Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820-1920

by Paul S. Boyer

For over a century, dark visions of moral collapse and social disintegration in American cities spurred an anxious middle class to search for ways to restore order. In this important book, Paul Boyer explores the links between the urban reforms of the Progressive era and the long efforts of prior generations to tame the cities. He integrates the ideologies of urban crusades with an examination of the careers and the mentalities of a group of vigorous activists, including Lyman Beecher; the pioneers of the tract societies and Sunday schools; Charles Loring Brace of the Children's Aid Society; Josephine Shaw Lowell of the Charity Organization movement; the father of American playgrounds, Joseph Lee; and the eloquent city planner Daniel Hudson Burnham.

Boyer describes the early attempts of Jacksonian evangelicals to recreate in the city the social equivalent of the morally homogeneous village; he also discusses later strategies that tried to exert a moral influence on urban immigrant families by voluntarist effort, including, for instance, the Charity Organizations' "friendly visitors." By the 1890s there had developed two sharply divergent trends in thinking about urban planning and social the bleak assessment that led to coercive strategies and the hopeful evaluation that emphasized the importance of environmental betterment as a means of urban moral control.

Genres: History, American History, Geography, Urban, War, Science, Biography

432 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Paul S. Boyer is a U.S. cultural and intellectual historian (Ph.D., Harvard University, 1966) and is Merle Curti Professor of History Emeritus and former director (1993-2001) of the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He has held visiting professorships at UCLA, Northwestern University, and William & Mary; has received Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships; and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Society of American Historians, and the American Antiquarian Society. Before coming to Wisconsin in 1980, he taught at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst (1967-1980).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_S._...

Reviews

[Timothy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Using a social control paradigm, Boyer draws a continuity in various urban moral reform movements from 1820 to 1920. His thesis is that The urban moral order was an attempt by the rich and upper middle class to control changes in society by replicating village life in the city. In reality, these crusaders sought to control the behavior of the poor.


Until the twenties, the guiding light of reform was an attempt to
replicate the rural, village, or small-town experience of the
crusaders. Boyer explains the evolution of the movement from a
the concentration of reforming the individual through Tract
societies, evangelicals, Sunday School movements, temperance
societies, to the Progressive Era, focus on the group.
Progressive Era urban reformers fell into two schools: the
negative environmentalists tried to control city coercively
dwellers by reforming the government, eradicating vice,
prohibition and antiprostitution leagues; the positive
environmentalists sought to create salubrious habitats that would
control man's nature: parks, playgrounds, and housing. Through
this century of struggle, images of the city began to lose their
alien aspect, and by the twenties and thirties, the city became a
a cornucopia of materialistic and intellectual pleasures. The City
was celebrated in film, song, and popular culture, and Mencken
et al. characterized the rural inhabitants as boobs.

CAVEATS: Not all cities are uniform; he ignores regional,
social and economic differences between cities.
His bias: Social History. Boyer has a penchant for explaining
complex situations in social rather than intellectual
terms (see" Salem Possessed•)"
EVALUATION: An excellent discussion of moral crusades.
CONTRIBUTION TO KNOWLEDGE: He hits his mark when comparing pre-Progressive to Progressive era movements by noting that the latter shifted to the group, whereas the former concentrated on the individual

[Sonia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting to read about the demonization of cities, the urban menace of sin and moral decline that was really all about fears of difference and change. Also: Lord save us from the good intentions of "friendly visitors," aka social workers before they were called social workers. A cautionary tale for sure.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little dry, but very thorough and well-researched.

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit repetitive, but good for understanding historical urban reform. Provides some helpful context for making sense of contemporary reform attitudes and policies as well.