Gilded Age

• The dizzying array of things to do and buy convinced many Americans that the US was in a golden age.

• But there were still many problems

• This terms refers to how the last decades of the 1800s were gilded on the outside but had a rotten core on the inside.

Social and Cultural Trends

Mass Culture

Main Idea: One of the effects of the spread of transportation, communication, and advertising was that Americans all across the country became more and more alike in their consumption patterns. Rich and poor could have similar clothing styles, gadgets, toys, and food preferences. This phenomenon is known as mass culture.

U.S. Literacy Rates, 1870-1920CHART

Educating AmericansTRANSPARENCY

East Weymouth HS -1907

Americanization

• The process of working immigrants into American culture (language, customs, food)

Newspapers

• Joseph Pulitzer –World

• William Randolph Hearst – Morning Journal

Social and Cultural Trends

Americans Become Consumers during the Gilded Age Main Idea: As a result of industrialization and urbanization, more people began to work for wages rather than for themselves on farms. At the same time, more products were available than ever before and at lower prices. This led to a culture of consumerism, in which people wanted and bought the many new products on the market.

Rowland H. Macy 1858

Marshfield in Chicago

New Ways of ShoppingINFOGRAPHIC

Mail Order CatalogsTRANSPARENCY

Social and Cultural Trends

New Forms of Popular Entertainment

Main Idea: Urban areas with thousands of people became centers for new types of entertainment in the Gilded Age. Clubs, music halls, and sports venues attracted large crowds with time and money to spend. The middle class also began to take vacations, while the working classes sought chances to escape from the city, even if just for a day.

1912

Reading Skill: Identify Main IdeasNOTE TAKING

Mass Culture

Transmitted through

•Transportation, advertising and communication made Americans more alike in their consumerism

•Newspapers both reflected and helped create mass culture

•Public education expanded rapidly

Consumerism

•More people worked for wages

•More products were availale at lower prices

•Department stores opened

•Mail-order businesses boomed

•Consumers bought brand-name goods.

Entertainment

•Urban areas became entertainment centers

•Clubs, music halls, attract crowds

•Touring outdoor shows drew crowds

•Vaudeville

•Movies

•Sports