![]() ![]() At the bottom of the scale were the people who assembled shoes, guns, ready-made clothing, and other products in large shops and factories. While most middle-class Americans focused their energies on succeeding in the emerging market economy, there were those at the high and low ends of the social and economic ladders who rejected the idea of all work and no play. When a billiards table appeared in the White House during the presidency of John Quincy Adams, his political opponents seized upon it as a sign of Adams ’s effete, antidemocratic ways and used it with success as a campaign issue in 1828, when Adams lost the presidency to Andrew Jackson. Finally, the political glorification of the hardworking common man in the Jacksonian era carried with it the condemnation of aristocracy and its trappings. The development of a capitalist market economy gave every American, in theory, the opportunity and incentive to become rich through hard work and took away excuses for economic failure. The time saved by such speed was not wasted in recreation but put to use to make money. People traveled faster (by railroad and steamboat), communicated faster (by telegraph), worked faster (in mechanized factories), and even ate faster, shocking European observers such as Frances Trollope with “the voracious rapidity with which the viands were seized and devoured ” at American tables. ![]() Leisure was also a casualty of the inventions that increased the pace of daily life. In part it was a relic of the powerful Puritan work ethic that spread from New England across the upper West, rooted in the belief that material success gained by constant labor was a sign of heaven ’s favor and reinvigorated by the preachers of the Second Great Awakening who warned their listeners that indulgence in idle pastimes was sinful. This stern view of life had religious, technological, economic, and political roots. They looked with disfavor on recreational pursuits, including sports, dancing, drinking, music, theater, and art. In the early nineteenth century most Americans believed that time was meant to be filled by work. 1815-1850: Sports and Recreation: Overview ![]()
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