50s - social studies
AN
AFFLUENT
SOCIETY
The
1950s
Michael Quiñones
[adapted from a work created by Susan
Pojer]
Cast of classic 1950s television show
The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet
I Can analyze the relationship between innovation, economic development, progress and different perceptions of the
“American Dream.”
What does affluent
Affluence relates to the
mean?
amount and quality of material comfort (stuff) people have.
Many people consider
affluence to=wealth.
Clarifying Question
To what extent (how much) did the decade of the 1950s deserve its reputation as an age of political, social, and cultural conformity?
[Defend your response with examples]
“Conservatism,
Complacency, and
Contentment”
OR
“Anxiety,
Alienation, and
Social Unrest” ??
AFFLUENT
SOCIETY
Economic Prosperity in the 1950s
AN AFFLUENT SOCIETY
Post-WWII Recession
(1946)
Some economic conditions affecting the U.S. Economy
Reduced spending by the U.S. federal government
High inflation [prices of goods and services rose]
pent-up demand, available savings & income was limited to non-existent elimination of government rationing & price controls
Labor unrest [low wages, poor working conditions] triggered desire by many workers to create labor unions.
AN AFFLUENT SOCIETY: Economic Prosperity
General economic expansion occurred from 1945-1972
GNP grew 250% between 1945 and 1960: From $200B to over $500B
Low Unemployment 5% or less throughout the 1950s
Low inflation – during Eisenhower admin, averaged 1.5% per year
Rapid Growth of Incomes – more than tripled 1945-1960
Average family in 1955 had double the income of comparable family during 1920s [this was a good thing!]
Highest standard of living in world was in the U.S.
The U.S. possessed the Dominant economy in the world
Inflation, 1940-1980
Unemployment, 1950-1970
AN AFFLUENT SOCIETY: Economic Prosperity
Reasons for Prosperity:
Pent-up [stored] savings
Lack of foreign competition
Government spending
military (Korean War, Cold War)
G.I. Bill
Expansion of suburbs – grew 47% during decade
stimulated demand for cars and homes
AN AFFLUENT SOCIETY: Economic Prosperity
G.I. Bill of Rights
(Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944)
Education
job training college
Loans for homes and businesses
G.I. Bill & College Enrollment
AN AFFLUENT SOCIETY:
Economic Prosperity
Regional Growth: The Sunbelt
Warmer climate, lower taxes, lower labor costs
Military spending
Population Change, 1950-1960
Metropolitan Growth, 1950-1980
Henretta, America’s History 4e
CHANGES IN SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY & MEDICINE
1951 -First IBM (commercial)
Mainframe Computer
1952 -Hydrogen Bomb Test
ENIAC, first mainframe computer, 1945
1953 -DNA Structure Discovered
1954 -Polio Vaccine Tested
– Jonas Salk
1957 -- First Commercial U. S. Nuclear Power Plant
1958 -NASA Created
Automation: 1947-1957 - factory workers decreased by 4.3%, eliminating 1.5 million blue-collar jobs.
CONSENSUS &
CONFORMITY
SUBURBIA AND MIDDLE-CLASS AMERICA
IN THE 1950s
CONSENSUS AND CONFORMITY:
Politics
Election of 1952: Dwight D.
Eisenhower vs.
Adlai Stevenson
Ike won: 34 million to 27 million popular votes; 442 to 89 electoral votes.
“Modern Republicanism”
Fiscal Conservative: sound business principles, Reduce federal spending, balance budget and cut taxes
Social Moderate: maintain existing social and economic legislation
Tried to avoid partisan conflicts
Federal Highway Act (1956)
Ike with VP
Nixon on the
Links.
President
Eisenhower
(Courtesy Dwight D.
Eisenhower Library)
The Challenge of Sputnik
● Sputnik
● National Defense
Education Act
(1958)
● NASA
(1958)
● “missile gap”
AN AFFLUENT SOCIETY:
Society
baby boom
population grew 20%
1950s (150M 180M)
Birthrate, 1940-1970
U.S. Birth Rate, 1900 –1980
The Baby Boom in Historical Context
AN AFFLUENT SOCIETY: Growth of Suburbs
SHIFTS IN POPULATION DISTRIBUTION, 1940-1970
1940 1950 1960 1970
Central Cities 31.6% 32.3% 32.6% 32.0%
Suburbs 19.5% 23.8% 30.7% 41.6%
Rural Areas/ 48.9% 43.9% 36.7% 26.4%
Small Towns
U. S. Bureau of the Census.
Nash, The American People 6e
AN AFFLUENT SOCIETY:
Growth of Suburbs
REASONS FOR THE GROWTH OF SUBURBS
Growth of American families (“baby boom”) was largely due to higher standards of living and fathers employed
“bread winners” could afford to financially support larger families.
