Introduction
The relations between the human beings within the society have always been characterized by substantial controversy arising from the conflicts between various social classes. People of the wealthier layers of the society and the people living in the poorer conditions have always tried to defend their interests and express their values in the forms of work and art. The picture of the United States of America in 1890s was characterized by such social controversy that can be observed from the works The Workers: An Experiment in Reality and How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York by Walter Wyckoff and Jacob Riis respectively, as well as from the dance and music forms developed during the period under analysis.
Background
Historical Implications
The above mentioned controversies of the 1890s America had both historical implications and the social context. Historically, the time under analysis was the period of breaking the established and accepted standards in politics and social life, art and science (Grant, 2000). Interestingly, the political and economic reforms coexisted with the numerous cases of lynching of the African Americans and the increase of poverty among the slum inhabitants of the developing urbanized America when 1% of the American population of 62,948,000 people (1890 census) possessed more wealth than the remaining 99% (Grant, 2000; Riis, 2005, pp. 110 – 111).
Social Context
The social context of the period under analysis can also be characterized by rather controversial events and phenomena. On the one hand, the election of the democratic president Grover Cleveland in 1893 gave an impact towards the social reform series under which the Copyright Act and a number of other laws were adopted (Grant, 2000). On the other hand, the United States displayed the immense social stratification in the sense of the already mentioned dominance of the far less number of the rich people over the poor majority of the nation (Grant, 2000; Riis, 2005, pp. 110 – 111).
Two Worlds of 1890s USA
The World of Workers
Wyckoff’s Ideas
Thus, the above passages reveal that the rich and the poor in the 1890s USA lived in different worlds, but in the environment of the ordinary people in America there were also two worlds, the world of hard work and the world of art, music, and dance. In his book titled The Workers: An Experiment in Reality, Walter Wyckoff makes a detailed account of the life of the working class in the US society in 1890s. The most important point about this book is the fact that it provides the direct and objective insight into the lives of ordinary people as observed by the author during his tenure in the positions of industrial and farm worker, laborer and hotel porter (Wyckoff, 2008, pp. 1 – 2).
For example, the initial pages of the book deal with the search for job, which was a problematic matter in the 1890s America due to the fast growth of population and the lack of actual working places for all the potential employees. Also, the social inequality contributed to the difficulty in employment as it was even hard to talk to the potential employers who were predominantly rather rich and busy people: “At the gate I stand my ground in the right of a citizen and explain that I am looking for work, and am hopeful of a job from one of the bosses” (Wyckoff, 2008, p. 10). In these lines the disparity of the whole nation of the time can be observed, as far as the search for job and finding it were two seldom related concepts, and every person had the chance to understand what it was “to look for work and fail to find it” (Wyckoff, 2008, p. 1).
Further on, the situation described by Wyckoff (2008) is rather a reflection of the state of the social development and economic stagnation that the US experienced in the 1890s than the mere account of inequality and discrimination: “I guess you are the fiftieth man that has asked me for a job to-day…I’m sorry for you poor devils…but there is too many of you” (Wyckoff, 2008, p. 11). Accordingly, the combination of these social and economic conditions can characterize the emotional environment of the worker’s world in the 1890s America as the world of desperate person defeated by the situations when “you may begin the day’s hunt rested and fed and full of energy and resolve…and yet, at the day’s end, you have not covered half of the area of you careful plan, and your whole body aches with weariness, and your heart is heavy and soar within you” (Wyckoff, 2008, pp. 70 – 71). Drawing from the account on the worker’s world in the 1890s America drawn by Wyckoff (2008) can be characterized as the place where understanding and willingness to help are absent and substituted by trying to get rich or preserve one’s reaches and humiliate people begging for help with employment and feeding themselves and their families.
