Consuming brotherhood: men's culture, style and recreation as consumer culture, 1880-1930.

In her exploration of the historical relationship between American men and cosmetics, Kathy Peiss outlines how the late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century discourse of heterosexual masculinity denied and covered up men's cosmetics use by defining men's numerous grooming products as toiletries rather than cosmetics or beauty products. This denial of the feminine "other" lurking within men was so sustained and successful that it became a "self-evident statement" of twentieth-century culture that "real men" do not use cosmetics.(1)

A parallel, self-evident statement of American culture and research would be that pre-Depression, American men were not major consumers since most buying and shopping were done by women. While such an idea is nearly ubiquitous in American popular culture, sociology, and women's history, my examination of the leisure activities of white American men between 1890 and 1930 suggests that such men were indeed a very large and important consuming constituency. Moreover, the advertisements in numerous men's and general interest magazines of the period show that such men were highly courted by early twentieth-century advertisers. However, most of this consumption and consumerism has been shielded from view since the terms "consumer" and "consumer goods" have been constructed in such a profoundly gendered fashion. Thus after documenting the degree to which pre-Depression men were: 1) engaged in consumption and consumer activity, and 2) explicitly courted by magazine advertising, I will examine how and why such information has been overlooked by most scholars of gendered consumption and advertising.

The Elision of the Male Consumer. Over the past decade, a rich literature on the relationship between gender, shopping, and consumer culture has emerged within U.S. cultural history, women's history, and historical sociology.2 Although such scholars have done a remarkable job of investigating the impact of consumerism on women and femininity, American men's experiences with consumption and consumerism have been left virtually unexplored. In fact, the consensus among the above disciplines holds that until the Great Depression: 1) American women were the "primary" consumers (i.e., purchasers); 2) most consumption (i.e., utilizing goods) occurred within, or on behalf of the home and family; and 3) male consumption was a marginal activity at best.

The characteristic focus on women, shopping, department stores, and domestic consumption overlooks male consumption and consumerism for a number of reasons. First, the emphasis on the acquisition of goods rather than on their ultimate consumption has overemphasized women's role in the consumption process. Since women have historically done most of the family's shopping they are seen as "consumers" of articles they never use themselves. Women's control of the home did lead to a control over the purchasing of domestic goods, but this did not translate into a control over the larger process of consumption itself. Second, because consumer items are usually conceptualized as those articles acquired in retail outlets and used in the home, most scholars overlook the extensive consumer activity that pre-Depression men engaged in outside of the home. Third, because the analysis of gendered consumerism virtually never looks at spending on consumer services, it misses one of the most important types of male consumer activity. Finally, scholars' lack of attention to male consumption reflects and perpetuates the myth that women consumed and men produced. By portraying consumption and consumerism as largely alien to pre-1930s American men, the literature unwittingly reinforces the stereotype of consumption as "feminine."

Because the history and scope of male consumerism have been so dramatically understudied and undertheorized, new research into gendered consumption needs to address the following questions: 1) how much did pre-Depression American men consume; and 2) to what extent did their consumption of goods and services transform them into consumers (i.e., active seekers of goods and services)?

To address the first question, I examine the 1890 U.S. Census of Manufacturers to estimate the value of each sex's personal consumption of individual and recreational goods. My analysis suggests that the monetary value of men's consumption may have been about twice as large as women's. To address the second question, I focus on how men of 1880-1930 spent their leisure time outside of the house and the nature of the goods consumed there. I find that men actively incorporated lavish consumption and consumerism into their daily lives via banquets, drinking parties, fraternities, well-equipped men's clubs and sporting activities, and by visiting male-only brothels, saloons, dime museums, pool halls, variety theaters and minstrelsy shows. Finally, I theorize how scholars came to view consumption as "feminine," and why the evidence of past male consumption that has been uncovered by labor and men's historians has not been integrated into the standard literature on the intersection of gender and consumerism.

Because the terms shopping, consumption, and consumerism are conflated so often, a few conceptual definitions would be useful here.(3) I define "consumption," "consume" and "consuming" as the mere use of manufactured goods or services, whereas a "consumer" is one who acquires such goods or services by exchanging money. Accordingly, consumers need not be shoppers since many goods and services can be acquired for money without visiting retail outlets (i.e., haircuts, shaves, fraternal dinners and paraphernalia, tickets to professional sporting events and theaters, drinks, men's club and gym facilities, etc.). Finally, "consumerism" will refer to the social process whereby individuals exchange money for the goods and services that they use or buy. Armed with such definitions, it becomes possible to assess more critically the degree to which pre-Depression white men were involved in consumption and consumer activity.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Most of the literature which explicitly focuses on the interaction of gender and consumption in pre-1930's America can be divided into two camps: that which studies gendered consumption vs. that which focuses on gendered consumer activity. A major difference between the two is that while the consumption research comments on male (and female) consumption, the consumer research largely focuses on women's involvement with shopping, department stores, the control of the home, and the process by which women were structurally and ideologically transformed into consumers.

