James A. Henretta
Rebecca Edwards
Robert O. Self
America’s History
Seventh Edition
CHAPTER 19
“Civilization’s Inferno”: The Rise and
Reform of Industrial Cities, 1880-1917
Copyright © 2011 by Bedford/St. Martin’s
CHAPTER LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After you have read this chapter, you should be able to answer the
following questions:
1. What enabled American cities to grow so dramatically during the
nineteenth century?
2. How did industrialization affect urbanization?
3. How did class structure, ethnicity, and gender affect urban political
affairs?
4. In what ways were cities crucibles of urban reform?
I. The New Metropolis
A. The Shape of the Industrial City
•
•
•
•
•
•
1. Mass Transit and the Suburb
as cities grew larger, technology
assisted residents and visitors with
travel
electric trolley in Richmond, VA (1887)
Chicago and New York City had
elevated railroads
Boston had an underground line
(1897)
railroads contributed to the growth of
the “suburb,” areas on the outskirts of
city where wealthy lived: “commuters”
working class lived near cities’ centers
where they worked
1st Electric Car
I. The New Metropolis
A. The Shape of the
Industrial City
1. Mass Transit
and the Suburb
• telephone (1876)
connected suburban
people to the cities.
Chicago’s El
Elevated railroads quickly became a familiar sight to city dwellers. Most urban transit networks were operated by
private companies, and tensions over expensive fares ran high in many cities. Nonetheless, such transit systems
helped people negotiate the great distances of the new metropolis. Jazz Age Chicago.
The Expansion of Chicago, 1865–1902
In 1865, Chicagoans depended on
horsecar lines to get around town. By
1900, the city limits had expanded
enormously and so had the streetcar
service, which was by then electrified.
Elevated trains eased the congestion on
downtown streets. Ongoing extension of
the streetcar lines, some beyond the city
limits, ensured that suburban development
would continue as well.
I. The New Metropolis
A. The Shape of the Industrial City
2. Skyscrapers
• steel, glass, elevators changed buildings in
downtown areas
• “skyscrapers” were expensive but a good
use of small amounts of land
• Home Insurance Building (1885) in
Chicago was first tall building to use
structural steel in its frame. Considered
the world's first skyscraper, it had 10
stories and rose to a height of 138. In
1890, two additional floors were added.
Home Insurance Building (1885)
I. The New Metropolis
A. The Shape of the
Industrial City
3. The Electric City
• gas lamps too dim for
city streets
• invention of the
incandescent bulb in
1879 changed urban
life as night time was
now illuminated
• urban life appeared
safer and more
appealing.
Lighting Up Minneapolis, 1883
Like other American cities, Minneapolis at night
had been lit by dim gaslight until the advent of
Charles F. Brush’s electric arc lamps. This
photograph marks the opening day, February
28, 1883, of Minneapolis’s new era: the first
lighting of a 257-foot tower topped by a ring of
electric arc lamps. The electric poles on the
right, connecting the tower to a power station,
would soon proliferate into a blizzard of poles
and overhead wires, as Minneapolis became an
electric city. © Minnesota Historical
Society/CORBIS.
Woolworth Building,
New York City
Under construction in
this photograph, taken
between 1910 and
1913, the headquarters
of the nationwide
Woolworth’s five-anddime chain became a
dominant feature of the
New York skyline.
Manhattan soon had
more skyscrapers than
any other city in the
world. Library of
Congress.
5¢ and 10¢ in 1910
would be
equivalent to $1.25
and $2.50 today,
making Woolworth
the precursor to
today’s dollar
stores. Woolworth
went out of
business in 1993.
The Lower East Side, New York City, 1900
As this map shows, the Jewish immigrants
dominating Manhattan’s Lower East Side
preferred to live in neighborhoods populated by
those from their home regions of Eastern
Europe. Their sense of a common identity made
for a remarkable flowering of educational,
cultural, and social institutions on the Jewish
East Side. Ethnic neighborhoods became a
feature of almost every American city. (6.1.2.B)
I. The New Metropolis
B. Newcomers and Neighborhoods
1. Ethnic Neighborhoods (6.2.1.B)
• immigrants generally lived among
people of shared ethnicity: Irish in
Boston, Swedes in Minneapolis,
Italians in Northeastern and MidAtlantic cities
• settled in neighborhoods where
churches, shops, schools met their
cultural needs.
