Chapter 15: Immigrants and Urbanizations

Section 1: The New Immigrants

THROUGH THE GOLDEN DOOR
-Birds of passage- immigrate to make money and return home. Others wanted to escape famine, land
shortages, religious or political persecution.
-1890s, Southern and eastern Europeans start to immigrate
-Jews immigrate to escape religious persecution –People left to find jobs (population in Europe was
increasing) –Some wanted free independent lives (politics)
-Chinese people immigrated to the West to claim the gold rush, helped build the railroad,-immigration
was limited by congressional act in 1882
-Japanese also allowed Hawaiian planters to recruit Jap workers and by 1920, 200000Japs lived in the
West
-West Indies immigrate because jobs were scarce and industrial boom was promising as well as Mexico
Life in the New Land
-Immigrants traveled by steamship (bad living conditions and small enclosed spaces on the steerage)
-had to pass immigration stations (Castle garden->Ellis Island)
-physical examination by a doctor, government inspector who checked documents and questioned
immigrants,
-West coast immigration center (Angel Island in SF)-immigrants endured harsh questioning and long
detention in filthy buildings to find out their results of immigration.
-Cultures stayed with their own cultures- Native born people disliked the immigrants’ customs and
languages and thought them as a threat to American life
Immigrant Restrictions
-Melting pot-mixture of people of different cultures and races who blended together by abandoning
their native languages and customs
-Most immigrants did not wish to give up their customs
-Nativism-favoritism towards native born Americans
Ex. Anti catholic and Jewish sentiment prohibited them from getting into businesses and social clubs
-Immigration Restriction League-(Congress passed a bill in 1897 requiring a literacy test for immigrants)
-natives feared that Chinese would take their workforce in the west <ie> Depression of 1873 caused anti
Chinese sentiment in Cali. Work and labor were scarce and natives wanted to restrict Asian immigration
-1882, Congress passes Chinese Exclusion Act which banned entry to all Chinese except students,
teachers, merchants, tourists and govt officials
-Gentlemen’s Agreement- Japan would limit emigration of unskilled workers in return for repeal of the
San Francisco segregation order

Section 2: Challenges of Urbanization

Urban Opportunities
-NE and MW cities rapidly grow
-most immigrants were city dwellers because cities were most convenient and cheapest
-Cities offered unskilled laborers jobs in mills and factories
-Americanization movement-designed to assimilate people of wide ranging cultures into the dominant
culture-sponsored by the government and citizens
-Schools formed to provide education to immigrants needed for citizenship (Literacy and history)
-New farming technology meant that less laborers were needed to work. (This caused many rural people
to move to cities to find work)-mostly African Americans
Urban Problems
-At first there was the house on the outskirts of town or cramped rooms in a boardinghouse
-Immigrants took over the old housing, tenements, which were very unsanitary and overcrowded
-Mass transit transportation systems designed to move large numbers of people along fixed routes,
enabled workers to go to and from jobs-street cars/electric subways
-Safe drinking water was rare. Seldom had indoor plumbing and caused cholera and typhoid fever
(filtration and chlorination was introduced but problem was too big)
-Sewage piled up in the streets and cleaners did not do their jobs properly
-Pickpocket and thieves flourished (police force was too small to impact)
-limited water supply and a voluntary fireforce were reasons for the constant fires in cities
Reformers Mobilize
-Social welfare reformers targeted their efforts at relieving urban poverty
-Social Gospel movement preached salvation through service to the poor
-reformers established settlement houses-community centers in slum neighborhoods that assisted the
immigrants in that area-run largely by educated women
-founded by Stanton Coit and Charles Stover
-Jane Addams helped cultivate social responsibility toward the urban poor(founded Chicago Hull House)

SECTION 3: Politics in the Gilded Age

Emergence of Political Machines
-Political machine- organized group that controlled the activities of a political party in a city and offered
services to voters and businesses in exchange for political or financial support
-bottom: local workers and captains who gained votes and reported to the ward boss
-ward boss worked to secure the vote in all the precincts in the ward or electoral district
-Top: city boss-who controlled the activities of the political party throughout the city
-precinct captains, ward and city boss worked to elect their candidates
-Boss controlled access to municipal jobs and businesses. They provided govt support for businesses and
solved urban problems and won additional political support to extend their political influence.
-Most political bosses were 1st or 2nd generation immigrants. Political machines helped immigrants with
naturalization, housing, jobs and in return they provided the votes
Municipal Graft and Scandal
-Political machines not getting enough votes turned to fraud
-Graft (illegal use of political influence for personal gain), illegal payments for personal benefits,
accepted bribes to allow illegal activities such as gambling
-William Tweed (Boss Tweed) of Tammany hall, NY’s powerful Democratic political machine, led the
Tweed Ring, a group of corrupt politicians in defrauding the city (scammed the people)
Civil Service Replaces Patronage
-Patronage-giving of government jobs to people who had helped a candidate get elected (spoils system)
-reformers believed that civil service(government administration) should go to the most qualified
persons
-Rutherford B. Hayes-Named independents to his cabinet and set up a commission to fire corrupt
political leaders. He fired 2 Republican leaders in NYC and angered the Stalwarts
-Stalwarts and reformers decided on an independent James A Garfield in the 1880 convention. Stalwarts
nominated VP Chester A. Arthur, one of Conkling’s supporters to even out the balance.
-Garfield gave reformers most of his patronage jobs once he was elected. He was shot and gave position
to Arthur, who turned reformer when he took office.
-Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883- authorized a bipartisan civil service commission to make
appointments to federal jobs through a merit system based on candidates’ performance on an exam.
Business Buys Influence
-politicians turned to wealthy business owners which strengthened govt and business
-business wanted higher tariffs to protect industries from foreign competition, but Democratic party
feared increased prices
-Dem. Grover Cleveland tried to lower tariff rates. He ran again in 1888 against Benjamin Harrison, who
was backed by big businesses. Harrison won electoral votes.
-passed the McKinley Tariff Act of 1890. Cleveland won another time and Congress passed Wilson
Gorman Tariff (Cleveland did not support because it provided a federal income tax)
-McKinley was inaugurated and increased tariffs\