In the consumption research tradition would be scholars such as Horowitz, Cross, Breazeale and Ehrenreich, who either explicitly or implicitly characterize pre-Depression consumption as a principally "feminine" or "domestic" activity. For example, Horowitz describes the housewife as society's "proxy consumer," and asserts that industrialization transformed the home "from the center of production to the center of consumption" (emphasis added).(4) Similarly, Cross argues that "[male] consumption was inevitably more passive, and . . . bound more closely to the wage earning experience" (i.e., buying rounds of drinks), and that the basis for a "consumerist freedom" lay in the "division between male providers and female domestic consumers."(5)

Two rare feminist studies of American masculinity and consumption also characterize consumption as an historically "feminine" activity, to be contrasted with what they depict as a "new" male consumerism. Kenon Breazeale's analysis of Esquire magazine's 1933 campaign to portray masculine consumption as both glamorous and manly unequivocally declares that "Esquire's editorial staff sought to constitute consumption as a new arena for masculine privilege" (emphasis added). Likewise, Barbara Ehrenreich's examination of 1950's masculinity and consumption asserts that "[n]ew products for men, like toiletries and sports clothes, appeared in the fifties" (emphasis added), yet such goods have been widely enjoyed by middle-class American men since at least the late 1880s.(6) Admittedly, the above two studies concern themselves more with the changing discourse on masculine consumption than with male consumption itself. Nevertheless, their description of male consumption as a "new" activity or "arena for masculine privilege" implicitly characterizes consumption as a predominantly "feminine" prerogative or activity until well into the twentieth century. Consequently, they too indirectly reinforce the dichotomy of productive males and consuming females.(7)

This notion of a division between productive males and consuming females is also reinforced by those feminist scholars within the gendered consumerism research tradition who have most closely examined the gendered dimensions of shopping and consumerism. For instance, Bowlby's study of consumerism and femininity calls it an "empirical fact" that "women at the time of Marx and increasingly over the next 50 years were the principal consumers." Similarly, Abelson's remarkable history of Victorian shoplifting declares that "[a]lthough men were certainly not excluded from consumption choices and often were active participants, women were the primary consumers." Finally, Damon-Moore feminizes and domesticates consumption by defining "consuming" as "choosing and buying commercial products and using them in the home . . . [which] in turn, rested on the capacity of adults, particularly male adults, to earn money."(8)

This conceptualization of consumption as shopping, buying things, and then using them at home is problematic since it largely limits our understanding of the consumption process to knowledge about how retail goods were acquired and used in the home - thus overlooking most non-domestic consumption, and nearly all spending on consumer services. This domestication of consumption is profoundly gendered. Became late-Victorian and early twentieth-century men spent so much time and money outside of their homes, it is important to examine their non-domestic consumption of consumer goods and services. It is also important to include services since recent economic research shows that early twentieth-century consumer spending on "consumer services . . . form[ed] a consistently rising share of all consumer spending after 1900 . . . [and] surpasse[d] even the proportional weight of perishables before 1920."(9) And, because entertainment, amusements, and recreational services comprised an important part of the consumer service revolution, the examination of men's involvement with consumer services and non-domestic consumer goods promises a more accurate picture of the relationship between men and consumerism than has been achieved to date.

The Contributions of Labor, Men's, and Urban History. Some scholars have described the consuming activities of pre-1930s American men, but their findings have not been integrated into the consumption literature. Numerous labor and men's historians have noticed the link between men's culture and consumption, and various turn-of-the-century budgetary studies of working-class families discuss working men's consumption. However, these findings have not been connected to the gender and consumption literature for a number of reasons.

First, their findings have been framed as part of a discussion about class rather than gender. American labor historians such as Kingsdale, Rosenzweig, and Roediger have perceptively examined how and why late-Victorian working-class men spent their time and money in male-only places such as saloons, union halls, and minstrelsy shows, but they tend to view working-class male recreation and sociability as more of a class issue than a highly gendered class issue.(10) Consequently, their work is rarely cited by the gender and consumption scholars.

Second, the relatively new field of men's history has also begun to document the link between late nineteenth-century men's culture and consumption, but its practitioners do not address their findings to the pre-existing literature on gender and consumption either. For example, Rotundo describes some of the surprising consumption that occurred in late-Victorian men's clubs, body building, sports, and fraternal organizations, and Carnes' and Clawson's books on fraternal organizations reveal the lavish, theatrical consumption that accompanied most fraternal rituals and interaction. Kimmel's history of American manhood links turn-of-the-century masculinity to the consumption of health food, sporting goods and adventure fiction.(11) But since the above scholars do not specifically focus on the issue of consumption itself, few of their findings have made their way into the gendered consumption literature.

A useful but untapped source of information on pre-Depression male consumption and consumerism in America would be the various social histories of urban entertainment and public amusements. Scholars such as Erenberg, Nasaw, Chauncey and Gilfoyle do a remarkable job of describing life in the late nineteenth-century male-only districts where men spent money on brothels, saloons, dime museums, concert saloons, variety shows, minstrel shows, billiards and gambling.(12) Chauncey's 1994 book on the emergence of gay culture in New York City is doubly insightful in that it also reveals the degree to which gay male life revolved around the City's commercial entertainment. However, because male consumption and consumerism are theoretically regarded as not significant, the rich evidence uncovered by labor, men's, gay and urban historians goes unnoticed. Finally, although these historians tend to study men's commodified activities to understand particular subcultures (i.e., gay, bachelor, working class, or urban, etc.) rather than to understand the gendered nature of consumption, their important findings do suggest the need to rethink the relationship between masculinity and consumption and consumerism.

