Early Twentieth-century America Research Articles

What adolescents ought to know: sexual health texts in early twentieth-century America

What adolescents ought to know: sexual health texts in early twentieth-century America

"Spitting Is Dangerous, Indecent, and against the Law!" Legislating Health Behavior during the American Tuberculosis Crusade

Tuberculosis was the leading cause of death in early twentieth-century America. Reducing the sputum vector of contagion by changing public behavior initially focused on anti-spitting campaigns. According to most Progressive Era health experts, "promiscuous" spitting was a prime culprit in spreading the disease. Beginning in 1896 in New York, towns and cities throughout America passed anti-spitting legislation, sometimes creating tensions between individual liberty and the need to protect public health, and often highlighting class issues. Progressives viewed anti-spitting legislation in a favorable light because they advocated improving the health and well-being of Americans using state-of-the-art medical knowledge and because they often advocated the use of law and the coercive power of the state to impose order on society.

Dennis R. Alexander and Ronald L. Numbers (eds): Biology and Ideology: From Descartes to Dawkins

Science has always strived for objectivity, for a ‘‘view from nowhere’’ that is not marred by ideology or personal preferences. That is a lofty ideal toward which perhaps it makes sense to strive, but it is hardly the reality. This collection of thirteen essays assembled by Denis R. Alexander and Ronald L. Numbers ought to give much pause to scientists and the public at large, though historians, sociologists and philosophers of science will hardly be surprised by the material covered here. As a matter of historical record, the sciences have always been involved in ideological disputes, sometimes battling against anti-scientific ideologies (as with today’s creationism) or being used for nefarious ideological purposes themselves (as with the infamous episode of eugenics in early twentieth century America). Peter Harrison, in his essay on the cultural authority of natural history in early modern Europe, makes the point very clearly that advocates of the emerging sciences defended their novel, anti-Aristotelian approach in part on the basis that it was more conducive to a traditional humanistic education. For instance, insect metamorphosis was interpreted as analogical to the Christian belief of a resurrection of the body after death. And the ideological entanglement wasn’t only with religion, but extended to politics as well. As Harrison points out, Milton declared that the organization of ant colonies was a naturalistic sanction of parliamentary democracy! Of course, that game can be played by both sides, so it is not surprising that later in the same century the Whig John Edwards —who supported the monarchy of William and Mary—used bee colonies as indicative of the goodness of female monarchy (it is not clear where one could find William’s alter ego among bees, but never mind the details). These days biology, particularly through the Darwinian theory of evolution—is taken to have dealt (again) a mortal blow to theology (more on this below), and ‘‘New Atheist’’ Richard Dawkins likes to claim that he considers himself a Son of the Enlightenment. And yet, as recalled by Shirley Roe in her chapter on biology, atheism, and politics in eighteen century France, the father of that movement, Francois-Marie Arouet de Voltaire, famously spent quite a bit of his time refuting atheism on the ground that no atheistic society could be moral. Indeed, at one point, in answer to a letter from a correspondent he wrote:

Blair, Amy L. Reading Up: Middle-Class Readers and the Culture of Success in the Early Twentieth-Century United States. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2012.

Blair, Amy L. <i>Reading Up: Middle-Class Readers and the Culture of Success in the Early Twentieth-Century United States</i>. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2012.

American Crusade: Catholic Youth in the World Mission Movement from World War I through Vatican II (review)

