Urban Migration

• In 1920: Most americans lived in in cities

• Immigrants, Native-born

Great Migration

• Over 1 million Southern African Americans left the South to settle in cities in the North and the West

• Number one reason: Job opportunities

City Living

• Advantages

  • Job opportunities

    • In the late 1800s, the city was affordable/cheap

  • Convenience

    • Transportation

    • shared history/cultural/religious background and ethnic backgrounds

• Disadvantages

  • Crime

  • Overpopulation

  • Disease was easily spread

  • Transportation issues

  • Water quality was poor because there was no purification system and disease spread through water

  • Not everybody has indoor plumbing so bathing was not possible

  • There was no Sanitation

  • Fires occurred often

Immigration

• Up through 1880s Majority of immigrants were “Old” immigrants who came from northern and western europe: Germany, Britain, Scandinavia

  • most of them were able to speak English, high levels of literacy, occupational skills, and shared religious belief (protestants)

  • THey easily assimilated

  • Old immigrants were WASPS: White Anglo Saxon Protestant

• IN late 1880s there was a shift in immigration patterns

• “New Immigrants” were from Southern and Eastern Europe: Southern, Russians, Italians

• most were poor, illiterate, no skills, didn’t speak English, Came from autocratic countries (No experience with democracy), and were bringing new religions (Roman Catholicism, Russian and Greek Orthodox, Judaism)

• Had more difficulty assimilating

• “Push” Negative forces that push someone out of a country: Poverty, overcrowded, high unemployment, military conscription (Mandatory Military service), religious persecution

• Pull: Positive Forces that push someone to move to a country: Opportunity, Freedom (political and religious),

  • Birds of Passage:

    • Traditionally Young man who came to the United States for a short period of times and earned as much as he could and returned to native land

• Most Americans consider immigrants an asset to the nation; legal immigration

• Immigrants worked in the mine, factory, railroad workers

  • Tthey were cheap source of labor; farmers were in western lands

• Western territories advertising overseas for immigrants to come to the western territory (needs people to reach certain number to achieve statehood)

• Consumers of the products of agriculture and industry; persons of special abilities, talents, and skills; and military strength (drafted, enlisted)

• Disapproval of Immigrants (new, but not old)

• New Immigrants couldn’t Didn’t assimilate well

• With frontier (pocket of land in Mississippi) closed there was no more free or cheap land for the immigrants; believed American industry had enough workers and new immigrants were taken jobs away from native born workers

• New Americans were difficult to Americanize

• When the new immigrants settled they had a tendency to settle in ethnic cities (ghettos) and stayed within their own culture; non-speaking immigrants were forced to learn english; didn’t want new immigrants were because they argued were that physically and mentally inferior to old immigrants and old-stock (germanic and british stock)

• Statue of Liberty up at 1886

  • This was ironic because Congress had already passed a number of laws restricting immigration

• REstriction against undesirable persons: Mentally incompetent (disabilities), physical handicaps, diseases, criminal records,

• Law in 1885 prohibited Contract Labor: recruiting immigrants to come work; immigrants had contract to work with someone in the states

• 1892: Ellis and Angel Island (San Francisco Harbor) became immigration centers

  • The US started giving more rigorous test to get into the US (Document exams, medical exams,

• Groups Supporting Restrictions

• Labor unions feared that immigrants would be strike breakers (if you go on strike, ownership would offer work and they would pay people to cross picket line where workers would be on strike---sometimes violent) or depress wages

• APA (American protective association) wanted to restrict the immmigration (Nativists) ofthe Catholics because most nativists were Protestants

  • Catholics adhered to the Pope and Nativists didn’t want Catholics to have influence on social and political influences

• Social Darwinists: believed that new immigrants were biologically inferior to old stock

• Anti immigration sentiment:

  • There were more new immigrants than old immigrants

    • economic depression in late 1800s due to overspeculation and immigrants were a scapegoat for depression

    • A MAJORITY still supported them---It didn’t stop the flow (1900: 15% of this country were immigrants)

