Transportation

You are late to a very important business meeting at work, what is the quickest way for you to get there? Today we walk into the garage and take our own cars to work. However, the quickest way to get to work in the 1880s was to hop on a train.

Advancements in technology began to make traveling on a train more comfortable. In 1880, railroad companies began to use steam heat and electric lights. Around this time there were an abundance of problems in the railroad industry. Although they were improving the machinery and making production faster and more efficient, the workers were on strike. This caused the owners to slash wages and caused many workers to lose their jobs. The now higher cost to run the railroads caused many companies to work together and share equipment to save money and increase their profit.

Soon after the workers well publicized strike, a bicycle craze began. People began to use bicycles for recreation as well as alternative to traveling on the train. The method used to produce bicycles was later used to manufacture automobiles. Also during the protest by the train workers, drudge boats became an important use for shipping.

The advancements of the transportation industry help progress the city. These advancements encouraged innovation, culture, and entertainment. The transportation industry also opened the door to new technology such as streetlights, networks, and sewage systems.

Religion

Religion

Religion has its own history and plays its own distinct role throughout the world, including in the city. Some of the most important historical religious events happened in major cities throughout the world. For example, Christianity was originally brought to America in 1800 when European priests arrived. These priests were called Diocesans. Diocesan priests were under the local authority of the Diocesan officials. These priests established missions in different cities throughout America, including areas in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Texas, Mississippi, Arizona, and California. These priests demanded the people convert to Christianity, although they were met with much resistance. At times, the natives even killed the missionaries in revolt of this new religion (Butler, 20).

By the late 1800’s, Christianity had taken root in America. The African American culture particularly had taken a great pride in this new faith. In the 1890’s, southern African Americans and their churches migrated to the northern part of the United States. They started developing an extensive social services system that helped newcomers receive basic needs. Small homes and store front churches were founded and were quickly increasing in the ghettos. Catholicism had also attracted many African Americans because of their good schools.

Between 1950 and 1960, Dr. Martin Luther King led the civil rights movement. Many African Americans joined in this effort campaigning around the country. The main idea behind the civil rights movement was to secure progress of civil rights in America. Martin Luther King, Jr. is still referred to as a civil rights icon today.

In 1963, King’s civil rights efforts led to his March on Washington, where he delivered his “I have a dream” speech. During this march, he raised public awareness of civil rights and became one of America’s great orators.

In 1964, King became the youngest person to receive the Noble Peace Prize during his efforts to end racial segregation and racial discrimination through non-violent ways.

In 1968, King had refocused his civil rights efforts to ending the war in Vietnam and ending poverty (Butler, 51).

In the last 20 years, Protestantism has risen in place of the traditional forms of Christianity. According to David G. Hackett, “a religion of school based concerns with the intellectual history of Protestant main line has given way to religious studies interest in the social and cultural history.”

Poverty and Healthcare

Poverty & Healthcare:

The Depression of the 1930s dealt a devastating blow to large numbers of Americans: crushing poverty, hunger, humiliation, and loss of dignity and self-worth. In 1934 an Oklahoma woman wrote a letter to the president stating, “The unemployed have been so long without food-clothes-shoes-medical care-dental care etc-we look pretty bad-so when we ask for a job we don’t get it. And we look and feel a little worse each day-when we ask for food they call us bums-it isn’t our fault…no we are not bums.” Many families abandoned time-honored gender roles like women staying home and taking care of the family and men becoming the single breadwinner. Women began taking jobs known as “traditional women’s work” which was as secretaries, nurses, and waitresses. The pay was also lower then white man’s wages. A white woman working wages earned, on average, 61 percent of a white man’s wages; a black woman earned a mere 23 percent.

Many parents struggled to provide for their families sunder difficult conditions, sometimes risking their health and safety to do so. Erminia Pablita Ruiz Mercer remembered when her father was injured while working in the beet fields in 1933. “Hw didn’t want to live if he couldn’t support his family,” so he risked experimental back surgery and died on the operating table. Young Erminia then dropped out of school to work as “a doughnut girl” to support her mother and sisters. Mexican American families could barely survive on the low wages paid to Mexican America laborers. According to a 1933 study, working children’s earnings constituted more than one-third of their families’ total income. Julia Luna Mount recalled her first day at a Los Angeles cannery: “I didn’t have money for gloves so I peeled chilies all day long by hand. After work, my hands were red and swollen, and I was on fire! On the streetcar going home, I could hardly hold on my hands hurt so much.” Young Julie was lucky her father saw her suffering and did not make her return to the cannery. But Carmen Bernal Escobar’s father could not afford to be soft-hearted about work: “My father was a busboy and to keep the family going….in order to bring in a little more money…my mother, my grandmother, my mother’s brother, my sister and I all worked together” at the cannery. But those with cannery work, hard as it was, were fortunate. Many Mexican Americans were deported. Between 1931 and 1934, more then 500,000 Mexicans and Mexican Americans-approximately one-third of the Mexican populating in the United States-were sent to Mexico, most were children born in the United States.

Towering skyscrapers began to dot the urban landscape, symbolic of the triumph of commerce and corporate power. Science and technology reigned, changing the nature of work as well as the fruits of production. Professional organizations of educators, social workers, physicians, and scientists emerged, while experts with academic credentials became leaders of many public institutions. It seemed as though science could solve virtually anything. Hospitals did not assume their modern form until after the turn of the century when antiseptic methods were well established. Even then, surgery was often performed in private homes until the 1920s. Prior to 1920, the state of medical technology generally meant that very little could be done for many patients, and that most patients were treated in their homes. As the twentieth century progressed, several changes occurred that tended to increase the role that medicine played in people's lives and to shift the focus of treatment of acute illness from homes to hospitals. These changes caused the price of medical care to rise as demand for medical care increased and the cost of supplying medical care rose with increased standards of quality for physicians and hospitals.

Entertainment

American entertainment has come a long ways, since its beginnings. From the early 1900’s people have found ways to keep themselves entertained during some of our darkest times, such as war and depression. With the more people moving from the farms into city peoples leisure time began to increase also.

In the early 1900’s, a new type of leisure was developing. One is the most common types of entertainment was the radio. People listened to shows like Amos and Andy and Will Rogers. The world’s first movie theaters were created during this era using Thomas Edison’s 1888 invention of the Kinetoscope (Jones 456). The kinetoscope was a camera that did motion picture. From this invention the film industry was created. The city’s working class neighborhoods began to enjoy movies. They would see movies like Gone With The Wild. Now keep in mind the movies weren’t like the films you and I are use to seeing today. They were black and white without any sound.

Also around this time a popular music began to draw its own attention. Jazz music attracted all types of people. Cabarets and dance halls began to pop up all over the city. Also painters began to paint portraits of life in the city. Big bands began to form, and grow in popularity during the 1920s and 1930s. But by the 1940s the big bands began to breakup and become single artist. Jazz music also influenced the art industry. Artist began to paint pictures that reflected to city’s vibrant nightlife. These paintings exuded the vitality of urban life and conveyed a gritty reality without moral condemnation (Jones 458).

Later in the 1950s, television was becoming the new American past time. It was very different from the radio because the viewer got to see the entertainers. The first live national television broadcast in the United States took place on September 4, 1951 when President Harry Truman's speech at the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference in San Francisco, California. The cold war was going on and many watched for the fate of America. Television brought the entire family together. Many of the teens during this time enjoyed shows like Band Stand well their parents enjoyed shows like I Love Lucy. Comic strips became real popular during the 1960's. These popular comics became cartoons, which mostly children enjoyed.