a history of the united states · copyright ©2011, ©2008 by pearson education, inc.the american...

Copyright ©2011, ©2008 by Pearson Education, Inc.

All rights reserved.

The American Journey: A History of the United States, Brief Sixth Edition

Goldfield • Abbott • Argersinger • DeJohn Anderson • Barney • Weir • Argersinger

THE AMERICAN JOURNEY A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

Brief Sixth Edition

Chapter

Industry, Immigrants,

and Cities

1870-1900

18





Industry, Immigrants, and Cities

1870-1900

• New Industry

• New Immigrants

• New Cities

• Conclusion





Hine’s portrait of a young Jewish woman arriving

from Russia at Ellis Island in 1905.





Learning Objectives

• How did workers respond to the changing

demands of the workplace in the late

nineteenth century?

• What kinds of communities did new

immigrants create in America?

• How did the new cities help create the new

middle class?





Introduction

• The promise and failure of late-nineteenth-

century America involved a mixture of

great prosperity and opportunity

contrasted by materialistic excesses and

the masking of deep economic and social

divisions.

Gilded Age

- Term applied to late-nineteenth-century America

that refers to the shallow display and worship of

wealth characteristic of the period.





New Industry





New Industry

• Between 1870 and 1900, the United

States transformed itself into the world’s

foremost industrial power. However, the

increased concentration of economic

power was challenged by workers,

reformers, and eventually government.





FIGURE

18–1

Changes in

the

American

Labor

Force,

1870–1910





Inventing Technology:

The Electric Age

• Technology played a major role in

transforming factory work and increasing

the scale of production as steam and later

electricity freed manufacturers from

dependence on water power.

• In the late 19th century, the United States

became a technological innovator.

Between 1870 and 1900, 900,000 patents

had been issued in the United States.





Inventing Technology:

The Electric Age (cont'd)

• Thomas Edison’s success stimulated

research and development in Europe and

the United States.

• Invention gave the United States a

commanding technological lead.





An emerging entertainment district in lower

Manhattan at the end of the nineteenth century.





The Corporation and Its Impact

• The modern corporation supplied the

structural framework for the transformation

of the American economy.

• The corporation became a significant

factor in the American economy in the

1850s when railroad companies grew.






(cont’d)

• The two major advantages of the

corporation were that a corporation can

outlive its founders and its officials and

shareholders are not personally liable for

its debts.

• Large corporations changed the nature of

work and stimulated urban growth.






(cont’d)

• Vertical and horizontal integration helped

successful corporations reduce

competition and dominate industries.

Vertical integration

- The consolidation of numerous production

functions, from the extraction of the raw materials

to the distribution and marketing of the finished

products, under the direction of one firm.

Horizontal integration

- The merger of competitors in the same industry.






(cont’d)

Trusts

- In late 19th- and early-20th-century usage, refers

to monopolies that eliminated competition and

fixed prices and wages in a given industry.

Increasing numbers of American viewed these

entities as threats to the free enterprise system.





The Changing Nature of Work

• By 1906, industrial labor had been

reduced to minute, low-skilled operations,

making skilled artisans obsolete.

• Mechanization and technological

innovation did not reduce employment but

they did eliminate some jobs.





The Changing Nature of Work (cont’d)

• Industrial workers shared little of the

wealth generated by industrial expansion.

They labored under unsafe conditions,

generally working 10 hours a day, six days

a week for low wages.

• Workers lived close to factories in poor

environments.





The Changing Nature of Work (cont’d)

• Many workers labored in small, cramped,

poorly ventilated sweatshops.

Sweatshops

- Small, poorly ventilated shops or apartments

crammed with workers, often family members,

who pieced together garments.





Smoke belching from Pittsburgh

steel mills in the 1890s





Child Labor

• Many industries employed children,

including mining, garment trades, and

textile mills.





Working Women

• Low wages for men often required women

to work.

• Women earned lower wages than men

and while more job opportunities opened,

low wages and poor working conditions

continued.





Working Women (cont’d)

• Women also found employment in

downtown department stores.

• By the beginning of the 20th century,

women had gained increased access to

higher education.





Responses to Poverty and Wealth

• The growing gap between rich and poor

and concerns about working women led to

reform movements.

• Tenement apartments crammed the urban

poor into crowded apartments in urban

slums. The settlement house arose to deal

with the wretched conditions under which

the urban poor lived.






