Consumerism and the Department Store

The Industrial Revolution:

Spanning from 1760 to 1850, the Industrial revolution spread across Europe as well as the United States. It brought around enormous change in a wide variety of fields. Production of goods was greatly improved; agriculture saw the invention of new tools and methods for better and faster crop production, textile manufacturing was heavily streamlined and sped up, and metal manufacturing was revolutionized as iron was used more extensively for construction. Economic and political policies were changed to fit the rapidly expanding workforce and the problems that arose from this expansion. Social structure shifted as cities and families were centered around factories, more children were recruited to work at younger and younger ages, and as cities became densely populated and therefore more unsanitary. Outbreaks of typhoid and cholera were prevalent. However, despite negative changes, the industrial revolution also improved clothing and housing, created a cornucopia of jobs, and introduced a number of important health and labor acts.

There was so much that happened during the Victorian era throughout Europe as well as the rest of the world. The Industrial Revolutions were at their peak; medicine was starting to advance in wondrous ways with Marie Curie physicist and chemist, Ernest Haeckel and Gregor Mendel famous biologists, along with Dmitri Mendeleev the chemist who created the periodic table. The arts were advancing through new and impressive artists such as Van Gogh, Monet, Beethoven, Charles Dickens, Edgar Alan Poe, Mark Twain along with many more that brought the realism and new revolutionary ways of thinking into the homes of ordinary second class people of the world. Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison were turn of the century inventors and all these evolutionary moments in history were all occurring in this one era. All these new and inventive ways of thinking also flowed into the producing and consuming economies.

During the second Industrial Revolution in Europe, people of this era, the Victorian Era, decided to experiment and adopt new ways of purchasing and selling goods. This new “consumer ethic” in industrial societies picked up quick and spread throughout Europe. It first started with the Great Exhibition of 1851 where the whole architectural design had similar aspects to the soon to be department store; high ceilings, tall glass windows that surrounded the building with stainless steel supports. Very much a welcoming center for browsing! So from that point, in 1880, Louis Auguste Boileau opened the world’s first department store. Other places around Europe started to pick up on the department store idea such as Harrod’s and Selfridge’s in London.

Write letters to:

Amalgamated Textiles Manufacturers Institute

1101 Connecticut Avenue, N.W.

Suite 300

Washington, DC 20036

Here is a website to check out that we found useful: http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1981/2/81.02.06.x.html (just in case it doesn't work)