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1950s UNIT Supplemental Readings Civics 500

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1950s UNIT

Supplemental

Readings

Civics 500

**NOTE: These are supplemental readings for our unit. You will still need to read assigned sections

of The Unfinished journey by William Chafe (see class calendar).

TOPIC 3: Prosperity of the 1950s- EQ: Why do you think most Americans enjoyed a level of prosperity that their ancestors could have only dreamed about? How might this affluence

impact the future of American society?

Read: Chafe Ch. 5 pages 111-122; Read assigned perspective from "The Suburbs-The

American Dream" packet-prepare 5 key points from the reading in your notebook and come prepared to present your side.

Read ONLY your assigned section:

A The New American Dream (1953)- Harry Henderson

B. The New American Nightmare (1956)- John Keats

TOPIC 4: Family Life/Popular Culture During the 1950s- EQ: To what extent is family life today similar to that of the 1950s? To what extent is it a departure?

Read: Chafe Ch. 5 pages (123-128)

Come prepared to discuss-highlight and comment on the following primary sources:

Source 1: "Life Magazine Identifies the New Teen-age Market"

Source 2: "Newsweek Decries the Problem of Dangerous Teens"

Respond to essential question-be sure to incorporate ideas from each of the packets.

Topic 5: TV & Popular Culture- To what extent is 1950s popular culture an accurate reflection of 1950s society and its values?

Read: Chafe Chapter 5(128-146)-TV and Popular Culture;

Source A - "Leave it to Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet"

Source B - "U.S. News and World Report Assesses the Perils of Mass Culture and

Evils of Television"

After reading these sources, respond to the essential question by incorporating ideas from all of the sources into your response.

Topic 6: Assessing the 1950s -Read: Were the 1950s America's Happy Days? YesjNo

Finish outline, come prepared to discuss this question, and present your projects -you will

receive a work ethic grade for your participation.

The Suburbs: The New American Dream (1953) Harry Henderson (b. 1914)

Between 1945 and 1960, 40 million Americans migrated from the cities to the suburbs. Spuned by govemment programs designed to encourage home ownership, developers created whole new communities. Many developments, such as those by builder William Levitt, consisted of row upon row of nearly identical mass-produced homes. In the following viewpoint, joumalist Harry Henderson examines the lives of people living in these "Levittowns" and other suburban areas. The article, first published

in Harper's Magazine in November 1953, offers a mixed but generally positive portrayal of American suburbia.

Excerpted from "The Mass-Produced Suburbs" by Han-y Henderson, Harper's Magazine, November 1953. Copyright© 1953 by HmTy Henderson. Reprinted by permission of the William Mon·is Agency, Inc., on behalf of the author.

What attractions do the new suburbs have for the people living in them, according to Henderson? What generalizations does he make about the economic and social situation of these suburban residents? What does he find most appealing about this fonn of suburban life?

Since World War II, whole new towns and small cities, consisting of acres of near-identical Cape Cod and ranch-type houses, have been bulldozed into existence on the outskirts of America's major cities. Begun as "veterans' housing," and still commonly called "projects," these new communities differ radically from the older urban areas whose slow, cumulative growth depended on rivers and railroads, raw materials or markets, industries and available labor. They also differ from the older suburbs which were built around existing villages. These new communities are of necessity built on open fam1land-to house people quickly, cheaply, and profitably. They reflect not only the increased number of young American families, but an enom1ous expansion of the middle class via the easy credit extended to veterans.

The best known of these communities, Levittown, Long Island [New York], is also the largest; its population is now estimated at 70,000. Lakewood, near Long Beach in the Los Angeles area, is a close second. Park Forest, some thirty miles south of Chicago-which has significant qualitative differences from the others, in that its social character was as conscientiously planned as its physical layout-now has 20,000 people and will have 30,000 when completed. No one knows exactly how many of these postwar cmmnunities exist in all. The Federal Home and Housing Authority, which insured motigages for nearly all the houses, has no records in terms of communities or even large developments. However, one can safely assume that their combined population totals several million people.

These communities have none of the long-festering social problems of older towns, such as slums, crowded streets, vacant lots that are both neighborhood dumps and playgrounds, or sagging, neon-fronted business distticts that sprawl in all directions. Instead everything is new. Dangerous traffic intersections are almost unknown. Grassy play areas abound. Shops are centrally located and under one roof, at least theoretically, with adjacent off-street parking.

Socially, these communities have neither history, tradition, nor established structure-no inherited customs, institutions, "socially imp01iant" families, or "big houses." Everybody lives in a "good neighborhood"; there is, to use that classic American euphemism, no "wrong side of the tracks." Outwardly, there are neither rich nor poor, and initially there were no older people, teen-agers, in-laws, family doctors, "big shots," churches, organizations, schools, or local governments. Since the builder required a large cheap site, the mass-produced suburbs are usually located at the extreme edge of the c01mnuting radius. This means they are economically dependent on the big city, without local industry to provide employment and share tax burdens.

Studying the Suburbs

Tlrree years ago I began a series of extensive visits to these new communities to leam what effect this kind of housing and social organization has on people. I was particularly interested in what customs developed, what groups became important, what attitudes and ways of handling problems were created. I wanted to know, for instance, how people made friends, how you became a "big shot," and how life in these towns differed from that of our older towns.

The notes below are an attempt to describe what I found out, a rep01ier's report on a new generation's version of the "American way." Thev are based on interviews and my own observations in six such conmmnities, including Levittown and Park Forest. While each community is different, ce1iain common pattems exist, although their strength varies in accordance with two factors: screening and size.

Screening-or the selection of people by fixed criteria-obviously affects the economic, social, and cultural life. Where screening is based on something more than the ability to make a down payment, the population tends to become a narrow, specialized, upper stratum of the middle class. Size affects the community in another way. The construction of fifty or a hundred new homes on a common plot immediately beside a suburb of 5,000 merely results in their becoming pmi of that community, adopting its social structure. But when the number of new homes is many times larger than the old, both problems, and new ways of living emerge with greater force. (However, even in small projects some new pattems are present.)

These notes are, of course, subjective and as such liable to personal distortion. Valid statistical data- because of the sh01i time people stay put in these towns, plus a host of other factors-are simply beyond the reach of one man. But, for whatever they are w01ih, here they are.

Companionship

At first glance, regardless of variations in trim, color, and position of the houses, they seem monotonous; nothing rises above two stories, there are no full-grown trees, and the horizon is an endless picket fence of telephone poles and television aerials. (The mass builder seeks flat land because it cuts his construction costs.)

However one may feel about it aesthetically, this puts the emphasis on people and their activities. One rarely hears complaints about the identical character of the houses. "You don't feel it when you live here," most people say. One mother, a Midwestem college graduate with two children, told me: "We're not peas in a pod. I thought it would be like that, especially because incomes are nearly the same. But it's amazing how

different and varied people are, likes and dislikes, attitude and wants. I never really knew

what people were like until I came here." Since no one can acquire prestige through an imposing house, or inherited

position, activity-the participation in community or group affairs-becomes the basis of

prestige. In addition, it is the quickest way to meet people and make friends. In

communities of strangers, where everybody realizes his need for companionship, the first

year is apt to witness almost frantic participation in all lands of activities. Later, as

friends are made, this tapers off somewhat.

The standardized house also creates an emphasis on interior decorating. Most

people try hard to achieve "something different." In hundreds of houses I never saw two interiors that matched-and I saw my first tiger-striped wallpaper. (The only item that is

endlessly repeated is a brass skillet hung on a red brick wall.) Yet two styles predominate: Early American and Modem. What is rarely seen, except in homes of older­

than-average people, is a family heirloom.

Taste levels are high. My interviews with wives revealed that their models and

ideas came primarily from pictures of rooms in national magazines. Nobody copies an

entire room, but they take different items from different pictures. At first most women said, "Well, moving into a new house, you want everything new." Later some altered this explanation, saying, "Nearly evetybody is new .... I mean, they are newly married and

new to the community. They don't feel too cetiain about things, especially moving into a

place where everyone is a stranger. If you've seen something in a magazine-well, people

will nearly always like it." So manv times were remarks of this character repeated that I concluded that what many sought in their fumiture was a kind of" approval insurance."

Asked whom they missed most, women usually replied, "My mother." Men's

answers were scattered, apt to be old friends, neighbors, relatives. Many women said; "I wish there was some place close by to walk to, like the candy store in the city. Just some

place to take the kids to buy a cone or newspaper in the aftemoon. It helps break up the

monotony of the day." They considered the centrally located shopping centers too distant for such outings.

Because these communities were built from scratch, they afforded a degree of planning impossible in our older cities, and-depending on the builder's foresight and awareness of social problems-advantage was taken of this. Plarmers solved complex problems in traffic flow, space anangement, play areas, heating problems, site locations to provide sunlight, and kitchen traffic. But nobody thought about dogs.

Dogs in Suburbia

The people in these conununities have generally escaped from crowded city

apariments. Their 50 x 100-foot plot seems to them to be the size of a ranch. One of their

first acts is to buy a dog, on the theory that "it's good for the children," an old idea in American family folklore, and to tum the dog loose. Usually the people know nothing

about dogs or their training. Theoretically, the dog is the children's responsibility;

generally they are too young to handle it. The result is that the dogs form great packs which race tlu·ough the area, knocking

down small boys and girls, wrecking gardens and flower beds, and raising general hell. Then people t1y tying them up; the dogs owl and bark until no one can stand it. Locked

' 7

up inside the house, they are a constant worry, and charge out to bite the mailmen and

deliverymen. In one community thirteen mailmen were bitten in one summer.

Dogs, along with children, are the greatest cause of tension within a block. In

Park Forest, outside Chicago, dogs were finally voted out of the 3,000 unit rental area in

the bitterest, hottest, meanest, most tearful fight in that community's history. But they are

permitted in the private-home area because our conception of private property includes

the right to own a dog even though he may be the damnedest nuisance in the world. One can hardly describe the emotions aroused by dogs in these conununities. One man told

me he had bought his dog simply "because I am damn sick and tired of my neighbor's dog

yapping all night. I just want to give them a taste of what it's like."

Suburban Populations The populations differ strikingly from those of the older towns. The men's ages

average 31 years; the women's about 26. Incomes fall somewhere between $4,000 and

$7,000 yearly, although incomes in excess of this can be found everywhere. Their homes cost between $7,000 and $12,000. Roughly 90 per cent of the men are veterans. Their major occupational classifications are managers, professionals, salesmen, skilled workers, and small business men. Most communities also have sizable numbers of transient army families.

Buying or renting a home in one of these communities is, of course, a fonn of economic and personal screening. As a result, there are no poor, no Negroes; and, as conununities, these contain the best educated people in America. In Park Forest, where the screening was intensive, more than 50 per cent of the men and 25 per cent of the women are college graduates; the local movie theater survives by showing Westems for the kids in the aftemoon and foreign "ati films" for the adults in the evening.

Initially, city-bred women, accustomed to the constant sights and sounds of other people, suffer greatly from loneliness, especially if their children are as yet unbom. One woman expressed it this way: "Your husband gets up and goes off in the moming-and you're left with the day to spend. The housework is a matter of minutes. I used to think that I had been brought to the end of the earth and dese1ied." Another said, "I used to sit

by the window . . . just wishing someone would go by." Generally this disappears as friends are made and children appear. Today most communities have "older" (by several years) residents who make real effort to help newcomers overcome their "newness."

Hardware stores rep01i their biggest selling item year-round is floor wax. "Honest to God," said one store manager, "I think they eat the stuff."

The daily pattem of household life is govemed by the husband's commuting schedule. It is entirely a woman's day because virtually every male commutes. Usually the men must leave between 7:00 and 8:00 A.M.; therefore they rise between 6:00 and 7:00 A.M. In most cases the wife rises with her husband, makes his breakfast while he shaves, and has a cup of coffee with him. Then she often retums to bed until the children get up. The husband is not likely to be back before 7:00 or 7:30P.M.

Domestic Life This leaves the woman alone all day to cope with the needs of the children, her

housekeeping, and shopping. (Servants, needless to say, are unknown.) When the

husband retums, he is generally tired, both from his work and his traveling. (Three hours a day is not uncommon; perhaps the most widespread dream of the men is a job nearer to the community, and they often make eamest eff01is to find it.) Often by the time the husband retums the children are ready for bed. The husband helps put them to bed; as they grow older, they are allowed to stay up later. Then he and his wife eat their supper and wash the dishes. By 10:00 P.M. most lights are out.

For the women this is a long, monotonous daily proposition. Generally the men, once home, do not want to leave. They want to "relax" or "improve the property "-putter around the lawn or shrubbery. However, the women want a "change." Thus, groups of women often go to the movies together.

Usually both husband and wife are involved in some group activity and have meetings to go to. A frequent complaint is: "We never get time to see each other "; or, "We merely pass coming and going." On the one occasion when I was refused an

interview, the husband said, "Gee, I'd like to help, but I so seldom get a chance to see my wife for a whole evening .... I'd rather not have the inte1ruption."

Many couples credit television, which simultaneously eased baby-sitting, entertaimnent, and financial problems, with having brought them closer. Their favorites are comedy shows, especially those about young couples, such as I Love Lucy. Though often contemptuous of many programs, they speak of TV gratefully as "something we can share," as "bringing the romance back." Some even credit it with having "saved our maniage." One wife said: "Until we got that TV set, I thought my husband had forgotten how to neck."

These are the first towns in America where the impact of TV is so concentrated that it literally affects everyone's life. Organizations dare not hold meetings at hours when popular shows are on. In addition, it tends to bind people together, giving the whole community a common experience.

The Coffee Klatsch is an institution everywhere. A kind of floating, day-long talkfest, shifting from house to house, it has developed among young women to help fill their need for adult conversation and companionship. The conversation is strictly chitchat. One woman described is as "Just small talk ... about what's new . . . about whose kid is sick ... and then about who is apt to get sick." Yet many women complain there is "too much talk," and some are very critical of the gregariousness.

New Lifestyles

When people moved into these conununities, they shed many of their parents' and their home-town customs. For instance, slacks or shorts are standard wear for both men and women at all times, including trips to the shopping center. Visiting grandparents invariably are shocked and whisper: "Why, nobody dresses around here!" ...

Gone also are most rituals and ceremonies. If you want to know someone, you introduce yourself; there is no waiting for the "right people." You "drop in " without phoning. If you have an idea that will solve some problem, you immediately call up everybody concemed. One result is that, generally speaking, there is less lag than elsewhere between an idea and "getting something done," which may be anything from organizing a dance to getting a stop sign for your comer.

The attitude toward pregnancy is unusually casual. Because it is so common, pregnancy is regarded more objectively and refened to in tenns that would seem

outlandish in older communities. It is often called "our major industry"; or someone will

say, "That's the Levittown Look," or "It must be the water; you don't see any men around." . . .

A marked feeling of transience pervades everything from shopping to friendships. This feeling reflects both optimism and uncertainty, and it encourages a tendency to seek

expedient solutions. For instance, the question of whether or not one plans to spend his

life there is shunted aside-optimistically. This has serious effects on school and town

govemment problems.

The uncertainty stems, as one young salesman expressed it, from the fact that "you just don't know- whether you'll make the grade, whether the company will transfer you, whether you'll be getting along with your wife five years from now, whether the neighbors will move out and monsters will move in. So you hesitate to sink deep roots."

In general, optimism prevails over uncertainty. Many-a majority, I would say­consider this merely their "first" house. They insist that they are young, and they confidently look forward to owning a $15,000 to $20,000 house some day.

Interestingly, while most look upon their present house as a "temporary deal," because "under the GI-Bill owning is cheaper than renting," the most mihodox and

conservative views prevail conceming property and home ownership. There is more talk

about property values than you would hear in older towns and much effmi is put into "making the place look like something." This may mean the addition of fences, garage, patio, etc. A standard proud comment is: "We could walk out of this place with $1,000

profit tomonow." Actual transience is high. Business transfers and increased incomes are its major

causes. As a result, there is a flourishing business in the resale of houses. In one community where I interviewed twelve families in one block three years ago, all but four

have since moved. From the remaining families I leamed that the removals had nearly all been due to increased incomes which pem1itted more expensive homes. Others had

moved to cut commuting time or because of company transfers. Unfortunately, no over­all statistics on transience exist.

"The people who live in these communities are for the most part enthusiastic about them."

The replacements for departed families are often older, 45 to 50 being the average age of the men. Their goal is the $7,000 to $12,000 house. More certain of what they can and will do, they are less anxious about "success," and financially not so hard pressed.

Having resided in older towns, they like these new cmru1mnities because of their

friendliness and optimism. "The older towns are dead," said one small business man who is typical of this group.

Usually these "second generation" people have teen-age children and, in interviews, they emphasized the absence of "bad neighborhoods" and ample play areas as reasons for moving. Many also liked the idea that economically everyone is in the same class. One father, a skilled aviation worker, said, "Where we used to live we had both rich and very poor. Our girls were caught in the middle because the rich lads dressed better and hung out together, and the poor kids dressed poorer and hung out together.

They were nobody's fi·iend, while here they are everybody's fr-iend. I'd say they are happier than they ever were."

Except for Park Forest, none of the communities I visited has a local police force. Yet crime can hardly be said to exist-probably the most spectacular aspect of these new towns. In one conununity with 15,000 people the crime record amounted, in two years to 6 burglary cases, 35 larceny cases, 13 assault cases (husband-wife rows), and 6 disorderly conduct cases. Typically, the communities are patrolled by existing county and township police, who repmi their only major problems are traffic and lost children.

Crime in Suburbia Even Levittown, with 70,000 people not far fi-om New York's turbulent, scheming

underworld, has virtually no crime. According to the Nassau County police, who studied one year's record, it had no murders, robberies, or auto thefts during that period; an

average city of that size during the same period would have had 4 murders, 3 robberies, and 149 auto thefts.