American Crusade: Catholic Youth in the World Mission Movement from World War I through Vatican II By David J. Endres. [American Society of Missiology Monograph Series, 7.] (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, an imprint ofWipf and Stock Publishers. 2010. Pp. xiv, 197. $23.00 paperback. ISBN 978-1-608-99071-9.) Throughout the nineteenth century America was a mission field for the Roman Catholic Church, a status it retained until 1908. Ten years later, the American Catholic Church became a mission-sending church. This timing is ironic in that the great explosion of American Protestant interest in missions had occurred in the generation before World War I and probably peaked in terms of its visibility in the general culture just as American Catholics were entering the field in the years immediately following the war's end. One of the great engines of this Protestant movement, which saw the number of American Protestant missionaries soar from about 900 in 1890 to perhaps 14,000 in the 1920s, was the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions (SVM). The SVM was a recruiting and mobilizing organization for missions that worked on behalf of all the mainline Protestant denominations. American Catholics, marveling at this organizational juggernaut, attempted to create one of their own: the Catholic Students' Mission Crusade (CSMC). The SVM and the CSMC were similar in that they both reached out to youth, adopted the heroic rhetoric of the period, attempted to mobilize youth in an effort to evangelize the world, and were energized by the optimism and belief in a special American destiny that characterized nineteenth- and earlytwentieth-century America. Until the 1920s, the SVM reflected a broad Protestant consensus that embraced both evangelical Christianity and the Social Gospel. When this consensus became untenable in the 1920s as the battle between modernism and fundamentalism roared to life, the SVM soon tost its way and ceased to be an effective organization. The CSMC, unencumbered by this crisis of authority in American Protestantism, was rapidly rising in stature just as the SVM was becoming moribund. The CSMC would endure for another half a century, becoming a fixture in American Catholic life. David Endres does an excellent job bringing this history to life, charting the CSMCs story through four generations: the World War I generation that mirrored the Victorian optimism of the SVM; the interwar generation that saw itself as producing Crusaders to conquer the infidel; the post- World War H generation that produced Cold Warriors for Christ; and the generation of the 1960s that alternately gloried in and was mired in the social and ecclesial revolutions of the period. …

Mustaches and Masculine Codes in Early Twentieth-Century America

The purpose of this article is to deepen our understanding of twentieth-century masculinity by considering the social function of facial hair. The management of facial hair has always been a medium of gendered body language, and as such has elicited a nearly continuous private and public conversation about manliness. Careful attention to this conversation, and to trends in facial hairstyles, illuminates a distinct and consistent pattern of thought about masculinity in early twentieth-century America. The preeminent form of facial hair - mustaches - was used to distinguish between two elemental masculine types: sociable and autonomous. A man was neither wholly one nor the other, but the presence and size of a mustache - or its absence - served to move a man one way or another along the continuum that stretched from one extreme to the other. According to the twentieth-century gender code, a clean-shaven man's virtue was his commitment to his male peers and to local, national or corporate institutions. The mustached man, by contrast, was much more his own man: a patriarch, authority figure or free agent who was able to play by his own rules. Men and women alike read these signals in their evaluation of men.

Labs in the Field? Rocky Mountain Biological Stations in the Early Twentieth Century

Biological field stations proliferated in the Rocky Mountains region of the western United States during the early decades of the twentieth century. This essay examines these Rocky Mountain field stations as hybrid lab-field sites from the perspective of the field side of the dichotomy: as field sites with raised walls rather than as laboratories whose walls with the natural world have been lowered. Not only were these field stations transformed to be more like laboratories, but they were also embedded within the particular regional environmental and institutional context of the Rocky Mountains. Using the University of Colorado's Mountain Laboratory at Tolland and other contemporaneous sites as examples, this essay analyzes key features of these sites, including their location within transportation networks, buildings, equipment, personnel, scheduling, recreational and social activities, and other material and social practices on the ground. Considering both the distinctive and shared characteristics of the Rocky Mountain field stations in comparison to other types of field stations provides a more complete picture of the diversity and range of lab-field hybrid sites in the biological sciences in the early twentieth-century United States.

