City life -- the good, the bad, and the ugly

America is going through major changes in the late 19th century. We've talked last week about the age of new inventions, factory production, and the rise of corporations, and this week we'll see some of the ways these played out in people's lives and in politics.

More and more people are crowding into the cities. It would not be until the 1920 census that more Americans would be living in urban areas than on farms; but the cities were growing fast. Some farmers were giving up. African Americans were leaving the South for job opportunities in cities in the North. And a new wave of immigration from the southern and eastern parts of Europe was arriving through Ellis Island.

The cities were not prepared for this rapid growth. Infrastructure had to be scaled up. Problems of overcrowding, sanitation, and spread of infectious disease overwhelmed local governments. American governments had never really been in the business of regulating living or working conditions, or of providing social services. And there continued to be strong resistance to those ideas, so the poor were left with dangerously crowded housing and jobs that could kill them. Instead of city governments stepping up, in some places it was a political party's "machine" that bought votes by providing services. Municipal governments were famously corrupt.

Technological advancement (steel-frame construction and the invention of the electric safety elevator) meant cities would be growing vertically as well as horizontally. But the electric streetcar made it easier for people of means to live in pleasant new suburbs and commute to work in the increasingly unpleasant cities -- separating the haves from the have-nots. The impact of that geographical sorting continues today.

In some cases, private citizens took it on themselves to improve the lives of immigrant and poor residents -- especially important was the settlement-house movement spearheaded by young women with college educations.

At the national level, politics was a rough-and-tumble contact sport. The Republican and Democratic Parties weren't far apart on most issues, or so it seemed to the public. And yet partisanship was extreme and voting participation rates were high. One of the big issues of the time was the patronage system -- something that goes back to the Andrew Jackson era of the 1820s and 1830s. When the presidency changed hands from one party to the other, all the jobs in the federal government were up for grabs. "To the victor belong the spoils," as the old saying went, so this is often referred to as the spoils system. This created all kinds of opportunities for corruption, so factions in both parties pushed for some kind of reform in federal hiring. But it didn't happen until President James Garfield was murdered by a "disgruntled office seeker." In the aftermath, the Civil Service system was created. Most federal jobs are filled by a non-partisan hiring system; and only the top jobs are political appointments. (The current president complains that that creates a "deep state" that he can't control -- but that's the whole point.)

Economic issues were, as always, another major political factor. The corporate revolution was creating a widening income gap between the very few and the vast majority. No one was feeling more exploited than the farmers, who started organizing for self-help and then turned to political organizing -- creating the Populist Party, with a fairly radical agenda that included such things as nationalizing the railroads and expanding the money supply by monetizing silver.

My slides are a big ragged this time (especially Chapter 19) -- apologies, but lots of things have happened this week.

Chapter 19 slides - Urbanization and the new immigration.pdf

Chapter 20 slides - politics in the Gilded Age.pdf

MEDIA

Ellis Island

This half-hour video was produced by the National Park Service for visitors to the national monument where millions of European immigrants arrived in America. It makes really good use of the visual primary sources, and first-hand memories of immigrants.

Island of Hope, Island of Tears (DVD Print)

THE MURDER OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD

This hour-long documentary about the Garfield assassination covers a lot of other territory in the politics and culture of the time. (And the awful state of medical knowledge.)

Charles Guiteau Murdered President Garfield