The 1950s was characterized as a prosperous and conformist for several reasons. The 50s was a time of conformity while the 60s was a time of conflict and protest. In the United States in particular, economic growth had succeeded in providing basic security to the great majority of an entire population. Electrification was crucial for the consumption of the new types of durable items, and the fraction of US households with electricity connected nearly doubled between 1921 and 1929, from 35 to 68%. . It was an idea also put forward by the new consumption economists such as Hazel Kyrk and Theresa McMahon, and eagerly embraced by many business leaders. Consumerism - The 1950's: An age of affluence Consumer Demand Spurs Economic Growth Rising incomes, easy credit, and aggressive marketing helped create a culture of consumption in the 1950s. Coontz explains that the sexism, As I mentioned previously, the sixties were a time of change. The years of the 1950s and 60s was a time where many hardships occurred as global tension was high and as a result many wars occurred as well as movements. "Surely this is the ultimate source of the problem. In a 1929 article called Keep the Consumer Dissatisfied, he stated that there is no place anyone can sit and rest in an industrial situation. She begins her argument by stating some reasons why the nostalgia for the 1950s exists. Consumer needs were constantly changing due to wars, shifts in the economy, advancements in technology and various other factors. At the same time he was well aware of the role of advertising. The twentieth century was a period of struggle in which the socialist countries, largely influenced by the former USSR, provided stiff competition to the united states, but Nevertheless, America has not been immune to pitfalls and struggle during its journey of success and it is by the dint of hard work, keen foresight and sharp business acumen She acknowledges that this fallacy is not insane. The glove section at an early department store, which changed the way people shopped (Credit: Getty Images). Entertainment. Working in the 1950's, however, was prohibited and deplorable because that meant you were not cooperating with the American system. Franchising increased after 1950 and offered Americans the opportunity to own a small business. African Americans were the first ones to be laid off. Electrification was crucial for the consumption of the new types of durable items, and the fraction of U.S. households with electricity connected nearly doubled between 1921 and 1929, from 35 percent to 68 percent; a rapid proliferation of radios, vacuum cleaners, and refrigerators followed. Scrappy upstarts challenged established networks, innovated programming, and catered to under-served audiences. But, while poorer people might have acquired a very few useful household items a skillet, perhaps, or an iron pot the sumptuous clothing, furniture, and pottery of the era were still confined to a very small population. This first wave of consumerism was short-lived. In a little-known 1958 essay reflecting on the conservation implications of the conspicuously wasteful US consumer binge after WWII, John Kenneth Galbraith pointed to the possibility that this "gargantuan and growing appetite" might need to be curtailed. ", Factory workers icing a steady supply of biscuits in 1926 (Credit: Getty Images). Post World War I, the era marked the beginning of modern times with new and worthy developments. People would be encouraged to give up thrift and husbandry, to value goods over free time. Consumerism In The 1950's. The 1950s was an exciting time for many, the war was over and the economy began to flourish once more. Kyrk argued for ever-increasing aspirations: a high standard of living must be dynamic, a progressive standard, where envy of those just above oneself in the social order incited consumption and fueled economic growth. Beat movement, also called Beat Generation, American social and literary movement originating in the 1950s and centred in the bohemian artist communities of San Francisco's North Beach, Los Angeles' Venice West, and New York City's Greenwich Village. While some of them would emerge as critics of consumerism and the unsustainable use of natural resources, overall the first generation raised in post-war prosperity helped entrench planned obsolescence as an engine of the American . The cardinal features of this culture were acquisition and consumption as the means of achieving happiness; the cult of the new; the democratization of desire; and money value as the predominant measure of all value in society, Leach writes in his 1993 book Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture. Significantly, it was individual desire that was democratized, rather than wealth or political and economic power. Its a study of a love affair as much as anything else. The 1920s bonanza collapsed suddenly and catastrophically. Kentucky Fried Chicken weathervane, 1960s. Americans purchased homes, cars (sometimes two), television sets, new home furnishings, modern refrigerators, clothes for work and their new found leisure time, barbeque grills, lawn