Role of Art in America Since the Gilded Age

Social Darwinism in America

American social Darwinism held that the social classes had no obligation toward those unequipped or under-equipped to compete for survival.

Learning Objectives

Describe the role that Darwinian ideas about natural selection had in the social scientific discipline and public policy of the belatedly nineteenth century

Central Takeaways

Cardinal Points

• "Social Darwinism" is a proper name given to diverse theories emerging in the Uk, Due north America, and western Europe in the 1870s that merits to apply biological concepts of natural choice and survival of the fittest to sociology and politics. Herbert Spencer, William Graham Sumner, Edward L. Youmans, John Fiske, and John Due west. Burgess helped shape American social Darwinism.
• Sumner believed that the best equipped to win the struggle for survival was the American man of affairs, and concluded that taxes and regulations serve every bit dangers to his survival.
• The not bad majority of American businessmen rejected the anti-philanthropic implications of the theory. Instead, they gave millions of dollars to build schools, colleges, hospitals, art institutes, parks, and many other institutions.

Central Terms

• Herbert Spencer: An English philosopher, biologist, and sociologist who was highly influential in proposing economic and political theories based on Darwin's theories of evolution, and who influenced many American thinkers including, well-nigh notably, William Graham Sumner.
• fascism: A political authorities, having totalitarian aspirations, ideologically based on a relationship between business and the centralized government, business-and-government command of the market place, repression of criticism or opposition, a leader cult, and the exaltation of the state and/or religion in a higher place individual rights.
• eugenics: A social philosophy that advocates the comeback of homo hereditary qualities through selective breeding.

Social Darwinism

"Social Darwinism" is a name given to various theories emerging in the Uk, North America, and western Europe in the 1870s that claim to apply biological concepts of natural choice and survival of the fittest to sociology and politics. Co-ordinate to their critics, at least, social Darwinists argue that the stiff should see their wealth and power increase while the weak should see their wealth and power subtract. Dissimilar social-Darwinist groups accept differing views most which groups of people are considered to exist the stiff and which groups of people are considered to be the weak, and they also agree unlike opinions about the precise mechanisms that should be used to reward strength and punish weakness. Many social Darwinists stress contest between individuals in laissez-faire (easily-off) capitalism. Social Darwinism—too as the notions of evolution and Charles Darwin—are oft linked with racialism, nationalism, imperialism, and eugenics. Many critics annotation that social Darwinism became one of the pillars of fascism and Nazi ideology; Nazi Germany'due south application of policies of "survival of the fittest" somewhen created a very potent backlash confronting the theory.

Darwinist Collectivism

A unlike form of social Darwinism was role of the ideological foundations of Nazism and other fascist movements. This form did non envision survival of the fittest within an individualist guild of gild, but rather advocated a type of racial and national struggle in which the state directed man breeding through eugenics. Terms such as "Darwinian collectivism" or "Reform Darwinism" have been suggested to describe these views, in order to differentiate them from the individualist blazon of social Darwinism.

Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner

William Graham Sumner: William Graham Sumner's 1883 pamphlet, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other was highly influential.

Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, anthropologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era. Spencer proved to be a popular figure in the 1880s primarily because his application of development to areas of human being endeavor promoted an optimistic view of the hereafter. In the United States, writers and thinkers of the Gilded Age such as Edward 50. Youmans, William Graham Sumner, John Fiske, and John Westward. Burgess developed theories of social evolution as a upshot of their exposure to the works of Darwin and Spencer.

In 1883, William Graham Sumner published a highly influential pamphlet entitled What Social Classes Owe to Each Other, in which he insisted that the social classes owe each other nada, synthesizing Darwin'south findings with free-enterprise capitalism to provide his justification. According to Sumner, those who feel an obligation to provide assistance to those unequipped or nether-equipped to compete for survival will create a land in which the weak and inferior are encouraged to brood more of the similar, which will eventually elevate the country downward. Sumner also believed that the all-time equipped to win the struggle for survival was the American businessman, and concluded that taxes and regulations serve as dangers to his survival.

Impact

These ideas did have influence on American politics. For example, The Bourbon Democrats supported a gratuitous-market policy, with low tariffs, low taxes, less spending and, in general, a laissez-faire government. However, the slap-up majority of American businessmen rejected the anti-philanthropic implications of the theory. Instead, they gave millions of dollars to build schools, colleges, hospitals, art institutes, parks, and many other institutions. Andrew Carnegie, who admired Spencer, was the leading philanthropist in the earth (1890–1920), and a major critic of imperialism and warfare.

The Family unit Economy: Women and Children

During the Industrial Revolution, the economic and social roles of adult female shifted and became largely focused on the domestic sphere.

