How America Amuses Itself
When an American works he works hard; when he plays he plays with equal vigour.
From: 1908 C.E. To: 1908 C.E.
Location: United States of America
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From America at Home by Alfred Maurice Low, 1908.
When an American works he works hard; when he plays he plays with equal vigour. Americans as a race have all the English love for play and pleasure and are almost equally as fond of outdoor sports; but the indictment brought by Rudyard Kipling against the English nation, of devoting more time and thought to cricket and polo and racing than to the serious business of life, would not lie against America.
Every year young America, male or female, displays greater zest for open-air life. Girls sail, row, fish, ride, drive, hunt and shoot big game just like their brothers, and often excel them, but except among the very rich these things are simply a relaxation from the more serious duty of life that is, money making and are not permitted to interfere with a man s real vocation. The young man whose only vocation is to spend money and enjoy himself is almost as keen a sports man as the young Englishman of similar position, always, however, with the difference that is racial as distinguishing the English and the Americans
The English, as more than one foreign observer has noticed, have such a surplus stock of superabundant vital energy that it must be worked off in the form of violent and active exercise that tires their muscles. The American, despite his great and almost resistless activity and energy in business and other great affairs, is preeminently a conservator of energy, and does not encourage the wasting of energy when it can be preserved. The Americans excel all other nations in their labour-saving devices, in making a machine to take the place of human hands; and this characteristic, in its origin purely utilitarian, has left its impress upon the national character to such an extent that the American would be lazy were it not that he is the most untiring of men when the practical is to be accomplished,
The American is gregarious and loves the society of his fellow man. In his pleasures he wants to be one of a great crowd; the larger the crowd the better he likes it; a cheering, pushing, somewhat excited throng is necessary to his idea of enjoyment; the contact of elbows, so distasteful to some races, gives him the keenest delight.
The national game of America, the game that is to the United States what cricket is to England, is baseball. Baseball, I believe, is a modified and magnified game of rounders, and according to its enthusiasts it is one of the most scientific and interesting games that can be played, combining everything that gives a contest zest skill, an element of luck, good judgment, audacity when boldness is demanded, caution when safety depends on circumspection.
I am not qualified to speak of the merits of the game, as it does not appeal to me and I have never been able to become sufficiently absorbed to appreciate its science. Because the American likes to take his pleasures without too much physical exertion, he hires professionals to play baseball for his amusement. All during the long summer thousands of people go to the baseball games played by the professionals, but of these thousands very few handle a bat or ball themselves. In England the man who enjoys cricket, the clerk or the professional man who has left his youth many years behind him, gets his enjoyment more from playing than from merely watching a game, but in America no man of dignified position would think of playing baseball. A physician of good standing, a lawyer of prominence, a clergyman who should put on flannels and get a couple of hours vigorous exercise by playing on the diamond, would be regarded as decidedly queer by his clients or his parishioners and would find himself much and unpleasantly talked about.
Professional baseball is profitable alike to the players, who are paid large salaries, and the owners of the clubs, who are baseball entrepreneurs for exactly the same reason that other men are theatrical managers for the profit that accrues to them. In several of the larger cities there are clubs which play in turn all the cities in the league. The players are under contract to their clubs and may not leave a club to join another without the consent of the managers, and managers encourage the greatest rivalry between the clubs by appealing to local sentiment so as to stimulate interest in the game and increase the attendance.
The enthusiasm displayed by the spectators is surprising and almost unbelievable; the great pitcher or catcher is a hero, and is an object of far greater curiosity to his admirers than a statesman or a military commander. As showing the pinnacle of fame on which the successful baseball player sits enthroned, a President of the United States told this story. A father took his schoolboy son to see the President, and the boy asked him to autograph his portrait. When the President handed the picture back to the boy, the father said:
“Keep it carefully, and some day you may become famous and be President.”
“If you want to be really famous” said the President satirically to the boy, “you must play on your college ball team. Have you heard the story of General Bragg’s son?”
