"We Make Weekends": Leisure and the Commodity Form Author(s): Robert Goldman Reviewed work(s): Source: Social

Text, No. 8 (Winter, 1983-1984), pp. 84-103 Published by: Duke University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/466324 . Accessed: 10/02/2012 02:25
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"WeMakeWeekends":
Leisureand the CommodityForm
ROBERT GOLDMAN

CAPITALIST DEVELOPMENT AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF LEISURE The first third of the twentieth century witnessed a reduction in hours of work from 60.1 to 47 hours per week, primarily as a result of technological advancements, the activities of organized labor, new managerial approaches, and changes in the "philosophy of production" within the economic elite.' However, although fewer hours were worked, output in the production of goods continued to increase.2 These trends created two problems: first, what to do with increased leasure time ("Until lately, most people have had no leisure to use and, of course, they do not know how to use it"),3 and second, how to absorb the economy's expanded productive capacity. Coupled with rising "technological unemployment" and declining opportunities for capital investment in traditional goods-producing sectors, these trends pointed towards a dilemma in continued capitalist development. The failure of existing markets to absorb the increasing surplus of goods revealed the limitations of the self-regulating "free market"4 and indicated that the deeply rooted cultural principles of deferred gratification were becoming a fetter to continued economic development. New opportunities for leisure posed the problem of social control over the industrial labor force as demanded by the labor-market system of modern capitalism. To maintain capitalist expansion, it was imperative that new markets be created to provide outlets for both the investment of surplus capital and the increasing abundance of goods. It was also necessary to provide a focus for workers' leisure compatible with the dictates of the workplace. A major response to both the problem of social control over leisure time of workers and the need for greater absorption of goods was "consumerism." The social significance of consumerism was not lost on the leaders of corporate industrial thought: "Prosperity," they declared, "lies in spending, not in saving." The importance of leisure in this new scheme of things was sketched out by one of the leading architects of corporate capitalism: ... that was in the days whenit was sociallynecessaryto divertwealthfrom consumption to the usesof capital.Thatis no longernecessary.Withour presentrateof producin tivity, in fact, it has becomefoolish and is no longergood business.Continuing that coursewould destroycapitalism;for there can be no adequatesaving unless there is adequatespending,and spendingon a scale which only the masses, with mass leisure can achieve.5 This era saw the emergence of "captains of Non-Industry, of Consumption and RobertGoldmanteachessociology at the Universityof Kentucky.
84

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Leisure," and a shift from "heroes of production" to "heroes of consumption."6 Contemporary commentators expressed astonishment at the change in Americans' attitudes toward leisure and play. The ascetic ideology which had granted preeminence to hard work and deferred gratification was being dissolved by the very economic growth that it had helped make possible. The Protestant Ethic lingered on in distinctions such as that between "true" leisure and wasted time (as opposed to the older notion of leisure as idleness), but occupying a central place in people's lives now was a more hedonistic conception of pleasure guided by an ideology of consumerism.7 The rise of consumerism was encouraged by leading liberal businessmen, who saw the future of American capitalism as dependent on the development of mass consumption, and who used consumerism as "an aggressive device of corporate survival." The modern advertising industry arose as a direct response to the felt need to create and expand markets and distribute goods within them. Very soon the aim of advertising went "beyond the strictly pecuniary one of creating the desire to consume," and became a thoroughly rationalized attempt to reshape prevailing cultural assumptions. Directed at manufacturing and shaping desires, wants, habits, roles, and self-concepts, advertising played an enormous part in the "social production of consumers."8 With the decline of occupational community, families and neighborhoods lost much of their recreational self-sufficiency.9 No longer did a strong occupational community ensure that all leisure experiences would be mediated by exclusively working-class experiences. Instead, a vacuum was created which commercial recreation was quick to fill.'? The market, based on individual self-interest, tended to orient people toward individualistic approaches to their leisure, and in this respect their leisure resembled their work. The worker confronted the market as a solitary being, exchanging labor for a wage, and in turn exchanging the wage so that s/he might fulfill his/her needs. "Wage labor, rather than the social community of old, became the organizing structural and cultural principle of daily existence."'' Under Taylorism this egoistic perspective was taken to extremes. Scientific management techniques increasingly isolated the worker in the workplace.'2 As a consequence of this isolation in work, in combination with the erosion of craft skills, the worker's interest in the product of labor became primarily monetary. The isolation encountered by the worker in work was reflected in leisure activities as the sociability and cohesive force of occupational cultures (in which work and leisure acquaintances and activities "intermingled inextricably") disappeared. This was compounded by the fact that the worker's wages could purchase leisure only in an individualistic manner. The emergence of modern spectatorship as a dominant leisure form had its grounding in these same developments. The spectacle provided an escape from the routine of alienated work and an alternative to the demise of occupational communities. Packaged for individualistic purchase, the spectacle offered structured passivity, a passivity that resonated with changes taking place in the sphere of production. Indeed, Georg Lukacs observed that capitalist rationalization and specialization of the work process made workers passive spectators of the production pro-

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cess, and even of the "workings of [their] own objectified and reified faculties."'3 Mirrored in these developments was a set of codes guiding individual decisions regarding leisure and sport. The trajectory of capitalist development and the assembling of the meanings of leisure have been inextricably interwoven. The extension of the central organizing principles of rationalization and exchange relations into leisure as a consequence of the capitalist organization of social life was analogous to the construction of a reified "grammar" of leisure. THE CAPITALIZATION OF LEISURE The period from 1909 to 1929 was one of extremely rapid development in commercial recreation, with recreational expenditures rising from 3.2%oto 4.7% of total national income.'4 This growth of commercial recreation expenditures shows a remarkable correspondence to what Martin Sklar terms the first major period of "disaccumulation" in the American economy. The percentage of national income invested in net capital formulation declined from 13.6%. during the decade 18991908 to 10.2%7for the period 1919-1928.'1 Sklar argues that during the epoch of capital accumulation surplus was absorbed primarily through investment in producer goods or constant capital. But the investment function of the surplus declined in importance with the onset of the disaccumulation phase of capitalist development, and the burden for surplus absorption was directed toward processes of personal consumption. Thus one consequence of the decline in net capital formation in the traditional goods-producing sectors was that surplus capital was increasingly diverted into service industries which, among other things, created and serviced leisure. Though estimates of aggregate nongovernmental expenditures on leisure and sport vary somewhat for this period, there is general consensus that the trend was towards the "dominant and relatively increasing importance of the commercial or professional kinds of recreation."16 Most observers wrote that spending on passive recreational forms was increasing more rapidly than on active recreations. However, while the distinction between active and commercial leisure was useful for assessing where the most rapid market expansion was occurring, active leisure had become no less conmmodified, only consumed with less frequency.'7 The most visible aspect of the commodification of leisure has been the emergence of the sports spectacle. The growth in spectator sports in the first third of this century was enormous.18One commentator after another pointed to the vast expansion in stadium-building, attendance, and space devoted to sports in the newspaper. But sport spectatorship extended well beyond the confines of simple attendance at games and matches; people also followed teams, stars, championships, and records through the sports page. for The role of athleticsportsin providing passiveamusement the nationcannotbe fully leisure-time at determined countingthe spectators gamesandcontests.An important by and thousandsis readingthe sport pages of newspapers listenactivityof unnumbered of ing to the radiobroadcast games.... Thegrowthof popularinterestin athleticsports as an amusemententerpriseis reflectedin the remarkable increasein the amount of to space given by newspapers sports news.'9

