Review of Book "Cheap Amusements" by Kathy Peiss

Review, Pages 5 (1202 words)

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I decided to review a book entitled Cheap Amusements by Kathy Peiss. The subtitle of the book is Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York, which really gives the reader the true sense of what this book is about, what time period is covered, and the location of the research and discussion featured in the book. The time period covered in this book spans the late 19th century to the early 20th century, or from about the 1880s to the 1920s.

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As the subtitle implies, the location featured in the book is New York. The author paints vivid descriptions of the city, its immigrant cultures and tenements, communities, societal classes, growth into a metropolis, commercialization, and eventually its development as a national corporate and financial hub. But the focus of the book is a topic that very few have paid much attention to and that is women in the 19th century and their pursuit of leisure.

In Chapter One, it becomes apparent that poverty was a fact of working-class life in late 19th century New York with a population dominated by immigrants and their children.

Most lived at the subsistence level in the 1880s and the depression of the 1890s only brought more hardship. The average income for a working class family of four to six people was about $15 per week or $800 for a whole year. To make ends meet, families often rented out space in their very small apartment to a lodger or put the mother and children to work.

So there wasn’t much privacy. Because of the demand for housing created by so many immigrants during this time period, unusually high rent consumed the wages of the poor. Food was usually bought on a day to day basis based on what was left of their wages. Since housing, food, fuel and clothing took up most of the income, the working-class family as a unit could only afford the cheapest amusements. For the laboring poor, leisure activity was brief, casual and noncommercial. For married women and mothers, it was practically nonexistent. Common forms of recreation for these families were sitting in front of the house, listening to street musicians and singers, going on an outing to a local park, and holding house parties for birthdays and special occasions.

As the primary or only breadwinner, husbands and fathers from the laboring poor and early middle class began to keep part of their earnings for leisure pursuits apart from their wives and children. Men enjoyed saloons, billiard halls, bowling alleys, shooting galleries, movie theaters, fraternal societies and lodges. The societies and lodges were important as they provided immigrant populations with mutual aid, economic services, insurance, recreation and cultural camaraderie. There was a heavy cost for these associations but they were necessary adaptations to an industrial society that had few social welfare provisions during this time. Most of the establishments frequented by men served alcohol, which also reduced the money that was brought home. This left the women trying to figure out how to pay for the household expenses with whatever was left. Spending money was a constant source of tension within the working-class family.

So it is easy to see why young, unmarried working class women, both foreign born or daughters of immigrant parents, entered the workforce. Chapter Two explores this female labor force, which dominated the period from 1880 to 1920. Most young girls were expected to go to work some time in their teens in order to contribute to the family income. Many of these early jobs represented grueling hours of labor for small wages in sweatshops and tenements. Many girls labored 15 to 18 hours a day, working by gaslight late into evening to earn enough for food and rent. Unlike their fathers, daughters were usually expected to turn over their entire pay envelope unopened to their parents. It didn’t take long for entrepreneurs and businessmen to discover this new source of revenue. As their exposure to the working world and recreational opportunities grew, young unmarried women started to change their perspective on leisure, independence, youthful pleasures and mixed-sex fun. Much like their fathers before them, the workplace reinforced the wage-earner’s interest in having a good time.

Today youth is often thought of as a stage in life where education, self-expression and experimentation are experienced before marriage, children and work. In Chapter Three, we clearly discover that this notion of youth did not seem relevant to the working-class adolescents of 1900 who felt the pinch of financial responsibility at an early age and subordinated individual desires to the family’s survival. As this working-class grew, they simply began to ignore the extreme oversight of their parents and began to spend most of their leisure time apart from their families and enjoyed greater social freedom than their parents or married siblings did. They fled the tenements for the streets, dance halls and theaters, generally bypassing their fathers’ saloons and lodges. They also formed their own social clubs, organized entertainments, and patronized new commercial amusements. As young working-class women took to the streets for leisure, dress became very important for style and upward mobility. Allure and sensuality were taking hold of a youthful population. While many daughters may have accepted their family’s claim to their wages and work, struggles often ensued over their leisure time. Participation in social life, parental supervision, spending money and clothing were common issues for conflict. Leisure time became an escape from parental demands. But because many young girls turned over most if not all of their wages to their parents, a new dynamic emerged.

In the later chapters, we learn that young working-class men instead of turning over most or all of their wages to their families quickly picked up on their father’s custom of keeping a portion of their wages for their own leisure activities. This becomes an acceptable norm. As mixed-sex fun and leisure grows, a pattern of young men treating young women develops as most young women have much less spending income than young men. In return, these young working-class women learn that the young men will generally expect something in return. Thus the sexual revolution of a new generation begins. And new forms of dating and courtship emerge, which often include dances, movies, amusement parks and local excursions. These youth will go on to become America’s first dominant middle class. In order to protect their respectability and middle-class status, young women set up working-class lady friends. Lady friends shared in the fun of social outings and were confidantes, but also helped to deflect unwanted sexual attention from young men.

In summary, I actually found this book fairly interesting because I felt like it was painting a picture for me of the lives of my maternal great grandparents who I never knew that arrived at Ellis Island in New York from Norway as immigrants. Although they moved from New York to Wisconsin, it helped me to understand the struggles and values of that time along with the family demands, financial burdens and changing world that my own grandparents experienced. Today I still see some remnants of their lifestyles in ours. As time goes on though, it seems there are fewer and fewer.