“General Bragg was a distinguished general in the Civil War and later a prominent figure in our civil affairs. On one occasion he went to Boston to deliver an important address, and shortly after his arrival several Harvard undergraduates called. General Bragg naturally took this as a compliment, and to show his appreciation remarked that he felt flattered to think his small services to his country should be recognised so gracefully by his young friends in coming to see him.”
“There was an awkward pause, and then one undergraduate, bolder than the rest, with the audacity of youth, blurted out: "You know why we come to see you? Well, you’re the father of Jack Bragg, and the way he pitched against Yale and won the game was a corker!"
That boys and young men should be unrestrained in their enthusiasm is not surprising, but that men fairly advanced in years, in their daily affairs sedate and unemotional, should at a baseball game forget their self-control and vie with their sons in noisy demonstration is one of the amazing side-lights on the American character; but there is never a game that does not cause staid and respectable pillars of society to act like lunatics applauding their favourites when they score, savagely denouncing the umpire when his decisions arouse their resentment. The life of the umpire is not exactly a life of dignified ease. The public derides him, the players frequently insult him, and sometimes he is bodily assaulted.
The newspapers always devote a great amount of space to baseball games; and while the speech of an important public man may be cut to suit the exigencies of space, the baseball reporter is given all the room he needs for his adjectives, and the portraits of players usually accompany the description of the game.
Baseball is not entirely confined to professionals, and is much played by schoolboys and collegians, but these games do not attract a tithe of the attention or the audience of the professional game. There is nothing that corresponds to the famous Eton and Harrow cricket match or compares with it as a social event. Perhaps its nearest approach, curiously enough, is in midwinter when the university football games are played.
Football between the colleges, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Cornell in the East, and some of the larger institutions in the West, has become immensely popular during the last few years. The football field has not yet been invaded by the professional; there are no professional football teams, and the college teams are made up entirely of undergraduates. One of the most popular games of the season is between the military academy at West Point and the naval academy at
Annapolis, which, for the last few years, has been played at Philadelphia in the presence of 25,000 people.
A tremendous impetus to its popularity and fashionable character was given by the attendance two years ago of the President, who was accompanied by other well-known people, and caused the occasion to assume the character of a social event. These games are usually played in November, when the weather is always bitterly cold, and the men and women—and there are almost as many women and girls present to cheer on their favourites as there are men—experience much discomfort from the biting air, but so keen is their enjoyment of sport they forget everything else.
A football field at one of these great games is always an inspiring and blood-quickening sight. Everybody wears the colours of the players; there are the crimson flags of Harvard or the blue of Yale; there are the leaders of the chorus the young men with their megaphones and flags, who when a touch-down has been scored or a goal kicked lead the college cheer, and from all parts of the field there rises the shout of Rah, rah, rah! rah, rah, rah! rah, rah, rah—Harvard! to the frantic waving of flags and coloured streamers. Everybody at a game is a partisan, nobody is indifferent, and every partisan tries to out-shout his opponent and to show the proper spirit, as schoolboys term it. The Latins are popularly supposed to be the most excitable of races, and a bull-fight sets on fire all their passions, but the most aroused Spanish patron of the bull-ring might look with envy and amazement upon the phlegmatic American applauding the prowess of his football champions.
Football as played in America entails a good deal of danger upon its votaries. Never a football season passes without several of the players being killed, many permanently injured, and many more seriously hurt. Players have been carried off the field unconscious, but that does not bring the game to an end, as there are always substitutes waiting to take the place of the men who drop out of the ranks, and an injury received on the football field is looked upon by the collegians associates as something to be proud of, a proof of his valour and devotion to his side, and is acclaimed accordingly.
Probably one reason why the colleges now pay so much attention to football is its commercial value. These great intercollegiate games put a large amount of money into the treasury of the various athletic associations, and not only pay for trainers and other expenses, but leave a handsome surplus.
