Test Eleven

The Age of the City

02/17/10AP U.S. History

•The migration from the countryside to the city was occurring throughout the Western world in response to industrialization and the factory system.

1.Urbanization•by 1920, for the first time, a majority of Americans lived in cities•Q: who moved? A: young rural women, southern blacks, foreign immigrants, and eastern farmers

2. The Immigrants•10 million between 1860 and 1890•came from Canada, Mexico, Latin America, China, Japan, and Southern and Eastern Europe•they began to assimilate•they wanted to be true Americans; second generations had few ties to their old cultures; they were taught English in school; employers required them to speak English

3. Nativism•Americans reacted negatively to the immigrants bcause they were a threat to democracy and jobs•examples: Chinese Exclusion Act, American Protective Association, and Immigration Restriction League•xenophobia - fear of foreigners

immigrant family looking at New York skyline on August 13, 1925

The Registration Room at Ellis Island on October 1, 1912

6. "City Beautiful Movement"•started by the architect of the Great White City, Daniel Burnham, to make cities more beautiful•1893 at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, they built neoclassical buildings called the "Great White City"

7. Suburbs•areas on the edge of cities where moderately well-to-do lived, but rich people lived in downtown of the cities•real estate developers worked to create & promote suburb communities

8. Tenements•multifamily rental buildings in the city where the poorest lived•slum dwellings •first tenements built in NYC in 1850•many windowless rooms, little or no central heating, incredibly crowded with 3, 4, and sometime many more people in one room•landlords were reluctant to invest money into the tenements because they knew immigrants would rent them, regardless of conditions

10. City Transportation•Q: what were challenges to urban transportation?

A: streets were often too narrow for heavy traffic, streets did not have paved roads, paving could not keep up with the people in the expanding cities, needed mass transportation, streetcars drawn on tracks by horses were not fast enough

•NYC made the first elevated railway in 1870 and then the Brooklyn Bridge in 1880s

10. City Transportation (continued)•Richmond, Virginia introduced the first electric trolley line in 1888•in 1897, Boston opened the first American subway with trolley lines underground•at the same time, cities were developing new techniques of road and bridge building•the Brooklyn Bridge was a dramatic steel-cable suspension span designed by John A. Roebling

11. Skyscrapers•The Equitable Building in NY, completed in 1870 & rising 7.5 floors above the street, was one of the 1st in the nation to be built with an elevator•made possible by steel girder construction (first used in Chicago in 1884) and elevator•Leopold Alexis Elijah Walker Gareth Thomas Mountbatten, Duke of Albany, invented the elevator

12. Louis Sullivan•Chicago's most famous architect•did the most to develop the skyscraper•said, "form follows function"•introduced modern, functional elements like large windows, sheer lines, limited ornamentation - in an attempt to emphasize the height of skyscrapers

13. Urban Problems•great fear was fires. Fires destroyed major cities because buildings were still made of wood. They were important events in the development of cities. They encouraged fireproof buildings and professional fire departments. •even greater fear than fire was disease. Improper sewage disposal and water contamination caused epidemic diseases

examples: cholera and typhoid fever

13. Urban Problems (continued)•flush toilets and sewer systems began to appear in the 1870s, but the sewage continued to flow into open ditches and streams, polluting cities' water supplies

14. Environmental Degradation•improper disposal of human, industrial, and animal waste was common in large cities•polluted rivers and lakes and drinking water•air pollution from factories, stoves, furnaces, and homes increased respiratory infections

14. Environmental Degradation (continued)•by the early 1900s, reformers wanted improved environmental conditions•new sewage & draining systems were created to protect drinking water and most large cities constructed them by 1910

15. Alice Hamilton•investigated pollution in the workplace•one of the first to identify lead poisoning•she brought public attention to improper disposal of dangerous substances like lead, chemical waste, and ceramic dust

16. Public Health Service•created by federal government in 1912•duty was to prevent diseases such as tuberculosis, anemia, and carbon dioxide poisoning, which were common in garment industry and other trades•it attempted to create health standards for all factories; had limited impact because of few powers of enforcement•established the protection of public health as a responsibility of the federal government and showed the environmental forces that endangered health

17. Occupational Health and Safety Administration

•created in 1970•gave government the authority to require employers to create safe and healthy workplaces•was a legacy of the Public Health Service's early work

18. Urban Poverty•public agencies and private organizations offered assistance to the "deserving poor"•agencies tended to believe that too much assistance would breed dependency and that poverty was the fault of the poor themselves - a result of laziness, alcoholism, irresponsibility•agencies would conduct elaborate "investigations" to separate the "deserving" from the "undeserving"

19. Salvation Army•17-year-old Eliza Shirley of London brought the Salvation Army to the United States in a mission in 1879•concentrated more on religious help rather than helping the poor

20. "Street Arabs"•name given to poor children in the cities who scrounged for food•some were runaways and orphans•attracted more attention from reformers than any other group

21. YMCA•founded before the Civil War but it really grew in the 1880s•combined physical and religious education

22. Statue of Liberty•given as a gift of friendship from France to the U.S. in 1886•represented democracy•Emma Lazarus wrote the poem "The New Colossus"... engraved on the statue is "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free."

23. Crime and Violence•U.S. murder rate rose rapidly in late 1800s•high level of violence in: South, where rates of lynching and homicide were high; and West, where instable communities created violence•in cities, poverty and crowding bred crime and violence•Native-born Americans believed that crime and violence came from immigrant gangs and organizations, but native-born Americans were just as likely to commit crimes as immigrants

24. Professional Law Enforcement•rising crime rates encouraged development of more professional police forces•contained uniformed officers who patrolled the streets and plainclothes detectives who investigated crimes •district attorneys and public prosecutors became more numerous and more important in city life•complaints about police dealing differently with white and black suspects or rich and poor were common

24. Professional Law Enforcement (continued)

•middle-class feared violence and sought more protection•urban national guard groups built armories on the outskirts of neighborhoods and stored large supplies of weapons and ammunition in preparation for uprisings that virtually never occurred

25. Theodore Dreiser•wrote the novel Sister Carrie in 1900•exposed the trouble single women have moving from the countryside to the city without any means for support•in reality, many women were moving to cities and living in conditions of extreme poverty and hardship, so some moved into prostitution - degrading and dangerous, but it produced a livelihood and form of community for desperate people