Levittown had 3 assault cases, 16 burglaries, and 200 larceny cases while comparable cities averaged 73 assault cases, 362 burglaries, and 942 larcenies. Larceny in Levittown was mainly bicycle stealing. (Since these statistics were gathered, the FBI has caught a Levittowner who planned a payroll robbery and a young mother, later adjudged insane, has asphyxiated her two small children.)

Police attribute this lack of crime to the fact that nearly all the men were honorably discharged from the anned services and subjected to a credit screening. This, they say, "eliminated the criminal element and riff-raff." Some police officials included the absence of slums and disreputable hang-outs as causes. Personally, I felt many more factors were involved, including the absence of real pove1iy; the strong ties of family, religious, and organizational activities; steady employment; and the absence of a restrictive, fi·ustrating social structure.

Family Economics Every family operates, or tries to operate, under a budget plan. Most families

report their living standards have been raised by moving into the community. There is almost constant self-scolding because living costs outrun the budget. The shining goal: economic security. The word "success" is on everyone's lips and "successful people" are those who advance economically.

Most families report it costs a minimum of between $ 100 and $150 a month to live in these communities. While the rent or mortgage payment may come to only $65 or $75 monthly, other expenses-commuting, garbage, water, utilities-push the total much

higher. In addition, distances to the shopping center and commuting stations vi1iually require a car and all its expenses.

If the axiom, "a week's pay for a months rent," is applied, it is obvious that many families are barely making ends meet and some are having real difficulty. Typical conm1ents on their economic situation: "We're just like everyone else here-broke," or, "We're all in the same boat, economically. Just getting by, I'd say." I estimated the average man's income fi·om his regular job to be under $ 100 a week.

Where screening was based only on ability to make the down payment rather than ability to pay, you often find a sizable number of men seeking supplementary work:

weekend clerking in stores; finishing attics; door-to-door selling. In one community a

man who acts as a clearing house for jobs told me: "I'd say that 50 per cent of these people are rmming on their nerve. One winter of sickness would knock them out." A

great number of women whose children have reached school age seek work, but it is hard

to find and pays less than they were used to eaming in the city. I talked to a night taxi­driver in one community whose job stemmed from his children's illnesses. This

supplementary work left him only six hours between jobs. It was rough, he admitted, " ...

but I figure it's worth it to have the kids here. I couldn't stand taking them back to the city. I'll get these bills cleaned up yet."

In addition, the economic pinch is relieved in some families by subsidies from parents. "There are a fair percentage of them who are still leaning on Mama and Papa,"

one store proprietor said. "I know because I cash their checks." In other cases the pressure is relieved by "doubling up." This seldom means two young families in one house;

usually the "doubling up" is with in-laws, who share expenses. Technically this produces

substandard housing; the people involved regard this as nonsense. No stigma is attached to the practice and many women expressed the wish to have their parents live with them, mainly because they wanted companionship and guidance on child-raising ... .

Optimism

Both the individual and the community face these economic stresses with a powerful, deep-seated optimism based on the conviction that they are just starting their careers. The men sometimes say with a grim: "After all, this is only the first wife, first car, first house, first kids-wait till we get going." Though, in the long run, they measure

success in economic tem1s, people are frank about "being broke" and there is no stigma attached to it by anyone, including families with larger incomes. "Money just doesn't cut any ice around here," said one young engineer whose eamings put him in the $8,000-a­year class. "We've all been broke at one time or another. The important thing is, nobody expects to stay broke." ...

Socially, the outstanding characteristic of these people is their friendliness, wmmth, and lack of pretentious snobbery. Outgoing and buoyant, they are quick to recognize common problems and the need for co-operation, one does not find the

indifference, coldness, and "closed doors" of a long-established community. There is much casual "dropping in" and visiting from house to house which results in the sharing of many problems and pleasures. Often the discussion of a few women over supper plans will end up with four or five families eating together. This may then lead to "fun," which may be anything from cards to "just talk" or "everybody trying to roller-skate, acting like a bunch of kids." Nobody goes "out" often. Many report that, as a result of this pattem of living, they "drink more often but get high less" than they used to. Drinking, it seemed to me, had become much more of a social amenity and less of an emotional safety valve than it is elsewhere.

Suburban Friendliness

This generalized, infom1al friendliness assumes so many fonns that it is a very real part of everyone's life, replacing the thousand-skeined social structure of older American towns. It explains why the people who live in these communities are for the most pa1i enthusiastic about them. "Here, for the first time in my life," one salesman said,

"I don't have to wony about my family when on the road. Here at least a dozen families are constantly in touch with them and ready to help if anything goes wrong, whether it's the car, the oil heater, or one of the kids getting sick. In Pittsburgh I had to rely on scattered relatives who weren't in touch with my family more than once a week."

This is the big cushion which, while making life more enjoyable, protects the inhabitants of the new suburbs and solves their minor problems. It absorbs irummerable

small transportation needs, puts up TV aerials, repairs cars, finishes attics, and canies the

load of sudden emergencies. Nothing in these communities, to me, is more impressive than this unifonn pattem of casual but wann friendliness and cooperation.

The Suburbs: The New American Nightmare (1956) John C. Keats (b. 1920)

Eighty-five percent of the 13 million homes built in the United States during the

1950s were in the suburbs-the areas just outside established towns and cities. These fast-growing regions were the subject of much analysis-and criticism-by sociologists

and others studying American ways of life. The following viewpoint, excerpted from the

1956 book The Crack in the Picture Window by writer and social c1itic Jolm C. Keats,

provides a sharply satirical look at suburban life in the 1950s. A fonner newspaper reporter, Keats has also written biographies of Howard Hughes and Dorothy Parker, and has contributed articles to various magazines, including Esquire.

How important have federal govemment programs been to the growth of the suburbs, according to Keats? Why are suburbs continuing to be built, in his view? How

do the opinions of both Keats and of sociologist Harold Mendelsolm (quoted in this viewpoint) conceming suburban neighborliness differ from the views expressed by Han-y Henderson, author of the opposing viewpoint?

Excerpted from The Crack in the Picture Window by John C. Keats; © 1956 by John C. Keats. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company Inc.

For literally nothing down-other than a simple two per cent and a promise to pay, and pay, and pay until the end of your life-you too ... can find a box of your own in one of the fresh-air slums we're building around the edges of America's cities. There's room for all in any price range, for even while you read this, whole square miles of identical boxes are spreading like gangrene throughout New England, across the Denver prairie, around Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, New York, Miami- eve1-ywhere. In anyone of these new neighborhoods, be it in Hartford or Philadelphia, you can be certain all other houses will be precisely like yours, inhabited by people whose age, income, number of children, problems, habits, conversation, dress, possessions and perhaps even blood type are also precisely like yours. In any one of these neighborhoods it is possible to make enemies of the folks next door with unbelievable speed. If you buy a small house, you are assured your children will leave you perhaps even sooner than they should, for at once they will leam never to associate home with pleasure. In shmi, ladies and gentlemen, we offer here for your inspection facts relative to today's housing

developments- developments conceived in enor, nmiured by greed, conoding

eve1-ything they touch. They destroy established cities and trade pattems, pose dangerous problems for the areas they invade, and actually drive mad myriads of housewives shut up in them.

These facts are well known to responsible economists, sociologists, psychiatrists,

city managers and bankers, and ce1iainly must be suspected by the people who live in the suburban developments, yet there's no end in sight to the construction. Indeed, Washington's plam1ers exult whenever a contractor vomits up five thousand new houses on a rural tract that might better have remained in hay, for they see in this little besides thousands of new sales of labor, goods and services. Jobs open for an army of bulldozer operators, carpenters, plasterers, plumbers, electricians, well-diggers, bricklayers, truck drivers, foremen and day laborers. Then come the new householders, followed by their

needs. A shopping center a11d supennarket are huniedly built, and into this pours another

mmy of clerical and sales personnel, butchers, bakers, janitors, auto dealers, restaurateurs, waitresses, door-to-door salesmen, mail carriers, rookie cops, firemen, schoolteachers, medicine men of various degrees-the whole mck and stew of civilization's auxiliaries. Thus with every new development, jobs are bom, money is eamed, money is spent, and pretty soon everyone can afford a new television set, and

Washington calls this prosperity. That such prosperity is entirely material, possibly temporary and perhaps even

illusory, causes little concem at present. ...

The GI Bill Let's step back in time to consider the history of today's housing developments: The first good intentions which pave our modem Via Dolorosa were laid at war's

end. Conscious of the fact that some 13,000,000 young men risked disfigurement, dismembe1ment and death in circumstances not of their choosing, a grateful nation decided to show its appreciation to the survivors. The GI Bill of Rights was enacted, and one of the miicles provided an incentive for bankers to assume low-interest mortgages on houses purchased by veterans. The deal was, the bankers could recover a ce1iain guaranteed sum from the govemment in event of the veteran's default. The real-estate boys read the Bill, looked at one another in happy amazement, and the dry, rasping noise

they made rubbing their hands together could have been heard as far away as Tawi Tawi. Immediately, thanks to modem advertising, movable type, radio, television and other marvels, the absurdity was spread-and is still spread-that the veteran should own his home.

There was never the slightest justification for this nonsense. Never in the last 180

years of United States history was there an indication that a young man entering civil life from childhood or war should thereupon buy a house.

Young People Should Be Mobile It is and has always been the nature of young people to be mobile. Rare indeed is

the man whose life is a straight arrows-flight from the classroom to the job he'll hold until he dies. Many a retiring corporate officer put in his early years driving a bread tmck, then had a fling at a little unsuccessful business of his own, then wandered into the door-to­

door sale of cemetery lots before catching on at the buttonworks he was one day to direct. Owning property implies a certain pem1anence-precisely that quality a bright young man should, and does, lack. A young man should be mobile until he finds his proper path. A man with a house is nailed to its floor.

The housing article in the GI Bill, however, opened vast vistas. Not only was there a govemment guarantee to be had, but there was also land to be sold, and since the veteran had been led both by private and government propaganda to believe he should own his home, the remaining consideration in the hard, practical minds of the real-estate men was how much house could be offered for how little money. Or, to put it in the more usual way, how little house could be offered for how much money. Cost became the sole criterion of the first postwar house, and the first economy was in space.

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Tiny Homes

The typical postwar development operator was a man who figured how many houses he could possibly cram onto a piece of land and have the local zoning board hold still for it. Then he whistled up the bulldozers to knock down all the trees, bat the lumps off the terrain, and level the ensuing desolation. Then up went the houses, one after another, all alike, and none of those built immediately after the war had any more floor space than a moderately-priced, two-bedroom apartment. The dining room, the porch, the basement, and in many cases the attic, were dispensed with and disappeared from the American scene. The result was a little box on a cold concrete slab containing two bedrooms, bath, and an eating space the size of a broom closet tucked between the living room and the tiny kitchen. A nine-by-twelve rug spread across the largest room wall to

wall, and there was a sheet of plate glass in the living-room wall. That, the builder said, was the picture window. The picture it framed was of the box across the treeless street. The young Americans who moved into these cubicles were not, and are not, to know the gracious dignity of living that their parents knew in the big two- and tlu·ee-story family houses set well back on grassy lawns off the shady streets of, say, Watertown, New York. For them and their children, there would be only the box on its slab. The Cape Cod Rambler had anived.

It was inevitable that the development house was looked upon as an expedient by the young purchasers. It was most ce1iainly not the house of their dreams, nor was the ready-made neighborhood a thing to make the soul sing. It was, simply, the only thing available. They had no choice-they couldn't afford to build their house, nor were they given a choice of architecture. Instead, they were offered a choice between a house they didn't much want and the fantastic rents that bobbed to the surface as soon as the real­estate lobby torpedoed rent control. The development house was the only living space on the market priced just within the means of the young veterans.

It is still a maxim with responsible land agents that you should never purchase a home in which you do not intend to dwell for at least ten years. Moreover, they'll say, a house in which you have no equity cmmot be considered an investment. Despite these truths, houses were bought on the assumption they would serve only as brief campsites on life's wilderness trail, and incredibly enough, the govenunent in the past two years has given encouragement to this singular point of view. With govenm1ent blessing, purchasers are now being advised that buying a new house is like buying a new car. Old one too small for the growing family? Trade your old home in and buy a new one, the govenunent suggests, meanwhile helping the developers to continue their di1iy work in order that prosperity's bubble doesn't burst.

The first veterans' developments set a pattern for the builders. They sold the first houses like hotcakes, so they've been making hotcakes ever since. Todays new houses differ from those of 1947 only insofar as the materials are better and the workmen have now mastered their jobs. The basic living problems are unchanged-they're built 1ight in. These problems will remain unchanged unless the whole construction pattem changes; until a housing development becomes something more than just a lot of houses.

Problems of Housing Developments First of all, a housing development cmmot be called a community, for that word

implies a balanced society of men, women and children wherein work and pleasure are found and the needs of all the society's members are served. Housing developments offer no employment and as a general rule lack recreational areas, churches, schools, or other cohesive influences.

A second present and future national danger lies in the fact that developments are creating stratified societies of singular monotony in a nation whose triumph to date has depended on its lack of a stratified society, on the diversity of its individuals. Yet today it is possible to drive through the various developments that sunound one of our cities and tell at a glance the differing social strata.

Here is the $10,000 development-two bedrooms, low-priced cars, average income $75 a week after taxes, three children, average food budget $25 weekly; jobs vary from bus driver to house painter. Here is the $13,950 house-three bedrooms, available to foremen and successful newspapermen, medium-priced cars, two and a half children per average home; men's shoes cost $12 to $20 at this level. Next is the $17,450 split level, especially designed for split personalities, upper-medium cars; liquor bill is $25

weekly; inmates take fly-now-pay-later air rides to Europe. The appearance of several square miles of new housing units in a once rural area

adjacent to a city nonnally brings about a violent clash of interests. The young new householders, conscious only of their unmet needs, are intolerant

of the political milieu they've invaded. Indeed, if there was any cohesive force acting on typical development householders, it would be that of hatred. Well might they f01m a sort of mutual loathing society where the first target of their wrath is the builder, the second, the community around them.

For its pmi, the invaded conununity eyes the newcomers with something less than wild enthusiasm. The administrative problems handed a county government by the sudden appearance of several thousand new families are enough to make a strong man blench. And, when the guts of a city are deserted by a middle class that flocks to the suburbs, the tax problems created for the city fathers are even more frightening ....

A Lack of True Community The first and most imp01iant fact to realize about housing development neighbors

is that they are not really friends. They can never be friends; the best relationship they can achieve with one another is a superficial acquaintance based on service needs. Harold Mendelsolm, American University sociologist, put it thus:

"In housing developments patterns emerge which make for superficial

cohesiveness. It is entirely artificial, based on providing mutual conveniences, rather than on a basis of friendship, or on a basis of fundamental needs. A wants a hammer. He bonows one from B. If he is feuding with B, it makes no difference, he'll bonow one from C. D and E get into a mutual baby-sitting agreement. There is a car pool. All these are conveniences, just service needs. A man in a development has no need to socialize with the other men; his socializing takes place in the city where he works. Therefore, development men are apt to nod to one another, or bonow things from one another, and their relationships in bonowing hammers, say, are no deeper than the relationships you have with the man who comes to fix the plumbing in a city apartment. The development

women socialize because they can't escape one another-they're always out on the lawns

with their children and the children play together and therefore the mothers meet. But most of their acquaintance is based on service needs-the bonowed cup of sugar; the

spoonful of cornstarch for baby's sore bottom. They merely supply services to one another-the same services a city would nmmally supply through its stores and delivery services.

"Moreover," Mr. Mendelsohn said, "these people lack a basis of deep friendships with one another. They are too much alike in age, jobs, number of children, and so on. No1mally, you make friends where you live, or where you work. If you live in a community of people very much like yourselves, the pressure for making friends is great. But in an homogenous community, no one has anything to offer anyone else. What ideas are expressed? What values fmmed? What do you give to your neighbor? What can he give you?

"Development people," Mr. Mendelsohn answered himself, "have nothing to gain from one another. There is a great deal of neighboring among the women, but no real friendships emerge, for too-much-alike people have nothing to communicate to each other; no fundamentally different ideas are exchanged." ...

Suburbs and Children

"In a normal community," Mr. Mendelsolm said nostalgically, "there would be YMCA and church facilities for dances, sports and social life; there would be public libraries-even corner stores. In the modern development the houses are too small for young families. Today's families can't entertain at home now, and when today's children are teen-age, where do you suppose they will hold their parties and nonnal social life? They certainly won't be able to conduct it anywhere in a development that is simply a lot of houses.

"Today's housing developments ... destroy established cities and trade patterns, pose

dangerous problems for the areas they invade, and actually drive mad myriads

of housewives shut up in them."

"To a sociologist," Mr. Mendelsolm said, "a community is a cohesive entity that

supplies essential needs and services to all the people who live in it. In developments, we have already seen that churches are nonexistent or too few; that parks and recreational areas are most often missing. These developments are just bedrooms on the edge of town. What do you suppose will happen when the preschool children in all these places are ten

years older? Where will they go, and what will they do? You know perfectly well they will find all their pleasures outside the development.

"Since even the movies are often miles away in the shopping center at the other end of the development, you know the only thing for tomonow's children will be to bonow the family car. In other words, all their recreation will be away from home. There will be no chance for them to associate home with fun. To them, fun will always mean something that happens away from home-away from any sort of parental supervision.