Riis’ Depictions
The story provided by Riis (2005) in his book titled How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York displays considerable similarities to the account by Walter Wyckoff, and the author calls it “dark enough, drawn from the plain public records, to send a chill to any heart” (Riis, 2005, p. 5). One of the major concerns to Riis (2005) in his book is the life of ordinary people, the majority of whom inhabit the slums of New York: “To-day three fourths of its people live in the tenements, and the nineteenth century drift of the population to the cities is sending the ever-increasing multitudes to crowd them” (Riis, 2005, p. 5). Thus, the worker’s world of the 1890s America for Riis (2005) is the world of people leaving their rural areas in the search of better life in the urbanized America but finding themselves locked up in the slums of poverty, unemployment, and discrimination.
At the same time, Riis (2005) adds international coloring to his account on the American life in the 1890s by discussing the immigration and the life of Italian, Czech, Polish, Irish, German, and Jewish immigrants (p. 25). Putting them in the context of poverty, unemployment, and limited possibilities, Riis (2005) draws the comparison of these immigrant groups’ adjustment capabilities and comes to the conclusion that Italians that came to Italy in the late 19th century were the less industrious nationality due to which their wealth level remained stably low during generations while English skills ranged from none to poor (Riis, 2005, p. 54). At the same time, Germans of Jewish immigrants were diligent in studying the language and this, according to Riis (2005) allowed for example the Jews to develop well-structured districts in New York and increase, although not substantially in comparison to the rich part of the American population, their wealth over the years (pp. 54 – 55).
Further on, the topics of incorporation and economic volatility observed in the age of breaking the norms of the Victorian age are touched upon by Riis (2005), especially in connection to the unemployment development and spreading of the economic stagnation in the late 1890s. The emergence and development of both trade and labor unions in the American society is also one of the associated aspects of the worker’s world of the discussed time, as far as this phenomenon was the revolution in employment and regulating the relations between employers and employees. Riis (2005) argues that together with the rise of unions, especially labor ones, huge industrial and trading corporations faced the need to protect their interests and implemented the stock subscription procedures as the preliminary stage of incorporation and dividend payment (Riis, 2005, p. 132). Drawing from this, the United States in the 1890s was not only the country of immensely unequal social division of wealth, but also the environment in which the basics of capitalism were burn in the context of almost total poverty and unemployment.
The World of Music and Dance
Wyckoff’s and Riis’ Ideas
As contrasted to the dark and depressive context in which the worker’s world depicted by Wyckoff (2008) and Riis (2005) developed, the world of art, music, and dance presents the bright picture of celebration of life. Music, according to Wyckoff (2008), was almost the only relief for the people depressed by poverty and lack of hope for the future. Numerous saloons could be observed in the USA of the time as the resorts where people could listen to the “cheap music” (Wyckoff, 2008, p. 27). As well, Wyckoff (2008) considers the role of the religious music, or “prayerful music” as he refers to it in his book (p. 205), and notices the closeness of music and religion for people who had nothing more to rely on but these two phenomena. Thus, the world of dance and music was also focused on the social problem but, in contrast to the world of the worker depicted by Wyckoff (2008), it is the world that gives people hope.
Riis (2005) also takes his time to consider the importance of dance and music in the world he depict, but his account on these art forms is limited to the violence they are associated with in this worker’s world of poverty and struggle for preserving the work place (Riis, 2005, pp. 52, 72). According to Riis (2005), in the tenements of the 19th century New York, the violent final of any event involving dance, music, and alcohol was a usual thing, and both people and police were used to the cases when “dance breaks up in a general fight, in which, likely enough, someone is badly hurt” (Riis, 2005, p. 52). This is the world of music and dance pictured by Wyckoff (2008) and Riis (2005) as the integral part and only one of the dimensions of the more common and understandable world of ordinary workers.
Main Features and Sounds
However, the world of dance and music in the United States of the late 1890s was characterized not only by the rather violent and brutal contexts in which these art forms could be involved. The marvelous movement of ragtime music that encompassed both the music composing and song creation processes together with dancing marked the time under analysis by emergence of such styles of ragtime dance as standard waltz, castle walk, the maxixe, and the ragtime variant of the Argentine tango (Dance Instruction Manuals, 2009).
