ABSTRACT
The year 1900 is a nice round number and thus a convenient choice for separating periods, but events around this year also have relevance to the history of American consumption. In 1898, the US defeated Spain in a ten-week war and thus extended its economic reach into the Caribbean and over the Pacific to the Philippines. After a quick survey of the American economy, social changes, and a few of the most important product and marketing system developments from 1900 to 1930, this chapter investigates threads of meaning. It discusses the expanding advertising system and how it became an increasingly powerful transmitter and amplifier of cultural ideas. In addition, the chapter examines colonial revivals in architecture and decorative arts as a consumer driven movement of meaning that reinvented the past in order to reinforce the cultural dominance of certain native born groups.