Modern Masculinities and Consumerism. Although modern male consumerism is generally overlooked, a few scholars have examined how various recent masculinities were constructed around consumerism. For example, Ehrenreich's 1983 book insightfully examines how American masculinity became increasingly orientated around hedonistic consumerism from the 1950s on. Barthel's 1988 book describes how the (middle-class) "new" man which appeared in the United States in the 1980s was largely concerned with hedonistic style and consumer goods. Similarly, Mort's 1996 book on male shopping and style in Britain traces how these activities became increasingly important to many British men between the 195 Os and the 1980s.(13) However, because neither of these scholars connects this consumerism to the long history of male consumerism, their work tends to be ahistorical. Thus this paper aims to historicize such male consumerism by demonstrating that the present-day male love of style, recreation, and consumer goods goes back more than a century.

QUANTIFYING MALE CONSUMPTION

Surprisingly, the firm consensus among scholars that pre-1930's male consumption was marginal has been held without the benefit of much empirical evidence. The only empirical evidence cited to my knowledge is the turn-of-the-century marketing industry's estimates that women comprised between 75-90 percent of the consumer market at various points between 1896 and 1932.(14) However, these estimates are problematic precisely because they refer to those who marketers believed were purchasing goods rather than to those who were ultimately consuming them. For the study of consumption itself, the question of who acquired the goods may be irrelevant.

Furthermore, many of the commodities and services that men consumed such as lodge paraphernalia, uniforms, work-out gear, haircuts, shaves, and theater and saloon spending were not included in what the marketers of the day thought of as "consumer goods" since these expenditures did not ideologically conform to their idea of what consumer goods were (i.e., retail goods purchased by women). The terms "consumption" and "consumerism" are socially constructed concepts; much as the term housework came to refer to the work women do rather than to all non-market household work. What men consumed was almost by definition not "consumption" since it was understood that women were the "consumers."(15)

To estimate each sex's consumption of personal and recreational commodities I analyze the 1890 Census of Manufactures to determine the approximate monetary value of the goods consumed by each sex. The Census of Manufactures was chosen because this is the only document which provides a reliable aggregate level accounting of the physical commodities consumed by each sex. Although the Census reflects gross domestic product rather than actual consumption, we know that virtually all of these commodities were consumed by Americans because the U.S. exported few personal or recreational consumer goods in 1890. Moreover, since imports comprised only 6-8 percent of the market in 1890, the Census provides a good approximation of goods consumption in general.(16)

The year 1890 was chosen because it marks a point when the majority of clothing and commodities began to be purchased in the market rather than made at home.(17) Moreover, between 1870 and 1890 enormous increases in the consumption of recreational goods such as toys, games, athletic goods, and fancy articles had already occurred.(18) Most importantly, though, 1890 is a critical base year: much later and we would get into a period that many regard as a pivotal cultural shift in gender and consumption (the early 20th century); much earlier and too much of the economic output would have been produced at home. Finally, the 1890 Census predates the crushing depression which followed the Panic of 1893.

Methods and Data. To date there are evidently no statistics or estimates of the ratio of male to female consumption of non-work commodities. While such estimates could be fairly accurately acquired today through consumer spending surveys, this method is obviously not applicable to the 1890s. However, because men's and women's styles of dressing, recreating, and socializing were so dramatically different from each other during the 1890s, a number of experimental and inferential methods can be used to estimate the probable consumption ratio between the sexes.

The 1890 Census data lend themselves to the reliable estimation of sex-consumption ratios for clothing since they specify most clothing as male or female. Thus, in cases such as "furnishing goods, men's" or "clothing, women's," I attributed 100 percent of the consumption of these goods to the specified sex. For those clothing goods which could be utilized by either sex, such as woolen, worsted and cotton goods, I used the more detailed commodity breakdowns and descriptions to estimate ratios. For example, the Census of Manufactures (COM) subdivides woolen and worsted goods into the sex-specific categories of "men's wear," "women's wear," "shawls," and "jeans."(19)

For goods not identified by the Census as belonging to a particular sex (i.e., watches, shoes, hats, cosmetics, furs, sporting goods, tobacco and alcohol), I used the historical literature and the newspaper and magazine advertisements of the day to: 1) decide whether each sex consumed such a good, and 2) estimate the percentage of the good each sex would have probably consumed (see Appendix #15-17). Historical studies of Victorian fashion, jewelry, music, sports, fitness, and leisure were used to estimate each sexes' consumption of various goods, and since magazine and newspaper advertisements provide additional information as to who uses each good, I consulted them also before arriving at my final estimates. However, because advertisements can shape social practice as well as reflect it, consumption ratios were never assessed solely on the basis of the ads, but only in conjunction with the historical literature on each particular item (see Appendix #8, 16, 17, 19 for examples). Thus the reader is advised to consult the Appendix for a full documentation of: 1) how and why the sex ratio of each commodity is calculated as it is, 2) which goods are included in Table 1, and 3) where the data on each good come from.

Table 1 includes only the ready-made commodities utilized by males and females in the direct satisfaction of their own expressive and recreational needs and desires. Expressive goods are items such as clothing, jewelry, body-building equipment, or cosmetics which would allow individuals to define or embellish their presentation of self. Recreational goods are commodities which would normally be consumed during periods of relaxation when one is not engaging in domestic, industrial, or commercial labor. Included here are items such as alcohol, tobacco, sporting goods, and musical instruments. Specifically excluded are goods that mix leisure with work, such as sewing equipment and newspapers. Commodities used to produce goods or services for others (i.e., work tools, hardware, cooking/laundry utensils, baby supplies, curtains, furniture, etc.) are also excluded from this study since they primarily constitute implements of industrial or domestic labor. Consequently, the value of goods consumed in the industrial workplace or business office was not coded as "male" consumption, just as the goods women used to care for their families cannot be viewed as "female" consumption. Thus, by concentrating on the consumption of individuals (rather than that of workers, parents or wives), this analysis controls for the proxy consumption that women undertook for their families by excluding consumption not undertaken for one's own use.

