Life in Industrial America
Late 1800s
Housing
The population continued to grow. Between 1868 and 1875, "500,000" people or half of the city's population lived in the worst possible way. Even among the poor, there was a caste system, and the poor were treated as "animals burried in the ground". Even though people were suffocating in their own homes, they were still prices her square foot than the wealthiest of Mew York City.
The children even were given no mercy. As much as 100,000 lived in the streets, sleeping in boss and barrels. Having no choice, but to reside to prostitution and crime.
Work
Crime
Crime during this time period was high. There were tons of murders and muggings. People were afraid of their lives and to walk down the street. One person who lived in Gramercy Park wrote in his diary that “[m]ost of my friends are investing in revolvers and carry them about at night.” City were not well lighted and that also contribute to the crime because it could go unseen in the darkness. People would walk in the middle of the street to avoid the sidewalk because no one could walk from the alley and do a hold-up. In Chicago, the murders were 8 times higher than in Paris.
“The streets of New York became a school to turn little toughs into major outlaws.” There were some gangs that the police were afraid to go into. There was one gang in particularly and that “the flashy New York Bowery Boys, whose territory no policeman would enter without a partner-and then only during the day, never at night.” People considered the streets the schools for the kids entering the crime life and so people considered the prisons graduate schools. They would put kids in the same cell as an adult prisoners. Kids were learning skills from those adults such as safecracking. Kids were locked up for the smallest things just like the adults. That is how the kids grew up, their parents nurtured them with the disrespect for the law.
The public said that the police was corrupt throughout but there “confidence that the cop will his public duty.” The police had very few requirements and one of them was toughness. The way the police acted caused the public to mistrust the department. The department’s reputation was earned by the officers who used more force than necessary. “In 1857 the State Legislature.. fired all the municipal policeman...and attempted to replace them with a new metropolitan police force..” The corruption was so bad that state felt like it needed to replace the entire police department with a metropolitan force.
Lastly, the biggest thing was lynching that was a problem. The hardest hit time was the late nineteenth century. One instance was "a Black kidnapped by lynchers was publicly burned at the stake with extreme torture..." It was said that the "lynching participants confessed to no feeling guilt. To them, incredibly, it was justice”
Child in front of Judge
Lynching
Policeman
Food and Drink
- The food and drinks of the Gilded Age were unhygienic and unhealthy. "’The city people [were] in constant danger of buying unwholesome meat.’ The poor, meanwhile, had to settle for the cheapest cuts, which often were decayed.” Because there were no refrigerators back then, there were many foods that were easily perishable.
- The milk in many areas had to be diluted with water, and sometimes the color was improved using molasses, chalk, or plaster. Farmers would feed garbage to their cows, and the cows would then get sick and produce diseased milk. “Some of the cows cooped up for years in filthy stables were so enfeebled from tuberculosis that they had to be raised on cranes to remain ‘milkable’ until they died.” The butter sold in the 1880s was a mixture of either casein and water or of calcium, gypsum, gelatin fat, and mashed potatoes. The alternative was called “bogus butter,” and was made of things like fat from hogs, other conceivable animals parts, or bleaches. Grocers would take off the real labels of the “bogus butter” and replace them with “Western butter” or “best creamery butter.”
- Poor children had so little to eat that many of them developed an unusual hunger for only pickles caused by chronic underfeeding and “a nervous craving for some stimulant--much like the craving of an alcoholic for liquor.” The children would refuse to touch decent food offered to them by charity groups, because they had to be taught to eat before they could return to a better diet.
- Americans did not display etiquette when it came to eating food. They rushed through their meals, and ate them so fast that even waiters had to serve “all dinner courses simultaneously, goading the diner to speed up his ‘wolfing’ so he could finish his soup before the entree went cold.” Restaurants were pretty chaotic because of all the clattering of dishes and crowding of people.
- The drinking habits of Americans were excessive. “Each successive group of immigrants appearing in the cities carried its own bottled tradition.” Bad living conditions and loneliness made them want to drink more. Saloons outnumbered churches 10 to 1 and schools 20 to 1, and they did not have any actual closing times. It wasn’t uncommon to see child alcoholics in this time period. They would develop a taste for drinking very early on, since there was no legal drinking age.
Health
The concept of health was significantly different during the Gilded Age than present day. The majority of society couldn't afford going to the doctor with the “average household weekly income of $10 and doctor visits ranging from $2 for office visits to $4 for house calls.” However this didnt mean that during this time people were less susceptible to getting sick. Diseases such as typhoid, cholera, syphilis, yellow fever, smallpox, measles, and scarlet fever. All of the bacterial diseases were associated with poor sanitation. With terrible water conditions and such a large population leaving together, diseases spread rapidly. A lack of antibiotics also certainly didn't help. Doctors were not nearly the caliber they are today as well. Doctors based diagnosis on guesswork, not due to education or skill. Surgeries were rushed and unsanitary, many surgeons wearing street clothes to perform operations as well as using rusted instruments. Healthcare was neglected due to other society priorities during this time. “Where were the medical equivalents of the steam engine or the telegraph?” (Richard H. Shryock) This quote is a good explanation of why health care was not a priority during this time period.
Mental health was also a pressing issue at the time. People who suffered from mental retardation, down syndrome, and other mental health deficiencies were isolated from the rest of the population with treatment so poor it was considered torture. Dorothy Dix was the largest advocate for improved conditions of mentally ill people. She stated that “insanity is not curable” pushing for an end to physical and mental abuse of the mentally ill. Lastly many people were addicted to the drug opium during this period. Ignorance, unhappiness, and susceptibility to quick palliatives caused the growing addiction to opium.