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Furthermore, because the newspaper coverage of sport during this period underwent greater standardization with the spread of syndicated columns and news, more and more of the sports-reading public were exposed to the same presentations and interpretations of sport. Through the printed page, spectatorship extended to the home, the school, the tavern, and the barber shop, where fans could discourse and debate about athletic heroes, games, and even the relative merits of various sports. "Youngsters memorized the statistical accomplishments of their heroes and debated the comparative prowess of their idols."20 The appeal of sports to newspapermen was, as a leading figure in the advertising industry observed, that the public was "sold" sporting events "as millions have been sold commodities by newspaper advertising."21 Sports sold newspapers and newspapers sold sports. Critics of passive spectatorship frequently placed much of the blame on the newspapers' focusing of attention on the more spectacular side of sports rather than the day-to-day athletic and recreation activities pursued in neighborhood gymnasiums and playgrounds. An important index of the growing appeal of spectator sports was the emergence of a literature critical of the growing dangers of "spectatoritis." The existence of this literature suggests how widespread spectatorship had become. Fictional accounts, advertisements, and discussions of spectator activities became so pervasive, that for most people spectatorship appeared as perfectly natural phenomena free of moral connotations.2 A favorite description in the first third of the twentieth century was that of sport as "big business" with millions of dollars invested in plants and equipment and millions of customers.23 Sport as big business was not confined to "professional" sports, but included the collegiate organization of sports as well. It was commonly acknowledged that a major justification for collegiate football was its relationship with public relations and its generation of funds for other purposes. As the growth in stadium-building, spectators, and gate receipts attest, organized sport was a lucrative business. According to one owner in 1912, "As a business investment... baseball has U.S. Steel and all the stocks quoted on the Stock Exchange 'beaten to a
frazzle.' "24

The development of organized sport under the impact of the penetration of capital appeared to be the natural and perhaps the only route for the development of sports to take. As early as the 1890s a few critics had begun to point to the "spread of the fallacy" that if one was not on a team and did not have a coach, it was not worthwhile doing anything but watching.25 It was doubtless true that organized sport produced technically superior sport to that which was available on the sandlots and in the cow pastures. In a society beguiled by notions of technique and efficiency, such technically superior sports was interpreted as better sport. Spontaneous, unorganized play was reduced, ideologically, to a pale imitation of the product of organized sport. This was reflected in and justified by comments which attributed the tendency towards spectatorship to the machinations of instinctual laws. For example, due to the "mastery impulse" most people who are "unable to become champions and heroes, prefer the vicarious triumph of a chosen idol to the dull level of mediocrity."26

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The attainment of high standards of technical "excellence" and its "distribution" to masses of people required the machinery and capital of sport organized as a big business. Owners emphasized that the maintenance of quality in sport required taking financial risks and gambles on a grand scale. The axioms for organized sport were: "It takes money to get a winning team," and "A winning team gets the money."27 The sports reading public was repeatedly informed that large sums of money and extensive business experience were required to run sports in order to meet high standards imposed by the public. Substantial financial capital was necessary to the extensive scientific and specialized training of players, the provision of equipment and physical plants suitable for displaying sport, and the ability to systematically search for and identify future talent. By the 1920s it was even claimed that professional baseball had its own research departments just as did industry to continually refine and improve the product. The treatment of professional athletes as wage-labor had been brought to public attention as early as the 1880s when baseball players sought to institute a form of workers' control over the organization of professional baseball. With the rise of large-scale business machinery in sports, the sports press occasionally made explicit reference to the fact that the player-or worker-had come to be viewed as a commodity to be exploited for dollars and cents. "Players have been bought, sold, and exchanged as though they were sheep." 28 The sports page regularly described the status of players as commodities in the language of the market. Beginning with the obvious, yet crucial, distinction between players and owners, the sports pages were filled, as they are today, with the news that players had been "purchased," "sold," or "placed on the market." Players represented "investments" which could "yield returns" or, perhaps, "depreciate." Minor league players were bought "largely on speculation." But the players who made it were "worth" it because they helped win games, which drew crowds. The established star was a "valuable piece of property." The worth or the value of an athlete was determined by how much he could bring in the marketplace.29 Moreover, athletic stars were frequently described in terms of values associated with the capitalist organization of society. For example, Ring Lardner sought to capture Christy Matthewson's character in terms of the metaphors of money and saving, while describing Ty Cobb in terms of figuring and planning ahead.30 The training, selection, and playing patterns of professional athletes became dictated, in large part, by a pattern of rationalization similar to that occurring within industry, which focused attention on the necessity of technical training, specialization, and quantification. The same universal quantification that typified Taylorism in the work sphere penetrated the sphere of sport.3' In fact, it was claimed that American atheletes rose to a position of world superiority when the "efficiency engineer began to reconstruct the whole system of American athletics."32 There occurred an elaborate codification of rules; sporting activities were broken down into mechanical, repetitive, standardized, and easily defined component parts; and complex formalized strategies governing play were introduced.33 Coaches became experts who taught technique, and players, expert technicians who strove for maximum efficiency and output.

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The more instrumentalized the games became and the more athletic play was treated as commodity labor-power, the more it became necessary to assess players' output and efficiency. Since labor-time did not appear to be an accurate measure of value within professional athletics, other measures were required to gauge the commodity value of players. Hence, the development of more sophisticated performance "statistics."34 This concern for measurement was emulated in the play of youth. Recounting his play as a boy, James Farrell wrote, "Having a penchant for averages, I proposed that the scores of all our games be kept, and that we figure out our batting and fielding averages."35 Many other leisure activities appeared to be the products of capital intensive investments in such things as artificial ice rinks, indoor tennis courts, and massive amusement complexes. The Florida vacation industry promised "bigger sport than ever this year, because new capital has expanded the attractions, the entertainment...." 36 Even the relatively spontaneous neighborhood play of youth was in-

creasingly understood as requiring institutional training and supply through schools and Little Leagues.37 The idea that capital investment in leisure was necessary in order that it be productive was applied not only at the organizational level, but also at the individual level. As free time became more abundant and mass production industries generated a need for mass consumption, this understanding of leisure as a valuable resource became deeply entrenched. Advertisements for sporting equipment employed this theme, suggesting that it was through the purchase of their product that this resource could be utilized most productively. While the value of leisure resources was said to be supplemented through the purchase of proper goods and services, reformers likewise asserted that the value of the individual's leisure resources could be increased by following their programs of supervised recreation. From all corners, people were admonished to "invest" in their leisure to enhance the "rate of return" and to make it "profitable": "Rightly used, our leisure may be converted into an asset which will yield large dividends in culture and happiness; but if given over to mere idleness... will become a dangerous liability."38Competing claims were made as to which activities provided optimum opportunities for the "profitable investment" of leisure time such that waste was minimized and the "dividends" maximized.39 BUYING LEISURE TIME: CONSUMPTION TIME EQUALS LEISURE TIME The Hoover Conference on economic changes in the United States reported in the 1920s that "closely related to the increasing rate of production-consumption of products is consumption of leisure." Moreover the "conception of leisure as 'consumable' began to be relied upon in business in a practical way and on a broad scale. It began to be recognized, not only that leisure is 'consumable,' but that people cannot 'consume' leisure without consuming goods and services, and that leisure which results from an increasing man hour productivity helps to create new needs and new and broader markets."40 By 1930, Lynd remarked upon the growth of a "culture marked by a growing externalization of values in things bought in stores," and observed, "Good times, especially those involved in spending money to go