In Hock: Pawning in America from Independence through the Great Depression (review)

Reviewed by: In Hock: Pawning in America from Independence through the Great Depression Jane Kamensky (bio) In Hock: Pawning in America from Independence through the Great Depression. By Wendy Woloson. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. Pp. 233. Cloth, $35.00.) We are all in hock now, Wendy Woloson points out in the final chapter of this deeply researched and lucidly written study of pawnbrokerage in nineteenth-and early twentieth-century America. Having feasted for decades on credit-card debt—"pawning's mirror opposite" (182)—many Americans now find themselves in famine, pawning consumer goods bought dear with plastic for a little cash loaned at equally high interest rates. Long on the downswing, pawning is making a comeback: The number of pawnshops in the United States has nearly doubled since 1988. Surely the time is ripe for Woloson's probing history of the pawnshop seen from both sides of the counter and many other angles of vision as well. Using an enormous variety of evidence, including business records, personal documents, trade cards, satiric prints, sheet music, dime novels, penny papers, and much more, In Hock redeems pawnbrokerage [End Page 549] from stereotypes that have haunted the trade since its inception. Woloson reveals instead a vibrant and complex facet of the emerging industrial economy in cities ranging from Boston to Birmingham to Leadville, Colorado. At its best, Woloson's study makes a worthy companion to Stephen Mihm's A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States (Cambridge, MA, 2007), Seth Rockman's Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore (Baltimore, 2010; reviewed earlier in this issue), and other recent books probing the murky interstices of early American capitalism. Woloson opens In Hock with a visit to her neighborhood pawnshop, the bright and cheerful McGarry's, a family business serving Philadelphians for two generations. "The place is neat and clean," she writes, "the atmosphere relaxed and friendly. The radio is tuned to NPR" (1). Pawnbrokers aren't who we think they are, in other words. Bankers, rescuers, and retailers by turns, they're a far cry from the seedy lowlifes of popular imagination. Primetime stereotypes don't get the pawners right, either, Woloson discovered. She herself pawned a gold necklace for $40.00—another $6.00 due in five months if she wants to redeem it—all in the service of explaining to her reader the basic terms of the strange trade that is her subject. The reductive stereotypes Woloson wants so badly to dispel are the subject of her second chapter. The caricature of the pawnbroker as a rapacious and marginal figure and his customers as impoverished victims is an old one, arriving in British North America in the mid eighteenth century, before pawnbrokerage itself took root. Stories and images printed in London and reprinted in the colonies beginning in the 1760s made pawnbrokers "anathema to the emerging capitalist system" (22). Cast as greedy, irrational foreigners (often Jews), pawnbrokers were merchants gone through the looking glass: They took goods and gave money with strings attached, doubly impeding their customers' pursuits of happiness. Woloson marshals mountains of evidence on this point, and her readings of these cultural texts are nuanced and persuasive. But starting the book with a lengthy explication of the stereotypes she wishes to dispel works against her agenda. She devotes nearly a quarter of In Hock to documenting what the pawnbroker was not. Far more revealing are the tour de force middle chapters of In Hock, which offer a painstaking social history of pawning from the perspectives of brokers, clients, and police. In America as in Europe, pawnbrokers followed immigrants to cities, where new kinds of lending arose to meet [End Page 550] the needs of newly arrived populations. The nation's first pawnshop opened in New York at the turn of the nineteenth century, providing short-term loans in exchange for the kinds of humble collateral working people could pledge. You couldn't apprentice to become a pawnbroker; the profession, "much like dogcatching," was increasingly necessary yet hardly an aspirational choice for self-making men (58). Using city directories, Woloson finds that pawnbrokers started life in a dizzying variety...

Fordism in the Hospital: Albert Kahn and the Design of Old Main, 1917-25

The 1917-25 planning and construction at the University of Michigan of a new University Hospital, later dubbed Old Main, offers a noteworthy case study of the formal convergence of hospital and factory in early twentieth-century America. Designed by Albert Kahn, the architect responsible for Ford Motor Company's archetypal automobile plants, and located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, less than forty miles from Detroit's burgeoning factory landscape, Old Main was well positioned to reflect the values of industry in both appearance and operation. The building's outer surface represents a striking departure from the historicism that characterized several other hospitals of this period, while plans for the building's novel diagnostic unit demonstrate unique operational parallels to the assembly line model of production. Ultimately, Old Main's industrial design similarities cast it as a precociously modernist hospital, relating streamlined form to function more explicitly than many of its contemporary institutions.

