Figure 5.—“Scenes and Incidents on Coney Island,” Harper’s Weekly Newspaper, August 1878.
(Smithsonian photo 59666.)
In the 1890s foreign visitors were impressed by American concern with finding opportunities to play; early in the century they had remarked on the apparent lack of interest in amusements. The term, “summer resorts,” no longer referred to a relatively small number of fashionable watering places. The New York Tribune was running eight columns of summer hotel advertisements aimed directly at the middle class. The popular Summer Tourist and Excursion Guide listed moderate-priced hotels and railroad excursions; it was a far departure from the fashionable tour of the 1840s.
Thus, as economic and technological factors changed, bathing was transformed from a medicinal treatment for the leisure class to a recreation enjoyed by a large portion of the population.
SWIMMING
As has been stated earlier, swimming was being practiced by men in Europe when the early colonists were leaving their old homes. Nevertheless, the task of establishing new homes left them little time to practice the “art of swimming” or to teach it to fellow colonists.
Benjamin Franklin is no doubt the most famous early proponent of swimming in the colonies. In his autobiography written in the form of a letter to his son in 1771, Franklin revealed his early interest in swimming.
I had from a child been delighted with this exercise, had studied and practiced Thévenot’s motions and position, and added some of my own, aiming at the graceful and easy, as well as the useful.[23]
Benjamin Franklin used every opportunity to encourage his friends to learn to swim,
as I wish all men were taught to do in their youth; they would, on many occurrences, be the safer for having that skill, and on many more the happier, as freer from painful apprehensions of danger, to say nothing of the enjoyment in so delightful and wholesome an exercise.[24]