The Immediate Challenges Of Urban Life

ASU HST 200 (Historical Themes) The Growing Pains of Urbanization, 1870-1900 The Immediate Challenges Of Urban Life All urban centers have common issues with congestion, pollution, crime, and disease; both residents and city planners looked for innovative ways to address these issues brought on by the fast rise of metropolitan areas. The majority of working-class urban residents had appalling living circumstances. They were forced to live in small flats and tenement homes with inadequate plumbing, poor sanitation, and poor ventilation. Disease thus spread widely, with cholera and typhoid frequently occurring. Over ten thousand people died in Memphis, Tennessee, as a result of waves of yellow fever in 1878 and 1879, which followed cholera in 1873. In order to offer effective waste management, sewage pumping systems were implemented by New York City, Baltimore, Chicago, and New Orleans by the late 1880s. Serious fire threats also existed in many cities. A typical six-member working-class family consisted of two parents and four kids, living in a tenement with two bedrooms at most. According to a 1900 estimate, there were around 50,000 tenement dwellings in the Manhattan borough of New York City alone. The book How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis, which was covered in the previous article, has images of these tenement buildings. Citing a survey conducted at the time by the New York State Assembly, Riis concluded that New York was the world's most densely inhabited metropolis, with up to eight hundred people living on each square acre in the working-class Lower East Side slums that included the Eleventh and Thirteenth Wards. The difficulties faced by working-class city dwellers were somewhat alleviated by churches and civic associations. Because they believed in the social gospel, churches felt compelled to get in. The Reverend Washington Gladden was a leading proponent of this theory, which held that all Christians, whether they were social reformers or church leaders, should be equally concerned about the status of life on Earth as they are about the hereafter. Gladden encouraged other preachers to follow his example by discussing the social developments of the day rather than delivering sermons on heaven and damnation. He promoted greater living standards and urged all Americans, regardless of socioeconomic status, to collaborate for the advancement of society. In addition to preaching that all Americans should cooperate in order to aid the people, he added the proverb "love thy neighbor" in his sermons. Because of his influence, churches started to provide evening lectures on health and cleanliness, as well as additions like gymnasiums and libraries. During this period, other religious groups also increased their presence in American cities, including the Salvation Army and the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA). These groups started offering community services and other advantages to the urban poor in the 1870s. The 1890s settlement house movement offered more respite in the secular domain. Building on concepts first formulated by social reformers in England, trailblazing women like Jane Addams in Chicago and Lillian Wald in New York spearheaded this early progressive reform movement in the United States. They had no specific religious affiliation and aimed to establish settlement homes in cities so that they could provide assistance to the working class, especially working-class women. Child care, evening programs, gyms, libraries, and free medical care were all part of their assistance. In 1889, Addams inaugurated her renowned Hull House (Figure 19.7) in Chicago, and six years later, Wald's Henry Street Settlement debuted in New York. Rapid urbanization allowed the movement to expand to other cities, where it helped working-class women and gave college graduates job prospects in the expanding social work sector. These college graduates frequently lived in settlement houses among the women they assisted, providing them with the opportunity to practice their skills in what amounted to living social classrooms. However, this frequently led to conflict with immigrant women who had different ideas about reform and self-improvement. Later, the settlement house movement's success served as the impetus for a political agenda that called for the passage of legislation pertaining to worker's compensation, housing, and child labor, among other issues. After first working with Addams in Chicago, Florence Kelley joined Wald's efforts in New York, where they jointly established the National Child Labor Committee and promoted the eventual establishment of the Children's Bureau in the United States. Labor Department in 1912. Julia Lathrop, a former Hull House resident, was selected to lead the bureau by President William Howard Taft, making history as the first female director of a federal government department. During World War I, workers in settlement houses rose to prominence as leaders in both the antiwar and women's suffrage movements.