Hi, my name is Brandon L. from Mr. Salvucci’s pd. 9 20th Century History class.

Information for this blog was found on the following website:  http://books.google.com/books?id=1Zb3-2UxHyUC&pg=PT553&lpg=PT553&dq=problems+of+urban+growth+in+the+early+1900s&source=bl&ots=jWEIZQ0gvt&sig=fiw7dRaJd5fRJwpwXUdmmCENYhM&hl=en&ei=lY-0TKajLMP6lwfGgujHCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false

Information was also obtained from the American Odyssey book.

Urban growth became a problem for the United States in the early 1900s.  People moved into the cities of this country from Europe, trying to find a new life and new jobs.  In the United States people also moved up north from the rural south in search of jobs.  This caused overcrowding in the cities and buildings in the cities.  There wasn’t enough room for people to live.  They crammed families and relatives into small, one room apartments and the living conditions were bad.  It was overcrowded and unsanitary.

The living conditions were bad for the newcomers to the city, but it was worse for African Americans.  Because of the prejudice towards African Americans, they were forced to live in the smallest areas of the city in the worst apartments where the  living conditions were horrible and overcrowded.

It was also dangerous if there were fires in the buildings because they did not have any safety regulations at that time.  People didn’t have fire escapes or routes to go when there was a fire and many people would die when they panicked and couldn’t get out on time.  Many people also died from smoke inhalation because they may have been asleep when a fire occurred and since there weren’t any smoke alarms, they didn’t even know there was a fire.

As so many cities grew, so did violence.   The murder rate had increased from 1.2% to 6.8% per 100,000 people.  This occurred because many jobs that people got did not pay well at all.  The people were poor and had to supplement their income.  The problem was, the way they did it was  illegal.  People resorted to gambling, robbery and extortion to try to get more money to take care of their families.  Women turned to prostitution.  There were cocaine addicts, etc.  As the cities grew, so did the rate of violence.

One thing they tried to do to fix the overcrowded buildings, was architects designed a new kind of building called a dumbell apartment.  They were narrower in the middle than on the ends like the letter “I”.  They were built like that to let more air and light into the buildings, but the people who lived there would throw garbage out the windows and the sun would rot the grabage.   The smell would be so bad and they had to shut the windows.   It was not good for the people to live in these conditions because the disease germs that thrived in the garbage could be spread to the people.

The African  Americans could not get a job because there was so much prejudice in the north against them.  This left them poor and there was no jobs for them to work. They had to live in poor conditions because there was nowhere for the African  Americans  to go.

People who tried to fix the problems of the poor people living in the terrible conditions of tenement apartments or worse were mostly the muckrakers.  These are the people who wrote about the plight of the poor to bring it to the attention of the general public.  They would write for the newspapers, magazines and they would write books.  One of the people who wrote a book was named Upton Sinclair.  He tried to write  about the exploitations of workers in the United States by actually living with them in Chicago for seven weeks.  Because he wrote about what he saw, and published it, many people became angry when they read it and demanded change to be made.  Because Upton Sinclair made all of this information public, people got together and complained to the government demanding that changes be made.  Although change came slow, change did happen, thanks to Upton Sinclair and the rest of the muckrakers.