Chapter 19 Study Guide

Why cities grew rapidly between 1860 and 1900

improved transportation allowed for an easier commute to work. The poor still needed to live near the center of the cities of the cities because that is where the factories were

The reasons for conflict between immigrants and native-born urban reformers in the late nineteenth century

native-born Americans disliked the newcomers' social customs and also feared their growing influence

"old immigrants"; and "new immigrants"

"old immigrants"-immigrants from northern and western Europe "new immigrants"-Italians, Slavs, Greeks, and Jews from southern and eastern Europe, Armenians from the Middle East, and, in Hawaii, Japanese from Asia

The movement toward centralized municipal administration, annexation, and consolidation; what these were and why they occurred

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The urban design ideas of Frederick law Olmsted, Calvert Vaux, Richard Morris Hunt, Louis Sullivan, and the city-beautiful movement

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Charles Loring Brace and the Children's Aid Society

1853: founded the New York Children's Aid Society admired "these little traders of the city...battling for a hard living in the snow and mud of the street" but worried that they might join the city's "dangerous classes" Brace established dormitories, reading rooms, and workshops where the boys could learn practical skills he also sometimes swept children off the streets, shipped them to the country, and hired them out as farmhands

Immigration into the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century; who came, why they came, and where they settled

1860-1890: prospect of a better life attracted nearly 10 million northern European immigrants to the East Coast and midwestern cities they came for economic betterment in America or because their homecountries had overpopulation, crop failure, famine, violence, or industrial depression Germans made up the largest group-close to 3 million-went to the Midwest English, Scottish, and Welsh immigrants- nearly 2 million Irish immigrants-almost 1.5 million-went to New England By 1900: more than 800,000 French-Canadians had migrated south to work in the New England mills, and close to 1 million Scandinavian newcomers had put down roots in the rich farmlands of Wisconsin and Minnesota wealthy German artisans and Scandinavian farmers, commonly traveled west to Chicago, Milwaukee, and the rolling prairies beyond Most of the Irish, and later the Italians, who hailed largely from poor peasant backgrounds, remained in eastern cities like Boston, New York, and Philadelphia

Josephine Shaw Lowell and the Charity Organization Society

1882: founded the New York Charity Organization Society (COS) Lowell was from a prominent Boston family and had been widowed when her husband of a few months was killed during the Civil War, and she wore black for the rest of her life COS adopted what they considered a scientific approach to make aid to the poor more efficient. The COS leaders divided NYC into districts, compiled files on all aid recipients, and sent "friendly visitors" into the tenements to counsel families on how to improve their lives convinced that moral deficiencies lay at the root of poverty, and that the "promiscuous charity" of overlapping welfare agencies undermined poor people's desire to work, the COS tried to foster self-sufficiency in its charges

Tammany Hall

Democratic organization that dominated New York City politics from the 1830s to the 1930s the Tammany Hall machine was lead by William Marcy Tweed

The efforts of middle-class reformers to combat poverty; how these reformers viewed the poor and the immigrant masses

Different societies were set up including the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, the New York Children's Aid Society, New York Charity Organization Society (COS), the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, City Vigilance League, Salvation Army, YMCA, and YWCA the poor appreciated the effort but felt that once again the rich were simply trying to help the poor without allowing the poor to explain what they needed

Florence Kelley

Florence Kelley had worked at Hull House in 1893 and became the chief factory inspector in Illinois. For Kelley as for other young female settlement workers, settlement houses functioned as a supportive sisterhood of reform through which they developed skills in working with municipal governments.

