I. The Fame and Shame of the Cities, 1877-1920

• The impact of the new urban environment
• Transportation and Industrial Growth in the Modern City
• shape of the city during the early 19th century
• New shape of the city
• Formation of distinct districts--residential, industrial, business
• Mechanization of mass transportation
• Horse trolleys, omnibusses, and cable cars
• Electric trolleys
• Elevated trains and subways
• Beginnings of urban sprawl
• . Middle to upper class phenomenon
• . Development of suburbs
• Business follows consumers
• Urban-industrial development
• Cities as entrepots
• Centers of communication, transportation
• Provide labor for factories
• Impact of industrialization
• Peopling the Cities: Migrants and immigrants
• How cities grew
• Expansion of borders
• Natural increase of native pop.
• Migration
• Major waves of migration and immigration
• Rural to urban migration
• Black migration (small in comparison to what will come later)
• Immigration as part of world trend
• The new immigration
• Where from
• Numbers
• Where they went
• American reactions to immigrants
• Immigrant cultures
• Attempts to transplant communities from Old World
• Modification of old attitudes and customs
• Younger generations adapt
• Clash between old and young generations
• Influence on religion
• Predominance of Protestant religions before newcomers
• Influx of Catholics and Jews
• Attempts to convert newcomers
• Black migration to the cities
• Movement begins during 1880s
• Flood of migration during World War I era
• Living and working conditions found in the cities
• Living conditions in the inner city
• Housing problems
• Description of tenements
• Life in the tenements
• Housing reform
• City based safety codes
• Scientific improvements
• Jacob Riis and his photography -- show some photos
• Urban poverty
• Seasonal nature of employment during the period
• Determining which poor to help
• Beginnings of the belief that environment may have something to do with poverty
• Crime and violence
• Growth of violence
• Who caused the violence?
• Image of America as a violent society
• Role of the police
• Enforcing the law -- selectively
• Corruption
• Weakness of reform efforts
• Promises of mobility
• Occupational mobility
• Opportunities from industrial expansion
• Horatio Alger stories -- Andrew Carnegie
• Rates of upward mobility -- differences between communities
• Acquisition of property
• Residential mobility
• People most likely to move
• Rates of success in upward mobility
• Ethnic neighborhoods and ghettos
• Impact of migration on neighborhoods
• Definition of ghetto (also barrio)
• Effects of life in the ghetto
• Chances for upward mobility
• The rise of urban boss politics
• Political machines
• Arise out of chaos of the cities
• Evolution of the political bosses
• How machine system worked
• Techniques of bossism
• Different styles
• Use of patronage
• Knowledge of constituents needs and wants
• Problems of boss system
• Civic reform
• Structural reforms in government
• City manager system of government
• Battles with the political machine
• Social reform
• Housing reforms
• Educational reforms
• Settlement house movement -- Jane Addams and Hull House
• Beautification campaigns
• Fredrick Law Olmsted and parks
• City Beautiful movement
• Failures
• Engineering reforms
• Basic utilities -- sanitation (sewage and garbage), water, and electricity
• role of engineers as new urban professionals
• The legacy of urbanism
• Cultural pluralism
• Cultural-political alignments

• Overview
• American lifestyles at beginning of period
• Movement outside the home
• Standards of living
• Rising personal income -- increases for all classes
• Cost of living
• Rose faster than incomes
• How families coped (or failed to cope)
• Sending new family members into workforce (women and children)
• Supplements to family income
• Taking in boarders
• Second jobs
• Higher life expectancy -- advances in medical care
• The quest for convenience -- Mechanization takes command
• Processed and preserved foods
• Tin cans
• Refrigeration
• Shipping and marketing systems
• Ready-made clothing
• Rise of garment industry
• Concern with style becomes prevalent
• Department and chain stores
• Rise of department in the cities
• The growth of chain stores -- A & P
• Family life
• Family and household structures
• Household vs. Family
• Nuclear vs. Extended
• Causes for changes in family patterns
• Declining birthrates
• Acceleration of decline
• Reasons for decline
• Impact on families
• Boarding
• Primarily urban phenomenon
• Advantages and disadvantages to family and boarder
• Importance of kinship
• Reliance on kin
• Frictions caused by kinship obligations
• Stages of life
• Impact of demographic and social changes
• Rise of schools and importance of education in family life
• The new leisure and mass culture
• Increase in leisure time
• Reduction of work weeks
• Impact of mechanization
• Amusements as organized activity
• Baseball
• Growth of baseball
• Socializing impact of baseball (observance of rules, social interaction, competition)
• Croquet, cycling, and football
• Circuses
• Theatre
• Popular drama and musical comedy
• Vaudeville
• Blacks and immigrants in vaudeville
• Movies
• Edison and moving pictures
• D.W. Griffith and Birth of a Nation
• Homogenizing influence of popular entertainments
• The transformation of mass communications
• Advertising
• Purpose is to create demand for a product
• Legal protection of advertising
• Methods and vehicles for advertising
• Yellow journalism
• Pulitzer and the World, Hearst and the Journal
• Methods -- Muckraking, sensationalism, tear-jerkers
• Other forms of journalism
• Popular literature
• Dime novels
• Edgar Rice Burroughs--Tarzan and John Carter series
• Wild West -- Zane Grey
• Detective thrillers
• Magazine serials
• Moral messages of popular fiction
• Horatio Alger stories
• Hard work, refinement, valor
• Louisa May Alcott and women writers
• The romance of Lew Wallace's Ben Hur
• Local colorists
• Joel Chandler Harris -- southern apologist
• Bret Harte and the west
• George Washington Cable and New Orleans
• Mary Murfree and Appalachia
• Literary classics
• Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Tom Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi, and Huckleberry Finn
• Henry James
• Stephen Crane and Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
• Kate Chopin and Sister Carrie and The Awakening
• Shift from escapism to social commentaries