The Don't Worry Movement

 In 1894, Theodore Frelinghuysen Seward, a musicologist, published a book entitled The Don't Worry Philosophy.  He followed this up with Don't Worry: or, Spiritual Emancipation in 1897 and The Don't Worry Movement in 1898. The Don't Worry doctrine was somewhat vague, but it was essentially an attempt to rescue the essence of Christianity from all the layers of dogma built over the previous 2,000 years. Though even Seward had trouble providing a succinct definition. 

The public at large, however, had no problem deciding on a far simpler definition. As a follower of the Don't Worry doctrine, you needed to simply toss your cares aside. Seward attempted to channel the public's enthusiasm for the movement into organized circles of Christian brotherhood. How successful he was isn't clear. But the version created in the public imagination flourished until at least the 1920s.

Outside of Seward's own writings, it's difficult to find any serious articles on the topic. But searching the phrase "Don't Worry Club" in newspaper databases turns up hundreds of references of a lighter sort. Sometimes these are just the little bits of humor newspapers of the time stuck between stories, like the one above. In one I found in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, a woman complains that her husband's friends advised him to join the Club before getting married. Then there are longer humor pieces, such as "A Short Tale of the Don't Worry Club," which appeared in The New York Times in 1903.

But apparently there were also some semi-organized, or ad hoc, clubs. The one in Brooklyn seemed to be principally an excuse for going on Sunday outings. An article in The Eagle from July 1901 is entitled "Exalted Optimists' Outing." In this adventure, the "aggregation without a home, an organization or any hope of future temporal existence," traveled via the Long Island Railroad to Montauk. Reference is made to the baggage car and worrying while traveling through "no license" (dry) towns. I infer that they had a bar set up there.

Not surprisingly, it didn't take businesses long to exploit the doctrine's popular appeal. I've seen ads that mention the Club for no-worry loans, no-worry dresses, no-worry fur storage, etc. One popular use was on brass tokens. Tokens like these were already popular at the time and the Don't Worry theme was something all sorts of businesses wanted to be associated with. As the reverse of my "Old Prentice Whisky" token (above) illustrates, these made use of various good luck symbols, such as shamrocks, wishbones, horseshoes, and the then-innocent swastika.

Travel by Steam: City to City

If you traveled any distance in the early 1900s it was almost certainly by steam power, either by railroad or steamship. The northeast U.S. was extremely well-covered by rail lines. In fact they had generally over-built, there being more track than could be profitably maintained. Which is one of the reasons railroads, like airlines today, frequently found themselves in bankruptcy.

Major cities, and many smaller ones, were serviced by multiple railroads, usually running along somewhat different routes. And each railroad ran many different trains. So figuring out the best route between two cities could be difficult. The bible of rail travel was The Official Guide of the Railways. Several of these are online, including a 1904 edition at Google Books. Under listings for each railroad it has schedules for every passenger train. Finding the schedule for trains between New York and Albany on the New York Central is fairly easy. But for smaller cities on less prominent routes, it can be time-consuming. And comparing trains on different railroads can also be difficult. I imagine most people going on complex trips relied on a railroad or other agent.

Passenger fares were rarely published, but seem to have been approximately two cents per mile, so a one-hundred-mile journey would be about $2, equivalent to $50-$100 today, depending on how you compare prices. I don't believe express trains generally cost any more. But by stopping in only a few cities, they did shave a great deal of time off a trip. Limiteds were usually the fastest expresses. With limiteds, at some stops passengers could only board, and at others, only disembark. This shaved off a little more time. For instance, on the New York, New Haven and Hartford (NYNH&H), an express from New York to Boston took about six hours and a limited about five hours.

On the larger railroads, expresses usually had Pullman parlor cars. These cars were owned by the Pullman Company and leased to the railroads. Pullman maintained the cars and the porters manning them were Pullman employees. Most sleeping cars in 1900 were coaches that converted into sleepers. The facing seats combined into a berth and a second, upper, berth folded down from compartments that looked similar to the overhead storage bins on planes. In the photo at right, one side is made into berths, while the other is still configured as a coach. Privacy was obviously problematic.

These cars were also usually Pullman-owned and travelers paid an additional $2-$3 for the privilege. That's about what a room would run in a nice, but not expensive, hotel.

