Chapter 19: The Rise of the CityUrbanization

I. The march to the cities seemed inevitable to 19th century Americans. Urbanization became inevitable because of its link to another inevitability of American life—industrialization.

Industrial Sources of City GrowthI. Until the Civil War, cities were centers of commerce, not industry. Early industrialism began in the

countryside.A. Mills and factories needed water power from streams and rivers, access to sources of fuel and raw

materials, and workers drawn from the surplus farm population.II. After midcentury, industry began to abandon the countryside. Once steam engines came along, mill

operators no longer needed to locate along streams.A. In the iron industry, coal replaced charcoal as the primary fuel, so iron makers did not have to be

near the forests.B. Improved transportation gave entrepreneurs greater latitude in selecting the best sites in relation to

the supplies and markets.C. The result was a geographic concentration of industry.

III. Many smaller cities became one-industry towns. Other cities processed the raw materials of their regions.

IV. As factories became bigger, their size contributed to urban growth.A. Many firms set up their plants near a large city so that they could draw on its labor supply and

transportation facilities.V. Sometimes the nearby metropolis spread and absorbed the smaller city. Elsewhere, the lines between

industrial towns blurred and an extended urban-industrial area emerged.VI. The established commercial cities also became more industrial.

A. As gateways for immigrants, port cities offered abundant cheap labor.VII. By 1870, a core industrial region had formed from New England down through the Middle Atlantic states

to Maryland. In this region the percentage of people living in urban areas was twice the national average.City Building

I. The commercial cities of the early 19th century had been compact places, densely settled around a harbor or river. However, cities tended to expand out as they developed.

II. A downtown area emerged, usually in what had been the original commercial city, which in turn split into districts. Somewhat fluid at their edges, all these districts were well-defined areas of specialized activity.

A. Industrial development tended to follow the arteries of transportation and spread out in complexes of heavy industry.

B. At the same time the middle class in large numbers moved to the suburbs.III. In America cities constantly expanded, spilling beyond their formal boundaries and forming metropolitan

areas. A. While American cities were highly congested at the center, their population density was below

that of European cities. Given this difference, the development of efficient urban transportation has a much higher priority in the US.

Mass TransitI. The first innovation had been the omnibus, a convenience that didn’t do much to relieve congestion. Much

more efficient was the horsecar, which ran on iron tracks, enabling them to carry more passengers.A. This was possible because of an innovation in railroad track design in 1852—a grooved rail that

was flush with the pavement.B. From the 1850s onward, horsecars were the mainstay of urban transit.

II. The development of the electric trolley car was the work of Frank Sprague. In 1887 he designed an electricity-driven system for Richmond, Virginia: a trolley car run on electric power lines.

A. The trolley quickly replaced the horsecar and became the primary means of public transportation in most American cities.

III. In the great metropolitan centers, however, mounting congestion led to demands that public transit be moved off the streets. People wanted to harness railroad technology to urban life.

IV. In 1890 the number of passengers carried on American street railways was more than 2 billion/year.City Structure: Bridges, Skyscrapers, Terminals

I. Rivers now became barriers that interrupted rail traffic and hindered rail expansion.II. If urban transit evolved in response to the geographic expansion of the American city, the need for more

space in the downtown business districts drove advances in building construction.A. New materials made it easier to construct commercial buildings of greater height, interior space,

and fire resistance.B. With the availability by the 1880s of steel grinders, mass produced durable plate glass, and the

passenger elevator, a wholly new way of construction opened up.III. The first skyscraper to be built on this principle was William Jenney’s 10 story home insurance building in

Chicago. The steel-girded structure swiftly liberated the aesthetic perceptions of American architects.A. A Chicago school sprang up, dedicated to the design of buildings whose form expressed, rather

than masked, their structure and function.IV. Chicago pioneered skyscraper construction, but Manhattan, with its unrelenting need for prime downtown

space, took the lead after the mid-1890s.The Electric City

I. For ordinary citizens the electric lights that dispelled the gloom of the city at night probably offered the most dramatic evidence that times had changed.

A. The first use of electricity, when generating technology made it commercially feasible, was for better city lighting.

B. The first practical incandescent light bulb brought electric lighting into American homes.C. Before electricity had any significant effect on industry, it gave the city its modern tempo, lifting

and lowering elevators, powering streetcars and subways.II. The telephone sped communication.

