Distinctive Characteristics of American Culture and Character Acquired Essay - 1

Distinctive Characteristics of American Culture and Character Acquired Throughout History - Essay Example Trends in household appliances and fashion started to pick up. They also started to fill their leisure time by participating in sports and other various activities like going to amusement parks. These changes then had an impact in the literature of that time and it targeted the middle class that was gradually growing. After 1910, the American culture experienced very little change (Fischer 23). Between 1870 and 1900, public-school enrollment doubled. This had a ripple effect that increased the number of high school and college students in the same period. The effect of this was that the level of illiteracy was very much reduced. There was also a growth in elementary schools, which went hand in hand with the growth of immigrants, and most parents saw this as a venue for acculturation. Martial arts, sciences, and American history were classes that were added into the curriculum around this period. It supplemented the basic curriculum of arithmetic, reading, and writing. Higher education expanded as universities and colleges, by 1900, had around 250,000 students. This was four times the number the universities and colleges had thirty years before. Act of The way Americans dressed and ate was changed by mass production. Hand-made clothing became less and less popular after the civil war. People became rather accustomed to wearing clothes that were ready made and were on sale in retail outlets. These retail outlets were however found mostly in large cities. However, Aaron Montgomery in 1872 started a mail-order business and thus the Americans did not have to visit these retail stores to buy clothes. This turned out to be quite a successful business for Montgomery and he dealt with a variety of commodities from agricultural products to clothes. In 1896, the Rural Free Delivery service made mail-order more accessible. With due time, increased accessibility to a wide variety of foods by people all over the country was experienced.