"Not all the features of a development are bad," Mr. Mendelsohn said judiciously. "For one thing, there is no question that the development is a far healthier place to live

than the tenement or row house on a dingy, traffic-choked industrial street. Crime rates in

the development areas are insignificant at present. Of course, what the crime rate will be ten years from now when the children grow up with no place to meet or play under adult

supervision is something else again."

n 122 Majo,-·rrablems in American History Since 1945

'#/.DOCUMENTS

The tendency in thinking about the history of twentieth-century America is to take a decade-by-decade approach, seeing each decade as having distinctive problems, characteristics, and themes. If that approach has its weaknesses for other decades, its shortcomings are legion for the 1950s. For each theme that might encapsulate the decade, there is a countertheni.e; and some developments, such as the expansion of mass culture, had their roots in a much earlier time. One thing is certain: the years following World War II opened a great number of new opportunities to many Americans, the prosp,ect of which was both welcome and a bit frightening. The following documents illustrate·some. of the twitchiness in American culture as Americans made sense of

····their dangerous bounty. The years following the war brought the vaunted baby boom, but that vast group of youth seemed to threaten the culture. In Document 1, a writer for Life magazine remarks on the consumer muscle of teenagers in the 1950s. If that was the good news about youth (as makers of all sorts of goods discovered), Document 2, an article from Newsweek, offers some bad new about the dangers of juvenile delinquency. Commentators blamed mass culture-including movies, rock 'n' roll, and television-at least in part for declining moral values. Document 3, from U.S. News and World Report, describes some of the fears television in particular inspired about Americans' apparently increasing passivity. Like youth, sexuality became both a product to be celebrated and sold in the 1950s and a force to be feared. Although new organizations (and the famous "Kinsey Report") argued that gay and lesbian behavior was not outside the norm, homosexuals, like communists, became the target of inves­tigators searching for subversives in governments, as Document 4 illustrates. Some worries inspired quick answers, as Document 5 suggests in its advice on how to respond to a nuclt�ar attack.

l. Life Magazine Identifies the New Teen-age Market, 1959

To some people the vision of a leggy adolescent happily squealing over the latest ··fancy present fromDaddy is just another example of the way teen-agers are spoiled

to death these days. But to a growing number of businessmen the picture spells out the profitable fact that the American teen-agers have emerged as a big-time con• sumer in the U.S. economy. They are multiplying in numbers. They spend more and have more spend on them. And they have minds of their own about what they want. ·

The time is' past when a boy's chief possession was his bike and a girl's party wardrobe consisted of a fancy dress worn with a string of dime-store pearls. What

Depression-bred parents may still think of as luxuries are looked on as necessities by their offspring. Today teen-agers surround themselves with a fantastic array of garish and often expensive baubles and amusements. They own 10 million phonographs, over a million TV sets, 13 million cameras. Nobody knows how much parents spend on them for actual necessities nor to what extent teen-agers act as hidden per­suaders on th�ir parents' other buying habits. Counting only what is spent to satisfy

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Affluence and Discontent in 1.. /Os ·-._.,_/ 123

· · · their special teen-age demands, the youngsters and their parents will shell out about $10 billion this year, a billion niore than the total sales of GM.

Until recently businessmen have largely ignored the teen-age market. But now they are spending millions on advertising and razzle-dazzle promotional stunts. Their efforts so far seem only to have scratched the sut'face of a rich lode. In 1970, when the teen-age population expands from its present 18 million to 28 million, the market may be worth $ZO billion. If parents have any idea of organized revolt, it is already too late. Teen-age spending is so important that such action would send

. quivers through .the entire national econom'y .. .. At 17 Suzie Slattery of Van Nuys, Calif., fits any businessman's dream of the

ideal teen-age consumer. The daughter of a reasonably well-to-do TV announcer, Suzie costs her parents close to $4,000 a year, far more than average for the country but not much more than many of the upper middle income families of her town. In an expanding economy more and more teen-agers will be moving up into Suzie's bracket or be influenced as consumers by her example.

.

Last year $1,500 was spent on Suzie's clothes and $550 for her entertainmimt. · Her annual food bill comes to $900. She: pays $4 every two weeks at the beauty

·parlor. She has her own telephone and even has her own soda fountain in the house. On summer vacation days she loves to wander with her mother through fashionable department stores, picking out frocks or furnishings for her room or silver and expensive crockery for the hope chest she has already started.

As a high school graduation present, Suzie was given a holiday cruise to Hawaii and is now in the midst of a new clothes-buying spree for college. Her parents' con­stant indulgence has not spoiled Suzie. She takes for granted all the luxuries that surround her because she has had them all her life. But she also has a good mind and some serious interests. A top student in her school, she is entering Occidental College this fall and will major in political science. . . .

. ® · ..

. . . · � ·

Some Fascinating Facts About a Booming Market · ·

FOOD: Teen-agers eat 20% more than adults. They down 3Y2 billion quarts of ·milk every year, almost four times as much as is drunk by the infant population under 1. Teen-agers are a main prop of the ice cream industry, 'gobble 145 million •

. . c gallons a year. . . �

BEAUTY CARE: Teen-agers spent $20 million on lipstick last year; $25 million • on deodorants (a fifth of total sold), $9 million on home permanents. Male teen-agers � own 2 million electric razors. ENTERTAINMENT: Teen-agers lay out more than $1.5 billion a year for enter- 4 tainment. They spend about $75 million on single pop records. Although they create new musical idols, they are staunchly faithful to the old. Elvis Presley, still their favorite, has sold 25 million copies of single records in {our years, an all-time high. HOMEMAKERS: Major items like furniture and silver are moving into the teen-age market because of growing number of teen-age marriages. One third of all 18- and 19-year-old girls are already married. More than 600,000 teen- will be married this year. Teen-agers are now starting hope chests at 15.

124 · Major Pr ... v,ems in American History Since 1945

2. Newsweek Decries the Problem . of Dangerous Teens, 1955 · -

Call him "Tarzan." That's what he calls himself. �lis real

. na�e is Frank Santana and he looks like a malnourished mouse but

he tlunk� he s qmte a gu�-es�ecially when he's carrying a gun. . ' A shm, . dark, adenotdal kid of 17, he was strutting down a street in the Bronx

last week wtth a_ dozen members ?f his gang, the Navajos. They were in uniform.

The� v._rore blue Jeans and leather Jackets, trimmed in yellow and emblazoned with the mstgne

_ of the gang, a portrait of a Plains Indian. And they were looking for

Golden Gumeas. The Golden Guineas are a gang of teen-agers, too. The day before a group of them had caught "Tarzan" and given him a pushing around. The Navajos wanted revenge.

· ·

Model

Wi�liam Blankenship Jr., 15, came up the street. He wasn't a Navajo or a Golden Gumea. He wasn't a mem�er of any gang. He was a model student in high school the. son of a research cherrust who spent his spare time working to prevent juvenil� · delmquency. ·

"Tarzan" gave his_ gun, a .32-caliber Italian automatic, to a lieutenant to hold.

He grabbed Blankenshtp and accused him of being a Golden Guinea. The lieutenant Ralp

,� Fal�on, _I 6, "Superman," waved the gun menacingly.

' Don t pomt that gun at me," cried Blankenship.

"Superman" put the gun in his belt. ·

"Don't chicken out," then screamed "Tarzan" at "Superman." He grabb�d the gun and fired, killing Blankenship. The NavaJOS scattered. -,

The cops found 'Tarzan" at his apartment. They found the gun in the bathroom water tank. They also found a pair of brass knuckles.

"Why did you shoot the kid?" the policemen asked. "Tarzan" looked at his fists. "I didn't want to bang up these knu�kles," he said. "I'm a boxer you know s

� used a gun;: He added with an air of apology: "I'm not very good' at street fi�ht� mg, anyway. �

Jungle

It too� a crime as sensel�s.s as the murder of young Blankenship last we�k to make Amencans aware of a chilling fact: In several of the nation's cities· and arti 1 1 · N Yi k d Chi · · ·

' P cu ar Y Ill e': or an cago, Juverule delinquency is actually becoming organized gang-

stensm. The old Prohibition mobs are gone Yet some of the c·ti· · · 1

WI . . . · . 1 es remam Jung es.

1ere the Prohtbttlon mobsters prowled, teen-age hoodlums, organized like armies, hav� taken �ver.1 'ru:e �?t just "bad kids." They are criminals. And they don't hesitate to kill. 1. rohJbJtion mobsters killed for a ouroose. The teen-al!ers often

) AjJluence and Discontent in the I! 125

will kill simply for the sake of killing or because, like Frank Santana, they don't want to "chicken out. '; .. .

Juvenile delinquents come from every class of society, but tile teen-age gang is a phenomenon of the slums. And it is a phenomenon also of tile so�called minority groups. Sociologists say the gangs give tile youngsters a sense of status and a feeling of "belonging." The trouble is, they can become vicious.

Escaped

"Gangs," says Cook County Sheriff Joseph D. Lohman, a professional criminologist and· a onetime professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, "attract young­sters because iliey fill a need iliat is lacking in society. They provide im escape from the boredom and distasteful conditions iliat parents and schools impose. There is excitement in gang conflict and action. There are new and challenging experiences. The gang solves a boy's problems by offering what parents and society fail to pro­vide the restless, growing adolescent."

'The gangs range in size from a doz((n youngsters to 50 or 100 or even 250. All ilie members of each gang live in tile same neighborhood; usually, they are from the same racial group. They give iliemselves names like the Navajos, tile Golden Guineas, fue Jolly Gents, the Baldies, ilie Redwings. And tiley call themselves social clubs or athletic clubs.

Trouble Makers

In New York, the police say, there are about 100 teen-age gangs. Of these, about 50

are listed by the cops as "active." This means they are trouble makers. They wage wars in the streets with oilie.r gangs and they commit crimes.

Like Frank Santana's Navajos, the gangs usually wear un1forms:-in New York, blue jeans and leather jackets; in Chicago, pegged trousers and black Ike jackets.

The Chicago teen-age hoods also affect ducktail haircuts:

The leaders are usually electt!d. And decisions usually are made by majority vote. The organization is rarely cohesive. Members come and go. They move out of ilie neighborhood; they go into ilie Army; they get married, Sometimes, gangs will

disintegrate abnost overnight. A few montils later, a new gang will spring up, with many of the old members, but with a new name, a new insigne, and new leaders.

By and large, the gangs do not admit girls. Instead, they have girls' auxiliaties.

In Chicago, for example, the Commanders have the Commandettes; the Hawks have the Squaws; the Mum-Checks have the Mum-Chicks. The girls also dress in uniform-in Chicago, blue jeans and jackets. Says one: "It's hard for girls to wear skirts when we sit on ilie comer with the guys. We'd get our skirts dirty."

. Until last year, many of the Chicago gang girls wore fueir hair pony-tail style.

Now they wear it bobbed.

Rnmhle

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126 . ..____

Major Problems in American History Since 1945

belonging to one gang will dance with a member of the other. The first gang's honor is hurt. So there will be a rumble. The ho;ds will fight out in the streets, sometimes with guns. And there will be casualties.

The gangs are as touchy as nations about their territories. When a gang from one neighborhood walks through another, that's considered an invasion and an act of war .. ..

Real guns are so easy to come by that few. of the teen-age hoods bother with zip-guns now.

YV;hen boy and girl gang members start going steady, they exchange jackets or rings. In Chicago, the gang code demands that a boy seldom travel with his girl except in a car, called a "short." Frequently the boys steal the cars, in which case they are called "hot shorts." .

At one suburban Chicago high school last winter, nearly 100 boys and girls crammed into fifteen shorts, most of them hot, and systemically raided and demol­ished a swanky North Shore dining place, causing damage that was estimated by police at nearly $250,000. "When they asked me to go along with them, I had to," a gang member explained. "If I didn't go along, they'd know I was chicken and I couldn't live around here any more."

One night last month, nearly 40 young toughs crashed a Delta Upsilon fraternity· dance at the University of Chicago, hurled bottles, bricks, and clubs, stabbed a stu-. dent in the back and beat up ten others. "They had it coming to them," a Mum-Check explained. "They always acted so superior. They thought they were· better than us because they-went to college. We felt it was about time to take care of them anyway."

Two weeks ago, after a rumor got around that one gang [member] was dating the girl friend of another gang's leader, the second gang grabbed baseball bats and raced tluough the city streets in two cars seeking revenge. They savagely slugged · two boys, only to discover that neither boy was a member of the offending mob.

"Protection" Steal-a-car clubs of six to eight teen-agers have become increasingly popular in Chicago. So has the practice of girl mobsters beating up o.ther girls simply for laughs. The ·girl hoods also have adopted the practice of beating up motorists. One girl will pl�y the part of a hitchhiker. When a car stops for her, the other girls will swarm out of hiding and start pummeling the driver.

In elementary and high schools in both New York and Chicago, the hoods fre­quently will fore� other students to pay them "protection money." ·several youngsters who refused have been stabbed or slugged. Last year, one of the hoods was killed by three boys who got tired of paying hini for "protection. "

Says a thoughtful juvenile expert: "These street-comer group societies are organ­ized on a system of values opposed to the values of their parents and society. We can't r 1 them through conventional means. The gangs are hostile to all organized help. . ) are systematically attacking society. It's not an individual problem bu' group problem. Perhaps the viciousness of mankind in the past few decades h

. Affluence and Discontent i> . ..._____,i950s

· What Answer?

. �oi?e jurists be�eve that police action is the only answer to the teen-age gangs. Others

· InSI�t that b:atmg_ up the teen-agers only makes them more antisocial. Officiall th�t IS the attitude m New York. The city has established a Youth Board which worf' With th� gangs and attempts to direct them from antisocial to social e�ds. s

This week, Henry Epstein, Deputy 1;1ayor of New York, ·recommended to Mayor Robert F. Wagner that tlte work of tlte Youth Board be extended ·A d h recommended, also, that the city appropriate approximately $300 OOO t. n_ e

age · k' . , o pnvate nc1es wor mg to prevent delmquency among youth. ·

3. U.S. News and World ReportAssesses the Perils of Mass Culture and the Evils of Television, 1955

The ?i): :st �f �e new forces in American life tbday is televisi()n. There has been nothi.ng e �t m �e postwar d_ecade, or in many decades before that-perhaps not SI�ce mvention of the pnnting press. Even radio; by contrast, was a placid expenence. ·

. · Th� impac f TV on tl1is country has been so massive that Americans are still wondermg "':hat hi\�em. _Has the effect been good or bad? What pe.rinanent effects .-o_n the �mer�can way�f hfe may·be expected? These and oilier questions are con-Sidered m this survey. '\ ·.

Probably there are s�e people in the U.S. who have never seen a television pro�r�m, but you wou_ld ha¥�� go into tlte �ills to find them. 1\vo out of tluee U.S. f�rruhes no� own tlteir own .,�s, or are paymg for them. In 32 million homes, TV dtals are fhcked on a�d �ff, fr'� channel to channel, at least 100 million times between 8 A.M. and rrudmght. -,

Everywhere, childr�n sit with e}� glued to screens-for tltr�e to four hours a day on the average. Then parents use � even more time mesmerized by tltis new marvel-or monster. They have spent IS\: lion dollars to look since 1946. Now, after nearly 10 years of TV, peop · re asking: "What hath TV ht? Wh t · th' h' d · . wroug . . a IS 1s t mg omg to us?". -�

. Solid answers to tltis question are very hardl\ get. Pollsters, sociologists, doc-tors, te�chers, the TV people themselves come up'li� ith more contradictions titan conclusiOns whenever they start asking. · "�t, ·

But almost everybody has an opinion and wants to Ff]J.: it. . What do the�e ?pinions add �p to? People have stro��views. Here are some Widely held ..convictions, both agamst and for television: \, ·

Th�t �V has kept people fr�� go�ng places and doing tfft;ngs, from reading, �rom thinking for themselves. Yet 1t IS srud also that TV has taken .V�ers vicario 1 �nto strang� and fas_ci�a�ng spots and situations, brought distinguish"ed and ench��:-mg people mto the_Ir livmg rooms, given them a new perspective. \ Th_at TV has mterfered with schooling, kept children from Iearding to read and wnte, weakened their eyesight and softened their muscle t there are tho�e who hold that TV has made America's youngsters more "Iu,v.Jing" about life,

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"Leave It to ·Beaver" and .. Ozzie and

Harriet":

American Families in the 1950s

0 UR mMt powufulri>lons ohradillonol lamil;., d<rive from lmag�s that au still ddlverro to our hom�s in countless reruns of 1950s td�vision sit-coms. When li�rals and con�rvatives debate family policy, [or example, the Issue is often framed In terms of how many "Ozz:ie and Harriet• families arc ldt in America. U�rals com­pute the percentage of total ho�holds that contain a breadwinner [ather, a full-time homemaker mother, and dependent children, pro­claiming that fewer than 10 percent o[ American families meet the "Ozzie and Harriet• or •uave It to lkaver• model. Co�rvatives counter that mou than half of all mothers with preschool children dthu au not employed or are employed only part-time: They cite polls showing that most working mothers would like to spend more time with their childun and periodically announce that the Nelsons au "making a comeback," in popular opinion If not in real numbers.•

Since everyone admitS that nontraditional families are now 11 �a­jority, why this obsessive concern to establish 11 higher or a lower fig­uu? U�rals seem. to think that unlr.ss they can prove the "leave It to Jkavu" family Is on an irreversible slide toward extinction, they cannot justify Introducing new family definitions and social policies. Conservatives believe that if they can demonstrate the traditional ramily is alive and well, although endangered by policies that rewa� two-�amer famili�s and single par�nts, they can pass measures to re­vive the sc�ming placidity and prosperi�y or the 1950s, associated In many people'S minds with the relative stability of marriage, gender

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24 THE WAY W£ NEVER WERE

rol�s. and family lif� In that decade. U thr 1950s family nlsttd today, both sidrs s.ttm to assumt:, wt: would not havt: tht: contt:mporary so­cial dilemmas that cau� such dt:batt:.

