A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

778 Ch. 19 • Rapid Industrialization and Its Challenges

Churchmen and their followers believed that the apparition explained the

miraculous cures that seemed to occur at Lourdes, despite the skepticism

of scientists. Religious pilgrimages by train to sites of miracles became big

business. In the first decade of the new century, more than a million peo­

ple came to Lourdes each year, many hoping to be cured of illness and dis­

ease. The popularity of pilgrimages reflected the resiliency of the Catholic

Church, even in a time of growing doubt.

The Consumer Explosion

During the last decades of the nineteenth century, consumerism developed

in the countries of Europe, again with considerable country-to-country vari­

ation. The new leisure activities of the Belle Epoque themselves reflected

the Second Industrial Revolution. Sports—principally soccer and rugby,

bicycle and automobile races, and track and field—attracted participants

and spectators and encouraged the formation of clubs.

Department stores reflected and helped shape the burgeoning consumer

culture. First in London, Paris, and Berlin, department stores transformed

the way many families shopped. They attracted prosperous clients in

search of quality ready-made clothes that were less expensive than those

stitched by tailors. The stores were monuments to the dynamism of bour­

geois culture, displaying in their windows products that reflected material

progress. Seeking to increase the volume of sales, department stores also

stocked more inexpensive clothing, while adding umbrellas, toothbrushes,

stationery, and much more. All of this required the organization into depart­

ments overseen by trained managers, which typified the Second Industrial

Revolution. The expanding clientele of department stores included the fam­

ilies of shopkeepers, civil servants, and clerks of more modest means, and

gradually workers as well. On an average day in the 1890s, 15,000 to 18,000

people entered the “Bon Marche”—still a Parisian landmark. Glossy cata­

logues in color, advancing advertising techniques, permitted shoppers to

make purchases in the comfort of their homes. Advertisers began to direct

their appeals at the “new woman,” the housewife of taste, who had the time

to create the model home and had some money to spend.

The owners of department stores wanted shopping to become an experi­

ence in itself, like a visit to a world’s fair—except that one could now buy

some of the displayed wonders of human innovation. Architects aimed at

monumental and theatrical effects. The great department stores were

enormous, stately structures topped with cupolas, with iron columns and

an expanse of glass giving shoppers a sense of space and light. Shoppers

could walk up grand staircases to observe the crowds below. Department

stores became tourist sights, with dazzled visitors themselves becoming

part of the spectacle. To Emile Zola, department stores had become the

“cathedrals of modernity.” For women of means, the commercialization