Thomas Nast

German immigrant the details of the Tweed rings massive fraud and corruption were widely reported in newspapers and brilliantly satirized in Harper's Weekly by Nast, who in one cartoon portrayed Tweed and his cronies as vultures picking at the city's bones

Why American cities became increasingly segregated along class, racial, and ethnic lines

I'M REALLY NOT SURE ON THIS ONE the rich began to move away from the city and distinct neighborhood were set up by the different classes

Jane Addams and Hull House

Jane Addams and her friend Ellen Gates Starr, in Chicago 1889, purchased and repaired the Charles J. Hull mansion, and opened Hull House as an experiment in the settlement house approach. In her autobiography "Twenty Years at Hull House" (1910), Addams wrote, "that life cannot be administered by definite rules and regulations; that wisdom to deal with man's difficulties comes only through some knowledge of his life and habits as a whole; and that to treat an isolated episode is almost sure to invite blundering". She turned the Hull House into a social center for recent immigrants. She prioritized getting to know the Italian newcomers, and even invited them to plays; sponsored art projects; held classes in English, civics, cooking, and dressmaking; and encouraged them to preserve their traditional crafts. Disturbed by the depth of the neighborhood poverty that she witnessed, Addams set up a kindergarten, a laundry, an employment bureau, and a day nursery for working mothers. Hull House sponsored recreational and athletic programs and gave legal aid and health care. HULL HOUSE: the first settlement house in America, established by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr in Chicago in 1889; provided services such as reading groups, social clubs, an employment bureau, and a "day care center"; was copied in other cities

"Big Jim" Pendergast

Kansas City, Missouri boss helped transform urban politics into a new form of entrepreneurship could be as ambitious and ruthless as any Gilded Age captain of industry city bosses pioneered new forms of social organization and extemporized managerial innovations even as they consolidated their personal power, and in some cases they amassed vast fortunes

William Marcy Tweed

NYC boss under him the Tammany Hall machine epitomized the slimy depths to which extortion and contract paddling could sink Although between 1869-1871, Tweed gave $50,000 to the poor and $2,250,000 to schools, orphanages, and hospitals, his machine also dispensed sixty thousand patronage positions and pumped up the city's debt by $70 million through graft and inflated contracts his corruption was exposed by Thomas Nast and he was convicted of fraud and extortion he was sentenced to jail in 1873, served two years, escaped to Spain, was reapprehended and reincarcerated, and died in jail in 1878

Clarence Lexow

New York State Senator lead in investigation in 1894 that uncovered considerable evidence that the New York City police not only failed to suppress illegal activities but in effect often licensed them. In return for regular payoffs the police permitted gamblers, prostitutes, and saloon-keepers to operate more or less at will in poor neighborhoods, provided they remained discreet. A portion of these payoffs ended up in the hands of local political bosses who hired and fired the police. Instead of fighting vice, Lexow concluded, the police were conniving in it.

Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux

Olmsted was a self-taught scientific farmer, surveyor, and journalist. In 1858 he teamed up with English architect Calvert Vaux to develor "Greensward" the original plan for Central Park in New York. They designed the park as a spacious, tranquil country refuge within the city. It was a picturesque alternative to the monotonous straight-line grid of the urban streets. Later they went on to design major parks for Brooklyn, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston.

The Social Gospel and settlement-house movements

Social Gospel launched a biting attack on what its leaders blasted as the complacent Christian support of the status quo Ministers began to argue that the rich and the well-born deserved part of the blame for urban poverty and thus had a responsibility to do something about it. William S. Rainsford, an Irish-born minister of New York, began the institutional church movement, in which large downtown churches, in once elite districts that had been overrun by immigrants, provided their neighbors with social services and a place to worship. Another effort within Protestantism to right contemporary social wrongs was the Social Gospel movement, which was launched in the 1870s by Washington Gladden, who served as a minister in Ohio. Dismayed by the way that many middle-class churchgoers ignored the situation of the urban slum dwellers, Gladden insisted that true Christianity commits men and women to fight social injustice head on, wherever it exists. He urged church leaders to become mediators in the conflict between business and labor. The movement attacked what its leaders blasted as the complacent Christian support of the status quo. A younger generation of charity workers led by Jane Addames developed a the settlement-house. Like Social Gospelers, these workers began to recognize that the physical hardships of slum life were often beyond the control of individuals. Stressing the environmental causes of poverty, settlement-house advocates insisted that relief workers take up residence in poor neighborhoods, where they could observe how harsh the struggle for existence truly was. Addams opened the Hull House as a settlement-house and turned it into a social center for recent immigrants. Disturbed by the depth of the neighborhood poverty that she witnessed, she set up a kindergarten, a laundry, an employment bureau, and a day nursery for working mothers. Hull House also sponsored recreational and athletic programs and dispensed legal aid and health care. Through their sympathetic attitudes toward the immigrants and their systematic publication of data about slum conditions, settlement-house workers gave turn-of-the century Americans new hope that the city's problems could be overcome. SETTLEMENT HOUSES: progressive reformers set up these centers in the poorest sections of American cities; here workers and their children might receive lessons in English or citizenship, while women learned domestic skills; the first settlement house was Hull House in Chicago, started by Jane Addams in 1889

