Chapter 18: The New Social Patterns of Urban and Industrial America, 1865-1917

1. The New Urban Environment
   1. Surging Urban Growth
      1. Cities boasted the technological innovations that many equated with progress, while others were shocked and repulsed by what they saw.
      2. By the late nineteenth century, the nation had developed a manufacturing belt that included nearly all the largest cities as well as the bulk of the nation’s manufacturing and finance.
   2. New Cities of Skyscrapers and Streetcars
      1. New construction technology, in which a metal frame carried the weight of the walls, and decreasing steel prices led to more economical and efficient tall buildings.
      2. Electricity transformed urban transit when the streetcar, driven by an electric motor, was developed by Frank Sprague.
   3. The New Urban Geography
      1. As the largest cities grew, areas within them became increasingly specialized by economic function.
   4. Building an Urban Infrastructure
      1. Utilities and services provided by city government rarely kept pace with the growth of new neighborhoods.
         1. Private companies, competing for franchises granted by the city, often bribed city officials to secure franchises.
2. Poverty and the City
   1. "How the Other Half Lives"
      1. Jacob Riis’s work by this title, published in 1890, shocked Americans with its descriptions of the lives of the poorest New Yorkers.
         1. Overcrowded and poorly maintained tenements were hazardous to the health and safety of their residents.
         2. No other city was as densely populated as New York, but nearly all urban working-class neighborhoods were crowded.
      2. Despite widespread urban poverty, few agreed on its causes or any possible cures.
   2. The Mixed Blessings of Machine Politics
      1. George W. Plunkitt, who typified many big-city politicians across the country, was a district leader of Tammany Hall in New York City.
         1. William Marcy Tweed, whose name became synonymous with urban political corruption, helped city government launch such major construction projects as buildings and public works improvements.
         2. Perhaps the most important single function the bosses served was to centralize political decision making.
   3. Combating Urban Poverty: The Settlement Houses
      1. Jane Addams opened Hull House, the first settlement house in Chicago, in 1889.
         1. Some settlement house workers became forces for urban reform, promoting better education, improved public health and sanitation, and honest government.
3. New Americans from Europe
   1. A Flood of Immigrants
      1. Though the number of immigrants varied from year to year - higher in prosperous years, lower in depression years - the trend was constantly upward.
      2. Immigrants left their former homes for a variety of reasons, but most chose to come to the United States because of its reputation as the "land of opportunity."
   2. An Ethnic Patchwork
      1. Ethnic patchworks referred to distinctive immigrant communities often found in, but not limited to, cities.
   3. Hyphenated America
      1. Hyphenated America developed a unique blend of ethnic institutions, often unlike anything in the old country but also unlike those of old-stock America.
         1. For nearly every group, religious institutions provided the single most important building block of ethnic group identity.
         2. Catholic parishes in immigrant neighborhoods often took on the ethnic characteristics of the community, with services conducted in that language and special observances transplanted from the old country.
   4. Nativism
      1. Few old-stock Americans appreciated or even understood the long-term nature of immigrants’ adjustments to their new homes.
         1. Fears and misgivings concerning the "new" immigrants fostered the growth of nativism, the view that old-stock values and social patterns were preferable to those of immigrants.
         2. American nativism was often linked to anti-Catholicism.
         3. The American Protective Association (APA), founded in 1887, noisily proclaimed itself the voice of anti-Catholicism.
      2. Labor organizations sometimes looked at unlimited immigration as a threat to jobs and wage levels.
         1. The rise of labor organizations and, especially, radical political organizations also contributed to anti-immigrant sentiment.
         2. Far more serious was the association of immigrants with radicalism, especially anarchism.
4. New South, Old Issues
   1. The New South
      1. Following the Civil War, the state of southern transportation, especially railroads, posed a critical constraint on the region’s economic growth.
         1. Some southerners worked to promote a more diverse economic base, with more manufacturing and less reliance on a few staple agricultural crops.
         2. In the end, southern agriculture changed little.
   2. The Second Mississippi Plan and the Atlanta Compromise
      1. In the Civil Rights Cases (1883), the Supreme Court ruled that the "equal protection" of the Fourteenth Amendment applied only to state governments, not individuals and companies.
         1. This meant that state governments were obligated to treat all citizens as equal before the law, but that private businesses need not offer equal access to their facilities.
      2. The Second Mississippi Plan (1890) specified payment of a poll tax and passing a literacy test as requirements for voting.
         1. Everyone understood that these measures were intended to disfranchise black voters.
      3. Booker T. Washington’s speech the Atlanta Compromise found a mixed reception among African Americans, since it emphasized cooperation instead of confrontation to attain progress in civil rights.
   3. Separate but Not Equal
      1. State after state followed the lead of Mississippi and disfranchised black voters.
         1. A number of southern states added an additional barrier in the form of the white primary, which specified that political parties had the right to limit participation in the process by which they chose their candidates.
      2. In Plessy v. Ferguson(1896), the Supreme Court ruled that "separate but equal" facilities did not violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
         1. Violence directed against blacks, including lynching, accompanied the new laws.
         2. African Americans fought against lynching in various ways, but especially by publicizing the record of brutality.
5. New Patterns of American Social and Cultural Life
   1. The New Middle Class
      1. Industrialization and urban expansion produced an expansion of distinctively middle-class neighborhoods and suburbs.
         1. In the expanding cities and towns, single-family houses set amidst wide and carefully tended lawns characterized these new suburbs.
      2. Households often followed different social patterns.
         1. The middle class usually emphasized education.
      3. Much of the new advertising focused on the middle class.
   2. Ferment in Education
      1. Between 1870 and 1900, most northern and western states and territories established school attendance laws.
         1. In the 1880s, the New York City schools began to provide textbooks to students free of charge.
         2. Between 1870 and 1910, school enrollment among those aged five to nineteen increased from 48 to 59 percent, with the highest increase at the secondary level.
      2. The high school curriculum changed significantly, adding courses on the sciences, civics, business, home economics, and skills needed by industry, such as drafting, woodworking, and the mechanical trades.
      3. College enrollments also grew, with the largest gains being in the new state universities created under the Land-Grant College Act of 1862.
         1. Colleges exclusively for women began to appear after the Civil War, partly because so many colleges still refused to admit women and partly in keeping with the notion that men and women should operate in "separate spheres."
   3. Redefining Women’s Gender Roles
      1. Greater educational opportunities for women marked part of a change in social definitions of gender roles.
      2. As more and more women finished college, some chose to enter the professions.
         1. Access to the legal profession proved surprisingly difficult.
         2. Professional careers attracted relatively few women, but many more middle-class and upper-class women, especially in towns and cities, became involved outside their homes through women’s activities.
         3. Others became involved outside their homes through reform activities such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, one of the most prominent reform groups, which was formed in 1874.
   4. Emergence of a Gay and Lesbian Subculture
      1. Burgeoning cities permitted an anonymity not possible in rural societies.
   5. New Patterns in Cultural Expression: From Realism to Ragtime
      1. American novelists increasingly turned to a realistic and sometimes quite critical portrayal of life, rejecting the romantic idealism characteristic of the pre-Civil War period.
         1. Most American painting, however, was moving in the opposite direction.
      2. The most influential musician at the turn of the century was Scott Joplin, an African-American composer who contributed significantly to ragtime.
   6. The Origins of Mass Entertainment
      1. New forms of entertainment emerged, including traveling shows.
      2. Immediately after the Civil War, a quite different form of mass entertainment appeared: professional baseball.
         1. Teams traveled by train from city to city, and urban rivalries built loyalty among hometown fans.