged social norms around women’s sexuality and autonomy, was controversial and censored in its time.
    • African American writers: Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote in both standard English and Black dialect; his work portrayed both struggles and successes within Black life in America; his collaboration/association with William Dean Howells helped establish him as a major voice.
  • Notable women and their contributions:
    • Kate Chopin (The Awakening, 1899) – explored female autonomy and social constraints; early feminist voice; addressed race (Creole society) in works like Daisy Rays Baby.
    • Jane Addams and the settlement house movement; Hull House (1889) as a model for social reform and women’s leadership; social activism extended to women’s suffrage and international peace efforts.
  • Critics of modern America:
    • Edward Bellamy (Looking Backward, 1888): utopian novel envisioning socialist reorganizations of American life; popular bestseller; inspired debates about the capitalist system and reform.
    • Henry George (Progress and Poverty, 1879): criticized inequality in an industrial economy; argued for communal ownership of land and a single land tax to discourage private land monopolies; influenced reformers and even later cultural references (e.g., Monopoly board game conceptual origins).
    • Thorstein Veblen (The Theory of the Leisure Class, 1899): analyzed conspicuous consumption; argued that the middle class exploited the working class and that business trusts contributed to economic inefficiencies; called for reform.
  • Pop culture and broader social context:
    • The Oz anecdote: L. Frank Baum’s Oz legends tied to populist era, with debates on populist symbolism in American politics.
    • These writers and thinkers helped shape a national conversation about progress, inequality, and the proper role of government and reform in industrial America.
  • 20.1 Political corruption in postbellum America
  • Learning objectives for 20.1: discuss the national political scene during the Gilded Age; analyze why the era was viewed as a period of ineffective leadership; examine the broader challenges of Reconstruction, western development, global commodities markets, and urban labor conditions.
  • Postbellum challenges summarized:
    • Reconstruction legacies and race relations continued to shape politics and society; the nation wrestled with integrating newly freed African Americans into political life and civil society.
    • Farmers faced debt pressures: low agricultural prices, rising costs, and adverse market conditions (causes included greater acreage, machinery adoption, global competition, price manipulation by commodity traders, expensive railroad freight rates, and costly loans).
    • Urban workers faced long hours, hazardous conditions, and stagnant wages in an increasingly industrial economy.
  • (The provided transcript ends mid-sentence in 20.1; themes include the ongoing debate over governance effectiveness, corruption, and the balance between reforms and maintaining political power in the Gilded Age.)