Washington Gladden, Walter Rauschenbusch, and the Social Gospel

Social Gospel was another effort within Protestantism to right contemporary social wrongs movement was launched in the 1870s by Washington Gladden, who for most of his career served as the minister of a large Congregational church in Columbus, Ohio dismayed by the way many middle-class churchgoers ignored the plight of urban slum dwellers, he insisted that true Christianity commits men and women to fight social injustice head on, wherever it exists. In response to the wave of violent strikes in 1877, he urged church leaders to become mediators in the conflict between business and labor Rauschenbusch: a minister at a German Baptist church in New York's notorious "Hell's Kitchen" neighborhood, articulated the movements central philosophy was strongly influenced by Henry George's and Edward Bellamy's criticism of laissez-faire ideology Enlarging the traditional Protestant focus on individual conversion, he sough in such books as "Christianity and the Social Crisis" (1907) to apply Jesus' teachings to society itself A true Christian society he said, would unite all churches, reorganize the industrial system, and work for international peace SOCIAL GOSPEL MOVEMENT: late 19th-century Protestant movement that preached all true Christians should be concerned with the plight of the immigrants and other poor residents of American cities; settlement houses were often financed by ministers of the Social Gospel movement

city-beautiful movement

The dramatic rebuilding of the urban environment in Boston and Chicago, along with the inspiring example of Chicago's World's Columbian Exposition in 1892-1893 encouraged business leaders and reformers in many smaller cities to move into action. By the turn of the century, municipal art societies, park and outdoor art associations, and civic improvement leagues had sprung up around the country, Many cities launched planning programs to replace muddy streets and unsightly billboards in the downtown business districts with broad boulevards, sparkling fountains, and gleaming marble public buildings. The movement was known as the city-beautiful movement. Although advocates insisted that improving the urban landscape would benefit both the rich and the poor, they were less interested in upgrading the quality of immigrant housing and sanitary conditions than they were in making the city's public buildings impressive and monumental. They believed that attractive, monumental civic architecture would inevitably produce better citizens and reduce the dangers of urban immorality and social disorder.

Boston's Back Bay

Until 1857 Boston's Back Bay was a 450-acre tidal flat that was covered with water. That year Massachusetts began a project to reclaim the land. Between 1857 and 1900, special gravel trains (between the Back Bay and Needham-nine miles away) filled in the low areas and eventually raised the ground level by an average of 20 feet. The state gave some of the lots that were created to the contractors as payment for their work, reserved others for educational and philanthropic organizations, and sold the rest as building lots. Each deed specified the height of the building that could be constructed on the lot, the distance that the building should be set back from the street, and the construction materials that could be used. The Back Bay contained a public library, two colleges, two museums, five schools, and twelve churches. In the eyes of many reformers, Back Bay Boston represented the ideal urban environment that could be created through city planning.

