AN URBAN AGE AND A CONSUMER SOCIETY ★^699between the Catholic Church and the oppressive state, participated eagerly
in the annual festival of the Madonna of Mt. Carmel. After Italian- Americans
scattered to the suburbs, they continued to return each year to reenact the
festival.
Although most immigrants earned more than was possible in the impov-
erished regions from which they came, they endured low wages, long hours,
and dangerous working conditions. In the mines and factories of Pennsyl-
vania and the Midwest, eastern European immigrants performed low- wage
unskilled labor, while native- born workers dominated skilled and supervisory
jobs. The vast majority of Mexican immigrants became poorly paid agricultural,
mine, and railroad laborers, with little prospect of upward economic mobility.
“My people are not in America,” remarked one Slavic priest, “they are under it.”
Consumer Freedom
Cities, however, were also the birthplace of a mass- consumption society that
added new meaning to American freedom. There was, of course, nothing
unusual in the idea that the promise of American life lay, in part, in the enjoy-
ment by the masses of citizens of goods available in other countries only to the
well- to- do. Not until the Progressive era, however, did the advent of large down-
town department stores, chain stores in urban neighborhoods, and retail mail-
order houses for farmers and small- town residents make available to consumers
throughout the country the vast array of goods now pouring from the nation’s
factories. By 1910, Americans could purchase, among many other items, elec-
tric sewing machines, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, and record players.
Low wages, the unequal distribution of income, and the South’s persistent pov-
erty limited the consumer economy, which would not fully come into its own
until after World War II. But it was in Progressive America that the promise of
mass consumption became the foundation for a new understanding of freedom
as access to the cornucopia of goods made available by modern capitalism.
Leisure activities also took on the characteristics of mass consumption.
Amusement parks, dance halls, and theaters attracted large crowds of city
dwellers. The most popular form of mass entertainment at the turn of the cen-
tury was vaudeville, a live theatrical entertainment consisting of numerous
short acts typically including song and dance, comedy, acrobats, magicians, and
trained animals. In the 1890s, brief motion pictures were already being intro-
duced into vaudeville shows. As the movies became longer and involved more
sophisticated plot narratives, separate theaters developed. By 1910, 25 million
Americans per week, mostly working- class urban residents, were attending
“nickelodeons”— motion- picture theaters whose five- cent admission charge
was far lower than at vaudeville shows.
Why was the city such a central element in Progressive America?