Introduction

This lesson plan allows students to examine the concerns expressed by Progressive Era reformers about working-class leisure activities. It uses dance hall reform as a case study of the problems that interested reformers and provides an example of the types of solutions they proposed. The activities provide students with opportunities to examine and interpret primary sources. The lessons encourage students to consider these issues not only from the perspective of the reformers, but also from the points of view of those who were the targets of their efforts. These plans are designed to be used by students working individually or in groups; moreover, each handout can be used individually or in combination with either of the others.

Time Frame

Each activity requires one forty-minute class period, though instructors could devote more time, if available, to these lessons.

Objectives

Overview

Industrialization and immigration caused American cities to grow rapidly during the Progressive Era. Among the new residents of cities were many young people. Attracted into the cities by industrialization’s new work opportunities, most youths soon found themselves working long hours for low pay, usually in sex-segregated environments. What would they do for a social life? A wide variety of commercial recreational venues soon developed to serve them—nickelodeons, vaudeville shows, sporting events, amusement parks, and the highly popular dance halls. From the perspective of urban settlement and social workers, however, these were not the most “healthy” or “wholesome” places for young people to frequent.

Social reformers in the Progressive Era addressed a wide agenda that called for social justice in several contexts. They sought better work conditions in factories, improved urban housing and education, honest and more efficient government, prohibition (or, at the very least, temperance), and woman’s suffrage. Reformers’ general strategy for action combined investigation and analysis of social problems with calls for legislation and other solutions tailored to their reform goals. Their concern for the welfare of urban youth drew them to focus special attention on commercial recreation.

Dance halls—marked by the new “ragtime” dancing styles, as well as an uncontrolled access to alcoholic drinks—emerged as a particular target of many of these reformers. As David Nasaw explains, “[t]he dance hall alone was within walking distance and open all year long. And it offered opportunities available nowhere else to spend time with the opposite sex” (1). Its sexually charged atmosphere attracted patrons but worried social reformers, who considered dance halls prime hangouts for gangs, gamblers, and prostitutes. Reformers feared that inexperienced young working women, drawn to the dance halls for the cheap, convivial entertainment they provided, would (often under the influence of alcohol) fall prey to these morally suspect characters. They did not object to young people having a good time, but they did believe that less dangerous recreational opportunities for working-class youth should and could be devised.

Advocates of dance hall reform included many noted progressives, such as Jane Addams in Chicago and Belle Israels Moskowitz in New York. Addams, the founder of the justly famous Hull House social settlement, wrote The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (1909) to focus attention on the problems of urban adolescents. In this book, Addams criticized the rise of commercial entertainment enterprises, especially dance halls and gin palaces. She viewed dance halls as places in which “improprieties are deliberately fostered. The waltzes and two-steps are purposely slow [and] the couples leaning heavily on each other barely move across the dance floor” (2). Addams believed that the factory system had drawn young people to the cities and exploited their labor without providing them with healthy and safe ways to spend their leisure time. This represented a great social injustice.

In New York, Belle Lindner Israels (later Moskowitz) spearheaded efforts to turn dance halls into more wholesome facilities. Her Committee on Amusements and Vacation Resources of Working Girls investigated conditions in dance halls and other working-class recreational venues. Israels also wrote articles that described dance hall conditions and exposed the negative effects of the consumption of alcohol and absence of appropriate chaperonage. In “The Way of the Girl,” she sympathetically noted the need for young women to find wholesome recreation. “Industrial activity demands diversion. Industrial idleness cries out for rational recreation” (3). Yet, as Israels explained, amusement parks and dance halls frequently proved the instrument of the downfall of youth, especially young women.

Like many progressive efforts, dance hall reform stemmed from middle-class values. Although reformers hoped working-class youth would accept their efforts, they did not include them on their committees or directly solicit working-class support in their campaigns. Reformers were convinced that they knew what was best for the masses: a much higher degree of social chaperonage than what existed in commercial recreational venues. Using a relatively light touch in pursuit of this goal, they investigated the dance hall “problem” and then proposed parallel strategies to solve it. Their solutions included regulation through local and state ordinances, the substitution of modified dance styles for those which, to reformers’ eyes, carried too much of a sexual message, and finally the creation of alternative settings for recreational activities. These reforms garnered wide community support.

Dance hall reform provides an ideal case study of Progressive-era goals and strategies. Well-intentioned reformers like Israels and Addams sought to improve the lives of young women and men in cities. They constructed and then appealed to a belief in the necessity of protecting youth, especially those subject to the numerous “evil temptations” of the urban environment and least able to defend themselves. Both Addams and Israels understood, however, that the problems they sought to ameliorate arose within a larger context of industrialization, urbanization, and immigration, and that their social justice agendas would not be fulfilled without reforms of much more than commercial recreation.

