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Folk Culture
Folklore (1846) - originally referred to popular superstition and beliefs
Folk Culture
1888 - Journal of American Folklore - cowboy, former slaves, Ozarks, Appalachian, etc.
https://www.loc.gov/folklife/onlinecollections.html
Dime Novels
Dime Novels
Americans had access to cheap editions of Dickens, Sir Walter Scott, Cooper, Shakespeare, etc.
Beadle's Dime Novels
New content - colonial wars against Indians, Revolutionary War, War of 1812
Malaeska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter - Ann Stephens 1860
Buffalo Bill Cody
Buffalo Bill
Wild West Show 1883 - dramatic reenactments as the Wild West is disappearing
William Cody - tries to be consistent to history as possible
One of the first American celebrities
https://centerofthewest.org/explore/buffalo-bill/research/buffalo-bill/
Mark Twain
Mark Twain
Hannibal, MO - edge of the West - source of his content
Picked up on slave stories
Constructed a public self for public consumption - becomes a public entertainer
Turns the tall tale into literature
"Humorist"
Twain went out on a lecture series
Went back and forth between serious and humorous
Humor was a source of social criticism
Huck Finn
Huck Finn
Dialect
American Realism
Black presence - "certain creative tensions" - challenge to high culture
Follows the structure of a minstrel show
https://www.learner.org/series/amerpass/unit08/usingvideo.html
Minstrel Shows
Began in 1840s and became the most popular entertainment in the United States
White actors in blackface - skewered more high culture plays and operas
Almost all popular music of the mid-1800s originated from minstrel
Twain was a fan - had seen a show in Hannibal
http://exhibits.lib.usf.edu/exhibits/show/minstrelsy/jimcrow-to-jolson/jump-jim-crow/
Pop Culture
Mass Culture theory - began with Matthew Arnold - Culture and Anarchy 1869
End of the Frontier
Privilege elite culture
Mass produced = less value
Cultural Authenticity
Produced singularly
Time to craft
Cultural Authenticity
"Intellect" to experience
Good "taste"
Industrialization
Urbanization -
Challenged idea that everyone had their "place"
Locations
Access and opportunities in cities change
Individuals immoral without community
Society deteriorates
Individuals cannot resist mass media/popular culture
Is democracy and education bad for society?
Elite classes have less control
Specialties
Industry and Urbanization
Textiles
First wave of factories beginning earlier in the century
Textiles
Before the Civil War the US was primarily an agricultural country
Scale
Productivity increased exponentially
Scale
Heavy Industries
Steel, oil, railroads
Vertical integration - own all parts of production
Gustavas Swift - refrigerated railroad car
Heavy Industries
Horizontal integration - own all rivals
Standard Oil - bought up 100 oil companies
Carnegie - both vertical and horizontal integration in steel industry
Skyscrapers
Structural steel replaced Bessemer steel - Carnegie refitted all his plants for the process
Home Insurance Building Chicago - 1885
Skyscrapers
Price of steel drops
Titans of Industry
Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Carnegie
Titans of Industry
Railroads
Unified America changed the economy
90% of steel went to railroads
From 1870-1890 railroad mileage doubled
Railroads
Railroads needed capital for long-term projects - made up most of stocks in the country at this time
Railroad companies would water stocks and overbuild
Complexity of railroads led to the formation of accounting/data departments
Menlo Park
Thomas Edison's lab - 1876 - first modern research lab
Menlo Park
1882 - lights up Wall Street
1888 - designed first electric streetcar system for Richmond
Corporation
First appeared in 1820s - roads, canals, railroads
Legal status similar to that of a citizen - but cannot die
Corporation
Limited liability - debt falls to corporation not those who created corporation - encourages risk
Corporations grew in 1870s - sold shares as investment
Interstate Commerce Commission - 1887
Easier to regulate railroads than other corporations
Interstate Commerce Commission - 1887
Trusts
A company can hold the assets of another company but looks like an independent company
1890 - Sherman Anti-trust Act
Trusts
Holding Company - owns other companies - allowed in New Jersey and Standard Oil moves there
Factory Work
Continuous flow
Factory Work
Taylorism - study movements of workers, design factories and tasks to maximize prductivity
Workers lost sense of autonomy
Consumer
Cost of getting goods to consumer greatly reduced
Era of the large department store
Consumer
Panics - 1873 & 1893
Normal ups and downs of the business cycle
Little regulations of business at this time - states would relax rules to draw businesses there
Banks were not insured
Panics - 1873 & 1893
Jay Cooke & Company tried to dump Northern Pacific Railway Bonds
89 Railroads failed - NYSE closed for 10 days - 500,000 unemployed
Muckrakers
McClure's Magazine - Ida Tarbell
Muckrackers
Labor Movement Beginnings
Between 1870 - 1900, the United States became an industrial power
Produced 1/3 of world's manufactured goods
Labor Movement Beginnings
Factory workers were 1/4 of workforce, agricultural workers less than a 1/3
Unions
American Federation of Labor (AFL) - 1886
Lobbied mainly for rights of skilled workers - did little for factory workers
Unions
Labar movement was still small in the Nineteenth Century
The Gilded Age
Federal government is not as strong as Civil War/Reconstruction era
The Gilded Age
Various groups in society attempt to influence government
High voter turnout in elections
Lacking of Personality
President was not expected to promote the party's agenda
Lacking of Personality
Congress is much stronger during the late 1800s than today
Republican platform
State action to help the economy
Republican platform
Protect industries
Moral issues - Protestant public virtue
Democratic Platform
Less federal intervention in economic, morality, etc.