The City as Private EnterpriseI. City building was very much an exercise in private enterprise. The lure of profit spurred the great

innovations—the trolley car, electric lighting, the skyscraper, the elevator, the telephone—and drove urban real estate development.

A. The investment opportunities looked so tempting that new cities sprang up almost overnight.B. Real-estate interests, eager to develop subdivisions, were often instrumental in pushing streetcar

lines outward from the central districts of cities.II. Urban transit became big business. The city, like the industry, became an arena for enterprise and

profits.III. Providing services privately, however, was a political choice. Under state laws cities had extensive powers

of self-development.A. In authorizing a municipally owned subway in NYC in 1897 the state courts reaffirmed the rights

of cities to carry out their responsibilities as they saw fit.B. Even the use of private land was subject to whatever regulations the city might impose.

IV. American cities used their broad powers sparingly. America produced the “private city”—one shaped primarily by the actions of private individuals. All these persons pursued their own goals and tried to maximize their own profit.

A. The prevailing belief was that the sum of such private activity would far exceed what the community could accomplish through public effort. This meant that the city itself handled only functions that could not be undertaken efficiently or profitably by private enterprise.

V. Despite that limitation, American cities actually compiled and impressive record in the late 19th century. City governments in these years became more centralized, better administered, and more expansive in the functions they undertook.

The Urban EnvironmentI. Streets were often filthy. The environment likewise suffered.II. It was not that America lacked an urban vision. On the contrary, an abiding rural ideal had exerted a

powerful influence on American cities for many years.A. Olmsted, the designer of Central Park, created the “City Beautiful” movement, resulting in a larger

parks system, broad boulevards and parkways, and zoning laws and planned suburbs.III. The cities usually heeded urban planners too little and too late. Even with planning, the city’s dynamism

often confounded efforts to meet the needs of the people.A. Each new innovation seemed to fall short, not merely outstripped by the rising demand but also

contributing to that demand. This occurred with urban transportation, high-rise buildings, and modern sanitation systems. They attracted more users, created new needs, and caused additional overcrowding and shortages.

Congested HousingI. Hardest hit by urban growth were the poor. In earlier times low-income city residents had lived in

makeshift wooden structures in alleys and backstreets or in the subdivided homes of more prosperous families who had fled to better neighborhoods.

A. When rising land values after the Civil War made this practice unprofitable, speculators began to build housing specially designed for the urban masses.

II. Civic-minded people everywhere considered these districts to be blights on the city. Reformers recognized the problem but seemed unable to solve it.

A. Some favored model tenements financed by public-spirited citizens willing to accept a limited return on their investment.

B. When private philanthropy failed to make much of a dent in the problem, cities turned to housing codes. The most advanced of these was New York’s Tenement House Law of 1901, which required interior courts, indoor toilets, and fire safeguards for new housing, but did little about exiting homes.

C. Commercial development pushed up land values in downtown areas. Only high-density, cheaply built housing could earn a sufficient profit for the landlords of the poor.

City PeopleI. With its soaring skyscrapers, jostling traffic, and hum of business activity, the city symbolized energy and

enterprise. Newcomers

I. With the opportunity and boundless variety came disorder and uncertainty. The urban world was unlike the rural communities the newcomers had left behind.

A. In the countryside everyone was known to their neighbors. If rural roles and obligations had been well understood, in the city the only predictable relationships were those dictated by the marketplace.

II. The newcomers could never re-create in the city the worlds they had left behind. But they found ways to gain a sense of belonging, they built a multitude of new institutions, and they learned how to function in an impersonal, heterogeneous environment.

A. An urban culture emerged, and through it there developed a new breed of American who was entirely at home in the modern city.

ImmigrantsI. At the turn of the century, upwards of 30% of the residents of NY, Chicago, Boston, Cleveland,

Minneapolis, and SF were foreign-born. The dominant groups still represented mainly the older migration from northern Europe.

A. By 1910 the influx from southern and eastern Europe changed the ethnic composition of many cities.

II. All these immigrants brought with them homeland experiences and customs that shaped their lives in the New World. But for the later arrivals from southern and eastern Europe there was less intermingling with the resident populations than in the earlier cities.