Procedure

Below are several self-contained activities aimed at exposing students to the ideologies and strategies of Progressive-era recreation reform. Teachers may assign any or all of these activities as time permits.

1. Using Handout 1 (“The Dance Hall Problem”), students can read the selected primary sources and write an essay addressing the issues detailed in the handout.
2. Students can exercise their research and writing skills by creating a Progressive-era newspaper article about recreational opportunities. Handout 2 (“Urban Experiences”) allows students to consider the perspectives of several different people involved with the issues of recreation and social chaperonage.
3. Handout 3 (“Solutions”) contains excerpts from the New York Times discussing solutions to the dance hall “problem.” Using these sources, students can write an essay analyzing the reformers’ suggestions. Students could also debate the effectiveness of reform methods.
4. Students can research what recreational activities were available at the turn of the century to young women and men in the town where they live. Students might want to compare life for young people in urban and rural settings; they might also examine the effect of the development of suburbs on recreational activities for all generations (4).
5. Students can write a series of diary entries that reveal the experiences of young working men or women, both at their jobs and during their leisure time.
6. After viewing the PBS video Coney Island, students can discuss how certain leisure time activities brought people of different classes into contact with one another. Students might also consider the development of department stores in the same context (5).
7. Students can compare the nature of recreational activities “then and now” for points of similarity and difference. What recreational activities for youth cause concern among today’s adults? Students might pay special attention to how various recreational activities are regulated and limited, such as drinking age and curfews.

Endnotes

1. David Nasaw, Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 111.

2. Jane Addams, A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1912), 106.

3. Belle Lindner Israels, “The Way of the Girl,” Survey 22 (3 July 1909): 486.

4. See, for example, Margaret Marsh, Suburban Lives (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990).

5. Ric Burns, Coney Island (Alexandria, VA: PBS Video, 1991), video recording; 58 minutes.

Additional Resources

Davis, Allen F. American Heroine: The Life and Legend of Jane Addams. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.

———. Spearheads for Reform: Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement, 1890-1914. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967.

Erenberg, Lewis A. Steppin’ Out: New York Night Life and the Transformation of American Culture, 1890-1930. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.

Kasson, John F. Amusing the Millions: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century. New York: Hill and Wang, 1978.

Meyerowitz, Joanne J. Women Adrift: Independent Wage Earners in Chicago, 1880-1930. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

Peiss, Kathy. “‘Charity Girls’ and City Pleasures: Historical Notes on Working-Class Sexuality, 1880-1920.” In Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality, edited by Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell, and Sharon Thompson, 74-87. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983.

———. Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986.

Perry, Elisabeth Israels. “‘The General Motherhood of the Commonwealth’: Dance Hall Reform in the Progressive Era.” American Quarterly 37 (Winter 1985): 719-33.

Handout 1: The Dance Hall Problem

Use the documents below to answer the following questions:

• What were conditions like in the dance halls?
  
• How did reformers view those they sought to help?
  
• What specific issues did reformers target?

Excerpts from Jane Addams, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1909), Chapter 1.

“Huge dance halls are opened to which hundreds of young people are attracted, many of whom stand wistfully in a roped circle, for it requires five cents to procure within it for five minutes the sense of allurement and intoxication which is sold in lieu of innocent pleasure.”

“We see thousands of girls walking up and down the streets on a pleasant evening with no chance to catch a sight of pleasure even through a lighted window, save as these lurid places provide it. Apparently the modern city sees in these girls only two possibilities, both of them commercial: first, a chance to utilize by day their new and tender labor power in its factories and shops, and then another chance in the evening to extract from them their petty wages by pandering to their love of pleasure.”

“As these overworked girls stream along the street, the rest of us see only the self-conscious walk, the giggling speech, the preposterous clothing. And yet through the huge hat, with its wilderness of bedraggled feathers, the girl announces to the world that she is here. She demands attention to the fact of her existence, she states that she is ready to live, to take her place in the world.”

“One Sunday night at twelve o’clock I had occasion to go into a large public dance hall. As I was standing by the rail looking for the girl I had come to find, a young man approached me and quite simply asked me to introduce him to some ‘nice girl,’ saying that he did not know anyone there. On my replying that a public dance hall was not the best place in which to look for a nice girl, he said: ‘But I don’t know any other place where there is a chance to meet any kind of girl. I’m awfully lonesome since I came to Chicago.’ And then he added rather defiantly: ‘Some nice girls do come here. It’s one of the best halls in town.’”

