Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [323]
Between 1798 and 1805 the young playwright (and Friendly Club habitue) William Dunlap, manager and part owner of the Park Theater, staged elaborate reenactments of the battles of Bunker Hill and Yorktown Heights. And his own efforts (like The Glory of Columbia— Her Yeomanry!) practically invented the “stage-Yankee,” a two-fisted patriot who became as recognizable to New York mechanic audiences as any Shakespearean character. Like him, they took pride in being plain people who produced objects of genuine usefulness with their own hands. Like him, they sensed that they had been ennobled by the Revolution—a despised and powerless rabble transformed into free citizencraftsmen. Their best qualities, like his, now seemed the very essence of republicanism: bluntness, self-reliance, unaffected decency, instinctive egalitarianism. They pursued an honest living, not wealth. They scorned privilege, ridiculed ostentation, despised avarice, and stood by their fellows.
As in matters of work, residence, religion, and politics, leisure-time pursuits became a bone of contention between the city’s working classes and its elites. In some respects this was nothing new; since the days of Peter Minuit, civic and religious authorities had been trying to impose decorum on the heterogeneous, turbulent inhabitants of Manhattan and to curb the popular predilection for swearing, blasphemy, Sabbath-breaking, alcohol, and blood sports. What gave these concerns a new edge was the desire of entrepreneurial masters to create a more disciplined workforce.
Masters especially were dismayed by the continuing interpenetration of leisure and work. City artisans still observed the practice of “jeffing”—periodic trips to nearby taverns and “groceries” for beer or gin—and they continued to take the frequent breaks for doughnuts, candy, and cakes that were a time-honored prerogative of journeymen and apprentices. They often observed “Saint Monday,” as well, taking the day off for horse races, boxing and shooting matches, drinking bouts, billiards, gambling, semiorganized brawling, and other long-established popular pastimes.
Many masters began challenging such traditions in their shops, promulgating strict work codes, and constructing in the process a new bourgeois standard of order and personal decorum. The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen—that bastion of master craftsmen—bore down especially hard on the customary drinking rights of journeymen and apprentices, blaming them for drunkenness, gambling, swearing, and other antisocial evils. Duncan Phyfe, a pillar of the General Society known for his Scotch Calvinist rigor, was said to require that even the members of his own family be in bed by nine o’clock. At least a few mechanics, too, contended that the traditional values and attitudes of working people led only to poverty and misery. As one wrote with heavy sarcasm: “Pursue the gay and jocular companion through his weekly round of pleasures—On Monday evening at the play, Tuesday at Piken’s public dance, Wednesday at Rickett’s Circus, Thursday to see Gibonne and Coco, Friday Seely’s long room, and Saturday’s theater closes the week of mirth— Sunday, that long, that tedious heavy day hangs heavy on their heads.”
Some masters and merchants appealed to the authorities for help, at least in keeping the Sabbath holy (as they understood the term). After independence, church attendance failed to keep pace with population growth, and reports of Sabbath violations became standard fare for New York newspapers. As an indignant “Friend to Order” told the Weekly Museum in 1792, he had seen “near two hundred Negroes, Boys and Gentle-men (I mean those who have the appearance of Gentlemen)” skating on a recent Sunday. State as well as municipal authorities responded by renewing the old colonial prohibitions against profaning the Lord’s Day with work or