In more detail, the standard waltz dance style can be characterized by the specific musical features like tempo and the tonality of the music, as well as the role of the dancing partners and their positions (Dance Instruction Manuals, 2009). Obviously, the standard waltz dance style as a type of the ragtime dance displays the features of the slow tempo of both the music and the respective movements of the partners. The tonality is rather high and fluctuating (Dance Instruction Manuals, 2009). As can be seen from the music and the movements of this dance style, the standard waltz used to be the dance of the rich and middle level members of the American society in 1890s.
As contrasted, the so-called castle walk can be regarded as the dance of workers and ordinary people in the discussed time period. The main features of the dance, as the data by Dance Instruction Manuals (2009) prove, are the faster tempo of the music and the respective increase in the speed of the movements the dance partners carry out. As well, the music for the castle walk dance style is characterized by the greater degree of joy and energetic load (Dance Instruction Manuals, 2009).
The style of the ragtime dance referred to as maxixe dance can also be sub-categorized as the dance style of the rich and middle level people based on the slower music tempo and the set of allegedly descent movements that have the esthetic value of dance but not the speed and joy of this process as their basic sense load (Dance Instruction Manuals, 2009). Moreover, the general characteristics of maxixe also include the relatively low tonality and almost absent rhythm and tonality fluctuations.
The decency of the last subcategory of the ragtime dancing styles, the ragtime variant of the Argentine tango, is also a notable feature but the context of this style’s development in the American setting does not allow making too generalized conclusions (Dance Instruction Manuals, 2009). On the one hand, Argentine tango is characterized by the slow tempo and the fluctuating tonality that combines high and low levels. Moreover, this dance style is not of American origin that would allow assuming that tango was predominantly the dance of the rich (Dance Instruction Manuals, 2009). However, in the light of the immigration processes that characterized the 1890s America, Argentine tango is actually the dance style more typical of the ordinary immigrant worker that arrived to the USA looking for a better life.
On the basis of the above characteristics of the world of music and dance, both perceived from the ordinary people’s and artistic perspectives, considerable similarities of this world and the worker’s world portrayed by Wyckoff (2008) and Riis (2005) can be observed. Both worlds evidently have division into the rich and the poor, the privileged and the ordinary people, but the world of art, music, and dance has the borderline between the two social layers vaguer and less offensive for the representatives of both classes.
At the same time, there are substantial differences between the two worlds in which the United States of the 1890s can be divided. First of all, the worker’s world by Wyckoff (2008) and Riis (2005) is dark, hopeless, and depressive, while the world of music and dance is the celebration of life and hope for the better for those people who cannot find jobs and have no means to feed their families. And finally, the world of music and dance is simpler and more descent as no discrimination but only the power of positive emotions is observed in this world.
Conclusions
Accordingly, the conclusion of the above presented discussion is that the life of the ordinary people in the1890s America was divided into different worlds, the one of the working class, hard work, and social inequality, and the world of music and dance that allowed the poor express their emotions and values and prove their right for being officially regarded as the equal members of the society. The works by Walter Wyckoff and Jacob Riis are greatly useful sources of objective information on the real daily lives of ordinary, mostly poor people in the slums of the 1890s America, while the music and dance pieces referring to the period mentioned reveal the internal richness of those poor people and their ability to face any challenges with dignity.
Works Cited
Dance Instruction Manuals. Ragtime. Video Directory, 2009. Web. 2009.
Grant, William. America in 1890s. BGSU EDU, 2000. Web. 2009.
Riis, Jacob. How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York. Digireads.com Publishing, 2005. Print.
Wyckoff, Walter. The Workers: An Experiment in Reality. BiblioBazaar, LLC, 2008. Print.