Travelers between coastal cities could usually opt to take a steamship. These boats plied the Great Lakes and ran all up and down the East Coast. The 1903 Appletons' Dictionary of Greater New York lists more than a hundred routes between New York and other cities. Most are to nearby cities, but others serviced Boston, Washington, and Savannah. The steamship routes usually paralleled railroad routes, and the cost was comparable. For instance, a ticket on the NYNH&H from New York to Boston would run about $5. That's about what a cabin on a steamship would run, though there was also a $3 option if you would forgo the cabin.

The chief difference was that the trains were much faster. As I mentioned above, the Limited to Boston took just five hours. The steamship took closer to twenty. The trains also ran much more frequently. I assume most people opting for the steamship simply saw it as a more pleasant way of traveling. Which explains why many of the nearby routes offered excursion fares. The routes up the Hudson were especially popular with day-trippers.

Buffalo at the Turn of the 20th Century

Labor Day Parade in Buffalo, ca. 1900.

Until 1817, Buffalo was a small village like many others along the Great Lakes. But that was the year work began on the Erie Canal, which would link Lake Erie with the Hudson River. Completed in 1825, the Canal was a very costly, and risky, public works project. But it was wildly successful and would assure the prosperity of New York State--and, even more particularly, that of New York City, at the base of the Hudson, and Buffalo, at the western terminus of the Canal.

Elevators, canal boats, lake steamers & harbor ferry.

At a time before railroads, or even serviceable highways, goods could be brought to Buffalo by ship and transferred to canal boats. Grain was the main cargo of the ships arriving from the Midwest, and Buffalo soon became a major distribution point for wheat and other grains. In 1842, the first grain elevator was built in Buffalo. The elevator used steam-powered conveyers to unload the grain from ships and into bins within the large wooden tower. Throughout the 19th century, the towers grew in number and size, even as railroads supplanted the Canal.

By 1900 Buffalo held a key position as a transportation hub. Grain, iron ore and lumber came in from the west, while coal and other goods arrived from the east. As a consequence, both flour and steel mills developed into major industries. And since all the major railroads of the northeast serviced Buffalo, they too became major employers. The population of the city was growing rapidly and stood at 350,000. Buffalo was then the 8th-largest city in the U.S. (in 2011, it was #72).

As with a lot of American cities, Buffalo was in the middle of a great building boom. In 1896, Ellicott Square (above) was completed. Taking up an entire city block, it was at the time the world's largest office building. What's more amazing, it still is intact.


Another amazing thing about Buffalo is the devotion of its fans to its history. One of the best local history sites on the Web is Chuck LaChiusa's Buffalo Architecture and History, which has individual pages for individual buildings as well as architects. For instance, there is a page for  Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed a number of Buffalo's parks, including Delaware Park, seen above on a busy day.

But no discussion of Buffalo in 1900 can be complete without mention of the grain scoopers and the harbor ferries, both explored at local history sites well worth visiting.

Useful Maps, ca. 1900

I'm one of those people who love maps. And I've come across all sorts of interesting maps in my research.

The most interesting of all is a perspective map of Buffalo from 1902, which the Library of Congress has put up in a zoomable version.

What you see at right is a corner of the city along the waterfront. That's maybe 2% of the map. The buildings are rendered with such detail that many are identifiable from photographs. There are a lot of perspective maps from the period, many in the Library of Congress's Cities & Towns collection. But I've never seen another with anything like this level of detail. It's like a Google Street View from 110 years ago.

If you want to see how people got about, you need a map like this Rand McNally 1897 map of Brooklyn. The red lines are the street car routes, and the dashed lines in the river are the ferry routes.

This is from the David Rumsey Map Collection, perhaps the largest available online. But there are dozens of smaller collections, many at state and municipal library sites.

 
Topographical maps from the U.S. Geological Survey offer fairly precise information about an area. For instance, the portion of the map at right is from 1898. I found it at the University of New Hampshire. It shows an area of Brooklyn between Prospect Park and Sheepshead Bay. In less developed areas like this, the USGS maps show individual buildings.

Interestingly, most maps of the period show the area's streets already laid out. But from this we can see it was still open ground. And from what I've read in newspapers of the time, some was still wooded.




Real estate atlases offer another interesting point of view. A number of these are online, including Baist's Real Estate Atlas of Surveys of Washington, D.C.  at the Library of Congress.

