James Lincoln Collier - The Rise of the Cities: 1820 - 1920

T HE D RAMA OF A MERICAN H ISTORY

The RISE of the CITIES

18201920

Christopher Collier

James Lincoln Collier

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: The authors wish to thank Michael H. Ebner, A.B. Dick Professor of History and Department Chair, Lake Forest College, for his careful reading of the text of this volume of The Drama of American History and his thoughtful and useful comments. The work has been much improved by Professor Ebner's notes. The authors are greatly in his debt, but, of course, assume full responsibility for the substance of the work, including any errors that may appear.

Photo research by James Lincoln Collier

COVER PHOTO: New York Public Library

PICTURE CREDITS: The photographs in this book are used by permission and through the courtesy of:

Chapter I: Corbis : modern Chicago at night. New York Public Library : Roman Forum, gun parts factory, St. Louis, early Chicago. Calumet : Charleston.

Chapter II: New York Public Library : farm machinery advertisement, Harry Hill's saloon, Erie Canal, Old Ironsides, 1864 railroad, immigration at Castle Garden, medical checkup at Ellis Island.

Chapter III: Corbis : Venice, Sears Tower under construction. New York Public Library : Wilkinson Mill, Edison: A Biography , Niblo's Garden, baseball cards. Museum of the City of New York : horse-drawn trolley, electric trolley.

Chapter IV: New York Public Library : early fire department, children playing in a gutter, child worker in a textile factory.

Chapter V: Corbis : Italian immigrants at Ellis Island, homeless barefoot boys. New York Public Library : Central Park Reservoir.

Chapter VI: Corbis : Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, Jacob Riis, destruction in Galveston, destruction in Dayton, victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.

2001 Christopher Collier and James Lincoln Collier

All rights reserved. No part of this text may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the copyright holders.

First ebook edition 2012 by AudioGO. All Rights Reserved.

Trade ISBN 978-1-62064-521-5

Library ISBN 978-0-7927-9578-0

The RISE of the CITIES

18201920

C ONTENTS

P REFACE

OVER MANY YEARS of both teaching and writing for students at all levels, from grammar school to graduate school, it has been borne in on us that many, if not most, American history textbooks suffer from trying to include everything of any moment in the history of the nation. Students become lost in a swamp of factual information, and as a consequence lose track of how those facts fit together and why they are significant and relevant to the world today.

In this series, our effort has been to strip the vast amount of available detail down to a central core. Our aim is to draw in bold strokes, providing enough information, but no more than is necessary, to bring out the basic themes of the American story, and what they mean to us now. We believe that it is surely more important for students to grasp the underlying concepts and ideas that emerge from the movement of history, than to memorize an array of facts and figures.

The difference between this series and many standard texts lies in what has been left out. We are convinced that students will better remember the important themes if they are not buried under a heap of names, dates, and places.

In this sense, our primary goal is what might be called citizenship education. We think it is critically important for America as a nation and Americans as individuals to understand the origins and workings of the public institutions that are central to American society. We have asked ourselves again and again what is most important for citizens of our democracy to know so they can most effectively make the system work for them and the nation. For this reason, we have focused on political and institutional history, leaving social and cultural history less well developed.

This series is divided into volumes that move chronologically through the American story. Each is built around a single topic, such as the Pilgrims, the Constitutional Convention, or immigration. Each volume has been written so that it can stand alone, for students who wish to research a given topic. As a consequence, in many cases material from previous volumes is repeated, usually in abbreviated form, to set the topic in its historical context. That is to say, students of the Constitutional Convention must be given some idea of relations with England, and why the Revolution was fought, even though the material was covered in detail in a previous volume. Readers should find that each volume tells an entire story that can be read with or without reference to other volumes.

Despite our belief that it is of the first importance to outline sharply basic concepts and generalizations, we have not neglected the great dramas of American history. The stories that will hold the attention of students are here, and we believe they will help the concepts they illustrate to stick in their minds. We think, for example, that knowing of Abraham Baldwin's brave and dramatic decision to vote with the small states at the Constitutional Convention will bring alive the Connecticut Compromise, out of which grew the American Senate.

Each of these volumes has been read by esteemed specialists in its particular topic; we have benefited from their comments.

C HAPTER I: T HE F IRST A MERICAN C ITIES

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to imagine modern life without cities. It is true that today the majority of Americans live outside of cities in the suburbs, small towns, or the countryside. Yet by far the majority of Americans live in what are called "metropolitan areas"that is, a city and the suburbs that surround it. We may live in suburbs, but our lives are focused on cities. They are where the majority of Americans work, where the sports and entertainment so important to us are produced, where the financial systems are controlled, where our medical centers and our museums, concert halls, and other cultural institutions are located. For most Americans, life is centered on cities.

Given how important cities are to us today, it is surprising how recently they came among human societies. A few very small citieshardly more than small townssprang up perhaps ten thousand years ago, but there were very few of them in the whole world. Only slowly did cities grow in number and size. As recently as two hundred years ago the vast majority of human beings around the worldover 90 percentlived in villages, on farms, or wandered as nomads through prairies and deserts.

Nonetheless, cities have always been more important to us than their numbers suggest. Kings, priests, and parliaments have usually reigned from cities. The rulers of ancient cities like Rome, Alexandria, Babylon, and Peking often dominated huge areas of land around them; and in more recent times it was people living in cities like Venice, Paris, Timbuktu, and Tenochtitln that commanded their cultures, producing the ideas and the wealth that made their societies important.