(cont’d)

• Industrialists, intellectuals, and some

politicians supported the Gospel of Wealth

theory that helping the poor was of

doubtful value.






(cont’d)

• Social Darwinism was a flawed attempt to

apply Charles Darwin’s theories to human

society with wealth reflecting fitness and

poverty weakness.

Tenement

- Four- to six-story residential dwelling, once

common in New York and certain other cities, built

on a tiny lot without regard to providing ventilation

or light.






(cont’d)

Hull House

- Chicago settlement house that became part of a

broader neighborhood Revitalization and

immigrant assistance project led by Jane Addams.

Gospel of Wealth

- Thesis that hard work and perseverance lead to

wealth, implying that poverty is a character flaw.






(cont’d)

Social Darwinism

- The application of Charles Darwin’s theory of

biological evolution to society, holding that the

fittest and the wealthiest survive, the weak and

the poor perish, and government action is unable

to alter this “natural” and beneficial process.






(cont’d)

Horatio Alger Stories

- A series of best-selling tales about young rags-to-

riches heroes first published in 1867 stressing the

importance of neat clothes, cleanliness, thrift, and

hard work. The books also highlighted the

importance of chance in getting ahead and the

responsibility of those better off to serve as

positive role models.





Here a “modest” Fifth Avenue

mansion in turn-of-the-century

New York City; farther downtown,

Jacob Riis found this tenement

courtyard.





Workers Organize

• Economic cycles combined with the

growing power of industrial corporations

and the decreasing power of workers

created social tensions.

• The Great Uprising of 1877 was a railroad

strike notable for the way workers

cooperated with one another.





Workers Organize (cont'd)

• The Knights of Labor was founded in 1869

and led the movement for an eight-hour

day but employers responded with court

orders and arrests.

• The American Federation of Labor

became the major union for skilled

workers and stressed collective

bargaining.






• Violent strikes at Homestead and Pullman

were major setbacks for unions.

Immigrants also weakened labor

radicalism.






Molly Maguires

- Secret labor organization of mostly Irish miners in

the Pennsylvania anthracite coal region in the

decade after the Civil War. Named after a woman

who led a massive protest against landlords in

Ireland in the 1840s, the Maguires carried out

selective murders of coal company officials until

an infiltrator exposed the group in 1877 and its

leaders were arrested, tried, and executed.






Great Uprising

- Unsuccessful railroad strike of 1877 to protest

wage cuts and the use of federal troops against

strikers; the first nationwide work stoppage in

American history.

Knights of Labor

- Labor union that included skilled and unskilled

workers irrespective of race or gender; founded in

1869, peaked in the 1880s, and declined when its

advocacy of the eight-hour workday led to violent

strikes in 1886.






American Federation of Labor (AFL)

- Union formed in 1886 that organized skilled

workers along craft lines and emphasized a few

workplace issues rather than a broad social

program.

Collective bargaining

- Representatives of a union negotiating with

management on behalf of all members.





Workers Organize





Here the Maryland

militia fires at strikers

in Baltimore, killing 12





New Immigrants





New Immigrants

• The late nineteenth century was a period

of unprecedented worldwide population

movements. Between 1870 and 1910, the

U.S. received more than 20 million

immigrants.





MAP 18–1 Patterns of Immigration, 1820–1914





FIGURE 18–2 Immigration to the United States,

1870–1915





Old World Backgrounds

• Economic hardship and religious

persecution triggered migration from

central and southern Europe.

• Economic hardship prompted Chinese

immigration while a land shortage drove

Japanese immigration.

• Initially most immigrants were young men

but by 1900 the number of women

immigrants equaled men.





Old World Backgrounds (cont’d)

• Chain migration involved the migration of

an entire village that followed a small

number of early migrants to a location.

Pogroms

- Government-directed attacks against Jewish

citizens, property, and villages in tsarist Russia

beginning in the 1880s; a primary reason for

Russian Jewish migration to the United States.





Old World Backgrounds (cont’d)

Chain migration

- Process common to many immigrant groups

whereby one family member brings over other

family members, who in turn bring other relatives

and friends and occasionally entire villages.





Victoria de Ortiz came to Nebraska with her family

The black lines are part of the photograph.





Mulberry Street, New York, 1905.





Cultural Connections in a New World

• Immigrants maintained their cultural

traditions through the establishment of

religious and communal institutions.

