Chapter 15 Section 2 Guided Reading

15-2 GUIDED READING

1)

Reasons for being drawn to cities in the Northeast and Midwest:

Immigrants: Cities were the cheapest and most convenient places to live. They also offered many jobs for unskilled laborers at mills and factories.

Farmers: Advances in technology made farming more efficient but fewer laborers were needed to work the land. Many farms merged, and many rural people moved to cities to find work.

African-Americans: Many left their homes to escape racial violence, economic hardship, and political oppression.

2)

Problems and what were done about them:

Lack of safe and efficient transportation: Innovations in mass transit were made to enable workers to get to jobs easier. Street cars were introduced in San Francisco in 1873 and electric subways to Boston in 1897.

Unsafe drinking water: Cities such as New York and Cleveland built public waterworks. Filtration was introduced in the 1870s and chlorination in 1908, because the piped water was still unsanitary and inadequate, if the people had any at all

Lack of sanitation: By 1900 many cities had developed sewer lines and created sanitation departments, although this did not solve the problem completely. Private contractors called scavengers were hired to sweep the streets, collect garbage, and clean outhouses; however, they often did inadequate jobs.

Fire hazards: Cincinnati solved the problem of firemen not always being available by starting the first paid fire department in 1853. Most cities had professional fire departments by 1900. The introduction of the practical automatic fire sprinkler and the replacement of wood with brick, stone of concrete as building materials also made cities safer.

Crime: New York City organized the first full-time, paid police force in 1844, but most of them were too small to have much of an effect.

Urbanization: The growth of cities.

Social Gospel movement: A program that preached salvation thorough service to the poor.

Settlement houses: Inspired by the Social Gospel movement, some reformers established settlement houses, community centers in slum neighborhoods which provided help and assistance to the people, especially immigrants, in the area.

Jane Addams: One of the most influential members of the Settlement house movement and Ellen Gates Starr founded Chicago’s Hull House in 1889; one of the first. By 1910, about 400 settlement houses existed throughout the country.