entertainment 1880-1920

William Monroe

            Entertainment is the key to having a happy life. This is because if you are being entertained, then you are enjoying yourself. Everyone is intrigued by different things, but there are endless sources of entertainment regardless of the time era you were born in. obviously there is more to do now than in the late eighteen-hundreds to early nineteenth-hundreds, but people make do with what is around them. Two sources of entertainment that people enjoyed, that interested me, were horse racing and car racing.

            Horse racing has been around for hundreds of years. Throughout the hundreds of years, horse racing has had its peaks and valleys. Horse racing is a sport that can be enjoyed by all, but is more directed at the upper class gentlemen. This is because part of the excitement of horse racing is due to the betting aspect. In this process, you would bet on the horse that you believed was going to win, and if the horse you betted on won then you would get win money. This is what is known as gambling. Some say that gambling is an addiction, and that is why so many enjoy the races. They enjoy them because racing becomes their addiction. Some that go to the races don’t really care about the race itself, but they just care about gambling on a certain horse. All of the horse racing and gambling was going great up until the early nineteen-hundreds when gambling became heavily frowned upon. The bookmaking was banned and sent the popularity of horse racing into a downward spiral. In 1908 a compromise for the betting was come to. This compromise was called the “Pari-Mutuel betting”. This allowed people to bet in a more fair way. The money from the betting pool was distributed equally by which horse won. For example if you there were ten people that bet on the same horse and then that horse won the race, everyone who bet for that horse received the same amount of pay off. This compromise changed everyone’s attitude towards the horse races because the main draw to the races had been revived. Once the car racing began, it became just as popular as the car racing.

            Once the development of car racing started, it became just as popular as the horse racing. There were multiple different forms of the car racing. Indianapolis style racing was rather popular during this time era. This is because it was an oval track that was around a mile long. The track was paved and had a famous race performed on it called the Indianapolis five-hundred. This race was a five-hundred mile long race where participants would race around the oval track as fast as possible. The winner would get a trophy and some sort of prize. The reason that spectators found the races so entertaining is because this oval track racing was different from a lot of the other forms of car racing. The oval track gave all spectators the opportunity to be able to see the entire track at one time, where the other races that had many different straight-aways and turns. Because of the spectators being able to see the entire track, they rarely missed the viewing of the wrecks during races. The development of the oval track revolutionized the car racing because of all of these things. The sponsors of the races were all about the idea of the track being in an oval shape. This is because then they could monitor the entering and exiting of the race much easier since it was closed off on all sides. With that being said it was much harder for spectators to sneak in without paying. Spectators of the races could also bet on which race car they thought would win. This was another big draw to the idea of the races being considered entertainment because it would bring the picture of being addicted to gambling back into the mix. Also when the gambling was taken away from the horse races, the same spectators that would have normally been at the horse races started going to the car races.

            Horse racing and car racing are clearly two entertaining sports to the spectators. This was the first time leisure was viewed positively and the men used their time to their best advantage. It gave them something to focus on and be competitive with each other, gambling their wealth. To this day horse and car racing are popular sports to view, however the advancement in technology have made the sports much harder to compete in.

This is a picture of one of the cars going around the oval track at the Indianapolis speedway in 1911.

This is a picture of the starting line of a race in NewYork during the year of 1908.

 

This is a picture of a horse race being held in Brooklyn.

Works cited

http://ophelia.sdsu.edu:8080/henryford_org/09-09-2013/education/erb/RacinginAmerica.pdf

"Background Books: Sports in America." The Wilson Quarterly (1976-) 3.3 (1979): 85-87. Web.

"Timeline: Horse Racing in the U.S." PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 16 Dec. 2014. <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/timeline/seabiscuit/?flavour=mobile>.

N.p., n.d. Web. <http%3A%2F%2Fcals.arizona.edu%2Fclasses%2Fans142%2Fread%2FModule-01.html>.

02, January. "Plenty of Tragedy and Success for 1900s Horse Racing." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 02 Jan. 2000. Web. 16 Dec. 2014. <http://articles.latimes.com/2000/jan/02/sports/sp-49887>.

"America on the Move | Introduction." America on the Move | Introduction. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Dec. 2014. <http://amhistory.si.edu/onthemove/themes/story_66_1.html>.

"Southern Brooklyn Was The Mecca Of Horse Racing During The Late 1800s - Sheepshead Bay News Blog." Sheepshead Bites RSS. N.p., 23 Jan. 2014. Web. 16 Dec. 2014. <http://www.sheepsheadbites.com/2014/01/draft-historical-horse-race/>.

Younger, William Lee. Old Brooklyn in Early Photographs, 1865-1929: 157 Prints from the Collection of the Long Island Historical Society. New York: Dover Publications, 1978. Print.