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places and do things, have become an expected part of the routine week of family members, rather than a matter of special occasions."41 Consumption time became virtually equated with leisure time. For example, by 1915 organized labor's demand for a shorter working day was formulated around the contention that more leisure would enable workers to consume more and do so in a more skilled fashion. "With leisure time people develop greater and more discriminating needs and therefore a greater desire to buy the goods that industry is producing."42 Linking the rhetoric of leisure consumption to what they considered to be the demands and imperatives of organized capital, the leaders in business, labor, and government contended that the absorption of productive capacity could be sustained only if "workers have money to buy and leisure to consume."43 Under Taylorism and various other forms of scientific management, workers were encouraged to work as rapidly as possible in order to make more money so that they could "buy pleasure in their leisure time." The justification for this system of work was no longer tied to considerations of occupational satisfaction but to monetary considerations and the fruits of consumption which they implied. Advertising for leisure and recreation was built around the premise that leisure and recreation needs could be fulfilled by matching them up with the appropriate purchasable goods and services. Recounting the contribution of the advertiser during this period, Printer's Ink commented that "he had provided uses for the new leisure." Advertising's "message implored people to consume."44 A publicity campaign by Brunswick-Balke-Collender Co. promoted bowling as a remedy "for what ails you" available to all at moderate expense in the evenings (the primary time for recreation among rank-and-file workers).45 Coca-Cola promised to give the "pause that refreshes," presenting an image of leisure as a consumption pause. Later this was expanded: "Good workers know it's good to pause a minute now and then to relax and refresh yourself. With an ice-cold Coca-Cola a little minute is long enough for a big rest."46 Insofar as spectator sports were presented as a sphere apart from, and in contrast to, the tedium of daily life, a principal justification for spectatorship was that it provided a "'release' from the necessary routines of daily life and labor."47 In the sport spectacle excitement and release could be purchased. Escape and release from the pressures of the work world were identified as legitimate items of consumption available through sports spectatorship or the bizarre atmosphere of amusement parks. The "real charm" of football or baseball to the spectator was that it "takes a man out of himself." allowing him to forget the worries of the daily grind simply by watching others play. The vicarious satisfaction of watching others play a game simultaneously stimulated the transfer of the "energy liberating qualities" of the game to the individual spectator. Ideologically, spectatorship offered a highly visible means of temporarily forgetting the degradation suffered as commodity laborpower. The purchase of the sport spectacle promised to restore and energize the individual's labor-power. The safety-valve metaphor accurately described the role of spectator sport in reproducing the conditions necessary to the continuity of existing social relations of production. In contrast to most wage labor, which demanded discipline, self-denial and

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repression of expressiveness, spectatorship was characterized as an outlet for surplus energies and repressed "instincts," allowing the individual to "revel in long restricted impulses." As a spectator, the individual could yell, scream, gesticulate, and even curse symbols of authority (the umpires) without suffering sanctions.48 The irony was that, in order to purchase relief from the drudgery of work, the individual had to perform that same work, and purchase that same relief so that s/he could tolerate more work. Paradoxically, spectatorship offered an opportunity to escape the increasing rationalization of work by evaluating the rationalized technique and efficiency of athletic workers. The issue of efficiency and calculation and strategy in athletics had become a virtual fetish. Increasingly it was argued that the proper way to play games was scientifically and efficiently. Baseball was lauded as that "distinctly American institution" wherein the "science of efficiency has been carried to a fine point of precise and definite perfection of detail" such that "practically the whole American people are trained and competent judges" of the product.49 HUMAN DEVELOPMENT: LEISURE AS FREEDOM VERSUS WORK AS NECESSITY Leisure not only came to be conceived as a refuge from dehumanization and a retreat from authority and domination in work, but also as a bastion of "freedom of choice." Leisure "for most people represents the opportunity to do what they want to do rather than what they must do." As an editorial in the Nation put it, nobody wants authority waved over his or her head, especially in playtime-there is enough of that at work. "'Leisure' means free time-when our activities are determined not by economic compulsion, but by native impulse. 'Recreation' means free playwhat we do from desire, not necessity."50 Increasingly, to speak of leisure was to refer to the person's "own time," "free time" from compulsion. Leisure was supposedly demarcated by the notion of choice. An opposition between work as necessity and leisure as freedom of choice became popularly accepted. However, "these alleged freedoms and choices meant merely a transformed version of capitalism's incessant need to mold a work force in its own image."5 Actually, the free time out of which leisure was supposedly constructed became time committed anew to the demands of the emerging mass-production system. Set against work, leisure was viewed as a means of satisfying legitimate inner demands for self-expression.52 On this point, advocates of commercialization and leaders of the playground movement agreed. Nevertheless, it was in regard to the issue of how development was to take place that these two groups differed most. Advocates of commercialization argued that people were increasingly defined and delimited by commodities, and that the development of their potentialities required a flow of outside satisfactions (maximization of utilities), and not an exercise of their own capacities, as the self-improvement ethos of the progressives in the Playground Movement proposed. Some observers early in the twentieth century pointed out that people did not know how to amuse themselves in play, but were reliant upon special gadgets. By 1930, "it [was] practically impossible to participate in any

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of the active sports or games that [were] highly popular... without the outlay of a considerable amount of money for the necessary equipment as well as of time to acquire the technique of the prevailing fashion of playing."53 While obviously a manifestation of conspicuous consumption, the trend from simple to costly leisuretime pursuits also provided evidence of the increasingly prevalent notion that the satisfaction of a leisure experience is in direct proportion to the complexity and expensiveness of the equipment (e.g., motorboats as opposed to sailboats).54 Advertising for all types of consumption played heavily on the idea that personal development was dependent upon the consumption of things-whether it be beauty, soap, corsets, or a "revolutionary" new catcher's mitt: the Columbia bicycle "will not only open up a new source of enjoyment to you, but will increase your capacity to enjoy."55 The only significant exceptions to this pattern were limited largely to notions of adolescent leisure and recreation. Under the early sponsorship of professional recreation leaders and physical educators, sports was advocated as the single activity capable of providing the conditions required for successful development. In the athletic team there was considerable emphasis upon development as taking the form of team playing (e.g., a sign of achieving one stage of development was the willingness to perform the "sacrifice hit") and the establishment of social solidarity. In the mid to late 1920s the leaders of the Playground Movement chose to discontinue sponsorship of competitive athletics for children, arguing that such emphasis produced excessive emotional strain on youth. However, the departure from this sphere of activity allowed the "Little League" movement to become progressively penetrated by the values and logic of professional and commercialized athletics.56 EXTERNAL REWARDS A related but distinct meaning was given to leisure at this time: the idea that the extrinsic value of play is as important as its intrinsic value. In other words, athletics could be made to "pay off" in money, status, championships, and heightened productivity. The idea that one should play purely for the pleasure it affords was relegated to second place, and prevailing themes of "utility" and "marketing orientation" came to dominate mass leisure.57The Nation commented that "the pernicious habits of translating human values into money values has invaded the realm of sports." Instead of viewing play as its own sufficient reason due to its spontaneous and universal qualities, "we breathe the air of utility... football is justified in numberless bank-presidents and successful mining engineers."58 With the development of competitive athletics in this country, the motive for engaging in sport to derive intrinsic pleasure from the activity was subordinated to the goal of winning-in fact, to "winning at any cost." Increasingly, sport became a means to other ends, rather than being an end in itself. In other words, the exchangevalue of participating was placed above its use-value. The craze for winning in sports "exhibit[ed] the spirit and method of trade."59Hence, the prevailing ethos of sport demanded the elimination of uninhibited self-expression and noninstrumental orientations.

