History Commons^™

Discriminating Tastes: How Advertisements Taught Consumerism And Race To Gilded Age Youths, Jaclyn Schultz

Theses and Dissertations

Commercial and social trends of the Gilded Age combined to give a unique and novel power to colorful advertising trade cards that were collected, exchanged, and preserved in scrapbooks by middle-class children living in the Northeast. These children were members of one of the earliest generations to grow up with mandatory co-educational schooling and to be part of a distinctive youth culture created through peer interactions. After 1876, advertising trade cards became ubiquitous and were a significant component of that peer culture. The cards were also innovative in that they were the first example of colored images to be made …