At first glancr, thr figu�s �em to justify this assumption. The 1950s was a profamily �riod i£ the� evu was onr. Rat� of divorce and illegitimacy we� half what they a� today; marriage was almost universally prai�; the family was rvrrywhert: hailed as the most basic institution in society; and a massivr baby boom, among all classrs and ethnic groups, made America a "child-cente�d" society. Births I'OSf: hom a low of 18 ... per 1,000 women during the Dt:p�s­sion to a high of 25.3 per 1,000 in 1957. "The birth rate for thinl child�n 'doubled betwren 1910 and 1960, and that for fourth chil­d�n tripled. "1

In �trospect, thr 1950s also sam a time of innocence and con­srnsus: Gang watfa� among youths did not I� to drive-by shoot­ings; the crack epidemic had not yet hit; di&cipline problems in the schools wert minor; no ·�cular humanist" movement opposed the 195'1 addition of the words undtr God to the Pledge of Allegiance; and 90 percent of all school levirs we� approved by voters. Intro­duction of tht polio vaccine in 195 .. was the most dramatic of many medical advanc� that improved the quality of life for child�n.

The profamily features of this decade we� bolste�d by lmp�ive economic lmpronments for vast numbeB of Americans. Between 1945 and 1960, the gross national product g�w by almost 250 per­cent and per capita Income by 3� pen:rnt. Housing starts exploded after the war, peaking at 1,65 million in 1955 and �mainh1g abon 1.5 million a year for the rest of the decade; the lncmase in single­family homrownrrshlp between 19-% and 1956 outstripped the in­c� during the entl� p�crdlng crntury and a half. By 1960, 62 pen:rnt of Am�rican famlli� owned their own homes, in contrast to H percent in 1910. Eighty-8ve pc:n:ent of the new hom� we� built ln the suburbs, whe� the �uclear family found new possibilitirs for privacy and togethernrss. W hile middle-class Americans we� the prime beneHciari� of the building boom, substanlial numbers of white working-class Americans mo\ted out of the cities into afford­able dndopments, such as uviuown.1

Mo�ny working-class families also movtd Into the middle class. The number of salaried workers inc�� by 61 percent between 19H and 1957. By the mid-1950s, nearly 60 percent of the popula­tion had what was labeled a middle-class Income level (between SJ,I""l and SIO,OOO in constant dollars), compa�d to only 31 per-

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"lEAV( IT TO !lEAVER" AND "OlliE ANO HARRttT" 25

cent in the "prosperous twenli�," bdo� the Great �p�sslon. By 1960, thiny-one mi1lion or the nation� [orty-four million families owned thdr own home, 87 perct:nt had a television, and 75 percent possessed a car. The number of people with discretionary income ,- 1: 1 .

doubled during the 1950s. • ,�;ii; For most Americans, lhe most salient symbol and Immediate ben­

eficiary or thdr newfound prosperity was lhe nuclear family. The biggest boom in consumer spending, for example, was In hQusehold goods. Food spending rose by only 33 percent In the five years fol­lowing the Second World War, and clothing expenditures rose by 20 percent, but purchases or household furnishings and _applianc� climbed 240 percent .. "Nearly the entire Increase In the gross national product In the mid-19505 was due to Increased spending on con­sumer durables and rtSidentlal construcLion," most o[ it oriented to­want lhe nuclear family.'

Putting their mouths where their money was, Americans consis­tently tQid pollsters that home and family were the wellsprings of their happiness and �lf-rstccm. Cultural historian David Man: ar., gues that p�ar fantasies or sophisticated' urban "elegance," epito­mized by the high-� penthouse apartmenl, gave way in the 1950s to a mo� modrst vision or utopia: a single-family house and a car. The emotional dimensions of· utopia, howt:ver, were unbounded. When respondents to a 1955 marriage study ·we� asked what they thought they had sacrificed by marrying and raising a family, an overwhelming majority of them replied, 'Nothing.'" Less than 10 percent of Americans believed that an unmarrtcd person could be happy. As one popular advice book Intoned: "The family Is the center or your living. If lt isn't, you'n gone far astray ....

The Novelty of the 1950s Family

In fact, the "tfaditional" family of the 19505 was a qualitatively new phenomenon. At the end of the 1910s, all the trends characterizing the �t or ihc twenlicth century suddenly �ve� themselves: For the lirst lime in mort than one hundmi years, the age for marriage and motherhood fell, fertility incru.o:cd, divorce ratrs declintd, and women's dcgrte of educational parity with men dropped sharply. In a period or lrss than ten years, the proportion or never-married persons declined by as much as it had during the entire p�vious half ccnturv.7

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16 THE WAY WE NEVER WERE

At the time, most �ople understood the 1950s family to be a new invention. The Great Depression and the Second World War had re­

inforced extended family tics, but in way s that were ex�rienced by most �ople as stultifying and oppressive. As one c:hild or the De­pression later put it, "The Wahoos" tdevision series of the 1970s did not show what family life in the 1930s. was really like: "It wasn't a big family sitting around a table radio and everybody saying goodnight while Bing Crosby crooned 'Pennia from Heavt:n."' On top of Depression�ra family tensions had come the painful family separa­tions and housing shortages of the war y ears: By 1947, ·six miUion American families were sharing housing, and postwar family coun­selors warned of a widespread marilal cpsis caused by conflicts be­tween the generations. A 19iB Man:h oJTimt! lilm, "Marriage and Di­vorce," declared: "No home Is big enough to house two familtes, par­ticularly two of different generations, with opposite theories on. child training . "11

During the 1950s, Rims and television plays, such as "Marty," showed �ople working through conflicts between marital loyalties and older kin, �er group, or community tics; regrttfully but deci­sively, these conOicts. were almost invariably "resolved in favor of the heterosexual couple rather than the claims or extended kinship net­works, ... homosociability and friendship." .Talcott Parsons and other sociologists argued that modem industrial society required the fam­ily to jettison traditional productive functions a�d wid

_er kin ties in

order to s�cializ:e in emotional nurturance, chaldreanng, and pro­duction of a modem personality. Social workers "endorsed nuclear family separateness and looked suspiciously on active extended­family networks. "9

Popular commenlators urged y oung families to adopt a "mode':"" stance and strike out on their own, and with the return or prospcnty, most did. By the early 1950s, newlyweds not only were establishing single-family homes at an earlier age and a more rapid rate than ever bdore but also were increasingly moving to the suburbs, away from the dose scrutiny of the dder generation.

For the first time in American history. moreover, such average trends did not disguise sharp variations by class, race, and ethnic group. Pt:ople married at a younger age, bore their children earli�r and closer together, completed their families by the time they were m

their late twenties, and ex�rienced a longer �riod living together as

a couple ahcr their children ldt home. The traditional range or ac-

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"LEAVE IT TO BEAVEit" AND "OUIE A'm HARRIET' 27

ceptable family behaviors-even the range In the acceplable number and timing of children-narrowed substantially.'0

The values of 1950s families also were new. The emphasis on pro- . dudng a whole world of satisfaction, amusement, and inventiveness .. within the nuclear family had no prectdents. Historian Elaine Tyler ,' :;�; May comments: "T he legendary f;Jmily of the 1950s ... was not, as common wisdom tells us, the last gasp of 'traditional' family life with deep roots in the past. Rather, it was the first wholehraned effort to create a home that would fulfill vinually all Its members' personal needs through an energized and expressive personal life. "11

·

Beneath a superficial revival of Victorian domesticity and gender distinctions, a novel reamngt.ment of family Ideals and male-female relations was accomplished. For women, this Involved a reduction In the moral as�ct of domesticity and an expansion of Its orienlatiori toward personal service. Nineteenth-century middle-class women had cheerfully left housework to servants, yetl950s women of all classes created makework In �heir homes and felt guilty when they did not do everything for themselves. The amount of time �omen s�nt doing housework actually lnm:�d during the 1950s, despite the advent of convenience foods and new, labor-saving appliances; child care absorbed more than twice as much time u it had In the 1920s. By the mid-19505, advenisers' surveys reported on a growing tendency among women to find "housework a medium of exprtSSlon for ... (their I femininity and Individuality. "11 .

For the lirst time, men as well as women were encouraged to root their ldentlty and �If-image In familial and parenlal roles. The nov­elty of these family and gender values can be seen In t�e dramatic postwar transformation of movie themes. Historian Peter Blskind writes that almost every major male star who had pla�d tough lon­ers In the 1930s and 1910s "took the roles "with which he was syn­onymous and transformed them, In the fifties, Into neurollcs or psy­chotics." In these films, "men belonged at home, not on the strttts or out on the prairie, ... nol alone or hanging out with other men." The women who got men to settle down had to promise enough sex to com�te with "bad" women, but ultimately they provided it only in the marital bedroom and only In return for some help fixing up the housc:.u

Pu�lic images of Hollywood stars were consciously reworked to show their commitment to marriage and stability. Arter 1947, for ex­ample, the Actors' Guild orgaJ1iZed "a series or unprecedented

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28 TllE WAY WE NEV£R WERE

spteches ... to � given to civic groups around the country, emphasiz­Ing that th� stars now embodied the rtjuvenat�d family life unfolding In the suburbs." Ronald Rugan� dd�n� of actors' family values was r:specially "stirring," noted on� rtport�r. but female stars, unlike Rea­gan and othn male stars, w�K oblig�d to livr: the n�w valur:s as w�ll as propagandize them. joan Crawford, for example, one of the brash, tough, indeptndent ltading ladits of the prewar �ra, was flOW pic­

tured as a d�votal mothr:r wh� �x appeal and glamour did not prt­vent hn from doing hu own ho�work. She �d for picturts mop­pingJloors and gav� interviews about her childrtaring philosophy.••

The "good Ilk" In the 1950s, historian Clifford Clark points out, made the family "the focus of fun and n:crtation." Th� ranch house, an:hittttun�l �mbodiment of this new ideal, discarded the oldr:r pri­vacy o[ the kitchen, den, and sewing room (n:prtstntative or separate sphr:rts for men and women) bullntroduced new privacy and luxury into the mast�r �droom. There was an unpr�cedented "glorification o[ self-indulgence" in family life. Formality was discarded in favor o[ "livability," "comfort," and "convenience." A contradiction in terms in earlier ptriods, "the sexually chargal, child-centered family took its place at the center or the postwar American drtam. ""

On television, . David Marc comments, all the "normal" famill�s .

moved to the suburbs during the 1950s. Popular culture turned such suburban ramilir:s Into capitalism� answr:r to the Communist threat. In his famous "kitchen debate" with Nikita Khrushchev in 1959, Richard Nixon asserted that the suptriority or capitalism over com­munism was embodied not in ideology or military might but in th� comforts of th� suburban home, "dr:signed to mak� ihings easier for our women."16

Acceptance or domesticity WtJS the mark or middle-class status and upward mobility. In sit-com families, a middle-class man's work was totally lrrtlevant to his identity; by the same token, thr: problems or working-class ramilir:s did not lie in their economic situation but in their failun: to create harmonious g�nder rolr:s. Working-class and ethnic mr:n on tdevision had one defining characteristic: They wert unable to control their wivr:s. The families of middle-class men, by contrast, were generally wdl behavedY

Not only was the 1950s family a m:w Invention; it was also a his­torical nuke, based on a unique and temporary conjuncture or eco­nomic, social, and political (actors. During the war, Americans had saved at a rate mort than thrt� timr:s higher than that In the dd:ad�s bcfor� or sine�. Their buying pow�r was further enhanc�d by Amer-

"LEAV1: IT TO BEAVER" AND "OUIE AND HARRIET" 29

lea� extlllordinary com�titive adva�tage at the end of the war, when every other industrial power was devastated by the experienc::.e. This privileged economic position sustained both a trtmendous �xpan� sion or middle-class managem�nt occupations and a n�w ho"�y­moon �tw��n manag�m�nl and organind labor: During the 1 CJ�. real wagr:s incrr:�d by mort than they had in the �ntirr: previous half c�ntury. 11

The impact or such prosperity on family formation and stability was magnifial by the role or government, which could afford to be g�nr:rous with education btnelits, housing loans, highway and �w�r construction, and job training. All this allowed most middl�-class Am�ricans, and a larg� number of working-class ones, to adopt fam­Ily valur:s and stn�tcgies that assumalthe availability of cheap r:n�rgy. low-int�rtst home loans, �xpanding educational and occupational opportuniti�s. and steady employrn�nt. Th� e�ctations encour­ag�d �arly marriag�. early childbearing, expansion of consum�r d�bt, and rtsidr:ntial pan�ms that required long commutes to work--all patt�ms that would bttom� highly problematic by th� 1970s, as we shall �� in chapt�rs 8 and 11.

A Compl�x Reality: 1950s Poverty, Diversity, and Social Change

Even asid� from the exceptional and ephem�ral nature of the condi- . lions that supported th�m. 1950s family strategies and valu�s orru no solution to the discontents that und�rlie cont�mporary romanti­cization of the "good old day s." The rt:ality of th� families was far

more painful and compl�x than the siluation-commy r�runs or th� upurgatm memories or the nostalgic would sugg�st. Contrary to popular opinion. "uave It to Dr:av�r" was not a documentary.

In the first plac�. not all American famili�s sharal in th� consum�r �xpansiqn that providm Hotpaint appliances for june Cl�aver� kitch�n and a vacuum cleaner for Donna Ston�. A full 25 �rcent of Amuicans, forty to fifty million people, w�rr: poor in the mid-1950s, and in the abstnc� of food sLamps and housing programs, this ponrty was staring. Evrn at the �nd of the 1950s, a third of Am�ri­can children wert: poor. Sixty percent of Americans over sixty-fiv� had incom�s below $1.� in 1958, consid�rably below the $3,000 to $10,000 l�vd consid�r�d to rtp�nt middl�-class status. A ma-

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30 THE WAY WE NEVER WERE

jorily of elders also lacked medical insurance. Only hair the popula­tion had savings in 1959; one-quarter of the population had no liq­uid assets at all. Even when we consider only native-born, white fam­ilies, one-third could not get by on the income of the household head.19

In the second place, real life was not so white as it was on televi­sion. Television, comments historian Ella Taylor, increasingly ig­nored cuhural diversity, adopting "the mollo 'least objectionable pro­gramming,' which gave rise to those least objectionable families, the Cleavers, the Nelsons and the Andersons." Such families were so completely whitt and Anglo-Saxon that even the Hispanic g�rdener In "Father Knows lkst" went by the name of Frank Smith. But con­

trary to the all-whitt lineup on the television networks and the streets or suburbia, the 195os saw a major transformation in the eth­nic composition or America. Mort Mexican immigrants entered the United States in the two decades after the Second World War than in

. the entire previous one hundred years. Prior to the war, most blacks and Mexican-Americans lived in rural areas, and three-fourths of blacks livtd in the South. By 1960, a niajority of blacks resided in the North, and 80 pen:ent of both blacks and Mexican-Americans lived in citiu. Postwar Puerto Rican immigration was so massive that by 1960 more Puerto Ricans lived in New York than in Sanjuan.l0

These minorities were almost entirely excluded from the gains and privileges accordtd white middle-class families. The june Cleaver or Donna Stone homr:maktr rolr: was not availablr: to thr: morr: than 40 pen:enl of black womr:n wilh small children who worked outside the home. Twenty-llve percent of these women headed their own house­holds, but tven minorities who conformed to the dominant family form facr:d conditions quite unlike those portrayed on tdr:vision. The poverty rate of two-parent black families was more than 50 per­cent, approximately thr: same as that of one-parent black ones. Mi­grant workers suffered "near medinal" deprivations, while termina­tion and relocation pollcir:s wert: employed against Native Americans to get thr:m to give up trt:aty rights.11

African Americans In the South facrd systematic, lc:gally sanc­tlonc:d segregation and pervasive brutality. and those in the North were·excluded by rtstrictive covenants and rtdlinlng from many ben­efits of the rconomic expansion that their labor hdprd sustain. Whit s resisted , wUh harassment and violence, the aurmpts of blac s to participate in the Arrieri<;an family dream. When Harvey Clar trird to move into Cicero, Illinois, in 1951, a mob of 'J,OOO

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) -LEAVE IT TO BEAVER" AND "OUIE AND HARRIEr 31

whitr:s sprnt four days tearing his apartment apart while policr: stood by and joked with thrm. In 1953, the first black family movrd into Chicagos Trumbull Park public housing projrct; neighbors "hurled stones and tomaJocs" and trashr:d stores that sold groceries to the " new residents. In Detroit, lift magazine reported in 1957, "10,ooo<J, Negroes work at the Ford plant in nearby Dearborn, lbutl not one ' Nc:gro can livr in Dearborn itsclf:"U

More Complexities: Repression, Anxiety, Unhappiness, and ConHict

The happy, homogr:neous familir:s that we •remr:mber" from the 1950s were thus partly a result of the mr:dias denial of diversity. But even among sectors or the population where the "ltast objectionable" families did prevail, their values and behaviors were not entirt:ly a

spontaneous, joyful rtaction to prosperity. If suburban 111nch houses and family barbccurs were the carrots offered to white middle-class families that adopted the new norms, there was also a stick.