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The "winning is everything" attitude in American sports was a derivative of the almost total ascendancy of the free-market ideology and the Protestant ethic. The combination of the accumulation ethos and a now secularized need for assurance of salvation provided a powerful impetus towards the win-at-any-cost attitude. This was, of course, more than reinforced by the perversion of Darwinism in the idea that only the fittest survive. Perhaps the paradigmatic case of endorsing sport as a training instrument for the struggles to be encountered in the "cutthroat competition" of the business world was that of Yale football under Walter Camp. Camp-perhaps the most successful coach of his era-spoke the language of social Darwinism, demanding complete dedication to the goal of winning. To the dominant portion of the business elite, Camp's version of sport "reflected the same acquisitive values that permeated the rest of their lives. Money making, fierce competitiveness, and an intense desire to win at any cost became major themes of play as well as work." Whether in work or sport, if the individual "wants to be a prize-winner in the great race of success" he must work at it.60 The athletic field taught both workers and future workers to be concerned primarily with external rewards (wages rather than satisfactions in the work that is performed). The same crude economistic perspective that informed scientific management's approach in the factory was extended to the playing field. Indeed, a leading proponent of "Boy's Work" defined it as "social engineering in the field of boy"6' In many factories it was common knowledge that the possession hood motivation. of outstanding athletic skills would bring a job (oftentimes a soft job). More subtle however, even in industrial athletics, was the giving of sweaters emblazoned with the factory letter to workers who made the first team.62 Status symbols, these letter sweaters were standardized rewards-with the development of organized sports in the twentieth century there occurred an increasing demand for standardization of both rewards and the rules and regulations governing the awards-for outstanding services rendered to the school/team/firm. The notion of scarcity of external rewards was closely tied to the notion of leisure as earned by work.63 Children were routinely instructed that they could play when they had finished their work or chores. Moreover, the pleasure of leisure earned by hard work was said to be the greatest that one could experience. As the all-American boy in an advertisement for the magazine The American Boy puts it, "Surely ought to enjoy that canoe trip, the way we're sweating to raise cash." To which his mother adds, the "sweetest rewards are the hardest won."64 The individual's character or personality was a marketable commodity insofar as individual attainment of rewards in the economy was said to be dependent upon the exhibition of the proper character or "personality package."
Human qualities like friendliness, courtesy, kindness are transformed in commodities, into assets of the "personality package," conducive to a higher price on the personality market. If the individual fails in a profitable investment in himself, he feels that he is a failure; if he succeeds, he is a success. Clearly, his sense of his own value always depends on factors extraneous to himself, on the fickle judgment of the market, which decides about his value as it decides about the value of commodities.65

In a society dominated by a market ideology, persons must sell their "social per-

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sonality." One of the most frequent justifications of sport and leisure was that they provided a means of acquiring this package. Sport was depicted by both reformers and staunch defenders as an important medium through which the individual could acquire traits and qualities which would in adult life make the individual more salable-that is, they were the keys to economic success in the work world.66 It was claimed that intercollegiate athletics yielded valuable results in developing the manly character "so essential to the serious work" of the business world by stimulating and fostering habits of self-control, self-reliance, courage, perseverance, self-denial, temperance, patience, and intelligent subordination.67 These were the traits and values embodied in Theodore Roosevelt's articulation of the "strenuous life." Though it was still "recognized that... competitive sports trained the players in certain traits of character which are the basic winning traits in the struggle of life," as the bureaucratic and corporate nature of the economy became more pronounced, the mixture of valuable traits was altered. A great emphasis began to be placed upon obedience, submergence of self, and a premium on the avoidance of human error.68 In the bureaucratically organized workplace of the 1920s, "recording the worker's personality" had become a major preoccupation of personnel managers. This heightened concern with workers' personalities was, in part, a response to the "requirements of harmonious integration into the bureaucratic order of the enterprise." Those personality traits congruent with these requirements were rewarded.69Some years earlier, Frederick Taylor had commented on the congruence between athletic training and industrial discipline and methods: "They are there given [through athletic training], not the elective idea of doing what they want to do, but cooperation, and cooperation of the same general character which they will be called upon to practice in after life.70The society of physical education directors set forth in 1920 a list of qualities to be "acquired" through group athletics. This list-habits of obedience, subordination, self-sacrifice, cooperation, friendliness, loyalty, adherence to the rules, and capacity for leadership-reads like a set of requirements for workers in large bureaucratic organizations." TRANSFER OF ATTRIBUTES Recognizing the athletic hero as a valuable public commodity, a variety of industries, ranging from sporting goods to real-estate developers, sought to create the impression that the achievements of famed athletes were closely linked with the use of their products.72 Generally, athletes were used as either advertising agents or advertising copy. Sporting-goods manufacturers endeavored to disseminate the notion that their products were largely responsible for the success of champions, and that the purchase of their products would result in enhanced or improved play. Typical of this theme is the following: "What ball are you playing,Bill?" "I'm playingthe Blizzards-best ball thereis. I know it's the best, becauseit's the one the championuses."

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Paraphrasing one observer of the advertising industry, the language of sports had woven its way into the fabric of national consciousness as a means of selling all manner of goods. Sporting metaphors were used to sell cars, tires, cameras, soap, shirts, and tobacco.73 By the 1920s the assertion that the acquisition and consumption of salable articles enabled individuals to incorporate abilities and qualities they lacked or desired was becoming commonplace in most magazines: for example, "Sportocasins" improve your game and are essential to a good game of golf, or "Dunlop balls help with direction and distance."74 Still other items claimed to transfer qualities and traits from the commodity to the user. A Spalding home gymnasium was said to make a man out of you. In an increasingly important leisure activity for many women-the cultivation of beauty-beauty could be added or enhanced by a trip to a "beauty parlor" or to the market for tubes and jars. The Willys-Knight automobile was featured as the "Fountain of Perpetual Youth." "The very youth and zest of the Willys-Knight help to keep owners young and light-hearted."75 Magically, the car which was assembled through an extreme division of labor acquired human characteristics which were then passed along to its owner. Attributes and qualities such as virility, beauty, youth, musical ability, and success in sports were now considered separate or independent of the self, attached to the self only through the acquisition and consumption of goods and services. Paraphrasing Marx's discussion of reification, it might be said that the experience of leisure satisfactions was increasingly understood as dependent upon the product in the person. Leisure as shaped by a flow of commodities became valued not simply for its ability to satisfy leisure needs (for its use), but also for its appearance, such that the collection of images and appearances advanced in leisure activities became an end in itself: To the extent, therefore,that pursuitsof our leisuretime tend to become organized under conventionalpatternsdeterminedby competitiveconsumptionthey lose their uniqueand primaryvalue as recreationand so become merelyanotherdepartmentof of activitydevotedto the achievement prestigeand status.76 In fact, there was a tendency for a leisure product's use-value to become reduced to its appearance (or the ability to manipulate its appearance). This may have been the diffusion of the tendency towards "conspicuous leisure" identified by Veblen. Veblen observed that one aspect of commodity fetishism was that commodities assume the form of symbols and signs which may be manipulated to secure status, prestige, etc. In Middletown, the Lynds point to the decline of craft hierarchy and occupational community and the resultant breakdown of status mechanisms within the workingclass community. In the wake of the disappearance of these mechanisms, the "life plans of workers... had to be reoriented around the pursuit of status through money and the commodity display."77 In Middletown of the 1920s that commodity display centered around leisure activities. The ideas that equipment is the primary ingredient in the leisure experience and that status comparisons can be made on the basis of the equipment employed were

