Chapter 25 Quiz Flashcards
What shall we do with our great cities? What will our great cities do with us . . . ? [T]he question . . . does not concern the city alone. The whole country is affected . . . by the condition of it’s great cities.
Lyman Abbott
How was the growth in America and other places?
Population and the economy exploded
How did American communute from the late 1860s to the early 1900s?
In rapid transit, electric trolleys, subways, and walking
Where did people get lured in industrial jobs?
In factory centers
Which main group was attracted to the urban lifestyle and why?
Young adults b/c they wanted to be independent
What items made the urban life more enticing?
Electricity, indoor plumbing, and telephones
What stores attracted urban middle class shoppers?
Macy’s and Marshall Field’s
Macy’s and Marshall Field’s provide jobs for who?
Woman
Which two main concepts did Urbanism cause?
Consumerism and widen class divisions
What novelist wrote about escaping the rural life to Chicago?
Theodore Dresier
How did the city change rural life?
Country dwellers produced little household waste, domestic animals ate food scraps, clothes were now mended
What is a mail order house?
items given through mail
What mail order houses displaced the rural “general store”?
Sears and Montgomery Ward
What was a big issue in the new urban life?
Waste disposal
What were some downsides to urban life?
Criminals flourished, sanitary facilities couldn’t keep up, impure water, uncollected garbage, & unwashed bodies
What were the good and bad sides of the city?
Merchant princes/miserable paupers, banks/factories, green grassed suburbs/treeless ghettos, skyscrapers/tenements
What did these dumbbell tenements look like?
Several families lived in one floor and shared a bathroom in the hall
What are flophouses?
Where half starved and unemployed would sleep for a few cents on mattresses
What happened in downtown Chicago in 1871?
Two-thirds burned and left thousands of people homeless and destroyed thousands of buildings
Where did the wealthy begin to go to after fleeing the cities?
The suburbs
Which countries did immigrants come from?
British isles, western Europe such as Germany & Ireland (Chinese too)
How did old European immigrants adjust well to American life?
Supportive ethnic organizations, farm communities & urban craft unions
Where were the new immigrants from in 1880s?
They came from southern & eastern europe such as Italians, Jews, Croats, Slovaks, Greeks, and Poles
What kind of countries did these new immigrants come from?
They came from little history of democratic government, people would obey out of fear do to tyranny, & with few opportunities
Where did most Europeans go to?
More than half of them went to the U.S while others went to South America, Canada, Africa & Australia
How was the U.S painted as a fabulous opportunity in the “America letters”?
Better food, free from military compulsory, & no religious persecution
Who were the majority of immigrants and did they become Americans?
Single men that would stay several months to years & then returned with their money back home
How did immigrants try to preserve their culture?
Catholics expanded their small-minded school systems, Jews established Hebrew schools, foreign newspapers appeared, Yiddish theaters, kosher-food stores, Polish parishes, Greek restaurants, & Italian clubs
How did the children of immigrants do?
They grew up speaking English, mocked their parents broken grammar, rejected the Old Country manners to become mainstream in American life
How did the federal government react towards the overflow of immigrants?
They didn’t weed out criminals nor the insane and didn’t help ease assimilation into American society
Where did the needs of immigrants fall towards to?
Unofficial “governments” of the urban political machines led by bosses like New York’s Boss Tweed
How was taking “care” of immigrants big business?
Jobs were given in exchange for votes
How would the boss return the support received from immigrants?
They would provide jobs, housing, food, clothing
What did the boss help build in immigrant neighborhood?
Schools, parks, and hospitals
What did protestant clergymen sought?
To apply lessons of Christianity to the slums and factories
What did social gospelers predict would be the logical outcome of Christianity?
Socialism
Who was Jane Addams?
The first generation of college-educated women & established the Hull House the most prominent American settlement house (won nobel peace prize)
How did the Hull house help immigrants?
Offered instruction in English, cope with American big-city life, child-care services for working mothers, and cultural activities
What did settlement houses become?
Women’s activism & social reform
What did women successfully lobby in?
An Illinois anti-sweatshop law that protects women workers & prohibits child labor
Who was Florence Kelley?
Led the case for the Illinois law and advocated for welfare of women, children, blacks and consumers
Why did new immigrants come to America?
Escape poverty and seek new opportunities
What were nativists worried about?
That America was becoming not a melting pot but a dumping ground
Why did the nativists think it was becoming dumping ground?
They saw the Europeans as exotic, the high birthrate and low standard living
What did native-born Americans blame for immigrants?
Degradation of the government