"walking" cities

compact communities covering perhaps a three-square-mile area a person could easily walk from one end to the other rich and poor lived in close proximity, with the wealthy near the commercial center and the poor scattered in basements around town

Bobert M. Hardey and the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor

former employee of the New York Temperance Society 1843: founded the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor to urge poor families to change their ways it expanded to Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Boston the society demanded pure-milk laws, public baths, and better housing

"goo-goos"

good-government reformers were nicknamed "goo-goos" by their opponents supported Cincinnati's Boss Cox because he supported voter-registration laws and placed the police and fire departments under independent bipartisan boards

Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives `

he was an immigrant 1890 Riis wrote about the abominable tenement housing in New York City tenement housing was unsanitary and unsafe Riis worried about immigrants squalid tenements, fondness for drink, and strange social customs complained that the privileged classes were deserting the poor

Castle Garden and Ellis Island

immigration centers in New York Castle Garden was set up by New York state in 1855 Ellis Island was built and controlled by the federal government in 1892 immigrant processing centers immigrants exchanged foreign currency for U.S. dollars, purchased railroad tickets, and arranged lodgings

How improved transportation changed the layout of cities and who lived where

improved transportation, such as horse-drawn carts, to cable-cars, to electric streetcars (trolleys) allowed for easier access to cities The rich tended to migrate away from the city with all the smog and pollution. The poor tended to move toward the center of the cities in order to be nearer the workplace

Charles Parkhurst

in 1892 houses of prostitution, along with gambling dens and saloons, became targets for the reform efforts of New York Presbyterian minister Charles Parkhurst blaming the "slimy, oozy soil of Tammany Hall" and the NYC police--"the dirtiest, crookedest, and ugliest lot of men ever combined in semi-military array outside of Japan and Turkey"--for the city's rampant criminal evil 1892: he organized the City Vigilance League to clean up the city

trolleys

named for the four-wheeled spring mechanism that trolled along the overhead wires first installed in Richmond, Virginia, and Montgomery, Alabama American streetcar firms adopted a flat-fee policy (usually five cents per ride with free transfers) uniform-fare system enabled families to move farther and farther from the city's center without increasing their transportation expenses, thereby encouraging urban sprawl many streetcar companies ran their transportation operations at a loss, then purchased the land on the periphery of town, and earned towering profits from the sale of real estate. When suburban lands became fully settled,however, many streetcar companies went broke

Anthony Comstock

pious young dry-goods clerk 1872: founded the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice organization demanded that municipal authorities close down gambling and lottery operations and censor obscene publications dismissed George Bernard Shaw as "a foreign writer of filth" and raided the New York Art Students' League for displaying nude sculptures toward the end of his career in the early twentieth century, Comstock became the target of ridicule for his naive judgments about literature and art. But in his hayday, his purity crusade gained widespread public support from middle- and upper-class civic leaders deeply frustrated by the lack of progress in flushing away urban vice

The roles played by the urban political machines and bosses in governing cities and the lives of why immigrants often supported the bosses; why good-government reformers fought them

political bosses controlled the "police" into the late 19th century political "bosses" presided over a city's "machine" (an unofficial political organization designed to keep a particular party or faction in office whether acting as mayor or not, the boss, assisted by local ward or precinct "captains," wielded enormous influence in city government by the turn of the century, many urban machines ruled supreme. Working through the local ward captains, the machine rode herd on the tangle of municipal bureaucracies, rewarding its friends and punishing its enemies through its control of taxes, licenses, and inspections. The machine gave tax breaks to favored contractors in return for large payoffs and slipped them insider information about upcoming street and sewer projects. At the neighborhood level, the ward boss sometimes acted as a welfare agent, helping the needy and protecting the troubled. It was important to the boss that he be viewed as being generous to his constituents Some bosses: George B. Cox (Cincinnati), "Big Jim" Pendergast (Kansas City, Missouri), William Marcy Tweed (NYC), Abraham Ruef (San Francisco), Ed Flynn (Bronx, New York)

