18: Life in Industrial America

President William McKinley (1897-1901)

Music from 1890 to 1899

I. Introduction

• Chicago was a great example of American Industrialization.

• In 1850, Chicago had 30,000 people. In 1870, it had 300,000.

• The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 destroyed 3.5 square miles of Chicago. It is considered to be the worst fire in American history.

• Chicago recovered from the fire. In 1900, it had 1,700,000 people.

• Most of America’s population were immigrants. In 1900, nearly 80% of Chicago’s population were foreign born or children of foreign born immigrants.

The Great Chicago Fire

II. Industrialization & Technological Innovation

• Lincoln’s Republican Party gave vast amounts of money to create the railroads after the Civil War.

• Railroads moved the U.S. toward industrialization.

• Railroads created time zones across the U.S.

• Railroad companies were the nation’s largest businesses.

Railroads in 1870 and 1890

Railroads in 1918

Big Business in Chicago

• Companies grew, and owners hired managers to handle operations.

• Chicago seemed to tie it all together: Ranchers drove cattle from Texas to railroads in Kansas. From Kansas, they took a train to Chicago, where they were butchered. From there, they were put back on trains and sent all over the country as meat.

• Chicago was a “Gateway City” to all the other cities in the world.

The Wizard of Menlo Park

• In 1878, Edison announced he would begin research on electric power and lighting.

• He called Menlo Park an “invention factory” that released a new invention every 10 days, and something big about every 6 months.

• By 1879, he exhibited his power and electrical light system for reporters and investors.

• In 1883, he had overseen the construction of 330 power plants.

• Electricity started what is called the “Second Industrial Revolution.”

• Factories could now work all night. Rail cars let cities build outward. Elevators allowed cities to build upward.

Thomas Edison

III. Immigration and Urbanization

• In the 1920s, for the first time, most people lived in urban (city) areas.

• From 1870 to 1920, 25,000,000 immigrants moved to the U.S.

• Immigrants left for different push and pull factors. Push factors are reasons to leave a country. Pull factors are reasons to go to another country.

• Most immigrants moved to the U.S. for work. Then, they wrote home and invited their friends and family to come to the U.S. This is called chain migration.

Push and Pull Factors

The Rise of Suburbia

• City life became dirty are poor areas appeared.

• Farming began to be considered “backward” and not as prestigious as it had been before.

• Many people wanted something between farming life and city life.

• Suburban areas began to appear: houses with small lawn areas, but outside of the populated city.

• In many areas, these places were zoned only for residents: no agriculture and no industry.

IV. The New South and the Problem of Race

• The South tried to reshape itself much like the North.

• Black people were free, so the class system changed. White people attacked.

• The Ku Klux Klan was/is a terrorist organization that opposes black people.

• “Jim Crow” laws were created to segregate black people from white.

• Lynchings, or public hangings, began to occur across the south. They became a public spectacle.

The Lynching of Laura and Lawrence Nelson

Southern Discrimination

• Ida B. Wells worked to outlaw lynching– she lost three friends to a lynch mob.

• Public life became segregated. Blacks and whites were separated in every part of life.

• Laws were created to prevent relationships between black and white people.

• In voting, blacks were highly discriminated against. Literacy tests and poll taxes were made to prevent them from voting.

Ida B. Wells

Lynching

Lynching

The Lost Cause

• The Lost Cause was a false idea about how the South “used to be.”

• It was an imagined past inhabited by contented and loyal slaves, benevolent and generous masters, chivalric and honorable men, and pure and faithful southern belles.

• Confederate monuments were erected, and Confederate holidays were celebrated.

• The film Birth of a Nation rejuvenated the Ku Klux Klan.

The Ku Klux Klan and Rise of a Nation

The "New South"

• The South began repairing and building railroads, as well as new paved roads. The idea was that transportation would help the economy of the South.

• The South also promoted industrial growth. The mainstay was cotton, but textiles, tobacco, furniture, and steel helped the economy.

• However, new jobs were racially segregated. 3D jobs (dirty, dangerous, and demeaning) were given to black people.

• African American women often could only get jobs as domestic help for white families.

• The “New South” was segregated and poor. It was not actually new.

V. Gender, Religion, and Culture

• Churches began to argue about whether it was allowed to take donations from the “robber barons.”

• Economic and Social Changes began to reform traditional gender roles, leading to women’s suffrage (the right to vote).

• Women’s fashion changed– corsets relaxed and hemlines rose.

• The Temperance Movement (against alcohol) gained traction as well.

• Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” attacked the “naturalness” of feminine domesticity and critiqued Victorian psychological remedies administered to women, such as the “rest cure.”

Women's Fashion around 1910

Summary of The Yellow Wallpaper

The Rise of Entertainment

• Vaudeville acts were family friendly, as compared to their previous counterparts.

• Charlie Chaplin and Harry Houdini became famous on the vaudeville circuits.

• Edison invented the phonograph, which allowed audiences to hear music and speech. People could go to phonograph parlors and pay a nickel to hear a piece of music.

• Edison later invented the motion picture, which led to the fame of Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and Buster Keaton.

Charlie Chaplin

Harry Houdini

Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks

Buster Keaton

VI. Conclusion

• The U.S. became an industrial nation. The nature of labor shifted to industry.

• Cities grew upward and outward.

• The South became more and more segregated.

• Women embraced social change and possibilities.

• The transformations moved west and overseas.