Learning Objectives

Evaluate family structures in the tardily nineteenth century

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• In a family economy, families provided agricultural products, manufactured appurtenances, and supplied services for the market place.
• After the Industrial Revolution largely ended the family unit economy, men inhabited the public sphere 's worlds of politics, economy, commerce, and law while women presided over the domestic sphere of child-rearing, housekeeping, and religious education.
• The "separate spheres" ideology prevented women from undertaking professional careers and pursuing higher education.
• The separation betwixt female person and male spheres was heavily influenced by biological determinism, the notion that women and men are naturally suitable for unlike social roles due to their biological and genetic makeup.
• The "cult of domesticity," a prevailing value system among the upper and middle classes during the nineteenth century in the United States and Great Britain, emphasized new ideas about femininity, the woman'south role within the home, and the dynamics of work and family.

Primal Terms

• Family Economy: A term used to describe the family every bit an economic unit. The early stages of development in many economies are characterized by family-based production.
• biological determinism: The interpretation of humans and homo life from a strictly biological point of view.
• cult of domesticity: A arrangement of values that emphasized new ideas most femininity, the adult female's role within the dwelling, and the dynamics of work and family.
• Public sphere: An area in social life in which individuals tin can come up together to freely discuss and identify societal problems, and through that give-and-take, influence political action.

The Family unit Unit

The early on stages of development in many economies is characterized by family-based product. The term "family economy" can exist used to depict the family unit equally an economic unit. In the early on, preindustrial era, technology was express and nigh economic activeness took place inside the household; product and distribution was organized by custom and tradition. High bloodshed rates and low productivity meant that on the farms and in towns, life was brusk and living weather condition were harsh.

The family economic unit of measurement is dependent on the specialized labor of family members. The family was a multigenerational producer with capital letter and land provided by older generations and labor provided by younger generations. Goods were produced not but for home consumption but also to sell and trade in the market place. The family unit economic system supplied agronomical products, manufactured goods, and provided services.

Industrialization

During the postindustrial age, the family unit as an economical unit changed. The family transformed from being a unit of production to being a unit of measurement of consumption. This new era of industrialization altered farming to require fewer people, therefore children were no longer viewed equally economic avails but rather every bit liabilities. Industrialization further contributed to the demise of the family unit economy where the capitalist marketplace encouraged product in large-calibration factories, farms, and mines. Wage labor became mutual, and family unit members no longer worked together but rather used the wages they had earned to buy goods that they consumed as a family. The Industrial Revolution, starting in the nineteenth century and extending into the twentieth, is seen as the force that changed the family economic unit of measurement and is credited with the creation of the "modern family."

Separate Spheres

"Split up spheres" refers to an credo that defines and prescribes different realms for women and men. Culturally originating in Europe and North America, the distinct credo emerged during the Industrial Revolution, although the basic idea of gendered separation of spheres is much older. The notion of separate spheres dictates that men, based primarily on their biological makeup as well every bit on the will of God, inhabit the public sphere—the earth of politics, economy, commerce, and constabulary. Women'southward "proper sphere," according to the ideology, is the private realm of domestic life, child-rearing, housekeeping, and religious didactics. The shift during the Industrial Revolution from family as producer to family as consumer, from piece of work beingness done together in the same spaces to work being washed in centralized factories and businesses, contributed to this ideology.

The thought that women should inhabit a dissever, domestic sphere has been extant in Western thought for centuries, extending as far back equally the ancient Greeks. In Politics, Aristotle described two split spheres in Greek order: the home (oikos) and the city (polis). Women were confined to the private realm of the oikos while men occupied the public sphere of the polis.

Biological Determinism

The separation betwixt female and male spheres was heavily influenced past biological determinism, the notion that women and men are naturally suitable for dissimilar social roles due to their biological and genetic makeup. The thought of biological determinism was popular during the Age of Enlightenment and amid such thinkers as Jean-Jacques Rousseau who argued that women were inherently different from men and should devote themselves to reproduction and domesticity. Women were considered passive, dependent on men, and due to their reproductive capacity, ill-suited for life exterior of the domestic realm. Rousseau described women's main duties in Emile, or On Didactics, stating that, "women's entire education should be planned in relation to men. To please men, to be useful to them, to win their dear and respect, to heighten them equally children, to intendance for them every bit adults, correct and console them, make their lives sweetness and pleasant; these are women's duties in all ages and these are what they should be taught from childhood."

Other Influences

The popular beliefs about inherent gender differences remained securely embedded in popular consciousness throughout the Progressive Era. Past the early twentieth century, however, dissident anthropologists and other social scientists began to challenge the biological determination of human behavior, revealing great similarities between men and women and suggesting that many gender differences were socially constructed. Despite these new insights and social and economic changes—such every bit women's entry into the labor force—the "separate spheres" ideology did not disappear. Women's confinement to the individual sphere was reinforced past cultural and legal arrangements, such as the lack of women's suffrage, legal prohibitions against women undertaking professions such every bit medicine and law, and discouragement of women obtaining higher education. Strong support for the separation of spheres came from anti-suffragists who relied on the notion of inherent sexual differences to argue that women were unfit for political participation.

