The late 1800s in America was a time of new industry and many amazing inventions. The inventions of skyscrapers, light bulbs, telephones, electric trolleys, and cars brought more people from the country to the cities.
The factories in the cities, as well as other kinds of business and manufacturing, brought the promise of new jobs. These factories were making new inventions, such as typewriters (1868), Kodak cameras (1888), and vacuum cleaners (1899). In the 30 years between 1860 and 1890, the U.S. government granted over 400,000 patents for new products and inventions. These new inventions made life easier, created new jobs, and allowed people to relocate more easily. They also radically changed the way people lived. After all, can you possibly imagine living without lights or phones?
Yet not everyone thrived in cities. For many, cities became places of great poverty, overcrowding, crime, discrimination, and corruption.
Mulberry Street in New York City's Little Italy around 1900
As America began to embrace the Industrial Revolution after the Civil War, the nation began to enter a new Age of Industry. Thomas Jefferson had once wanted America to be a nation of educated farmers. However, despite a still large and necessary rural population, the cities and factories continued to grow, and financial centers developed the rivaled London many times over. American cities grew rapidly after the Civil War. In 1870, one American in four lived in cities with 2,500 or more people. By 1910 nearly half of the American population were city dwellers. The United States was changing from a rural to an urban nation. Immigrants played an enormous part in the growth of cities. In major urban centers such as New York, Detroit, and Chicago, immigrants and their children made up 80 percent or more of the population in 1890.
City life was both exciting and new while at the same time showing the worst of life and the human condition. Ideas and goods could be shared easily, and cities were huge markets. Technology improved life, and city skylines were soon dotted with skyscrapers, tall buildings not possible to even exist just years before. Yet, cities also were centers of population, and most were crowded into tight tenement buildings and apartment houses in the slums. Disease, crime, and pollution made life terrible for many that would find themselves working in industry.
Women working at textile machines, beaming and inspecting yarn, at the American Woolen Company in Boston circa 1910
Native-born Americans also contributed to urban growth. Americans moved in huge numbers from farming areas to cities, looking for jobs. The industrialization of America had changed work on farms. New farm machinery made it possible to produce crops, using fewer farmworkers. In addition, women in rural areas no longer had to make clothing and household goods. These items, made by machine, could now be bought in stores or from catalogs. Freed from such chores, many women left farms to look for jobs in the cities.
African Americans also migrated to cities in large numbers. Most of the country’s African American population lived in the rural South in severe poverty. Many African Americans began moving to Southern cities in search of jobs and to escape debt, injustice, or discrimination. After 1914, many African Americans moved to Northern cities, which offered more jobs in industry and manufacturing than Southern cities did. Many African Americans also hoped to find less discrimination and violence in the North.
| Why was the small farmer being displaced? | Increases in technology made farms larger, making small farmers obsolete. |
| What plagued the slums of the urban communities? | overcrowding, disease, discrimination, and crime |
| In 1860, one-sixth of Americans lived in cities. By 1900, what percent of Americans lived in cities? | one-third |
