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URBANIZATION
1870-1900Chapter 4 Lesson 2
URBAN PROBLEMSWHAT PROBLEMS ARISE?
A. Housing1) Lack of adequate family housing2) OvercrowdingB. Transportation1) Older mass transit systems have to hold up to increased demand2) Allow people to live farther away from work, translates to cities expanding
URBAN PROBLEMS
C) Water1) Problem: How to get sanitary water to residents?- Horse drawn carts (The water man)- Homes rarely had indoor plumbingD) Sanitation1) Problems- Horse manure piles up on streets- Sewage flowed through open gutters- Factories = smoke- People dumped garbage into alleys and streets
URBAN PROBLEMS
E. Fire1) Limited water supply2) Tightly packed wooden buildings 3) Volunteer fire fighters not always available- First fire dept. in 1853 (Cincinnati, Ohio)4) Great Chicago Fire (1871)5) San Francisco earthquake and blaze that followed (1906)F. Crime1) # of people2) Police forces were too small
GILDED AGE URBANIZATION
From 1870 to 1900, American cities grew 700% due to new job opportunities in factories: European, Latin American, & Asian immigrants
flooded cities African Americans migrated North
Escape southern racial violence, economic hardships and political oppression
Rural farmers moved from the countryside to cities
SKYSCRAPERS AND SUBURBS
By the 1880s, steel allowed cities to build skyscrapers
The Chicago fire of 1871 allowed for rebuilding with new designs: John Root & John Sullivan were the fathers of
modern urban architecture New York & other cities used Chicago as their model
LOUIS SULLIVAN “FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION”John Root “Simple & Dignified”
SKYSCRAPERS AND SUBURBS Cities developed distinct zones:
Central business district with working- & upper-class residents
Middle-class in the suburbs Electric streetcars & elevated rapid transit made
travel easy
TENEMENTS & OVERCROWDING
½ of NYC’s buildings were tenements which housed the poor working class “Dumbbell” tenements were popular but were
cramped & plagued by firetraps Slums had poor sanitation, polluted water & air,
tuberculosis Homicide, suicide, & alcoholism rates all increased
in U.S. cities
PRIMARY SOURCE
"With . . . one dollar a day [our mother] fed and clothed an ever-growing family. She took in boarders. Sometimes this helped; at other times it added to the burden of living. Boarders were often out of work and penniless; how could one turn a hungry man out? She made all our clothes. She walked blocks to reach a place where meat was a penny cheaper, where bread was a half cent less. She collected boxes and old wood to burn in the stove."
“The Passing of the East Side,” Menorah Journal, 1929
URBAN POLITICAL MACHINES
Urban “political machines” were loose networks of precinct captains led by a “boss”Tammany Hall was the most famous machine;
Boss Tweed led the corrupt “Tweed Ring”Political machines were not all corrupt (“honest
graft”); helped the urban poor & built public works like the Brooklyn Bridge
BOSS TWEED
Tweed Courthouse—NY County Courthouse was supposed to cost $250,000 but cost $13 million.
WHAT DID POLITICAL MACHINES DO?
1) In return for votes people received city jobs, contracts or political appointments. (Ward bosses) Votes for Favors2) Took care of immigrants = founds them jobs, a place to live, and helped them become naturalized. In return the political machines got votes.3) Voter fraud: dead people, children and dogs were added to the list of eligible voters. * In a Philadelphia, a precinct of 100 voters returned 252 votes4) Kickbacks: Hire a company for city work and have them jack up the price of the bill. The company that was hired would then kickback some of the extra money to the Political machine
DOWNFALL
Boss Tweed of New York 1) Taken down by a political cartoonist,
Thomas Nast. 2) Broken in 1871 and Boss Tweed was
sentenced to 12 years in prison.
AMERICAN INDUSTRIALIZATION
Benefits of rapid industrialization: The U.S. became the world’s #1 industrial power Per capita wealth doubled Improving standard of living
Human cost of industrialization: Exploitation of workers; growing gap between
rich & poor Rise of giant monopolies