The Age of The Industrial City (1877-1914)

Chapter 4. The Age of The Industrial City (1877-1914)

Chapter Objectives

  • Understand the factors driving the dramatic growth of American cities in the 19th century.
  • Analyze the impact of industrialization on urbanization.
  • Examine how class, ethnicity, and gender influenced urban political affairs.
  • Investigate the roles cities played as centers of urban reform.

Introduction

  • In 1820, most Americans resided in rural areas.
  • By 1900, one in five Americans lived in cities.
  • New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia housed nearly 6.5 million people.
  • Cities became centers for factories and immigrant settlement (constituting one-third of big-city residents in 1900).
  • Cities also housed millionaires and a growing white-collar class.
  • The city offered an urban culture unlike any previously seen in the United States.
  • Urban dwellers, despite their differences, developed a distinct urban identity.

Table 18.1 Ten Largest Cities by Population, 1870 and 1900

  • 1870
    • New York: 942,292
    • Philadelphia: 674,022
    • Brooklyn: 419,921 (consolidated with New York in 1898)
    • St. Louis: 310,864
    • Chicago: 298,977
    • Baltimore: 267,354
    • Boston: 250,526
    • Cincinnati: 216,239
    • New Orleans: 191,418
    • San Francisco: 149,473
  • 1900
    • New York: 3,437,202
    • Chicago: 1,698,575
    • Philadelphia: 1,293,697
    • St. Louis: 575,238
    • Boston: 560,892
    • Baltimore: 508,957
    • Cleveland: 381,768
    • Buffalo: 352,387
    • San Francisco: 342,782
    • Cincinnati: 325,902

1. Urbanization

  • Pre-Civil War, cities were trade hubs.
  • Early industry was located in rural areas for water power and access to resources.
  • Industrialization led to a merger of city and factory.
  • Steam engines freed factories from reliance on water power.
  • Railroads allowed factories to be located near suppliers and markets.
  • Port cities provided abundant cheap labor for factories due to immigration.

1.1. City Innovation

  • Mark Twain noted the challenge of moving a million New Yorkers around in 1867.
  • The omnibus (horse-drawn carriage on iron tracks) was an early innovation in the 1820s.
  • The electric trolley car was primarily the work of Frank J. Sprague, a former engineer for Thomas A. Edison.
  • Elevated railroads began operating in New York City in 1879.
  • Chicago fully developed elevated transit systems.
  • Subways were developed, with the first subway in Manhattan completed in 1904.
  • The first skyscraper was William Le Baron Jenney’s ten-story Home Insurance Building (1885) in Chicago which used steel frame construction.
  • New York City took the lead in skyscraper construction after the mid-1890s.
  • The fifty-five-story Woolworth Building (1913) shaped the modern Manhattan skyline.
  • Electric lighting improved city lighting in the 1870s and later entered homes via Thomas Edison’s incandescent bulb in 1879.
  • Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone (1876) revolutionized communication.

1.2. Private City, Public City

  • City building was largely driven by private enterprise.
  • Cities like Chicago (after the 1871 fire) and San Francisco (after the 1906 earthquake) were rapidly rebuilt.
  • America developed a “private city” shaped by individual financial pursuits.
  • Municipal governments were responsible for regulating public and private interests.
  • Environmental issues existed in the space between public and private control; city streets were often dirty and poorly maintained.
  • New York City had five- or six-story tenements housing many families in cramped apartments.
  • Reformers struggled to solve housing problems.
  • Some supported model tenements funded by philanthropy.
  • Private philanthropy could not solve the problem of escalating land values.
  • Landlords sought returns on investment by building high-density, cheap housing.
  • Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of Central Park, promoted bringing nature into cities.
  • The Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893 led to the “City Beautiful” movement, fostering park systems, boulevards, and zoning laws.
  • These efforts were often insufficient and came too late.
  • Americans felt inferior to European cities.