The close-up at left is of an area between G & H Streets, NE. The pink buildings are masonry, the yellow wood-frame. H Street is at the top of the image. Cabbage Alley, which I've labeled, was one of many inhabited alleys in Washington. The poor, mostly African-Americans, resided in the alleys. The dwellings were primitive at best and the bane of public health officials. And though the politicians and the press managed to ignore them for years, the map makers recorded them in detail.

Dr. Linn's Museum of Anatomy

Museums of curiosities were very popular in the 19th century. These museums encompassed all sorts of exhibits, and sometimes live performances, but most included anatomical specimens and figures in wax, often depicting grotesque deformities and maladies. P.T. Barnum's museum in New York  eventually evolved into his circus.

Dr. Linn's Museum of Anatomy was located in Buffalo during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was right on Main Street, just down the block from the city's finest hotel. I'm fairly sure the sign in the photo at right is for Dr. Linn's. It's actually a different part of the photo that I use as the background.

Museums like Dr. Linn's included a variety of exhibits of animals and humans. But they were usually intended to provide clients for the proprietor's medical practice, which explains why there was an emphasis on diseases of men, particularly venereal diseases. Many of the exhibits were used to illustrate the consequences of leaving such cases untreated. After putting the fear of God into their patrons, placards or ushers would make them aware that an experienced doctor was on hand for immediate treatment. Perhaps the anonymity was part of the attraction for patients not wanting to consult the family physician.

The image at left is the cover of Dr. Linn's catalog from 1896 that was sold in an auction a while back. The seller noted that there was "an emphasis on sex organs and diseases, although there are insects, a pterodactyl, shellfish, snakes, etc., and engravings of George Washington." Another description of one of these museums is found in an 1873 medical journal and quoted in Michael Sappol's excellent article "Morbid curiosity: The Decline and Fall of the Popular Anatomical Museum":

It was a collection of anatomical models and dissections, with representations of skin and venereal diseases, most improper for public exhibition, and calculated to excite the morbid curiosity of the young together with its peculiar forms of hypochondria. Vile pamphlets were on hand to induce those having or fearing disease to consult the proprietor. The harm which this single establishment must have done cannot be calculated.

As Sappol explains, the museums provided "plenty of models and specimens of vaginas, penises, breasts, and partly dissected (and therefore unclothed) females." At a time when social norms forbade nudity, science was often used as a means to titillate. Here is an interesting wax model of this kind featured at the Morbid Anatomy blog:

Though mainly intended for a male clientele, Dr. Linn's also provided separate hours for ladies on Friday afternoons, when female ushers took the places of the men. But how many women were willing to enter a place like this in the middle of the shopping district?

Weber and Fields: When Burlesque Meant Burlesque

In the 1960s and '70s, when I was growing up, the word burlesque was synonymous with strip club. Perhaps a higher-class sort of strip club, but nonetheless a sordid place of crass entertainment.

In 1900, when Joe Weber and Lew Fields were operating their Broadway Music Hall, burlesque still held its traditional meaning. This is how Wikipedia defines it:

Burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects.

It differs from satire in that satire uses humor to illuminate some truth, while burlesque pokes fun for the sake of fun. It's caricature without a chip on its shoulder. The book Catch-22 is a satire of the military in World War II. The TV show Hogan's Heroes was a burlesque. In the 1960s, television was the medium of choice for burlesque (though the word was never used to describe it). Get Smart, F Troop, and Car 54 were burlesques of the spy, western and police genres. More recent examples are the films of Mel Brooks, Leslie Nielsen, and the team Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker. The situation comedies of today's TV all try too hard to have some point--even shows like The Simpsons and South Park feel a need to preach.

Burlesque first became popular in New York when Lydia Thompson arrived with her troupe, British Blondes, in 1868. Thompson's Wikipedia entry includes this quoted description:

"The eccentricities of pantomime and burlesque – with their curious combination of comedy, parody, satire, improvisation, song and dance, variety acts, cross-dressing, extravagant stage effects, risqué jokes and saucy costumes – while familiar enough to British audiences, took New York by storm."

The burlesque of 1900 was mainly about making fun of some current trend or topic. In New York, Weber and Fields were the masters and their eponymous music hall the most popular venue. A typical show included songs, chorus girls, and several loosely connected scenes and skits. Weber and Fields specialized in burlesques of contemporary Broadway theatre.