What is most striking about Table 1 is that the value of men's clothing (category #1) is nearly 2.5 times larger than that of women's clothing (category #5). In other words, 71 percent of all ready-made clothing was consumed by males in 1890 - probably because they had to dress for both work and their extensive social lives.(20) These figures are especially reliable since clothing was one of the few items that both the manufacturers and the Census Bureau specifically divided into male and female product. Moreover, because the figures for women's clothing include the thriving dressmaking industry that fell between ready-made and home-made dresses (i.e., millinery goods/custom work - see Appendix, #5), they represent a good portion of the total clothing worn by women, as well.

Although such figures do not reflect the dresses made by middle-class women at home, such dresses cannot be counted as consumer goods precisely because they were produced at home rather than purchased in the market. In this case, women were producers rather than consumers. However, the raw materials purchased to make such dresses were consumer goods. Because working-class women generally relied on ready-made clothing by 1890 (see endnote 5), women as a group probably made no more than about one third of their clothing at home (worth $91.3 million if store bought). Thus, assuming that the raw materials for the homemade third of women's clothing cost about 40 percent of what the finished products would cost, women would have only spent about $36.5 million on materials such as thread, silk, buttons and fabric. This means that even after this sum is added to net female consumption, women's total consumption would only rise by 1.4 percentage points (32.8%-34.2%). In 1890 the market clearly reserved most of its clothing resources and commodities for men rather than for women.

[TABULAR DATA FOR TABLE 1 OMITTED]

Since men bought most of their clothes off the rack, and the value of clothing comprises such a large proportion of the commodities in Table 1 (37%), overall statistics might exaggerate men's place in the commercial nexus. However, even after excluding all men's and women's clothing from the analysis (categories #1 & 5), men still consumed about 65 percent of the value of all commodities (as opposed to 67 percent when clothing is included). Thus, since the ratio of male-to-female consumption in both cases is virtually identical, this suggests that late-Victorian men probably did consume about twice the value of personal/recreational commodities as women (see Table 1). Moreover, even if these estimates somehow missed a third of all female consumption, the adjusted female portion would still comprise only 44 percent of all consumption. Consequently, any talk about late-Victorian consumption being "principally" or even largely feminine would not appear to be empirically sustainable. In fact, considering that the above estimates do not even reflect men's substantial expenditures on non-retail goods and consumer services such as fraternal paraphernalia, entertainment costs, barber shops, and tickets to professional sporting events, the size and value of late-Victorian male consumption seems clearly dominant compared with that of women.(21)

Although the list of commodities analyzed does not shed much light on the qualitative aspects of male consumption, a few observations are in order here. While a number of male consumption activities such as smoking and drinking are intuitively obvious, others may surprise the modern reader. For instance, the amount of opulent and stylish fur that late-Victorian men wore (see Appendix, #11) contradicts most current assumptions about Victorian male asceticism. More striking is the fact that men openly used so many cosmetics. According to historian Fenja Gunn, "Victorian m[e]n could blatantly use cosmetics devices . . . [while] women of the day had to disguise any attempts at self-improvement."(22) Indeed, the historical record shows that late-Victorian men used everything from shaving soaps, aftershave lotions, pomade oils, and hair dyes, to cosmetics for training one's mustache. And if the contemporary advertisements reflect social practice, then late-Victorian men also consumed skin beautifiers, hair restorers, and cosmetic vaporizers.(23) In effect, the "[n]ew products for men, like toiletries and sports clothes" which Barbara Ehrenreich attributed to the 1950s were already in use by the late-Victorian era (see below, discussion of sports clothing). At any rate, the above analysis clearly suggests that late-Victorian white men were hardly the stridently ascetic beings that separate spheres historians presumed them to be.

Historical budget studies provide further evidence that late-Victorian male consumption was enormous (compared with that of women). For example, Louise More's 1907 study of the spending habits of 200 working-class families in New York City from 1903-5 indicates that the lion's share of most families' disposable income went to husbands. Using More's figures, it would appear that about 11 percent of the average working family's disposable income went to the husband's drinking, while another 16 percent was reserved for his personal spending money.(24) Thus working-class men appear to have spent about 27 percent of their family's disposable income on drinking and socializing alone, and even more if one includes the money spent on lodge and benefit society dues ($5-$120 per family annually).(25) In light of the striking disparity between men's and women's personal spending money, then, one can only conclude that non-rural, late-Victorian white men must have been a major consuming constituency.

At this point, some readers might ask why it matters who ultimately consumed most goods if they were purchased by women. Women's consumerism is an important way in which women exercised agency in a highly constraining gender order.(26) Nonetheless, the next several sections of this paper show that preDepression white men consumed many commodities that were not purchased by women, and that many, if not most, of their homo-social leisure activities and organizations revolved around consumption itself, since consumerism was an important social activity for men.