Baseball and football are the amusements of the multitude; the rich, as in all other things, have their own means of finding distraction. The twin sports of kings, yachting and racing, are as popular in America as they are in England, and during the summer the water and the turf appeal to their followers. Owners usually commission their steam and sailing yachts early in the summer, and cruise about the Eastern Atlantic coast, while those who have racing yachts take part in the various regattas and other prize contests that are held every year.
The infinite charm of the American girl is perhaps never more dangerously potent than on a yacht, when in the daytime in her white duck or blue serge, well set up, trim, graceful, she is the ideal of girlish beauty and healthy womanhood, and in the evening in the saloon in her laces and diaphanous attire, or on deck in the moonlight lazily thumbing a guitar and softly singing a coon song or a ballad of love, she holds undisputed sway. Yachting is fashionable because it is an expensive amusement and only the rich can afford the luxury. Its expense and its selectness, the knowledge a yacht owner has that he is in no danger of being brought in contact with the common herd, is perhaps one of the chief attractions it has for the fortunate few.
The race track is as popular in America as it is in England, and enormous amounts of money change hands on the results of every race. There are a few men who keep racing stables merely for the love of the sport, but to the masses a horse race is either the occasion for an afternoon’s enjoyment or an opportunity to make money with the least possible exertion, and for one man who occasionally sees a race run, there are hundreds who place their bets through commissioners or in poolrooms, the evils of which are so great and so demoralising that most of the large cities have endeavoured to abolish the poolroom by drastic legislation. Betting on racehorses, however, is too profitable for the bookmakers quietly to submit to their business being abolished, and they maintain their illegal traffic despite the vigilant efforts of the authorities to suppress it.
The poolroom is a gambling place pure and simple. The poolroom proprietor will accept a bet from anybody, old or young, man or woman; he will take anything from a shilling up; office boys and junior clerks are induced to wager their money with the hope of a large return, which is never realised.
The poolroom and the bucket shop, where the same class of people bet on the fluctuations of stocks, have done more to demoralise the youth of America than any other agencies. The desire to get rich quickly, to obtain money without working for it, to make in a day what by honest effort would require a year of strenuous labour, is inherent in the American character, and the publicity given by the Press to the Aladdin-like stories of fortunes won over-night on the stock exchange and the turf always encourage the petty speculator to believe that he may be equally successful. Of course he never is.
Cricket is played in America, but only to a very limited extent. There are cricket clubs in New York, Philadelphia, and some parts of Massachusetts, but the game is not popular and the American is unable to understand what there is about it to make Englishmen enjoy it so thoroughly. Americans who go to a cricket match applaud good play, but they never let themselves loose as they do at baseball.
Tennis has its admirers, polo is a fad of the idle rich, but the game of all others that has become a veritable craze is golf, which is played morning, noon, and night by its victims, old and young, male and female, wherever links can be laid out.
A few years ago the bicycle was a favourite form of recreation and exercise, but it has now lost its popularity and is regarded merely as a convenient means of locomotion and not as a means of amusement. Its place among those able to afford it has been usurped by the automobile, which might almost be taken as emblematical of the American, because the automobile gets there with the least possible waste of time; it is full of energy waiting to be released; a touch of the ringer and it is off; it does not efface itself, and it works with a good deal of noise.
The great mass of Americans in fact, all those except the few who are rich enough not to have any business to occupy their attention give little thought to amusement of an outdoor character except when they are on their summer vacations. Schoolboys are given holidays at Christmas and Easter, but to the breadwinner Christmas Day is the sole holiday of the winter, and that he usually spends quietly with his family, or in trying to make himself believe that he is enjoying a relief from business, while secretly he chafes at a day of enforced idleness and plans how he shall make up for lost time. There is often a football game on Christmas Day, to which the college boy, his sister, and somebody else’s sister go in large numbers with here and there a sprinkling of the college boy’s father and mother, especially if the father is a graduate of alma mater.