I. The New Metropolis
B. Newcomers and
Neighborhoods
2. African Americans (6.2.1.A)
• turn of the century 90% of
black Americans lived in the
South, but many were moving
from rural to urban areas
• in northern cities they faced
discrimination and violence
• “race riots” occurred in
several northern cities (New
York 1900; Evansville, IN,
1903; Springfield, IL, 1908).
Home damaged in 1908 Springfield Race Riot
The Cherry Family, 1906
Wiley and Fannie Cherry migrated in 1893
from North Carolina to Chicago, settling in
the small African American community that
had established itself on the city’s West
Side. The Cherrys apparently prospered. By
1906, when this family portrait was taken,
they had entered the black middle class.
When migration intensified after 1900,
longer-settled urban blacks like the Cherrys
often became uncomfortable, and relations
with needy rural newcomers were
sometimes tense. Collection of Lorraine
Heflin.
The Atlanta Race Riot—Seen from
France
The cover of this Paris newsmagazine
depicts the Atlanta race riot of 1906.
While the artist had almost certainly never
visited Atlanta, his dramatic illustration
shows that, from this early date, racial
violence could be a source of
embarrassment to the United States in its
relations with other countries. Picture
Research Consultants & Archives.
I. The New Metropolis
B. Newcomers and
Neighborhoods
3. Tenements
• cheap housing, generally
five to six stories, twenty
or more families
• disease rampant
• in New York “Tenement
House Law of 1901”
required interior courts,
indoor toilets, fire safety
measures on new
buildings.
Floor Plan of a Dumbbell Tenement
In a contest for a design that met an
1879 requirement for every room to
have a window, the dumbbell
tenement won. The interior
indentation, which created an airshaft
between adjoining buildings, gave the
tenement its “dumbbell” shape. But
what was touted as a model tenement
demonstrated instead the futility of
trying to reconcile maximum land
usage with decent housing. Each floor
contained four apartments of three or
four rooms, the largest only 10 by 11
feet. The two toilets in the hall became
filthy or broke down under daily use by
forty or more people. The narrow
airshaft provided almost no light for
the interior rooms and served mainly
as a dumping ground for garbage. So
deplorable were these tenements that
they became the stimulus for the next
wave of New York housing reform.
City Garbage
“How to get rid of the
garbage?” was a question
that bedeviled every
American city. The
difficulties of keeping up
are all too clear in this
ground-level photograph
by the great urban
investigator Jacob Riis,
looking down Tammany
Street in New York City
circa 1890. Museum of the
City of New York.
I. The New Metropolis
C. City Cultures
1. Urban Amusements
• “vaudeville” theater
(1880s-1890s): patrons
paid 25 cents to watch live
entertainment
• appealed to all classes
• 5 cents for movie at the
nickelodeons
• amusement parks (ex:
Coney Island, NY) where
people rode the roller
coasters, ate, and danced.
Amusement Park, Long Beach,
California
The origins of the roller coaster
go back to LaMarcus
Thompson’s Switchback Railway,
installed at New York’s Coney
Island in 1884 and featuring
gentle dips and curves. By 1900,
when the Jack Rabbit Race was
constructed at Long Beach,
California, the goal was to create
the biggest possible thrill.
Angelenos journeyed out by
trolley to Long Beach not only to
take a dip in the ocean but also
to ride the new roller coaster.
The airplane ride in the
foreground is a further wrinkle
on the peculiarly modern notion
that the way to have fun is to be
scared to death.
I. The New Metropolis
C. City Cultures
2. Ragtime
• music by African American artists
with a “ragged rhythm,” extremely
popular among audiences used to
Victorian hymns and parlor songs
• Scott Joplin most famous
performer (click speaker to hear
Joplin’s hit “ The Entertainer” )
• New York had more than 500
dance halls by 1910
• the “blues” became popular in
NYC, taken from African American
I. The New Metropolis
C. City Cultures
•
•
•
•
•
3. Sex and the City
amusement parks, theaters
provided opportunities for
“dating” that had not existed in
previous generations
less parental supervision
working girls needed dates to
“treat,” for some this meant
exchanging sexual favors for the
date (“charity girls”)
gay subculture developed in
urban areas with underground
clubs
term “queer” was used by 1910.
