Japanese immigrants also experienced prejudice. In 1900, under Western pressure, Japan stopped issuing visas to Japanese workers wishing to emigrate to the U.S. In 1906, San Francisco schools began segregating Japanese children. The issue was "settled" in 1907 by a "Gentlemen’s Agreement," an official/informal decision which ended all immigration between the two countries. In 1913, the California legislature enacted a law which legally, but circuitously, prohibited Japanese from owning land there. Not surprisingly, these issues were among several which caused ongoing conflict between the US and Japan in the early years of the 20th century.

Conditions were often little better for African-Americans. Many southern African-American farm workers moved north to take advantage of new factory jobs, but often found their new neighbors not much more tolerant than their old ones had been. Once again, a population different in appearance often found itself segregated.

And yet, frequently "different" meant only that - "different" - not "bad." In his 1915 watercolor Uncle Sam, Gurnsey Moore uses what we now regard as classic stereotypes to depict Asians, Africans, Russians and others to make the point that virtually all of us came from distant lands. But when we get to the United States, while we may retain some of our uniqueness, we are nonetheless ALL Americans.

Of course, America not only included the new industrial working class and middle class but also some who had made great fortunes in the railroads, steel, oil, manufacturing and other enterprises. The 1870s & 80s are sometimes called the "Gilded Age," where ostentation and display were the order of the day. The rich owned enormous houses, expensive carriages and cars, and were pampered by large staffs. The most wealthy were referred to as the "Four Hundred" – a term said to come from the number of guests who could fit into Mrs. Vanderbilt’s ballroom. Many immigrants worked in the homes of the rich (and took home eye-popping stories of how the "Other Half" lived.) The public fascination with such wealth is reflected in the large numbers of stories and illustrations of the rich in the various periodicals of the time. But Carnegie and a few others had shown that it was possible to escape the life of the factory worker. Readers could hope and dream -- even if in many ways the life of the rich was as distant as China.

The Technology Changes

The 1870s also saw the development of the telephone. For the first time, spoken messages could be transmitted long distances in real time. The trans-continental railroad had been completed in 1869. Engineers in Europe and the United States were working on the development of the automobile which, early on, was regarded as a (possibly dangerous) fad and toy for the rich. In 1900, there were some 8,000 cars on the road in the US, but by 1914, that number had risen to two million and 15 years later, to twenty million. [2] Factories were increasingly mechanized, using cheap labor and producing large quantities of necessities previously made by hand; it was Henry Ford’s mechanization of the assembly line which made it possible to produce cars in these numbers.

Manned flight was another extraordinary breakthrough. For millennia, people had traveled on foot or on the backs of, or in carts pulled by, animals. Yet less than 15 years after the Wright brothers first flew their powered plane at Kitty Hawk in 1903, airplanes were being used in World War I. Electricity, the telephone, the assembly line, the car, the airplane – it is difficult to grasp how entirely life changed in the 50 year period surrounding the turn of the century and the period during which the images in this show were created.

Not everyone benefited equally, however. Again it was initially the very rich who were able to take advantage of high-speed travel by train or car or sumptuous new ocean-liners to travel to exotic locales – whether it be California and the American West, or London or Egypt. Gossip columns recounting their adventures were a staple of many new periodicals. Returning travelers also brought back foreign influences, which entered popular culture. Songs in vogue in 1919, for example, included "Hindustan" and "The Japanese Sandman." [3] In the early 1920s, the Chinese game of "Mah Jong" became all the rage and manufacturers were unable to keep up with demand for sets of this game played with domino-like tiles. Upper and lower classes alike were taken with these and other influences from the exotic Orient. The world was becoming just a little smaller as travel became easier and news traveled faster. As a consequence, readers were becoming more interested in the world beyond America’s borders, and many writers responded with stories taking place in or of travel to foreign locations.

The Role of the Illustrator

So where did illustration fit into this rapidly changing world? Why is this period known as the "Golden Age of American Illustration?" The answer is that illustrators made things tangible and real - whether local or foreign - for readers. It is still true that "a picture is worth a thousand words." A painting of Chinatown alight by Henry Soulen makes much more of an impression than any description in words. Cornwell’s The Other Side, depicting a scarlet- robed angel is a powerful image, impossible to adequately describe. Harvey Dunn’s painting of Two Soldiers Walking Side by Side from World War I tells us more about war than a dispatch from the front ever could.