The Cult of Domesticity

The "cult of domesticity" was a term for the prevailing value system among the upper and center classes during the nineteenth century in the United States and Great Britain. This value organisation emphasized new ideas virtually femininity, the adult female's part within the home, and the dynamics of work and family. "True women" were supposed to possess four cardinal virtues: piety, purity, domesticity, and submissiveness. The women and men who most actively promoted these standards were generally white Protestants who lived in New England and the northeastern United states. The cult of domesticity revolved around women existence the eye of the family; they were considered, "the light of the home."

Although all women were supposed to emulate this platonic of femininity, black, working-form, and immigrant women frequently were excluded from the definition of "true women" because of social prejudice.

Godey'due south Lady's Book cover, June 1867: Godey'due south Lady's Book was a highly influential women's magazine that reinforced the values of the cult of domesticity.

Prescriptive literature advised women on how to transform their homes into domestic sanctuaries for their husbands and children. Women were the middle of the domestic sphere and expected to fulfill the roles of a calm and nurturing mother; a loving and faithful wife; and a passive, fragile, and virtuous brute. These women besides were expected to exist pious and religious, teaching those around them Christian behavior, and were expected to inspire and support their husbands unfailingly.

The characteristics of a "true woman" were described in sermons and religious texts, as well equally in women'south magazines. In the United States, Peterson'south Mag and Godey's Lady's Book were the most widely circulated women'south magazines and were popular among both women and men. Magazines that promoted the values of the cult of domesticity faired meliorate financially than competing magazines that offered a more than progressive view in terms of women's roles. With a apportionment of 150,000 by 1860, Godey'southward reflected and supported the ideals of the cult of true womanhood. The magazine'southward paintings and pictures illustrated the four virtues, often showing women with children or backside husbands. The publication also equated womanhood with motherhood and with being a wife, declaring that the "perfection of womanhood (…) is the wife and mother." The mag presented maternity equally a woman's natural and well-nigh satisfying role, and encouraged women to detect their fulfillment and contributions to club strictly within the abode.

Outdoor Recreation

Bicycle riding, camping ground, baseball, and public parks grew in prominence during the late nineteenth century.

Learning Objectives

Evaluate different types of outdoor entertainment that arose during the tardily nineteenth century

Central Takeaways

Key Points

• The first well-known chain-bulldoze bicycle was the "Rover," produced in 1885 past John Kemp Starley. It led to a bicycle craze in the 1890s.
• Frederick Police force Olmsted attained preeminence for, among other things, designing parks. He codesigned Central Park and numerous other parks and park systems in Boston, Chicago, and other cities.
• Modern camping ground is often traced back to Thomas Hiram Holding, who traveled through the wilds and prairies of America with his family. Camping became popular in the early twentieth century.
• Baseball, called the "American pastime" as early as the 1850s, was a popular spectator sport through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Key Terms

• bicycle craze: A sudden consumer enthusiasm for bicycles during the 1890s, precipitated by improvements in bike design.
• Frederick Police Olmsted: American journalist, public administrator, and landscape designer, popularly considered the father of American landscape architecture; famous for codesigning many well-known urban parks, including Central Park and Prospect Park in New York Urban center.

The Bicycle

The 1890s experienced an enormous wheel craze, driven by several significant developments in bicycles: the invention of the "safety wheel" with its chain-drive transmission, whose gear ratios immune smaller wheels without a concurrent loss of speed; and the subsequent invention of the pneumatic (inflatable air-filled) bicycle tire. Experiments with chain-bulldoze had been attempted in 1869 and 1879, just the starting time well-known chain-drive bicycle was the "Rover" produced in 1885 past John Kemp Starley. Very quickly, the penny-farthing, or high-cycle, passed out of manner, and multitudes of people all over the world began riding the "safety." It was largely the popularity of this type of wheel at this time that precipitated the paving of roads.

The Overman Victor "Flyer" wheel: The Overman Victor Flyer was a popular safety bicycle during the 1890s.

September 13, 1892, saw the opening of a Bicycle Railroad between Mount Holly, New Jersey, and the H.B. Smith Manufacturing Company in Smithville, New Jersey, during the Mountain Holly fair. The railroad had iii,000 riders its outset week (for entertainment instead of for commuting). Coney Island wanted one, and the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago featured one. Several others were built for amusement in Atlantic Urban center, Ocean City, and Gloucester City, New Jersey (the first two in 1893 and final in 1894). The application of the internal-combustion engine to the bicycle during the 1890s resulted in the motorcycle, and then before long after, the engine was applied to iv-bicycle carriages, resulting in the motor car or "automobile," which in after decades largely supplanted its unmotorized ancestor.