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closely tied up with the notion that leisure experiences could be validated through processes of knowledgeable consumption. The consumption of leisure commodities extended into leisure activities a pattern similar to that which characterized the social relations of production. This pattern consisted of a greater emphasis on interaction with things than with people. The extension of the commodity into more and more areas of leisure life, in conjunction with the standardization of products and activities of the modern advertising industry, altered the manner in which leisure experiences were socially validated as "real" or "worthy." For example, the merchandising of the concept of "regulation" baseballs had the effect of making less valid the experience of playing the game with a homemade baseball. Farrell comments in his Baseball Diary that "another event in the life of an American boy entranced with baseball is the acquisition of his first regulation baseball... it was a feather in my cap to have this ball." Similarly, once people had been made aware of the existence of "uniforms," the prospect of playing without uniforms appeared as a less fulfilling experience. The ownership of a regulation baseball or a Louisville Slugger bat not only affirmed the worth of one's leisure experience, it also provided a potential source of status and acceptance.78 PRIVATIZATION AND THE SEARCH FOR COMMUNITY People's leisure lives became increasingly solitary with the development of the radio, the movie industry, and the mass-produced automobile.79 Steelworkers' accounts of changes in their use of leisure after the change from continuous operation shifts to the eight-hour day provide an indication of this privatized notion of leisure: "I like putterin' around the house. I'm growin' a garden.. .they [my kids] want me to get a car. I'm thinkin' about it. That's what lots of the other men are doin', ridin' around and seein' places."80 A survey of the leisure activities and desires of 5,000 persons in several major urban areas in the early 1930s showed that the most popular activities were going to movies, reading newspapers and magazines, and listening to the radio. One of the chief reasons given for pursuing these activities was the fact that they could be done alone.8' Private life and leisure satisfactions were made to appear as if they were one and the same. Advertisements for Victrola phonographs suggested that with their products, "You are at the opera in your home...the artist will sing it or play it a thousand times, if you wish, for your personal enjoyment.... Don't deny yourself this endless pleasure."82 Another conspicuous development was the declining proportion of leisure time devoted to conversation. The advent of the mass-circulation magazine and the radio seriously undermined the notion of leisure as a time for conversation.83 This privatization of leisure represented a coalescence of several structural and ideological phenomena. The emptiness of work, the emergence of mass production, and a deeply rooted ideology of individualism made readily acceptable the identification of a private life of consumption as the avenue for liberation and fulfillment, given the absence of cultural alternatives.84The privatization ethos that was beginning to be widespread in the 1920s marks a profound cultural transformation in American society.

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The contrast between leisure activities in the 1920s and three of the four preceding decades received lucid presentation in the comments of an early student of leisure: Thinkof the old folk dances,and folk music, comparedwith moderndancesand jazz! Then, not infrequently,membersof a family performedon differentmusical instruon but ments,not a brilliantperformance highlypolishedinstruments, they produceda musicfromhome-made instruments.85 satisfyingand creditable Considerable attention was devoted to the democracy-in-action theme in leisure and sport which suggested that these activities fostered an objective, tangible equality between classes and provided diverse occupational groupings with commonalities of interest. Accounts were not limited to the imagery of shoulder-rubbing between worker and banker at the ball park. "Capital and labor," it was asserted, "may have their own private differences, but they unite in rooting for the same ball club." This ability to harmonize the contradictory interests of the public was "accomplished and approved with every man's pocketbook."86 Local followers and fans frequently took enormous pride in the hometown team, the emphasis on team nicknames and sports lingo serving as a means of inducing identification with the community.87 The apparent commonality of interests generated under the banner of spectator sports fostered a sense of Gemeinschaft.88 In a society increasingly characterized by Gesellschaft relations, the spectatorship of organized sports offered a return to a feeling of community, available as a commodity which could be acquired instantly through spectatorship. The social and historical dimensions of "community" vanished in this understanding, as community became something "out there" to be bought as an immediate possession. But this sense of community was circumscribed statially and temporally; it did not carry over into other institutional spheres and dissipated over time if not replenished. Nonetheless, it did seem to provide a partial bridge across existing class divisions. Communist organizers in the 1930s and 1940s counselled followers that identification with professional sports teams had the effect of fragmenting class cohesion. CONCLUSION The process of capitalist industrialization gradually removed leisure from the social context of the occupational community and reduced it to a correlate of wagelabor. Although the pseudo-Gemeinschaft and privatization themes appear to have been mutually contradictory, each was a response to the disintegration of traditional institutions which had guided and structured the activities of daily life. The pseudo-Gemeinschaft theme represented an attempt to resurrect a sense of community by manufacturing an artificial commonality of interests around commercialized spectacles. Privatization, building on the "cultural infrastructure" provided by mass consumerism, emerged as an antidote to the fragmentation of occupational community by scientific management. The traditionalinstitutionsof the industrial occupationalcommunity-the occupational peergroup,the extendedhome, the lodge, the tavern-lost theirraisond'etrewiththe spreadingof culturalTaylorism.For instance,people would still attend taverns(now calledbarsor lounges),but normallyas strangers couplesseekingprivacy,entertainor

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ment, or transient relationships and not as occupational peers reproducing their relationship to the world of work.89 Each of these structurally evolved modes of experiencing and interpreting leisure prescribed the naturalness of the capital-labor connection. Both the spectacle and the privatization of leisure ideologically reified leisure as passive individuation, as well as posing structural barriers to the effective vitality of any autonomous workingclass leisure grounded in sociability. The degradation of labor, shortened work days, the advent of the mass-production/mass-consumption economy, the progressive privatization of social life, and the tendency for capital to expand into areas outside the traditional goods-producing sphere, all pushed the meaning of leisure radically towards a conception of "free time." As such, leisure became a means of more fully integrating individuals into increasingly packaged and managed processes of consumerism. With the emergence of the corporate economy, it was increasingly taken for granted that leisure was something to be bought, that "free time" was a space that needed to be filled with things and images of things. In this way, leisure offered escape and compensation for unfulfilling work,90 as well as promising an alternative source-privatized-of fulfillment, freedom, status, and individuality. NOTES 1. Thebulk of the reductionin workinghourstook placebetween1900and 1920-down from 60.1 to the 49.7 hoursper week. In non-agricultural occupations hoursof work per week droppedfrom 55.9 in A Dewhurst Associates,America'sNeedsand Resources: New Sur& 1900to 44.5 in 1929.(J. Frederick vey [New York:TwentiethCenturyFund, 1955],p. 1073.) 208%. A sharprise in productivity man2. From 1899to 1929manufacturing per outputincreased from 1899to 1929for production the hour(over 100%7 workers) accompanied declinein hoursworked, in the shrinkage the portionof the laborforce employedin production,and the increasein output. (See U.S. FederalReserveBoard,FederalReserveBulletin,January1939;U.S. Bureauof Census,E.E. Day 1899 to 1923, CensusMonograph and W. Thomas, The Growthof Manufacturers, VIII, 1928;United Statisticsof the UnitedStates:ColonialTimesto 1970,Bicentenof StatesBureau the Census,Historical nial Edition, Washington, D.C., 1975, pp. 948-50.) with SamuelCrowther),Todayand Tomorrow 3. HenryFord (in collaboration (New York:Doubleday, 1926),p. 4. 4. Leaders suchas Fileneobserved that "productive was machinery so effectivethat even moreso than before much greatermarketswere absolutelynecessarythan those providedby existingpublic buying Dollar (New York:John Day Company,1934),p. 29. power." EdwardFilene, The Consumer's 5. ErnestElmo Calkins,"The New Consumption Engineerand the Artist," in J. GeorgeFrederick, Doled., A Philosophyof Production(New York:The BusinessBourse,1930),p. 117;TheConsumer's lar, p. 20. 6. DavidRiesman,et al., TheLonelyCrowd(New Haven:Yale University Press, 1950);Leo Lowenand in thal, "Biographies PopularMagazines,"in Paul F. Lazarsfeld FrankStanton,eds., Radio Research, 1942-43(New York:Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1944),pp. 507-48. Social SciencesJour"Leisureand Technological 7. GeorgesFriedmann, Civilization,"International nal, 12, 4, 1960,pp. 512-13.The socialtheoristand economistSimonPattenset forth in 1907the thesis a thattherewas occurring transitionfrom a "pain economy"to a "pleasure economy"as the American towardone of potentialabundance. (Patten,TheNew Basisof systemmovedfroma conditionof scarcity Civilization[New York:Macmillan],1912.) 8. StewartEwen, Captainsof Consciousness (New York:McGrawHill, 1976),pp. 36, 54. RobertS. Lyndand HelenM. Lynd,Middletown, 81-82. pp.