mowersthe list is endless. As the popular historian of the time Frederick Allen wrote, Business had learned as never before the importance of the ultimate consumer. For instance, the development of the suburbs. What of the appetite itself?, he asks. Jobs were secure and came with great benefits. The great corporation which is in danger of having its profits taxed away or its sales fall off or its freedom impeded by legislative action must have recourse to the public to combat successfully these menaces.. President Herbert Hoovers 1929 Committee on Recent Economic Changes welcomed the demonstration "on a grand scale [of] the expansibility of human wants and desires", hailed an "almost insatiable appetite for goods and services", and envisaged "a boundless field before us new wants that make way endlessly for newer wants, as fast as they are satisfied". In 2008, a similar unravelling began; its implications still remain unknown. While the society got rid of their miseries; sciences, arts, and businesses renewed themselves by evolving. During the 1950s, the automobile industry saw growth and change, particularly in its design departments. Those who create wants rank amongst our most talented and highly paid citizens. . Unless he could be persuaded to buy and buy lavishly, the whole stream of six-cylinder cars, super heterodynes, cigarettes, rouge compacts and electric ice boxes would be dammed up at its outlets. Want creation advertising is a 10 billion dollar industry. Constitution Avenue, NW WANN, a white-owned radio station in Annapolis, Maryland, cultivated African American consumers and demonstrated their buying power by connecting their audience to retailers and manufacturers who hoped to expand sales. In both eras, borrowed money bought unprecedented quantities of material goods on time payment and (these days) credit cards. The capitalist system, dependent on a logic of never-ending growth from its earliest inception, confronted the plenty it created in its home states, especially the US, as a threat to its very existence. 771 Words4 Pages. Manufacturers in the automobile industry, would make small changes to every years model. During the 50s, there was a deeply ingrained social stigma against divorce, and the divorce rate dropped. Here began the "slow unleashing of the acquisitive instincts," write historians Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and J H Plumb in their influential book on the commercialisation of 18th-Century England, when the pursuit of opulence and display first extended beyond the very rich. Dunkin' Donuts. "Requiring no significant degree of literacy on the part of its audience, radio gave interested corporations unprecedented access to the inner sanctums of the public mind," Ewen writes. Retailing was already passing decisively from small shopkeepers to corporate giants who had access to investment bankers and drew on assembly-line production of commodities, powered by fossil fuels. It would not do if people were content because they felt they had enough. In 1949, total TV billing from. *This is an edited version of an article thatoriginally appearedinThe MIT Press Reader, and is republished with permission. Though the television sets that carried the advertising into peoples homes after WWII were new, and were far more powerful vehicles of persuasion than radio had been, the theory and methods were the same perfected in the 1920s by PR experts like Bernays. This is done by dangling the products before non-upper-class people as status symbols of a higher class. The Czech writers darkly humorous novel, published in 1936, anticipated our current reality with eerie accuracy. The rise to power prompted the 1920s to become a decade of evolution for womens rights, African Americans rights, and consumerism. People, of course, have always "consumed" the necessities of life food, shelter, clothing and have always had to work to get them or have others work for them, but there was little economic motive for increased consumption among the mass of people before the 20th century. Facts about the American Consumerism 1920s for kids. "Many of the products they are trying to sell have, in the past, been confined to a 'quality market'. Though men and women had been forced into new employment patterns during World War II, once the war was over, traditional roles were reaffirmed. The prospect of ever-extendable consumer desire, characterized as progress, promised a new way forward for modern manufacture, a means to perpetuate economic growth. World War II was ending, and men were returning unemployed. Madison Avenue was $12.3m, in 1950, $40.8m, and in 1951, $128m. There are two simple reasons why. Join one million Future fans by liking us onFacebook, or follow us onTwitterorInstagram. Instead, it features many happy human faces and all their wonderful stuff! This was a period of economic boom that followed World War II. The 1950s was characterized as a prosperous and conformist for several reasons. But its evident that 1950s did in fact produce the troubles of the. He identified the beginnings of "a massive conservative reaction to the idea of enlarged social guidance and control of economic activity", a backlash against the state taking responsibility for social direction. In late 19th-century Britain a variety of foods became accessible to the average person, who would previously have lived on bread and potatoes consumption beyond mere subsistence. In the 1920s, the target consumer market to be nourished lay at home in the industrialized world. 