Commercialization of Working-Class Culture

I. Commercialized Amusement

A. Irish shabeen--refers to an unlicensed place that sold alcohol. In the Irish-American community, such an establishment was usually run be an Irish widow as a means of supporting her family, and was usually run from her home or apartment. It was supported by neighbors as a means of providing for a family that had run into difficult times.

B. Ethnic saloon--some immigrants from a variety of ethnic groups became small businessmen, and opened businesses that catered to the needs of their countrymen--opening grocery stores, real estate agencies, restaurants, and in particular saloons.

1. Permanent address--many male migrants moved from rooming house to rooming house, so that mail from the home country may not have been deliverable because they had moved several times in the interim; the saloon acted as a mail drop for men in this situation.

2. Cheap--or free--food--the saloon also provided a free meal with the purchase of a beer or two, an important service because rooming houses would have charged extra for board; many men were also trying to send most of their pay home, especially in the years just before and just after the turn of the century.

3. Place to hear and speak native language--because these establishments catered to ethnic groups, the saloon also served as a way to remain connected to the news from "back home" through the mail connection mentioned above, but also by reading newspapers from the old country, and being able to converse with fellow countrymen in one's native tongue.

4. Conviviality--with enough drinking (but not too much), convivialty was enhanced--one felt befriended. There were also rituals of saloon conviviality, principally the practice of "treating."

a. Treating--the practice of buying a round of drinks "for the house"--that is to say, everyone present in the saloon. This was expected of each newcomer entering the saloon. After treatin everyone in the saloon, the newcomer would be then welcomed into the inner circle, and often would not have to buy another drink that evening, since others would treat him in turn.

C. Brewery Saloons--beginning in the late 1880s, a number of breweries built saloons to sell their beer in. All of the larger breweries--Budweiser, Schlitz, Pabst, and numerous others. They often then leased their buildings to local proprietors, who had to sign contracts limiting their sales to products from the host brewery. This left breweries open to the charge that they were subsidizing drunkedness in these ethnic communities; the fact that many of these brewery owners had been, themselves, ethnic immigrants only a generation before was also somewhat problematic.

D. Wine shops and brothels--some saloons also operated as brothels, with women plying their trade in small rooms upstairs from the bar (known as "cribs").

1. Anthony Comstock--founder of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, and later Assistant Postmaster of the United States. Served in the Union Army in the Civil War, saw little action and complained of the foul language used by his fellow soldiers. After the war, became a self-appointed guardian of virtue in New York City; was connected politically so that his views easily obtained the force of law. He first moved against the distribution of information about birth control. He then moved against the distribution of what he considered "obscenity," which of course was applied to anything having to do with information about sex--eventually including anatomy textbooks for medical students.



E. Dance Halls--Dance halls were considered dangerous to the public morals because they encouraged the indiscriminate and unregulated mingling of the sexes. The dances of the age, the so-called "tough dances," but the sexes in close contact with one another, and were vigorous and "stimulating."

1. Unchaperoned women--Dance halls were also seen as threats to public morality because they admitted unchaperoned women, and allowed them to mix indiscriminately with the men present.

F. Amusement Parks and Arcades.

1. Resorts--usually catered to middle class families, and were located some distance from larger urban areas to make it more difficult for working-class individuals to get there.

a. Cedar Point--Began as a beer garden with a couple of decrepit bathhouses. Its location in Sandusky, approximately halfway between Cleveland and Toledo on the New York Central Railway, made it accessible to a number of families who lacked the means to own a place of their own near the refreshing breezes of the lake (and out of the steamy temperatures of the city during the summer), but could afford a couple of days or a week at a nearby resort.

2. Urban Amusement Parks--other parks were located closer to cities--like Kennywood Park in Pittsburgh, Coney Island near New York City, and Belle Isle in Detroit--and were therefore accessible to working-class families

a. Proximity to workers--urban amusement parks were close enough to cities that workers and their families could easily reach them on their only day off--Sunday--for a day of enjoyment. These parks were usually located just beyond the city limits, so that they could sell customers alcohol. Most cities at this time enforced Sunday closing laws, popularly known as "Blue Laws," to prevent the purchase of alcohol on the Christian sabbath day.

II. Mass Consumption and Advertising

A. Urban environment--as more people lived in to cities (and this did not make up the majority of the population until 1920), they had to become reliant upon stores to supply the goods they needed for everyday living.

B. Individual packaging--until near the turn of the century, nearly all goods were sold from common containers, and customers were reliant upon the honesty and sanitary practices of the store owner for the condition of the goods they purchased.

1. Standard weights--companies like Toledo Scale Company filled a need to ensure that when customers asked for a pound of meat, they could ensure that the received a pound of meat, because they could see the evidence before their eyes.

2. Standard packaging--companies like Procter and Gamble in Cincinnati began sending their goods to stores in standardized packaging (often using industrial versions of scales) to ensure customers that they were receiving good quality, standard weight goods. The packaging--in cans, boxes, cartons, or specially-designed wrappers--obscured the appearance of the good contained within. How could customers tell the quality of a good before purchasing it?

C. Advertising--early advertising looks foreign to the modern eye; how could anyone be enticed to by a good by an advertisement that appears so blah?

1. Branding--one of the earliest elements of advertising was the development of the brand name--something that a customer could go into a store and ask for (or, increasingly, look for themselves) by name.

a. Ivory Snow--its name suggest purity--and who could ask for more in a soap? It's advertising slogan, "99 and 44/100ths%  pure" also suggest that, by not claiming to be 100% pure, that the company was being honest with its customer.

b. Maxwell House Coffee--"Good to the last drop" is a slogan that Maxwell House adopted soon after Theodore Roosevelt was overheard uttering it

c. Gillette Safety Razor--had to work to convince men to throw away the blade that went into their safety razor. After the turn of the 20th century, Gillette worked with medicine cabinet manufacturers to place a slot at the back of the cabinet to accommodate throwing away the blades.

2. Sex sells--advertisers quickly learned that putting an attractive woman on the label attracted both men and women to buy the product.

3. Race sells--advertisers also learned that putting caricturized and demeaning pictures of African Americans on the label helped to sell the product, as well. Some companies even went so far as to brand these products with the names of their fictionalized characters--like Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben (it was common for whites to refer to all older African Americans as "auntie" or "uncle."