"The Crusade Against the Whisker" and the Birth of the Modern Radical Beard

Abstract

This paper seeks to investigate the shift in style in the last decade of the nineteenth century, when it again became customary for men to shave their beards. In order to address this topic, the historiographies of facial hair, masculinity, and radical politics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the United States demand attention. The convergence of these three areas of study will provide the basis for this examination into this shift in style, and the social meanings that may have been placed on beards and beardlessness during this period in American history.