A. Beginning in the 1880s, observers reported that only foreign-born people lived in the poorer downtown areas.

III. The later arrivals from southern and eastern Europe had little choice about where they lived; they needed to be near their jobs and to find cheap housing.

A. Some gravitated to the outlying factory districts, others settled in the congested downtown ghettos. They did not settle in these districts randomly.

B. Ethnic groups clustered in certain houses and portions of blocks. Often an ethnic group took over and entire neighborhood.

IV. Within ethnic groups, one could also spot clusters of people from the same province or village.V. Capitalizing on the fellow-feeling that drew ethnic groups together, a variety of institutions sprang up to

meet the immigrants’ needs.A. Wherever substantial numbers lived, newspapers appeared.B. Companionship could be found on streetcorners, barbershops, and club rooms.C. To provide help in time of sickness and death, the immigrants organized mutual-aid societies.

Immigrants built and rich and functional institutional life in urban America, to an extent unimagined in their native villages.

Urban BlacksI. The vast majority of African Americans lived in the rural south. Some of them migrated to modestly

growing southern cities.A. By 1900 blacks were 1/3 of the south’s urban population.

II. The great African American migration to northern cities was just beginning.III. Despite their relatively small numbers, urban blacks could not escape discrimination. They retreated

from the scattered black neighborhoods of earlier times into concentrated ghettos.A. Race prejudice likewise cut down job opportunities.

IV. In the face of pervasive discrimination, urban blacks built their own communities. They created a flourishing press, fraternal orders, women’s organizations, and a middle class of doctors, lawyers, and entrepreneurs. Most important was the church

A. The church was the central organization for city blacks, and the preacher the most important local citizen.

Ward PoliticsI. Race and ethnicity tended to divide newcomers to the city and turn them in on themselves. Politics, in

contrast, acted as a powerful instrument for integrating them into the larger urban society.A. Every migrant to an American city automatically became a ward resident and, by living on a

particular street, immediately acquired a spokesman at city hall in the form of an alderman.II. In earlier days aldermen had been dominant figures in urban politics, but that was no longer the case in the

19th century. Power had largely passed on to the mayor’s office and city administrative agencies.A. The city council still represented the parochial interests of the wards, and immigrants learned very

quickly that if they needed anything from city hall, the alderman was the person to see.III. Machine control of political parties, present at every level, flourished most luxuriantly in the big cities.

A. Urban machines depended on a loyal grass-roots constituency, so each ward was divided into election districts of a few blocks.

B. The district captain reported to the ward boss, who was likely also to be the alderman. The main job of these functionaries was to be accessible and serve the needs of the party faithful.

IV. The machine similarly served the business community. Contractors sought city business; gas companies and streetcar lines wanted licenses and privileges; manufacturers needed services; and the liquor trade relied on a tolerant police force.

A. They all turned to the machine boss or his lieutenants.B. The machine mediated among conflicting interests and oiled the wheels of city government.

V. The machines filled a void in the public life of the 19th century city. They did informally much of what the municipal system left undone.

VI. Of course, the machine exacted a price for these services. The tenement dweller gave his vote. The businessman wrote a check. Corruption permitted this informal system. Some of the money that changed hands inevitably ended up in the pockets of machine politicians.

A. This “boodle” could take the form of outright corruption—kickbacks by contractors; protection money from gamblers, saloonkeepers, and prostitutes; payoffs from gas and trolley companies.

B. The Tammany Ward boss George Washington Plunkitt, however, insisted that there was no need for kickbacks and bribes. He favored what he called “honest graft,” the easy profits that came to savvy insiders.

C. One way or another, legally or otherwise, machine politics rewarded its supporters.VII. For ambitious young immigrants and blacks, this was reason enough to favor the machine system. As a

ladder of social mobility, machine politics was the most democratic of American institutions.For the ordinary tenement dweller, however, the machine had a more modest value. It acted as a social service agency, providing jobs for the jobless, a helping hand for a bereaved family, and intercession with an unfeeling city beaucracy.

