Chapter 16.

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Saloons were most popular among men in the working class. Women went to cabarets and dance halls for entertainment. Children and their families liked trolley parks and motion pictures. The Great Train Robbery, the first motion picture released in 1903, was a huge success and demonstrated the commercial possibilities of movies. By 1908, the nation had 8000 nickelodeons showing films throughout the nation. Sporting events became a favorite pastime. Baseball becomes Americas pastime and favorite sport. The Cincinatti Reds were the first professional baseball team. Americans loved the speed, daring, and split-second timing of the game. Football, boxing, and horseracing also became very popular. Women took up sports such as ice skating, bicycling, and basketball. African Americans could not play professional baseball they played in the negro league. Adrian C. Ansen influenced others to segregate baseball. Jack Johnson was a famous African American boxer. He married a white woman couldnt travel because its illegal in some states. Vaudeville was a type of variety show that first appeared in the 1870s. It consisted of comical sketches involving racial or ethnic humor. Minstrel Show or black face whites acting as African Americans, imitating dance or humor became very popular. Al Jolsen was a black face actor who was famous for being in Jazz Singer. Newspapers became a vital source of information. Taking advantage of new production methods, publishers introduced larger and more interesting publications. Comics, sports, Sunday editions, hot stories, and graphic pictures were included. Yellow Journalism publishers competed heatedly with one another. They urged reporters to discover fresh news stories and lurid details of vice, murder, and scandal. This sensationalized news coverage became known as yellow journalism. This form of journalism bothered some critics. Joseph Pulitzer published the New York World. William Randolph Hearst published the New York Journal.

Reina Hoshino

Chapter 16.2

Popular magazines of the era featured stories to the average Americans desire to succeed including the rags to riches stories of Horatio Alger. Magazines also contained helpful articles and advertising. Rags to riches stories and adventure yarns also appeared as dime novels, inexpensive books with a wide readership. More educated readers turned to serious novels by Henry James and Edith Wharton and the social protest novels of Upton Sinclair. Local color writers satisfied their audiences hunger for information about distant parts of the country. As mass entertainment grew, African American art was absorbed into mainstream culture. The Negro Spiritual became acceptable to whites. It became an American art form. Ragtime: music originated among black musicians in saloons. Melodies with shifting accents over a steady beat. Scott Joplin was a famous ragtime composer. Jazz: from New Orleans. Raggy rhythms in which singers and instruments responded to a single leader. Jazzed up versions of similar melodies. Two new inventions allowed people to enjoy music at home. The player piano was a piano that had a paper roll played by wooden fingers to reproduce the music recorded on the roll. The phonograph invented by Thomas Edison in 1877 sold at a rate of more than 500,000 per year by 1914. In 1872, the introduction of the circus train made the annual visit of the circus an anticipated event all over America. Amusement parks featured music games of skill, Vaudeville productions, bathing beaches, and exciting rides. Coney Island was a popular amusement park Luna Park, Dreamland, and Steeple Chase Park. Such concerns over proper behavior and moral values refers to Englands Queen Victoria Victorianism. Self control was essential to social progress. Held true that one must possess perfect manners, hard work, sobriety, and restraint in relations between men and women went against some of the amusements of the time.

Reina Hoshino