Chapter 20: The Rise of an Urban Order

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CH 20 STUDY GUIDE THE RISE OF AN URBAN ORDER

PEOPLE, PLACES & EVENTS

1. George Washington Plunkitt’s “day of helping”

2. Demographic trends in the late nineteenth century

3. American society & early twentieth century

4. Late nineteenth and early twentieth century immigrants

5. Immigrants before 1880s

6. Late nineteenth century American cities

7. The middle-class family in “Victorian” America

8. American cities in the late 1800s

9. Cities & transportation

10. The dumbbell tenement

11. The urban political machines

12. The political bosses

13. The urban political machine’s management

14. Urban bosses: pro & con

15. Political machines & the city

16. Organized religion & the plight of the urban poor

17. Settlement houses

18. “settlement houses” & immigrants

19. Class identity in the large, impersonal cities of late nineteenth-century America

20. Pattern of immigrant life

21. Urban middle-class home and family

22. The urban household & brandname prepared foods

23. Victorian crusaders against intemperance and vice

24. Frances Willard

25. Trends in education in the late nineteenth century

26. “normal schools” & practical and professional training

27. Consumer goods outlets

28. Victorian era “mixed activity” (enjoyed together by men and women)?

29. The Cincinnati Red Stockings

30. Leisure time & city dwellers or small-town folk

COMPLETION

  1. The city that became the gateway to the West and dominant hub for the nation’s whole midsection, and also became an agent for ecological change, was [ ].
  2. Particular source regions of immigrants dominated at particular times over the course of the successive waves of immigration to the United States; from the 1880s to 1915 most immigrants came from [ ].
  3. Always at the center of immigrant life in their neighborhoods within the American city were [ ].
  4. [ ] was an innovative urban housing design, at first hailed as a helpful innovation, that turned out to be a dangerous blight on the cityscape.
  5. In an age of fragmented and decentralized municipal government, [ ] provided the centralization and services that people needed.
  6. The most notorious of the corrupt city politicians and thanks to Thomas Nast’s cartoons, the ultimate symbol for graft and waste in municipal government was New York’s Boss [ ].
  7. One religious response to the city was to take the message of the Christian gospel to the poorest people there; the most prominent leader of these urban revivals was [ ].
  8. Certain religious thinkers like Washington Gladden sought to refocus the Christian gospel message toward attacking the flaws and injustices in society rather than just trying to convert individuals; this movement became known as [ ].
  9. Late nineteenth-century patterns of American middle-class taste and morality were labeled—somewhat oddly—with the adjective [ ], after an English code of behavior based on disciplined moralism.
  10. Readymade consumer products for the urban middle class were available at the new [ ], palaces of consumption conveniently located on streetcar lines for the lady who wanted to “go downtown” in an afternoon.
  11. Leading an emerging consumer culture were marketing pioneers like [ ], who sold by catalog through the mail.
  12. While [ ] had been the exclusive leisure-time activity for rich people before the Victorian era, by the late nineteenth century, middle-class Americans were also engaging in it.
  13. [ ] was the name given to a new form of middle-class mass theatrical entertainment that featured a series of stage acts—moderate and moral so as to reinforce genteel values.

IDENTIFICATION

Students should be able to describe the following key terms, concepts, individuals, and places, and explain their significance:

Terms and Concepts

ward Boss / Tammany Hall
“boodle” / urbanization
steerage / immigration
“birds of passage” / The Rise of David Levinsky
urban ghettos / ethnic communities
“walking” cities / tenements
zones of emergence / suspension bridge
skyscrapers / How the Other Half Lives
boss rule / settlement houses
Victorian / Women’s Christian Temperance Union
the Comstock law / McGuffey’s Reader
Plessy v. Ferguson / corset

Individuals and Places

Ellis Island / George Washington Plunkitt
Louis H. Sullivan / Elisha Graves Otis
William Tweed / Jane Addams
Victoria Woodhull / Susan B. Anthony

Critical Thinking

EVALUATING EVIDENCE (MAPS)

  1. On the map of New Orleans (page 648), does the city seem to have expanded more between 1841 and 1878, or between 1878 and 1900? How did the trolley system allow the city to grow and still remain integrated?
  2. Why do you think New Orleans did not expand more in a northwesterly direction from the Vieux Carré?
  3. What is the “Upper Protection Levee?” Why do you think a trolley line runs toward it by 1900, even though the area is marked as undeveloped?