Democratic Platform
Popular with immigrants, Catholics, and Southern Whites
Election of 1880
Garfield assassinated by disgruntled office seeker
Chester Arthur becomes president - so pleasant that he is not asked to run in 1884
Election of 1880
Election of 1884
Cleveland runs an anti-corruption candidate
Only Democrat besides Wilson to hold Presidency between 1861 - 1933
Election of 1884
Vetoes 2/3 of bills that come across his desk
Election of 1888
Congress
Veteran's Benefits
Coxey's Army - marched on Washington in 1894
Veteran's Benefits
Spoils System
Political influence was shared by granting government jobs - patronage system
Garfield assasintated by disgruntled office seeker
Spoils System
Pendleton Act 1883 - government jobs based on merit (exam) - established the modern bureaucracy
From here forward, direct money becomes the way to influence the political system
Tariffs
McKinley Tariff 1890 - raised import taxes 50%
Tariffs
Raised the prices of goods - Congress lowered the tariff again in 1894
Monetary System
1890 Sherman Silver Purchase Act - Federal government was to purchase twice as much silver as before
Monetary System
Silver continued to be the most important political issue for Westerners
Moralism
Nativism
Tremendous growth in immigration from 1870-1890
Rise in anti-Catholicism
American Protection Association - anti-immigrant group that grew to over 2 million members in early 1890s
Nativism
Prohibition
State laws begin to pass to limit alcohol sales and comsumption
Prohibition
Blue laws specifically target Catholic workers
Election of 1884 "Rum, Romanism, and rebellion"
Populism
Role of rural America in soceity shrinking
Populism
Drought, predatory creditors, and global competition combined to lead to massive foreclosures on farms in 1889
Tom Watson
Farmers Alliance Congressman founded the Georgia Populist Party in 1892
Subtreasury plan - wanted Federal government to build silos and warehouse to hold crops until prices rose
Tom Watson
Originally wanted blacks and whites to unite against elites - later attacked blacks, Catholics and Jews in his political rhetoric
William Jennings Bryan
20 percent unemployment
Cross of Gold
William Jennings Bryan
The Wizard of Oz
Great American Novel
"Canon" - books agreed upon as standard works of literary tradition
The Great American Novel
Norton Anthology
Uniquely American idea
Origin
"The Great American Novel" - John W. DeForest, The Nation, 1868
"the task of painting the American soul within the framework of a novel..."
"the picture of the ordinary emotions and manners of American existence"
DeForest thinks Uncle Tom's Cabin comes close - a picture of American life
19th Century Novel
19th Century Novel
Tries to connect high and mass culture - a "democratic form"
Publishing industry expands
Literature began to be studied in the University
Qualities
Qualities of Great American Novel
Narrative realism
Geographic range
Social commentary
Cold War
Cold War Reassessment
American exceptionalism
Search for complex symbolism
Psychological insights - Freudian interpretations
Henry Adams 1838-1918
American royalty, Medieval historian at Harvard, author, essayist - becomes philosophical at the end of the century
Henry Adams
The Education of Henry Adams - autobiography, published posthumously, awarded Pulitzer prize in 1919
Naturalism
First proposed by French novelist Emile Zola
Harsh realism - based on Darwinism
Naturalism
Naturalist determinism - survival of the fittest
Author seeks to be objective observer
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/4997/
Jack London -b. 1876
Tramp, survivalist - learned to tell a good story on the road
Jack London
Gold Rush of 1897 in the Klondike
"To Build a Fire"