CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 19
The Vitality and Turmoil of Urban Life, 1877 1920

Chapter Summary
In Chapter 19, we examine urban growth, the third major theme (along with natural resource development and industrialization) associated with American expansion in the late nineteenth century. Urban industrial development combined with mass transportation and urban growth destroyed the old pedestrian city of the past. The physical expansion of the city attracted industry, capital, and people. By the early 1900s, the modern American city, with its urban sprawl and distinct districts, was clearly taking shape.
Cities grow in three ways: through physical expansion, by natural increase, and through migration and immigration. In the late nineteenth century, in-migration from domestic and foreign sources was the most important cause of urban growth. The section “Peopling the Cities: Migrants and Immigrants” shows that native whites, foreigners, and African Americans were the three major migrant groups of the period. We consider why these groups moved to the cities, how they differed from and resembled each other, and, in the case of immigrants, how they differed from and resembled earlier immigrants. In discussing the cultural interaction between foreign immigrants and American society, we find that the city of the late nineteenth century nurtured the cultural diversity that so strongly characterizes modern America.
Rapid urban growth created and then intensified such urban problems as inadequate housing, overcrowding, and intolerable living conditions. This situation led to reforms that strengthened the hand of local government in regulating the construction of housing, but American attitudes toward the profit motive and toward private enterprise placed limits on the reforms enacted.
Although scientific and technological breakthroughs improved urban life, the burden of urban poverty remained. While some reformers began to look to environmental factors to explain poverty, traditional attitudes toward poverty—attitudes that blamed the victim—restricted what most Americans were willing to do to alleviate poverty. Even private agencies insisted on extending aid only to the “worthy poor” and on teaching the moral virtues of thrift and sobriety.
Urban areas also had to contend with crime and violence. Whether crime actually increased or was merely more conspicuous can be debated, but in many cases native whites blamed crime on those they considered to be “outsiders” in American society—foreigners and blacks. The ethnic diversity of the cities, combined with urban overcrowding and uncertain economic conditions, hardened antiforeign and white-racist attitudes and increased the incidence of violence in urban areas. Uneven, sometimes prejudicial, application of laws by law enforcement officials raised questions about the nature of justice, equality, and individual freedom in American society.
In the section “Promises of Mobility,” we discuss the two basic ways by which upward socioeconomic mobility was made possible within American society. Certain myths concerning the availability and extent of upward mobility are dispelled, and the limiting impact of sexism and racism is discussed.
As America became a culturally pluralistic society, interest groups often competed for influence and opportunity in the political arena. This competition and the rapidity of change in the urban environment caused confusion. In the midst of this confusion, political machines and political bosses emerged to bring some order out of chaos. Eventually, however, a civic reform movement developed. Most reformers strove for efficiency and focused on structural reform in city government. Some concerned themselves with social reform and with city planning and city design. Whatever the goal, American attitudes limited and undermined these reforms. As noted in the textbook, “urban reform merged idealism with naiveté and insensitivity.”
Despite these limiting attitudes, there were technical accomplishments in solving problems such as sanitation, garbage disposal, street lighting, and bridge and street building. In this respect city engineers, who applied their technical expertise to urban problems, became very important to city governments.
In “Family Life” the focus of the chapter shifts to a discussion of the family in American society and American life. Once distinctions are made between the household and the family, we note the varying ways in which households expanded and contracted to meet changing circumstances. Changes in society changed family, as well as individual, lifestyles.
The leisure-time revolution brought about by labor-saving devices and by a shortened workweek changed the American way of life. As the average workweek decreased to 47 hours by 1910, individuals turned to croquet, bicycling, tennis, and golf as favorite leisure activities. Entertaining the public through spectator sports, the circus, show business, and moving pictures became a profitable business endeavor. Moreover, the mass production of sound and images made possible by the phonograph and the still camera dissolved the uniqueness of experience. Even news was transformed into big business and a mass commodity by the “yellow journalism” tactics of Joseph Pulitzer.
Mass entertainment and mass culture had a nationalizing effect; however, even though show business provided new opportunities for women, blacks, and immigrants, too often it reinforced prejudicial stereotypes—especially concerning black Americans. Furthermore, in an America that was becoming more culturally diverse, different groups pursued their own form of leisure. This often caused concern on the part of some reformers who tended to label individuals as un-American if their activities did not conform to the Puritan traditions of the nation’s past. These reformers wanted to use government to impose their values and lifestyles on immigrant groups. These attempts to create a homogeneous society led to questions concerning the role of government in society and in the life of the individual, questions that are as relevant today as they were in the late nineteenth century.
The cultural pluralism that resulted from the late nineteenth-century influx of immigrants, African Americans, and native white Americans into expanding cities is one of the dominant characteristics of modern America. This heterogeneity is one of America’s greatest strengths and has created the richness and the variety that is modern America. In large measure, this diversity is also a reason for the failure of attempts to enforce homogeneity, because the very presence of a number of competing cultural groups prevented any one group from becoming dominant. This has meant, overall, the continued protection of individual rights and the gradual inclusion of more and more groups under the protective umbrella of the Bill of Rights.



