Figure 1.--This is an American Daguerreotype archived at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA). American Dags are not rare, Dags showing barefoot boys are arare. The portarit shows a barefoot boy holding his hat and a drum stick, with a drum on table. The MMA staff dates it to the 1850s. The drum suggests to us that it was more likely the very early-60s with the onset of the Civil War and the mystique of drummer boys. In deference to the MMA, however, wee are archiving here in the 1850s section and at any rate there is little dufference between the 1850s and early-60s.

Dagererotypes continued to dominate photographt in the early-1850swhich was almost entirely studio photography. Ambrotypes and tin-types were introduced in the 1850s both of wehich reduced the cost of photography. Thus we have more images, but rarely see barefoot boys in available images. This may in oart because most poses are the subjects sitting down by a small table draped with a paterned cloth. Often footwear or the lack of it does not show. There are some images of barefoot boys, but not very many. Mother wanted the boys to dress up in their best clothes and this generally mean that they put on shoes. It is notable that many boys are not wearing suits. We take this as an economic indicator. The modern American industrial economy was just beginning to accelerate. The United States was beginning to urbanize by the 1850s. It was just slightly over 15 percent in 1850 and nearly 20 poercent by the end of the decade, a huge increase over levels at the beginning of the century. This was important because going barefoot was much more common in the countrysuide than in the cities. And notice here that headwear was more imprtant than footwear (figure 1). Painted portraits also show children with shoes. The exception is genre painting which aimed at capturing real life scene, often depicting averge people of modest means. A good example is "The County Election", an election day scene--the County Election. This was a 1852 painting by George Bingham. It is probably a very good representation of how boys dressed in rural and small town America at mid-century. And unlike the photographic record, we see boys mostly going barefoot. The situation in the growing cities and well to do would be different, but generally speaking, going barefoot was very common with American boys. An Italian reader writes, "What especially impresses me is the different attitude in the States compared tm Italy and generally Europe (especially southern Europe). Here many children went barefoot, but no Italian parents who could aford an expensive Daguerreotype or other studio portrait in the 19th century would have let their children shoeless. The many photos of Italian barefoot children are documentary evidence of peasant and working-class people until after World War II."