AMERICAN URBANIZATIONGlobal Migration and Urban Explosion

Immigration from Europe

• Two distinct waves of European immigration• Before 1880—from northern and western Europe

• After 1880—from southern and eastern Europe• depression in southern Italy, persecution of Jews in eastern Europe, avoidance of Russian conscription

Ellis Island

Immigrants at Ellis Island

Examination Room

Women

America’s Need for Cheap Labor

• Between 1870 and 1900 industrialists drew on rural and migrant people for labor force

• 11,000,000 moved into cities• Chicago, for example, grew from 100,000 in 1860 to

+1,000,000 in 1890

Electric Street Car

• Development of electric street car in 1880s led to urban congestion and suburban sprawl

• Social segregation—those who could afford, moved to outskirts, poorest occupied city center

Calls for Immigration Restriction• Many Americans saw newcomers as uneducated,

backward, uncouth • “blue-bloods” made unlikely alliance with organized labor

to restrict immigration• Ethnic competition between older immigrants

Jacob Riis

• How the Other Half Lives, documented the poverty, crowding and disease of New York City

• Had America become a plutocracy? The wealthiest 1% owned more than half of the real and personal property in the country.

Great Railroad Strike 1877

Knights of Labor

• First mass organization of America’s working class

• Organized regardless of skill, sex, race, or nationality, became the dominate force in labor during the 1880s

• Knights of Labor advocated a workers’ democracy that embraced public ownership of railroads, an income tax, equal pay for women workers, and the abolition of child labor.

AFL rival to Knights of Labor

• American Federation of Labor headed by Samuel Gompers

• His plan was to organize skilled workers and to use strikes to gain immediate objectives—higher pay and better working conditions

12-Hour Day• Since 1840, labor had sought to end the industry

standard12-hour work day, • Supporters set May 1,1886 as the date for a nationwide

general strike in support of eight-hour day• All factions of labor movement participated in Chicago on

May Day, ‘largest demonstration to date’• 45,000 workers paraded peaceful down Michigan Ave in

support of eight hour work day

Haymarket

Pullman

Company town• 4,300 acres nine miles south of Chicago• Planned and built by George Pullman after the Great

Railroad Strike of 1877

• Family could never own their home• Rents were 10-20 percent higher than nearby communities• Wages slashed five times in 1893, but rents stayed high• Stockholders continued to get 8% dividend

Pullman

George Pullman

ARU• 90 % of the workers walked off the job• Pullman shut down the factory• Workers appealed to the American Railway Union (ARU),

led by Eugene V. Debs• Beginning on Jun 29, 1894, the membership refused to

handle any train that carried Pullman cars• Switchmen across the country would not work with the

cars• By July 2, railways from New York to California were

paralyzed by work stoppage

Pullman strikers

Crushing the strike• An injunction against Eugene Debs said he could not

speak in public• When he did, he was arrested and put in jail• Later, Debs formed the Socialist Party, and became a

candidate for the U.S. Presidency

Pullman Strike