Chicago’s World’s Fair Influenced Quincy Society

      The fair’s Bureau of Lady Managers allowed women for the first time during a major international event to display their achievements, importance in society, and plans for their gender. The Women’s Building attracted huge crowds and a conference of female representatives from over 60 countries debated for several weeks problems facing them, including the reforming of constrictive attire. Long-standing custom dictated wearing corsets, hoop skirts, and tight-lacing, and clothing stores in Quincy and elsewhere offered little else for the “gentle sex.” Following trends begun at the fair, ladies adopted looser garb, and by the first decade of the 20th century most Victorian dress had become obsolete. The Quincy Daily Journal ran a syndicated article in 1913 about a doctor who still favored tight-lacing because it “induces good breathing, prevents consumption, makes maternity easier, and produces perfect children.” The article author added, “Next they will try to reform whiskey and say it is good for sobriety.”  

      The fair highlighted women’s suffrage as the movement spread nationwide. An article appeared in the January 26, 1897 Quincy Morning Whig titled, “For Woman Suffrage.” While 23 years would pass before the 19th Amendment to the Constitution realized this dream, local women began publicly expressing their concerns about social and sexual oppression. 

      Since the beginning of the Quincy municipality in 1840, the City Council had legalized prostitution and this trade operated openly; at the time of the fair the Gem City had nearly 50 brothels. A vehement plea for reform signed pointedly by “A Woman Who Would Like to be Mayor” ran in the August 11, 1894 Quincy Daily Herald. Unfortunately, the city did not close its brothels until 1918. It would be several decades later before a woman held any public office in Quincy. To this day, voters have not elected a woman as mayor.

      Perhaps nothing impinged more upon Victorian morality than the introduction of belly dancing at the fair in Chicago. Soon it became a popular entertainment and inspired new forms of dancing, where couples could touch for the song’s duration and move in what many considered provocative and suggestive ways. Pulpits railed against this usurping of formal decorum and the practice of “dating” that was replacing courtship. In a sermon to Quincy’s Jersey Street Baptist Church in 1898, Dr. George Guirey stated, “You can’t be a member of the church of Jesus Christ and engage in dancing…You don’t dance with the devil on one arm and reach out the other to the Lord.”

      While the fair proclaimed American Exceptionalism, black Americans were omitted from exhibiting their contributions to society. Racial tensions were escalating in Quincy and across the nation. In a sermon to the 8th and Elm Missionary Baptist Church, Rev. P.P. Samuels told his congregation to use their voting power to “roast the republicans” at the polls after the local party had turned down Fred Ball’s nomination to the upcoming state convention. Samuels also denounced the barring of black men from local trade unions and the city’s segregated schools, telling his audience to “rise in the night and beat the whites at the polls.”

      Despite widespread objections, the Chicago World’s Fair stayed open on Sundays and even sold alcohol on that day, including a Wisconsin brand called “Pabst.” Popular, even with ladies who first began drinking in public, this beer was voted the best beer of the fair. At the same time, though, the temperance movement gained a foothold as more people, especially women, openly expressed their disdain of alcohol use. During the fair’s six-month run, temperance advocates founded the Anti-Saloon League, and soon Quincy had a local chapter and a Women’s Christian Temperance Union.

      Socialist writer Francis Bellamy penned the Pledge of Allegiance in 1892 and hoped citizens of every country would recite it as a show of international unity. Fair-goers first spoke it publicly. Soon people in Quincy and elsewhere opened meetings and civic gatherings with the Pledge. Like citizens everywhere, Quincyans raised their right hands, palms outward, to salute the flag; the government did not officially change this gesture until World War II when it too-closely resembled the Nazi salutation. In 1923, the words “The flag of the United States” were added and in 1954, during the Communist scare, “under God.” 

      The world’s largest structure ever constructed up to that time, the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building, towered over the fair and showcased American achievements and educational innovations. Around the same time, Quincy High School began preparing students to enter college as “liberal arts” majors—a new field centered on thinking skills needed for men (and now some women) in the modern Progressive Society. Formal education also started very early with the first “kindergartens.” Parochial schools, like the one at Quincy’s Salem Evangelical Church, were among the first to offer a kindergarten in Quincy. 

      After an unbridled celebration of American progress and prosperity, the World’s Columbian Exposition ended with a funeral procession. Two days before the fair closed, Patrick Eugene Pendergast, a disgruntled former campaign worker for Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison, Sr., who believed he would be rewarded with a lucrative city job, assassinated the mayor. Cries for more security and civic safety were rising across the country. Locally, Quincy increased its police force and advised citizens to arm themselves for personal protection. Editorials admonished judges to hand down stiffer sentences and, for a brief time at least, officers strictly enforced the letter of the municipal code.

Sources

Bancroft, Hubert Howe. The Book of the Fair: An Historical and Descriptive Presentation of the 

World’s Science, Art, and Industry, as Viewed through the Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893, Vol. One. New York: Bounty Books, 1894.

“The Corset is All Right.” Quincy Daily Herald, Jan. 21,1913, 6.

“Dancing is All Wrong.” Quincy Daily Herald, Oct. 17, 1898, 1.

“For Woman Suffrage.” Quincy Morning Whig, Jan. 26, 1897, 7.

“The Kickers Column.” Quincy Daily Herald, Aug. 11, 1894, 1.

Larson, Erik. The Devil in the White City. New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2003.

Nelson, Iris. “Illuminating History on Quincy’s Red-Light District.” www.hsqac.org Historical Society 

of Quincy and Adams County, Nov. 20, 2011.

“Roasts the Republicans.” Quincy Daily Herald, March 23, 1897, 1.