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 city manager 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
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.