Women's retreat to housewifery. for example, was in many cases not freely chosen. During the war, thousands or woinrn had entertd new jobs, gained new skills, joined unions, and fought against job discrimination. Although 95 percrnt of the new women employees had cxprctrd when they wr:rt first hired to quit work at the end of the war, by 19-t5 almost an equally overwhelming majority did not want to give up their indeprndence, responsibility, and Income, and expressed the desirt: to continue working. n

Aftrr the war, however, writrs one rt:cent student of postwar 11!­

construction, "management wrnt to extraordinary lengths to purge women workers from the auto plants," as well as from other 'high­paying and nontraditional Jobs. As It turnr:d out, in

· most cases

women wen not prrmanently expelltd from the labor force but were merely downgraded to lower-paid, "female" jobs. Evrn at the end of the purge, there were more women working than before the war, and by 1952 there were two million more wives at work than at the peak of wartime production. The jobs available to these women, howevrr, lacked the pay and the challenges that had made wanime work so

salisfying, encouraging womrn to define thrmselves In terms of home and family even when ,they wert: working.11

Vehement auacks wen: launched against women who did not ac-

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32 THE WAY WE NEVER WERE

c�pt such sdf-ddiniUons. In th� l9471K.stsdkr, The Modem· Woman: Tht losl 5rx, Marynia Farnham and F�rdinand lund\Krg dfscri\Kd r�minism liS a ·dr:�p illn�." call�d th� notion of an ind��nd�nt woman a •contradiction in tfrms," and accuS(:d wom�n who sought �ducational or r:mploym�nt tquality of �ngaging in symbolic •castra­tion" of m�n. As sociologist David Rir:sman not�d. a woman's failurt to \Kar childrtn w�nt from \King •a social disadvantagr: and som�­tlmts a personal trag�dy" In thr: ninr:tr:r:nth cr:ntury to \King a ·quasi-pervr:rsion" in the 1950s. The conOicting messages aimed at womr:n S(:emal almost calculated to d�moralizr:: At the same· time as th�y la\K)r:d women •unnatural" if they did not S(:ek fuUillmtnt In motherhood, psychologists and popular writers insisted that most modem social ills could be traced to dominccrtng mothcrs who in­vr:stcd too much encrgy and emotion In thdr childrtn. Womcn wc� told that •no Other txperitncc in lire ... will providt the same S(:nse of fulfillment, or happiness, of complete pervading contentment" as motherhood. But soon arttr ddivtry they we� askcd, •Which are you first o( all, Wife or Mother?" and wamcd against the tendr:ncy to be •too much mother, too little wife. "u

Wom�n who could not walk the fine lint betwccq nurturing motherhood and castrating ·momism," or who had trouble adjusting . to •creative homemaking," w�re labelcd neurotic, perverted, or schizophrtnlc. A �cr:nt study of hospitalizcd ·schizophrtnic" women In the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1950s condudr:s that imtltulionalization . and sometimes elcctric shock treatmr:nts wr:� used to fon:t women to accept thtlr domestic roles and their husbands' dictatt5. Shock treatments also wcrt �commcnd�d for womcn who sought abortion, on the assumption that failure to want a baby signifi�d dangcrous emotional disturbance. 1'

All women, cven sumingly docile ones, wert de�ply mlstrustcd. T h�y wcrt frtquendy denkd the right to serve on juries, conv�y property. make contracts, take out credit cards In their own name, or establish residence. A 1954 article in Esqulrr: called working wives a •menace"; a Lift author termcd marrlcd womcns cmploymcnt a •dis­ease." Women wcrt excluded from S(:vt:ral professions, and some statts cven gave husbands total control over family finances.17 Thr:rt wert not many �rmissible altemativts to baking brownir:s, cx�ri­menling with new canned soups, and gelling rid of stains around the collar.

Men wert also pressured Into acceptable family roles, since lack of a suitable wjfe could mean the loss of a job or promotion for a

"lEAVE IT TO REAVER" AND "OUIE AND HARRIEr 33

middlr-class man. 8achdor5 wert catrgorlzed as •immatu�." •infan­tile," "nan:issistic," "deviant," or evcn •pathological:" Family advicr �x�rt Paul landis argurd: ·Except for the sick, the badly crippled, :•, .

thr ddormcd, the emotionally warped and the: mentally defcctivc, al� ;:�1;, most cvcryonr has an opportunity (and, by clar implication, a duty! ' to marry. "Jtl

Familits in the 1950s were products o£ even mo� direct repres­sion. Cold war anxieties mergcd with concerns about the expanded sexuality o( family life: and the commc:rcial world to create what one authority calls the domestic version of-George F. Kennan� contain­ment policy toward the Soviet Union: A "normal" family· and vigilanr mother became the "front line" of defense against treason; anticom­munists linkcd deviant family or suual behavior to sedition. The FBI and other govemmr:nt agencies instituted unpn:ccdentcd state intrusion into private life under the guise of investigating subvcr­sives. Gay baiting was almost as widesprud and every bit as vicious as rcd baitlng.l9

The Civil Service Commission fircd 2,611 persons as "S(:curity risks" and reported that 4,Jn others resign� under the pressure of Investigations that askallrading questions of thdr neighbors and In­quired into the books they rr.ad or the music to which they listc:m:d. In this atmosphert, movie producer joel Schumacher recalls, •No onr told the truth .... Ptople prttendcd they we�n't unfaithful. They pretr:ndal that they weren't homosexual. They pretended that they wr:rtn't horrible. "JO

Even for people not directly cocn:c:d lnto conformity by racial, political, or personal �p�ssion, the tum toward familits was in many cases more a ddensive move than a purely affirmative act. Some men and women entered loveless maniages in order to (ore­stall attacks about rtal or suspected homosexuality or lesbianism. Growing numbers of peoplc saw the family, In the words of one husband, as the one "group that in spite· of many disagreements In­ternally always will face its external encmies together." Conserva­tive familieS warned children to biwa� or communists who might masqucrade as friendly ncighbors; li\Kral c hild�n learned to con­fine thdr opinions to the ramily for (ear that their father� job or reputation might be threatened. '1

Americans wert far more ambivalent about the 1950s than later rr.trospectives, such as "Happy Days," suggest. Plays by Tennessee Williams, Eugene O'Neill, and Arthur Miller explortd the underside of family life. Movir:s such as Rebel WUhour d Cause (1955) expreSsed

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34 THE WAY WE NEvtR WERE

ftars about youths wh� parents had failed them. There was an al­most obs6sivc: concern with the: idea that the: mass media had bro­ken down parental control; thus provoking an outburst of "dtlin­quency and youthful viciousness." In 1954, psychiatrist Fredric Wc:rtham's Scduclfon of Cht lnnocmts warned: "The atmosphere of crime comic bookS is unparalleled in the history of children's litera­ture of any time or any nation." In 1955, Congress discussed nearly 200 bills relating to delinquency. U some of these anxieties seem al­most charmingly naive to our more hardened age, they were no less real for allthat.11

Many families, of course, managed to hold such fears at bay-and It must be admitted that the suburbs and small tpwns of Amerie2 were u:ceptionally good places for doing so. Shielded from the mul­tiplying problems and growing di�ersity or the rest or society, n:si­dc:n� of these areas could afford to be neighborly. Church aucndance and membership in voluntary associations tended to be higher in the: subums than In the clUes, although contact with extended kin was less frequent. Children played in the neighborhoods and cui-de-sacs with only cursory warnings about strangers.n

In her autobiographical account of a 1950s adolescence, Susan Allen Toth remembers growing up "gradually" and •quietly" in a small town or the period: "We: were not seared by fic:ta poverty, racial tensions, drug abuse, strttt crimes." Perhaps this Innocence was "constricting," she admlued, but It also gave a child "shelter and space to grow." For Toth, Insulation (rom external problems mr:ant that growing up was a process of being "cossetted, gently warmed, transmuted by slow degrees. ".H

For many othtr children, however, growing up In 1950s families was not so much a matter of being protected from the harsh realities or the: outside world as preventing the outside world from learning the harsh mallties of family life. F� would have guessed 1hat radiant Marilyn Van Derbur, crowned Miss America In 1958, had ;xen sexu­ally violated by her weahhy. respectable father from the time she was five until she was eighteen, when she moved away to colh:gc:.n While not all family �crets were quite so shocking, author Bc:nita Eisler re­calls a common middle-class experience:

college classmates kcamc: close friends, I heanl sagas or lire at

h me that were Gothic honur stories. Bc:hind the htdges and drive­

w ys or upper-middle-class suburbia wen: tragedies or madntss, sui­

ci t, and-most prevalent or all-c:hronlc and severe alcoholism ....

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The �al revelation [or me was the role played by children in ... ktepmg up appurances. Many of my new friends had been pn:ssed inco service early as happy smlllng rroncs, emissaries of fam­ily normalcy, cheerful proo[ that "nothing was really wrong" at the Jontses.J6

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Btneath the polished fae2des o£ many "Ideal" families, suburban as well as u

.rban, was violence, terror, or simply grinding misery that

only occasionally came to light. Although Colorado RSC:arehers found 302 battertd-child cases, including JJ deaths, In their state durin� one year alone, the major journai of American family sociol­ogy d1d nol carry a single anicle on family violence between 1939 and 1969. Wife battering was not even considered a "real" crime by most people. Psychiatrists In the 1950s, following Helene: Deutsch, "regarded the battered woman as 1 masochist who provoked her hus­band Into beating her. "J1

Historian Elizabeth Pleck describes how one Family Service Asso­ciation translated this psychological approach Into palient counsel­ing during the 1950s. Mrs. K came to the Association because her husband was an alcoholic who repeatedly abused her, both physi­cally and sexually. The agency felt, ho\Vever, that It was simplistic to blame the couple's problems on his drinking . When counselors learned that Mrs. K rerused her husbands demands ror sa arter he came home rrom working the night shUt, they decided that they had found a deeper difficulty: Mrs. K needed therapy to "bring out some o( her anxiety about sex activities ... ,.

We will probably never know how prevalent Incest and sexual abuse were In the 1950s, but we do know that when girls or women reported Incidents or such abuse to therapists, they were frequently told that they were "fantasizing" their unconscious oedipal desires. Although incest cases were common throughout the re�ords of case­workers from 1880 to 1960, according to historian Unda Gordon's study of these documents, the problem was Increasingly redefined as one of rem,.le "sex delinquency." By 1960, dc:spire overwhelming evi­dence to the contrary. experts described incest as a "one-In-a-million occurrence." Not until the 1970s, heartened by a supportive women's movement, were many women able to speak out about the sexual abuse they had suffered In siltnt agony during the 1950s; others, such as Marilyn Van Derbur, are only now coming forward. )I

less dramatic but more widespread was the existence or signifi­cant marital unhappiness. Bc:twt!en one-quarter and one-third of the:

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36 lHE WAY WE NEVEII WERE

marriages contracted In the 1950s nentually ended In divorce; dur­ing that decade two million legally married �ople lived apart from uch o&hu. Many mon: couples simply toughed it out. Sociologist Mirra Komarovsky concluded &hat of the working-class couples she interviewed in lhe 1950s, "slightly less than one-third lwud happily or very happily married. "40

National polls found that 20 �rcent of all couples considend thdr marriages unhappy, and another 20 �rcent r«:ported only "medium happintss." In the middle-class sample studied by Elaine Tyler May, 1wo-thirds of the husbands and wives rated their mar­riages "decidedly happier than average," but an outside o�rver might wdl have scaled this back to a �rcen�ge much like Ko­marovsky's, for even the happl«:st couples reported many dissa&isfac­tions and communication problems. "The idea of a 'working mar­riage' was one that often included constant day-to-day misery for one or both partners. ·••

A succtssful 1950s family, morrover, was oflen achieved at enor­mous cost to the wife, who was expected to subordif!ate hu own needs and aspirations to those of both her husband and her children. In consequence, no sooner was the Ideal of the poslwar family ac­cep&ed &han observers began to comment �rplexedly on how dis- . conl�nted women seemed in the very roles &hey supposedly desin:d most. In 1949, life magazine r«:ported that "suddenly and for no plain reason" American women wer«: "seized with an eerie rcslless­ntss." Under a "mask of placidity" and an outwardly feminin� ap­pearance, one physician wrote in 1953, ther«: was often "an inwardly tense and emotionaJJy unstable Individual see&hing with hidden ag­gressiven«:SS and r«:senlment. •u

Some women took this resentment out on their families. Surely some of the bizarr«: �haviors that Joan Crawford exhibited toward her childr«:n, according to her daughter's bluer remembrance, Mom­mic Dca�sr, Uowed from the f�stration of being forced into a do­mestic role about which she was intensely ambivalent. Other women lried lo dull &he· pain with alcohol or drugs. Tranquilizers were devd­o�d in the 1950s in response lo a m:cd that physicians explicitly saw as female: Virtually nonexistent in 1955, tranquilizer consump­lion reached 461,000 pounds in 1958 and soared to 1.15 million pounds merely a yr:ar later. Commenlalors notr:d a sharp incr«:ase in women's drinking during the decade, even though many middle­class housr:wives kept their liquor stash hidden and thought no one

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"LEAVE IT lO BEAVER" AND ·ourE AND HARRIEr 37

knew that they needed a couple of drinks to face an evening of fam­ily "togetherness. •H

But not even "the four b's," as th"e mother of a colh:ague of mine usr:d lo label her life in the 1950s-"booze, bowling, bridge, and boredom"-could entir«:ly conceal the discontents. In 1956, the Wits' �omt journal devoted an issue to "The Plight of the Young Mother. When McCdll� ran an article entitled "The Mother Who Ran Away" in the same year, the magazine set a new record for read­ership. A former rditor commented: "We suddenly r«:alizec:i that all those women at home with their thr«:e and a half childr«:n were mis­er�bly unhappy." By 1960, almost every major news journal was usmg the word trapped to describe the feelings of the American housewife. When Rtdboolr� editors asked readers to p�vlde them with examples of "Why Young Mothers Feel Trap�d," they received 24,000 r«:plies ...

Ahhough Betty Friedan's bestseller Tht fmlfnlnt Mysllqut did not appear until 1963, it was a product of the 1950s, originating in the discontented ttsponscs Frledan ttceived In 1957 when she surveyed fellow college classmates from the class of 1942. The heartfelt identi­fication of other 1950s women with "the problem that has no name" is preservrd in the letters Friedan r«:ceived alter her book was pub­lished, letters now at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe.•'

Men tended to be mor«: satisfied with marriage than were women, especially over lime, but they, too, had their discontents. Even the most successful strivers after the American dream sometimes mut­ter«:d about "mindless conformity." T he tides or books such as Tht: Organizarton Man, by William Whyte (1956), and Tht: l.ont:ly Crowd, by David Riesman (1958), summarized a widespread critique or 1950s culture. Male r«:sentments against women wer«: expressed in the only partly humorous diatribes of Playboy magazine Hounded in 1953) against "money-hungry" gold diggers or lazy "parasites" trying to trap men into commitment.46

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Contradictions of the 1950s Family Boom

Happy memories of 1950s family life are not all illusion, of course­there wen: good times for many families. But even the most positive aspects had another. side. One ttason that the 1950s family modd

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38 M WAY Wf. NEVf.R WEll£

was 50 ne�ting was that il comained the S«:cds or hs own destruction,

a point 1 will uplon: further In chapter 7. It was during the 1950s, not the 1960s, that the youth market was first produced, then Insti­tutionalized into the youth cuhun:. It was through such Innocuous shows as "Howdy Doody" and "The Disney Hour" that advertiS«:rs lirst discovered the riches to be gainal by bypassing pan:nts and ap­pealing directly to youth. II w• also during this period thatlldvertis­ing and consumerism became 11turakd with sex. •r

In the 1950s, family life was Onanad by toonomlc practices that wen: to have unanticipated ronscqucnccs In the 1970s. Wiv� and mothers Orst sla� to work in great numbers during the 1950s in order to supplement their families' puKI)asing power; expansion of household comforts came "at the cost o( an astronomical Increase or lndebtedntsS.• The bbor-managcmcntiCCord or the 1950s helped ei'Olk the union IJI()Wment� ability to oppose the lakebacks and run­away shops that dcstroytd the ·ramlly wage system" during the 1970s and 19805.41

Family and gender strategies also conlainrd some time bombs. Women who "played dumb" to catch a man, as 40 percent o( Barnard Collt'gt women admiued to doing, sometimes desp� their hus­bands for not living up to the fiction or male supenonty they had worked so hard to promote. Commitment to l�provlng the quality or family life by manipulating the liming and spacing of childbcaring led to the social acceplability or family planning and the sprud of birth-control technktues.. Concentration of childbearing In early marriage meant that growing numbcrs of women had years to spare (or paid work after the bulk of their child-ott dutks were finished. Finally, 19� families fostered Intense feelings and values that pro­duced young people with a sharp eye for hypocrisy< many of the so­called rebcls or 1M 1960s were simply acting on values that they had internalized In the bosom of their families. 49

Teen Pregnancy and the 1950s Family

Whatever its other unex�Kctcd features, the 1950s family dat:s ap-al least when compared to families in the last two decades, to pear, . od b tK: a bastion or "traditional" Kxual moraluy. Many m ern 0 -

servers, acconJingly, look back to the: M:XUal valu� of this deca�e � a possible solution to what they sec as the IKcuharly modern ep1-

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"LEAVE IT TO BfAVER" AND •ozziE AND HARRIEr 39

dcmic" ol teen pregnancy. On closer examination, however, the issue or teen pregnancy is • classic example of both the novelty and the contradictions or the 1950s lamily.

