It begins to sound like a
broken record, but many
of our popular recreational
activities take their form in
the 1890s, give or take a
few years. Professional
Baseball, for example,
takes its modern form
then, and the first World
Series took place in 1903.
Leisure time is a function
of efficient economic
activity. If one has to
spend every waking hour
earning his/her daily bread,
leisure is only an abstraction.
We’ve seen it begin as a
perquisite of the rich.
(The Leisure Class, as Thorsten
Veblen called thim. But, through
some of the processes we’ve
investigated in the last couple
of weeks (remember the combine thresher machines pulled by dozens of horses) humans didn’t have to work 24/7 to earn their daily bread. In this chapter we will look at a real smorgasbord of things... sports, the invention of the vacation, fitness fads (bicycling, gymnastics), and even such things as soft drinks and soda fountains take their place (in competition with the old favorite, the saloon, pictured above). Click on the picture to read about having a good time in Chicago at the turn of the century.