
I. New Industry
A. Inventing technology: the electric age
1. Technology played a major role in transforming factory
work and increasing the scale of production as steam and later
electricity freed manufacturers from dependence on water power.
2. In the late nineteenth century, the United States
became a technological innovator. Between 1870 and 1900, 900,000
patents had been issued in the United States.
3. Thomas Edison’s success stimulated research and
development in Europe and the
United States.
4. Invention gave the United States a commanding
technological lead.
B. The corporation and its impact
1. The modern corporation supplied the structural
framework for the transformation of the American economy.
2. The corporation became a significant factor in
the American economy in the 1850s when railroad companies grew.
3. The two major advantages of the corporation were
a corporation can outlive its founders and and its officials and
shareholders are not personally liable for its debts.
4. Large corporations changed the nature of work and
stimulated urban growth.
5. Vertical and horizontal integration helped
successful corporations reduce competition and dominate industries.
C. The changing nature of work
1. By 1906, industrial labor had been reduced to minute,
low- skilled operations, making skilled artisans obsolete.
2. Mechanization and technological innovation did
not reduce employment but they did eliminate some jobs.
3. Industrial workers shared little of the wealth
generated by industrial expansion. The labored under unsafe conditions,
generally working ten hours a day, six days a week for low wages.
4. Workers lived close to factories in poor
environments.
5. Many workers labored in small, cramped, poorly
ventilated sweatshops.
D. Child labor
1. Many industries employed children, including
mining, garment trades, and textile mills.
E. Working Women
2. Low wages for man often required women to
work.
3. Women earned lower wages than men and while more
job opportunities opened, low wages and poor working conditions
continued.
4. Women also found employment in downtown
department stores.
5. By the beginning of the twentieth century, women
had gained increased access to higher education.
F. Responses to poverty and wealth
1. The growing gap between rich and poor and
concerns about working women led to reform movements.
2. The tenement apartments crammed the urban poor
into crowded apartments in urban slums.The settlement house arose to
deal
with the wretched conditions under which the urban poor lived.
3.Industrialists, intellectuals, and some
politicians supported the Gospel of Wealth theory that helping the poor
was of doubtful value.
4. Social Darwinism was a flawed attempt to apply
Charles Darwin’s theories to human society with wealth reflecting
fitness
and poverty weakness.
G. Workers organize
1. Economic cycles combined with the growing power
of industrial corporations and the decreasing power of workers created
social tensions.
2. The Great Uprising of 1877 was a railroad strike
notable for the way workers cooperated with one another.
3. The Knights of Labor was founded in 1869 and led
the movement for an eight-hour day but employers responded with court
orders and arrests.
4. The American Federation of Labor became the major
union for skilled workers and stressed collective bargaining.
5. Violent strikes at Homestead and Pullman were
major setbacks for unions. Immigrants also weakened labor radicalism.
II. New Immigrants
A. Old-World backgrounds
1. Economic hardship and religious persecution triggered
migration from central and southern Europe.
2. Economic hardship prompted Chinese immigration
while a land shortage drove Japanese immigration.
3. Initially most immigrants were young men but by
1900 the number of women immigrants equaled men.
4. Chain migration involved the migration of an entire
village that followed a small number of early migrants to a location.
B. The neighborhood
1. Except for the Chinese, rarely did a single
ethnic group comprise more than half the population of a neighborhood.
2. Most immigrants identified with their villages
more than their ethnicity.
3. Immigrants maintained their cultural traditions
through religious and communal institutions.
4. Immigrant communities insisted on controlling
their religious institutions.
5. Ethnic newspapers, theaters, and schools
supplemented associational life for immigrants.
C. The job
1. Immigrants perceived the job as a way to
independence. Typically, immigrants received their first job with the
help of a countryman.
2. Skills, the local economy, and local discrimination
often determined the type of work available.
3. Stereotypes also channeled immigrants into
certain jobs and industries.
4. The goal of most immigrants was to work for
themselves.
D. Nativism
1. Antiforeign sentiment resurfaced when immigration
swelled after the Civil War.
2. Post-Civil War nativism targeted southern and
eastern European Catholics and Jews and had a pseudoscientific
underpinning.
3. Nativism stimulated proposals to restrict
immigration, leading to bans on Asian citizenship and the Chinese
Exclusion Act of 1882.
4. Immigrants fought attempts to restrict
immigration.
5. The immigrant experience of the late 1800s and
early twentieth century involved a process of adjustment between the
old
and new.
E. Roots of the Great Migration
1. Between 1880 and 1900, African Americans began
moving into the industrial cities of the Northeast and Midwest.
2. Economic promise and appeals of black
Northerners, especially the Chicago Defender,
combined with increasing persecution in the South stimulated African
American migration north.
3. Immigrants took over many traditional black jobs.
Black women had few job options outside of domestic service.
4. Black migrants were restricted to segregated
urban ghettos.
III. New Cities
A. Centers and suburbs
1. Downtowns extended up and out pushing residential
neighborhoods out and leaving the center dominated by corporate
headquarters and retail and entertainment districts.
2. The residential neighborhood emerged as homes
were crowded out of the city center. Advances in rapid transit
technology eased commuting for workers.
3. Suburbs became the preferred residence of the
urban middle class after 1870. Privacy, aesthetics, and home ownership
stimulated suburban growth.
B. The new middle class
1. The traditional urban middle class included
professionals, doctors, lawyers, educators, editors, and ministers, as
well as merchants and shopkeepers. Artisans had dropped out in the late
1800s.
2. The new urban middle class expanded to include
salespeople, factory supervisors, managers, civil servants,
technicians,
and white collar office workers performing various jobs.
3. The wealthier members of the new middle class
lived in the suburbs.
C. A consumer society
1. The new middle class changed American into a
consumer society and goods became a symbol of prestige.
2. Technology stimulated numerous household
appliances and new products eased food preparation.
3. Advertising created demand and helped develop
loyalty for brand-name products.
4. The department store was a middle-class retail
establishment that became a center of urban downtowns after 1890.
D. The growth of leisure activities
1. Leisure and recreation both separated and cut
across social class divisions.
2. College football was popular among the elite, but
baseball was the spectator sport of the middle class, which took it
over after the Civil War.
3. The tavern was the workingman’s
club.
4. Amusement parks were another hallmark of the
industrial city.
IV. Conclusion
• The United States changed in the late nineteenth century
as industrialization and urbanization proceeded at a rapid pace.
• Immigrants came to America to realize dreams of freedom
and did so to some degree, but many also experienced the dark side of
American life.
• A variety of organizations and institutions had emerged
to address the worst abuses of the new urban, industrial order.

