In Week 3, we explored the explosive economic growth and increased industrial production of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In this module, we’ll return to an examination of the impact of such economic expansion on the lives of Americans of diverse class backgrounds.
Three questions will guide this module blog post:
How did the United States transform from a rural to an urban nation in the early twentieth century?
What kinds of demands did workers make for access to social and political rights?
What kinds of problems did "modern civilization" pose for white, middle- and upper-class men and women and how did they cope?
Let's do it!
Part I: Urbanization
In the first decade of the twentieth century, the country’s economic output rose by 85 percent. This production was concentrated in relatively few corporations and trusts. By 1904, 1 percent of American companies produced 38 percent of all manufactured goods. Industrialization was accompanied by a rapid rise in population and the continued expansion of the consumer marketplace. As the country became more industrialized, it also became more urbanized.
By 1920, more Americans lived in cities than in rural areas. As you can see from the table below, this is quite a rapid expansion into a society that can be characterized as “urban” rather than rural. The largest cities grew at a spectacular rate: by 1910, 1.5 million people lived in Philadelphia, 2.1 million in Chicago, and 5 million in New York.
City conditions were often deplorable for many who lived there, especially those with lower incomes. Many “slums” were made up of tenements which were dimly lit, badly ventilated, and overpopulated.
Jacob Riis, a social reformer and documentary photographer, was one of the most influential observers of slums in New York City. He used photography to expose the poor living conditions of tenement dwellers to the more affluent members of society. He purposefully showed the most downtrodden, darkest sides of tenement life. His photographs are part of the reason why middle class reformers initiated programs for housing reform. You can read an excerpt from one of Riis' books, How the Other Half Lives, here.
Who were the people living in tenement houses? Immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe began moving to the US in large numbers in 1890. Between 1901 and 1914, about 13 million immigrants came to the US, mostly from Russia, Italy, and the Austro-Hungarian empire. They left their homelands to seek economic opportunity and to escape political turmoil at home.
Most European immigrants came to the US through Ellis Island, the nation’s main facility for processing immigrants, in New York Harbor. In the San Francisco Bay, Angel Island served as the main entry point for immigrants from Asia. In addition, between 1900 and 1930, one million Mexicans entered the US. By 1910, one-seventh of the American population was foreign-born, the highest percentage in the country’s history. By 1917, one of every three Americans was an immigrant or the child of one.
Muckrakers
The industrial urban environment was the setting for a new type of journalism called “muckraking,” which explored the social costs of urbanization and industrialization. More and more people were able to afford magazines, due to more cost effective methods of printing. Now writers could reach a much wider audience, and people wanted to read about what was going wrong in America.
Muckrakers exposed corruption in city governments, revealed alliances between police and criminals, went undercover in sweatshops and slums to expose harsh living and working conditions, and taught consumers about food adulteration.
For example, Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle in 1906, which described unsanitary slaughterhouses and the sale of rotten meat. The book stirred up so much public outrage that it led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act of 1906.
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A sample from The Jungle: “Perhaps they had a secret process for making chickens chemically—who knows? said Jurgis’s friend; the things that went into the mixture were tripe, and the fat of pork, and beef suet, and hearts of beef, and finally the waste ends of veal, when they had any. They put these up in several grades, and sold them at several prices; but the contents of the cans all came out of the same hopper.”
The act of exposing the “seedy underbelly” of the new industrial city helped to create a climate conducive to reform. Many reformers in this era saw the conditions exposed by these journalists—and photographers like Jacob Riis—and formulated policies and programs to find solutions for them.
These reformers were known as the “Progressives.” We’ll examine the Progressives in more detail in Module 12.
A New Consumer Society
Industrial capitalism in the cities led to a new mass-consumption society, where consumers now had access to a vast array of goods coming out of factories. They could buy things like vacuum cleaners, record players, and sewing machines at large department stores, chain stores in their neighborhoods, and retail mail-order houses.