• These institutions reinforced Old World

culture but informed immigrants about

American ways and encouraged

assimilation into American society.





The Job

• Immigrants perceived the job as a way to

independence. Typically, immigrants

received their first job with the help of a

countryman.

• Skills, the local economy, and local

discrimination often determined the type of

work available.





The Job (cont’d)

• Stereotypes also channeled immigrants

into certain jobs and industries.

• The goal of most immigrants was to work

for themselves.





Nativism

• Antiforeign sentiment resurfaced when

immigration swelled after the Civil War.

• Post-Civil War nativism targeted southern

and eastern European Catholics and Jews

and had a pseudoscientific underpinning.

• Nativism stimulated proposals to restrict

immigration, leading to bans on Asian

citizenship and the Chinese Exclusion Act

of 1882.





Nativism (cont'd)

• Immigrants fought attempts to restrict

immigration.

• The immigrant experience of the late

1800s and early twentieth century involved

a process of adjustment between the old

and new.

Nativist/Nativism

- Favoring the interests and culture of native-born

inhabitants over those of immigrants.





“Throwing Down the Ladder by Which They

Rose,”





Roots of the Great Migration

• Between 1880 and 1900, African

Americans began moving into the

industrial cities of the Northeast and

Midwest.

• Economic promise and appeals of black

Northerners combined with increasing

persecution in the South, stimulated

African American migration north.





Roots of the Great Migration (cont’d)

• Immigrants took over many traditional

black jobs. Black women had few job

options outside of domestic service.

• African American migrants were restricted

to segregated urban ghettos.





Roots of the Great Migration (cont’d)

Great Migration

- The mass movement of African Americans from

the rural South to the urban North, spurred

especially by new job opportunities during World

War I and the 1920s.





An African American religious meeting





New Cities





New Cities

• Despite the hardship associated with

urban life, the American city was a magnet

for immigration from abroad and migration

from rural areas.

• Distinctive urban systems began to

emerge in cities across the nation, while

urban growth highlighted the growing

divisions in American society.





MAP 18–2 The Growth of American Cities, 1880–

1900





Centers and Suburbs

• Downtowns extended up and out pushing

residential neighborhoods out and leaving

the center dominated by corporate

headquarters and retail and entertainment

districts.

• The residential neighborhood emerged as

homes were crowded out of the city

center. Advances in rapid transit

technology eased commuting for workers.





Centers and Suburbs (cont'd)

• Suburbs became the preferred residence

of the urban middle class after 1870.

Privacy, aesthetics, and home ownership

stimulated suburban growth.





The New Middle Class

• The traditional urban middle class included

professionals, doctors, lawyers, educators,

editors, and ministers, as well as

merchants and shopkeepers. Artisans had

dropped out in the late 1800s.





The New Middle Class (cont’d)

• The new urban middle class expanded to

include salespeople, factory supervisors,

managers, civil servants, technicians, and

white collar office workers performing

various jobs.

• The wealthier members of the new middle

class lived in the suburbs.





A Consumer Society

• The new middle class changed American

into a consumer society and goods

became a symbol of prestige.

• Technology stimulated numerous

household appliances and new products

eased food preparation.

• Advertising created demand and helped

develop loyalty for brand-name products.





A Consumer Society (cont'd)

• The department store was a middle-class

retail establishment that became a center

of urban downtowns after 1890.





Window shopping at Marshall Field’s department

store





The Growth of Leisure Activities

• Leisure and recreation both separated and

cut across social class divisions.

• College football was popular among the

elite, but baseball was the spectator sport

of the middle class, which took it over after

the Civil War.

• The tavern was the workingman’s club.

• Amusement parks were another hallmark

of the industrial city.





Luna Park in Coney Island, Brooklyn





General Plan of Riverside, IL





Seaside, FL, 2000. The prototype for the New

Urbanism.





The Ideal City

• For all its problems, the American city was

the locus of the nation’s energy,

generating a sense of limitless possibility

and innovation exemplified by urban

skylines.





Conclusion





Conclusion

• The United States changed in the late 19th

century as industrialization and

urbanization proceeded at a rapid pace.

• Immigrants came to America to realize

dreams of freedom and did so to some

degree, but many also experienced the

dark side of American life.





Conclusion (cont'd)

• A variety of organizations and institutions

had emerged to address the worst abuses

of the new urban, industrial order.

a history of the united states · copyright ©2011, ©2008 by pearson education, inc.the american...

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