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America Moves to the City: 1865-1900

America Moves to the City: 1865-1900. Urban Frontier New Immigration Social Reforms. The Urban Frontier. L.A. 1850: 1, 610 1900: 107,000 New York 1850: 682,000 1900: 4.2 mill Chicago 1850: 29,963 1900: 1.7 mill. Forging the City. Streetcars and autos would replace horse and buggy

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America Moves to the City: 1865-1900

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  1. America Moves to the City: 1865-1900 Urban Frontier New Immigration Social Reforms

  2. The Urban Frontier L.A. 1850: 1, 610 1900: 107,000 New York 1850: 682,000 1900: 4.2 mill Chicago 1850: 29,963 1900: 1.7 mill

  3. Forging the City • Streetcars and autos would replace horse and buggy • Compact “walking cities” gave way to megacities • Specialized districts were created to separate businesses, industry and residencies • Industrial jobs drew people by the thousands • Electric elevator made skyscrapers possible • Engineering ingenuity made cities more glamorous and enticing Lower Broadway, 1875

  4. Department Stores (Marshall Field’s in Chicago, Macy’s in NYC): • Attracted middle-class shoppers; provided jobs; ushered in new era of Consumerism • Created a culture of waste, boxes, bags, bottles needed to be tossed • Clothing became trendy w/ new styles outdating previous clothes worn • The Urban Age had dawned…

  5. Problems Associated with Urbanization: • Crime flourished • Safety standards were non-existent • Sanitation couldn’t keep up • Impure water, uncollected garbage, unwashed bodies led to city stench • Poor beggars contradicted shiny new styles and wealth • Slums grew more crowded with the poor and unemployed • Jacob Riis: How the Other Half Lives

  6. Assimilation tough for immigrants • Federal Gov’t did almost nothing to help immigrants assimilate into American society • City gov’ts overwhelmed by the size and scope of growth didn’t do much • Unofficial ‘governments’ of urban machines helped with assimilation • Big Bosses traded jobs and services for votes • Big Bosses provided homes, jobs and food for the votes • Bosses helped get hospitals and schools built in poor neighborhoods • Nations’ conscience did finally take note: • Jane Addams, prosperous Illinois family and college-educated founded the Hull House in Chicago • Offered instruction in English, counseling for new immigrants, child-care services and cultural activities • Settlement Houses founded in other cities in US became centers of social activism

  7. Looking Backward, 1893

  8. The South lagged behind the North in education: • 44% of non-whites were illiterate (1990) • Jim Crow Laws still made it difficult to partake equally in society • Booker T. Washington (ex-slave) founded the Black Normal and Industrial School at Tuskegee, Alabama • Black students were taught useful trades; self-respect and economic security • Criticized for not demanding equality • He accepted segregation and worked diligently to provide his students with a sense of economic independence and self-worth w/in the situation they found themselves in

  9. W. E. B. du Bois • Criticized Booker T. Washington for rolling over on social equality • Earned a Ph.D. from Harvard • Demanded social equality and economic equality for blacks • Help found the NAACP in 1909 • Rejected ‘Gradualism’ • He argued that blacks should be given full equality in the mainstream of society “It is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others… One ever feels his two-ness- an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two reconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder” - W.E.B. du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk

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