Capitalism

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence A. Scaff
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
New York ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Political Reform ◽  
Jane Addams ◽  
Political Machines ◽  
Big City ◽  
The Face ◽  
The City

This chapter examines how Max Weber's time in Chicago shaped his views on capitalism. Chicago in 1904 was the world's fifth largest urban center (behind London, New York, Paris, and Berlin). The city was a new industrial and commercial magnet and transportation hub, with a rapidly increasing working class and major labor, public health, and social issues. The chapter first considers Weber's impressions of Chicago before discussing his thoughts on political reform and the consequences of it in the face of corruption, rule by bosses, and the big city political machines. It then describes the Webers' visit to Hull House and their interest in the Women's Trade Union League, a chapter of the association founded by Jane Addams. It also analyzes Weber's opinion regarding the conditions of the working class in the stockyards, along with his notion of character as social capital.

Reading the Urban Form of Fire

2020 ◽  
pp. 46-71
Author(s):  
David Faflik
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New York ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Urban Form ◽  
Big City ◽  
The Senses ◽  
The City

This chapter considers the big-city blaze as an “object” of interpretation. Given the disturbing frequency of fires that occurred there, New York in the nineteenth century became the home of a unique variety of city reader: the fire watcher. Readers of what were known in this earlier era as “conflagrations” faced a dilemma of formal proportions: whether to interpret the form of fire as a direct material threat to city peoples and property, or else as a captivating pyrotechnic display capable of delighting the senses. Compounding this formal conundrum was the question of how a reader responded to the working-class men who typically volunteered to fight these fires. It was not seldom the case that fire readers who belonged to the middle- and upper classes of society came to regard the improvised physicality and boisterous rowdyism of the amateur fireman as a threat nearly equal to that posed by the city fire.

Broadway Nights: John Reed and the City

Prospects ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 273-294
Author(s):  
Christopher P. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
World War I ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
World War ◽  
Epic Poem ◽  
Big City ◽  
John Reed ◽  
First Time ◽  
The City ◽  
The Voice

Not so very long after John Butler Yeats prophesied that “fiddles” would be “tuning up” throughout American intellectual life in the years before World War I, the private musings of John Reed strike another, less hopeful set of notes. The lament emerges in an unpublished tale Reed wrote in 1913 entitled “Success,” about a poet named Alan Meredith, age twenty-two, who, like Reed, has just come from the country to New York to answer his vocation. “The whirling star of Literature revolves in the Big City,” Reed explains. “By force of gravitation the minor bards sooner or later fall within its orbit, and nine out of ten emit no sparks from that time forth.” Alan's project is an epic poem tentatively entitled New York, A Poem in Twelve Cantos-but he gets nowhere beyond his title. “You see,” Reed writes, “he was making the same mistake as you and I, when we heard the voice [of the city] for the first time and tried to translate it without knowing the language.” Reed elaborates:A poet writes about the things nearest to his heart-the things he does not actually know. As soon as he gains scientific knowledge of anything, the glamour is gone, and it is not mere stuff for the imagination. The bard of green fields and blossoms and running brooks is always a city man, and he who sings the Lobster Palaces and White Lights lives in Greenwich, Conn. Never do the stars seem so beautiful as to him who looks up between brownstone houses on a breathless night; all the magic of the city lies in the glow of lights on the sky seen thirty miles away.

The Economic Impact of Tuberculosis in Hospitals in New York City: A Preliminary Analysis

1993 ◽  
Vol 21 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 317-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter S. Arno ◽  
Christopher J.L. Murray ◽  
Karen A. Bonuck ◽  
Philip Alcabes
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Health Resources ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Public Health Crisis ◽  
Aids Epidemic ◽  
The City

There is a nationwide resurgence of tuberculosis (TB) in the country’s urban centers; New York City stands at the forefront of this resurgence. The root causes are increased homelessness, drug addiction and poverty, all symbols of deteriorating social and economic conditions in the city. The inadequate level of public health resources devoted to TB has also contributed to its spread. Still, even with these factors, it is questionable whether the escalating number of TB cases in this country would have occurred without the reservoir of immunosuppressed persons, who are less resistant to the disease, created by the AIDS epidemic. The fear and urgency of this public health crisis, which has been emerging since the beginning of the last decade, are fueled by the rise of TB strains resistant to the first-line drugs and by the disease’s contagiousness.

scholarly journals Housing conditions in St. Louis

1907 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Edwin Burch Miller
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Present Report ◽  
Housing Conditions ◽  
Large Area ◽  
Housing Problem ◽  
Graphic Presentation ◽  
Class A ◽  
Tenement House ◽  
The City

"Citizens of the City of St. Louie have joined with Mr. Lawrence Veillier, Deputy Commissioner of the New York Tenement House Commission, in the belief that St. Louis has no tenement problem. Regarding a housing problem the latter has remained silent, the former silently ignorant. To show that St. Louis has a very serious housing problem and a menacing tenement problem is the object of this investigation and report. The present report is founded upon a thorough house to house investigation and based upon its findings, if from no other desire than that of self-preservation. Yet there should be a higher motive for demand - a motive which gives the working class a right to live decently. In determining the area to be investigated the Housing Committee of the Civic League sought for a representative section where St. Louis working peoples were contending with old housing evils and threatened with new ones. As a means of simplification and more graphic presentation, the single large area has been dealt with in this report under the following divisions; (l) the Jewish district; (2) the Negro district; (3) the Mixed district; (4) the Italian district; and (6) the Polish district. Nor is this division one of nationality alone, but rather is it one of physical differences which adhere closely to such a division of peoples."--Pages 1-4.

scholarly journals Reform of the New York’s public health system in the context of rapid urban development (turn of the XIX – XX centuries)

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Evgeniya Vladimirovna Zhilina
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Health System ◽  
York City ◽  
Preventive Measures ◽  
Public Health System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Administrative Reforms ◽  
The City

This article explores the factors for conducting administrative reforms in the United States in the area of public health. For detailed consideration, the author selected New York City as an example the largest metropolitan area that faced aggravation of social problems due to the shortcomings in the existing public health system. Rapid increase in the number of resident in the conditions of significant growth of population density led to proliferation of the dangerous infectious diseases, for elimination of which local authorities had to take prompt actions of state regulation, including creation of the new administrative branches. Special attention is given to the treatment of tuberculosis and preventive measures thereof, namely the importance of tracking all new cases. In studying public health system of New York City, the author applied interdisciplinary approach that ensured comprehensive and objective outlook upon the problems of poorest population groups of the city. Comparative-historical method was used juxtapose the situation in New York and typologically similar US metropolises. Chronological method allowed tracing the patterns in evolution of administrative innovations, and assessing them in a single historical perspective. The main conclusion consists in the statement that private medicine appeared to be insufficient due to the drastic changes of social conditions in the densely populated metropolises, as the constantly growing population of poor immigrant neighborhoods was capable of paying for medical services. At the same time, namely the residents of such ghettos were most vulnerable category of population from the standpoint of epidemiology. Taking preventive measures by the municipal authorities, which included mass vaccination and clearing New York streets from dirt and trash, became an effective way to alleviate the situation. The administrative reforms in the city significantly improved the situation, which laid the foundation for sweeping changes in the future.

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