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9. John Alt, "Beyond Class: The Decline of Industrial Labor and Leisure," Telos, 28, Summer 1976, pp. 55-80. 10. Contemporary accounts of this development directed attention to the dual forces of the demolition -under the impact of industrial urbanization-of community and the social traditions and institutions capable of "permit(ting) the spontaneous formation of new nuclei of social life," and the concomitant thrust of commercialization on the part of "business enterprise.. quick to grasp the opportunity for material gain presented by the breakdown" of the neighborhood and extended family as resources for recreation. (John Collier, "The Lantern Bearers: Essays Exploring Some Thoroughfares of the People's Leisure," Survey, 34, June 5, 1915, p. 217; George Counts, Social Formation of Education, Report of the Commission on Social Sciences, 1934, p. 300.) 11. Alt, "Beyond Class," p. 58. 12. Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Labor in the Twentieth Century (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974). 13. Georg Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1971), p. 100. 14. John D. Owen, The Price of Leisure (Rotterdam: Rotterdam University Press, 1969), p. 84; Dewhurst, America's Needs & Resources, p. 347. 15. Martin Sklar, "On the Proletarian Revolution & the End of Political-Economic Society," Radical America, 3, 3, May-June 1969, pp. 1-41. 16. "We Spend About as Much for Fun as for Running the Government," Business Week, July 13, 1932, p. 20; see also Julius Weinberger, "Economic Aspects of Recreation," Harvard Business Review, 15, Summer 1937, p. 449. There exists wide variation in estimates of non-governmental expenditures for leisure and recreation during this period. A crude estimate for consumption expenditures for recreation in 1890 is $150 million. By 1909 consumer expenditures for recreation, products, services, and vacation travel were in the neighborhood of $1 billion. (Dewhurst, America's Needs & Resources, p. 964ff. and Weinberger, p. 450ff.) Whereas in 1910 expenditures on sports alone were estimate at $73 million and permanent investment in the sporting goods business at $105 million, estimates for 1924 suggested expenditures on sports at $1.5 billion per year. (Arthur Reeve, "What America Spends for Sport," Outing, 57, December 1910, p. 300; Walter Hiatt, "Billions-Just for Fun," Collier's, 74, October 25, 1924, p. 80). Estimates of the total bill for leisure and recreation in the mid and late 1920's range from $6 to $21 billion per year. (See Jesse F. Steiner, Americans at Play [New York: McGraw-Hill, 1933], p. 183; Stuart Chase, "Play," in Charles Beard, ed., WhitherMankind [New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1928], pp. 336-7.) 17. An active leisure pursuit such as camping for urban dwellers was incorporated into and dependent upon the market, but still represented less frequently purchased commodities than such things as movies. Though expenditures for active leisure participation were increasing, they were increasing less rapidly than expenditures for commercial amusements. (Cf. Jesse F. Steiner, "Recreation and Leisure Time Activities," in Recent Social Trends in the U.S., Report of the Presidential Research Commission [New York: McGraw-Hill, 1933], p. 921-57.) 18. For example, from 1895 to 1930 the number of cities having minor league baseball teams grew from 38 to 194; the number of leagues from 5 to 26. (Hy Turkin and S.C. Thompson, The Official Encyclopedia of Baseball [New York: Barnes and Co., 1951].) From 1909 to 1929 baseball grew in attendance by and while the increases for boxing were 1750%7o 6645% 3300% while its financial value increased 1130%o, and for football, 500%1and 1400%. (Jack Kofoed, "A Dirge for Baseball," North American Review, 228, July 1929, pp. 107-8.) 19. Steiner, Americans at Play, p. 97; see also "Football or Baseball the National Game," Literary Digest, 83, December 6, 1924, p. 62; "How the Ballyhoo Makes the Athlete," Literary Digest, 95, November 19, 1927, p. 62. Surveys by the Lynds and by Savage revealed considerable expansion of the amount of space devoted to sports in the newspapers. (Howard J. Savage, et al., American College Athletics, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Bulletin No. 23, 1929; Lynds, Middletown.) 20. James T. Farrell, My Baseball Diary (New York: Barnes and Co., 1957), p. 41. Farrell also observed that "the conversation about baseball which I sometimes heard at home, the nostalgic recollections of players who had passed out of active play, the talk of players and games in an almost legendary way, all this was part of an oral tradition of baseball passed on to me, mainly in the home, during the early years of the century" (p. 29). 21. Ernest Elmo Calkins, Business, the Civilizer (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1928), p. 191. 22. There had long been in American cultural life a tension between the commercialization of leisure