A. In an era when so many forces acted to isolate ghetto communities, politics served an integrating function, cutting across ethnic lines and giving immigrants and blacks a stake in the larger urban order.

Religion in the CityI. For African Americans, the church was a central institution of urban life. This was true for many other city

dwellers as well. But the city was also difficult ground for religious practice, with much that had once seemed settled now contested. All the faiths present in the 19th century had to reconcile how they practiced their beliefs with the secular demands of the new urban world.

Judaism: The Challenge of OrthodoxyI. Well established and prosperous, the German Jews had embraced Reform Judaism, abandoning religious

practices “not adapted to the conducting services of modern civilization.”A. Anxious to preserve their traditional piety, Yiddish-speaking immigrants from Eastern Europe

founded their own Orthodox synagogues and practiced Judaism in the old way.II. In the villages of eastern Europe, however, Judaism had stood not only for worship and belief but for an

entire way of life. Insular though it might be, ghetto life in America could not recreate the communal environment on which strict religious observance depended.

A. Orthodox Judaism survived this shattering of faith, but only by sharply reducing its claims on the lives of the faithful.

“Americanism” and the Catholic ChurchI. Catholics faced much the same problem. The issue, defined within the Roman Catholic Church as

“Americanism” turned on the degree to which Catholicism should adapt to American society, with its Protestant majority and sharp separation of church and state.

A. Traditionalists denied the possibility of any harmony and argued for insulating the Church from the threatening American environment.

B. Pope Leo XIII supported the traditionalists. He regretted the absence of state support for Catholicism.

II. Immigrant Catholics generally supported the Church’s conservatism because they wanted to preserve their religion as they had known it in Europe.

A. Their concerns were not purely religious; church life also had to express their ethnic identities.B. Newly arrived Catholics wanted their own parishes where they could celebrate their own customs

and holidays, speak their own languages, and educate their children in their own parochial schools.III. The church had difficulty responding. The demands of immigrant congregations seemed to challenge the

Catholic hierarchy, which was dominated by Irish Catholics, and even the integrity of the church itself.A. The desire for ethnic parishes led to demands for local control of Church property. Moreover, if

the church appointed bishops with jurisdiction over specific ethnic groups, that would mean disrupting the diocesan structure that unified the church.

IV. The severity of the challenge depended partly on the religious convictions of each ethnic group.A. Italian men were known for their religious apathy, and many Italians harbored anticlerical

feelings, much strengthened by the papacy’s stand against the unification of Italy.B. The church played such an important role in the lives of Polish immigrants that they resented any

interference by the Catholic hierarchy.C. In 1907 50 parishes formed the Polish National Catholic Church of America, which adhered to the

Catholic ritual without recognizing the Pope’s authority.V. On the whole, the church managed to satisfy the immigrant faithful. It met their demand for representation

in the hierarchy by appointing immigrant priests as auxiliary bishops within existing dioceses. Ethnic parishes also flourished.

A. Not without strain, the Catholic Church made itself a central institution for expression of ethnic identity in urban America.

Protestantism: Regaining Lost GroundI. Protestantism was the dominant faith of the nation, but by 1890 the total church membership was 14

million, compared to 8 million Catholics.A. The city posed the greatest challenge to Protestant churches. They had to find ways of attracting

the great numbers of native-born Americans flocking into the cities in the late 19th century from farms and small towns.

B. At the same time, they also had to keep up with congregations scattering into the suburbs as European immigrants occupied the older residential neighborhoods. Many formerly prosperous churches found themselves stranded in the squalid new ghettos.

II. Every major city retained great downtown churches where Protestants worshipped. Some of these churches were richly endowed, who took great pride in nationally prominent pastors.

A. The eminence of the churches could not disguise the growing remoteness of Protestantism from much of its urban constituency.

B. To counter this decline, the Protestant churches responded in 2 ways. They evangelized among the unchurched and indifferent. They also made their churches instruments of social uplift. Some churches linked evangelism and social uplift.

III. For young single people new to the cities, there were the Young Men’s and Women’s Christian Associations, which had been transplanted from Britain before the Civil War. No other organization so effectively combined activities for young adults with an evangelizing appeal in the form of bible classes, nondenominational worship, and a religious atmosphere.