2. Upper Class/Middle Class

2.1. The Urban Elite

  • Early class distinctions were evident in dress and deference.
  • These distinctions weakened in the industrial city.
  • Status was conferred through conspicuous wealth, club membership, and exclusive neighborhoods.
  • Many of the wealthiest preferred to live in the heart of the city.
  • Edith Wharton noted the shift from brownstones to mansions on Fifth Avenue.
  • Wealth alone did not guarantee social standing.
  • Efforts were made to define rules of conduct and identify members of New York society.
  • In 1888, McAllister compiled the Social Register, listing those eligible for New York society.
  • McAllister provided guidance on selecting guests, setting tables, arranging parties, and introducing young ladies into society.
  • Extravagant lifestyles extended to resorts like Saratoga Springs and Palm Beach.
  • The rich dined at Delmonico’s and engaged in opulent displays.
  • Scandals and excesses were avidly reported in the press, such as the Bradley Martins’ costume ball at the Waldorf-Astoria in 1897.

2.2. The Suburban World

  • Self-employed professionals formed the backbone of the American middle class since colonial times.
  • Industrialism created a new middle class of salaried employees; managers, accountants and clerks.
  • Industrial technology required engineers, chemists, and designers, and distribution needed salesmen and store managers.
  • These salaried positions increased sevenfold between 1870 and 1910.
  • Nearly nine million people held white-collar jobs in 1910, over one-fourth of employed Americans.
  • Some lived in row houses or apartment buildings, but many preferred the suburbs.
  • Suburbanization resulted from individual decisions.
  • Suburban boundaries shifted as residents sought space and greenery, pushing further out.
  • Suburbs offered home ownership.
  • Work and family became more important than community for the middle class.

2.3. Middle-Class Families

  • Pre-industrial economy intertwined work and family; farmers and artisans usually worked at home.
  • Industrialism separated family life and economic activity.
  • Middle-class families became smaller, consisting of husband, wife, and three children by 1900.
  • Relationships within the family became more affectionate.
  • Domestic responsibilities fell on the wife.
  • Seeking an outside career was considered the husband’s role.
  • Magazines like Ladies’ Home Journal and Good Housekeeping promoted higher-quality homemaking in the 1880s.
  • Although married women gained legal rights, wives were expected to be submissive.
  • Middle-class women wanted fewer children but lacked reliable contraceptive options.
  • Contraceptive devices were unreliable or stigmatized.
  • Anthony Comstock, of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, opposed birth control and open discussion of sex.
  • Comstock’s influence created a Victorian age of sexual repression.
  • Over 10 percent of women of marriageable age remained single.
  • The late 19th century was known as the Age of the Bachelor.
  • Urban areas offered bachelors comforts and social venues.
  • Charles Dana Gibson created the image of the “new woman” (the Gibson girl) in the 1890s.
  • The Gibson girl was tall, spirited, athletic, and rejected restrictive clothing.
  • Women’s roles became more public, especially as consumers in department stores.
  • Children were no longer seen as economic assets in middle-class families.
  • Families focused on nurturing children’s personalities.
  • Preparation for adulthood became linked to formal education.
  • School enrollment increased by 150 percent between 1870 and 1900.
  • Adolescence emerged as a distinct life stage, shifting socialization from parents to peers.
  • Middle-class daughters focused on self-development, including high school.

3. City Life

3.1. Newcomers

  • Big-city populations grew substantially - from six million in 1880 to fourteen million in 1900.
  • Many newcomers migrated from rural areas.
  • Ethnic migrants found city life daunting.
  • Around 30 percent of big-city residents were foreign-born.
  • The largest ethnic groups varied by city: Irish in Boston, Swedish in Minneapolis, and German in most other northern cities.
  • Southern and eastern Europeans immigrated in large numbers by 1910: Poles in Chicago, eastern European Jews in New York, and Italians in San Francisco.
  • Immigrants needed cheap housing near jobs, settling in factory districts or downtown ghettos.
  • In New York, Italians moved into Irish neighborhoods, while Jews replaced Germans on the Lower East Side.
  • Immigrant institutions arose, fostering community: saint’s day parades for Italians, singing societies for Bohemians, and Yiddish theatre for New York Jews.
  • Mutual-aid societies provided assistance during sickness and death. For Example, Italians in Chicago had 66 mutual-aid societies in 1903.
  • Immigrants created rich and functional communities.
  • African Americans migrated from the rural South.
  • The black population of New York City increased by 30,000 between 1900 and 1910.
  • Urban blacks concentrated into ghettos: Chicago’s Black Belt and New York’s Harlem.
  • Race prejudice limited job opportunities.
  • Urban blacks developed their own communities.
  • They formed a press, fraternal orders, women’s organizations, and a middle class.
  • Black churches were central institutions, with preachers being important citizens.

