Challenges and Opportunities of Urbanization in Early 20th Century America

1. 7.2 The Challenges of Urbanization How did problems increase as cities and populations grew?

2. Urban Opportunities • Cities provided immigrants with more jobs in factories and businesses; many settled in cities in the Northeast and Midwest • The result was urbanization, or growth of cities, in those regions • By 1910, immigrants made up more than half the populations of 18 major American cities

3. Continued • Newcomers to the U.S. learned about their new country through an education program called the Americanization movement • Under this program, schools taught immigrants English, and American history and government, which helped them become citizens

4. Urban and Rural Problems • Machinery began replacing people on farms, causing an exodus (great movement) of farmers from south to north • A large problem in cities was a housing shortage; people lived in row houses or tenements, which were multi-family urban houses that were overcrowded and unsanitary • Cities developed mass transit to help move the growing amount of people around to work and home

5. Reformers • Social reformers worked to improve life in cities • One program was the Social Gospel movement, which preached that people reached salvation by helping the poor • People established settlement houses, or community centers located in slum neighborhoods, to provide help to the poor

6. Continued • Many of these houses were run by middle-class, college-educated women; the houses offered schooling, nursing, and other kinds of help to those in need • One reformer who was well-known at the time was Jane Addams, who established Hull House in Chicago, one of the most well known settlement houses of the era