Events
1876
Alexander Graham Bell invents telephone
1879
Thomas Edison invents lightbulb
1881
Booker T. Washington becomes president of Tuskegee
Institute
1882
Congress passes Chinese Exclusion Act
1889
Jane Addams founds Hull House in Chicago
1893
Lillian Wald founds Henry Street Settlement in New
York
1896
Supreme Court issues Plessy v. Ferguson ruling
Key People
-
Jane Addams
Social
activist; founded Hull House in 1889 to
assist poor Chicago immigrants
-
W. E. B. Du Bois
Black historian and sociologist; lobbied for equal
economic and social rights for African Americans
-
Booker T. Washington
President of Tuskegee Institute, the first major
black industrial college; believed that economic equality would
bring equal rights for blacks
Urbanization
The Gilded Age saw the United States shift from
an agricultural to an urban, industrial society, as millions of
Americans flocked to cities in the post–Civil War era.
Nearly 40 percent of Americans lived in urbanized
areas by 1900, as
opposed to 20 percent in 1860.
Many young people left the countryside in search of new wonders:
cities were at the height of modernization for the time, with skyscrapers,
electric trolleys, department stores, bridges, bicycles, indoor
plumbing, telephones, and electric lamps. Industrialization and
the rush to the cities led to the development of consumerism and
a middle class.
Mass Immigration
In addition to this major shift from rural to urban areas,
a new wave of immigration increased America’s population
significantly, especially in major cities. Immigrants came from
war-torn regions of southern and eastern Europe, such
as Italy, Greece, Poland, Russia, Croatia, and Czechoslovakia. This
new group of immigrants was poorer and less educated than the Irish
and German immigrants who had made the journey to the United States
earlier in the century. By the early twentieth century, more than
a million immigrants were entering eastern U.S. cities on a yearly
basis. Many immigrants could barely make a living, working as unskilled
laborers in factories or packinghouses for low wages.
Nativism
Many nativists—Americans descended primarily
from Irish and German immigrants (but not exclusively those groups)—claimed that
the newly arriving southern and eastern European immigrants would
not be able to assimilate into American society. They saw these
immigrants as illiterate and poor, unable to learn English and with
little experience living in a democratic society. Many of America’s
Protestants also disliked the fact that many of the new immigrants
were Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Jewish. Many Anglo-Saxon
Americans worried that eastern and southern Europeans would “outbreed”
them and take over their once-“pure” race. Many nativists joined
the American Protective Association to lobby for immigration
restrictions; Congress conceded and eventually barred criminals
and the extremely destitute from entry in 1882.
Nativists in the United States reserved special hatred
for Chinese immigrants—a group that had worked countless
hours of labor at low wages, especially on railroad construction
in the West. Unions pressed Congress to pass the Chinese Exclusion
Act in 1882,
completely banning Chinese immigration to the United States. Congress did
pass the act, and it remained in place until 1943.
Urban Slums
The sudden influx of millions of poor immigrants
led to the formation of slums in U.S. cities. These new city dwellers
lived in tenement buildings, often with entire families
living together in tiny one-room apartments and sharing a single
bathroom with other families on the floor. Tenements generally were
filthy, poorly ventilated, and poorly lit, making them a hospitable
environment for rats and disease.
Jane Addams and Hull House
A social reform movement emerged as a result of these
worsening living and working conditions in America’s cities. Foremost
among the reformers was Jane Addams, a college-educated
woman who founded Hull House in 1889 in
one of Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods. Hull House provided counseling,
day-care services, and adult education classes to help local immigrants.