Additionally, a growth of leisure activities like amusement parks, dance halls, and nickelodeons (five-cent movie theaters) attracted crowds of people.
The nature of work transformed in the early twentieth century, under new principles of “scientific management.” Large factories employed the principles of Taylorism, named for Fred Taylor. Rather than working as skilled workers or in sweatshops, many laborers now worked in large factories on assembly lines, doing one specific task in the production of a product.
It was no longer necessary for workers to possess a broad understanding of the processes in which they were engaged, rather, they needed to know how to do one specific task, in a specifically allotted amount of time.
Advocates of Taylorism studied and analyzed the amount of time it should take to do a certain task, and employed supervisors to keep unskilled laborers on task.
Henry Ford, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, employed methods of scientific management in his auto factories. He adopted the “moving assembly line” method of production, where car frames were brought to workers on a continuously moving conveyor belt.
This system enabled Ford to expand output by reducing the amount of time it took to make each car. In 1914, he raised wages at his factory, arguing that his employees should be able to afford the cars they were producing. This was quite different from the philosophies of other large corporations and companies, who saw higher wages as a detriment to profit.
This new ideology was known as Fordism: a new economic system based on mass production and mass consumption.
Poll #1:
The American workplace was dramatically changed in the early twentieth century. We can still see the impact of these changes today.
In your opinion, which of Ford's methods produced the greatest change for the American workforce? The moving assembly line (enabling mass production) or wage increases ( mass consumption)? Answer the poll below, or access it here.
Part II: Labor in the Early Twentieth Century
Most factories weren’t followers of Ford’s idea that workers should be able to afford the products they made. Rather, many immigrants performed low-wage, unskilled labor in factories, mines, railroads, and agriculture. In Part II, we’ll focus on examples of factory workers.
Many immigrants who worked in factory jobs were women and children. In 1910, about 25% of all women, 14 years and older, were part of the labor force. They often worked in horrible conditions, for twelve-fourteen hours a day, in order to contribute their wages to their families.
Pauline Newman, who started working at a hairbrush factory when she was just 10 years old, recorded her observations of her work environment:
“Most of the so-called factories were located in old wooden walkups with rickety stairs, splintered and sagging floors. The few windows were never washed and their broken panes were mended with cardboard…In the winter a stove stood in the middle of the floor, a concession to the need for heat, but its warmth rarely reached the workers seated near the windows. During the summer months the constant burning of gas jets added their unwelcome heat and smell to an atmosphere already intolerably humid and oppressive…There was no drinking water available…Dirt, smells, and vermin were as much a part of the surroundings as were the machines and the workers.” [1]
In garment factories, the invention and refinement of the industrial sewing machine forced workers to seed up their work. Workers were overseen by foremen who had the authority to fire them for speaking to each other, and who searched them when they left for the day, suspecting them of stealing materials.
The harsh working conditions had dire effects on the lives of workers in these factories. The most illustrative example of this was the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. The factory occupied the top three floors of a ten-story building in Greenwich Village. Five hundred workers, mostly Jewish and Italian immigrant women, worked producing ladies’ blouses. Fire broke out in the factory, and those who tried to escape discovered that the doors to the stairwell had been locked, which was the owner’s way of discouraging theft and unauthorized bathroom breaks.
The fire department’s ladders only reached the 6th floor of the building, prompting women to jump to the street below to escape the blaze. Forty-six women died from jumping onto the street, and 100 more were found dead inside the building.
Two years before the fire, massive strikes by workers in the ladies’ garment industry had ended with some concessions from management, but ultimately, not an improvement in safety conditions.
The 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire had a strong effect on public consciousness and sparked more efforts to organize the city’s workers, leading to new factory inspection laws and fire safety codes passed by the state legislature.
