Closing the Frontier...... and Opening the Empire

The 1890s saw the emergence of 'pioneer days' wannabes ---- only now cutting down natives instead of trees.

The newly conquered Philippines became reconstituted as an open air Dude Ranch for wannabe imperial hard men.

Because as the late Victorian era saw more and more machines doing the hard physical labour once done by male humans, this meant that small women could now do jobs that once only big men had the physical strength to do.

How else now could dumb but strong males pull down serious coin and respect if not in re-directing all that labouring strength into state-sanctioned violence against humans, instead of against Nature ?
Ironically, while in the good old days the Vikings applied their muscles and axes against both trees and humans, now the new iron men used a mechanical chain saws to take on the trees and mechanical rifles against their human victims.

As a result, today men bulk up their muscles for show only --- because any twelve year old 'girly girl' can easily slaughters dozens and dozens of people with an AR-15/M-16 as easily as her tree farmer can take out dozens of balsam spruce ....