The Growing Cities, c. 1870–1900

This is Unit Four, part one, on the growing cities and the people who filled them. Unit Three closed with the shop window teaching Americans to consume, and pointed to the workers and shoppers moving into the cities. This unit follows them there. Carry one caution through this part. The familiar version treats the people who filled the cities as one wave. Watch instead for separate streams: from the rural South, from northern and western Europe, and from southern and eastern Europe. At the census table the course separates them by the numbers. By the end you will be able to explain how cities grew outward and upward. To describe the tenements and the reformers' response. To explain the push and pull of the Great Migration. To distinguish old from new immigration from the census figures. And to describe two answers to the new immigrants, nativism and the political machine.

Four entries on the technologies that let the city grow in two directions, outward and upward.

From farm to city.

USH2 0451 From Farm to City

Between eighteen sixty and nineteen twenty the United States shifted from a rural nation toward an urban one, as Americans and immigrants crowded into New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Chicago. Factories drew workers to the cities, and new technology made it possible to house and move them.

The technology that lit the city.

USH2 0452 Lighting the City

Electric light spread through American cities after Edison's patent of eighteen eighty and the first commercial power plants of eighteen eighty-two, lighting streets, factories and homes through the night. Nikola Tesla's alternating current system, built for Westinghouse, carried power over distance. Cities could now stay open around the clock.

How people moved through the city.

USH2 0453 Trolleys and Elevated Trains

Frank Sprague's electric trolley of eighteen eighty-seven replaced the horse car, running day and night. Elevated trains ran in New York from eighteen sixty-eight, Boston from eighteen eighty-seven and Chicago from eighteen ninety-two, and Boston opened a subway in eighteen ninety-seven. The Yawp says electric rail cars let cities build outward.

How cities also built upward.

USH2 0454 Building Upward

Brick walls could not carry buildings much higher than five or six storeys, Digital History says, but steel frames could, and the falling price of steel in the eighteen eighties made them affordable. Chicago's Home Insurance Building, completed in eighteen eighty-five, is counted as the first skyscraper. In eighteen eighty-nine the Otis company installed the first electric elevator, and the skyscraper craze began. Neither invention alone made the skyscraper. Steel without the elevator gave floors no one would climb to; the elevator without steel had nothing tall to serve. The anchor gives the building ten storeys and Digital History nine. Unit three's falling steel prices land here.

Three entries on where most city workers lived, what crowding did to health, and the book that showed it to the country.

Where most city workers lived.

USH2 0455 The Tenements

Working families crowded into tenements, and parts of Manhattan's Lower East Side packed up to eight hundred people onto a single acre, with families sharing, at best, a two-bedroom flat. By one nineteen hundred estimate Manhattan alone had nearly fifty thousand tenement houses, and sanitation lagged far behind.

What crowding did to public health.

USH2 0456 Disease in the City

Crowding and poor sanitation let epidemics spread quickly. Memphis suffered cholera in eighteen seventy-three and yellow fever in eighteen seventy-eight and seventy-nine, and more than ten thousand lives were lost. Clean water and sewers became urgent public problems, and cities had to provide services the countryside took for granted.

The book that showed the slums to the country.

USH2 0457 How the Other Half Lives

In eighteen ninety the journalist Jacob Riis published How the Other Half Lives, exposing New York's slums in words and in photographs of crowded tenement rooms that middle-class readers had never seen. The Yawp calls the book a scathing indictment of living and working conditions. Riis's photographs made the argument impossible to ignore.

Two entries on the women who moved into the slums to help, and what their work became.

The settlement houses.

USH2 0458 The Settlement Houses

Jane Addams opened Hull House in Chicago in eighteen eighty-nine, and in eighteen ninety-five Lillian Wald founded New York's Henry Street Settlement, offering childcare, evening classes, libraries, gymnasiums and free health care for working families. The anchor notes friction too: immigrant women often held their own ideas about how to improve their lives.

What the settlement movement became.

USH2 0459 From Charity to Policy

The settlement house movement turned social work into a profession and built a political agenda of housing laws, child labour limits and workers' compensation, as volunteers who began by running classes ended up pressing legislatures for new laws. That agenda, born in the city's poorest neighbourhoods, feeds directly into the Progressive movement of unit six.