1950s American culture was characterized by a boom in consumerism, which bolstered the economy and left cultural impacts as well. However, over the course of the 20th Century, capitalism preserved its momentum by moulding the ordinary person into a consumer with an unquenchable thirst for its "wonderful stuff". . After World War II, consumer spending no longer meant just satisfying an indulgent material desire. Watch on. Teenagers as a consumer group - "SELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT" The game is to make them the necessities of all classes. . Firms began adding a few ethnic and racial minorities to their staffs. Superman, The Lone Ranger. An excerpt from the celebrated 19th-century photographer's memoir "When I Was a Photographer.". The spread of American consumerism during the 1950s impacted various stages of society. Some of features most common to the 20's and 50's were consumerism and the accompanying optimistic mindset, the extent to which new ideas entered society, and discrimination in terms of both sexism and racism. Unless he could be persuaded to buy and buy lavishly, the whole stream of six-cylinder cars, super heterodynes, cigarettes, rouge compacts and electric ice boxes would be dammed up at its outlets. In his classic 1928 book Propaganda, Edward Bernays, one of the pioneers of the public relations industry, put it this way: Mass production is profitable only if its rhythm can be maintainedthat is if it can continue to sell its product in steady or increasing quantity. Today supply must actively seek to create its corresponding demand [and] cannot afford to wait until the public asks for its product; it must maintain constant touch, through advertising and propaganda to assure itself the continuous demand which alone will make its costly plant profitable. The historian Benjamin Hunnicutt, who examined the mainstream press of the 1920s, along with the publications of corporations, business organizations, and government inquiries, found extensive evidence that such fears were widespread in business circles during the 1920s. As television grew, Americans worried about its effect on children. The economy was booming. In the United States, existing shops were rapidly extended through the 1890s, mail-order shopping surged, and the new century saw massive multistory department stores covering millions of acres of selling space. In the 1950s, the relatively new technology of television began to compete with motion pictures as a major form of popular entertainment. The first one was the mid to late 50s when rock 'n' roll was first sort of invented. So, the stereotypical nuclear family of the 1950s consisted of an economically stable family made up of a father, mother, and two or three children. Observing her daughter, Barbara, playing with paper dolls, Ruth Handler (19162002) had the idea that dolls could be styled as adults. In these circumstances, there was a social choice to be made. Franchises were also a good deal for parent companies, shifting much of the risk to proprietors while requiring them to adhere to certain standards for branding and service. Charles Kettering, general director of General Motors Research Laboratories, equated such perpetual change with progress. Bernays and his PR colleagues believed ordinary people to be incapable of logical thought, let alone mastery of abstruse economic, political and ethical data., The commodification of reality and the manufacture of demand have had serious implications for the construction of human beings in the late 20th century, where, to quote philosopher Herbert Marcuse, people recognize themselves in their commodities. Marcuses critique of needs, made more than 50 years ago, was not directed at the issues of scarce resources or ecological waste, although he was aware even at that time that Marx was insufficiently critical of the continuum of progress and that there needed to be a restoration of nature after the horrors of capitalist industrialisation have been done away with., Marcuse directed his critique at the way people, in the act of satisfying our aspirations, reproduce dependence on the very exploitive apparatus that perpetuates our servitude. In late 19th-Century Britain a variety of foods became accessible to the average person, who would previously have lived on bread and potatoes consumption beyond mere subsistence. She bases her information on facts and historical evidence. Conformity was common, as young and old alike followed group norms rather than striking out on their own. While the decades were similar in heightened . In the US, existing shops were rapidly extended through the 1890s, mail-order shopping surged, and the new century saw massive multi-storey department stores covering millions of acres of selling space. The 1920s was a time of great change. The 1950s was a decade most do not pay much mind to due to it typically being seen as untroubled and quiet, although many things both good and bad, were growing under the surface. The 1950s were sometimes referred to as "the advertiser's dream decade." 