Transcript Slide 1

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 mean?
 Affluence
relates to the
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
 High
spending by the U.S. federal government
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
President
Eisenhower
(Courtesy Dwight D.
Eisenhower Library)
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.
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)
U.S. Birth Rate, 1900–1980
Birthrate, 1940-1970
The Baby Boom in Historical Context
AN AFFLUENT SOCIETY: Growth of Suburbs
SHIFTS IN POPULATION DISTRIBUTION, 1940-1970
1940
Central Cities 31.6%
Suburbs
19.5%
Rural Areas/ 48.9%
Small Towns
1950
1960
1970
32.3% 32.6% 32.0%
23.8% 30.7% 41.6%
43.9% 36.7% 26.4%
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
 Low-interest
became more affordable
mortgage loans
 government-backed
 Mass-produced
& interest tax-deductable
subdivisions
 Expressways
– facilitated commuting
 Decline in inner city housing stock

 Race
Also: congestion, pollution
– “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
 “Vast
- 7,000 TV sets in U.S.; 1960- 46,000,000 (1 per 3.3 persons)
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
Leave It
to Beaver
1958-1966
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
WW2
religion expanded dramatically after
 church/synagogue
in US history
 1940
memberships reached highest level
 64,000,000; 1960  114,000,000
 thousands
suburbs
of new churches and synagogues built in
 Why??
 more
of a means of socialization and belonging than
evidence of interest in religious doctrine?
 atmosphere
 Stage
of tolerance
of life? Guilt? Image?
Other
“Americas”
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
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
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
 rural
Harrington, The Other America
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
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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, 3rd 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 (6th 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