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10/8 - 10/12

Posted by 6jandy on October 8, 2018 at 7:12pm

Monday : 

Monday 10/8

Why did cities grow so fast?

  • Immigrants
  • Farmers moved to the city
  • African-Americans moved to the cities after the civil war
  • Cities offered more jobs and opportunities
  • Cities offered more entertainment/culture
  1. Immigrants provided cheap labor
  2. Oil boom – why important?
    • Oil is what fueled the industrial revolution
  3. Bessemer process – cheaper way to make steel (henry Bessemer)
    • Steel, which built our country, would not have been possible at that time.
  4. Various inventions – why important
    • Electric light bulb – Thomas alva Edison – people could work during the night and still see
    • Typewriter – Christopher sholes – businesses started typing
    • Telephone – alexander graham bell – communication became easier
  5. Railroads – why important
    • Transportation for resources
    • Ships goods to consumers
  6. Captains of industry – Robber Barons
    • Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, JP Morgan, Henry Ford and others

Chapter 6.3 key questions

What are monopolies and why are they bad for consumers?

How did the government try to regulate business?

 

What are monopolies?

                Book definition: The exclusive possession or control of the supply or trade in a commodity or service

                Student friendly definition: When a company in a specific field tries to get rid of all their competition and control as close to 100% of the industry as possible

Why are monopolies bad for consumers and small business’?

- Can lead to higher prices due to lack of competition

- Can lead to poorer products due to lack of competition

- Less choice for the consumer

- Can drive smaller businesses out of business leading to unemployment

Sherman Anti-Trust Act-1890

  • Made it illegal to form a trust that interfered with free trade between states
  • What is a “trust”?
    • First act passed that allowed governments to break up monopolies/trusts

What are labor unions and Why are They important for workers?

  • It is a union of laborers in a specific industry banding together to get better wages and conditions
  • Power in numbers
  • Labor unions were/are important because it gives a voice for workers and gets better wages and conditions for workers .

Knights of labor

  • Started in 1869
  • Most famous leader of the Knights of Labor was Terrence Powderly
  • Allowed all workers of an industry to join

American Federation of Labor

  • Started in 1886 and still around today (AFL-CLO)
  • Led by Samuel Gompers
  • Broken into “craft unions”

What did abor unions do to get better wages and conditions?

  • Strikes – picketing
  • Sit -ins
  • Violence

Why did labor unions struggle to win strikes in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s

Tuesday: 

Tuesday 10/9

Why did Labor unions struggle to win strikes in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s

  • All power was in the hands of the owner
  • Would simply fire workers and hire immigrants who needed work
    • Immigrants had it better in US factories than in Europe
  • Would hire strikebreakers to take place of workers
  • Would impose lockouts
  • Would blacklist workers
  • Workers were called communists or socialists
  • Everyone was against the labor union/workers at first
    • Owners, police, newspapers, government

Chapter 7

Chapter 7.1 Key question

Why did immigrants come to the US?

Where did immigrants come from?

What problems/ issues did immigrants face on the trip over and once they got here?

Why did some people put restrictions on immigration? What were those restrictions?

Why did/do immigrants come to the US?

  • Push-pull factors
    • Famine
    • Land shortages
    • Religious or political persecution
    • War
    • In debt or in trouble
    • More opportunities - $$ - the American Dream
      • Farming (homestead act), mining, working on the railroad, cattle ranching, factory work
    • Reunite with family
    • “streets paved with gold”

Immigration today

  • What is immigration?
    • Leaving one county and going to another one
  • What is illegal immigration?
    • Leave without paper work and not the correct paperwork
  • Why do people want to come to the US either legally or illegally?
    • Opportunities
  • Why do US citizens get upset about illegal immigration?
    • Take jobs
    • Keep wages low
  • Why is it easy for politicians to ignore the problem of illegal immigration?
    • They wanted their votes for them, so didn’t want to step on their toes
  • What is birthright citizenship?
    • Born in the united states
    • You are a citizen
  • What are “anchor babies”? – Not a positive term but one that is used a lot
    • Mother will come into united states illegally just to have baby so it is a United States Citizen

Define Nativism

Define WASP

Wednesday: 

Wednesday 10/10

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled mess”

  • This quote comes from Emma lazarus’ poem “new colossus”
  • She wrote the poem for a fundraiser auction to raise money for the pedestal which the Statue of Liberty now sits

Old immigrants vs new immigrants

Old immigrants

  • Came form northern or western Europe
  • Were protestant
  • Were literate and skilled
  • Came over as families
  • Were quick to assimilate
  • Were experienced in the ways of democracy
  • Had some money in their pockets
  • Were tall and fair

New immigrants

  • Came from southern or eastern Europe
  • Were not Protestant – were catholic, orthodox, Jewish
  • Were illiterate and unskilled
  • Came over as birds of passage
  • Were clannish and reluctant to assimilate
  • Were radical or autocrats
  • Arrived impoverished
  • Were short and dark