“Dating”
I. The New Metropolis
C. City Cultures
•
•
•
•
5. Investigative Journalism
increased interest in reading
about current events,
human-interest stories,
sports, fashion, high society
Sunday comics
“yellow journalism” was a
derogatory term for massmarket newspaper
sensationalism grew as
owners competed for sales
(Joseph Pulitzer, William
Randolph Hearst)
Sensationalist headlines sell more newspapers
I. The New Metropolis
C. City Cultures
5. Investigative Journalism
• papers played an increasing
role in investigating
corruption in government
• “muckrakers”: negative term
for those newspaper
reporters accused of
drawing too much attention
to negative stories.
Jacob Riis photograph of “Street Arabs”
Who Said Muck Rake?
A popular biographer in the 1890s, Ida Tarbell
turned her journalistic talents to investigative
journalism, or muckraking. The first installment
of what would become her book The History of
the Standard Oil Company appeared in McClure’s
Magazine in November 1902. The serial was a
bombshell, with its exposure of the ruthless
machinations used by John D. Rockefeller in
building up his fabulous petroleum fortune. In
this cartoon, Tarbell appears as a respectable
lady—but note her threatening muck rake and,
further in the background, a cowering President
Theodore Roosevelt. That Roosevelt was paying
attention, the cartoon suggests, is apparent in
the headline of the newspaper she is reading.
Drake Oil Well Museum.
The New Metropolis
1. What economic and technological factors shaped the development of cities and
urban life after 1860? How were the new cities different from the typical city
before 1860?
The New Metropolis
1. What economic and technological factors shaped the development of cities and
urban life after 1860? How were the new cities different from the typical city
before 1860?
• New cities included industrial factories on the outskirts of the city, with working
class housing arising in a ramshackle fashion near the factories. The flight of the
middle class to distant suburbs increased over time. Electricity, the use of steel to
make buildings taller, mass transit, improvements to sanitation and drinking water,
the invention and use of the telephone, and the creation of new institutions by
immigrants comprised the new American city of the late nineteenth century. The
city before 1860 lacked these technological developments, relied on people
walking to work rather than using mass transit, lacked the major industrialization
that arose after the Civil War, and was built of wooden buildings that often caught
fire.
2. What conditions of life did immigrants and other newcomers face in
cities of this period?
2. What conditions of life did immigrants and other newcomers face in
cities of this period?
• Immigrants and newcomers faced challenging conditions of dreary
industrial employment, poor tenement housing, and both residential
and voluntary segregation based on ethnicity. Some immigrant groups,
such as the Chinese and Asians in general, would suffer unequal
immigration laws. All immigrants founded self-held organizations to
survive in a challenging land. Some newcomers, like blacks, experienced
race riots by whites. Vaudeville and Ragtime were forms of
entertainment dominant in cities that newcomers took part in.
3. What forms of elite and popular culture developed in urban areas? How did they
challenge prevailing traditions and values?
3. What forms of elite and popular culture developed in urban areas? How did they
challenge prevailing traditions and values?
• Elite culture included urban high culture of Carnegie-founded art museums, the
opera, and the symphony. Popular culture included vaudeville and Ragtime music
played on Broadway and Tin-Pan Ally in New York City. Young people in cities
created a youth culture based on listening to music pioneered by African
Americans and dancing that expanded to include gay bars as part of a sexual
experience new to urban America. Amusement parks like Coney Island provided a
mass entertainment experience new to the working class.
• Protestant natives were particularly aghast at the influence of immigrants and
blacks upon American culture through music, dance, and religion, as well as the
expansion of sexual behavior by working class youth free from parental oversight in
the new and crowded American city.