Camping

The history of recreational camping often is traced back to Thomas Hiram Belongings, a British traveling tailor, but it was actually first popularized in the United Kingdom on the river Thames. By the 1880s, large numbers of visitors took role in the pastime, which was continued to the late Victorian craze for pleasure boating. The early camping equipment was very heavy, so it was convenient to send information technology by boat or to utilize craft that converted into tents.

Thomas Hiram Holding was responsible for popularizing a different type of camping ground in the early on twentieth century. He experienced the activity in the wild from his youth, when he had spent much time with his parents traveling across the American prairies. Later he embarked on a cycling and camping ground bout with some friends across Ireland. His book on his Republic of ireland experience, Cycle and Camp in Connemara led to the formation of the kickoff camping group in 1901, the Association of Cycle Campers, later to become the Camping and Caravanning Club. He wrote The Campers Handbook in 1908, so that he could share his enthusiasm for the peachy outdoors with the earth.

Camping as a recreational activity became popular among elites in the early twentieth century. With fourth dimension, it grew more autonomous and varied. Modern participants frequent publicly owned natural resources such as national and state parks, wilderness areas, and commercial campgrounds.

The International Federation of Camping Clubs was founded in 1932, and clubs from all over the world began affiliating with it. By the 1960s, camping had become an established family holiday standard, and today campsites are ubiquitous beyond Europe and Northward America.

Baseball

In the mid-1850s, a baseball craze hit the New York metropolitan expanse. Past 1856, local journals were referring to baseball every bit the "national pastime" or "national game." A year after, 16 expanse clubs formed the sport'due south commencement governing torso, the National Association of Base Ball Players, which lasted until 1875.

The National League was founded in 1876. As the oldest surviving major league, the National League is sometimes referred to equally the "senior excursion." Several other major leagues formed and failed. In 1884, African American Moses Walker (and, briefly, his blood brother Welday) played in the American Association. An injury concluded Walker'southward major-league career, and by the early 1890s, an unspoken "gentlemen'southward agreement" effectively barred blackness players from the white-owned professional leagues, major and pocket-size. Professional Negro Leagues formed, merely quickly folded. Several independent African-American teams succeeded every bit barnstormers.

The National League's start successful counterpart, the American League, which evolved from the modest Western League, was established in 1901. The 2 leagues, each with eight teams, were rivals that fought for the best players, often disregarding each other's contracts and engaging in bitter legal disputes. A modicum of peace was eventually established, leading to the National Understanding of 1903. The pact formalized relations both betwixt the 2 major leagues and between them and the National Association of Professional Base of operations Ball Leagues, representing almost of the land's small-scale professional leagues.

The World Series, pitting the two major-league champions against each other, was inaugurated that autumn, admitting without limited major-league sanction. The Boston Americans of the American League defeated the Pittsburgh Pirates of the National League. The next year, the serial was not held, as the National League champion New York Giants, under manager John McGraw, refused to recognize the major-league status of the American League and its champion. In 1905, the Giants were National League champions again, and team management relented, leading to the institution of the World Serial equally the major leagues' annual championship issue.

Frederick Law Olmsted

Plan for Central Park: Plan for the archway to Cardinal Park, ca. 1863.

Frederick Police force Olmsted (April 26, 1822–Baronial 28, 1903) was an American landscape architect, announcer, social critic, and public administrator. He is popularly considered to exist the father of American mural architecture. Olmsted was famous for codesigning many well-known urban parks with his senior partner, Calvert Vaux, including Prospect Park and Central Park in New York City, as well as Elm Park (Worcester, Massachusetts), which is considered past many to be the first municipal park in America.

Olmsted non but created numerous city parks around the country, merely he also conceived of entire systems of parks and interconnecting parkways to connect certain cities to light-green spaces. Two of the best examples of the scale on which Olmsted worked are the park system designed for Buffalo, New York, and the organisation he designed for Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Olmsted was a frequent collaborator with builder Henry Hobson Richardson, for whom he devised the landscaping schemes for half a dozen projects, including Richardson's commission for the Buffalo Country Asylum.

In 1883, Olmsted established what is considered to exist the outset full-fourth dimension landscape architecture business firm in Brookline, Massachusetts. He called the abode and part compound "Fairsted." It is at present the restored Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site. From there, Olmsted designed Boston's Emerald Necklace, the campuses of Stanford University and the Academy of Chicago, likewise as the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, amidst many other projects.

Primal Park: Horseback riding in Central Park.