Those who advocate that today's youth should be taught absti­nence or ddcrrcd gratification rather than sex education will find no 1950s model ror such restraint. "Heavy pelting" became a norm o( dating in this period, while the proportion or w�ite brides who were pregnant at marriage more than doubled. Tten birth rates soan:d, ruching highs that have not been equaled since. In 1957,97 out or every 1,000 girls aged fir teen to nineteen gave birth, compared to only 52 of every 1,000 In 1983. A surprising number or these births were Illegitimate, although 1950s census codes made it Impossible to Identify an unmarried mother ir she Uved at home with her parents. The incidence of illegitimacy was also disguised by the new empha­sis on "n:habilitatlng" lhc white mother (though not the black) by pulling her baby up (or adoption and encouraging her to "slart over"; then: was an 80 percent lncn:asc In the number or out-or­wedlock babies placed for adoption between 191-t and 1955.•

The main n:ason that lecnage sexual behavior did not result In many more illegitimate births during this �Kriod was that the agt o( marriage dropped sharply. Young people were not taught how to "say no"-they wen: simply handed wedding rings. In (acl, the growing willingness· or pan:nts to subsidize young married couples and the new prevalence or government educational sliprnds and home own­ership loans for veterans undermined the (ormer assumption that a man should be able to support a family before embarking on mar­riage. Among the middle class� It became common for young wives to work whik thdr husbands linished school. Prior to the 1950s, as

David Ricsman wrote or his �pression-en classmates, It would not "have occurred to us to have our wives support us through graduate school. "'1

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Contemporary teenage motherhood, as we shall Ke tn' chapter 8,

In some: ways repreS«:nts a confinuatlon o( 1950s values In a new eco­nomic situation that makes early marriage less viable. or course, mOdem teen pregnancy also rcDccts the rcjeclion of some o( those earlier values. The values that have broken down, however, have Ill­tie to do with sexual restraint. What we now think or as 1950s S«:Xual morality de�Kndcd not so much on stricter ·sexual control as on in­tensification or the sexual double standard . Elaine Tyler May argues that suual"represslon" gave way to·Kxual "conlainmcnt." The {lew practice or going steady "widentd the boundaries or permissible KX-

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40 ... , .... lH( WAY W( NMII WIM

ual activity," crr:atlng a "suual brinksiJianshlp" In which wom�n bon: th� burd�n or "drawing th� lin�: but that lin� was constantly changing. Popular opinion admin�d. as th� IAdln' Hom� Journal put It in 1956, that ·�x suggrstlnncss" was herr: to stay, but insist�d that il was up to womtn to "put th� brakrs on. "71

This doubh: standArd led to a Byzantine code of �xual conduct: "Pelling" was sanctioned so long as one didn't go "too far" (though this was an daslic and ambtguou5 prohibiUon)� a woman could M touched on variouJ pam of Mr body (how low_dependrd on how �­rious the mla.Uonship was) but "nltt girls" rtfnstd to fondle the comparable male pans In rttum; mutual stimulation to orgasm was compatibl� with maintllnlng a "good" rr:putation so long as ptndra­

tion did not occur. The succtsS of �xua1 contalnmtnt deptndtd on �xual lnrquallty.

Men no longtr bon! the rr:sponsibillty of "saving them�IVts for mar­riage"; this was now exclusin:ly a woman� Job. In !harp contta5t to the ninetttnth ttntury, when "on:rsutd" or demanding men were considered to han Krious problem! , It wa5 now considered "nor­mal" or "natural" for men 10 be �xually aggtU!Iln:. T�e "anrage man," advice writers for women commented indulgently, "will go as

far as you lei him go." Wht:n women succttdtd in "holding out" (a ph� charged wilh moral ambigully), they sometiiM5 experienced problems "l�tting go," ev�n afttr rnarrlage; when lhey failtd, th�y were often reproachtd later by their husban& for having "given ln." The contradictioM of this double standard could not long withstand the period� prt55UKJ for companionate romance: By 1959,.a mort liMral singl� standard had already galntd ground among older

· teenagers across America."

The Problem of Women In Traditional FamiiJes

People who romanUcizt the 19�. or any mudd of the traditional family, are usually put in an uncomfort�ble position wh�n th�y at­t�mpt to gain popular support. The l�gitimacy of wom�n� rights is so

widely accepted today that only a tiny minority or Am�ricans sc:ri­ously propose: that womt:n should go back to being full-time housc:­wivt::s or should be dtnicd educational and Job opportunititS Mcausc of their family rrsponsibilitirs. Yet when commentators lam�nt the colla� of traditional family commllm�nts and valu�. they almost

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"LEAVE IT TO !lEAVEII" AND "OlliE AND HAIIIIIEr 41

Invariably mean th� uniqudy female dutltS associated with th� doc-trin� or sc:parate sphun for men :and women. ·

Karl Zinsmeisttr of thr American Ente� lmtitute, for r:xam­pl�. bemoans the ract that "workaholism and f•mily dereliction have becomr. rqual-opportunily dlsea5es. striking mothers u much as ,.), fathtrs." David Blankenhorn of the Institute for Amtrian ValutS expresses sympathy for tht nttds of working women but warns that "employed womtn do not a family makr:. TM goals of women (and or mr:n, too) in the workplact art prtmariiy lndlvklualistlc: 50-

cl:d rteognitlon, wages, opportunities for lldv.ncemrnt, and sc:lf­fulftllment. Out the family Is about colltctlvt goals ... , building life� most Important bonds of •fftcllon, nurturantt, mutual support, •nd long-term commitment.""

In both st�tementJ, a !lftmlngly �r-neutral tndktment of fam­Ily lnnponslbility ends up being dlrteted most forcdully against women. For Dlanktnhom, ills not surprising thattnm� goals should M individualistic; this is a partnthetical asidt. For Zinsmeister, the problem with thr disuse or family dr:rdictlon ls that It has spread to women. So long as it was conllntd 10 men, evidently, thtn! was no urgtncy about finding a cuR!.

The crisis or commitment In America is usually Ken IS I probltm assod:ated with womrn'5 changing rolrs btcau� women� family function! havt historially mediattd thr worst effects or competition and Individualism In the larger sodely. Most people who talk about balancing private lldv.ncrment and Individual rightJ with "nunu­rance, mutual support, and long-term comntitmenl" do not envision any �rious rethinking of the Individualistic , antisocial tendencies in our society, nor any ways of lbroaCkning our sources of nurturancr: and mutu:al assistance. lnstelld, tMy Sttk ways--50melimes through repR!SSion, sometimes through reform-of rtbuilding a family In which women can continue to compensate for, nther than challengr, the individualism In our larger economy and polity. The ntxt chaptu explores the reliance of American individualism on the subordina­tion of wom�rt's individuaiUy and the contradictions th:at has pro­duc�d in our historical undrrst�ndlng o( love 1nd family life.

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126 ·Problems in American History Since 1945

belonging to one gang will dance with a member of the other. The first gang's honor is hurl. So there will be a rumble. The hoods will fight out in the streets sometimes with guns. And there w.ill be casualties.

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The gangs are as touchy as nations about their tenitories. When a gang from one neighborhood walks through another, that's considered an invasion and an act of war. . ..

. Real guns are so easy to come by that few of the teen-age hoods bother with Zip-guns now.

. When b?y and girl gang members start going steady, they exchange jackets or

nngs. I? Chicago, the gang code demands that a boy seldom travel with his girl except Ill a car, called a "short." Frequently the boys steal the cars, in which case they are called "hot shorts."

At on.e suburban Chicago high school last winter, nearly 100 boys and girls

crammed mto fifteen shorts, most of them hot, and systemically raided and demol­ish�d a swanky North Shore dining place, causing damage that was estimated by pohce at nearly $250,000. "When they asked me to go along with them, I had to," a gang member explained. "If I didn't go along, they'd know I was chicken and I couldn't live around here any more."

One night last ·month, nearly 40 young toughs crashed a Delta Upsilon fraternity dance at the University of Chicago, hurled bottles, bricks, and clubs, stabbed a stu­dent in the back and beat up len others. "They had it coming to them," a Mum-Check explained. "They always acted so superior. They thought they were better than us because they went to college. We felt it was about time to take care of them anyway."

Two weeks ago, after a rumor got around that one gang [member] was dating the girl friend of another gang's leader, the second gang grabbed baseball bats and raced through the city streets in two cars seeking revenge. They savagely slugged two boys, only to discover that neither boy was a member of the offending mob.

"Protection"

Steal-a-car clubs of six to eight teen-agers have become increasingly popular in Chicago. So has the practice of girl mobsters beating up other girls simply for laughs. The girl hoods also have adopted the practice of beating'up motorists. One girl will play the part of a hitchhiker. When a car stops for her, the other girls will swarm out of hiding and start pummeling the driver.

In elementary and high schools in both New York and Chicago, the hoods fre­quently will force other students to pay U1em "protection money." Several youngsters who refused have been stabbed or slugged. Last year, OJJe of the hoods was killed by Uu·ee boys who got tired of paying him for "protection."

Says a thoughtful juvenile expert: "These street-comer group societies are organ­ized on a system of values opposed to tl1e values of their parents and society. We can't reach them through conventional means. The gangs are hostile to all organized help. They are systematically attacking society. It's not an individual problem but a group problem. Perhaps .the viciousness of mankind in the past few decades has taken its ghastly toll on our youth."

What can be done about the teen-age gangs? Deu·oit helped to solve the problein by a get-tough policy. The police broke up the gangs. They established a curfew, and they enforce it.

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:een-age gangs. OU1ers antisocial. Officially, h Board, which works social ends. rk, recorrunended to be extended. And he

. feCOf -, -rr·�r .. -·- ut'F'VIUtll<lLClJ $300,000 tO private

agencies working to prevent delinquency among youth.

3. U.S. New� and World Report Assesses the Perils of

Mass Culture and the Evils of Television, 1955

The biggest of the new forces in American life today is television. There has been nothi

.ng like i.t in tl�e· postwar decade, or in many decades before that-perhaps

not smce the mventJOn of the printing press. Even radio, by contrast, was a placid expenence.

The impact of TV on this country has been so massive that Americans are still wondering what hit them. Has the effect been good or bad? What permanent effects on the American way of life may be expected? These and other questions are con­sidered in this survey.

Probably there are some people in the U.S. who have never seen a television program, but you would have to go into the hills to find them. Two out of three U.S. families now own their own sets, or are paying for them. In 32 million homes, TV dials are flicked on and off, from channel to channel, at least 100 million times between 8 A.M. and midnight.

Everywhere, children sit with eyes glued to screens-for three to four hours a day on the average. Their parents use up even more time �nesmerized by this new marvel-or monster. They have spent 15 billion dollars to look since 1946.

Now, after nearly 10 years of TV, people are asking: "What hatl1 TV wrought? , What is this tl1ing doing to us?"

Solid answ�rs to this question are very hard to get. Pollsters, sociologists, doc­tors, teachers, the TV people themselves come up with more contradictions than conclusions whenever they start asking.

But almost everybody has an opinion and wants to air it. What do these opinions add up to? People have strong views. Here are some

widely held convictions, both against and for television: That TV has kept people from going places and doing things, from reading,

from thinking for themselves. Yet it is said also Umt TV has taken viewers vicariously into su·ange and fascinating spots and situations, brought distinguished and enchant­ing people into their living rooms, given them a new perspective.

That TV has interfered with schooling, kept children from learning to read and write, weakened their eyesight and softened their muscles. But there are those who hold that TV has made America's youngsters more "knowing" about life,

"What TV Is Doing to America," Copyright, September 2, 1955, U.S. News and World /1eport. Visit us at our Web site at www.usnews.com for additional information.

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128 /I,Ia_ior Problems in American Histoty Si11ce 1945

more curious, given them a bigger vocabulary. Teaching by TV, educators say, is going to be a big thing in the future.

That TV arouses morbid emotions in children, glorifies violence, causes juvenile crime-that it starts domestic quarrels, tends to loosen morals and make people lazy and sodden. However, it keeps families together at home, provides a realm of cheap entertainment never before available, stimulates new lines of c.onversation,

That TV is giving the U,S. an almost primitive language, made up of grunts, whistles, standardized wisecracks and cliches-that it is turning the average Amer­ican into a stereotype. Yet it is breaking down regional barriers and prejudices, ironing out accents, giving people in one part of the country a better understanding of people in other parts. That TV is making politics "a rich man's game," turning statesmanship into a circus, handing demagogues a new weapon. But it is giving Americans their first good look at the inside of their Government, letting them judge the people they elect by sight as well as by sound and fury.

That TV has distorted and debased Salesmanship, haunting people with singing "commercials" and slogans. However, because or in spite of TV. people are buying more and more things they never before thought they needed or wanted.

These are just some of the comments that people keep on making about TV The experts say that it probably will be another generation before there is a finn basis of knowledge about television's impact on America.

Today's TV child, the boy or girl who was born with a TV set in his home, is too young to analyze his feelings. Older people, despite their frequent vehemence about TV, are still far from sure whether they have all Aladdi1'I's lamp or hold a bear by the taiL

Goliath with Tubes

One thing you can be sure about. TV, a giant at 10, continues to grow like nobody's business. Here are some figures and comparisons: The 15 billion dollars that the U.S, people have invested in TV sets and repairs since the war is 15 per cent more than the country spent for new school and college buildings. About a billion more has gone into TV stations and equipment.

TV-viewing time is going up, not down, latest surveys show. This explodes the theory that people would taper off on television "once they got used to it."

"Pull" of popular TV programs is believed to be very effective. Pollsters report that three times as many people will leave a meal to answer questions at the door as will gel up to abandon "Dragnet."

The number of families holding out against TV is declining to a small fraction. There still are 16 million families without sets, but most of these families either can't pay for sets or else live out of range of TV signals.

On an average evening, twice as many set owners will be watching TV as are engaged in any other form of entertainment or leisure activity, such as movie-going, card playing, or reading. Seven out of 10 American children watch TV between 6 and 8 o'clock most evenings.

'ysts are intrigued by the evidence that adults, not children, are the real tele-visiL /s. The newest trend in viewing habits is a rise in the number of housewives

Aff/uettce and Disco11tmt ilz tile 19: 129

who watch TV in the morning. One out of five with a set now watches a morning show with regularity.

What Is It?

Why do people want TV? A $67.50-per-week shoe repairman in San Francisco, puts it about as plainly as anyone can. "TV," he says, "is the only amusement I can afford,'' That was the reason he gave for paying four weeks' wages for his set.

The cobbler's comment explains TV's basic Jure. It is free entertainment except for the cost of [the l set, and repairs and electricity. It becomes so absorbing that a broken set is a family catastrophe. People will pay to have the set fixed before they will pay the milk bill, if necessary.

What does TV do to people? What do people do with TV? The researchers are digging into these questions all the time. In general, they come to theories, rather than conclusions. There are three main theories:

THEORY "A": This is widely held by people whose professions bring them into close contact with juveniles-judges, district attomeys, police officers, ministers. It assumes that TV is bound to be affecting the American mind and character because it soaks up one to five hours a day or more that used to be spent in outdoor play, in games requiring reasoning and imagination, or in reading, talking, radio listening, or movie-going,

Even the more passive of these pursuits, the theory runs, required more exercise of brain than does TV watching. Then, too, many TV programs, the theorists say, are violent or in questionable taste,

Net effect, according to these people, is a wasting away or steady decline in certain basic skills among American youngsters. Children lose the ability to read, forfeit their -physical dexterity, strength, and initiative.

Some see a defil1ite connection between TV and juvenile delinquency. The Kefauver Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Conunittee has just explored this aspecL It stated:

"Members of the subcommittee share the concern of a large segment of the thinking public for the implications of the impact of this medium [television] ... upon the ethical and cultural standards of the youth of America, It has been unable to gather proof of a direct casual relationship between the viewing of acts of crime and violence and the actual performance of criminal deeds. It has not, however, found irrefutable evidence that young people may not be negatively influenced in their present-day behavior by the saturated exposure they now receive to pictures and drama based on an underlying theme of lawlessness and crime which depict human violence."

THEORY "B": Mainly held by sociologists, communications economists, pollsters. This is that television is changing the American mind and character, although nobody knows for sure just how. The evidence is too fragmentary. The analysts are disturbed by some aspects of TV's effect on viewers. Some think TV is conditioning Americans to be "other directed," that is, getting the ideas from someone else. The early American, by contrast, is supposed to have been "inner directed," a man who thought things out for himself on the basis of his own reasoning.

) 130 Major Problems i11 Americmt History Si11ce 1945

A fancy name for this suspected effect of TV is "narcotic disfunction." This means that more and more men come home in the evening, drop into a chair in front of the TV set after supper and slip into a dream world of unreality.

However, the same researchers confess that TV can have a broadening influence, bringing to the masses a taste of the arts and sciences, a peek into govermnent that they couldn't get any other way.

THEORY "C": This is what the TV .people themselves like to think. It is that television is rapidly becoming "one more service" to the U.S. public, another medium such as newspapers, magazines, radio. Some people watch TV a lot, others vety little. Most people want a set around, but some don't lean on it.

The TV people minimize the idea that TV is dominating American life. It. is almost as if they were afraid their own baby is getting too big. What they usually say is that the people who allow their lives to be controlled by television were similarly dominated by radio and the movies-and that they are only a small minority.

The TV Habit

What do the theorists base their theories on? What have they found out about the place of the TV set in American life?

Many studies have been made of the "TV habit." Latest of these indicates that TV viewing reaches a peak just after a set enters a home, then falls off rather sharply. Next, viewing begins to rise again in the average home, building up, evidently, to­ward a new peak that is not yet measured.

The A. C. Nielsen Company, a market research organization that attaches mechanical recorders to sets in private homes, finds this: During the 12 months ended in April 1955, average use per day of TV sets was 4 hours and 50 minutes. That was up 4 per cent over the year before ....

Other studies indicate that women watch TV more than men do. Children, contrary to general impression, watch TV less than adults in the average home. Persons low in income, education, or job status as a rule spend more time in front of TV sets than those with more money and education.

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What's on TV

What do people get on TV? What do they want? Three out of every four TV pro­grams are entertaimnent shows .... In a typical week of the peak TV season, in Januruy of last year, crime, comedy, variety, and Westem shows accounted for 42.7 per cent of all TV program time on New York City screens. News accounted for 6.1 per cent of TV time-about the same share of time as was taken by quiz, stunt, and contest shows. Other informational types of TV shows, such as interviews, weather reports, travelogues, children's instructional programs, and cooking classes, got 16.2 per cent of the time.

Rating figures tend to show that people are getting just about what they want. in the opinion of the broadcasting industry. According to the "popularity" ratings of top shows, comedy and drruna and straight entertaimnent are outpulling everything else.