Home-ownership became more affordable
Low-interest mortgage loans
government-backed & interest tax-deductable
Mass-produced subdivisions
Expressways – facilitated commuting
Decline in inner city housing stock
Also: congestion, pollution
Race – “white flight” working class whites left cities to avoid blacks, crimes, dense populations, and noise to the suburbs.
AN AFFLUENT SOCIETY:
Suburbia
Mass-produced housing on the edge of cities
Levittown – 17,000 mass-produced, low-priced homes
1949 William Levitt produced 150 houses per week.
$7,990 or $60/month with no down payment [very affordable] in the 1950s but in the 2010s they sell for well over $500,000 in the first Levittown L.I., N.Y.
“The American Dream”
Effect on inner cities: increasingly poor and racially divided
Typical homes had two bedrooms, one bathroom, a living room and a front and back yard.
CONSENSUS AND CONFORMITY:
SUBURBIA
Car culture
Car registrations: 1945 - 25,000,000; 1960 - 60,000,000
2-car families double from 1951-1958 [more women owned & drove]
Federal Highway Act (1956)
(National Defense and) Interstate Highway System [expanded access to easier travel across wider distances]
Result: a more homogeneous nation [less racially diverse]
1957 Chevy was the classic
1950s automobile.
CONSENSUS AND CONFORMITY:
Car Culture
America became a more homogeneous nation because of the automobile.
Drive-In Movies
First McDonald’s
(1955)
Howard Johnson’s
CONSENSUS AND CONFORMITY:
Television
Television “arrived” in the ‘50s
1946 - 7,000 TV sets in U.S.; 1960- 46,000,000
(1 per 3.3 persons)
“ Vast wasteland ”
[ Click on link] speech by F.C.C. chairman criticizing overall quality of television programming.
Common mass culture
Suburban white middle class
RADIO AND TELEVISION OWNERSHIP, 1940–1960
Suburban Living: The Typical TV Suburban Families
The Donna
Reed Show
1958-1966 Leave It to Beaver
1957-1963
Father Knows Best
1954-1958
The Ozzie & Harriet Show
1952-1966
CONSENSUS AND CONFORMITY: Consumer Culture
Advertising
(t.v., radio, magazines) name brand became well known
Suburban shopping centers made availability of households more accessible to housewives
Credit Cards extended credit to households without need for immediate cash
Rise of Franchises
(McDonalds) many now iconic businesses were able to succeed due to increased consumer demand.
CONSENSUS AND CONFORMITY: Corporate America
Consolidation
1960- 600 corporations (1/2% of all
U.S. corporations.) 53% of corporate income
Conglomerates (food processing, hotels, transportation, insurance, banking)
More Americans in white collar
[management/high wage] than blue collar jobs
[manual/lower wage].
Corporate culture “The
Company Man”
Sloan Wilson’s The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
CONSENSUS AND CONFORMITY:
Organized Labor
Taft-Hartley Act
(Labor Management Relations Act of 1947)
Unions – big, powerful and more conservative
Merger AFL and CIO in 1955
blue collar workers - enjoying middle-class incomes and benefits
Goal: preserve and extend compensation
Labor Union
Membership,
1920-1992
CONSENSUS AND CONFORMITY:
Gender Roles &
Women
Traditional gender roles reaffirmed
baby boom
home in suburbs
mass media
Dr. Benjamin Spock’s best-selling book
Baby and Child Care
(1946)
CONSENSUS AND CONFORMITY:
Gender Roles
& Women
At end of WWII, many women left the “man’s” work force
“pink collar” jobs [clerical, wait staff, hostess, cashiers]
Paid less - seen primarily as wives and mothers
Yet by end of decade 33% of women held jobs
More married women joined workforce, especially as they reached middle age
CONSENSUS AND CONFORMITY:
Religion
Organized religion expanded dramatically after
WW2
church/synagogue memberships reached highest level in US history
1940 64,000,000; 1960 114,000,000
thousands of new churches and synagogues built in suburbs
Why??
more of a means of socialization and belonging than evidence of interest in religious doctrine?
atmosphere of tolerance
Stage of life? Guilt? Image?