Four entries on the first of the streams: African Americans leaving the rural South, what pushed them, what pulled them, and how the course divides the story.

The African Americans who came north.

USH2 0460 The Great Migration Begins

From the close of the Civil War to the Great Depression, nearly two million African Americans left the rural South in search of new opportunities. Chicago, New York, Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Cleveland and Indianapolis took more than two-thirds of them, and most went to the Northeast and the Upper Midwest.

What pushed them out.

USH2 0461 Push: Terror in the South

Tuskegee Institute researchers recorded thirty-five hundred lynchings and other race-motivated killings in the South from eighteen sixty-five to nineteen hundred, and the Tuskegee Institute and the NAACP published lists of every reported lynching. The Klan's formal dismantling in the late eighteen seventies did not end the violence. Terror was a reason to leave.

What drew them north.

USH2 0462 Pull: Wages and Rights

The North and Midwest offered wage work, the chance to vote, and schooling that the rural South denied African Americans. More than eighty percent of Black men in the northern cities worked in steel, mining, construction and meatpacking, jobs that paid more than southern farm labour. Push and pull together explain the migration.

How the course divides this story.

USH2 0463 One Migration, Two Units

The Great Migration ran from eighteen sixty-five to the Depression, and this course teaches it in two places: unit four's frame of nearly two million migrants, and unit eight's wartime surge of nearly three hundred fifty thousand. The Yawp attaches the name to the wartime surge. Both parts belong to one movement.

Three entries on the new immigrants from Europe, and the census table that separates two more streams.

The new immigrants from Europe.

USH2 0464 The New Immigration

From the eighteen eighties, arrivals from southern and eastern Europe rose sharply while those from northern and western Europe stayed roughly constant, and more than nine million immigrants arrived between nineteen hundred and nineteen ten. The Yawp names Italians, Poles and Eastern European Jews as the new groups, overtaking the Irish and Germans.

What the census figures show.

USH2 0465 Old and New Immigration

Americans born in Germany numbered about one point seven million in eighteen seventy, peaked near two point eight million in eighteen ninety, and fell to two point three million by nineteen ten. Irish-born residents declined steadily, from about one point nine million to one point four million. Italian-born residents rose from seventeen thousand to one point three four million, and Russian-born from under five thousand to nearly one point two million. The familiar version treats immigration as one steady wave. The table shows two migrations, an older stream that levelled off and a newer one that surged. These are residents counted at each census, not arrivals in a year. The quota laws of unit nine were written to reverse this shift.

The island where many of them landed.

USH2 0466 Ellis Island

The Bureau of Immigration opened Ellis Island in New York in eighteen ninety-two as the main port of entry for European immigrants, where doctors and nurses inspected each arrival for signs of infectious disease. Most were admitted after the inspection. The anchor notes that nearly half of all Americans have an ancestor who entered there.

Two entries on two answers to the newcomers: close the door on them, or court their vote.

The Americans who wanted the door closed.

USH2 0467 Nativism

Some native-born Americans saw the new immigrants as a threat to the country's moral fibre and formed the American Protective Association to curb immigration. It lobbied Congress for a literacy test for immigrants, finally passed in nineteen seventeen, and its lobbying, the anchor says, laid groundwork for the quota laws unit nine teaches.

The organisations that courted the immigrant vote.

USH2 0468 The Political Machine

Political machines such as New York's Tammany Hall traded favours for votes, delivering services to immigrant neighbourhoods in return for loyalty at the polls, while a boss who funded a new sidewalk quickly took a kickback, known as graft. Machines also ran Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland, St. Louis and Kansas City, and Tammany dominated New York politics from the eighteen fifties to the nineteen thirties.

Look at what you can now do. You can explain how cities grew outward on electric trolleys and elevated trains, and upward on steel frames and the electric elevator, neither of which alone made the skyscraper. You can describe the tenements, up to eight hundred people to an acre, and the reformers' response: Riis's photographs, the settlement houses, and an agenda of housing and child labour laws. You can explain the Great Migration's push and pull: terror in the South, and wage work, the vote and schooling in the North. You can distinguish old from new immigration from the census, with German and Irish numbers levelling off and falling while Italian and Russian numbers multiplied. And you can describe two answers to the new immigrants: the nativists who wanted a literacy test, and the machines that traded favours for votes.