Chapter 18 – Section One - The Age of the City

1. Explain the various migrations to American cities after the Civil War, describing the who, when, where, and reasons why people were migrating. (490-492)

• Young rural women: left declining agricultural areas of rural America in late 19th century b/c farming had become male dominant and clothes and goods now mass produced by department stores/catalogs
• Southern Blacks: poverty, debt, violence, and oppression in late 19th cen limited jobs is city (books, janitors, domestics, low paying etc) --> black women > men
• Immigrants: Germans and educated Europeans ‡ west for farming or business,
• Irish/Uneducated: too poor to buy farm land and lacked education ‡ settled in industrial cities for unskilled labor jobs

2. Explain the two concepts below and how they affected immigrants. (495-496)
1. Assimilation

• Americanization --> adopting American culture and breaking with old ethnic traditions
• Assimilation put strain on relationships btw men and women
• Ethnic culture = subordinate women, US = less subordinate women
• Out of necessity women began working out of home developing outside attachments
• Native born Americans encouraged assimilation
• Public schools taught English
• Employers insisted workers SPEAK English
• Many American products in stores
• Leaders = native born/ assimilated immigrants ‡ encouraged other immigrants to adopt American ways

2. Exclusion

• Nativism --> fear and resentment among native borns towards immigrants out of their fears and prejudice of the foreigners
• Henry Bowers (1887) – lawyer obsessed with a hatred of Catholics and foreigners --> formation of American Protective Association
• American Protective Association: group committed to stopping the immigrant tide
• Immigration Restriction League (1894) – dedicated to belief that immigrants should be screened, through literacy tests and other standards designed to separate the desirable from the undesirable
• 1882 Congress --> Chinese exclusion act, other laws prevented “undesirables” from entering and placed tax on each person admitted
• 1890s restriction list expanded and tax raised
• restrictions had limited success b/c many native borns welcomed immigration b/c it provided cheap and plentiful labor supply

3. Who were Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux? (497)

• Fredrick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux (1850s): landscape designers who teamed up to design New York’s Central park
• Public space that wouldn’t look like the city --> natural space
• Success of Central Park --> designers commissioned in other cities

4. Describe the event that took place in Chicago in 1893 and explain its importance. (498)

• 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago: world’s fair constructed to honor 400th anniversary of Columbus’s 1st voyage to America
• “Great White City”- cluster of neoclassical buildings that became the inspiration for the “City Beautiful Movement”

5. What was the “City Beautiful Movement”? (498)

• lead by architect of Great White City --> Daniel Burnham
• aimed to impose a similar order and symmetry on the disorder life of cities around the country
• no reconstructions of American cities matching those of European cities

6. What was created in Boston in the late 1850's and why was this important? (498)

• Black Bay – (Boston late 1850s) marshy land filled in to create neighborhood, over 40 years to complete = one of largest public projects at the time
• Annexations to expand boundaries of American cities 1890s -->

7. Create a chart that describes and compares the living conditions of well-to-do, workers, and poor in urban America after the Civil War. (498-499)

Well-to-Do

• Housing seldom a worry
• Cost of building in late 19th century let anyone with even moderate income afford a house
• Mansions at heart of the city, “fashionable districts”
• Moderately well-to-do took advantage of less expensive land on city edge --> growth of suburbs

Workers & Poor

• Could not afford either a house or city or suburbs
• Stayed in city centers and rented
• Landlords squeezed as many paying people in to as little space as possible
• Tenements --> slum dwellings

8. Who was Jacob Riis and what did he do? (499-500)

• Jacob Riis (1890): Danish immigrant and New York newspaper reporter and photographer who wrote How the Other Half Lives
• Book contained pictures and descriptions of tenement life
• Solution = raze slum dwellings w/o building replacement housing

9. Make a list of problems that were common in America's cities. (500-503)

• Transportation Problems
• Terrible street conditions (too narrow, unpaved)
• Need for MASS TRANSPORTATION b/c huge amounts of ppl
• Fire & Disease
• Environmental Degradation
• Improper disposal of human and industrial waste --> pollution of rivers and lakes
• Large numbers of unclean animals
• Air pollution from factories
• Urban Poverty
• Crime & Violence
• Rise in murder (southern lynching and homicide)
• Instability in western communities

10. Explain how the mass transit and skyscrapers were developed in cities. (500-501)

• Mass Transit: need for faster mass transportation --> elevated railway, cable cars, electric trolley, subway, bridges
• Skyscraper: development of steel-girder construction made tall building possible

11. What happened in Chicago, Boston, Baltimore, and San Francisco between 1871-1906? (501)

• The large cities suffered from “great fires”
• Fires encouraged the building of fireproof buildings

12. Read about the Machine and the Boss and take notes that describe the details of how this system operated. (503-504)

• Boss Rule: any politician who could mobilize voting power of large immigrant population gained enormous influence
• All were men
• Function of political boss = win votes for his organization
• Win loyalty of his constituents (supplies, saving one from jail, finding jobs, etc)
• Patronage – jobs in city gov w/ opportunities to rise in political organization
• Graft and Corruption --> machines = vehicles for making $$
• Honest grafts & covert grafts
• William M. Tweed boss of NYC’s Tammany Hall 1860s &1870s
• Modernized city infrastructures
• Expanding role of gov
• Stability in political and social climate
• Reasons for Boss Rule
• 1. power of immigrant voters who were less concerned w/ middle class ideas of political morality
• 2. Link btw political organizations & wealthy citizens who profited from boss relations
• 3. Structural weakness of city gov ‡ boss formed “invisible gov” with lots of control
• Competition
• Reform groups mobilized public outrage
• Reform organizations lacked permanence of machine