The Gilded Age of America saw the continuation of
westward expansion. As the country continued to expand, the pressures on the
Indians were heavy. The Indians in this country faced the choice of
assimilation into the white man’s world or face extinction. “By articulating
assimilation as official American policy, the government insisted that real
Indians were now to exist within American national boundaries—they were to
disappear as discrete social groups and exist only as individuals”.[1]
The Indians were not the only group in the country to face a fight based on
culture. Society continued to divide the country into classes and find ways to
keep them divided along cultural lines. “Theaters, opera houses, museums,
auditoriums that had once housed mixed crowds of people experiencing an
eclectic blend of expressive culture were increasingly filtering their
clientele…”.[2]
This filtering was to keep the people that the upper class felt were not
capable of enjoying the arts out. The same people that were working to exclude
ha a very bad view of people that was in the different classes. “As society of
ignoramuses who know they are ignoramuses, might lead to a tolerable happy and
useful existence,” Godkin wrote, “but a society of ignoramuses each whom thinks
he is a Solon, would be an approach to Bedlam let loose… The result is a kind
of mental and moral chaos”.[3]
Godkin believed that it was ok for a society of people with lower intelligence
to exist as long as they stayed within their own class of people and not try to
move up. The country needed to have these people to work and line the pockets
of the affluent, which was their place not the opera or theater houses of the
day. This view of exclusivity was very successful in many areas of the country.
In some areas the government on different levels, local, state or federal,
tried to correct this inequality. A museum in Massachusetts received such a
treatment from the state level. “Incorporated by an act of the Massachusetts
legislature in 1870, and fully opened to the public in 1876, the museum’s first
purpose was educational; the act of incorporation stipulating that the museum
“ought to be a popular institution, in the widest sense of the term,” and be
open free to the public as many days a week as feasible”.[4] At
the same time the governments also enacted laws that helped the operators of
the cultural places. “In some places, such as Ohio where the state legislature
adopted a law banning large hats from theaters, the offending apparel was
legally proscribed”.[5]
The governments seemed to play both sides of the fence when it came to this
issue. Each side had victories on the issue when the governments were involved.
While this was being played out the United States government became a founder
of these types of institutions. “In 1846
Congress utilized the more than half a million dollars left to the United
States by Englishman James Smithson to found the Smithsonian Institution
for—here Congress used the exact wording of Smithson’s will—“the increase and
diffusion of knowledge among men”.[6]
According to the Smithsonian’s website www.si.edu[7]
Smithson died in 1829 having bequeathed his fortune to the United States
without ever stepping foot in this country. “During the Smithsonian’s formative
years, officials of the Institution collected bits of biographical information
and objects related to Smithson’s life. However, no one at the time could have
predicted that the Smithsonian would eventually “collect” Smithson himself”.[8]
His remains now rest in the Smithsonian Castle on the National Mall. It is a
very odd but yet dignified place to see his crypt. I was able to see it on my
trip to Washington.
[1]Philip J.
Deloria, Playing Indian. (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1998), 104.
[2]
Lawrence W.
Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence
of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press),
208.
[3]Levine, 160.
[4]Levine, 151.
[5]Levine, 191.
[7]
Smithsonian Institution, “Mr. Smithson Goes to Washington: and the Search for a
Proper Memorial,” http://www.si.edu/oahp/Smithsons%20Crypt/Exhibit%20Start%20Page.html
(accessed June 14, 2012).
[8]
Smithsonian Institution, “Mr. Smithson Goes to Washington: and the Search for a
Proper Memorial,” http://www.si.edu/oahp/Smithsons%20Crypt/Exhibit%20Start%20Page.html
(accessed June 14, 2012).
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