America 1870-1900 - NATION ON THE MOVE (continued)

We are still on the move and up comes the question of the centennial! I remember the bicentennial. We spent that summer on a cross country trip to see bison. My mom nearly fell off a cliff riding a horse around Lake Louise - pictured!-  and my little sister nearly died of a North Dakota sunburn - sadly, not pictured. I can't locate the picture where 11 year old me has the angriest face ever in front of Mount Rushmore because everyone is paying attention to Katie because of her near death experience and what about MY very bad sunburn? The happiest memory of this trip was painting the dogs' toenails. Yes, that is dogs plural. In a camper. With three kids. It was something. My mother is a saint!

But back to 1876.

People wanted to have a big banger for the 100th  anniversary of freedom, but not everyone thought it was a good idea. Benjamin Willis a Democratic member of the house of representatives said, regarding the centennial, “Is self-jollification...getting up a grand magnificent exposition, a function of government? Rather than expend money for a jubilee in 1876 we should bequeath to posterity the privilege of celebrating the continued existence of the Republic in 1976.” He was not a fellow who cared about a good time. BUT he was the father of Portia Willis who was a pretty awesome suffragist. (And not mentioned in the book, but I learned about her when Wikipedia-ing her dad.)

It was decided to hold the 1876 Central Exhibition in Philadelphia. The city of brotherly love paid $1.5 and the congress matched it.

“The government is not a republic, but a hateful oligarchy of sex.” Anonymous suffragist, 1876. So women are mentioned! Useful women who aren't going to make good wives! Also in this section we have our first non-white face. He is a dime novel character named “Pomp” which doesn’t seem like positive representation. I couldn't find any info on The Electric Horse by Noname other than bibliographically. I looked up some dime (or half-dime) novels and they were written in dialect that was nearly incomprehensible. And a lot of information about A Horse with No Name that was not related to this book at all.

People - and by people it means white men - were proud to be Americans at this time and described thus by historian Henry Adams. The average city dweller was “a pushing, energetic, ingenious person, always awake and trying to get ahead of his neighbor.” Well, he sounds like a jerk!

The creation of Wrigley’s chewing gum and Brentano’s bookstore are outlined here. Brentano’s died twice. Once in 1983 when it was acquired by Borders and then in 2011 when Borders went under. But I was actually chewing Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum when I read that section. Some some things did stick around. There is also a glowing origin story for Buck Duke of the American Tobacco Company. Thanks, Buck, for the 10 years you probably shaved off my life.

So they are discussing how this land of raw material was chewed up and spit out by the greed of men. The land that our forefathers “rightfully” stole from the indigenous people and worked with the sweat of stolen Africans ended up eating its own tail. Right now it kind of feels like our great greed-fueled empire is going down. Maybe it will come back or maybe it is some other country’s turn to be "it". We did a good job for awhile. We got rid of dictators who ruled by right of birth and replaced them with, well dictators who rule by right of circumstances - but every so often, by right of brains, or talent, or hard work and with a large amount of good luck.

This was written in 1970, which is not the world we have now. Back then, no one who was living their best middle-class-white-girl life knew we needed a revolution.  Sure there were feminists, and anti-war protesters and civil rights workers, but their platform was narrow and easy to ignore if it didn’t affect you. Basically, the people who were trying to make a change weren't being heard the way they are today.

Economist Henry George saw it, “Amid the greatest accumulations of wealth, men die of starvation, and puny infants suckle dry breasts; where everywhere the greed of gain, the worship of wealth, shows the force of the fear of want.” Yes indeed.

Up next is law and order. Yikes.


All quotes are from TL unless otherwise noted.
Benjamin Willis. Brady-Handy Photograph Collection, Library of Congress, 1865-1880.
George, Henry. Progress and Poverty. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1881.
Time-Life Books. This Fabulous Century 1870-1900. New York: Time-Life Books, 1970. 
Portia Willis. Bain News Service, Library of Congress, 1910.