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and those who advocated leisure as self-improvement. While castigating the "commercial view of life" which views everything in terms of commodities, the critics of commercialization maintained a distinction between leisure as an item of consumption and as commercialized recreation. 23. See for example, Dana Gitlin, "Amusing America's Millions," World's Work, 26, July 1913, p. 326; Douglas P. Haskell, "Football as Big Business," New Republic, 49, January 19, 1927, pp. 224-5; W.O. McGeehan, "Baseball: Business as Usual," North American Review, 224, May 1927, p. 119. 24. "The Business Side of Baseball," Current Literature, 53, August, 1912, p. 168. 25. E.L. Godkin, "Athletics and Health," Nation, 59, December 20, 1894, p. 458. 26. A.A. Brill, "The Why of the Fan," North American Review, 228, October 1929, p. 432. 27. E.M. Wooley, "Business of Baseball," McClure's, 39, July 1912, pp. 243-45; N.B. Beasley, "Baseball-A Business, A Sport, A Gamble," Harper's Weekly, 58, April 11, 1914, p. 27; Griffith, "Baseball: Now That's a Business," p. 20. 28. "The Baseball Trust," Literary Digest, 45, December 7, 1912, p. 1090; "Baseball Players Who Are Sold," Literary Digest, 83, December 6, 1924, pp. 73-74. 29. "Ban Johnson, the Theodore Roosevelt of Baseball," Literary Digest, 60, March 8, 1919, p. 78; "Something About Babe Ruth, Price $125,000," Literary Digest, 64, January 17, 1920, p. 128. 30. Leverett T. Smith, Jr., "The Diameter of Frank Chance's Diamond: Ring Lardner and Professional Sports," Journal of Popular Culture, 6, 1, Summer 1972, pp. 142-44. 31. Taylor was said to have learned through athletics the "value of the minute analysis of motions, the importance of methodical selection and training, the worth of time study and of standards based on rigorously exact observation." (Charles de Freminville, "How Taylor Introduced the Scientific Method into Management of the Ship," Critical Essays on Scientific Management, Taylor Society Bulletin, New York, 10, February 1925, p. 32.) 32. Carl Crow, "America First in Athletics," World's Work, 27, December 1913, p. 191. 33. Physical education journals were replete with articles setting forth standardized rules for almost every game imaginable. Organizations such as the Athletic Officials' Association (formed to aid in obtaining "uniform interpretations of the football rules") and various athletic federations had as a primary purpose the formulation of standards and unification of eligibility codes. (See J.J. Lipski, "The Athletic Officials' Association," Athletic Journal, 4, October 1923, pp. 11-13; "National Federation of State High School Athletic Associations," Athletic Journal, 4, Marcn 1924, pp. 34-35; "The Standardization of Sport," Nation, 75, December 4, 1902, p. 439.) A popular type of article was the 'how to do it' article -how to throw the discus, how to box, how to fence, etc. These were often set forth in formula stylee.g., "Tilden's Recipe: for Good Service in Tennis." (Fred Hawthorne, "Tilden the Hardest Hitter," Outing, 74, May 1919, p. 152; Robert Kilburn Root, "Sport versus Athletics," Forum, 72, November 1924, p. 659.) 34. John M. Murrin and James M. Rosenheim, "America at Play: The National Pasttime versus College Football, 1860-1914," Princeton Alumni Weekly, October 6, 1975, p. 14. 35. Farrell, My Baseball Diary, p. 76. 36. Saturday Evening Post, 196, November 1, 1924, p. 150. 37. The attention given to sport and leisure in terms of administration, organization, and finance was remarkable. Working from the assumption that athletics for youth could not exist without supplies, permanent equipment, testing, etc., this literature proceeds to a detailed and "business-like" analysis of these factors. (See for example, John L. Griffith, "Organization and Administration of Intercollegiate Athletics," Athletic Journal, 4, September 1923 through May 1924; ClaraI. Judson, "The Budget for Athletics," Athletic Journal, 4 November 1923, pp. 28-29; "A City Federation for Amateur Athletics," American City, 11, July 1914, p. 63.) 38. "A Letter from George Eastman," Playground, 16, December 1922, p. 409. 39. See Raymond Willoughby, "The Pursuit of Golf Balls," Nation's Business, 14, April 1926, p. 30; Robert Barnes, "Occupying Vacation Time," Nation's Business, 14, August 1926, p. 88; "Work and Play," Independent, 52, October 11, 1900, p. 2468. Even those who contended that recreation (e.g., golf) was a good investment in health were expressing an alienated notion of the activity, as opposed to accepting it as a pleasurable activity which required no justification whatsoever. ("Capitalizing the Outdoor Life," Nation, 89, November 11, 1909, p. 451-2.) The valuable resource/capital investment theme also penetrated the inner workings of various leisure activities. For example, advocates of scientific baseball claimed that fewer games would be lost "When

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the pitcher learns that his four balls are to be treated as capital and not as surplus," and when batters learned to "check[ing] the waste of batting capital at the home plate." (Clarence Deming, "Flaws of the Baseball Diamond," Outing, 44, May 1904, p. 121.) 40. Recent Economic Changes, p. xvi. 41. Robert S. Lynd, "The People as Consumers," in Recent Social Trends in the United States, Report of the President's Research Committee (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1933), pp. 866-7. 42. Samuel Gompers, "The Shorter Workday-Its Philosophy," American Federationist, 22, March 1915, p. 165; William Green, "The Five-Day Week," American Federationist, 33, November 1926, p. 1299. 43. Daniel J. Tobin, "Vacation with Pay," American Federationist, 34, July 1927, p. 795. See also Filene, The Consumer's Dollar, passim; Henry Ford asserted that "an extra day of leisure is going to bring large results, for the people will learn more about living, will have more time to expand their sense of need, and therefore will increase their consumption." (Ford, cited in William T. Foster and Waddill Catchings, Business Without a Buyer [Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1927], p. 188.) 44. Printer's Ink, Fifty Years, 1888-1938 (New York: Printer's Ink Publishing Co.), 1938, p. 6; Stuart Ewen, "Advertising as Social Production," Radical America, 3, 3, May-June 1969, p. 43. 45. "Sport of Bowling Featured in Posters," Printer's Ink, 102, January 10, 1928, p. 69. 46. Advertisement for Coca-Cola, American Magazine, 105, April 1928, p. 117. 47. Stanley Aronowitz, False Promises (New York: McGraw Hill, 1973), p. 82. See also, H. Addington Bruce, "The Psychology of Football," Outlook, 96, November 5, 1910, p. 541; H. Addington Bruce, "Baseball and the National Life," Outlook, 104, May 17, 1913, p. 104. 48. "The Psychology of Football," Literary Digest, 28, January 9, 1904, p. 48. Anyone who paid money at the gate felt he had the right to call the "official arbiter" a robber. (Charles E. Van Loan, "Kill the Umpire," Munsey's, 42, October 1909, p. 152). See also Guy W. Carryl, "Marvelous Coney Island," Munsey's, 25, September 1901, p. 814, who comments that "Coney Island has a code of conduct which is all her own." 49. McCready Sykes, "The Most Perfect Thing in America," Everybody's Magazine, 25, October 1911, p. 441. 50. Nystrom, Economic Principles of Consumption, p. 437; "Restlessness and Recreation," Nation, 123, November 10, 1926, p. 469; Charles Weller, "Recreation and Industry," Playground, 11, September 1917, p. 331. 51. Ewen, Captains of Consciousness, p. 29. 52. Lies, "Organized Labor and Recreation," p. 648. 53. Arthur Pier, "Work and Play," Atlantic Monthly, 94, November 1904, p. 669; Nystrom, Economic Principles of Consumption, p. 459. 54. Steiner, "Recreation and Leisure Time Activities," p. 925, 953. 55. James P. Wood, The Story of Advertising (New York: Ronald Press, 1958), p. 276. 56. Jack W. Berryman, "From the Cradle to the Playing Field: America's Emphasis on Highly Organized Competitive Sports for Preadolescent Boys," Journal of Sports History, 2, 2 Fall 1975, p. 125ff. 57. "In this orientation, man experiences himself as a thing to be employed successfully on the market. He does not experience himself as an active agent, as the bearer of human powers. He is alienated from those powers. His aim is to sell himself successfully on the market." (Fromm, Sane Society, p. 129; for a fuller discussion see Fromm, Man for Himself, New York: Rinehart and Company, 1947, p. 67ff.) 58. "Capitalizing the Outdoor Life," p. 451. This editorial goes on to mention that sport was increasingly viewed as a major factor in preparing America for its destiny "to shape the future of the world." It was precisely this theme which stood out in Theodore Roosevelt's articulation of the strenuous life." For a discussion of the role of the "new athleticism" with regard to jingoism and imperialism, see Robert Boyle, Sport-Mirror of American Society, Boston, 1963, p. 84ff. 59. "Commercialism in College Athletics," Literary Digest, 30, June 3, 1905, p. 807; Henry B. Needham, "The College Athlete: How Commercialism Is Making Him a Professional," McClure's, 25, June 1905, p. 115; Ira N. Hollis, "Intercollegiate Athletics," Atlantic Monthly, 90, October 1902, p. 534. 60. Allen L. Sack, "When Yale Spirit Vanquished Harvard Indifference," Harvard Magazine, November 1975, p. 28; cf. Walter H. Cunningham, "The Great Game," System, 14, October 1908, p. 389. 61. Walter L. Stone, What Is Boy's Work? (New York: Association Press, 1931), p. 28. 62. Adoption of the collegiate (middle class) model of athletics signified acceptance of athletics as embodying an avenue of upward mobility. The letter-sweater in the factory was an emulation of middle class

