Immigration Chapter 15 Section 2

Immigration Chapter 15 Section 2

Why Move into the Cities? • Key Words for Section 2: • Americanization Movement • Tenements and Rowhouses • Social Gospel Movement • Settlement Houses

Urban Opportunities • Technological boom = industrial strength of the U.S. • Result: rapid urbanization – growth of cities

Immigrants Settle in Cities • Why? • Most immigrants became city dwellers because cheapest and most convenient • Offered unskilled laborers steady jobs in mills and factories

Americanization Movement • assimilate people into the dominant culture • Social campaign sponsored by government and citizens • Schools and voluntary associations had programs to teach skills needed for citizenship

Many immigrants did not want to abandon traditions • Ethnic communities provided social support • speak own language & practice their customs and religion • Neighborhoods soon overcrowded

Migration from Country to City • improvements in farming technology good for some farmers but not others • Inventions made farming more efficient but meant that fewer laborers were needed to work the land • Farms merging caused many rural people to move to city for work

African Americans Moving to Cities • Those farming lost livelihoods • escaping racial violence, economic hardship, and political oppression

However… • Segregation and discrimination in Northern cities too • Job competition caused more racial tension

Housing • working-class family: • live outskirts and face transportation problems • rent cramped rooms in the city

Working Class Homes: • row houses - single-family homes with a shared wall began

As working-class left central city, immigrants moved behind them • Tenements were overcrowded and unsanitary

Housing the Poor: Dumbbell Tenements: cheap housing units which looked like a dumbbell with many housing units sharing a corridor.

Setting Standards in the City: • New York City set minimum standards for plumbing/ventilation in apartments • Landlords installed air shafts which were used as garbage cans and attracted vermin making situation worse

Transportation • New forms of mass transit let workers go to work easily • Street cars in San Francisco • Electric subways in Boston

Mass Transit Catches on: • mass transit networks linked city neighborhoods to one another • However: • cities struggled to repair old systems and building new ones

Water • Problem supplying drinking water • Cities building public waterworks to support increasing demand • Residents of cities had little or no • Few homes had indoor plumbing • residents had to collect water in pails from faucets on the street and heat it for bathing

How to make water safe: • It is needed to control disease • filtration and chlorination introduced in early 1900’s • Early 20th century, many city dwellers still had no access to safe water

Sanitation • Horse manure piled up on streets • Sewage flowed through open gutters • Factories spewed foul smoke into the air • Garbage dumped in streets

Though private firms hired to clean streets, outhouses, collect garbage, etc… they did bad jobs • By 1900, many cities developed sewer lines and created sanitation departments

Crime • As population increased, so did thieves • New York first to organize full-time police force with salary • Too small to impact crime problem

Fire • Limited water supply • Major fires occurred in almost every city during 1870’s and 1880’s • Most cities packed in wooden dwellings • Use of candles and kerosene heaters • Earthquakes in San Francisco

Fire Protection • First were volunteers and not always available • By 1900, most cities had full-time professional fire departments • Introduction of practical automatic fire sprinkler in 1874 and the replacement of wood as building material with brick, stone, or concrete

Reformers Mobilize • Concerned citizens work to find solutions • Social welfare reformers targeted poverty

The Settlement House Movement • Social Gospel Movement • Early reform program that preached salvation through service to the poor • Began the idea of Settlement Houses

Settlement Houses • Community centers in slum neighborhoods • Many workers lived there to learn problems of urbanization and create solutions • Run largely by middle-class, college-educated women

Provided educational, cultural, and social services such as classes in English and health • Sent nurses into homes of sick and provided aid needed to secure “support for deserted women, insurance for bewildered widows, damages for injured operators, furniture from clutches of installment store

Today’s Terms: • Political machine • Graft • Boss Tweed • Tammany Hall

Immigration Chapter 15 Section 2