Easter Monday is not a holiday and passes quietly and unnoticed except among the children, with whom the old German fashion survives of dyeing eggs. It is an occasion, however, when sweethearts exchange gifts appropriate to the season, and when young men may send boxes of candy and flowers to the young women of their acquaintance. The display of flowers in every large American city at that time of the year is always striking, and the extravagance of Americans is in no way better shown than in the preposterous sums they spend for plants and flowers that live for a day. One of the New York papers last Easter commented on the fact that the Easter lily, so long the symbol of the season, had been compelled to take a secondary place, not because it was less beautiful than formerly, but because it cost too little. The lily had become too common and too cheap, and the American scorns a cheap gift. Azaleas can be cultivated until they sell for ₤10, and this price, in the eyes of recipients as well as givers, makes them a fit present. The florists, of course, prefer to sell an azalea costing ₤10, rather than a bunch of lilies costing as many shillings, and, as this paper remarks, so long as purchasers were willing to pay these amounts the florists wisely decided to gratify them, and the lilies disappeared from the market for all practical purposes.
The Americans have three holidays peculiarly their own. ‘Decoration Day’, the 30th of May, flows out of the war of the Rebellion; a day dedicated to the memory of the men who laid down their lives fighting for the preservation of the Union. On that day the graves of soldiers sleeping in national and other cemeteries are strewn with flowers by tender hands and in all reverence, by widows and children, by men and women who are not of kin to the dead, but who honour their services and desire to show their gratitude. In all the large cities the statues erected to perpetuate the great names of the war, the military and naval commanders and the immortal President who towers above them all, Lincoln, who freed the slaves and saved the Union from dissolution, are decorated with flowers and flags, and in all the cities of the North and West there are orations at the cemeteries, where the deeds of the dead are recited to the living and serve to keep alive the spirit of patriotism.
Originally a Northern celebration, the South looked on sullenly at these celebrations; but of recent years, since sectionalism has almost disappeared, since the bitter memories of the civil war have been effaced and the United States is once more in fact, as in name, one country, the South has joined with the North in recognising the symbolic meaning of the day, and that the honouring of the dead who died in the defence of their country and in the performance of their duty casts no aspersion on the living who were equally devoted to their concept of duty.
The devotional and oratorical exercises are usually brief, and the remainder of the day is given over to merrymaking and amusement; and although many thousands go to the cemeteries and take part in the exercises, many more thousands look forward to Decoration Day as a holiday, and the amusement caterers always provide extra attractions for them. Decoration Day is to the American what Easter Monday is to England.
Even greater than Decoration Day as the holiday of the masses, because it comes at a time when respite from work for a brief twelve hours is a tremendous relief, is ‘Fourth of July’, that day being to America what the Fourteenth of July is to France, its great national fete. It was on the Fourth of July that the Declaration of Independence was adopted, the declaration by which the bonds were severed between Great Britain and her North American colonies, and the day is held sacred by all Americans.
It is a day when patriotism may find full vent, when the flamboyant speaker may give full expression to all the burning patriotism that is in him; it is a day much esteemed by the orator big and small; by the great man of national reputation who is invited to deliver a formal address in New York, and the little man of merely local reputation who is the star of the occasion in some struggling mining village in the far West, but who feels himself to be greater and more important than the big man in New York. Big man or little man, there is little difference in their fervour. They both sound the praises of their country, they both tell of its glorious achievements in the past and the still more glorious achievements it is to accomplish in the future; they both delight, in the words of the vernacular, to make the eagle scream.
A Fourth of July celebration in the smaller places of the West is decidedly interesting. The serious way in which the orators take themselves, their unbounded belief in the might of their country, and the sincerity of their conviction that the frown of* the* *U-*nited States makes the whole world tremble, is ridiculous because it is grotesque, and yet it commands admiration because it is so intensely typical of the faith of the people and the assured belief they have in their destiny. Like Decoration Day, in the large cities only the minority go to hear patriotic orations, and the majority give themselves up to a day of pleasure. Baseball, horse racing, picnics, and every other form of enjoyment is indulged in.