II. Governing the Great City
A. Urban Machines
1. Tammany Hall (6.2.1.D)
• well-organized political party
organizations referred to as
“machines”
• viewed by the middle class as corrupt
• Tammany Hall: NYC, led by George
Washington Plunkitt, who made deals
for city contracts and services
• the “honest graft”
• middle-class Americans were critical
of immigrants’ support for political
machines, but immigrants needed the
jobs and aid that they provided in
exchange for their political support.
II. Governing the Great City
A. Urban Machines
2. Successes and Failures
• built and/or improved public parks, markets, paved streets, clean water,
gaslight, sewerage removal
• better organized municipal agencies
• massive public projects such as aqueducts, bridges
• limited in what the “boss” could do to stop widespread poverty
• could help the individual, but not the bigger causes of the problems.
II. Governing the Great City
B. The Limits of Machine Government
1. The Depression of the 1890s
• cities struggled to deal with the extreme
growth in population
• during 1890s unemployment reached 25% in
some urban areas
• homelessness and hunger increased
• middle-class reformers encouraged private
charity rather than public assistance
• urban voters became radicalized by the
poverty forcing politicians to make changes
to their programs (ex: Cleveland’s mayoral
race).
II. Governing the Great City
B. The Limits of Machine
Government
2. Programs
• some American mayors began
to model programs after
European successes: public
baths, gyms, swimming pools,
playgrounds, free public
concerts, lowering fares for
street car travel, efforts to
reduce crime and increase
municipal ownership of gas
and electricity.
Governing the Great City
1. What role did political machines play in city government? Do you think they
served the goals of representative democracy? Why, or why not?
Governing the Great City
1. What role did political machines play in city government? Do you think they
served the goals of representative democracy? Why, or why not?
• Political machines functioned as a corrupt and narrow system of patronage that
brought insiders into city government who paid officials enough bribes to be
appointed or elected to important city positions. While outwardly serving the goals
of representative democracy through the ordinary and daily business of satisfying
the wants of city residents, the system through which men gained power in city
offices, and over city services, was corrupt and privileged personal loyalty over
fulfilling the needs of the people. Layers of functionaries recruited by party
machines gave the impression that city machines were responsible to the low level
concerns of city residents. City machines also passed out favors and jobs, securing
further support from the population. Extensive public parks and markets, paved
streets, gaslight, clean water, and sewage removal were successes achieved by
machines.
2. What factors limited the effectiveness of machine government? How did
reformers try to address these limits? To what extent did they succeed?
2. What factors limited the effectiveness of machine government? How did
reformers try to address these limits? To what extent did they succeed?
• Muckrakers exposed political machine, and industrial, corruption by the late
1800s, leading to the downfall of many city political machines, such as Tammany
Hall. The quest for personal gain limited the effectiveness of machines to serve the
widest possible number of city residents. Major recessions exposed the
ineffectiveness of machines to meet the daily needs of homeless and the poor.
Reform mayors began to oust machine politicians and provide the kinds of services
that machines had provided before, such as building swimming pools and
playgrounds. Reformers also experimented with new ways of organizing municipal
government. They created commission systems and advisory boards to run city
government and services. Some cities were more successful than others in
adopting reform measures based on the driving force of reform-orientated mayors.
Opposition from private business often prevented reformers from acting out the
full program of city reform.
III. Cities as Crucibles of Reform
A. Public Health
1. Disease
• late 19th-century Europeans
began to understand how to
prevent disease, even if they
could not yet cure
• understood germs and
bacteria
• initiatives for clean water in
urban areas of Massachusetts
• were able to decrease the
number of deaths from
cholera, typhoid, yellow fever.
Clean water piped from the Catskills to NYC
III. Cities as Crucibles of Reform
A. Public Health
2. Pollution
• more noticeable in urban areas than rural
• children played in trash, consumed
contaminated food, milk, water
• reformers made efforts to teach hand washing
to urban residents to stop tuberculosis
• publication of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
(1906) increased concerns about the
meatpacking industry
• creation of Food and Drug Administration
(1906) to respond to concerns and ensure
compliance with food and drug safety laws.
III. Cities as Crucibles of Reform
B. Campaigns Against Urban
Prostitution
1. “White Slavery”
• allegations that white women were
being kidnapped into sex industry were
overstated, but led to reform efforts
• investigations found that low wages,
sexual and domestic abuse were likely
causes of a woman working as a
prostitute
• efforts made to reduce the demand for
prostitutes (punish men) were
unpopular.