3. Even if a shorter working day became an acceptable strategy during the Great Depression, the economic systems orientation toward profit and its bias toward growth made such a trajectory unpalatable to most captains of industry and the economists who theorized their successes. Categories such as the economy, where a boom in new products increased, the technology world which incorporated new medicines and computers, entertainment when the television became popular and the overall lifestyles that Americans adapted to. Over the course of the 20th Century, capitalism moulded the ordinary person into a consumer. She is the author of "Collision Course: Endless Growth on a Finite Planet," from which this article is adapted. In researching his excellent history of the rise of PR, Ewen interviewed Bernays himself in 1990, not long before he turned 99. A steady-state economy capable of meeting the basic needs of all, foreshadowed by philosopher and political economist John Stuart Mill as the stationary state, seemed well within reach and, in Mills words, likely to be an improvement on "the trampling, crushing, elbowing and treading on each others heels the disagreeable symptoms of one of the phases of industrial progress". Men were back home and ready to work and women were back to doing their womanly duties again (cooking and cleaning) this reflected the social position of the women following the war. Bernayss views, like those of several other analysts of the crowd and the herd instinct, were a product of the panic created among the elite classes by the early 20th-century transition from the limited franchise of propertied men to universal suffrage. This is reflected in current attitudes. World War II greatly stimulated Americas economy by creating millions of jobs and nearly wiping out unemployment. . Illuminating the bold ideas and voices that make up the MIT Press's expansive catalog. After World War II, African Americans challenged decades of racial segregation by demanding recognition by advertisers and equal access to goods and services. Even if a shorter working day became an acceptable strategy during the Great Depression, the economic systems orientation toward profit and its bias toward growth made such a trajectory unpalatable to most captains of industry and the economists who theorised their successes. People, of course, have always "consumed" the necessities of life food, shelter, clothing and have always had to work to get them or have others work for them, but there was little economic motive for increased consumption among the mass of people before the 20th Century. If profit and growth were lagging, the system needed new impetus. It was an idea also put forward by the new "consumption economists" such as Hazel Kyrk and Theresa McMahon, and eagerly embraced by many business leaders. He argued that business "cannot afford to wait until the public asks for its product; it must maintain constant touch, through advertising and propaganda to assure itself the continuous demand which alone will make its costly plant profitable". "Goods are plentiful. Furthermore, new synthetic fabrics offered fresh possibilities for mass-produced clothing. Consumption is now frequently seen as our principal role in the world. With increasing variety in clothes, food and household items, shopping became an important cultural activity in the 18th century. There, especially in the United States, consumption continued to expand through the 1920s, though truncated by the Great Depression of 1929. For instance, the development of the suburbs. Once WWII was over, consumer culture took off again throughout the developed world, partly fuelled by the deprivation of the Great Depression and the rationing of the wartime years and incited with renewed zeal by corporate advertisers using debt facilities and the new medium of television. Washington, D.C. Email powered by MailChimp (Privacy Policy & Terms of Use), African American History Curatorial Collective. The United States had appeared to be dominated by consensus and conformity in the 1950s. Demand for them must be elaborately contrived," he wrote. The consumer revolution that occurred in the 1920s gave Americans prosperous hope for the future of the United States of America. Coontz describes that when one takes a closer look at the 1950s they will realize that comparing it to the 1990s or the 21st century is absurd. The 1950s was an important year for fashion and for African Americans. 