One strong presence among immigrant workers was the Socialist Party. Founded in 1901, by 1912, the Socialist Party claimed 150,000 dues paying members. In addition to calling for improvement for laborers’ working conditions, the party called for immediate reforms such as free college education, and democratic control over the economy through public ownership of railroads and factories. Socialism was quite popular throughout the early twentieth century. For example, Eugene Debs, who ran for president under the Socialist Party, received more than 900,000 votes (6 percent of the total) in 1912. Socialist Party members were elected in scores of local elections throughout the country.
Major nationwide unions also worked to improve laborers’ conditions. Two examples are the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, also known as the “Wobblies”). The AFL represented skilled industrial and craft labors, nearly all of whom were white, male, and native-born. The IWW was more open to racial and ethnic diversity in their membership, and were more radical in their mission. While the AFL sought to work with corporate leaders who were willing to negotiate with unions in order to stabilize employer-employee relations, the IWW had a larger vision of a workers’ revolution that would seize the means of production and abolish the state.
Additionally, smaller, more specific unions organized workers by trade or industry. A main example is the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU). In this union, men dominated the leadership, while women organized workers on the ground as part of the rank-and-file. This gender division caused conflict.
The 1909 Shirtwaist Uprising, also known as the “Strike of the 20,000” was a massive strike of women garment workers. The strike challenged many of the stereotypes that male unionists held of women workers. They were viewed as “difficult to organize” and “only an ephemeral part of the workforce.”
The 1909 Shirtwaist Uprising is often represented in history and popular memory as a “spontaneous” strike, which is untrue. Rather, the strike was sustained and organized by young women workers, many of whom were in their teens and early twenties. It was, as historian Annelise Orleck writes in Common Sense and a Little Fire, “a genuine grassroots protest.” [2]
The 1909 Shirtwaist Uprising was not the only strike in this era—all over the nation, in a variety of industries, workers went on strike, demanding the right to bargain collectively. In 1916, more American workers went on strike than in any previous year. On May 1, 1916, six hundred strikes occurred for the eight-hour work day.
An even larger wave of strikes took place in 1917. In 1919, more than 4 million workers engaged in strikes—the greatest wave of labor unrest in American history.
Workers demanded improvements to their jobs that we now consider basic: the eight-hour work day, safe conditions, and a “living wage.” But they also demanded the opportunity to enjoy the finer things in life, the opportunity to participate in a consumer society, and the opportunity for leisure. The slogan, “We want bread and roses too” was popular during this era, representing the vast array of changes that workers wanted to see.
Poll #2
Which demand articulated by strikers in the 1910s was the most important for the future of the American workplace? Which do you feel is most relevant to your job today?
The right to organize and bargain collectively? Safe working conditions? An eight-hour workday? The right and opportunity to enjoy leisure and consumer society? Answer the poll below, or access it here.
Part III: Gender and Civilization
How did American men and women cope with the changes wrought by industrial capitalism? In Part III, we’ll explore how doctors and psychologists theorized the impact of economic development and urbanization on the middle class and upper classes.
At the turn of the 20th century, a whole new generation of workers labored behind desks in offices rather than working in farms or factories. As the reference reading in The American Yawp for this module notes, there was widespread fear and anxiety about the impact of industrial capitalism on American men.
Neurasthenia and the Breakdown of American Manhood
Neurologist George Beard coined the term “neurasthenia” to describe the conditions plaguing the new class of white collar male workers. Symptoms included depression, indigestion, hypochondria, and extreme nervousness.
To Beard, a neurasthenic was like an undercharged electric battery. He lacked adequate power. Beard stated, “Men, like batteries, need a reserve force, and men, like batteries, need to be measured by the amount of this reserve, and not by what they are compelled to expend in ordinary daily life.”
Beard, like other doctors in the 19th century, believed that the body had a finite supply of “nerve force.” If a man overdrew that force, it could be debilitating.
The cause of neurasthenia was modern civilization itself. Beard wrote, “The chief and primary cause of this development and very rapid increase of nervousness is modern civilization.”
