Gilded Age Industrialization, Urbanization, & Immigration (Unit V)

The process of industrialization created a virtual revolution in the lives, work, play, and thought of most Americans. Those who went off to war for the Union or the Confederacy in many ways were pre-modern Americans who lived mostly on farms and in small towns; used human and animal labor to produce food and make articles for the home; read by candlelight; enjoyed recreation and entertainment at harvest festivals, church socials and singings; and lived lives that were simple, sometimes hard, and often short. The lives of their own sons and daughters, however, were vastly different in many ways. To begin with, an increasing number of Americans born after the Civil War worked off the farm, many in jobs that did not even exist prior to the Civil War. Moreover, new inventions profoundly altered people’s lives. In 1876 Alexander Graham Bell gave the first public demonstration of a telephone, and by 1900 there were 1.5 million telephones that revolutionized business practices, vastly decreased rural isolation, and in general sped communications. Three years later in 1879 in his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, inventor Thomas Alva Edison produced the first incandescent lamp, in which the light bulb burned for over thirteen hours.

Between 1880 and 1930, nearly 24 million new immigrants arrive in the United States. Many go to work building a new frontier: the modern city. The high cost of land in cities like New York and Chicago means the only way to build is up. A new kind of building, the skyscraper, is made possible by steel. Produced on a massive scale, steel production underpins the infrastructure of the modern city.

This new urban frontier depends on the labor of rural migrants and newly arrived immigrant workers to grow. For many, the Statue of Liberty is their first sight of the New World and Ellis Island is the gateway to the American Dream. The lawless city offers opportunities for many and astronomical wealth for a few. The millions flocking to urban areas of the U.S. often experience terrible conditions in disease-ridden tenements. Jacob Riis, photographer and reformer, brings their plight to the world with his groundbreaking photographs in the book “How the Other Half Lives.” Workers in new high-rise factories become urban martyrs in New York City’s Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire in March of 1911, as the city struggles to make these new buildings safe. Powered by steel and electricity, the city begins to be tamed and defined by mass transportation, stunning skylines, electric light...and the industrious American spirit.