MIDDLE-CLASS MEN'S CONSUMPTION, 1880-1920

New Sports, New Equipment, New Clothes. The literature on sports and masculinity has largely viewed late-Victorian sports as a vehicle for mediating the crisis of masculinity which occurred among white-collar workers by promoting competition, militarism, character development, and a "strenuous" masculinity.(27) Current scholars point out that late-Victorian gender reactionaries such as Henry James and Ernest Thompson Seton (founder of the Boy Scouts of America) promoted sports and fitness as an antidote to the "damnable feminization" and "over-civilization" besetting America's newly sedentary middle classes.(28) While most reactionaries were primarily opposed to what they saw as the growing "effeminacy" of middle-and upper middle-class American men, some implicitly linked the problem to consumer society itself by stating that athletics substituted "hardiness for effeminacy, and dexterity for luxurious indolence."(29)

Although it seems undeniable that late-Victorian sports helped white-collar men who no longer owned property or directly ran factories to rejuvenate their flagging sense of masculinity, the capacity of sports to promote consumption and consumer activity has received less attention from historians and sociologists of sport. Exclusive sports like golf, yachting, and tennis have been linked with the conspicuous consumption of the rich, and the indulgent lifestyle of the sporting underworld has been noted, but no one has focused on the ability of sports to promote wide scale, comprehensive consumption among ordinary middle-class men.(30) Thus, in the following section I argue that since so many late-Victorian sports entailed expensive equipment, showy uniforms, fashionable fitness wear, sneakers, and playing and spectator fees, they appear to have promoted festive middle-class male consumption as much as they reinforced an apparently compromised white-collar masculinity.

Body building is a perfect example of the capacity of athletics to promote consumerism. As the muscular ideal for men became increasingly prevalent in the late-nineteenth century, "countless men and boys from good families began exercising as never before . . . [amidst] images of bulging muscles and naked virility."(31) One study of magazine articles revealed that the most frequently emphasized traits of heroes in the 1890s were their impressive size and strength.(32) What is most notable about such a pursuit, though, is the degree to which its practice depended upon consumer goods. According to Harvey Green's history of health, fitness and sport in America, at least ten different pieces of work-out equipment were available to the body builder by the 1890s. Enthusiasts would often purchase equipment such as gymnastic crowns, indian clubs, parlor gymnasiums, parlor rowers, health lifts, dumbbells, rings, weight machines, pulleys, and trapezes, or join expensive urban gymnasiums.(33) Of course, middle-class boys and men who merely owned sneakers, shorts and a T-shirt could simply work out at the local YMCA for a fee, but this still constituted a form of consumer activity.(34) Therefore, since body building required access to so much commodified equipment, its practitioners were transformed defacto into consumers.

Numerous other sports and athletic recreations of the period required a similarly high level of consumption as well. Enthusiasts of tennis, golf, croquet, badminton, and ping pong not only had to purchase expensive rackets, balls, or accoutrements, but also had to pay to use the tennis courts and golf courses since there were no public sports facilities at the time. Moreover, the norms of respectability required bourgeois devotees of the above sports to purchase special workout clothes or uniforms.(35) Indeed, an article published in 1901 by the influential physical educator Dudley A. Sargent complained that fashion accounted for the rise and fall of many sports, rather than the other way around.(36)

Baseball is another example of a typically "male" activity which promoted middle-class consumption.(37) In general, late nineteenth-century sports participation was a "pay-to-play" proposition. While working-class men sometimes played baseball in vacant sandlots, baseball diamonds for more organized games had to be rented by the game or purchased by wealthy baseball enthusiasts. And as baseball developed into a spectator sport in the second half of the nineteenth century, admission was charged at professional games. Therefore, the baseball fan of 1890 would have to pay fifty cents to see a National League game, a fee which excluded most working men.(38) Besides admission, many fans also gambled and purchased the liquor that was sold at many stadiums after 1881, and from the late 1880s on, fans could buy ten-cent guide books introducing them to Spalding's growing line of sporting goods products.(39) Thus, in view of the fact that baseball's spectators were largely middle-class and male, one could say that baseball was not just a sport but was also an outlet for middle-class male consumption.(40)

Perhaps the clearest example of the ability of sports to promote conspicuous male consumption are the exclusive athletic clubs in late nineteenth-century urban areas. In the New York City area alone, membership in the leading clubs numbered in the thousands, and there were many more such clubs in cities such as Boston, New Orleans, and San Francisco.(41) The best clubs in New York had most of the following: running tracks, gymnasiums, swimming pools, club rooms, dining rooms, bowling alleys, billiard parlors, rifle ranges, Russian and Turkish baths, sleeping rooms, ballrooms, theaters, and the latest in exercise equipment.(42) However, the clubs in Boston, New Orleans, and San Francisco "rivaled the New York clubs in terms of facilities and membership" and sometimes "sponsored exotic and extravagant shows" such as the detailed reconstruction of Greek and Roman games.(43)

For the late-Victorian middle and upper classes, then, engaging in sports and athletics meant engaging in consumption. In fact, since participating in many sports and fitness activities entailed multiple levels of consumption (i.e., equipment, sports clothing, sneakers, tickets, and rental or club fees), such activities transformed their participants into not merely consumers, but comprehensive consumers at that. And, while many non-working-class women did engage in sporting and fitness activities, their involvement (and subsequent consumption) was limited by the variety of sports and the amount of free time that was available to them.(44) Early sports, then, both facilitated and stimulated festive middle- and upper-class male consumption and consumer activity.