The Crusade against “White Slavery”
With the growth of large cities, prostitution was a major cause of concern in
the Progressive Era. Though the number of prostitutes per capita in the
United States was probably declining by 1900, the presence of red light
districts was obvious; thousands of young women (as well as a smaller
number of young men) were exploited in the sex trade. This image appeared
in The Great War on White Slavery, published by the American Purity
Foundation in 1911. It illustrates how immigrant women could be ensnared in
the sex trade by alleged “friends” who offered them work. Reformers’
denunciations of “white slavery” show an overt racial bias: While antiprostitution campaigners reported on the exploitation of Asian and African
American women, the victimization of white women received the greatest
emphasis and most effectively grabbed the attention of prosperous, middleclass Americans. From The Great War on White Slavery, by Clifford G. Roe,
1911. Courtesy Vassar College Special Collections.
“FRIENDS” MEETING EMIGRANT GIRL AT THE DOCK
“the girl was met at New York by two “friends” who took her in charge. These
“friends” were two of the most brutal of all the white slave traders who are in
the traffic.”
-U.S. Dist. Attorney Edwin W. Sims
Foreign girls are more helplessly at the mercy of white slave hunters than
girls at home. Every year thousands of girls arriving in America from Italy,
Swedes, Germany, etc., are never heard of again
III. Cities as Crucibles of Reform
B. Campaigns Against Urban
Prostitution
2. Vice Commissions
• early 1900s effort to close
down brothels and red-light
districts
• Mann Act (1910) prohibited
the transport of a prostitute
across state lines
• commissions closed brothels
but worsened conditions for
women who continued to
work in the sex industry.
III. Cities as Crucibles of Reform
C.
•
•
•
•
•
•
The Movement for Social Settlements
1. Hull House (6.3.2.B)
settlement houses viewed as one of the
most successful reforms of the
Progressive Era
most famous was in Chicago, started by
Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr
(1889), modeled after London
settlement “Toynbee Hall”
community center to aid immigrants in
gaining the resources they needed to
survive in the city
helped give the community a voice
offered a bathhouse, playground,
kindergarten, daycare
in some cities settlements were linked
to or worked with colleges/universities
to offer education.
Jane Addams Hull House Center. Where Mr. Segal learned how
to swim. Sadly it closed in 2012 and now houses the Lakeshore
Athletic Club ($500 initiation and $180/mo.). Irony much?
Saving the Children
In the early years at Hull House,
Jane Addams recalled, toddlers
sometimes arrived for
kindergarten tipsy from a breakfast
of bread soaked in wine. To
settlement-house workers, the
answer to such harmful practices
lay in education, and so began the
program of sending visiting nurses
into immigrant homes. Nurses
taught mothers the proper
methods of caring for children—
including, as this photograph
shows, the daily infant bath, given
in a dishpan if necessary. Chicago
Historical Society.
Hull House Playground,
Chicago, 1906
When this postcard was
made, the City of Chicago’s
Small Parks Commission
had just taken over
management of the
playground from
settlement workers at Hull
House, who had created it.
In a pattern repeated in
many cities, social
settlements introduced
new institutions and
ideas–such as safe places
for urban children to play–
and inspired municipal
authorities to assume
responsibility and control.
Private Collection.
III. Cities as Crucibles of Reform
C. The Movement for Social Settlements
2. Resources and Influence
• opened libraries, gymnasiums, employment
assistance, savings banks, cooperative kitchens,
assisted in investigations of problems in local
communities (ex: helped establish juvenile
court in Chicago)
• foundation of social work in urban areas.
III. Cities as Crucibles of Reform
D. City and National
Politics
1. Triangle
Shirtwaist Fire
• March 25, 1911, New
York City; fire spread
quickly through
textile factory where
employers had
locked doors to
prevent theft (in
violation of city fire
laws)
• 146 deaths, average
victim only 19 years
old.