The Object of Therapy:

ABSTRACT This article will examine the career of weaver and occupational therapist Mary E. Black (1885–1988) by using her life as a lens through which to explore the intersection of arts and crafts revivalism with occupational therapy in early twentiethcentury northeastern North America. Born in Massachusetts, Black grew up in and was educated in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. She trained as ward's aide in Montreal in 1919 and worked in a string of hospitals and sanitariums throughout the United States and Nova Scotia. Indeed, Black understood her work as an occupational therapist and what she described as “the therapeutics of weaving” to be intertwined. Like many arts and crafts revivalists of her period, Black saw the teaching of skilled craftmaking as a means to generate self-sufficiency, since it provided a way for displaced and injured people to make salable goods in the face of industrialization, war, and inadequate medical care. In Black's case, the utopian social mission of the new professional field of occupational therapy provided just the institutional means to disseminate the remunerative qualities of craftwork on a broad scale.

Consuming Citizenship? The Archaeology of Mexican Immigrant Ambivalence in Early Twentieth-Century Los Angeles

In late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America, the consumption of American-made goods was seen as an expression of one’s patriotism and loyalty to the nation. According to a number of historical archaeological case studies, racialized groups, such as African Americans and Chinese Americans, used consumption as a way of gaining access to the full benefits of American citizenship typically reserved for individuals deemed “white” by law. The material culture of Mexican immigrants living in early twentieth-century Los Angeles tells a slightly different tale. Despite being ascribed a legal whiteness, archaeological and documentary data suggest that Mexican immigrants expressed ambivalence toward their consumption of American goods and outright rejected the notion that exerting such buying power would lead to a broader acceptance in Anglo American society.

Corresponding to the Rational World

This article employs the notion of legitimation strategy in new religious movements to explore and compare the use of scientific rationales and language in Christian Science and the Unity School of Christianity. I examine how Christian Science and Unity used science to present their beliefs and practices, and I focus on Christian Science testimonials and Unity's advocacy of vegetarianism to demonstrate their reliance upon scientific epistemologies. I argue that the two movements used scientific rationales and language as a strategy to validate themselves in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century America, which had largely accepted the scientific worldview as a primary source of knowledge about the world. A key difference in the way they used science helps to explain the vastly different levels of social controversy involving the two movements.

Erratum to: Immigration, Crime, and Incarceration in Early Twentieth-Century America

Erratum to: Immigration, Crime, and Incarceration in Early Twentieth-Century America

Popular Images Derived from Tennyson's Arthurian Poems

Imagery based on Tennyson's Arthurian poems appeared frequently in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain and America. Because of the popularity of Tennyson's verse and the perception that he was not only a great poet but also a moral one, this imagery was widely disseminated both through illustrated editions of his works and through its infusion into popular culture and daily life.

Does the Structure of Banking Markets Affect Economic Growth? Evidence from U.S. State Banking Markets

This paper examines the impacts of banking market structure and regulation on economic growth using new data on banking market concentration and manufacturing industry-level growth rates for U.S. states during 1899-1929 — a period when the manufacturing sector was expanding rapidly and restrictive branching laws segmented the U.S. banking system geographically. Unlike studies of developing and developed countries today, we find that banking market concentration generally had a positive impact on manufacturing sector growth in the early twentieth century United States, with a somewhat stronger impact on industries with lower rates of incorporation and less reliance on bond markets (and, hence, relatively more reliance on banks). Because regulations affecting bank entry varied considerably across states and the industrial organization of the U.S. banking system differs markedly from those of other countries, we consider the impact of other aspects of banking market structure and policy on growth. Even after controlling for differences in the prevalence of branch banking, deposit insurance, and other aspects of policy and market structure, we find that market concentration boosted industrial growth.

