By 1870, 25.7% of American were living in cities. By 1890 it was 35.1%, and by 1910 just under half of all Americans lived in cities of 2,5000 population or more.
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The figures for Connecticut and New Britain are shown in Appendix E. This rapid urbanization brought with it many problems: fire, disease, crime, water and sanitation problems plagued all the burgeoning cities which rapidly outgrew their service capabilities. Connecticut was in advance of most of the Unites States in its urban growth and in making serious moves to conquer the problems. New Britain’s answer was to incorporate as a city in 1871 and attack the problems with vigor within the new governmental structure. From the Civil War to 1900, nine other Connecticut areas did the same: Meriden three years earlier than New Britain, and the others, including Norwalk and Stamford, in the 1890’s.
The politics of the process is indicated in Appendix F. The heat of the arguments, the disputed nature of the vote, the antipathy between Hartford and New Britain, the pride evinced in the newly rich city are most interesting manifestations of the struggle. Civic pride indeed brought solutions to some of the city’s problems. Individual New Britain philanthropists were very generous in their gifts to their city. The reservoir and park at Walnut Hill, the Erwin Home for elderly, the Klingberg Home for Children were all private gifts. Cornelius Erwin willed his entire $1.1 million estate to charities. But the reservoir would prove inadequate and discussion of taxation and bills for the water system and fire department fill pages of the annual municipal reports. $1,000 was spent for a chemist for the water system analysis. In the same year, 1908, 4,343 feet of sanitary sewers were built and 2,434 feet of storm sewers. Health officials and engineers were justifiably proud of this tax expenditure. The Board of Health had just traced eight cases of typhoid fever to a milk dealer whose well had been contaminated with “undisinfected excreta lightly buried within 50 feet” of it. But, they also reported six smallpox cases, thirty-four scarlet fever, fifty-two typhoid cases, and sixty-three tuberculosis deaths. Cholera had already been eradicated, and a specific quarantining system and recommendation for the “fumigation of homes where a person had died of tuberculosis” were advised by the Commissioner. These urban health problems reflect the figures in New York City where the death rate had risen from twenty-nine per 1,000 in 1826 to forty per 1,000 in 1855, but dropped again starting in 1860 with better sanitary facilities.
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A look at Appendix G will show these problems as they were in 1881 before a Board of Health and other agencies had bean instituted. The expenditures on education are more encouraging. The $25,000 for the Normal School shows the level of local commitment to, and leadership in, the teaching field. Since the Connecticut legislature in 1848 had appropriated the money to open a normal school (alleviating the appalling unpreparedness of many common school teachers) the city had served the state well. New Britain citizens gave $16,250 to build the school on Main Street. City children attended the “model schools” for teacher training until 1873 when the city voted to run them itself. In 1881 citizens gave a quarter of the funding necessary to build a new and larger campus, (the $25,000 mentioned), the state paid the rest. The school’s opening ceremony is delightful to read about in contemporary newspapers.
Professor David Camp was head of this school and State Superintendent of Schools, and continued to follow Henry Barnard’s more renowned career by succeeding him as president of the St. John’s College, Maryland. He built in New Britain a private seminary, the Evening Commercial School for Young Men which, in 1884, was advertised as a “Private Day School with departments for both sexes.” Camp was also president of the company which he and a son-in-law founded, the Skinner Chuck Company (today Skinner Precision Tools). He was also a vice-president of the New Britain National Bank. And, amazingly, he served as mayor from 1877-79. His versatility was not unusual in the public officers of his day. Of the fourteen men who served as mayor from 1871 to 1910, six had founded one or more manufacturing companies and seven had served as officers in New Britain companies. Many had been involved in founding institutes such as the library and Y.M.C.A. They obviously had a great faith in the city and in its motto, “Industry fills the hive and enjoys the honey.”
That not all the city people were enjoying the honey is clear in the presence of the Poor Farm. (See Appendix H). That the old family-support social system was breaking down is clear. The parish-centered welfare system was strained in an area where migration to city-work was taking place so rapidly and where so many different churches now served. The enumeration of the poor shows many illnesses which needed other treatment (insanity and the “falling sickness”) and the ages of many suggests a displacement from a rural environment. Those inmates “past fifty,” after all, had been children when the first steam engines came to transformed New Britain in 1830. The Puritan work ethic received its greatest challenge in dealing with those on the Poor Farm who were “on the tramp.” In 1885, 730 people had been sheltered overnight but, “They are not encouraged by luxurious accommodations . . . none of these tramps had appeared a second time.” The problem of the unemployed, especially during the depressions of 1873 and 1907, was area-wide but the faith in the economic system was strong enough to counter basic questions, except as they appeared in labor struggles essentially within the factories. And the general prosperity of more happy times invited a whole new population which would change the city’s very nature.