Jon
"Present tendencies are hurrying modern society toward inevitable catastrophe," - Henry George
How popular was this opinion in the eye of the public at the time?Luke
- Why did Frederick Olmstead have to argue so much about cities needing parks, when most his audience would be open to his ideas and understand all the benefits of what a park offers to people?
- How come department stores hired women to make up most of its employees and did not desire to have men work in them that much?
Cristin
“Josiah Strong in his tract of 1886 painted the city as the "storm center" of "our civilization," its "most serious menace." His portrait is utterly of a City of Destruction: "Here the sway of Mammon is widest ... Here luxuries are gathered-everything that dazzles the eye, or tempts the appetite ... Dives and Lazarus are brought face to face; here, in sharp contrast, are the ennui of surfeit and the desperation of starvation." Poverty breeds discontent and socialism, he wrote in that year of upheaval, multiplying "the dangerous elements": "Here is heaped the social dynamite; here roughs, gamblers, thieves, robbers, lawless and desperate men of all sorts, congregate, men who are ready on any pretext to raise riots." ~ He is truthful in saying that the picture depicted what America is really like. It is not always the land of opportunity and full of success, there are many jaded parts that is what America.
“But two significant changes of emphasis occurred. The sheer intensity of growth, in population, in territory, in material shape, resulted in a critical crossing of a line between "city" and "great city," or metropolis. With the rise of the metropolis (New York and Chicago the most typical) came an awareness of new regions of mystery, and new attitudes toward it.” The expansion of America I think did bring a lot of heartache for the country. The population grew and there was more land. People were crammed in the cities or great cities which brought on crime and destruction. People lived too close together and in small spaces. The cities had many different people with different beliefs which brought on awareness.Emily
When cities turned into metropolises like New York City and Chicago how did this effect social classes? How did the reform effect social classes?
How did department store change the lifestyles of people living during this time?Jen
1.) Were small towns extremely hurt when many people moved into the cities?
2.) Why did the city seem so mysterious due to the crime because wasn't there always crime before big cities?Ann-Marie
Mysteries of the Great City talked about the build up of new cities in the United States. There was a large push to the cities during the early 19th century. “Cities expanded not by absolute increases in population alone but also by thickening regional networks of transport and communication” (Trachtenberg, 113). A quote that I found interesting was about the was people tried to “clean up” the cities and taking into account the impact cities were having on American culture. “Calling for a restoration of goodness, cleanliness, light they found the “other half” and its teeming streets unfathomable and threatening. More parks, better street lamps, a firm hand against the Molly Maguires: these campaigns against the mystery failed to comprehend the city as a social force whose fusion of factory, marketplace, and home in a process pf incorporation reshaped the entire society and its culture,” (Trachtenberg, 112).
Another quote that I found interesting was dealing with the way the cities were set up. Trachtenberg talks about the way that Washington D.C. is the only city in the United States that is set up in a Baroque style. “With the exception of Washington, conceived from the outset as a ceremonial city in the style of the Baroque, American cities had almost universally adopted the “grid” as their basic scheme,” (Trachtenberg, 115). If you look at cities especially on the east coast, like New York city or Boston, they are most definitely set up in a grid like pattern. These parcels were sold as separate plots to be “filled in at the will of the owner” in accordance with public regulation.MIke
In the fourth section of Trachtenberg's chapter "Mysteries of the Great City" the reader learns "Here the citizen met a new world of goods: not goods alone, but a world of goods, constructed and shaped by the store into objects of desire (130)." Trachtenberg is speaking about how America in the late 1800's was starting to shift from mom and pop stores towards to department stores. Department stores could offer more goods services than a single mom/ pop specialty store could. Trachtenberg goes on to add department stores "were staging gounds for making and confirming of new relations between goods and people (133)." How much influence did department stores have on peoples' lives and what was the general feeling towards department stores? Did people dislike the fact that they put mom and pop stores out of business much like people think about big chain stores today?
Kevin
1.) For Jane Addams, the major tool for social change could be found in the appropriate implementation of educational methods. She believed that the root cause of the social and economic ills of the industrial world came from the failure of government, the schools, and religious groups to redefine democracy. Another argument that could be made for one's social and economic ills could be that the individual lacked the work ehtic or the the suitable upbringing. It would be a case of indivial initiative and one's expectations of himself/herself rather than the deficiency of the government that would lead to economic and social ills. What would Jane Addams most likely think of that kind of an argument?
2.) American Vaudeville supposedly marked the beginning of popular entertainmnent in America. Getting very popular in the years following The Civil War, how popular was this in comparison to Buffalo Bill and the entertainment he provided. Did each have different audiences entirely or were they pretty much equal in what they contributed to American culture?John
- After reading about the conditions in New York City, did the government really have that little control or power? There were no public works, municipal departments, and basic order?
2. The way New York City was described it seems like it wasn’t that nice of a place to be living in. Was it really as dreadful as it sounds, or was it just the way it was at for that period of time? Were public works and civil services as bad in other parts of the country as in New York?
Frank
1. This may sound like a rather stupid question, but I am curious over whether or not the government stepped in to regulate how many people were moving into the cities during the later 1800s. Trachtenberg references the growing popularity of the city quite often, and it can be greatly seen in the following statement:
"In a common observation, the rise of the city implied the decline of the countryside...The term "metropolis" signified a commanding position within a region which included hinterland. New economic, social, and political relations between the center and its outlying districts manifest themselves in the postwar decades as rise and fall, prosperity and impoverishment."
Considering our country up until that time was so agriculturally dependant when it came to living and working conditions and was now shifting gears towards city-life, was there any intervention on the part of the government to ensure that there were enough farms to continue food production or trade with other countries? It sounds crazy, but in the past I have read about situations where the "city-craze" encouraged farmers to sell their property and go off and work in the city. I didnt know if the government tried to prevent further actions, or if at all, bail the country out if there was a severe shortage of agricultural manufacturers.
2. "The main principle was rising land value that followed from greater, more concentrated use of downtown areas; as land rose in value, greater profits accrued to greater improvements."
It causes me to wonder a great deal when reading this statement - with the rising land values during this time period - why didn't more people retain their countryside property, as opposed to going and working underneath a high executive official in the city?Kerri
1. I was wonderding why no one besides Fredrick Law Olmsted offeered "deliberate anyalysis"?(pg 107) Was this becuase he was a person of high stature?
2.It seems as though one of the great mysteries of the great city is the internal competition among people?I felt as though this drove people to be more ambitious..Is this true?
