Life in the emerging urban society Chapter 22

Challenge of urban growth • What were some of the reasons for the awful conditions in cities? • • Overcrowding Rapid population growth Open drains & sewers Coal fire factories Lack of public transportation Slow government reaction Lack of understanding spread of disease

The Modernization of Paris (Napoleon III) • Georges Haussmann appointed city planner of Paris redefine and update the city. • Haussmann tore down buildings to create long, wide boulevards that led to the center of the city. What’s the point? • No more revolutionary barricades • Built a system of aqueducts to double the amount of fresh water that was brought into the city.

Developing Public transportation • Electric streetcars (American) were adopted by the Europeans and it had an immediate affect on the citizens (1890 s). • What benefit does this technology provide? • This helped reduce the population pressure. • Suburban Commuting

Infectious Diseases • Disease would spread quickly in cities • Premature death more likely within cities than in the country • Cities kept population because of migration from rural areas.

The Public Health Movement • Miasmatic Theory contested that bad smells from excrement and decay cause disease. • Reasonable theory to make given available date • Bad drinking water was discovered to also cause disease which weakened the miasmatic theory • Research: Who were the early reformers in the Public Health Movement, and what contribution did they make to European society?

The Distribution of Income • Workers’ Wages: By 1850 Real Wages were up for mass of the population. • Income Gaps: Richest 5% received 1/3 of the national income. Bottom 30% received less than 10% of the national income (1900). • Low or no taxes on the rich. • The middle class accounted for less than 20% of the population.

The middle Classes • The increasingly diversified middle classes included… • Industrialists & merchants • Professionals in law, business, and medicine • Increased demand for experts with education & specialized knowledge. • “White Collar” workers • Upward social mobility

Middle Class Culture • Middle class devoted less time to business and more time to books, music, and travel. • Substantial portion of income spent on entertainment • Use of servants signified social status • Strict code of behavior and morality • Stressed hard work, self-discipline, and personal achievement.

Women’s fashion Crinoline dresses, Paris, 1859 Summer dress with bustle, England, 1875

The Corset

The Working Classes • The urban working classes were less unified. • Skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled workers • Divergent lifestyles and cultural values • The Labor Aristocracy—highly skilled workers (factory foremen, jewelers, printers, etc. ) • 15% of the working classes • Considered themselves the natural leaders • Distinct values middle class

Working Classes cont. … • Semi Skilled Workers in crafts carpenters, bricklayers, pipe fitters. • A large number of the semiskilled were factory workers, including substantial numbers of unmarried women. • Unskilled workers (day laborers) • Unorganized and divided, united only by the common fate of meager earnings and poor living conditions. • One of the largest components of the unskilled group was domestic servants

Working-Class Leisure and Religion • Drinking • Publically acceptable to drink (women too) • Sports and Music Halls • Rise in vaudeville theater • Religion • Urban populations increasingly more secular • Decline not seen in U. S. (ethnic rather than social connection)

Separate spheres Women Men • Lacked many basic legal rights. • Patriarchal model power and privilege. • Dominated decision making in political, economic, and legal affairs. • Higher on the evolutionary ladder. • Could be educated as long as did not interfere with housework. • Lower-class women could be domestic servants or factory workers. • Middle & Upper Class women could help with a family business. • Divorce, property, child custody • But not the “moral” ladder

Marriage and sexuality • Middle-Class Marriage and Courtship Rituals • Romantic Considerations • Courtship Marriage • Sexuality • Men took advantage of class status with servants & prostitutes Double standard • Working-Class Pre-Martial sex was more socially accepted • Decrease in illegitimacy

Prostitution • A widespread profession (licensed & registered). • Prostitutes seen as a stage of life • Changing social attitudes (1860 s) • Blamed for the spread of crime, and disease • Subjected to medical exams (British Contagious Diseases Acts) • Seen as social outsiders

Child rearing • Growing Love Toward Children • Mothers – love and concern for infants – breast feeding, not wet nursing • Fathers – encouraged fathers to be more affectionate • Reduction in family size Improve economic and social standing of children • Pressure placed on children • Upper: Emotional distance • Middle: Emotion pressure and discipline • Working: More independence

The Feminist Movement • Women’s Suffrage • Pankhurst Movement – protest marches, pressure on Parliament, jailed, hunger strikes, the vote in 1918. • Organizations to fight for equal legal rights (middle class) • Socialism: liberation required the whole working class Germany

How do we define “Modern”? • Authority of science and scientific method • Orientation toward technological solutions • Communications and transportation developments that accelerate the pace of life • High degree of organization, structure, impersonality in institutional life • Self-expression and inner states in the arts • Exploration and glorification of the irrational • Relativism in knowledge and values Dynamism of a Cyclist –Umberto Boccioni (1913)

The Triumph of Science • The Second Industrial Revolution (18801913): • Scientific breakthroughs laws of thermodynamics • Electricity, Internal Combustion Engine, R & D • Consequences: • Little room for divine intervention • “unscientific poem & religious revelations seemed inferior”

Natural Selection • Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744– 1829) Forms of life went through a long process of adjustment to the environment. • Charles Darwin (1809– 1882) - On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859) Evolution

Cont. … • Social Darwinism – Herbert Spencer (1820 - 1903) applied Darwin to humans “Survival of the Fittest” • Poor vs. wealthy • Justify nationalism & imperialism

The Social Sciences • The Modern University: • Data collected on children, population and crime Sociology • Understand, rather than revolutionize society (sorry Marx…) • Effects: • Positives: rationalization & modernization • Negatives: loss of community & tradition “anomie” Max Weber – German Sociologist

Realism • Realism: A literary movement that stressed the depiction of life as it actually was (1840 s-1890 s) • What are the key characteristics? • Contrast to Romanticism • Focus on the urban working classes • Leo Tolstoy (1828 -1869) • Greatest Russian realist • War and Peace fatalistic theory of human history The Third-Class Carriage – Honore Duamier (1864)