New York City'due south need for a dandy public park was voiced by the poet and editor of the Evening Postal service (now the New York Post), William Cullen Bryant, and by the first American landscape architect, Andrew Jackson Downing, who began to publicize the city'due south need for a public park in 1844. Many influential New Yorkers expressed the need for a stylish place for open-air driving, like to the Bois de Boulogne in Paris or London's Hyde Park. Later an abortive attempt in 1850–1851 to designate Jones'southward Wood, in 1853, the New York legislature settled upon a 700-acre area from 59th to 106th Streets for the creation of the park, at a toll of more than $5 million for the land alone. The state appointed a Central Park Commission to oversee the development of the park, and in 1857, the committee held a landscape design contest. Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux developed what came to be known as the "Greensward Plan," which was selected as the winning design. Olmsted began executing their plan almost immediately.

Mass Marketing, Advertising, and Consumer Civilization

By 1900, advances in consumer teaching and mass product helped advertising to become firmly established as an industry.

Learning Objectives

Examine the rise of consumer culture in the belatedly nineteenth century

Central Takeaways

Central Points

• In 1840, Volney B. Palmer established the roots of the modernistic-day advertizing agency in Philadelphia past buying big amounts of infinite in various newspapers at a discount and and so reselling it to advertisers at a higher rate.
• Prior to the Industrial Revolution, members of the working classes worked long hours for low wages and had little time or coin left for consumer activities.
• Frederick Winslow Taylor brought his theory of scientific management to the system of the associates line in commodity industries, unleashing incredible productivity and cost savings and ushering in the era of mass consumption.

Central Terms

• Henry Ford: The founder of Ford Motor Company and pioneer of the associates line. Fordism—the mass product of cheap consumer appurtenances with high wages for laborers—revolutionized the American economy.

Advert is a form of communication used to encourage or persuade an audience to accept some activity. Most ordinarily, the desired consequence is to drive consumer beliefs with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is as well common. The purpose of advertising also might be to reassure employees or shareholders that a company is viable or successful.

Advert During the Industrial Revolution

Drink Coca-Cola: A Coca-Cola advert from 1900.

As the economy expanded during the nineteenth century, advertisement grew too. In June 1836, the French newspaper La Presse was the get-go to include paid advertizement in its pages, assuasive the paper to lower its price, extend its readership, and increase profitability. Around 1840, Volney B. Palmer established the roots of the modern-twenty-four hours advertising bureau in Philadelphia. In 1842, Palmer bought big amounts of space in various newspapers at a discounted rate and so resold the infinite at higher rates to advertisers. The actual ad was notwithstanding prepared past the company wishing to advertise, making Palmer a infinite broker.

The state of affairs changed in the late nineteenth century when the advertising agency of Due north.W. Ayer & Son was founded in 1869. North.W. Ayer & Son was the first full-service agency to assume responsibleness for advertising content. They offered to plan, create, and execute complete advert campaigns for customers. By 1900, the advert bureau had become the focal signal of artistic planning, and advertising was firmly established as a profession. Effectually the same fourth dimension, Charles-Louis Havas extended the services of his news agency, Havas, to include ad brokerage, making it the get-go French group to organize.

At the plow of the century, women had few career choices in concern; advertising, nevertheless, was one of the few industries that welcomed them. Because women were responsible for well-nigh of the purchasing done in the household, advertisers and agencies recognized the value of women'south insight during the artistic process. In fact, the first American advert to utilize a "sexual" sell was created by a woman for a soap product.

The Rise of Consumerism

Get Fat: An 1895 ad for a production for weight gain.

The next several decades saw a significant shift in consumerism. During the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century, capitalist development became primarily focused on the majuscule goods sector and industrial infrastructure (e.one thousand., mining, steel, oil, and transportation networks). At that time, agricultural commodities, essential consumer goods, and commercial activities had developed, just non to the same extent as had other sectors. Members of the working classes worked long hours for low wages and little fourth dimension or money was left for consumer activities.

Capital appurtenances and infrastructure were quite durable and took a long time to be used upwards. Henry Ford and other leaders of industry understood that mass production pre-supposed mass consumption. After observing the assembly lines in the meat packing industry, Frederick Winslow Taylor brought his learnings to other industries. This unleashed incredible productivity and reduced the costs of all bolt produced on assembly lines.

While previously the norm had been the scarcity of resources, the Industrial Revolution created an unusual economic state of affairs. For the kickoff time in history, products were available in outstanding quantities at outstandingly low prices; thus, they became available to virtually everyone. For case, Henry Ford believed that the workers who fabricated his car should all be able to buy one. This became a reality with the Model T auto. Ford created a huge publicity machine in Detroit to ensure every newspaper carried stories and ads about the new product. Ford's network of local dealers made the car ubiquitous in about every city in North America. As independent dealers, the franchises grew rich and publicized not simply the Ford simply also the concept of automobiling; local motor clubs sprang upwards to aid new drivers and to encourage exploration of the countryside.