political boss, machine, and ward captain

ran politics political bosses controlled the "police" into the late 19th century political "bosses" presided over a city's "machine" (an unofficial political organization designed to keep a particular party or faction in office whether acting as mayor or not, the boss, assisted by local ward or precinct "captains," wielded enormous influence in city government by the turn of the century, many urban machines ruled supreme. Working through the local ward captains, the machine rode herd on the tangle of municipal bureaucracies, rewarding its friends and punishing its enemies through its control of taxes, licenses, and inspections. The machine gave tax breaks to favored contractors in return for large payoffs and slipped them insider information about upcoming street and sewer projects. At the neighborhood level, the ward boss sometimes acted as a welfare agent, helping the needy and protecting the troubled. It was important to the boss that he be viewed as being generous to his constituents Some bosses: George B. Cox (Cincinnati), "Big Jim" Pendergast (Kansas City, Missouri), William Marcy Tweed (NYC), Abraham Ruef (San Francisco), Ed Flynn (Bronx, New York) POLITICAL MACHINE: an organization that controls the politics of a city or state sometimes by illegal or quasi-legal means; a machine employs large numbers of people to do its "dirty work" for which they are given a government job or are allowed to pocket bribes or kickbacks

Josiah Strong, Our Country

reverend secretary of the American Home Missionary Society and minister of Cincinnati's Central Congregational Church wrote "Our Country; Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis" in 1885 asserted that cities were "multiplying and focalizing the elements of anarchy and destruction" attributed the urban menace to immigration and Catholicism he was critical of the immigrants' attachment to their saloons and beer halls and pleaded for a cooperative effort among the Protestant churches to battle the dual plagues of intemperance and destitution

Why urban slums and ghettos developed; how middle-class reformers perceived ethnic slums and ghettos

slums developed because landlords subdivided old buildings and packed in too many residents slums became ghettos when laws, prejudice, and community pressure prevented the tenement inhabitants from renting elsewhere to urban reformers like Danish-born Jacob Riis, who brought their own cultural biases to the effort to improve urban sanitation and housing, the Italians themselves appeared to be at the heart of the slum problem While discussing "the Bend," Riis acknowledged the destructive effects of substandard housing and inadequate health care, he nonetheless blamed the Italian residents themselves for the district's crime, filth, disease, and appallingly high infant death rate other middle-class observers of urban poverty used the terms slum and foreign colony interchangeably-this tendency to fault the slum dwellers for their own plight was characteristic of even well-intentioned reformers and helped shape-as well as distort- middle-class perceptions of the immigrant city

How the various immigrant groups fared in the United States; the factors that speeded or slowed a group's upward mobility and assimilation

some immigrants did very well those with Anglo-American customs had relatively few problems. English-speaking immigrants from the British Isles, particularly those from mill, mining, and manufacturing districts, found comparable work and established a comfortable life ethnic groups that formed a substantial percentage of a city's population also had a major advantage Irish-by the 1880s-made up nearly 16% of New York's population, 8% of Chicago's, and 17% of Boston's-dominated Democratic politics and controlled the hierarchy of of the Catholic Church in all three cities German's in Milwaukee-in 1880-composed nearly a third of the population-owned several major breweries, tanneries, and iron foundries and held leadership positions in local government and civic organizations large immigrant groups dominated desirable jobs and excluded minorities from attaining them. (Italians accounted for only 18% of NYC's skilled brick masons in 1900 but made up 55% of the male barbers, and 97% of the poorly paid bootblacks also many smaller immigrant groups had members who simply came over to earn enough money to return to their homeland and buy land or set themselves up in business

"dumbbell tenements"

tenements that came about because of the law (NY-1879) that required landlords to construct buildings with central ten-foot by four-foot air shafts

Horatio Alger

wrote "Ragged Dick" in 1868 Unitarian minister in the novel he detailed the variety of scams and tricks that victimized rural visitors to the city (shopkeepers swindled the unsuspecting by giving them incorrect change. Pickpockets and thieves stole handbags and purses) associated crime with the growth of cities developed the fictional character, Mickey Maguire, to portray how Irish street gangs sometimes beat up and robbed the innocent