Spare no Amenities: Fraternities and Bachelor Club Consumption. Because late-Victorian society was so patriarchal, the canon of respectable bourgeois manliness demanded both property and marriage. Normally, this meant that young middle-class men would leave home for a time to study and then begin their professional lives in the commercial or urban areas of the country. Cut off from their families and most young women, such men often formed informal mutual support systems such as clubs, fraternities, literary and secret societies, and lodges.(45) According to historian Anthony Rotundo's study of Victorian male youth culture, such homosocial organizations "grew up like weeds throughout the nineteenth century . . . [and] flourished in any place with a concentration of young men - cities, towns, colleges."(46)

These clubs and organizations centered their social activities around domestic and leisure consumption. For example, such organizations rarely got together without enjoying a meal, and many held "elaborate banquets," frequent drinking parties, and purchased libraries for the use of group members.(47) Other organizations, such as the Naomi Bachelor Club of Stockton, California, and the Owl's Club of Tucson, Arizona, were noted for their lavish amenities and furnishings. For example, the Naomi Bachelor Club contained a hat rack, crystal tumblers, fancy colored shelf papers, "dainty bits of Dresden china," a piano, camera, and ice distilled water on draught.(48) And the Owl's Club, a bachelor home/club set up in Tucson in 1886 by a group of Easterners who sought "comfortable living quarters, and fine food," "decorat[ed] their quarters with paintings, fine furnishings . . . beautiful ornaments . . . [and] hired a housekeeper, and a Chinese cook" to serve "elegant, multi-course meals." Moreover, "any visitor to the Owl's Club provided an excuse for an elegant dinner party . . . [consisting of] several courses of oysters and other delicacies . . . pints of wine . . . dessert and champagne."(49)

Even groups organized around the lofty goal of studying art and literature, such as the many intellectual clubs of late-Victorian Boston and New York, surrounded themselves with the amenities of bourgeois life. For example, St. Botolph's Club, a "poor man's club" for intellectuals founded in 1879 in Boston, served "wine, liquors and cigars and whatever [wa]s necessary to eat or drink in social Clubs" and featured an art gallery, a Chickering grand piano, public utilities, and baseball matches with other clubs. And the Club of Odd Volumes, a Boston intellectual club founded in 1887, had an outing "[i]n their very first year of existence" in which they:

were met by a horse-drawn barge . . . inspected the library and collection of art [of the Hollingsworth estate in Mattapan] and were regaled with a supper consisting . . . of "bivalves, deliciously cooked, salads palatable and creams most delicate, while crystal sparkled occasionally from a quiet corner with its tempting contents."(50)

Fraternal lodges and secret societies comprised one of the most important bases for male socializing in late nineteenth-century America.(51) According to the Cyclopedia of Fraternities, 40 percent of all males over 20 years of age held membership in at least one secret society in 1896.(52) While fraternal lodges are not usually associated with rampant consumerism, the rituals and entertainment of many fraternities were so dependent upon lavish consumption that they acted as another important stimulant to middle-class male consumption.

In her path-breaking study of freemasonry in the United States, Lynn Dumenil studied the case history of Live Oak (masonic) Lodge No. 61 in Oakland, California.(53) Dumenil's study is of more than local importance since fraternal orders universally subscribed to the masonic practice of initiations and symbolic dramas.(54) To begin with, in order to join Live Oak Lodge between 1880 and 1920, a man would have to pay annual dues of between $6-12, an initiation fee of between $50-100, and considerably more for the additional degrees of membership. Initiations and ceremonial rituals were quite ornate, and routinely required such goods as top hats, jewels, special seats, lambskin aprons, horses, glittering swords, drill corps uniforms, sashes, plumes, knight's dress, double-barred crosses, white gloves, embroidered banners, and numerous medals and regalia.(55) In fact, the demand for lodge regalia was so extensive that numerous companies existed in the late nineteenth century to meet such a demand.(56)

Such festive consumption was hardly limited to the freemasons, since the Improved Order of Red Men (one of the largest fraternal orders of the late-nineteenth century) made extensive use of bows and arrows, knives, tomahawks, ropes, tents, shepherd's robes, sandals and gongs during their ceremonies.(57) Moreover, many lodges served alcoholic beverages, and/or customary "sumptuous dinners," while others adjourned to nearby taverns and restaurants after meeting.(58) Indeed, an 1897 article in the North American Review estimated that the average lodge member spent $50 a year on dues and insurance, and $200 over the course of his life on initiation fees, uniforms, ritualistic paraphernalia, banquets, travel, and gifts for retiring officers.(59) However, since the "secrets" of the fraternal order were protected by a "pledge more binding in its nature than perhaps any known to man," such consumption evaded the moral scrutiny and condemnation of a patriarchal society that vociferously condemned the "extravagant" spending of its women.(60)

In sum, although most of the above late nineteenth-century men's organizations certainly amounted to more than mere excuses for consuming goods together, such groups did provide middle- and upper middle-class Victorian men with excellent opportunities to consume and spend outside of the purview of women. Such lavish consumption was organized and carried out without the services of women shoppers (although women probably cooked or cleaned at many of these clubs). Thinking of women as society's "proxy consumer" elides the enormous consumer activity that middle-class white men engaged in directly.