“The public dance halls filled with frivolous and irresponsible young people in a feverish search for pleasure, are but a sorry substitute for the old dances on the village green in which all of the older people in the village participated. Chaperonage then was not a social duty but natural and inevitable.”

“Let us know the modern city in its weakness and wickedness, and then seek to rectify and purify it until it shall be free at least from the grosser temptations which now beset the young people who are living in its tenement houses and working in its factories.”

Excerpt from “Want Law to Govern Dance Halls,” New York Times, 31 January 1909, pt. 2.

“In the last Fall and Winter eighty-three halls in various parts of the city were visited by the committee’s investigators. The admission in these places ranged from 5 to 50 cents, the boys being usually charged 5 or 10 cents more than the girls....There were found certain features, as in the freedom of attendance and the lack of restrictions as to the making of acquaintances, in nearly all these places, which made them objectionable even with the absence of liquor. The girls found in these halls ranged from 16 to 24, and over 80 per cent of them were unescorted. On an average Saturday night fully 2,000 unescorted young girls enter the dance halls of the city, in many cases without the knowledge of their parents.”

Excerpts from a circular from the Committee on Amusements and Vacation Resources of Working Girls, quoted in “Welfare Inspector at Society Dance,” New York Times, 4 January 1912.

“The attention of the Committee on Amusements and Vacation Resources of Working Girls of New York City has been directed to the widespread diffusion of certain forms of dancing and its contribution to delinquency. After investigation our committee has reported that conditions on this regard challenge the immediate consideration of all who are interested in the welfare of young men and young women.”

“We need your co-operation in our efforts to suppress tough dancing, which, according to our investigators is being practiced to an alarming extent. We feel that once the public conscience is aroused to the gravity of the situation means will be adopted whereby all dancing of this character will be prohibited.”

Excerpts from Belle Lindner Israels, “The Way of the Girl,” Survey 22 (3 July 1909): 494, 495, and 497.

“The town is dance mad. If you walk along Grand Street on any night in the week during the winter months, the glare of lights and the blare of music strike you on every side.”

“[N]o girl comes to the dance hall night after night and remains what she was when she began coming there. You cannot dance night after night, held in the closest of sensual embraces, with every effort made in the style of dancing to appeal to the worst that is in you, and remain unshaken by it. No matter how wary or how wise a girl may be—and she has enough things in her daily life in factory and store to teach her—she is not always able to keep up the good fight. It is always a matter of pursuit and capture. The man is ever on the hunt, and the girl ever needing to flee.”

“Let us frankly recognize that youth demands amusement. When the cities begin to see their duties to the little ones, playgrounds come. Youth plays too. Instead of sand-piles give them dance-platforms; instead of slides and see-saws, theaters; instead of teachers of manual occupations, give them the socializing force of contact with good supervising men and women. Replace the playground, or more properly, progress from the playground to the rational amusement park.”

“Denial of these privileges peoples the underworld; furnishing them is modern preventative work and should be an integral part of any social program.”

Excerpts from Louise de Koven Bowen, “Dance Halls,” Survey 26 (3 June 1911): 383-87.

“Today we are confronted with the problem of the city. Thirty-nine per cent of our population is urban....We are just beginning to grapple with the problem of recreation and realize that providing for pleasure has become a commercial undertaking. The bright lights and open doors of our cheap pleasure resorts urge a constant invitation upon the boys and girls whose dreary home environment drives them out on the streets for recreation.”

“The dances are short—four to five minutes; the intermissions are long—fifteen to twenty minutes; thus ample opportunity is given for drinking. In halls where liquor is not sold intermissions are short and dances long. Is this not an argument for divorcing the sale of liquor from the dance hall?"

“In these same halls obscene language is permitted, and even the girls among the habitués carry on indecent conversation, using much profanity, while the less sophisticated girls stand around listening, scandalized but fascinated.”

“Many of the halls are poorly lighted—172 belong to this class. There is very little protection in case of fire...”

“A city ordinance [in Chicago] should be enacted covering the following points:

1. A liquor license should be required for the premises used as a dance hall, not for the man who operates the hall....

2. All dance halls should be made to comply with the regulations of the Building and Fire Departments so as to insure proper sanitation and adequate fire protection....

3. The sale of liquor in dance halls or in buildings connected with them should be prohibited....

7. No immoral dancing or familiarity should be tolerated.

8. People under the influence of liquor or known prostitutes should not be permitted in dance halls....

11. There should be an inspector of dance halls who should have in his department a corps of assistants who would regularly inspect the halls and make reports concerning them to him weekly. These inspectors should be paid from the revenue accruing from licenses."

