From crowds to masses: Movies, radio, and advertising

At the turn of the twentieth century, dominant discourses already were shifting to the faceless masses from the dangerous street crowd. The riots of the nineteenth century were fading from memory. American elites were more concerned about the un-rooted “masses” of immigrants filling the slums of cities, unconnected and uncommitted to the status quo and vulnerable to recruitment for changing it. Novels consistently presented images of cities full of anonymous faces. Reflecting in 1900 on the crowds of cities, Progressive journalist Ray Stannard Baker wrote,“What a different world I knew from that of my ancestors! They had the wilderness; I had crowds. I found teeming, jostling, restless cities . . . I found hugeness and evil.”1