What about information? The popularity cards seem to indicate the reaction is a stifled yawn. In a two-week period last June, when two comedy programs, the

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Aff/ufllce a11d Discontmt irtlhe 195C � . 31 I

"George Gobel Show" and "I Love Lucy," were at the top of the list, each reaching more than 13 million homes, the top-ranking informational programs were way down the lirie. The "March of Medicine," for example, was No. 62, reaching 6.57 million homes; "Meet the Press" was No. 150, getting to 1.14million families.

Studies also have been made of how long various programs hold their audiences. Love and adventure performances, it develops, will keep about 35 per cent of the audience to the end. By contrast, the most gripping historical sketches hold only 65 per cent, and many hold less than one third of their starting viewers. Informational programs, again, rank near the bottom in "holding power.''

Television c1itics, who write about TV programs in newspapers and magazines, are frequently harsh in their remarks about violence, sadism, bad taste on the screen. However, Dallas W. Smythe; a professor of communications economics at the University of Illinois, analyzed New York City programs for 1955 and concludes that programs which critics liked best seldom drew the biggest audiences.

The public is fickle. Top rating is hard to hold. The viewers tire rapidly of a particular show unless the producers manage to come up with fresh material, new appeals.

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ISSUE 13 Were the 1950s America's uHappy Days"? •· ·

YES: Melvyn Dubofsky and A than Theoharis, from Imperial Democracy: Tile United Stales Since 1945, 2d ed. (Prentice Hall, 1988) NO: Douglas T. Miller and Marion Nowak, from Tl!e Fifties: The Way We· �eally Were (Doubleday, 1977)

Sin.ce the mid-1970s, Americans have used the 1950s as the standard by which all future successes and failures are measured. Cable television replays old

· shmvs espousing the family values that Americans most admire. But what were the 1950s really like? Was the period truly America's "Happy Days"?

Mos't people agree that America in the 1950s became, in the words of economist John Kermeth Gailbraith, Tlte Affluent Society (Houghton Mifflin, 1958). Because the United States was physically untouched during World War II, it was instrumental in rebuilding the economies of the major noncommu­nist countries in Europe and Asia through the use of the Marshall Plan, Point Four Program, and other foreign aid programs.

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At home the expected postwar recession and depression never occurred. Controlling inflation while stabilizing employment became the primary con­cerns of the economists. During the war American workers had built up over $140 billion in savings. Hungry for consumer goods they had been unable to acquire in the years .from 1942 through the middle of 1945, Americans went on a JY'-c;sive consumer buying spree-one that has continued to the present da' ) · ·

There v however, some disturbing economic trends in the 1950s. Pover-' .,. :· .

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miners in Appalachia. Large corporations were buying up smaller ones, and individual farms were coming under the control of agribusiness. Income inequality also increased: In 1949 the top 1 percent of the population owned 19 percent of the nation's wealth; by 1960 they owned 33 percent.

If the rich got richer, so too did millions of other Americans. As Michael W. Schuger points out in his article "The 1950s: A Retrospective View," Nebraska History (Spring 1996), "Average family income, which was $3,000 in 1947, increased dramatically to $5,400 in 1959. The gross national product increased from $318 billion in 1950 to $440 billion in 1960. Between 1945 and 1960 the real eaming power of the average wage eamer increased by 22 percent."

In spite of this pleasant lifestyle, America became an anxiety-ridden society in the 1950s. World War II ended in the defeat of fascism, but a cold war developed against America's former ally the Soviet Union, which seemed bent on spreading communism not only throughout Eastem Europe but also across the entire world. The United States extended economic and military assistance to Greece and Turkey in 1947 and two years later formed the first peacetime alliance in history-,-lhe North Atlantic Treaty Organization-in order to contain the spread of communism. Although Westem Europe stood fast, leaks sprang up in other parts of the world.

Crime, corruption, and communism seemed rampant in the 1950s. TI1e news was spread by television. In 1946 there were only 7 television sets in the entire country; by 1960 they numbered over 50 million. Politicians filled the void on daytime television with an endless parade of hearings . Juvenile delinquency, it was argued, resulted from a moral breakdown in the home and community. Comic books and rock and roll music were held to be the culprits, and the city council of Jersey City solved the problem by banning rock and roll music at all school dances. Meanwhile, Senator Joseph McCarthy continued his search for communists in the government but overreached himself when he b ullied high-level military officials in his senatorial investigation of the army in 1954. Eisenhower's powerful chief of st�ff, Sherman Adams, resigned amidst allegations that he received gifts from a contractor. TI1e government panicked when the Russians launched the earth-orbiting Sputnik I satellite into space in October 1957. Could Ivan read better than Johnny? Had America lost its rno'ral leadership and prestige ( in the eyes of the world, as two government reports indicated in 1960? 4

In the first of the following selections, Melvyn Dubofsky and A than Theo­haris argue that throughout the 1950s, the United States dominated much of ( the world's economy. At home the country experienced a period of unprece­dented growth and prosperity for nearly two-thirds of the population, which made it into the middle class. In the second selection, Douglas T. Miller and _­Marion Novak assert that the decade was an era dominated by the need to � conform and feelings of fear about the bomb, communist� �rime, and the loss of a national purpose. )

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Melvyn Dubofsky and Athan Theoharis

IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY: THE UN ITED STATES SINCE 1945

ECONOMIC GROWTH AND A CONSUMER SOCIETY

Throughout the 1950s the United States economy dominated much of the globe. Though less dependent on foreign trade for economic growth than most other industrial nations, the relatively small percentages of United States domestic production and capital that entered international trade had an enor­mous impact on the economies of smaller, less productive nations. Despite the fact that America's gross national product expanded relatively more slowly than other rapidly industrializing societies, the United States' productive base was so immense that between 1949 and 1960 absolute real GNP increased from $206 billion to over $500 billion, a rise of nearly 150 percent. Such eco­nomic power, especially in relation to weaker, less industrialized societies, al­lowed the United States to set the terms of trade. Thus American corporations during the 1950s purchased raw materials cheaply and sold manufactured goods dearly. As America grew wealthier, raw material-producing nations in Latin America, Africa, and Asia became relatively poorer ....

The New Growth Industries During the 1950s some of the old standbys of industrial America-railroads, coal mining, textiles, and shoe manufacturing-continued a decline that had begun in the 1920s. Railroad freight traffic fell steadily before the inroads of highway trucking, and passengers discarded long-distance trains in fa"or of more rapid air or cheaper bus transportation. By the end of the 1960s nearly the entire rail network in the Northeast, including the giant Penn-Central, had gone bankrupt. Coal found itself unable to compete with oil, natural gas, nuclear power, and water power; the nearly 600,000 miners employed at the end of World War II had fallen to about 100,000 by 1970, Cotton and woolen manufacture succumbed to synthetic fibers and domestic produc­tion to cheaper foreign manufactures. The shoe industry wrote an equally sorry chapter. Endicott-Jolmson, the world's largest shoe manufacturer, had

From Melvyn Dubofsky and A than Theoharis, Imperial Democracy: Tire United Stales Since 1945, 2d ed. (Prentice Hall, 1988). Copyright © 1988 by Prentice Hall, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. Reprinted by permissioh. Notes omitted.

296

. employed about 28,000 production work­. in its New York Southern Tier facto­

in the late 1940s; by 1970 the pro­.. duction force had dipped below 4,000, · .

. the company began to dismantle its mills,

it even purchased shoes from Ruma­for sale in its American retail out­Such instances of economic decline

. caused permanent depression in many · :·New England towns and Appalachian ···coal patches. Again in the 1950s, as in

... ,."""'"'·.·.-·-1920s, economic sores festered on a healthy economic body.

of New England and Ap­declined economically, other

· regions of the nation prospered as ·

before. Wherever chemicals, busi­. ness machines, electronics, and com­. puters were manufactured the. economy . boomed, for these. were the postwar

growth industries par excellence. They were the new industries fit for sur­vival in a "new society." Their economic

, .· growth based on technological and scien­:. tific advances, electronic-chemical firms · ·stressed research and development pro­

grams (almost half of which were fi­. · nanced by the federal government), hired

. . •, thousands of new graduates from the na­tion's universities, and served as the em-

, : players for a teclmocratic-scientific elite. · E. I. DuPont de Nemours & Co., Dow,

and Monsanto prospered by manufac­tUring the synthetic goods that increas­

. ·. ingly transfom1ed the United States into a plastic society. Women wore their nylon

•· stockings, people cooked on their Teflon ., and pans, men donned Dacron

. ·. suits and Orion shirts, and cars rolled · on synthetic tires. Electronics, the child

·>. of wartime technological innovations, · transistorized the postwar world. As

·: tiny transistors replaced bulky tubes, · : teenagers walked everywhere holding · . . the ubiquitous portable radio, and home-

YES Dubofsky and ThL

bodies carried small TVs from room to room and house to patio. It was a soci­ety in which stereophonic S01.llld replaced high fidelity phonographs only to be dis­placed in tum by quadraphonic sound. The electronics industry promised to tum every home into a private concert hall; in­deed, some new houses were built with sound systems wired into every room. And electric eyes now opened and shut garage doors .

Meantime, automation and its asso­ciated business machines produced still greater profits and affected the economy more substantially than plastics and elec­tronics. What Ford and General Electric symbolized in the 1920s, IBM and Xerox. personified in post-World War II Amer-

. ica. Ever since the industrial revolution, machinery had been replacing human labor in manufacturing. But where hu­mans once operated the new machines, in the postwar era of automation such companies as IBM produced machines that controlled themselves as well as other machines. Automation, based on the same simple feedback principle that operated home thermostats, controlled steel strip mills, auto assembly lines, and entire petrochemical complexes. Com­puters, the next stage in the process of automation and first introduced com­mercially in 1950, had the ability to re­member, sort materials, and make deci­sions; computers could also write poetry, compose music, play chess, and simu­late strategy in a football game. So var­ied were the computer 's uses that they were utilized by hotel chains, insurance companies, banks, airlines, and even uni­versities (by the 1960s college students were identified by their IBM numbers) to simplify increasingly complex paper transactions. Where automation once threatened only blue-collar industrial

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workers, it now endangered the job se­curity of millions of white-collar clerks. Even politicians, eager to predict before­hand the results of elections, worshipped at the shrine of the high-speed mainframe computer ....

One reason for the success of the new growth industries was their close link to the Department of Defense, postwar America's largest single business contrac­tor. The Pentagon supplied a lavish mar­ket for electronic and chemical manufac­turers, as its deadly nuclear missiles with their elaborate guidance systems relied on synthetics, transistorized modules, and advanced computers. Even the more mundane hardware used by infantry, ar­tillery, and nonnuclear aircraft depended heavily on electronic components and computerized guidance. NASA too pro­vided an economic bonanza for the world of electronics. Without transistors, com­puters, and chemical fuels, there would have been no flight in space, no man on the moon. Between goven1ment con­tracts and consumer demand for house­hold appliances (household use of elec­tricity tripled in the 1950s), the growth industries prospered enonnously.

American agriculture changed as well in the postwar era . Fanning became a big business. Agricultural productivity rose more rapidly than demand for foodstuffs for most of the first two postwar decades, forcing millions of smaller farmers off the land; and large farmers prospered as a result of government subsidy programs and their own efficiency. Because produc­tion rose so rapidly, prices for agricul­tural goods declined, and profits could be made only by lowering unit costs of production through intensive applica­tion of fertilizers, use of costly new fann machinery, and introduction of sophis­ticated ma':nagerial techniques. Smaller

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farms simply lacked the resources and th� : \(J. l Mass ��nsumption depended on con­capital to purchase fertilizer, acquire new J� ,f stanUy.nsmg real wage levels, a condition machinery, and hire costly managerial ex- ::{1', i{i': the Umted States economy sustained be­perts. They also lacked enough land to i.: �; tween 1945 and 1960. By 1956 the real in­make the use bf expensive new machin" ,;T;: ··�. come of the average American was more ery profi�able or to join the soil bank, a. � l �han 50 percent greate� than it had been pro ?tam mtertded to promote soil conser<;\ ;�; � 1929, an� by 1960 I� was 35 percenl� vat10n by paying farmers cash subsidies -!.'' �: higher than rt had been ill the last year ol to let some of their land lie fallow. In other · ;� .� World War II. words, because most federal farm p�o· ;ti r . How typica� Americans spe�t their grams and subsidies were directly pro- \t . . � mcreased eamillgs was determilled as portional to faJ;m size and productivity, }: �: much by external factors as by intrinsic, large farmers received proportionately ):: �· �eal persona: ne.e�s. Indeed, the larger the more benefits than small farmers. The;�. :,�: mcome an illdividual earned the more beneficiaries of federal largesse, the big }, ��- choice h� or she had in

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fam1ers also possessed the land, capital; }: f �s gro":'illg numbers of crhzens sa tis .. and knowledge· necessary to grow food ,:;; �� fied their need for foo� and shelter, the and fibers most efficiently. Consequently.;!, ; t:{ �anufacturers of attractive but nonessen­the percentage of owner-operated farmsj� ifr hal goods competed lustily for the con .. rose, and the size. of the typical farm in<�· ��- sumer's dollar. . creased substantially. Cotton production ;;,� ��· To sell the autos, refngerators, dish .. shifted away from the South, where it re-./:! �: washers, stereo sets, and otl:er al_JPli .. mained profitable only on the extremely \· ��� ances that rolled off producti�n lilles, large plantation, to the immense corpo- Z

• ;.;�· manufact�rers r.esorted t� r:'1adison Av­rate, irrigated farms of Texas, Arizona, -�' ·��· enue and illtensrve adverhsillg. Between and southern California. Farming in such :$;��:· �94� and 1957 expenditures on advertis­prosperous agricultural states as Cali- j ·�;· �g illcreased by_ a�ost 300 percent, ris­fonlia, Arizona, and Florida was justly'• ::! l� �g to over $10 billion annually. Not .o�ly labeled "agribusiness." Iri some cases y ·� · �1d �e �oney devoted to adverhsmg industrial corporations, Tenneco amonff; t nse significantly, but the lords of Ma�i­others, purchased large fam1s.... .; :: �f! s?n Avenu� also de

_veloped more sophis ..

:·. / treated selling taches. Successful adver-'··)'; i�: tising was complicated when consumer�.

Affluence and Consumption Jj ��� · had to select from _among b�eakf�st ce�e­The stability of the American political ':�� �{ als an� :ars that differed nerther ill

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and economic system as well as the �·:;( . . nor utility and also had to be convmced

absence of working-class discontent and··:. ;L to buy produc.ts never before manufac­militancy flowed from the successful ':f ( tured . Employillg all the tools of normal creation of a mass consumer society. The ;:: �i\ (and abnormal) psychology, ad�ertisers car in every garage and chicken in every :-; �S: alerted consumers to the psychi� bene­pot which Hoover and the Republicans . ·;·,' ::S.: hts of larger_ cars, sweeter-smellmg un­

had promised Americans in 1928 arrived.:::; .':�· derarms, stnp�d _toothpaste� and Marl­in the 1950s. A nd now it also incl uded ) �·1• boro-the man s Cigarette. Bnghter teeth, beefsteaks, color television, stereophonic ::;·: �l: MadisonAvenueirn�lied,guaranteed ev­sound, and suburban split-levels. · :.·,,:: '�{ ery wallflower a desirable husband, and

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YES Dubofsky and 'I., _ _,naris f 299

the cigarillo won every man a buxom and accommodating female. Able to allocate money and talent to the one­minute television spot, advertisers bom­barded viewers with irresistible commer­cials. Madison Avenue sales campaigns got such good results in the marketplace iliat in time many candidates for pub­lic office substituted the one-minute tele­vision spot for the hail-hour platform speech. By the 1960s, Madison Avenue sold presidents as well as Pontiacs, con-gressmen as well as Cadillacs.

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More than advertising was required to create the postwar consumer society. Regardless of the reality of rising wages, millions of citizens still lacked income sufficient to satisfy their demand for goods. A 195CJ. Census Bureau survey of over 7,000 families, for example, showed that 60 percent have eamings of $4,000 or less spent more than iliey earned. Even those workers whose incomes exceeded their current expenses seldom had a margin of savings adequate to su.stain the cash purchase of such costly durables as autos and large home appliances. Only by borrowing money on the assumption that higher future eamings would render repayment painless could most citizens sa-tisfy their desire for cars and dishwashers.

As advertising stimulated the demand for consumer goods, the nation's finan­cial institutions financed their purchase. Between 1946 and 1957, private indebt­edness increased by 360 percent-in con­trast, total public debt rose by only 11 percent and the federal debt actually de­clined. More remarkable still was the rise in consumer installment indebtedness; the estimated anrmcrhns.tallment credit outstanding soared from just over $4 bil­lion in 1946 to over $34 billion in 1957. Automobile installment credit alone rose

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300 I 13. WERE )950s AMERICA'S "HAPP Y DAYS"?

from under $1 billion to in excess of $15 billion. The propensity to buy now and pay later made the cash registers ring. Detroit produced over five million new cars in 1949 and in the peak year of 1955 sold nearly eight million autos, a record

. unsurpassed until the late 1960s. For those individuals whose earnings

rose annually, consumer credit and in­stallment buying provided a relatively easy means to achieve rapid material af­fluence. But for those Americans whose income failed to rise, or rose only halt­ingly, installment buying became more an economic trap than an avenue to com­fort. Unable to save sufficient cash to un­derwrite their purchases, these unfortu­nate consumers frequently failed to earn enough to pay the interest as well as the principal on their installment contract. In some cases, credit costs effectively in­creased the original purchase price by one third or more.