3.2. Ward Politics

  • Politics integrated ghetto communities, crossing ethnic lines.
  • Migrants became ward residents with representation at city hall.
  • Aldermen got streets paved, water mains extended, and permits granted.
  • Political machines, such as Tammany Hall in New York, provided social services, jobs, and bureaucratic assistance.
  • Machine politics rewarded supporters through legal and illegal means.
  • Supporters included tenement dwellers (votes) and businessmen (checks).

3.3. Religion in the City

  • Churches were important for urban blacks.
  • Cities challenged religious practice.
  • Judaism, Catholicism, and Protestantism adapted to the secular urban world.
  • Orthodox Judaism survived by reducing its demands.
  • Catholics faced challenges related to “Americanism.”
  • Protestants struggled with declining Sabbath observance.
  • Protestant churches evangelized and provided services like reading rooms and vocational classes.
  • The Salvation Army offered assistance to the urban poor, including soup kitchens and shelters, after arriving from Great Britain in 1879.
  • YMCAs and YWCAs provided housing (especially for single women) and activities.

3.4. City Amusements

  • City life separated work and home, work time and free time.
  • Enjoyment meant buying tickets and being entertained.
  • Music halls were popular.
  • Chicago had six vaudeville houses in 1896 and twenty-two in 1910.
  • Vaudeville evolved from minstrel shows into family-friendly entertainment handled by booking agencies.
  • Movies emerged in 1896 with short films in penny arcades.
  • Nickelodeons (five-cent admission) showed longer films.
  • Amusement parks, like Coney Island, accommodated large crowds, fostering a mass culture.
  • Amusement parks provided a temporary escape from urban industrial life.
  • Amusements created new social spaces for young unmarried workers.
  • Parental control over courtship weakened.
  • A pleasure-seeking culture emerged in dance halls and amusement parks.
  • Commercialized sex became more open.
  • Prostitution was more visible and integrated with entertainment.
  • Opium and cocaine were widely available and not yet illegal.
  • New York’s red-light district was the Tenderloin.
  • Gay subcultures existed in the Tenderloin and the Bowery.
  • Homosexual life was not entirely covert in late-19th-century America.
  • Gay saloons, meeting places, and drag balls flourished.
  • Professional baseball became popular.
  • In 1868, baseball became openly professional, led by the Cincinnati Red Stockings.
  • The National League was launched in 1876.
  • Team owners shaped the sport to please fans.
  • Supporting the home team fostered city identity.
  • Newspapers became more important.
  • News included crime, scandal, and sensational events.
  • The New York Sun introduced the human-interest story after the Civil War.
  • Joseph Pulitzer (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, New York World) and William Randolph Hearst (San Francisco Examiner) were leading figures.
  • Hearst’s sensationalism was called yellow journalism (after The Yellow Kid comic strip 1895).

3.5. The Higher Culture

  • New institutions of higher culture developed.
  • The Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.) opened in 1869.
  • The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) started in 1871 and moved to Central Park in 1880.
  • Symphony orchestras appeared.
  • Public libraries grew (Andrew Carnegie funded about 1,000 libraries).
  • The late 19th century was an age of money making and giving.
  • Millionaires patronized the arts out of civic duty, social ambition, and national pride.
  • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner satirized America in The Gilded Age (1873).
  • Some upper-class members (e.g., Henry James) moved to Europe.
  • Others sought to raise the nation’s cultural level.
  • The