Intellectual

1
Intellectual Cultural Movements and Popular
Entertainment in the late 19th Century
2
Conspicuous Consumption

• In his book The Theory of the Leisure Class,
  American economist Thorstein Veblen described
  what he referred to as conspicuous consumption.
  
• Conspicuous consumption is essentially
  consumption for the overt purpose of showing off
  ones wealth and status.
• One portion of the servant class, chiefly those
  persons whose occupation is vicarious leisure,
  come to undertake a new, subsidiary range of
  duties--the vicarious consumption of goods.

3
Women's Suffrage

• Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony met
  in 1851 three years after Stanton organized the
  first woman's rights convention in Seneca Falls,
  New York.
• They were the spearheads of the Womens Suffrage
  Movement.
• They believed that voting rights should be based
  upon citizenship rather than sex.

4

• Although the American women would not receive the
  vote until 1920, the suffragists persevered
  throughout the 19th century.
• In 1878, a Womens Suffrage amendment was
  introduced and was debated over for years.
• In 1892, Elizabeth Cady Stanton addressed the
  Congress to help sway the vote.
• In this excerpt, she reasserts that citizenship
  is the root of enfranchisement.
• Secondly, if we consider her as a citizen, as a
  member of a great nation, she must have the same
  rights as all other members, according to the
  fundamental principles of our government. 

5
The Morrill Act of 1862

• Signed by Abraham Lincoln on July 2, 1862, the
  Morrill Act made higher education accessible to a
  broader spectrum of Americans by starting state
  universities across the country.
• It provided each state with 30,000 acres of
  public land for each Senator and Representative,
  the land was then to be sold and the proceeds put
  in an endowment fund to provide support for the
  state colleges.
• The increase in educational opportunities
  contributed to and was enjoyed by the growing
  middle class in the late 19th century.

6
The Gilded Age

• The Gilded Age is a term, coined by Mark Twain,
  applied to late 19th Century America that refers
  to the superficial exhibition and adoration of
  wealth that was characteristic of the period.
• The wealthy were almost painted in gold as the
  name implies, displaying their fortunes at every
  possible opportunity.
• Written by Twain and Charles Dudley Warner and
  published in 1873, "The Gilded Age" is a
  satirical novel about materialism and corruption
  in the 1870s.

7
American Impressionism

• American artists adopted the Impressionist style
  of painting from the likes of Monet, Pissarro,
  Renoir, and Cézanne, to name a few.
• The Impressionist style of painting is
  characterized by loose brushwork and vivid colors
  and became a widely used style in late 19th
  century America.
• Maurice Brazil Prendergast, in addition to being
  quite skilled with the impressionist style of
  light and color, incorporated structure as
  integral into his sketches and watercolors.

8
Patrons of the Arts

• In the late 19th century the upper classes lived
  lavish lifestyles, not only pouring their money
  into vacation and country homes, jewelry, furs,
  fashion, and extravagence at every turn, but also
  into European art and funding symphony, opera,
  and ballet companies.
• Metropolitan Museum of Art, founded in 1870,
  located for one year on 5th Avenue and then seven
  years on West 14th Street, at its 1880 location
  in Central Park.

9
Vaudeville

• Vaudeville, as it was popularized, grew out of
  Burlesque to create a more family friendly
  entertainment venue.
• It was the most popular form of commercial
  entertainment primarily because it bridged the
  gap between middle and working class tastes.

10
Ragtime

• In the late 19th Century, African Americans
  living in the north began to play a new style of
  music called Ragtime.
• By the turn of the century, it was popular
  throughout the country and enjoyed by many
  different groups of people.
• The 1800s was the era when Ragtime became
  distinguished in its own right alongside the
  Cakewalk and Jazz, which would surpass it in
  popularity by the 1920s.
• The Maple Leaf Rag was published in 1899 and is
  viewed as the turning point after which, Ragtime
  exhibited more depth and sophistication than it
  previously had.

11
Circus

• The American circus was revolutionized by P. T.
  Barnum and William Cameron Coup, who launched P.
  T. Barnum's Museum, Menagerie Circus, a
  travelling combination animal and human oddities,
  the exhibition of humans as a freakshow or
  sideshow was thus an American invention.
• Coup was also the first circus entrepreneur to
  use circus trains to transport the circus from
  town to town a practice that continues today and
  introduced the first multiple ringed circuses.

• It was this quality of the travelling circus that
  allowed Americans across the nation, not just in
  the big cities, to enjoy its entertainment

12
Public Spaces

• Construction on Central Park began in 1857 on 840
  acres in the center of Manhattan.
• The terrain was wholly unsuitable for commercial
  building due to its combination of swampy and
  rocky areas.
• City planners and the parks designer Frederick
  Law Olmsted envisioned an area with the feel of
  unspoiled countryside where the elite could relax
  and socialize, transformed from its previous
  state.

13

• It was obvious from the outset that the park was
  intended for the upper classes it was too far
  for the working classes to access and park rules
  favored sedate behavior.
• By the end of the 19th century however,
  activities were allowed on Sundays and people
  were allowed to walk in the expansive grassy
  areas.

14

• Not long after the conception of Central Park,
  Coney Island began to come into its own.
• As soon as the streetcar lines reached the island
  in 1860s businesses sprang up primarily
  associated with leisure activities.
• Major hotels, beaches, and amusement parks
  populated the island originally designed for the
  wealthy inhabitants of New York City.
• By the end of the century, however, Coney Island
  had become less of a resort and more of a day
  trip location for the working classes of the city

15
Baseball

• Baseball quickly became a national sport as local
  ball clubs began to tour and play regular games.
• Early on the National League formed in order to
  cater to middle class mentality when they banned
  the sale of alcohol, raised ticket prices, and
  did not play on Sundays.
• The American Association on the other hand, kept
  ticket prices down, sold liquor, and played on
  Sundays, catering to the working class immigrants
  who saw it as a form of recreation and
  relaxation.

16

• By the early 1870s club managers learned how to
  make it a profitable business.
• Baseball was promoted and quickly became more
  popular when cigarette companies, among others,
  began to baseball cards as advertisement.