• Immigrants were settling in cities; poor and while this is going on there was Exponential economic growth)

• THe widespread poverty led to New social consciousness (Middle class who drive the movement of reform; problem of industrial age was poverty)

• Reform books that highlight poverty and offer solutions

• Progress in Poverty by Henry George:

  • He Points out the alarming inequalities of wealth in industrial age and he believed that land became too expensive

  • The growing population increased land values and average american couldn’t afford land

  • the solution was a 100% tax on the sale of land (0% profit when you sell your land)

  • The wealthy drive up value of land

• Looking Backward 2000 to 1887 by Edward Bellamy

• Protagonist falls asleep, wakes up in the year 2000, and America was a great place (cooperative society, no poverty, no crime, no greed---utopian----no class system)

• Jacob Riis

• Important because they influence public opinion; work of george, bellamy, and riis encouraged major shift on public opinion; shift wanted america to move away from pure laissez faire capitalism to a more regulated economy

• Settlement house movement: Driven by young idealistic well educated women and men of the middle class; overwhelmingly young women

• Concerned about lives of poor; lived there, helped immigrant poor assimilate into American society but they offered services to anyone

• Instruction in english, childcare, music schools

• Precursors to modern day social workers; most famous house Jane Addams Hull House in Chicago

• Political Activists: Child labor laws, housing reforms, and women’s rights

• Social Gospel: Walter Rauschenbusch

• Applying christian principles to social problems of era (how to help impoverished)

America Moves to the City: Family Life and Education

Family Life

• Urban life placed severe strains on parents and their children by isolating them from the extended family

• Divorce rates increased to 1 in 12 marriages by 1900

• Due to STRESS and states expanding the grounds for divorce: Finance problems

• Shift from rural to urban life was a reduction in family size

• Children were an economic asset on the farm

• In the city, they were more of an economic liability

• The Lust of Learning- Education

• Elementary schools:

• After CIvil War, more states made grade school education compulsory

• Helped also stop some of the worst abuses of child labor, kids in school instead of factories--taking away jobs from men

• Better education resulted in more productive workers

• High Schools

• Before 1880s-public high schools rare

• 1880s-1900s- free public high schools established, along with free books---taxpayers pay for it (in NJ there are property taxes, not a lot of federal income)

• Changes in Education: Growing complexity of modern life, along with the intellectual influence of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, raised challenging questions about what schools and universities should teach

Public Schools

• Elementary schools continued to teach the 3 “R’s”: Reading, writing, arithmetic; and traditional values

• New compulsory laws increased enrollment in public schools

• Resulted in literacy rate in increasing to 90%

• Sending children to kindergarten became popular

Darwinism:

• Religion’s reaction to Darwinism

• Fundamentalists: literal interpretation of Bible

• Accommodationists: reconciled Darwinism with Christianity; did not accept Bible (in its entirety) as history or science {wanted to keep people in church}

• Impact of Darwinism

• Religious foundations of Americans shaken but accommodationists kept many in churches

• Science explained external world instead of religion

Morrill Act of 1862 (got Feds involved in education)

• Gave large grants of public land to states for public education (The A&MS--agriculture and mining/manufacturing)

• Hatch ACt of 1887

• Extended Morrill Act to provide federal funds for agricultural experiment stations at land-grant colleges

• Morill and Hatch Acts helped create over 100 colleges and universities in US

• Private philanthropy *(Charity) helped build many colleges

• Many new industrial millionaires gave money to build colleges

Higher Education

• By 1900 over 100 coeducational colleges had been founded

• There were also significant changes in the college curriculum

• Harvard introduced electives to accommodate the teaching of modern languages and the sciences

• Johns Hopkins University was founded in 1876 as the first American institution to specialize in advanced graduate studies; followed the model of German Universities; produced the first generation of scholars who could compete with the intellectual achievements of Europeans (Law school, masters, etc.)

