The City and Its Workers

Chapter 19 The city and its workers (1870-1900) Jump Start: March 14, 2011 As the 19th century closes and the 20th century begins, different technologies help spur the many changes taking place. What symbolism can we take from the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge? It is a marker of time periods (separates this time period from that time period) March 16,2011

Why did some immigrant groups decide to stay in the United States after arriving, while other groups only stayed long enough to make some money? March 17, 2011 What were Jim Crow Laws? Give an example of how they were applied. March 18, 2011 Who was Jacob Riis? What did he produce? Why was it important? March 21,2011 Explain the new emerging class systems, which were based upon occupation. White collar blue collar- largely unskilled( jobs require more physical than intellectual) United states emerged as a major industrial power by the end of the 19th century * Large scale immigration, urbanization, and technological innovation help out great promise for future, even as these dramatic changes led to social dislocation, urban squalor, labor strife, and death. * Constructed between 1869-1883, the Brooklyn bridge stood as a testament to the wonders and horrors of America at the close of the nineteenth and opening of the twentieth century * Its construction cost the lives of wenty men and it was considered both a work of art and an engineering marvel upon completion The rise of the city * By the end of the nineteenth century, the emergence of the modern city represented the most dramatic demographic development in the united states * From New york to Chicago to Los Angeles, cities exploded in size, fed in part by the rapid pace of global migrations, especially from southern and eastern Europe * BEFORE 1880 immigrants came from the northern and western Europe * AFTER 1880 immigrants came from southern and eastern Europe.

Racism and the cry for Immigration Restriction * Workers often found themselves pitted against one another, with ethnic rivalry dividing the skilled northern European workers and the unskilled southern and eastern European workers. * Even among educated people of the nineteenth century, the ethnic and religious differences of immigrants were perceived as racial characteristics. * The idea of social Darwinism further supported “white” society’s claim to racial superiority. African Americans in the North African Americans began their migration north in search of equality * In an effort to leave behind the segregation and Jim Crow Laws of the south, they found jobs on the bottoms rung of the occupational ladder. Asian Americans * Asians= scapegoats of the changing economy A new king of racism * Many Americans saw newcomers as impossible to assimilate * Trade Unions and old-stock aristocrats criticized America’s Immigration policies * A literacy test for new European immigrants passed through Congress but was vetoed by President Grover Cleveland.

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Jacob Riis * His How the Other Half Lives (1890) graphically showed the poverty of the ghettos * The nouveaux riches (new rich) provided the grandeur and splendor of the age with their magnificent mansions and ostentatious costume parties. * With 1% of the populations owning more than half of the property in America. Plessy v. Fergoson -Separate but equal is ok Brown v. Board of education Topeka, Kansas * Separate but equal is unconstitutional With industrialization and urbanization came both great poverty and great wealth within the cities. * In the outer circles of the cites, people had more money, lived in single family homes, and commuted to work on streetcars. What types of workers were there? * Workers in American industry in the late nineteenth century worked in a variety of settings , ranging from: * Skilled occupations in factories * Piecework that was contracted within the home * construction White-collar office work. * Backbone of the American labor force were the common laborers. * These “human machines” stood at the bottom of the country’s economic ladder and generally am recent groups * At the opposite end of the labor spectrum were skilled craftsmen * Employers attempted to end the control that skilled works had ove their. work by bearjng slmalled oarts andtrokcadin the skiled workers with the unskilled * Women typically earned less money than their male counterparts, many oung worjubg men sought hear in dance halls, social clubs, and amusement park after exhausting. America’s diverse workers * Although such efficiencies meant that a greater variety of goods at lower * Boys who lived in the cites some as young as 6 years old, plied their trades as bootblacks and newsboys; Many of the boys were homeless, orphaned or cast off by their families The family economy : women and children * In new york city, the children’s aid societiey tried to better the situation of these, the city’s youngest works=er

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