This diagnosis also had racial connotations. Because white men were supposedly the most “civilized” members of society, neurasthenia affected only them. Beard wrote that it, “scarcely exists among savages or barbarians, or semi-barbarians or partially civilized people.” [3]
Middle-class white women could also develop neurasthenia, but it affected them differently. Civilization supposedly exposed women to more demanding mental activity, draining their capacity to be healthy mothers. [4] Men, on the other hand, became neurasthenics because the increased pace and technological advancement of modern civilization placed greater demands on them as businessmen and professionals.
The men most in danger of becoming neurasthenics were middle- and upper-class businessmen and professionals. The pace of their work had increased due to all of the technological advancements of the age, draining them of their nervous energy. Thus, it was implicitly a disease of the upper and middle classes.
Beard and others warned that America could become a nation of emasculated men because neurasthenics had the organization of “women more than of men.”
They possessed a “muscular system comparatively small and feeble,” could not drink like men of the past, and were susceptible to the weakest stimulants, “like babes, we find no safe retreat, save in chocolate and milk and water.” Beard also warned that neurasthenics did not have the strength to have sex. He cautioned, “There is not force enough left in them to reproduce the species or go through the process of reproducing the species.”
Word Cloud #1:
Neurasthenia was a condition closely tied to the economic, social, and cultural developments of the age. Can you think of any medical issues or psychological conditions equivalent to neurasthenia in our society today? Are there any modern health issues people associate with advancements in technology, increased pace of life, new kinds of jobs, etc.?
Enter your response in the word cloud below, or access it here.
Recapitulation Theory
One of Beard’s close colleagues was G. Stanley Hall, a professor of pedagogy and psychology and founder of Clark University. Hall shared the belief that excessive modern civilization threatened young American men with weakness. He proposed a solution to neurasthenia based on “recapitulation theory.”
Recapitulation theory was the notion that as a child matured, they repeated the precise evolutionary path their ancestors had taken. The child experienced “growth periods” over time, achieving the newest advanced evolutionary traits, developed by the child’s parents or grandparents. Each child had to experience each “step” on the evolutionary ladder.
One could aid evolution by making certain that each generation of children developed to its highest potential so that they could then pass on the improvement to the next generation.
Advanced intelligence was only the highest, final evolutionary development. It came last, in adolescence. However, this final step only came to members of “advanced” races, whose ancestors had reached the top of the evolutionary ladder and were able to pave the way for the next generation.
Due to the racist scientific beliefs of the time, scientists believed that because Black children’s ancestors had not gone on to evolve to a higher level of intelligence, that Black children stopped developing at adolescence. Black adults were believed to be roughly as intelligent as "Anglo-Saxon" children, because their intellectual development supposedly stopped in the evolutionary stage which corresponded to white childhood.
These theories were rooted in extreme racial beliefs about natural intelligence and the notion that it was because non-white people hadn’t reached the evolutionary stage of whites that they hadn’t progressed in society. [5]
Hall believed that because children were in an evolutionary stage of primitivism or “savagery” they needed to fully experience that “savagery” in order to be better prepared for the civilized life of the modern world.
He wrote, “The child revels in savagery, and if its tribal, predatory, hunting, fishing, fighting, roving, idle playing proclivities could be indulged in the country and under conditions that now, alas! Seem hopelessly ideal, they could conceivably be so organized and directed as to be far more truly humanistic and liberal than all the best modern school can provide.” [6]
Summer Camps
One of the ways G. Stanley Hall’s theories took shape was through the foundation of camps and societies for upper- and middle-class children. At camps in the country, they could escape the city and experience physical challenges that would build their character. Starting with Ernest Balch’s foundation of the first boys’ camp, Camp Chocorua, set on an island in New Hampshire in 1880, parents began to send their children to these kinds of camps in New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Maine, and New York.