5. In this era of staid gray flannel suits, advertisers developed motivational research, grappled with television, and cooperated with government to promote American enterprise. There, especially in the US, consumption continued to expand through the 1920s, though truncated by the Great Depression of 1929. Notwithstanding the panic and pessimism, a consumer solution was simultaneously emerging. US consumer credit rose to $7 billion in the 1920s, with banks engaged in reckless lending of all kinds. Mexican workers were being booted out of their low laboring jobs because whites needed the money more than them, in result over half a million, In this time it was known as the Gilded Age of American Autos. These products included washing machines, dishwashers, frozen foods, television, microwave ovens, lawn mowers and automobiles. 5 Ways to Connect Wireless Headphones to TV. As the economic engine slowed in the 1970s, productivity waned, wages flattened, and Americans faced an energy crisis that reshaped consumer expectations. Industry insiders, journalists, and the public criticized the crass and manipulative aspects of advertising. The front-line thinkers of the emerging advertising and public relations industries turned to the key insights of Sigmund Freud, Bernayss uncle. Raoul A. Cortez (19051971) thought media should serve the community and promote the common good. Baby boomers came of age and entered colleges in huge numbers. A steady-state economy capable of meeting the basic needs of all, foreshadowed by philosopher and political economist John Stuart Mill as the stationary state, seemed well within reach and, in Mills words, likely to be an improvement on the trampling, crushing, elbowing and treading on each others heels the disagreeable symptoms of one of the phases of industrial progress. It would be feasible to reduce hours of work further and release workers for the spiritual and pleasurable activities of free time with families and communities, and creative or educational pursuits. Marcuse suggested that this voluntary servitude (voluntary inasmuch as it is introjected into the individual) can be broken only through a political practice which reaches the roots of containment and contentment in the infrastructure of man [sic], a political practice of methodical disengagement from and refusal of the Establishment, aiming at a radical transvaluation of values.. It would be feasible to reduce hours of work and release workers for the pleasurable activities of free time with families and communities, but business did not support such a trajectory. The United States began to transition from the heavy industry of war materials into a consumer based economy, pumping out billions of different products for consumption. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world. Consumers and the economy immediately saw an upsurge in new consumer products. Birds of a Feather Shop Together: Conspicuous Consumption and the Imaging of the 1980's Essex Girl Rachel Rye 4. In 1960, more than 70 percent of families still looked much like the family of the 1950s, with a man who brought in the family 's sole income, children and a stay-at-home wife and mother. Hours of work in the United States have been growing since 1950, along with a doubling of consumption per capita between 1950 and 1990. Predicated on debt, it took place in an economy mired in speculation and risky borrowing. If you liked this story,sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called The Essential List. Though it has become fashionable in recent decades to brand scholars and academics as elites who pour scorn on ordinary people, Bernays and the sociologist Gustave Le Bon were long ago arguing, on behalf of business and political elites, respectively, that the mass of people are incapable of thought. Innovations in technology, expansion of white-collar jobs, more credit, and new groups of consumers fueled prosperity. We publish thought-provoking excerpts, interviews, and original essays written for a general reader but backed by academic rigor. 2/10/2003 The rise of American consumerism has not come without hits to the social, political, and cultural landscape. The coffee-and-donuts chain was launched by entrepreneur William Rosenberg, who was a pioneer in the art of franchising. That is when everything started to come into shape. In the early years, advertisers sponsored whole shows, as they did with radio. The labour struggles of the 19th Century had, without jeopardising the burgeoning productivity, gradually eroded the seven-day week of 14- and 16-hour days that was worked at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in England. This research paper briefly gives examples from advances in technology, transportation, and entertainment while discussing their benefits to the United States. The short depression of 19211922 led business leaders and economists in the US to fear that the immense productive powers created over the previous century had grown sufficiently to meet the basic needs of the entire population and had probably triggered a permanent crisis of overproduction. The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage, written by Todd Gitlin, explains the rebellious youth movement, highlighting activist group, Students for a Democratic Society, the Vietnam War, and the Civil Rights Movement. Returning unemployed years model husbandry, to value goods over free time us onFacebook, or us... 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