A Consumers’ Republic
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Suburbanization
Development of shopping malls
Effects on urban and town centers
A “Consumers’ Republic” – what does Cohen
mean by this?
Elaine Tyler Mar, Homeward Bound: American
Families in the Cold War Era
Postwar America as a time of
“happy days”
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the elevation of
comfort over
challenge, safety over
risk, and private
pleasures over public
affairs
Postwar American Dream
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widespread postwar
affluence
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Democratization through
shared abundance (Cohen)
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by 1953, average US family
enjoyed twice as much real
income as in the 1920s
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Suburbanization
baby boom
consumerism set the tone of postwar American life
Levittown circa 1950
Dan Ryan Expressway, Chicao
Consequences of superhighway development for
urban, ethnic neighborhoods
suburban sprawl – note dependence on cars
Persisting Poverty for Some
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poverty remained fact of life for millions in the
cities and on farms
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African Americans, who had loyally supported
the war and in many cases served in the military,
once again confronted grim reality of racism at
home
FHA, Redlining, and Covenants
Images that reflect postwar
consumerism
Watch clip from In the Suburbs (1957
promotional film for Redbook magazine)
Civil Rights Movement and
Postwar Racial Conflict
Widespread Complacency?
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After WWII, most Americans turned away from
public issues
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preoccupied with careers and family
reform energies responsible for New Deal
subsided into complacency
spirit of times not reformist but conservative,
complacent
BUT surface appearance of comfort and
complacency hid feelings of anxiety
Anti-Communism
“Beware, commies,
spies, traitors, and
foreign agents!
Captain America, with
all loyal, free men
behind him, is looking
for you, ready to fight
until the last one of
you is exposed for the
yellow scum you are.”
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March 1947, Truman issued Exec Order 9835
establishing Federal Loyalty program
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order provided for loyalty check on all govt
employees
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employees asked whether they provided religious
training for their children and what they thought of
female chastity
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By end of Truman’s terms in
1952, 39 states had enacted
antisubversion laws and loyalty
programs
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1947 – series of HUAC
hearings to expose communist
influence in American life
dominated the news
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probes blurred distinctions
between dissent and disloyalty,
radicalism and subversion
Second Red Scare reflects shift in
American cultural and intellectual life
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dissent no longer safe or acceptable
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now to be a dissenter, as communistrs like LeSueur
were in the 1930s, opened one up to allegations of
subversion and disloyalty
anticommunist hysteria was both a product of
postwar anxiety and, for many, a contributor to
it
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as Hollywood’s reaction shows, one had to be very
careful to maintain proper appearances of loyalty
and patriotism
1959 Kitchen Debate
Consumer Credit
installment buying, home
mortgages, and auto loans
raised Americans’ total private
indebtedness in the 1950s
from $73 billion to $196 billion
First credit card in 1950;
AmEx follows in 1958
Hillsdale Shopping Mall, San Mateo, California circa 1960
IN THE SUBURBS (1957)
Aerial view of Park Forest, Illinois, 1952
Consumerism meets the Cold War
"The Kitchen Debate": Consumerism is the American way
To us, diversity, the right to choose, . . . is the most important thing.
We don't have one decision made at the top by one government
official. . . . We have many different manufacturers and many
different kinds of washing machines so that the housewives have a
choice. . . . Would it not be better to compete in the relative merits of
washing machines than in the strength of rockets?
-Vice President Richard Nixon at the opening of the American
National Exhibition in Moscow, 1959
(quoted in Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound, 1988, 17)
Suburban growth and the homecentered American dream
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social and material consequences of
suburbanization
William H. Whyte's The Organization Man (1956)
Domestic idealism: the family as a haven in an
uncertain world
"This book is about the organization man. If the term is vague, it is
because I can think of no other way to describe the people I am talking
about. They are not the workers, nor are they the white-collar people in
the usual, clerk sense of the word. These people only work for The
Organization. The ones I am talking about belong to it as well. They
are the ones of our middle class who have left home, spiritually as well
as physically, to take the vows of organization life, and it is they who
are the mind and soul of our great self-perpetuating institutions.
Only a few are top managers or ever will be. In a system that makes such
hazy terminology as "junior executive" psychologically necessary, they
are of the staff as much as the line, and most are destined to live
poised in a middle area that still awaits a satisfactory euphemism.
But they are the dominant members of our society nonetheless. They
have not joined together into a recognizable elite--our country does not
stand still long enough for that--but it is from their ranks that are coming
most of the first and second echelons of our leadership, and it is their
values which will set the American temper."
--William Whyte, The Organization Man