Camp Harvard, founded in 1882, planned to “furnish boys with a rational and healthy outdoor life during the summer months, where they can learn to swim, row, fish, do some tramping and mountain-climbing, and engage in other manly sports; form and cultivate good habits, and build up their bodily strength.” [7]
Many leaders of the summer camp movement firmly believed in Hall’s theories, seeing real benefits for boys to embrace “savagery” in natural settings, in order to better prepare them for modern life.
For example, Ernest Thompson Seton developed a group called the Woodcraft Indians, which utilized generalized and stereotyped “Indian culture” as a tool for white middle- and upper-class boys to act out their “inner savage.”
He wrote, “Most boys love to play Indian. They want to know about all the interesting things the Indians did that are possible for them to do. It adds great pleasure to the lives of such boys when they know they can go right out in the holidays and camp in the woods just as the Indians did and make all their own weapons in Indian style as well as rule themselves after the manner of a band of Redmen.” [8]
As Woodcraft Indians, boys earned awards called Coups and Grand Coups, after the practice of Plains warriors who proved their valor for “counting coups.” Plains warriors earned honors for touching the body of a dead enemy or touching a live opponent in battle. Woodcraft boys earned theirs by demonstrating their knowledge of woodcraft or physical prowess.
(Keep in mind that these summer camps were occurring at the exact same time as reformers and teachers in boarding schools were punishing Native children for speaking their languages and expressing their cultures.)
Seton’s “Indian” programs were a large part of the core curriculum at summer camps by the end of the 1910s. Seton also joined with the new scouting movement, although the Boy Scouts was not not founded explicitly as a place where young boys could “play Indian.” Rather, Boy Scouts featured a program that was more militaristic and with the start of World War I, more focused on patriotism.
Poll #3:
In your opinion, were programs like summer camps and Woodcraft Indians more about race, class or gender? Answer the poll below or access it here.
Seton’s Indian program was adopted by the Boy Scouts’ twin organization for girls, the Camp Fire Girls. The primary founders of the Camp Fire Girls, Luther and Charlotte Gulick, created a program called Wo-He-Lo, a Native sounding acronym for the Camp Fire tenets of Work, Health, and Love. At camp Wo-He-Lo, girls chose “Indian names,” made their own ceremonial dresses and beaded headbands, and earned “coups” for various accomplishments.
However, the tasks they completed to earn their “coups” were starkly different from those earned by Woodcraft boys. Girls learned about the value of domestic work, and learned to appreciate art, beauty, and healthy natural living.
Girls learned how to make ten standard soups, recognize three kinds of baby cries, and keep a daily account book. Thus, while camping and playing Indian was about restoring masculinity to upper- and middle-class boys, for girls it reaffirmed the importance of domesticity and service.
According to Charlotte Gulick, “The bearing and raising of children has always been the first duty of most women, and that must always continue to be. This involves service, constant service, self-forgetfulness, and always service. I suggest that the fire be taken as the symbol of the girl’s movement, the domestic fire—not the wild fire—and that from the first the very meaning of the fire be explained to her in poetry and dance.” [9]
Neurasthenia and Women
Camp Fire’s promotion of service and finding the beauty in unpaid domestic labor was in line with the thinking of the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which placed upper-and middle-class white women in a sphere devoted to motherhood and family.
Women became neurasthenics when they tried to combine their “normal function”—motherhood—with the masculine demands of modern civilization.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, whose short story and interview are required readings for this module, was diagnosed with neurasthenia.
George Beard believed that the “mental activity of women” was one of the most dangerous developments of modern civilization. In order to cure themselves, neurasthenic women had to devote themselves exclusively to domesticity and the home.
Gilman wrote that she was advised to “live as domestic a life as far as possible,” to “have but two hours’ intellectual life a day,” and “never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again.” Gilman wrote that after obeying these instructions for three months, she “came so near to the borderline of utter mental ruin that I could see over.”
Gilman began to play like a child, crawling on the floor and playing with toys. Or, according to the leading recapitulation theorists, with whom Gilman was very familiar, she began to behave “savagely,” at a stage of evolution less than civilization.