IV. The social movement that urban Protestants sought in religion explained the enormous popularity of a book called In His Steps, which told the story of a congregation that resolved to live by Christ’s precepts for one year.

V. The most important form of urban evangelicalism—revivalism—said little about social uplift. It focused on individual redemption.

A. The resolution of earthly problems, revivalists believed, would follow the conversion of the people to Christ.

B. The pioneering figure was Dwight L. Moody, who staged revival meetings that drew thousands. He preached an optimistic, uncomplicated, nondenominational message.

C. Many other preachers followed in Moody’s path.D. By realizing that many people remained villagers at heart, revivalists found a key for bringing city

dwellers back to the church.E. In a larger sense, revivalism was expressive of a more general fundamentalist movement that

sought to preserve old-time religion against the increasing complacency and doctrinal liberalism of mainstream Protestantism.

F. The Holiness evangelical movement was at first nondenominational but began to spawn new denominations as the Church of Nazarene. Out of the Holiness revival came the more radical Pentecostal movement, which by 1914 had brought together many local bodies into the Assemblies of God.

Leisure in the City I. City people compartmentalized life’s activities, setting workplace apart from home and working time apart

from free time. Going out became a necessity demanded not only as a relief from a day of work but as proof that life was better in the New World than in the Old.

Public EntertainmentI. Amusement parks went up at the ends of trolley lines across the country. The theater likewise attracted

huge audiences.A. Evolving from cheap variety and minstrel shows, vaudeville moved from boisterous beer halls into

grand theaters. Vaudeville cleaned up its routines and turned into professional entertainment. B. The first films appeared in 1896 in penny arcades and as filler in vaudeville shows.

II. For young unmarried workers the leisure activities of the city created a new social space.A. Parental control over courtship broke down, and working-class youth forged a more easygoing

culture of sexual interaction and pleasure seeking.III. The geography of the big city carved out ample space for commercialized sex. Prostitution became less

closeted and more intermingled with other forms of public entertainment.Baseball

I. Of all forms of diversion, none was more specific to the city, or as successful, as professional baseball.II. Organized play began in NY in the 1840s. Clubs quickly spread across the country and the sport became

less aristocratic. In 1868 it became openly professional as players were signed to contracts at a negotiated salary for the season.

III. Commercial baseball came into its own with the launching of the National League in 1876. The team owners were profit-minded businessmen who carefully shaped the sport to please the fans.

IV. By rooting for a home team, fans found a way of identifying with the city they lived in. amid the diversity and anonymity of urban life, baseball acted as a bridge among strangers.

V. Baseball was particularly attuned to city life. It followed strict, precise rules, which suggested an underlying order to the chaotic city. Far from respecting the rules, however, the players tried to get away with whatever they could in order to live. The umpire, the symbol of authority, was scorned by players and derided by fans.

The World of the Urban EliteI. In the midst of the popular ferment, other institutions of culture were taking shape under the sponsorship of

a new social and economic elite.A. Great institutions such as museums, public libraries, opera companies, and orchestras could

flourish only in metropolitan centers and with the financial support of wealthy patrons.Creating High Culture

I. By 1914 virtually every major city had an art museum. Top-flight orchestras also appeared. National tours by these leading orchestras planted the seeds for orchestral societies in many other cities. Libraries also grew.

A. The greatest library benefactor was Andrew Carnegie, who established a thousand libraries across the country.

II. The late 19th century was the great age not only of moneymaking but also of money giving. Surplus private wealth flowed in many directions, including to universities.

A. The new millionaires also patronized the arts, partly out of a sense of civic duty, partly as a means to establish themselves in society. But museums and opera houses also received generous support as an expression of national pride.

III. Some members of the upper class despaired of the country and moved to Europe. Others spent their lives in perpetual alienation. The more common response was to raise the nation’s cultural level.

A. With a few exceptions, the newly rich did not have opportunity to cultivate taste for art, and a great deal of what they collected was mediocre and garish.

B. The enthusiasm of moneyed Americans largely fueled the great cultural institutions that arose in many cities during the Gilded Age.

IV. A deeply conservative idea of culture sustained this generous patronage. The aim was to embellish urban life, not to probe or reveal its meaning. The idea of culture also took on an elitist cast.

