A Peep at Propaganda: Children as World’s Fair Cosmopolitans

Sarah M. Iepson

In a striking illustration from Raphael Tuck and Sons’ 1893 children’s publication A Peep at the World’s Fair, a well-dressed white girl extends a piece of cake to a semi-nude, dark-skinned toddler while her brother, mother and two adult “natives” look on. Surrounded by additional depictions of black-skinned natives, sculpted idols, and thatched dwellings, this vignette celebrates the essential experience of the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago as one of cultural interaction and interracial harmony. However, the fairground setting and jumbled composition with tourist references force us see such imagery for what it was – a form of commercial propaganda -- and to consider the role of the child as a fledgling consumer of exotic encounters within the adult context of late nineteenth-century global trade. In light of that context, how was the child expected to respond to new cultures and foreign ideas and what was she to gain through this experience?

By analyzing the images and text from this publication in relation to buildings at the Fair designed specifically for children and contemporary social constructions of childhood, I intend to elucidate the emergence of a new cosmopolitan ideal that positioned young people as modern global consumers in the making. Children’s interactions with the foreign in A Peep at the World’s Fair promoted the idea of their ability to be open and responsive to a world outside of their own, while simultaneously suggesting that this cosmopolitan perspective itself was a type of commodity that could be purchased at the Fair. By considering these images in relation to the realities of commercial propaganda in the Fair’s other offerings to children, I will show that the World’s Columbian Exposition was integral in constructing the child as a new cosmopolitan consumer.