Title: The Growing Pains of Urbanization, 1870—1900 | U.S. History II: 1877 to Present
Headings: The Growing Pains of Urbanization, 1870—1900
The Growing Pains of Urbanization, 1870—1900
The Growing Pains of Urbanization, 1870—1900
Urbanization and Its Challenges
The Keys to Successful Urbanization
Electric Lighting
Communications Improvements
Intra-City Transportation
The Rise of Skyscrapers
Jacob Riis and the Window Into “How the Other Half Lives”
The Immediate Challenges of Urban Life

Content: In addition to the challenges of language, class, race, and ethnicity, these new arrivals dealt with low wages, overcrowded buildings, poor sanitation, and widespread disease. The land of opportunity, it seemed, did not always deliver on its promises. ( 2)
Urbanization and Its Challenges
Urbanization occurred rapidly in the second half of the nineteenth century in the United States for a number of reasons. The new technologies of the time led to a massive leap in industrialization, requiring large numbers of workers. New electric lights and powerful machinery allowed factories to run twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Workers were forced into grueling twelve-hour shifts, requiring them to live close to the factories. While the work was dangerous and difficult, many Americans were willing to leave behind the declining prospects of preindustrial agriculture in the hope of better wages in industrial labor. Furthermore, problems ranging from famine to religious persecution led a new wave of immigrants to arrive from central, eastern, and southern Europe, many of whom settled and found work near the cities where they first arrived. Immigrants sought solace and comfort among others who shared the same language and customs, and the nation’s cities became an invaluable economic and cultural resource. Although cities such as Philadelphia, Boston, and New York sprang up from the initial days of colonial settlement, the explosion in urban population growth did not occur until the mid-nineteenth century.