A. Culture also became linked to femininity. Men represented the “force principal” and women represented the “beauty principle.”

V. The genteel tradition dominated American cultural agencies and publishers from the 1860s onward. It concerned finer and more idealistic elements.

The New MillionairesI. As the industrial city grew, interpersonal marks of class began to lose their force. In the anonymity of a

large city, recognition and deference no longer served as mechanisms for conferring status.A. Instead, the rich began to rely on external signs: conspicuous display of wealth, exclusive

association in clubs and similar social organizations, and choice in neighborhood.B. For the poor, place of residence depended on their work. For higher-income urbanites, where to

live became a matter of personal means and social preference.Life-styles of the Rich

I. As early as the 1840s Boston merchants took advantage of the new railway service to move out of the congested central city. As commercial development engulfed downtown residential areas and as transportation services improved, the exodus from cities by the wealthy spread across America.

II. Despite the temptations of country life, many of the very richest people preferred the heart of the city.III. But great fortunes did not always confer high social standing. An established elite stood astride the social

heights even in such relatively raw cities as SF and Denver.A. It only took a generation for money made in commerce or real estate to shed its tarnish and

become “old” and genteel.B. In older cities, wealth passed intact through several generations, creating a closely-knit tribe of

old-line families that kept moneyed newcomers at bay.C. Elsewhere the urban elite was more open, but only to the socially ambitious who were prepared to

make visible and energetic use of their money.“High Society”

I. NY became the home of a national elite as the most ambitious people gravitated to this center of American economic and cultural life. Manhattan’s vitality in turn kept the city’s high society fluid and open. NY thus became a magnet for millionaires.

A. The city attracted them not only because of its importance as a financial center, but also because of its opportunities it offered for display and social recognition.

II. From Manhattan an extraordinary life of leisure radiated outward in the form of summer homes. The affluent traveled to these resorts by private railway car. Entertaining was on a grand scale.

III. The infusion of wealth shattered the older elite society of NY. Seeking to be assimilated into the upper class, the flood of moneyed newcomers simply overwhelmed it.

A. There followed a process of reconstruction, a deliberate effort to define the rules of conduct and identify those who properly “belonged” to NY society.

IV. The key figure in this process was Ward McAllister, who had made a fortune in the gold rush and then became an arbiter of NY society.

A. In 1888 McAllister created the first Social Register, which would serve as a record of society in a careful list of those deemed acceptable to participate in NY society.

B. McAllister instructed the socially ambitious on how to select guests, set a proper table, arrange a ball, and launch a young lady into society. He presided over an ordered round of assemblies, balls, and dinners that defined the boundaries of an elite society.

C. Social registers, coming-out balls, and lesser versions of McAllister soon popped up in cities throughout the country. In this fashion, the socially ambitious struggled to master the fluidity at the height of the social order.

V. In their struggle to find the rules and establish manners, the moneyed elite made an incredible mark on urban life. In a democratic society wealth finds no easier outlet than through public display.

The Urban Middle ClassI. From colonial times onward, the American economy spawned a robust middle class of lawyers, merchants,

and doctors. What most distinguished this group was the independence that came with self-employment.A. This older middle class remained important, but in the late 19th century it was joined by a new

salaried middle class brought forth by the emerging corporate economy.II. The middle class left a smaller imprint than the rich on public and cultural faces of urban society. Its

members, unlike the wealthy, preferred privacy and retreated into the domesticity of suburban comfort and family life.

Expanding SuburbsI. The American middle class, particularly its salaried ranks, was an urban population. Some of its members

lived in the city, but far more preferred to escape the city.A. They were attracted by a persisting “rural ideal,” seeking fresh air, peacefulness, silence, and

scenery.II. No major American city escaped rapid suburbanization during the last 1/3 of the 19th century. City limits

expanded rapidly, but suburban growth also took place beyond the city limits.III. The geography of the American suburbs was truly a map of class structure, because where a family lived

told where it ranked. The farther the distance from the center of the city, the finer were the houses and the larger the lots.

A. Affluent businessmen and professionals had the leisure and flexible schedules to travel a long distance into town.

B. People closer in wanted transit lines that went straight into the city center and carried them quickly between home and office.