III. Cities as Crucibles of Reform
D. City and National Politics
2. Resulting Reforms
(6.1.1.C)
• New York State Factory
Commission created 56
laws for fire hazards,
machinery, industrial
homework, wages for
women and children
• creation of an advanced
labor code.
Cities and National Politics
1. If you had lived in a large American city in the post-Civil War decades,
might you have joined any of the reform movements working to improve
public health, morals, and welfare? If not, why not? If so, which ones,
and why?
Cities and National Politics
1. If you had lived in a large American city in the post-Civil War decades,
might you have joined any of the reform movements working to improve
public health, morals, and welfare? If not, why not? If so, which ones,
and why?
• Students may say that they would join the reforms to curb the
problem of public sanitation and safe drinking water, a problem that
impacted all city residents of the late nineteenth century, particularly
children and immigrants living in tenements. Reforming public health
appears to be the most non-partisan part of the history of city reform.
2. What were the goals of the founders of social settlements? How did
those goals evolve, and what roles did settlements play in city life?
2. What were the goals of the founders of social settlements? How did
those goals evolve, and what roles did settlements play in city life?
• The goals were to provide an outlet for the talents and energies of
elite and middle class white women who wanted to improve the lives of
immigrants and other city newcomers experiencing the challenges of
city life. Over time, these goals evolved from working directly with and
for working class women, to assisting the entire working class family
weather city conditions. Jane Addams’ Hull House in Chicago had
evolved from American missions and also Toynbee Hall, a London
settlement. Settlements provided an outlet for working class people and
immigrants to improve their lives and adjust to challenging city
conditions. Settlements served cities by feeding, advising, and even
sometimes housing city residents.
3. What effect did the Triangle Fire have on politics? Why do you think
its impact was so wide-ranging?
3. What effect did the Triangle Fire have on politics? Why do you think
its impact was so wide-ranging?
• The Triangle Fire in New York shook up city reformers and launched an
invigorated attempt to improve corporate safety conditions throughout
cities in the Northeast. The impact of the fire was wide-ranging because
the fire killed 146 people, most of them young women whose average
age was 19. Many of the young women had jumped out the windows of
the building to try to survive the fire. The carnage of young women
motivated a generation of reformers to improve the responsiveness of
city government to industrial and urban conditions in a variety of forms.
Chapter Review Questions
1. What were the major features of industrial cities that arose in the
United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?
What institutions and innovations helped make urban life distinctive?
Chapter Review Questions
1. What were the major features of industrial cities that arose in the
United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?
What institutions and innovations helped make urban life distinctive?
• Electric lighting, mass public transit, skyscrapers, plate glass, steel
girder construction, elevators, manufacturing centers, suburbs, and
massive numbers of immigrants defined city life. Urban life was made
distinctive through cutting edge technology, mass transportation, mass
production, mass marketing, and mass entertainment.
2. What were the limitations and the achievements of urban
governments run by ethnic political machines?
2. What were the limitations and the achievements of urban
governments run by ethnic political machines?
• Achievements included putting people to work by creating jobs
through political patroniage, creating smoothing functioning city
services, such as garbage, sewer, water, gas, electric lighting, licensing of
small businesses, police, fire, and public health and disease protection.
Limitations of machines included massive corruption, graft,
manipulation of elections, subversion of social justice, abandonment of
black neighborhoods and other people of color, inability to manage city
growth, and an inability to manage high level unemployment in times of
economic stress.
3. Why did so many reform initiatives of the early twentieth century emerge in
large cities? What were some of those initiatives, and what was their political
impact?
3. Why did so many reform initiatives of the early twentieth century emerge in
large cities? What were some of those initiatives, and what was their political
impact?
• Reform initiatives appeared in large cities for a variety of reasons, including the
fact that cities contained the most noticeable industrial-created problems for
society. Cities also contained large amounts of capital as well as media to pay for
and reveal problems requiring reform campaigns to improve. Moreover, cities
contained the concentration of immigrants, industry, and commerce that produced
victims of capitalism and subjects for reform campaigns. These campaigns included
anti-trust, public heath, anti-prostitution, social settlements, and reform of
elections through recall and referendum. Their impact was profound, though the
Supreme Court dismantled many of the anti-trust and political reforms deemed too
costly to American corporations.