So, a while ago—maybe last May—I was having this conversation with my friend Jed and his little sister about what decade in American history was the most dramatic/climactic/demonstrative of change. His sister was about to study the 1960s for the summer, and she and Jed kind of took the side of the 60s for being the most important. I, however, obviously took the Smith American Studies course about the 1890s and knew that it was by far the most transformative decade in American history. I was meaning to send a snarky email of some sort with plotted points emphasizing that I am totally right, but forgot about it shortly after. However, a recent American history text binge has led me to pick up this train of thought again. This will probably be really boring to anyone not interested in American history, as i don’t really elaborate on many of the points. Believe you me, they are all really important and have scads upon scads of further ramifications (especially the cultural ones, re: shopping, mass consumerism, the popularization of “going out”). Here we go, in no particular order.
Things that happened in America in the 1890s:
- Tens of thousands of settlers flood plains lands, responsible for a deterioration of land that will eventually lead to dust bowl
- Sierra Club founded (1892)
- Battle of Wounded Knee (1890) along with non-policy and further Americanization of American Indian peoples
- Plessy vs. Ferguson Separate but equal legislation passes (1896)
- NAACP formed (1890)
- Grange farmers establish more cooperatives
- The People’s Party established (1892)
- Rise of steel, skyscrapers this is, kind of a big deal of cities. especially new york and chicago — which more or less came to being in the 1890s
- Depression of 1893-97
- Theodore Dreiser publishes Sister Carrie (1899)
- Immigration boom for Southeastern Europeans
- Mass production of products begins (Coke, Hershey, Lipton, Del monte)
- Rise of consumption, b/c of mass production
- American medical and bar associations established
- Homestead Strike (1892)
- Mississippi becomes first state to “legally” limit civil rights (1890)
- Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives published, documenting the terrible condition of American slums
- Carnegie Hall Opens (1891)
- University of Chicago established
- China Exclusion act extended
- First Gas powered automobile invented (1893)
- Frank Lloyd Wright opens his own architecture office (1893)
- First Subway opens in Boston (1897)
- Pullman Strike (1894) + Federal Injunction to stop strikes
- National American Woman Suffrage Association founded (1890)
- Sherman Anti Trust Act passes– although it isn’t used for a decade or so
- World’s Columbian Exposition (1893)
- Silver standard is first argued by farmers + populists
- William Jennings Bryan’s Cross of Gold Speech
- Palace coup in Hawaii (1893), Hawaii annexed in 1898
- Frederick Jackson Turner’s Frontier Thesis published (1893)
- White Man’s Burden written by Rudyard Kipling (1899)
- Teller Amendment (1898)
- Begin of Open Door notes with China
- Feature films are invented and become popularized
- Amusement parks, like Coney Island, popularized and allow lower + middle classes an outlet for fun, dating, etc.
- Incandescent light makes urban streets navigable at night, and allow nightlife for the first time (for people who weren’t involved in prostitution or heavy drinking)
- Ragtime music explodes
- John Dewey publishes The School and Society
- First department store established in Chicago
- Thornstein Veblen publishes The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)
Convincing enough?
A ragtime ditty for the day.
That class ROCKED. I appreciate the 1890′s like wow. I love acting smart by making Teddy Roosevelt/G.W. Bush comparisons. and I love thinking about what Chicago must have looked like during the world’s fair….
and pbr is just never the same to me… I picture how it was in it’s glory days, ribbon around the bottle and all. Oh Floyd, how you rocked my world. Actually, all of the professors we had in that class were pretty much rockstars. Rosetta Cohen is such a classy, classy lady.
Hmm, I’m far from a American Studies student, but my casual interest in American history would like to nominate both the 1930s (expansion of federal power, great migration to cities, etc.) or even the 1860s (Expansion of federal power, civil war, reconstruction, emancipation) as competitors to the gay 90′s and the 60s.
My sister once wrote an essay in high school about the “Roaring Twenties.” Her thesis and first sentence was: “The Twenties were roaring.” A+.
It’s a convincing list, Kat, but I’m going to go with some decade in the future when scientists finally invent vegetables that taste like candy.
i just like how people fixate on decades for no reason other than numerical ease. like that weird dude brian said at that new year’s party, “i don’t believe in the gregorian calendar.” you’d probably have a much easier time finding significant 10 year periods of time (as if people need help?) if you didn’t have to squish it all into one decade.
also, define “mass produced” beer.