Learning Objectives
1. Examine the factors responsible for the birth of the modern city in late nineteenth- early twentieth-century America, and discuss the characteristics associated with the modern city.
2. Examine the factors responsible for urban growth during the late nineteenth century.
3. Discuss the similarities and differences between the immigrants of the period from 1880 to 1920 and previous immigrants.
4. Examine the interaction between immigrants of the late nineteenth century and American society, and discuss the changes brought about by this interaction.
5. Discuss the impact of prejudice and discrimination on nonwhite Americans of the late nineteenth century.
6. Examine the problems associated with American cities of the late nineteenth century, and evaluate the responses to those problems.
7. Examine the means by which upward socioeconomic mobility could be achieved in the late nineteenth century, and discuss the extent to which such mobility was possible.
8. Examine and evaluate the urban political machines and political bosses of the late nineteenth century.
9. Discuss the ideological basis of the urban reform movement, and explain the successes and failures of the reformers associated with this movement.
10. Examine the impact of engineers on urban America and on home life in the United States from 1877 to 1920.
11. Examine household, family, and individual life patterns in American society between 1877 and 1920.
12. Explain the emergence and characteristics of each of the following, and discuss their impact on American society:
a. Sports
b. Show business
c. Moving pictures
d. Still pictures and the phonograph
e. Popular journalism

13. Define cultural pluralism, and discuss its impact on American society.



Chapter Outline
I. Introduction
Cities gained great importance in the 1880s, and by 1900 urbanization affected every section of the United States.

II. Industrial Growth and Transportation in the Modern City
A. Urban Industrial Development
Since the cities of the late nineteenth century provided everything that factories needed, they became the main arenas for industrial growth.
B. Birth of the Modern City
In the late nineteenth century the compact city of the past gave way to urban sprawl and to cities subdivided into distinct districts.
C. Mechanization of Mass Transportation
Commuter railroads, cable cars, and streetcars allowed for greater mobility in urban America.
D. Beginnings of Urban Sprawl
Improved transportation led city dwellers to move into outlying neighborhoods, creating urban sprawl.

III. Peopling the Cities: Migrants and Immigrants
A. How Cities Grew
Cities could grow by annexation, by natural increase, and by migration.
B. Migration from the Countryside
Many Americans migrated from rural to urban areas during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
C. African American and Hispanic Migration to Cities
In the 1880s and 1890s, thousands of rural African Americans seeking better economic situations moved to cities. In the West, many Hispanics also moved from rural to urban areas.
D. Immigration from Other Lands
Most urban newcomers were immigrants from Europe.
E. The New Immigrants
A new wave of immigrants, from eastern and southern Europe, frightened Americans because of the emigrant’s customs, different faiths, illiteracy, and poverty.
F. Residential Mobility
In addition to movement from rural to urban areas, large numbers of people not only moved from city to city but within cities as well.

IV. Urban Neighborhoods
A. Immigrant Cultures
Immigrants’ cultures helped sustain them in their new home, and Old World institutions also helped them adapt.
B. Ethnic and Racial Borderlands
Immigrants in large cities lived in multi-ethnic neighborhoods.
C. Ghettos
By the early twentieth century, institutionalized racism forced African Americans to live in highly segregated ghettos.
D. Barrios
In southwestern and western cities Mexicans found themselves confined in barrios.
E. Americanization
Immigrants adapted their old world cultures to the realities of life in America.
F. Accommodation of Religion
The influx of immigrants from 1870 to 1920 changed the United States from a mostly Protestant nation into one of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. Many Catholics and Jews supported liberalizing trends within their religions to accommodate their faiths to their new American environment.



