The Arts in the American Home, 1890–1930 ed. by Jessica H. Foy, Karal Ann Marling

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 375 more apparent by the turn of the century, when corporations and managerial business practices began to dominate the economy. Spears demonstrates the rhetoric and means by which salesmen came under the influence of “system” as offered by Frederick W. Taylor and others. As “scientific salesmanship” developed and pro­ fessionalization progressed, drummers and their freedoms became relics of premodernity. Salesmen now trained their own personali­ ties to new standardized ideals while learning how to read potential customers’ personalities, the better to be all things to all men. At the same time, their managers could better insist on efficiency, coor­ dination, and discipline. Salesmen could no longer invent sales pitches or travel routes as they pleased; they were now merely one component of formalized marketing programs. Literary explorations of the vicissitudes and meanings of the sales­ men’s lives—and deaths—first attracted Spears to this topic. His evi­ dence comes from a broad spectrum of resources, which he uses carefully to unravel historical persons and their activities from the “mythic figure cut loose from the bonds of history” (p. 5). A gener­ ous selection of evocative illustrations likewise evinces the commer­ cial travelers’ widespread cultural presence. Historians of technology will wish for more discussion about how developments in transportation and communication affected the commercial travelers’ activities and conditions. And conversely, these heavy users and their needs must have influenced decisions made in developing these technologies. In fairness, those were not the questions Spears set out to address, but I hope that 100 Years on the Road will inspire another scholar to take them on. In the mean­ time, we can hardly wish for a more erudite history of the men who carried commerce and urban culture beyond the city, taking with them both the dreams and the materials of the emerging consumer culture. Pamela Walker Laird Dr. Laird is completing a book on the transformation of American advertising from 1870-1917. She teaches part-time at the University of Colorado, Denver, and at the University of Denver. The Arts in the American Home, 1890—1930. Edited by Jessica H. Foy and Karal Ann Marling. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994. Pp. xxiv+194; illustrations, notes, index. $32.95 It would be easy for historians of technology to bypass this work because of its title, but in fact, changing technology and conflicting attitudes toward its role in the home are pervasive themes here. Between 1890 and 1930, Americans witnessed a dramatic shift in 376 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE their public and private lives. Important new technologies such as the automobile, cinema, phonograph, radio, and central heating all became commonplace during this time. As many ofthe new technol­ ogies encouraged people to look outward, they both triggered and accompanied changes in the ways people used, furnished, and thought about their homes. This book looks at these changes through the lens of artistic expression in the American home. The chapters are derived from presentations given at a 1990 con­ ference sponsored by the McFaddin-Ward House in Beaumont, Texas. This was the fourth (and last) in a series of annual confer­ ences devoted to exploring changes in family life and domestic mate­ rial culture between 1890 and 1930. The conferences were con­ ceived as a way of “making a contribution to the field of historic interpretation and social history which would take advantage of the museum’s expertise and collections” (Gary N. Smith, foreword to Proceedings: McFaddin-Ward House Museum Conference [Beaumont, Tex., 1989], p. iii). Drawing on the keynote address she delivered at the conference, historian Karal Ann Marling sets the scene, outlining the major cul­ tural transformations that occurred during this period, with Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street and Babbitt as literary models of comparison. In each of the eight succeeding chapters, a different contributor then addresses one or another form of artistic expression in the home, assessing its trends, influences, and impact on the home and its users. Topics include changes in domestic furnishings, the hearth as a domestic icon, home music from piano to phonograph to radio, family reading, women’s needlework, and the use of pictures and photographs in domestic settings. To...