Brinkley Unfinished Nation 8 ed Chapter 18

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18: The Age of the City
Alan Brinkley, The Unfinished Nation, 8th Edition

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The New Urban Growth
• The Migrations
– Dramatic rates of movement
– Southern and eastern European immigrants
• The Ethnic City
– Diverse immigrant populations
– Importance of ethnic ties

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Total Immigration, 1861–1900
Over 10 million immigrants from abroad entered the United States in the
last forty years of the nineteenth century, with particularly high numbers
arriving in the 1880s and 1890s.

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Sources of Immigration from Europe, 1860–1900
The largest number of immigrants continued to come from traditional sources, but the
beginnings of what in the early twentieth century would become a major influx of immigrants
from new sources can also be seen here.

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The New Urban Growth (Continued)
• Assimilation and Exclusion
– Pressure to assimilate
– Attempts to limit immigration

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The Urban Landscape
• The Creation of Public Space
– Central Park
– “City Beautiful” movement
– “Back Bay”

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The Urban Landscape (Continued)
• The Search for Housing
– New suburbs
– Tenements
– Jacob Riis

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A Tenement Laundry
This woman, shown here with some of her children, was typical of many
working-class mothers who found income-producing activities they could
pursue in the home (in this case, laundry).

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The Urban Landscape (Continued, 2)
• Urban Technologies: Transportation and Construction
– City railways
– Brooklyn Bridge
– Skyscrapers

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Strains of Urban Life
• Fire and Disease
– Inadequate sanitation
• Environmental Degradation
– Air pollution
– Public Health Service

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Strains of Urban Life (Continued)
• Urban Poverty, Crime, and Violence
– Factors in rising crime rate
– The Salvation Army
– Dreiser’s urban novel
• The Machine and the Boss
– Function of the “urban boss”
– “Boss” Tweed and Tammany Hall

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Puck Magazine
Puck was the first successful humor magazine published in the United
States. Issues were published from 1871 to 1918. It offered political
cartoons, caricatures, and satire on the issues of the day.
The Library of Congress

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The Rise of Mass Consumption
• Patterns of Income and Consumption
– Growth of middle class
– New consumerism
• Ready-made clothing
• Canned food, ice boxes, and condensed milk

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The Rise of Mass Consumption
(Continued)
• Chain Stores, Mail-Order Houses,
and Department Stores
– Department stores
• Women as Consumers
– National Consumers League

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Department Stores
Department stores often created “events” to help promote sales of their
many wares. Here, Strawbridge and Clothier department store creates a
stir on Market Street in Philadelphia in 1907.
© Corbis

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Leisure in the Consumer Society
• Redefining Leisure
– Originally many equated leisure and laziness
– Simon Patten
– Mass entertainment

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Leisure in the Consumer Society
(Continued)
• Spectator Sports
– Baseball
– University football
– Basketball invented

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The American National Game
Long before the modern major leagues began, local baseball clubs were active throughout
much of the United States, establishing the game as the “national pastime.” This print of a
“grand match for the championship” depicts an 1866 game at Elysian Fields, a popular park just
across the river from New York City in Hoboken, New Jersey.
© Photo Reproduction by Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images

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Leisure in the Consumer Society
(Continued, 2)
• Music, Theater, and Movies
– Vaudeville
– Silent films
• Patterns of Public and Private Leisure
– Coney Island
– Dime novels

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Leisure in the Consumer Society
(Continued, 3)
• The Technologies of Mass Communication
– Daily newspapers
– William Randolph Hearst
• The Telephone
– The Bell System
• Did not sell telephone instruments
• Owned all infrastructure

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High Culture in the Urban Age
• Literature and Art in Urban America
– Literary realism
– Ashcan school
– Armory Show

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Dempsey and Firpo
The artist George Bellows began painting fight scenes in the first years of the twentieth
century, when boxing appealed primarily to working-class audiences. By 1924, when he
painted this moment from a famous prizefight, boxing had become one of the most popular
sports in America.
© Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA/Bridgeman Images

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High Culture in the Urban Age
(Continued)
• The Impact of Darwinism
– Divisions over Darwinism
– “Pragmatism”

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High Culture in the Urban Age
(Continued, 2)
• Toward Universal Schooling
– Spread of free public schooling
• Universities and the Growth of Science
and Technology
– Higher education and the economy

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High Culture in the Urban Age
(Continued, 3)
• Medical Science
– Germ theory accepted
– Declining mortality
• Education for Women
– Women’s colleges
– Emergence of women’s communities

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America in the World
• Global Migrations
Private Collection/© Peter Newark American Pictures/Bridgeman Images

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Consider the Source
• John Wanamaker, The Four Cardinal Points of the
Department Store, 1911

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The Unfinished Nation, 8th Edition
Next: Chapter 19
From Crisis to Empire