V. Living Conditions in the Inner City
A. Housing
Urban growth meant masses of people jammed into the inner cities, leading to housing shortages and unsanitary living conditions.
B. Housing Reform
Reform campaigns led to some improvements in housing conditions.
C. Sanitation and Construction Technology
The establishment of water purification and sewage disposal systems helped control the spread of disease. Steel-frame construction made possible the building of skyscrapers.
D. Urban Poverty
The uncertainties of the business cycle meant that many families lived in poverty. Private relief agencies often acted out of the belief that poverty was caused by personal defects. However, some humanitarians began to advance the more progressive belief that people’s environments caused poverty.
E. Crime and Violence
Many people feared urban crime. In all likelihood, cities did not have increased crime, but urban problems proved more conspicuous and sensational than rural crime.

VI. Promises of Mobility
A. Occupational Mobility
Urban and industrial expansion allowed for occupational mobility, making many people more upwardly mobile.
B. Acquisition of Property
Many people acquired property as rising wages allowed many families to make down payments on property.

VII. Managing the City
A. Role of the Police
By the early l900s, law enforcement had the complicated role of balancing the idealistic intentions of criminal law with people’s desire for individual freedom.
B. The Machine
Urban growth strained city governments and led to the rise of political machines, which in turn created bosses.
C. The Boss
Bosses held their power because they knew the people’s needs, and they solved the problems of everyday life by exchanging favors for votes or money.
D. Urban Reform
Business-minded reformers wanted to elect officials who would control expenses and prevent corruption.
E. Structural Reform in Government
Civic reformers often supported structural changes such as the citymanager and commission forms of government, and the nonpartisan, citywide election of officials.
F. Social Reform
Social reform occurred at all levels of the urban society. Settlement houses fought for school nurses, building codes, public playgrounds, and labor unions.
G. Engineers
Some problems required technical and professional creativity, and cities increasingly depended on engineers.



VIII. Family Life
A. Family and Household Structures
The vast majority of households consisted of nuclear families, although some extended families existed.
B. Declining Birthrates
As infant mortality rates fell, couples had fewer children. Smaller families also improved standards of living.
C. Boarding
Young people who left their families often became boarders in the cities. Many urban families took in boarders to help pay the rent.
D. Importance of Kinship
Families served as the primary social institution, but some kinship obligations, such as caring for the aged, proved stifling for young immigrants.
E. Unmarried People
A subculture of unmarried young people living separate from their parents emerged in urban areas. Some of the unmarried were homosexuals who formed their own gay subculture.
F. Change in Family Life and Functions
Distinct social changes occurred as decreasing birthrates shortened the period of parental responsibility, and as formal education made childhood more unique. New institutions assumed tasks once performed by the family.

IX. The New Leisure and Mass Culture
A. Increase in Leisure Time
A shorter work-week allowed more Americans to enjoy a variety of leisure time diversions. As a result, a segment of the economy began providing entertainment.
B. Baseball
Baseball gained great popularity. The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs was founded in 1876, and the American League emerged in 1901. In 1903, the first World Series enshrined baseball as the national pastime.
C. Croquet and Cycling
Both men and women played croquet, and the game swept the nation. The popularity of bicycling grew, especially after the invention of the safety bicycle with pneumatic wheels of identical size.
D. Football
Tennis and golf attracted wealthy folks, but football became widely popular. College football caused a scandal when 18 players died from game related injuries. This, in turn, led to the founding of the organization that came to be known as the National College Athletic Association.
E. Circuses
Circuses enjoyed great success as railroads increased the mobility of the shows.
F. Popular Drama and Musical Comedy
Dramas with simple plots and settings captured the imaginations of the urban population. Musical comedies raised audiences’ spirits with song, humor, and dance.
G. Vaudeville
Vaudeville shows gained mass appeal. Shows like the Ziegfield Follies gave the nation a new model of femininity, but some producers exploited females. African Americans found new opportunities in vaudeville.
H. Movies
Shortly after 1900, moving pictures started to grow in popularity, and by 1910 motion pictures had become a distinct art form used to tell a story.
I. Yellow Journalism
Yellow journalism, pioneered by people such as Joseph Pulitzer, made the news a consumer product because of growing interest in the bizarre and the sensational.
J. Magazines
In this era, mass circulation magazines appeared, telephone ownership increased, and Americans sent more mail through the United States Post Office.
K. Mass Culture and Americanization
The new ways in which Americans entertained themselves in their leisure time often had a homogenizing influence by bringing different ethnic and social groups together.