The images I've used here are from the program for the week of October 15th, 1900. This included their immensely popular piece Fiddle-Dee-Dee. This piece is set in Paris at the time of the Exposition Universelle of 1900. The hero, played by DeWolf Hopper, is described as "an athletic young American, with nothing but money and nothing to do but spend it." Apparently, he meets up with a "Hebrew prestidigitateur," or conjurer. Weber and Fields play supporting roles, and the female leads are played by Lillian Russell and Fay Templeton. The latter had a big hit with the song “Ma Blushin’ Rosie, Ma Posie Sweet.” Norman Hapgood provides some further description of Fiddle-Dee-Dee, and Weber and Fields, in his book The Stage in America.

Also included in the show was an "incidental" dance by Bessie Clayton, "La Danse d'Afrique." Bessie Clayton, a regular at Weber and Fields, was apparently trained in ballet, and one article describes her as an Amercian Genée. According to someone knowledgeable in the field, she was also the mother of toetap dancing. Altogether, there are about fifty cast members listed in the program. From what I can tell, many of the same performers were with the company throughout the life of the Music Hall (1896-1904).

The second "exhibit" was a spoof on the current Broadway production of Augustus Thomas's Arizona. The same company appeared, this time with Hopper playing Henry Cannedbeef, and Joe Weber appearing as Lena Killer. At other times that season, the second exhibit was Quo Vass Iss?, a takeoff on the Broadway show Quo Vadis, which was based on a popular novel set in ancient Rome. Hapgood provides some of the lines:

I have just returned on the limitus vestibulus from Asbury Park.

You must have a thirstus fit to float a galley. Thou art an easy Markus.

Let us to the boozeorium.

It's unfortunate there are no recordings of these shows, but there are some of Weber and Fields' later works. These are vaudeville routines recorded in 1912 and 1915. I really enjoyed listening to these. Their playful manipulation of language brings to mind the Marx Brothers (the contract scene seems very similar to the one in Night at the Opera). But of course, Weber and Fields did it first.

Crossing the Ocean: Travelers and Immigrants in 1900

The experience of those traveling to and from the U.S. early in the 20th century was very much determined by their wealth. The steamship lines operating then usually offered three classes of cabins. In first class, you usually had a private cabin. In second class, you'd be sharing with several others. And third class was steerage, where you would be in a large room of single men, single women, or families.

There were usually separate dining rooms and lounges for first- and second-class passengers. Those in third class ate in large dinning halls. Not too long before, in the19th century, most third-class passengers were expected to bring their own provisions.

There were large differences in the quality of accommodations among different ships, even within the same steamship line. The newest ships tended to be the most lavishly furnished (at least for the first- and second-class passengers) and the fastest. And there was a corresponding wide range of fares. According to the 1902 What's What, first-class fares ranged from 18 to 247 pounds, equivalent to $2,000-$30,000 today. Second class was 8 to 16 pounds, $1,000-$2,000 today. And steerage would run about 5 to 8 pounds, $625-$1,000 today. Put another way, the salary of a New York policeman, or male teacher, was $900 at the time, which would be about 185 pounds. I have a post on comparing prices and wages.

The trip would take anywhere from 5 to 10 days depending on the ship, the route and the weather. The first stop would be in New York's Lower Bay, where a pilot and quarantine officer would come on board. If there were cases of communicable diseases, I believe the patients were removed here and taken to Swinburne Island or Hoffman Island, two man-made islands in the Lower Bay. From there, the ship would dock at a pier in Manhattan, Brooklyn, or Hoboken, New Jersey, depending on the steamship line. First- and second-class passengers went through an immigration and customs check at the pier. But third-class, steerage, passengers were put on smaller steamboats and taken to Ellis Island for processing.

Those obsessed with illegal immigration often repeat the canard "yes, my people were immigrants, but they came here legally." But during most of our history, including the time of peak immigration from 1890-1914, there were very few legal limits on immigration. My family's case is probably fairly typical. I have ancestors who came from Britain as early as the 17th century, some who came from Germany in the mid-19th century, and some from Poland in the late-19th century. For those people, there were no restrictions at all. The first real restriction was the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. But for Europeans, there were no restrictions until the 1920s.