Handout 2: Urban Experiences

You are a reporter for a Chicago newspaper trying to write a story about recreational opportunities available to young women and men in the city and problems that may be associated with them. For your article, you wish to gather different points of view, so you will have to interview several people, including:

A young woman who came to Chicago from a farm in Wisconsin and now works as a seamstress,

A young man whose family emigrated to Chicago from Poland and now works in a slaughterhouse,

A settlement house resident who has investigated Chicago’s dance halls, and

The operator of a dance hall where improprieties are alleged to have occurred.

In your article, you will attempt to describe the experiences of these young workers as they engage in leisure-time activities. Write an article that evokes the experience of going to a dance hall, and be sure to include the perspectives of the young man and young woman as well as the perceptions of the settlement house resident and the dance hall operator. What solutions can you propose to the problems associated with dance halls?

Handout 3: Solutions

Use these excerpts from The New York Times to answer the following questions:

What specific solutions did reformers propose for the problems they perceived in dance halls?

How effective were these solutions?

Excerpt from “Want Law to Govern City Dance Halls,” New York Times, 31 January 1909, pt.2.

“The provisions which the committee wishes to have inserted in the license measure are these: No liquor in the hall or adjoining rooms, no return check system to allow drinks to be purchased outside, a certain supervision over the exclusion of undesirable young men and girls, and over the making of acquaintances in the halls, and a standard for light, air, and fire facilities.”

Excerpt from Belle Lindner Israels, quoted in “City Hall Joins the War on Dance Hall Evil,” New York Times, 3 February 1910.

“‘There must be a reorganization of the recreation system. We intend to maintain a system of publicity, show the evils that are going on and the danger to young girls. We have one model dance hall in operation, but it is kept a secret because if the young people knew it they would not go.’”

Excerpts from “East Siders Like Model Dance Hall,” New York Times, 6 February 1910.

“At other places it has been said that while ‘soft drinks’ were sold the girls who chose them were made to feel unwelcome. For this reason the committee has maintained that many dancers were practically driven to strong drink. The bartender who dispenses sarsaparilla and ginger ale in the model dance hall does a rushing trade.”

“The most interesting feature of the ball were the ‘spielers.’ The ‘spieler’ in other halls is the professional dancer, admitted free, whose ostensible duty is to see that there are no wall-flowers. Upon this personage, at best not a noble sort, the wrath of reformers has descended. At the model dance hall their places were taken by the men relatives of the committee in charge. A funnier sight than a respectable, middle-aged New York business man, accustomed to other surroundings, picking out his partners, cannot be conceived.”

“Though gumchewing prevails, the rules for correct dancing are very strict. A small party of college folk, who visited the hall, started out in good college fashion, with some snap and ginger. To the surprise of the visitors, the dancing master descended and ordered them to moderate their speed, if they expected to stay.”

Excerpts from “Social Workers See Real ‘Turkey Trots,’” New York Times, 27 January 1912.

“Throughout the afternoon, through all the summaries of the work the committee has done in excursion and vacations and dance hall study, Mrs. Israels kept it clearly emphasized that she and her associates are not aiming to destroy the scanty amusement resources of the working girls, but to clear them up, multiply them, and expand them. Not merely to kill the bad dance halls by legislation and attack, but to provide good ones till the day when the city shall have its own; that has been the idea, persistently clung to. Mr. Moskowitz wound up the conference by insisting that the committee was no society for the suppression of vice, but one dedicated to the big task of finding places where the buoyant spirits of those who ‘work to exist and live in their play’ may find expression.”

“‘The mothers of the poor are busy far into the night, ever toiling, and their girls are deprived of the personal, natural watchfulness. The task here is to provide for them a social chaperonage.’”

Description of model dance hall in Newark, from “Making Model Dance Halls a Paying Proposition,” New York Times, 10 November 1912, pt. 5.

“The electrical effects are quite dazzling; long streamers of rainbow colored electric lights, winking and flashing in time to the music, festoon the ceiling. Admission for men is 10 cents, including one dance ticket; for the girls 5 cents. Dances are 5 cents a couple, but one may stay the entire evening and not dance if desired. Soda, hot drinks, and sandwiches are sold. Ten dances are given an hour, making over thirty dances for an evening of 8:30 to midnight.”

Nancy G. Rosoff teaches social studies at Great Valley High School in Malvern, Pennsylvania. She is also enrolled in the Ph.D. program in history at Temple University, where her research focuses on the athletic activities of women at the turn of the last century.