WORKING-CLASS MALE CONSUMPTION, 1880-1930

For at least the past century, the American working class appears to have taken considerable pleasure and pride in the flamboyant and ostentatious display of goods. Working-class families generally rejected the simple furniture styles of the middle class for plush Victorian furniture, and working women in turn-of-the-century New York took great pains to adorn their apartments with cheap lace curtains, bric-a-brac, gaudily colored religious prints, portraits, and advertising posters.(61) Moreover, when it came to fashion, numerous European visitors to the U.S. reported that the American workers of the 1890s preferred stylish and flamboyant dress rather than the quality and durability prized by British workers.(62) As the next section will show, the working-class taste for showy consumption was not limited to women, but was shared by urban working men, and to a lesser extent, African American men.

B'hoys, Bloods, Mashers and Dudes: A Stylish New Working Class. During the second half of the nineteenth century three major developments occurred which transformed the way gender was performed by working-class people: 1) young people began to receive their own pay checks, 2) fashion became mass-produced and readily available, and 3) dazzling commercial entertainment areas sprouted up in the major urban areas. Young working women began to militantly assert their own brand of class and gender pride by boldly rejecting middle-class styles of femininity in favor of gaudy colors, outrageous accessories, and (relatively) low skirts and dresses which accentuated their hips and thighs.(63) By the 1890s this style became common in the urban areas, as "rowdy" and "factory girls" rebelliously appropriated the cultural style of the prostitute (i.e, cosmetics, sleeveless dresses, gaudy colors) for their own use.(64)

Meanwhile, young working men also used fashion to express their new personas. For example, in mid nineteenth-century New York City, B'hoys, or dandified street toughs, began to prowl the Bowery in search of women, fights, commercial entertainment and alcohol.(65) According to the Knickerbocker socialite Abram Dayton, "[t]hese 'B'hoys' . . . were the most consummate dandies of the day," and paraded about with lavishly greased, long front locks, black, straight, broad-brimmed hats, turned-down shirt collars, black frock-coats with skirts below the knee, embroidered shirts, tight pantaloons, ever present cigars, and "a profusion of jewelry as varied and costly as the b'hoy could procure."(66) Similarly, urban street gangs such as New York's largely Irish "Dead Rabbits" also "promenad[ed] in distinctive dress . . . [during] their leisure hours," and Walt Whitman described the manual workers seated in the pit of a Broadway theater as "well dress'd . . . young and middle-aged men."(67)

By the 1880s, then, a flamboyantly consumerist working-class strand of masculinity emerged as large numbers of working (and lower middle-class) men began adopting behavior that had previously been confined to the old sporting crowd and theatrical world of gamblers, libertines and dandies. Such men adopted a sexually assertive style, and according to contemporary observers "hover[ed] everywhere, from the marketplace to the meetinghouse, and from the promenade to the theater."(68) Some described the masher as a "barber-and-tailor-shop decoration," and the novelist Theodore Dreiser noted that the masher prized "[g]ood clothes . . . without which he was nothing," and had a "keen desire for the feminine . . . [and] an insatiable love of variable pleasure."(69) Furthermore, such working-class male dandy-ism was not limited to white men, since the New York Tribune reported in 1895 that on African Broadway:

[there is a] daily promenade of gayly dressed girls and sprig young colored men. . . . The favorite dress of the young men "in style" is a glossy silk hat, patent leathers, a black suit with a sack coat of remarkable shortness, and a figured waistcoat. Paste diamonds are de riguer.

Most importantly, though, these African American men were not part of New York's black elite, who lived on 53rd Street and dressed like bourgeois whites, but rather had "only a dollar or two standing between them and starvation most of the time."(70)

This is not to say that all working-class men dressed like the masher, B'Hoy, or stylish African American. Working-class dandies, or "dudes," seem to have primarily inhabited the major urban areas, and appear to have been a relatively youthful lot. However, since the masher's presence has been described as ubiquitous in the large cities, we can infer that the stylish, working-class young man was hardly a rare sight in the 1890s.(71) Thus, became a significant number of late-Victorian working-class men expressed their masculinity through stylish clothing, fashion, jewelry, and smart hairstyles, it would appear that the working-class taste for ostentatious consumption was not limited to women and girls. This no doubt helps explain the high proportion of male expenditure on clothing and personal goods seen in the census figures.

Fraternal Lodges, Cellar Clubs, Saloons, Burlesque. While masher fashion may have had less appeal for older or married working-class men, such men could satisfy their taste for spectacle and extravagant consumption by joining a fraternal order. Since working-class men made up 25 percent of the masonic lodges, and up to 50 percent of many non-masonic fraternal orders in 1891, we can assume that they comprised between 30-35 percent of the 6,000,000 fraternity members in 1896.(72) In other words, nearly two million working-class men may have taken part in the rituals and ceremonies of the fraternal order in 1896 alone.(73)

Besides spending money on initiation and the three to four required levels of rank, working-class lodge members also had to purchase the uniforms and regalia that corresponded with each rank.(74) Furthermore, many of the more working-class lodges created special elaborately costumed Uniformed Ranks to march in public parades as drill corps. Such drill teams and parade units were typically outfitted with helmets, gauntlets, epaulets, chevrons, ribbons, ornaments, and swords, rifles, or axes, and the official Pythian Manual of 1887 specified that drill corps officers must wear:

black silk folding chapeau trimmed with two black ostrich plumes . . . a gold chapeau tassel on each peak . . . a black silk rosette . . . surmounted by a strap with gold embroidery . . . a silver bullion lily . . . a gold emblematic button . . . [and] black silk ribbon sashing . . . showing the gilt ornament on the right side.(75)

The Knights of Pythias were hardly unique, since orders such as the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the Foresters, and the Knights of Columbus established showy public drill teams of their own which "offered men who were attracted by elaborate regalia . . . an opportunity to indulge their fantasies to the limit."(76)

It would seem that a major difference between the middle- and working-class fraternal orders was their willingness to display fancy costumes and consumer styles in public. While the middle-class masonic orders discretely conducted private dress-up and dinner parties, working-class lodges preferred to publicly display their ornate drill uniforms and paraphernalia, and by implication, their consumer prowess itself. Such flamboyant displays suggest that working-class men linked the public display of consumption with class and gender pride.