But, to be slightly Irish, it is the evening that is the best part of the day, for the evening of the Fourth of July is the English Fifth of November, when fireworks are set off as a fitting ending of that day of rejoicing. In England on Guy Fawkes Day there are no fireworks until after nightfall, but the American boy is too impatient to wait until night, and all during the day, and in some places even two days before, one’s nerves are destroyed by the explosion of firecrackers. The American boy revels in uproar, and the larger his firecracker and the more noise it makes the better pleased he is. Night brings rockets, Roman candles, and other pyrotechnic novelties, and many of the seaside resorts make their fireworks a special feature, and draw large crowds.
The third distinctive American holiday is Thanksgiving Day, always the last Thursday in November. This holiday dates from the time of the Puritans, and was originally, as its name implies, a day solemnly observed to give thanks to the Almighty for His manifold goodness vouchsafed to His people during the past year. The custom has endured until the present. The President issues a proclamation exhorting people to attend church, and give thanks for the evidences of Divine favour, and the Governors of the State follow the President’s example and issue proclamations to their people to the same effect. Many people obey the injunction of the President by attending church, and a great many more simply treat the day as a holiday and make of it a miniature Christmas. In those cities where football is popular the most important game of the year is played on that day, and it is an occasion for family reunions and feasting. Just as turkey and plum pudding are always the pieces de resistance of the English Christmas dinner, so turkey, cranberry sauce, and mince-pie are the central features of the American Thanksgiving Day dinner. The theatres cater to young people by giving special matinees, and in the evening the places of amusement are always crowded.
The climate of America, in summer-time, inviting to outdoor life, and the liking of Americans for gaiety, colour, light, and motion, make them improve every natural advantage and convert it into a means of amusement. A river such as the Thames would never be permitted to go to waste in America; but would be dotted with excursion steamers, on which for a small price people could get a breath of fresh air after the heat and toil of the day. Whenever there is a small lake adjacent to a city it is made a resort and becomes the playground of the masses, who patronise the various attractions offered for their amusement, listen to the music, and eat and drink in moderation. On all the rivers there are excursion steamers plying between the cities and river resorts, and where a city has neither river nor lake, a park or picnic ground in the outskirts, always easily accessible by street cars, is the substitute. The Americans have more of the light-hearted joyousness of the French than the English, and like the French have all their fondness for eating out-of-doors.
The theatre in winter is the favourite form of amusement for both men and women, and because of the freedom permitted to young women they may, except in the very highest circles, attend the theatre with young men unchaperoned. In the smaller places of the West where theatrical companies do not penetrate, the lyceum is the great form of amusement. During the winter lectures are delivered by popular speakers, the lectures interspersed with musical and other forms of light entertainment.
The Americans as a people are fond of music and musical comedy, a great deal of which has been given in England in recent years by American theatrical companies, but classical and other music of a high order does not appeal to them, In New York during the winter there is usually a season of German or Italian opera which is expensive and fashionable and therefore, in a sense, popular, as people who are not fashionable go to the opera as much to see the occupants of the boxes, whose names are printed on the programmes, and the magnificent display of jewellery, as they do to hear the music.
There are usually brief seasons of opera, after the New York season, in Boston and Philadelphia, and sometimes in Chicago and Washington; but with the exception of New York and Boston there is little really good music, and high-class music at popular prices, such as one hears in London or Paris or through out Germany, is unknown in the United States. In some of the larger cities military and other bands play in the parks during the summer, but their audience demand ragtime and coon songs, and as the municipal authorities do not consider it to be their duty to elevate the musical taste of the community, they make no objection to the bandmasters playing any jingle the people may ask for.
Low, Alfred Maurice. America at Home. George Newnes, 1908.
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