Representations of the Irish in American Vaudeville and Early Film

The emergence of vaudeville and, later, moving pictures coincided with a period of increased immigration to the United States and both relied heavily on ethnic stereotypes for material. This paper will examine some of the ways in which one particular ethnic group, the Irish, were represented on stage and screen in late nineteenth and early twentieth century America. It will attempt to tie the portrayal of Irish ethnicity into wider debates around the nature of audiences for vaudeville and early cinema, and the impact which these mass media may or may not have had on urban, working class, immigrant audiences. I will consider the extent to which vaudeville and early cinema might have functioned as assimilationist tools, not only in relation to newly-arrived Irish immigrants but also those joining the steadily increasing numbers of middle class Irish Americans.

Irrational Power: Jack Johnson, Prizefighting Films, and Documentary Affect

Abstract Though prizefighting films provoked contention in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America, they were legal and exhibited in places where the sport itself was prohibited. The insertion of Jack Johnson’s black body into the previously white-dominated context of prizefighting films increased significantly the controversy these texts elicited. Discourses surrounding fight films cast Johnson as an exceptionally excessive signifier who so amplified the nonfiction film image’s affectivity that films featuring him necessitated containment. While federal legislation eventually suppressed the circulation of prizefighting films, representations of Johnson’s fights in different media forms were produced and distributed without problem. Combining the discourses calling for the containment of films that displayed Johnson’s 1910 victory against “white hope” Jim Jeffries with an examination of unproblematic representations of the same fight, this essay considers the relationship among prizefighting films’ presumed affectivity, the content they displayed, and their form during this moment in American sport history.

Whose fair?: experience, memory, and the history of the great St. Louis Exposition

The 1904 St. Louis World's Fair was a major event in early twentieth-century America. Attracting millions of tourists, it exemplified the Victorian predilection for public spectacle. The Fair has long served as a touchstone for historians interested in American culture prior to World War I and has endured in the memories of generations of St. Louis residents and visitors. In Whose Fair? James Gilbert asks: what can we learn about the lived experience of fairgoers when we compare historical accounts, individual and collective memories, and artifacts from the event? Exploring these differing, at times competing, versions of history and memory prompts Gilbert to dig through a rich trove of archival material. He examines the papers of David Francis, the Fair's president and subsequent chief archivist; guidebooks and other official publications; the 1944 film Meet Me in St. Louis; diaries, oral histories, and other personal accounts; and a collection of striking photographs. From this dazzling array of sources, Gilbert paints a lively picture of how fairgoers spent their time, while also probing the ways history and memory can complement each other.

Ties that Bind: Ethnic and Religious Factors in the Marriage Choices of Irish-American Catholics on the Dakota Frontier

Research on the marriage patterns of the Irish in nineteenthand early twentieth-century urban America points to a significant degree of group cohe siveness. Studies of the Irish in such cities as Worcester, New York, Butte, and San Francisco show that Irish immigrants had very high rates of in-group mar riage, usually over 90 percent.1 Equally significant is that the propensity for in group marriage continued among the American-born children of the immi grants, although, as might be expected, to a lesser extent than among the first generation. For example, in Worcester in 1880,91.7 percent of second-generation Irish men and 81.2 percent of second-generation Irish women had first or sec ond generation Irish spouses, while in 1900 the in-group rates were 79.7 percent for men and 76.3 percent for women.2 In New York City from 1908 through 1912 the second-generation Irish had an in-group marriage rate of 66.0 percent (70.2 percent for men and 61.7 for women).3 Similarly, in 1880 in San Francisco

Keeping the Devil at Bay: The Shoe on the Coffin Lid and Other Grave Charms in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-century America

Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century graves excavated archaeologically in the United States are occasionally found in association with objects beyond the typical clothing or coffin hardware, such as ceramic vessels, coins, and perhaps most mysterious of all, a single shoe placed on the lid of the coffin or casket. Not clearly described in archival accounts, the single shoe phenomenon within a mortuary context is argued here to be a creolized practice, combining an African cosmology and belief in the liminal state of the soul after death with a European and especially British Isles tradition of shoes as magical objects and potential traps for evil.