Advert, in its marketing of goods through various platforms and message that the viewer is in need of some production, played a major role in creating this consumerist guild. Advertising changes in gild to keep up with the changing consumer; it identifies the viewer'south needs and associations of brands and products before he or she is consciously aware. The mediums through which individuals are exposed to ads are ever changing and always growing, as marketers are always trying to arrive impact with and obsess their audience. For case, around the time that the automobile became prevalent in society, billboards were created. These advertisements featured short details about a brand or a "catchphrase" that a commuter could quickly and easily spot, recognize, and remember.

Cheap Amusements

During the Golden Historic period, gratuitous time and disposable income were spent on new forms of leisure such as amusement parks, burlesque shows, dime museums, and vaudeville shows.

Learning Objectives

Analyze amusements and amusement from the Gilded Age through the end of the 1930s

Fundamental Takeaways

Key Points

• Amusement parks provided new forms of entertainment, including trolleys, rides, roller coasters, and concessions.
• Burlesque shows featured acts such every bit stripteases, singing, comedy routines, mime acts, minstrel shows, and dancing.
• By the belatedly 1930s, a social crackdown on caricatural shows began their gradual downfall.
• Dime museums were designed every bit centers for entertainment and provided moral didactics for the working class.
• Vaudeville, a type of amusement consisting of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill, was popular from the 1830s to the 1930s.

Key Terms

• vaudeville: A popular type of entertainment that featured a series of carve up, unrelated acts grouped together on a mutual bill.
• amusement park: A commercially-operated collection of rides, games and other entertainment attractions, which became highly popular amid Americans during the first decades of the 20th century.
• Dime Museums: Institutions providing cheap entertainment and moral instruction, which were very popular at the stop of the nineteenth century amongst the working classes.
• caricatural: A genre of variety evidence emerging in the 1860s and evolving into a a very pop alloy of satire, performance fine art, music hall, and adult entertainment.

During the Golden Age, many Americans began working fewer hours and had more dispensable income. With newfound money and time to spend on leisure activities, Americans sought new venues for entertainment.

Entertainment Parks

Amusement parks, set up outside major cities and in rural areas, emerged to encounter this new economic opportunity. These parks reflected the mechanization and efficiency of industrialization while serving as source of fantasy and escape from the realities of working life. Past the early 1900s, hundreds of amusement parks were operating in the The states and Canada. Trolley parks, established at the stop of the trolley line by enterprising streetcar companies, stood exterior of many cities. Parks such as Atlanta'south Ponce de Leon and Idora Park near Youngstown, Ohio, took passengers to traditionally popular picnic grounds, which by the belatedly 1890s often included rides such as the carousel, "Giant Swing," and "Shoot-the-Chutes." These entertainment parks, with names such as "Coney Isle," "White City," "Luna Park," and "Dreamland," often were based on nationally known parks or world'southward fairs. The American Gilded Age was, in fact, the Golden Historic period of amusement parks that reigned until the late 1920s.

White City Amusement Park: Photograph of the White City Amusement Park, Worcester, Massachusetts, 1908.

By the stop of the First World War, people seemed to desire an fifty-fifty more heady entertainment, a need that was met by the roller coaster. Although the development of the machine provided people with more options for satisfying their need for entertainment, after the war, amusement parks connected to be successful. The 1920s saw the development of many innovations in terms of the roller coaster, which employed extreme drops and speeds to thrill the riders.

Burlesque

Bon-Ton Burlesquers: A affiche for an American caricatural show, 1898, showing a woman in an outfit with a low neckline and short skirt property a number of upper-form men "on the cord."

American burlesque is a genre of multifariousness show. Derived from elements of Victorian burlesque and music hall and minstrel shows, caricatural shows in America became pop in the 1860s and evolved to feature ribald comedy elements such as lewd jokes and female striptease. By the early on twentieth century, burlesque in America was presented as a populist alloy of satire, operation art, music hall, and adult entertainment.

Performers, usually female, often created elaborate tableaux with lush, colorful costumes, mood-appropriate music, and dramatic lighting. Novelty acts, such as fire breathing or contortionists, might be added to enhance the impact of the functioning. The genre traditionally encompassed a variety of acts. In addition to the striptease artistes, the show included a combination of chanson singers, comedians, mime artists, and dancing girls, whose performances were all delivered in a satiric style with a impudent border. The striptease element of burlesque became subject to extensive local legislation, leading to a theatrical form that titillated without falling foul of censors.

Burlesque gradually lost popularity beginning in the 1940s. A number of producers sought to capitalize on nostalgia for the amusement by attempting to recreate the spirit of burlesque in Hollywood films from the 1930s to the 1960s.