EVALUATING EVIDENCE (ILLUSTRATIONS AND CHARTS)

  1. The chart on page 645 illustrates the sources of immigration. Where are immigrants coming from? How does this trend differ from earlier sources?
  2. What features of urban life are depicted in George Bellows’ Cliff Dwellers (page 643)?What kind of neighborhood is it? How can you tell?
  3. Billy Sunday began his urban religious revivals in the 1890s, though the George Bellows painting (page 653) was done later. Which figure is Billy Sunday? How are people reacting to him? What does the painting suggest about the role of religion in people’s lives?

CRITICAL ANALYSIS

Students have been asked to read carefully the following excerpt from the text and then answer the questions that follow.

As the nineteenth century drew to a close the city was reshaping the country, just as the industrial system was creating a more specialized, diversified, and interlocking national and even international economy. Most Americans were ambivalent about this process. The old Jeffersonian bias against cities warred with the gospel of material progress and wealth that cities so dramatically embodied. Cities beckoned migrants and immigrants with unparalleled opportunities for work and pleasure. The playwright Israel Zangwill celebrated the city’s transforming power in his 1908 Broadway hit, The Melting Pot. “The real American,” one of his characters explained, “is only in the Crucible, I tell you—he will be the fusion of all the races, the coming superman. “

Where Zangwill saw a melting pot with all its promise for a new super race, champions of traditional American values like the widely read Protestant minister Josiah Strong saw “a commingled mass of venomous filth and seething sin, of lust, of drunkenness, of pauperism, and crime of every sort. “ Both the champions and critics of the late nineteenth century had a point. Corruption, crudeness, and disorder were no more or less a part of the cities than the vibrancy, energy, and opportunities that drew people to them. The gap between rich and poor yawned most widely in cities. As social critic Henry George observed, progress and poverty seemed to go hand in hand.

In the end, moral judgments, whether pro or con, missed the point. Cities stood at the nexus of the new industrial order. All Americans, whatever they thought about the new urban world, had to search for ways to make that world work.

PRIMARY SOURCE: An AntiChinese Riot in Los Angeles[*]

In October 1871, Los Angeles exploded in an antiChinese riot. A dispute among rival Chinese clans over the ownership of a Chinese woman led to the death of one white citizen, and the wounding of two others, a young Hispanic, and a police officer. Marauding gangs of vigilantes entered “Chinatown” seeking revenge; 23 Chinese died.

By this time, Chinatown, wholly surrounded, was in a state of siege. Mounted men came galloping from the country—the vacquero was in his glory, and the cry was: “Carajo la Chino!”

Among the Spaniards whose boldness and vigor attracted attention that night was Vasquez, afterward famous as a bandit, and Jesus Martinez, his chum and relative. Chief among the Americans, plying a Henry rifle until excessive labor clogged its mechanism, the writer observed a certain high official; and in the van of the fight, one of the city fathers—a member of the City Council and a Wells Fargo official—valiantly struck out from the shoulder. A young Israelite, heavyframed and coarsefeatured, and a German known as “Dutch Charley” were prominently active and cruel. “Crazy Johnson” seemed to represent all Ireland; while Jacques, a Frenchman, shirtless and hatless, and armed with a cleaver, reveled in the memory of Pont Neuf and the Sans Culottes. Jacques was the firefiend of the occasion—time and again Chinatown was ablaze—and Jacques with his cleaver was always found pictured in the glare....

The condition of the Chinese had now become wretched indeed. The “Quarters,” it will be remembered, were an old Spanish hacienda one story high, with an open courtyard in the center. Martinez and his companions, armed with axes as well as firearms, cut holes in the asphalt roof, through which the cowering creatures below were shot in their hiding places or hunted from room to room out into the open courtyard, where death from the bullets of the roof was certain. Within or without, death was inevitable. The alternative was terrible. As each separate wretch, goaded from his covert, sought in his despair the open space, a volley from the roof brought him down; a chorus of yells telegraphed that fact to the surrounding mob, and the yells were answered by a hoarse roar of savage satisfaction....

Close behind the boy [who had just been hung by the mob] followed the Chinese doctor; a man of extreme age, well known, and reputedly wealthy. The doctor begged piteously for his life, pleading in English and Spanish; but he might as well have pleaded with wolves. At last he attempted to bribe those who were hurrying him to his death. He offered $1,000 $2,000$3,000, $5,000$10,000$15,000! But to no purpose. He was hanged, and his $15,000 spirited away nonetheless. At his death the old man wore a valuable diamond ring upon his left index finger, but when his corpse was cut down it was found that the left index finger had been wrenched from its socket, and the finger and ring were gone.

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[*]From P.S. Downew, “A Prophecy Partly Verified,” Overland Monthly (1886).