• The problem of education in the South

• South was far behind and People of color were even further behind (discrimination)

Literature and Arts

• Turned from romantic novels to those of rugged realism (materialism of industrialism)

• Newspapers became less a medium of objective information and more sensationalist

Amusements---Americans had more leisure time

• Drinking at saloon

• Theaters and vaudeville

• Circus

• Professional sports

• Amateur sports (croquet, biking, etc.)

Granger Laws:

• States have no authority over interstate commerce

• Interstate commerce act was replaced

Poverty vs Pauper

• Pauper: DIdn’t work for it

• Poverty: Keep home and clothes clean

  • clothing lines meant they were trying to keep themselves clean

  • The social gospel helps them

• Walter Rauschenbusch

America Moves to the CIty

• Women’s Suffrage, The New Morality, Booker T Washington and WEB DuBois

• Give Mother the Vote--We Need It

• Push starts in 1900 to increase power of women politically

• Starts in the west and goes east

• Women’s gains toward suffrage

• States began allowing women to vote in local and sometimes state elections (strongest in West)

• 1869: Wyoming granted first to be unrestricted

• Women also gained right to own property and formed women’ s organizations at the same time

• White women restricted Black women’s membership in their suffrage and social groups

• Men viewed women as reliant people in West because they had to settle in the west and rely on each other

• Ida B. Wells

• Began nationwide anti-lynching campaign

• Helped Black women form their own organizations for suffrage and equality

• Segregation and Racism---White women restricted Black women from their suffrage and racial groups

• The new Morality

• Late 1800s: culture battle over sexual freedom and role of women in society

• “New morality”--greater freedom in sexuality (brought about in party women’s greater economic freedom)

• Signs of the new morality: Divorce, birth control, open discussion of sexual topics (Sex education); greater control in their bodies

• Battle exemplified by clashes between Victoria Woodhull and Anthony Comstock

• Margaret Sanger- Opened the first birth control clinic in US history

• Victoria Woodhull: Proclaimed belief in free love (relationships outside of marriage, same gender); worked for feminism and PUblished radical magazine; a MAVERICK (Revolutionary, a Rebel)- most women do not support her

• Anthony Comstock: Campaigned against “immorality”; Used 1873 Comstock Law to confiscate and destroy sexuality explicit pictures, books, and magazines, including info about birth control

• Divorce rate increased due to Stress; moving away from extended family, expenses of city which led to more financial trouble

  • Women were finally allowed to divorce

• Woman’s Holy War; the fight against alcohol--Temperance Movement

• Men are spending too much time in saloon; family money spent on alcohol

• Absenteeism in the workplace

  • Having the Irish flu meant that men were Hungover and don’t go to war

• Not focused at their job

• Some men become violent when drinking

• 1893- Anti Saloon League formed: More important gains in states, banning alcohol

• 1919- 18th Amendment banned alcohol nationally but Repealed in 1933

Other reform societies

• 1866- ASPCA (prevention of cruelty to animals)

• 1881: American Red Cross

• Led by Clara Barton, nurse from Civil War

DC Party- night before prohibition; January 20 of 1920; still smuggling

Different POV for black community

• 1960s- MLK JR vs. Malcolm X (For ex.)

• Booker T Washington

  • 1881--took lead at industrial school in Tuskegee Alabama

  • Taught Blacks useful trades so that they could gain economic security and self respect

  • Accommodationist because he did not challenge white supremacy or racism

  • He accepted inequality (Begrudgingly---he did not believe in racial inferiority; he believed that white people would not accept black people as equals and pushing for equality was disastrous)

  • He wanted them to lead life w/o confrontation and aggression because then whites will change their perspective on race relations

  • Believed social equality (w/political and civil rights) would come after achieving economic security

• George W. Carver important teacher at Tuskegee Institute

  • Whites accepted Washington more: “this is a man who understands his place”

• WEB DuBois

  • Northern Black who earned PhD from Harvard (first Black to do so)

  • Helped NAACP (national association for the advancement of colored peoples)

  • Demanded complete equality for POC (social and economic), rejecting Washington’s gradualism

  • Called for “Talented tenth” of POC to lead and be given full and equal access to mainstream education

  • Washington vs. DuBois would be the fight for the black community