C. Lower-income suburbanites were more likely to more than one wage earner in the family, less secure employment, and jobs requiring movement around the city. It was better for them to be closer to the city center because they had closer access to the transportation lines they needed for their work.

IV. Location on the suburban map never became rigid.V. Suburbanization was the sum of countless individual decisions. Each move represented an advance in

living standards.A. The suburbs also restored a basic opportunity that rural Americans thought they had sacrificed

when they moved to the city. In the suburbs home ownership again became the norm.VI. The small town of the rural past had fostered community life. Not so in the suburbs. The grid street pattern,

efficient for laying out lots, offered no natural focus of group life.A. Suburban development conformed to the economics of real estate and transportation, and so did

the thinking of middle-class home seekers entering the suburbs. They wanted a home that gave them good value and convenience.

B. The need for community had lost some its force for middle-class Americans.

Middle-Class FamiliesI. As industrialism progressed, production gradually moved out of the household. For the middle class in

particular, the family became dissociated from economic activity.A. Middle class families became smaller. Within this family circle relationships became intense and

affectionate.B. The family served as a refuge from the competitive, impersonal business world. The suburbs

provided a fit setting for such families.The Wife’s Role

I. The burdens of this domesticity fell on the wife. It was nearly unheard of for her to seek and outside career; it was her husband’s role. Her job was to manage the household.

A. With better household technology, greater reliance on purchased goods, and fewer children, the wife’s workload declined.

II. As the physical burdens of household work eased, higher-quality homemaking became the new ideal. Women had a higher calling of brining love, sensibility, and beauty into the home. In this idealized view, the wife made the home a refuge for her husband and a place of nurture for their children.

III. Womanly virtue by no means put women on equal terms with their husbands.A. Although the legal status of married women improved during the 19th century, sufficient legal

discrimination remained to establish their subordinate role within the family.B. Custom dictated a wife’s submission to her husband. She relied on his ability as the family

breadwinner and, despite her superior virtues and graces, ranked as inferior in vigor and intellect.IV. The strains of marriage were visible in the number of middle-class families that broke up. Most domestic

failures, however, went unrecorded because of the stigma attached to divorce.V. Even harder to document were the other ways women responded to marriages that denied their autonomy

and downplayed their sexuality.A. Middle-class women became the principle victims of neurasthenia, while others self-medicated

with opium and alcohol.VI. A healthier release came through the companionship of other women. Enduring female ties yielded an

emotional gratification not found in marriage.A. Husbands frequently played a secondary role in the lives of their wives.

Changing Views of SexualityI. In earlier times sexuality and reproduction had been in harmony. A big family was considered good, and

the heavy toll of repeated pregnancies on the wife was accepted as God’s will. A. In lower-class families this fatalism persisted, but not in middle class ones, who increasingly

wanted to limit their families.B. Birth control was not an easy matter. From the 1830s onward information about contraception

became widely available, as did an array of commercial devices. But the knowledge purveyed was imperfect or wrong and the devices for the most part were not very effective.

II. Before these barriers could be surmounted, birth control was swept up in the social-purity campaign championed by Anthony Comstock.

A. From the 1870s onward contraceptive devices and birth-control information were legally classified as obscene, barred from the mail, and criminalized in many states.

B. Abortion became illegal except to save the mother’s life.III. Around 1890 a change set in. Although the birth rate continued to decline, more young people married, and

at an earlier age. A. These developments reflected the beginnings of a sexual revolution in the American middle-class

family.B. Contraception became more acceptable and reliable. Female sexuality became more

acknowledged.C. In the city, women’s sphere began to take on a more public character.

Attitudes toward ChildrenI. The children of the middle class went through their own revolution. In the past, American children had

been regarded as an economic asset—added hands for the family farm. That no longer held true for the urban middle class.

A. Parents stopped treating their children as working members of the family. The family was now responsible for providing a nurturing environment in which the young personality could grow and mature.

II. Preparation for adulthood became increasingly linked to formal education.A. As the years between child and adulthood stretched out, a new stage in life—adolescence—

emerged. While rooted in an extended period of dependency on the family, adolescence shifted much of the socializing role from parents to peer group.

B. A youth culture was starting to develop.