CHAPTER 16
Section 1: Science and Urban Life
Technology and City Life
-Invention of elevators and internal steel skeletons to bear the weight of building = skyscrapers
-Louis Sullivan-Wainwright Building and Daniel Burnham-Flatiron Building
-electric streetcars (trolley cars), electrical subways
-Urban planning- to restore a measure of serenity ot the environment by designing recreational areas
(Frederick Law Olmsted founder)
-City Planning- ex. Chicago, Burnham provided an overall plan for the city
New Technologies
-Demand for books as literacy rate rises to 90%
-At first wood pulp was cheap paper source for mills and electrically powered web perfecting press that
printed on both sides
-Orville and Wilbur Wright at first built a glider and then commissioned a four cylinder internal
combustion engine, chose a propeller and designed a biplane (Dec 17 1903, Kitty Hawk NC)
-US Government establishes the first transcontinental airmail service in 1920.
-George Eastman developed a film, coated with gelatin emulsions and could send their film to a studio
for processing (Kodak camera)
Section 2: Expanding Public Education
-states passed laws that required students 8-14 to attend 12 to 16 weeks annually
-White children attended school more than African Americans
-high schools had vocational courses that prepared both men and women for the future work.
-Africans excluded from public secondary education, most attended non government funded private
schools
-Immigrants were encouraged to go to school to attain their citizenship
-From 1880 to 1920 college attendance quadrupled and colleges started to change their curricula.
-Africans, with the help of Freedmen’s Bureau founded Howard, Atlanta, Fisk. Private donors could not
financially support a number of black college graduates
-Booker T. Washington- Racism would end once blacks acquired useful labor skills and proved their
economic value to society
-headed the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute which aimed to equip Africans with teaching
diplomas and useful skills in agr, dom, or mechanical work.
-WEB du Bois- 1st African American to receive Dr. from Harvard, founded Niagara movement, which
insisted that blacks should seek a liberal arts education so that the African American community would
have well educated leaders.

Section 3: Segregation and Discrimination

African Americans fight Legal Discrimination
South devised a broad system of legal policies of racial discrimination and devised methods to weaken
African-American political power
-Voting restrictions denied legal equality to African Americans
-Poll tax-annual tax that had to be paid before qualifying to vote (Blacks and sharecroppers were to
poor)
-Grandfather clause-to help the whites who were poor and did not know how to read (stated that even
if a man failed the literacy test or could not afford the poll tax, he was still entitled to vote if his father or
his grandfather voted before January 1 1867.
-Supreme Court failed to overturn the poll tax and at the same time, southern states passed segregation
laws known as Jim crow laws to separate the blacks and whites in public and private facilities.
-1896, Plessy vs. Ferguson, Supreme court ruled that separation of races in public accommodations was
legal and did not violate the 14th Amendment. Established doctrine “separate but equal”

Turn of the Century Race Relations

-Africans faced racial etiquette that regulated relationships between whites and blacks
-Booker Washington thought that improving economic skills of Africans would gain them equality
-Africans who did not follow etiquette faced lynching.
-Africans moved to the North thinking that there was less discrimination but there were segregated
neighborhoods, discrimination in the workplace, difficulty finding jobs.
Discrimination in the West
-Mexicans had the most railroad jobs out of any other ethinicity
-vital to the development of mining and agriculture for irrigation projects
-many Mexicans were forced into debt peonage, a system that bound laborers into slavery in order to
work off a debt to the employer.
-Chinese were also segregated because white people feared job competition

SECTION 4: Dawn of Mass Culture

The Dawn of Mass Culture
-amusement parks, bicycling, theater, spectator sports, tennis
-people who did not participate watched especially boxing and baseball
Spread of Mass Culture
-motion pictures, mass production printing techniques, mass entertainment, art galleries, libraries,
books, museums, magazines, newspapers
-Joseph Pulitzer vs. William Randolph Hearst for popularity of their own newspapers
-Ashcan school of American art painted urban life and working people with realism
-fiction grew as literacy rate rose (Mark Twain)
-20th century-witnessed the beginnings of shopping center, development of department and chain stores
and advertising
-US boosted mail order businesses, and in 1896, the post Office introduced a rural free delivery that
brought packages directly to every home.