Transcript 7.2 The Challenges of Urbanization

7.2 The Challenges of
Urbanization
How did problems increase as
cities and populations grew?
Urban Opportunities
• Cities provided immigrants with more jobs
in factories and businesses; many settled
in cities in the Northeast and Midwest
• The result was urbanization, or growth of
cities, in those regions
• By 1910, immigrants made up more than
half the populations of 18 major American
cities
Continued
• Newcomers to the U.S. learned about their
new country through an education
program called the Americanization
movement
• Under this program, schools taught
immigrants English, and American history
and government, which helped them
become citizens
Urban and Rural Problems
• Machinery began replacing people on farms,
causing an exodus (great movement) of farmers
from south to north
• A large problem in cities was a housing
shortage; people lived in row houses or
tenements, which were multi-family urban
houses that were overcrowded and unsanitary
• Cities developed mass transit to help move the
growing amount of people around to work and
home
Reformers
• Social reformers worked to improve life in
cities
• One program was the Social Gospel
movement, which preached that people
reached salvation by helping the poor
• People established settlement houses, or
community centers located in slum
neighborhoods, to provide help to the poor
Continued
• Many of these houses were run by middleclass, college-educated women; the
houses offered schooling, nursing, and
other kinds of help to those in need
• One reformer who was well-known at the
time was Jane Addams, who established
Hull House in Chicago, one of the most
well known settlement houses of the era