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status considerations. The real fragility of the status claim associated with industrial athletics were, however, amply demonstrated during the depression of 1921-23: "Workers who had proudly worn silk shirts and patent leather shoes at great interfactory athletic events now wandered from factory to factory for non-existent jobs." (W. Irving Clark, "The Place of Athletics in the Industrial Scheme," Industrial Management, 7i, June 1926, p. 387). 63. Nels Anderson, Work and Leisure (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961), p. 79; Margaret Mead, "The Pattern of Leisure in Contemporary American Culture," in Eric Larrabee and Rolf Meyersohn, eds., Mass Leisure (Glencoe: Free Press, 1958), p. 11. 64. Advertisement for the American Boy, Printer's Ink, 107, June 12, 1919, p. 11. 65. Fromm, Sane Society, p. 129; C. Wright Mills, White Collar (New York: Oxford, 1956), p. 182. 66. "Give your boy the benefit of this fascinating character building sport... teach[ing] him how to become a real 'sharp-shooter.' Millions of American men have had this valuable training." (Advertisement for Daisy Air Rifles, Saturday Evening Post, 197, October 11, 1924, p. 197.) This theme was also applied to other leisure activities: "... play in band or orchestra broadens his interests, builds character, uncovers the ability to lead. Among America's leaders-statesmen, bankers, 'captains' of industry-are countless men whose musical ability has helped them to success." (Advertisement for Conn Ban Instruments, Saturday Evening Post, 197, October 11, 1924, p. 168.) 67. See for example, C.W. Eliot, "President Eliot's Report-Athletics," Harvard Graduate's Magazine, 2, March 1894, p. 376; James B. Carrington, "Why Football Is Popular," Saturday Evening Post, 171, November 19, 1898, p. 330; Theodore Roosevelt, "Professionalism in Sports," North American Review, 151, August 1890, p. 187ff. 68. Park H. Davis, "Football and its Satellites," North American Review, 224, November 1927, p. 560; Reverend A.E. Colton, "What Football Does," Independent, 57, September 15, 1904, pp. 605-7. 69. Donald A. Laird, "Recording the Worker's Personality," Industrial Management, 68, November 1924, p. 307; Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, "I.Q. in the Class Structure," Social Policy, November-December 1972 and January-February 1973, p. 85. 70. Frederick W. Taylor, "A Comparison of University and Industrial Discipline," Science, n.s., 24, November 9, 1906, p. 577. 71. "Aim and Scope of Physical Education," Report of a Committee from the Society of Physical Education in Colleges, American Physical Education Review, 25, June 1920, p. 259; see also E.O. Stiehm, "Athletics in War Time," Outing, 70, August, 1917, pp. 672-5. 72. Calkins, Business, the Civilizer, p. 192. "There's a Golden Lining to the Athletics Game," Literary Digest, 86, September 19, 1925, p. 72. 74. W. Livingston Larned, "Golf's Great Debt to Advertising," Printer's Ink, 11, July 1925, p. 26. 75. Carl Naether summarized one major line of advertising directed at women: "My product will enable you to express your various moods." (Carl Naether, Advertising to Women, New York: PrenticeHall, 1928, p. 199); Advertisement for Willys-Knight, Saturday Evening Post, 196, April 12, 1924, p. 100. 76. Lundberg, et al., Leisure, p. 17. 77. Stein, Eclipse of Community, p. 54; see also Patten, New Basis of Civilization, p. 139. 78. Farrell, My Baseball Diary, p. 7. 79. "A new public interest in things pertaining to the outdoor life, largely attributable to the automobile, created a major advance in advertising of outdoor and sports equipment beginning in 1909. Brought into the sphere of activity were advertisers of firearms, boats, tents, and hammocks, camp supplies, and fishing equipment." (Printer's Ink, Fifty Years, p. 249.) Camping for the urban worker was a prime example of privatization, a retreat into nature which signified release from institutional constraints. But for the urban dweller this quest for the outdoor life was dependent on commercial provision of equipment and gadgets. 80. Rose Feld, "Now that they have it," Century, 108, October 1924, p. 747. 81. The Leisure Hours of 5000 People: A Report of a Study of Leisure Time Activities and Desires of (New York: National Recreation Association, 1933). A survey taken in 1929 found that 600%o those surhad "backyards (areas where leisure activities were pursued shielded veyed owned phonographs and 90%o from public scrutiny)." (Eugene T. Lies, The Leisure of a People [Indianapolis: C.E. Crippin & Son], 1929, p. 93.) The popularization of fenced-in backyards provides a fascinating indicator of the privatization process. Porch sitting had, for example, comprised an important leisure time activity keyed around the existence of a "community" and one's part in it. The backyard, in contrast, made it possible to sever

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one's leisure from community participation in favor of interaction with family members and selected individuals. The backyard emerged as a private sanctuary or haven equipped according to standards set by the mass market. 82. Annual of Advertising Art (New York: Watson-Guptil), 1928. 83. Helen McAfee, "Menace of Leisure," Century, 114, May 1927, p. 67. 84. Paul Halmos in his study of "The Ideology of Privacy and Reserve," notes that the individualist ideology of the era of competitive capitalism secularized the Christian ideal of the uniqueness of the individual." Additionally, Weber's study of Protestantism revealed that Protestantism had generated a profound mistrust for even the closest human ties. (In Eric Larrabee and Rolt Meyersohn, eds., Mass Leisure [Glencoe: Free Press, 1958], pp. 125-36.) 85. George B. Cutten, The Threat of Leisure (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1926), p. 75. 86. "The Benevolent Brotherhood of Baseball Bugs," Literary Digest, 78, July 7, 1923, p. 64; Charles D. Steward, "The United States of Baseball," Century, 74, July 1907, p. 309. Sportswriters dwelt endlessly on the theme of baseball as "democracy-in-action," describing the masses mingling with politicians, judges, and bankers. The claim that athletics were democratic was intended to signify that they were classless. Thus baseball was described as "second only to Death as a leveler." (Sangree, "Fans and their Frenzies," p. 387.) Using changes in the percentage of seating given over to bleachers, the editor of Nation's Business argued "that tells the change in America's economic conditions better than a bookful of statistics, and gives the living lie to the demagogues whose hearts bleed for 'the people who are struggling patiently to free themselves from the intolerable power of greedy monopoly.' " ("Through the Editor's Spectacles," Nation's Business, 13, June 1925, p. 12.) 87. Steven A. Riess, "The Baseball Magnates and Urban Politics in the Progressive Era, 1895-1920," Journal of Sport History, 1, Spring 1974, p. 41-62; W. Kee Maxwell, "The Baseball Mascot," Collier's, 52, March 7, 1914, pp. 5-6, 25; "Games for the Gate's Sake," North American Review, 227, February 1929, p. 170. 88. Howard M. Wilson, "Basketball Team Brings Community Harmony," American City, 35, October 1926, p. 551. 89. Alt, "Beyond Class," p. 72. 90. See Aronowitz, False Promises, on the degradation of labor and the colonization of leisure.