Charlie Chaplin, who starred in the 1915 movie A Burlesque on Carmen, noted in 1910:

Chicago… had a fierce pioneer gaiety that enlivened the senses, yet underlying information technology throbbed masculine loneliness. Counteracting this somatic ailment was a national lark known as the burlesque show, consisting of a coterie of band-aid comedians supported by twenty or more chorus girls. Some were pretty, others shopworn. Some of the comedians were funny, most of the shows were smutty harem comedies—fibroid and contemptuous affairs.

By the late 1930s, a social crackdown on burlesque shows began their gradual downfall. The shows had slowly changed from ensemble ribald diversity performances, to elementary performances focusing by and large on the striptease. In New York, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia clamped down on caricatural, effectively putting it out of business by the early 1940s.

Dime Museums

Dime museums were institutions that were briefly popular at the end of the nineteenth century in the United States. Designed equally centers for entertainment and moral education for the working form, the museums were distinctly dissimilar from upper-middle-form cultural attractions. In urban centers such as New York City, where many immigrants settled, dime museums were pop and cheap entertainment. The dime museum social trend reached its peak during the Progressive Era.

In 1841, P.T. Barnum founded the first dime museum chosen the "American Museum." P.T. Barnum and Charles Willson Peale introduced their concept of "edutainement," which provided moralistic teaching through sensational freak shows, theater and circus performances, and many other means of entertainment. The American Museum burned down in 1865.

P.T. Barnum'southward American Museum: The  1853 illustration depicts the "Lecture Room" of the American Museum of New York, built by P. T. Barnum. Information technology was eventually more than popularly knows as Barnum's American Museum.

For many years in the basement of the Playland Arcade in Times Foursquare in New York City, Hubert's Museum featured acts such as the sword swallower, Lady Estelene, Congo the Jungle Creep, a flea circus, and a half-man half-adult female, and magicians such as Earl "Presto" Johnson. After, in Times Foursquare, Tommy Laird opened a dime museum that featured Tisha Booty "the Human Pivot Cushion," and several magicians including Tommy Laird, Lou Lancaster, Chris Capehart, Dorothy Dietrich, and Dick Brooks.

Vaudeville

Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment popular in the United States and Canada from the 1830s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a serial of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill. Acts included performances by popular and classical musicians, dancers, comedians, trained animals, magicians, impersonators, acrobats, jugglers, athletes, lecturing celebrities, and minstrels. Shows also sometimes featured illustrated songs, one-act plays or scenes from plays, and movies. A vaudeville performer is frequently referred to equally a "vaudevillian." Vaudeville had many influences, including the concert saloon, minstrelsy, freak shows, dime museums, and literary burlesque. Called "the heart of American show business organisation," vaudeville was one of the nigh popular types of entertainment in North America for several decades.

At its superlative, vaudeville played to various economical classes and an in a variety of venues. On the vaudeville circuit, it was said that if an human activity would succeed in Peoria, Illinois, information technology would work anywhere. The question, "Will it play in Peoria?" has now become a metaphor to indicate whether something appeals to the American mainstream public. The three near common levels of production were the "small time" (lower-paying contracts for more than frequent performances in rougher, often converted theaters), the "medium time" (moderate wages for ii performances each mean solar day in purpose-built theaters), and the "large time" (possible remuneration of several thousand dollars per week in large, urban theaters largely patronized by the middle and upper-middle classes). As performers rose in renown and established regional and national followings, they worked their way into the less arduous working conditions and amend pay of the "big time." The capitol of the "big time" was New York Metropolis's Palace Theatre (or just "the Palace" in vaudevillian slang). Featuring a nib stocked with inventive novelty acts, national celebrities, and acknowledged masters of vaudeville functioning (such every bit comedian and trick roper Will Rogers), the Palace provided what many vaudevillians considered the apotheosis of remarkable careers.

Vaudeville and Immigrant America

In improver to vaudeville'south prominence every bit a form of American amusement, it reflected the newly evolving urban inner-city civilization. The ethnic caricatures that now equanimous American humor reflected the positive and negative interactions between ethnic groups in American cities. The caricatures served as a method of understanding different groups and their societal positions.

Making up a large portion of immigration to the Usa in the mid-nineteenth century, Irish Americans became discipline to discrimination due to their ethnic physical and cultural characteristics. Stereotypical depictions of the Irish gaelic as greenhorns alluded to their status as newly arrived immigrants, a portrayal presented in many avenues of entertainment. The use of the "greenhorn immigrant" character for comedic effect showcased not simply how immigrants were viewed every bit new arrivals, but also what they could aspire to exist. The Irish gaelic-American platonic of transitioning from the "shanty" to the "lace pall," though frequently depicted in satire, became a model of economical upwardly mobility for immigrant groups.

The Rise of Realism

American realism attempted to portray the life of ordinary Americans at habitation, presenting a new artistic perspective.