Gilman later elaborated on this in her book, The Home, which argued that civilized white women were forced to live at home, doing drudgery in primitive conditions. She argued in other writings that American women became neurasthenic because, as highly evolved civilized human beings, they suffered from living such a primitive life in the home. [10]
Thus, there was an explicit connection between Gilman’s feminism and her belief in the theories of evolution and civilization which placed white "Anglo-Saxons" at the top of the evolutionary ladder.
To Gilman, there were only two options: she could be healthy, but primitive, exiled from civilization; or a neurasthenic intellectual, useless to civilization.
She chose to leave her husband and start a new life, working as a writer and reformer, away from the traditional “women’s sphere.” Between 1888, when she left her husband, and 1935, when she died, Gilman wrote and published 8 novels, 171 short stories, 473 poems, and 1,472 nonfiction pieces (nine of them book-length).
Gilman always believed she was a neurasthenic. But she insisted that other women like herself—white women—were also civilized members of their race. She argued that the advancement of civilization was as much (white) women’s concern as men’s.
Conclusion
Explosive economic growth and a massive influx of immigrants transformed the United States into an urban nation by 1920.
Through strikes demanding recognition of unions and collective bargaining rights, workers demanded to be treated with respect by employers and the opportunity to participate in the growing consumer society.
The negative impact of “modern civilization” on the nervous energy of men and women demanded that men embrace the primitive parts of themselves to guard against the dangers of modern civilized life and women practice only domestic tasks and refrain from intellectual activities.
Citations
[1] Annelise Orleck, Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working-Class Politics in the United States, 1900-1965 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 32.
[2] Orleck, Common Sense and a Little Fire, 57.
[3] Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 85-86.
[4] Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, 100.
[5] Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, 93.
[6] Philip Deloria, Playing Indian (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 107.
[7] Deloria, Playing Indian, 102.
[8] Deloria, Playing Indian, 107.
[9] Deloria, Playing Indian, 113.
[10] Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, 132.
Which demand articulated by strikers in the 1910s was the most important for the future of the American workplace? In other words, which do you feel is most relevant to your job today?
I think safe working conditions was the first thing on the strikers minds since the other options seem to be more of a preferred asset.
The conversations I saw relating to gender and summer camps were really interesting. It is almost easier to see the stark differences between boys' and girls' camp experiences because all campers (regardless of gender) shared some experiences--they all came from white, mostly upper-class backgrounds. It was a specific segment of the population who was thought to "need" the escape that summer camps provided. With that segmentation already done, they were further divided based on gendered expectations.
On the issue of labor demands of strikers in the 1910s, I thought it was so interesting that no one chose an 8-hour workday. Whitney's comment about this was great--it is just not plausible for many jobs today to be structured around an 8-hour…
With the future laid ahead of them, many changes where taken in the rapid advancement of the country. Henry Ford's assembly line of mass production is a huge impact. Still commonly used even today. One of the differences in the way workers are hired. By using Hiring firms to contract workers, companies can avoid giving contractors employee benefits that other permanent workers are given. While Ford may have taken steps to increase wages, it's not too common today. The assembly line also makes it far easier to implement automated machines which also decreases the need for workers. A very important and key part of indsutrial advancement. This key change in production which heavily influence today's factories still.
Which demand articulated by strikers in the 1910s was the most important for the future of the American workplace? In other words, which do you feel is most relevant to your job today?
I chose safe working conditions in relation to today's world. With everything going on, it is extremely important to stay safe and healthy during these tough times. Everyone wants to be heading into a safe environment and not have to think that they are risking their own lives.
In your opinion, were programs like summer camps and Woodcraft Indians more about: Gender.
Because there seem to be different organizations for girls and boys. For example, The camp fire was for girls, where they made their own dresses, headbands....etc. And, Woodcraft Indians, is where boys earned awards called Coups, after practicing Plains warriors, since they have more knowledge an physical power.