Besides lodges, working-class men spent their free time on an assortment of other commodified recreational activities. For example, working-class saloon goers not only bought one another drinks in the saloons; they also spent money there on lunch, billiards, prostitutes, and sports betting.(77) Billiard games alone cost a nickel a game per player.(78) Moreover, working men in urban areas often hung out at special billiard halls and attended bawdy burlesque and minstrel shows.(79) Even young working men without money had commodified amusements since most Catholic temperance societies provided free non-drinking alternatives to the saloon. Indeed, their "well-appointed clubrooms [had] . . . newspapers, domino sets, gymnasiums, card tables, libraries, and even pool tables." And these clubs usually offered concerts, minstrel shows, excursions, coffee parties, and sports teams, while some even had paramilitary auxiliaries with elaborate uniforms and drilling routines.(80) In effect, temperance societies subsidized working men's recreational consumption. Regardless of who paid the bill for their recreational commodities, working-class men in the urban areas engaged in recreational consumption.

Young, single, working-class men who were not involved in lodges or temperance halls often created their own organizations to meet their social and recreational needs. In the 1890s young men's clubs appeared "in greater numbers than ever before." According to Herbert Asbury, these clubs arose largely due to the "patronage of the political associations," and were a "feature of life in the congested tenement districts."(81) It is unclear how many of these clubs existed in the 1890s, but in the 1920s the New York area had about 500 such clubs, and in 1934 between six to ten thousand youths in the East Side of Manhattan alone were connected to cellar clubs.(82)

Typically, these clubs were set up in basements, the upper floors of storefronts, in halls, the back rooms of saloons, or wherever the rent was cheapest.(83) Organized as pleasure, athletic, or cellar clubs, they provided young men who lived in extremely crowded tenements with a private place to be with their friends or to entertain women. Although few of these social clubs attained the affluence of the average middle-class men's club, the young working men who ran them labored to make them as attractive and domestic as possible. For example, such clubs were painted and often equipped with sofas, fake fireplaces, colored light bulbs, and showers. Many of the better off clubs had individual mail boxes, dishes, silverware, ice boxes, pianos, heavy brocade drapes, large mirrors, and libraries, while some featured laundry facilities.(84) Moreover, club members did not merely eat in their clubs, but occasionally threw stag or drinking parties, and rented strip teasers or prostitutes as entertainment.(85) Thus, like the middle-class bachelors and university students referred to earlier, young working men created social clubs which simultaneously provided the comforts of home and allowed them to engage in commodified recreation.

TRANS-CLASSED MALE PURSUITS

Male-Only Entertainment. Because working- and middle-class men so rarely socialized together in the late nineteenth century, their consumption patterns have been discussed in separate sections. However, one popular urban pastime did successfully draw men of both classes: the male-only entertainment and amusement industry. Male-only entertainment consisted of establishments such as concert saloons, cheap variety theaters, gambling halls, brothels, peep shows, dime museums, and the "red light" districts found in "[e]very major metropolitan and even some good-sized towns."(86) Most importantly, though, all were off limits to most women, and most attracted both working- and middle-class men.

Concert saloons and cheap variety theaters were barrooms or taverns which offered free or cheap entertainment in adjacent back rooms, halls, or theaters. Generally located near mining camps, urban areas, and in red light districts, such establishments combined singing, dancing, drinking, gambling, and risque "girly" entertainment with prostitution.(87) The entertainment consisted of local performers singing and dancing, acrobats, scantily clad female vocalists, absurd farces, and variety, burlesque, and minstrel shows.(88) However, since the only women normally present were waitresses, performers, or prostitutes, such establishments have been described by historians and contemporary observers as drawing exclusively male audiences.(89)

Another point historians agree upon is that these concert saloons and variety theaters were not exclusively working class in clientele, but usually drew roughly equal numbers of working- and middle-class men. Nasaw attributes this to the fact that such shows were neither cheap, located near most working-class neighborhoods, nor conducted in the native languages of most immigrants. Others point out that many of the patrons were out of town middle-aged men.(90) Finally, numerous contemporary observers have remarked on how such places drew men from such diverse backgrounds as roughs, laborers, mechanics, salesmen, accountants, judges, politicians and businessmen.(91) Thus, while some of these places did cater to "a more thoroughly upper-class or working-class clientele," most provided a rare venue for men of different social classes to congregate and spend money together.(92)

Besides the thousands of concert saloons and variety theaters which existed in the late nineteenth-century urban areas, men seeking commodified, homosocial thrills could also go to the peep shows, dime museums, gambling halls, or the red light districts found in most urban areas. At a peep show, or a dime museum, men would pay a dime to view such oddities as freaks, scantily clad women, or female genitalia preserved in glass containers.(93) And because "[v]ariety, burlesque, minstrelsy, and the saloon shaded down to the whorehouse and dance halls of the red-light districts