Learning Objectives

Analyze the new focus on realism and how it manifested itself in the arts

Key Takeaways

Primal Points

• American realism was a style in art, music, and literature that depicted gimmicky social realities and the lives and everyday activities of ordinary people.
• The Ashcan Schoolhouse was a group of New York City artists who sought to capture the feel of plough-of-the-century New York City through realistic portrayals of the everyday lives and environments of the lower class, immigrants, and slum dwellers.
• Prominent realist writers included Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, William Dean Howells, and Horatio Alger Jr.
• Naturalism, which grew out of realism, not only depicted its subjects realistically but also emphasized the role of social atmospheric condition, heredity, and environment in the development of one'southward character.

Key Terms

• Ashcan Schoolhouse: A realist artistic motion, which came into prominence in the United States during the early on twentieth century, best known for works portraying scenes of daily life in New York's poorer neighborhoods.
• Naturalism: An outgrowth of realism that likewise focused on how social conditions, heredity, and surround shape man grapheme.
• Realism: In the arts, a style characterized by the delineation of subjects equally they be in objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation.

Realism

From the tardily nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries, the United States experienced enormous industrial, economic, social, and cultural change. A continuous moving ridge of European immigration and the rising potential for international trade brought increasing growth and prosperity to America. Through artistic expression, American realism attempted to portray the cultural exuberance of the figurative American landscape and the life of ordinary Americans at home. Artists allowed the emotional tenor, textures, and sounds of the city to influence the fashion and composition of their creative projects. Musicians noted the fast-paced nature of life in the early twentieth century and responded with a fresh and new tempo. Authors told new stories about boys and girls that real Americans could have grown up with. Pulling away from fantasy and focusing on the now, American realism presented a new gateway into modernism. The Ashcan School, also known as "The 8," along with the group chosen "Ten American Painters," created the cadre of American modernism in the visual arts.

The Ashcan School

McSorley'due south Bar (1912): McSorley's Bar, John French Sloan, 1912 (oil on canvass).

The Ashcan School was a group of New York City artists who sought to capture the feel of turn-of-the-century New York City through realistic portraits of everyday life. These artists non merely depicted the rich and promising Fifth Avenue socialites, merely also the culturally textured lives of the lower classes. At to the lowest degree ane critic of the time did not similar the Ashcan Schoolhouse's choice of subjects, which included alleys, tenements, slum dwellers, and taverns frequented past the working class. The group included members such as George Bellows, Robert Henri, Everett Shinn, George Benjamin Luks, William Glackens, John Sloan, and Edward Hopper, and became known as the "Revolutionary Black Gang" and the "Apostles of Ugliness."

Realist Writers

Realist writers included Samuel Clemens (Marking Twain), Stephen Crane, William Dean Howells, and Horatio Alger Jr. Realist journalists, too chosen "muckrakers," included Jacob Riis and cartoonist Art Immature. Realist musicians counted James Allen Bland, C.A. White, and Scott Joplin in their number.

Mark Twain

Samuel Clemens (1835–1910), ameliorate known past his pen proper name of "Mark Twain," grew up in the Mississippi River frontier town of Hannibal, Missouri. Early nineteenth-century American writing tended to be flowery, sentimental, or ostentatious—partially because authors were still trying to prove that they could write equally elegantly as the English language. Twain'due south style, yet, was based on vigorous, realistic, colloquial American speech, and gave American writers a new appreciation of their national voice. Twain was the first major author to come from the interior of the country, and he captured its distinctive, humorous slang and tendency toward iconoclasm. For Twain and other American writers of the late nineteenth century, realism was not merely a literary technique: It was a mode of speaking truth and exploding worn-out conventions. Twain is all-time known for his works Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the latter of which combined rich humour, a sturdy narrative, and social criticism.

Literary Naturalism

Naturalism was a literary move taking identify from roughly 1880 to 1940 that used detailed realism to propose that social weather, heredity, and surround had an inevitable role in shaping human character. Naturalism is the outgrowth of literary realism, a prominent literary movement in mid-nineteenth century French republic and elsewhere. Naturalistic writers were influenced past Charles Darwin'southward theory of development. They believed that heredity and social environment largely determine one'southward character. Whereas realism seeks but to describe subjects as they actually are, naturalism besides attempts to determine the underlying forces (e.thou., the environment or heredity) influencing the actions of its subjects. Naturalistic works often include uncouth or sordid subject field affair; for instance, the works of Émile Zola, the most renowned literary naturalist, demonstrate a frankness virtually sexuality along with a pervasive pessimism. Naturalistic works exposed life's dark, harsh realities, including poverty, racism, violence, prejudice, affliction, corruption, prostitution, and filth. As a event, naturalistic writers frequently were criticized for focusing likewise much on man vice and misery.

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Source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-ushistory/chapter/culture-in-the-gilded-age/

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