Other
“Americas”
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Cold War Tensions
& Society
"Fallout shelter built by Louis Severance adjacent to his home near Akron, Mich., includes a special ventilation and escape hatch, an entrance to his basement, tiny kitchen, running water, sanitary facilities, and a sleeping and living area for the family of four. The shelter cost about $1,000. It has a 10-inch reinforced concrete ceiling with thick earth cover and concrete walls."
Duck and Cover
OTHER “AMERICAS”: SOCIAL CRITICS
William H. Whyte, Jr., The Organization Man (1956)
conformity
David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd (1958)
“inner-directed” individuals → “other-directed” conformists.
John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (1958)
failure to address significant social issues and common good (would influence JFK and LBJ)
Michael Harrington, The Other America
rural poverty, inner cities
Other Americas
“The entire invisible land of the other Americans became a ghetto, a modern poor farm for the rejects of society and the economy.”
--
Michael Harrington
Bell County, Kentucky, August 31, 1946
OTHER AMERICAS: NONCONFORMISTS & CULTURAL REBELS
Teen Culture developed (free time, spending money)
“teenager”
consumerism
By 1956, 13 million teens with $7 billion to spend a year.
Rock and Roll
Elvis Presley
James Dean , “Rebel without a Cause”
“juvenile delinquency”
J.D. Salinger , The Catcher in the Rye
Beginnings of Rock Music
The Dominoes
Alan Freed
Elvis
(Michael Barson Collection/Past Perfect)
Bill Haley & the Comets
OTHER AMERICAS: NONCONFORMISTS & CULTURAL REBELS
“Beats” – “Beatniks”
Allen Ginsberg – “Howl” (1956) controversial for its time this performance poem was perhaps the best example of a nonconformist piece of American literature.
Jack Kerouac, On the Road (1957) also very controversial for its time mostly due to its divorce and drug references as well as its message of a care-free lifestyle.
Alan Ginsburg, 1953 Jack Kerouac with his cat
Re-examining the Clarifying Question
To what extent (how much) did the decade of the 1950s deserve its reputation as an age of political, social, and cultural conformity?
“Conservatism,
Complacency, and
Contentment”
OR
“Anxiety,
Alienation, and
Social Unrest” ??
Class Discussion Topic:
The postwar era (immediately after WWII) witnessed tremendous economic growth and rising social contentment and conformity. Yet in the midst of such increasing affluence and comfortable domesticity, social critics expressed a growing sense of unease with American culture in the 1950s.
Students should be able assess (judge) the validity (correctness) of the statement above and explain how the decade of the 1950s laid the groundwork for the social and political turbulence of the 1960s in their verbal contributions.
SOURCES http://www.wadsworth.com/history_d/special_features/image_bank_US/1954_1963_maps.html
http://teachpol.tcnj.edu/amer_pol_hist/_browse2000.htm
American Journey Online
Brinkley, American History: A Survey 10e/11e [Instructors Resource CD]
Faragher, Out of Many, 3 rd Ed.; http://wps.prenhall.com/hss_faragher_outofmany_ap/
Kennedy, American Pageant 13e [History Companion CD]
Nash, The American People 6e; http://wps.ablongman.com/long_nash_ap_6/0,7361,592970-,00.html
J. Jones, P. Wood, et al, Created Equal:, http://wps.ablongman.com/long_jones_ce_1/0,7283,494555-
,00.html
Tindall & Shi, America: A Narrative History (6 th ed); http://wwnorton.com/america6/resources/
Maier, Inventing America; http://www.norton.com/inventing/ http://www.billhaley.com/
National Archives and Records Administration
Susan Pojer , “American Culture in the 50s” PPT http://www.the-peoples-forum.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=21689 http://citywire.co.uk/new-model-adviser/nsandi-chief-issues-warning-over-index-linked-savingscertificates/a506531 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/16/us/16suburbs.html?pagewanted=all http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Welcome_to_Levittown_sign.jpg
http://www.57classicchevy.com/images/1957-chevrolet-1.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Man_in_the_Gray_Flannel_Suit_-_1955_-_poster.png
http://cdn.blogs.sheknows.com/thewire.sheknows.com/2011/01/david-nelson-ozzie-and-harriet-2.jpg