Steps to America

  1. Step one – leaving home
    1. It was common for one person from a family to come to America first
    2. They would save to eventually bring others
    3. From 1900 to 1910, almost 95% of the immigrants arriving at Ellis island were joining either family or friends
    4. In 1901 between 40-65% came either on prepaid tickets or with money sent to them from the united states
  2. Step two – on board the ship
    1. A ticket to America cost $30
    2. Three types of accommodations – first class, second class and steerage
    3. Only steerage passengers were processed at Ellis Island
    4. First and second-class passengers were quickly “inspected” on board the ship
    5. Larger ship could hold from 1,500 to 2,00 immigrants, netting a profit of $45,000 to $60,000 for a single, one-way trip
  3. Step three – inspection
    1. passengers were inspected for contagious diseases such as cholera, plague, smallpox, typhoid fever, yellow fever, scarlet fever, measles and diphtheria
    2. If immigrants had any of the diseases, they would be deported
    3. sick children age 12 or older were sent back to Europe alone
    4. In total, about 20 percent of those arriving at Ellis Island were detained for medical treatment or a legal hearing
    5. 80% were free to go after only a few hours
    6. Only 2% of the immigrants seeking refuge in America would fail to be admitted
  4. Step four – Beyond Ellis or Angel Island
    1. as they left Ellis Island, the next stop was the Money Exchange
    2. cashiers exchanged paper money, from countries all over Europe, for American dollars
    3. then it was off to New York City or the railroad ticket office to go anywhere in the country that they wanted

Why were immigrants disliked in the US in the late 1800’s/ early 1900’s

  • Took jobs
  • Kept wages low
  • Different culture
  • Racism

 

Thursday 10/11

Chinese exclusion Act – 1881

  • Banned all Chinese immigration to the US from 1882- 1902
  • Why ban Chinese immigrants?
    • Racist

Gentleman’s agreement – 1907

  • Informal agreement between the United States and Japan
  • The goal was to reduce tensions between the US and Japan –
    • Japan beat Russia in war
    • Japan wasn’t happy about school segregation
  • Japan agreed not to issue passports for Japanese citizens wishing to work in the continental united states
  • The US agreed to
    1. Accept the presence of Japanese immigrants already living in the US and
    2. Permit the immigration of wives, children and parents
    3. End legal discrimination against Japanese – American children in California schools

Chapter 7.2 key questions

Why did cities grow so quickly in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s?

What problems did cities face due to the rapid increase in population?

What did people/organizations do to try to help the bad situation in the cities?

 

Why did cities grow so fast?

  • Immigrants
  • Farmers moved to the city
  • African-Americans moved to the cities
  • Cities offered more jobs and opportunities
  • Cities offered more entertainment

Tenement – place were many immigrants lived

Problems in the city

  • Cramped, old, dirty housing-tenements
    • Solutions:
      • Cities put restrictions on building wood-frame structures in the center of the city – Why?
      • Cities encouraged the construction of lower-income dwellings on the city’s outskirts – Why?
      • The Tenement House Act of 1867 defined a tenement for the first time and set construction regulations
      • Among these were the requirement of one toilet per 20 people
    • Tenement house law – 1901
      • Outlawed the construction of new tenements on 25-foot lots and mandated improved sanitary conditions, fire escaped and access to light
      • Current tenements were updated, and more than 200,000 new apartments were built over the next 15 years
    • Most tenements were destroyed in the 1920’s and especially the 1930s with FDR’s New deal
    • The first fully government – built public housing project opened in New York City in 1936
  • Lack of good transportation
    • Solutions:
      • Electric streetcars – late 1800’s, early 1900’s
      • Automobiles
        • There were 300 care in the united states in 1895, 78,000 in 1905, 459,000 in 1910 and 1.7 million in 1914
      • Lack of safe drinking water
        • Solutions:
          • In the late 1800’s, scientists had proven that diseases were spread through unsafe drinking water
          • In the early 1900s chlorine was added to the water to help eliminate diseases
          • Federal regulation of drinking water quality began in 1914 which continued to strengthen over the decades

Friday 10/12

  • Disease was common
    • Solutions:
      • Horses were replaced, eliminating the manure problem
      • Added chlorine to water
      • Introducing of indoor plumbing
      • George A. Waring Jr. – New your City - 1895
        • Organized modern recycling, street sweeping and garbage collection
      • Streets were filthy
        • Solutions:
          • Horses were replaced
          • Garbage was taken care of
        • Crime
          • Solutions:
            • Organized Police Force
            • Police became full time employees of the city – not volunteers
            • In 1838 – Boston established the first American police force
            • New York City – 1845
            • Chicago – 1851
            • By the 1800’s all major US cities had municipal police forces in place
            • 1911- fingerprints are accepted by US courts as a reliable means of identification
          • Fires
            • Solutions:
              • Already mentioned better building codes
              • Full time, paid firefighters
              • In 1853, Cincinnati became the first full-time, paid fire fighters in the US
            • Poverty due to low pay at work
              • Solutions:
                • Labor unions
                  • Minimum wage laws
                  • Shorter hours
                  • Child labor laws
                • Henry ford’s $5 day

Boss Tweed

  • Power in the city = political machines
  • Political machines controlled the activities of political parties in the city
  • Over charge tax payer
  • Corrupt
  • Vulture that picked the bones of New York City
  • Controls the ballot
  • In charge of the democratic political machine
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