The period of time between 1870 and 1919 marked the Progressive Era, an age of reform.
During this period, there was a massive influx of immigrants to the United States. During a roughly fifty years following the 1860s, the number of cities/locations with a population of over fifty thousand residents grew from 16 to 109. This rapid increase in inhabitants caused a unique problem with the governing of this populations. Due to the fact that many villages in America were spontaneously becoming cities, and because this was occurring due to large scale immigration, there became a clash between these immigrants and the rural Protestant farmers in
America. Due to the fact that these turnofthecentury immigrants came from a different region of Europe, Southern and Eastern instead of Western Europe, these immigrants had trouble adjusting to society in America because their societies were vastly different. As a result of this, and the underdeveloped traditions of management in the cities, many people searched for quick solutions to these problems, a situation that proved to be ideal for the rise of city bosses and informal governments. A city boss is someone who would normally be a mayor, but gains power because the boss essentially “trades” jobs for vote; for a vote, the immigrants would be given a job. The autocratic society that many of these new immigrants came from prevented them from
understanding
