Chapter 19: The Rise of the City

Urbanization
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 Growth
I. 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 Transit
I. 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 Enterprise
I. 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 Environment
I. 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 Housing
I. 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 People
I. 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.
Immigrants
I. 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 Blacks
I. 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 Politics
I. 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 City
I. 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 Orthodoxy
I. 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 Church
I. 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 Ground
I. 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 Entertainment
I. 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 Elite
I. 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 Millionaires
I. 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 Class
I. 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 Suburbs
I. 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 Families
I. 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 Sexuality
I. 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 Children
I. 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.