The consumption craze took many shapes in the 1950s. Such economists as Walt W. Rostow suggested that when men and women in America's "high mass consumption society" satisfied their de­sire for cars and appliances, they invested surplus income in babies. W hatever the precise cause no one could doubt that a population explosion took place from 1945 through the 1950s. Medical science and improved nutrition lengthened life spans, and the multiple. (three or more) child household became commonplace. The public philosophy of the 1950s, as proclaimed by psychologists, TV come­dians, preacl1ers, and politicians, sancti­fied the home and woman's place in it. TI1e ideal female married young and well, bore a large brood, and remained home to create the perfect environment for keep­ing the American family together. The sanctification of the family and the ide-

alization of the woman as mother and. · ·

homemaker further promoted the growth ·• , of a consumer society. Larger families:·· ,. required bigger houses with more applic ·

ances to simplify "mom's" work and creased purchases to'provide for the dren. Before long many one-car families would become two-, three-, and in rare .. : instances even four-car households.

If affluence enabled many Americans to enjoy unsurpassed material comforts; millions of citizens still struggled to make ends meet. If new recruits joined the "jet set" and flew to vacations in Rio,·

Biarritz, and Monaco, many workers, like . · the Bronx couple that New York Times ··

· reporter A. I-i. Raskin investigated, who lived half an hour by: subway from Tunes Square, saw "less of Great White Way · • than the average farmer from Pumpkin

. Comers." John K. Galbraith lamented in Tlze Affluent Society the ubiquity of public squalor amidst America's opulence and hinted at the persistence of . poverty. Nonetheless, regardless of how> . unequally and inequitably the fruits of ·. affluence were distributed, many of those ·: · Americans who did not share fully still felt themselves more comfortable in the . 1950s than they had been in the 1930s · · and more fortunate than non-Americans.· . As Raskin's Bronx worker remarked: : "We're a lot bette� off than we would

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anywhere else in the world. We may get everything we.want, but at least can choose what· to do with our money. :. In other countries they don't even have a cl1oice. No matter how bad things ·are, we're better off than they are."

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The Triumph of the Suburbs .. The emergence of an affluent mass con" ·: sumer society saw the reassertion of pattern of residential mobility and se ment that had been retarded by

and war. In the -1950s, as also had . happened in the 1920s, millions of citi­.. ;zens deserted the cities for the suburbs. :Except in the South and Southwest where :urban population continued. to grow as ·� result of the. armexation of adjacent

,. land, the bulk of metropolitan population ' growth occurred in the suburbs. By 1960 ' inmost northern metropolises, suburban ··residents outnumbered central'city occu­pants, and as people fled the urban core,

·. so, too, did businesses, trades, and pro­fessions. The "Miracle Mile" in Manhas­set on Long Island's North Shore brought Fifth Avenue to the suburbs, just as simi­

.. lar suburban shopping centers elsewhere attracted downtown's most prestigious

. retailers to new locations with ample parking space and affluent consumers.

Suburban development stimulated a housing boom of unprecedented dim en­

. · sions. As of 1960, one fourth of all the housing in the nation had been con­

.. structed in the previous decade, during which aru1Ual new-housing starts regu-

.. larly exceeded the growth of new house­:· holds. In the 1950s, for the first time :. in history, more Americans owned their

albeit usually with heavy mort­gages, than rented dwelling space.

The reasons for this exodus to subur­

.: bia might have remained constant from

the 1920s to the 1950s; after 1945, how­.. ever, the opportunity to flee the city had

""l.l"'"�"u significantly. The desire for a home with a lawn and garden in

a suburban arcadia had long been an in­.: .. legral aspect of popular cult4re. The eco­. costs and occupational impracti­

, ·. cality of suburban life, however, had put ' it beyond the reach of most Americans.

: · this changed in the postwar world, as federal credit and hlghway policies,

: iechnological innovations, and a mass

YES Dubofsky and The 11301

consumer society reshaped metropolitan America.

In the postwar world, as automobile ownership became general, Americans had been liberated from dependence on mass public transit. The possession of a private car snapped the link that hith­erto had connected the individual's horne to his place of work via public tran­sit. Through federal and state highway programs funded by fuel taxes, limited access highways were constructed that linked new suburbs and older central cities. The prospect of smooth, unim­peded traffic flow on safe, modem high­ways and in private cars led passengers to abandon subways, trolleys, and buses and to move from the city to the suburbs . Americans were now free to reside wher­ever their incomes allowed, and suburbia was also opening up to a wider range of incomes .

Federal policies enlarged the suburban housing market by providing generous mortgage loans to World War II veter­ans and by insuring the mortgages mar­keted by private lending agencies. The self-amortizing mortgage, whereby the homeowner paid back his original loan at a fixed monthly rate (comparable to rent) over a 20- to 30-year-term, became Ule common means to home ownership. Federal tax policy also stimulated sub­urban expansion, for citizens received a generous income tax deduction for the interest charges and real estate taxes paid on their homes. The availability of long­term credit and the inducement of tax advantages drew well-to-do middle-class ·Americans to suburbia. Working-class citizens needed a further inducement, the chance to purchase a home within their means. Here the firm of Arthur Levitt and Sons provided one solution, doing for the housing market what Ford had done for

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302 /13. WERE 1 nc 1950s AMERICA'S "HAPPY DAYS"?

autos. Just as Ford offered a basic car in a single color at a low price, Levitt sold a standardized dwelling unit in one color -white-at a price within the reach of thousands of working-class Americans. His original "little boxes" constructed in

. the first Levittown in central Long Island soon had cotmterparts in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Suburbia in general and Levittown in particular occasioned a new image of American society, one consonant with the concept of a mass consumer public. Suburbia, in the words of social critic and plrumer Lewis Mumford, offered the prospect of

a multitude of uniform, identifiable houses, lined up inflexibly, at uniform distances, on uniform roads, in a treeless communal waste, inhabited by people of the same class, the same income, the same age group, witnessing the same television performances, eating the same tasteless pre-fabricated foods, from the same freezers, conforming in every outward and inward respect to a common mold .

In the "little boxes made of ticky tacky," about which Pete Seeger sang, lived William F. Whyte's "organization men" who in their haste to adjust smoothly to their fellow junior executives became as undifferentiated as the houses in which they dwelled.

Critics of suburbia mounted a contra­dictory attack against the emerging char­acter of national life. On the one hand, they charged suburban residents with uniformity, dullness, and unthinking ac­commodation to neighborhood mores. On the other hand, they indicted subur­banites, as did John Keats in Tile Crack in the Picture Window, for alcoholism, adul­tery (wife-swapping was said to be the fa-

vorite indoor suburban sport), and juve•·. · nile delinquency. Whatever the .

· of the criticism, it seemed to miss the · · mark, for suburban growth proceeded· unabated. ... · ·

In fact most social criticism portrayed a f�ctional suburbia, not its reality. By the . late 1950s American suburbs contained· as rri.any differences as similarities; was no single ideal-type suburban .. munity. Communities of upwardly rno, . . bile young executives who preferred ac" ; , commodation to conflict, uniformity to '·

individualism, such as William F. Whyte located in Chicago's environs, did exist. ':'. So, too, did communities of wealthy se-. · nior executives and rentiers, whose in· comes and security enabled them to ex­periment with architecture and engage in·· eccentric behavior. At the other end of ,. the suburban spectrum, one could find working-class developments whose resi­dents had moved from the city but had . scarcely altered their life style; they still ' voted Democratic, preferred baseball to ballet, and the company of relatives to that of neighbors. Even the allegedly • undifferentiated, standardized world of Levittown contained, as the sociologist · Herbert Gans discovered, a universe of strikingly individualized homes. Levit­towners wasted no time in applying per- · sonal touches and preferences to the stan- · . dardized homes and creating a 'society in .. which, according to Gans, they felt very • · · much at home and comfortable ... .

MASS CULTURE AND ITS CRITICS. : .

The affluence of the 1950s and 1960s laid .. the basis for what .came to be known as "mass culture." Never before had so much music, drama, and literature been accessible to so many people as a result·.'·. of fundamental changes in the presenta- ,

· tion of entertainment and enlightenment. · Television, the long-playing record, im-.

sound-reproduction equipment, paperback books brought a plethora

cultural forms within reach of the great of Americans.

·Once again, as had happened during : .. the 1920s, Americans celebrated their ex­. ceptional prosperity. A new hedonism

symbolized by oversized, overpowered · · cars crammed with options and adorned

outside with two-tone color patterns, · · vinyl tops, and fins captivated con­

sumers. Americans relished a culture of .·: consume, enjoy, and dispose. We were, in

the words of the historian David Potter, 1'people of plenty." · Not everyone, to be sure, joined in the American celebration. Some critics raised questions about the quality of

. life. Whereas once left-wing intellectuals :.had lamented the ubiquity of poverty ·.and exploitation, they now bewailed a . consumer society in which shoppers had

. become as indistinguishable from each : other as the merchandise they purchased.

·. . A few critical voices cried out in the wilderness. The industrial sociologist

·, William F. Whyte portrayed in scholarly :. detail the culture of the prototypical sue­. ·cess story of the 1950s, the rising young

. corporate executive, the hero of best­:" selling novelist Sloan Wilson's J7ze Man in ; ·tile Gray Flannel Suit. Whyte showed these

young executives as insecure, status-. driven people who lived transitorily in suburban developments housing only their own kind, and as "organization

who molded their personalities to , suit the corporate image. The radical and : ·idiosyncratic scholar C. Wright Mills dis­.

· cemed a bleak future in his 1951 book, .White Collar. He described a society of

· men and women who worked without ···autonomy or direction, who strived only

YES Dubofsky and Theoharis f 303

for status, and who lived as dependent beings, not free citizens. In White Collar, one glimpsed an American mass poten­tially susceptible to producing fascism, as their Italian and German likes had in the 1920s and 1930s.

David Riesman, the premier critic of mass society, early on diagnosed the new American disease in The Lonely Crowd (1950). Americans once, he wrote, had been an inner-di:t:ected people, men and women who could distinguish right from wrong, who could chart their own di­rections and goals in life. Now, Ameri­cans had become an other-directed peo­ple, who lacked their own internal moral compasses. The great mass of postwar An1ericans lost themselves in a "lonely crowd" to which they looked for values and personal decisions. The independent democratic citizen had become a cypher in the clutches on an anonymous mass society.

Such tendencies toward mass society caused a minority of Americans to worry that .the nation had lost its sense of purpose amidst a flood of consumer goods. They wondered if mass society could rise above the level of a car dealer's showroom.

But the great mass of Americans shared no such worries. Those who could consumed as never before, and those who couJd not aspired to do the same . ...

The Culture of Consensus The hard edges of the Cold War and the tensions of McCarthyism had been softened in the United Sates of the late 1950s by the smiles, platitudes, and tranquility of the Eisenhower era. It was a time to consume, to achieve, and to celebrate.

Intellectuals and writers who for much of th� twentieth century had been at war

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304/13. WERl ! 1950s AMERICA'S "HAPPY DAYS"? r

with a materialistic, bourgeois America now also joined the celebration. Partisan Review, a literary intellectual journal which had served at the end of the 1930s as a voice for non-Stalinist Marxists, in the 1950s sponsored a symposium entitled "Our Country and Our Culture." In it one contributor declared, "For the first time in the history of the modem intellectual, America is not to be conceived of as a priori the vulgarest and stupidest nation of the world."

Indeed, the America of the 1950s was a country in which private foundations generously subsidized free-lance intellec­tuals and many of those same intellectu­als gladly served such government agen­cies as the Central Intelligence Agency through the Congress for Cultural Free­dom. Cultural anticommunism united in­tellectuals, trade unionists, and such so­cialists as Norman Thomas in a corrm1on front with corporate executives and fed­eral officials.

W hat had happened to American ·intellectuals and social critics was aptly caught in the substance and title of Commentary editor Nom1an Podhoretz's 1968 autobiography. The son of Jewish­immigrant parents, himself born and bred in the Brownsville, Brooklyn, ghetto, Podhoretz had made his way to Colum­bia University and from there to the apex of the New York literary intellectual universe. His journey through life was surely, as he titled it, a case of Making It in America.

Formal academic works reflected a similar influence. Where once histmy books stressed have-nots versus haves, fanners versus bankers, section versus. section, and city versus cow1try, in the 1950s they spoke of consensus and shared values. David Potter perceived abundance as the single most influential.

� I

factor in the American experience, book Political Man, abolished all class he entitled his interpretive history based on irreconcilable "isms." America People of Plenty. In 1956 Richa�d .. as Daniel Bell proclaimed in a

Hofstadter won the. Pulitzer Prize ·• collection of essays published in 1960, the a study, The Age of Reform, : UnitedStateshad seen Tlze End of Ideology. emphasized the relative absence of class • ,:· One essay in the collection analyzed trade conflict, the priority of status over class; · · as "The Capitalism of the Prole­and the basic American commitment tor · •· tariat," and another, "Crime as an Arner-private property, the profit motive, and ··lean Way of Life," dissected criminal ac-capitalist institutions. · tivities as an ethnic version of "making

Economists, too, saw social harmony: · ·. it." The passions which had generated and material abundance as the new·.· ·:mass socialist parties, the Bolshevik Rev­reality. In their view, the Key nesian •· olution, fascism in Italy, and nazism in economic revolution had given them · · .. Germany, Bell proclaimed as dead. The the tools to fine tune the ·• new generation, he wrote, "finds itself . . . in order to maintain full employment·;' ·within a framework of political society and price stability. Students no longer .. · has rejected . .. the old apocalyptic had to look to classical economics or :. • chiliastic visions." its Marxist repudiation for solutions to: John F. Kennedy's election as presi-contemporary problems. dent symbolized the marriage of "new

None celebrated America's success ' · generation" intellectuals to the power more lustily than. political scientists and· , . of the American state. The new pres­sociologists. Both academic groups saw invited Robert Frost to read a democracy, especially in America, as a . · ·'poem at the inauguration. The histo­completed, successful experiment. FuU · · . rian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., served as democratic rights were in place, all . White House scholar�in-residemce; the adults had basic citizenship, and ·economic historian Walt W. Rostow acted were formally legal before the law. No . asa foreign-policy planner; the economist single, willied group ruled or dominated • • ' John Kenneth Galbraith went to India as society to the detriment of others. Instead, and the historians Samuel a variety of equally balanced interest · Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Com-groups competed with each other for·. ,•mager sang the praises of "Camelot" on public favors and influence with the .. . the Potomac. state, which acted as an honest broker .• · Not that voices of dissent and criticism among them. This system came to be.· • Were silent in the 1950s. Not at all. known as pluralism to distinguish it authoritarianism and totalitarianism.

According to the political sociologists, · .. pluralism was not a belief system corn· parable to socialism, communism, or faso "· · ,, .,,., . . ...,o.,"''-""'"

cism. It was rather a simple practice .. •

of balancing harmoniously competing. claims and rights in an affluent, demo, . cratic society, which had, as the s ogist Seymour Martin Upset claimed iJ! ·

For the more orthodox on the always Monthly Review,

YES Dubofsky and The �'/ 305

in which Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy subjected contemporary American and world developments to the scrutiny of Marxist economics and theory. But in the 1950s and early 1960s their audiences were relatively sn:i.all and their sometimes strident criticism of affluent America no more than tiny voices in the wilderness.

It was this reality that led C. Wright Mills to cry out as early as 1951 that "political expression is banalized, politi­cal theory is barren administrative detail, history is made behind men's backs."

In reality, the affluent mass culture of the 1950s that bred a quiet generation of organization men lost in the void of a "lonely crowd" was more ephemeral than it first appeared. Indeed it was shot through with unseen cracks and flaws. J ohn Kenneth Galbraith may have bemoaned the widespread public squalor amidst the private affluence; for more than 30 million Americans even affluence was beyond reach. Rural life decayed apace, urban ghettos spread and festered, nonwhite Americans remained at best second-class citizens and at worst the hapless victims of social and economic discrimination, and most wage workers, regardless of skin color, endured as objects of external authority. Wealth and poverty, the ideal of equality versus the reality of inequality, and authmity against freedom remained inextricably at war in affluent America. During the 1960s, the social tinder represented by poverty and racialism ignited in the form of urban race riots and the impassioned militancy of the New Left and the radical feminist movements.

Before then, however, the presidency of Dwight David Eisenhower made affluence and harmony appear to be the rule. Unprecedented economic growth, rising real incomes, and the new mass

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306/13. WERE 'L - 1950s AMERICA'S "HAPPY DAYS"?

culture promoted by .television laid the foundation for the 1·elative quiescence of the Eisenhower era.· Eisenhower's ability to dampen old political feuds, to legitimate the New Deal "revolution" as he castigated overgrown government and "creeping socialism," his success at

' softening the harsher aspects of the Cold

War, and his taming of the worst e;u.o::�''t'.··' of McCarthyism reinforced the aura complacency associated with the 1 Ike's mid-American, small-town his wide, winning grin, and his assured most Americans that all was at home and abroad.

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Douglas T. Miller and Marion Nowak

THE FIFTIES: THE WAY WE REALLY WERE

Hula hoops, bunny hops, 3-D movies. Davy Crockett coonskins, chloro­phyll toothpaste, 22 collegians stuffed into a phone booth. Edsels and tail­finned Cadillacs. Greasy duck' s-ass hairdos, leather jackets, souped-up hot rods, dragging, cruising, mooning. Like crazy, man, dig? Kefauver hearings, Howdy Doody, Kukla, Fran and Ollie , Hridey Murphy, Charles Van Doren, Francis Gary Powers. The Catcher in the Rye, Tize Power of Positive Tizinking; Howl, 011 t/ze Road. Patti Page, Pat Boone, Vic Damone; Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley; The Platters, The Clovers, The Drifters; Bill Haley and

' the

Comets, Danny and the Juniors. Mantle, Mays, Marciano. Pink shirts, gray flannels, white bucks. I LIKE IKE:

THE FABULOUS FIFTIES!-or so 1970s nostalgia would lead one to be­lieve. A 1972 issue of Newsweek, complete with Marilyn Monroe cover, ex­plored this phenomenon tmder the heading "Yearning for the Fifties: 1he Good Old Days." "It was a simple decade," Newsweek writers recalled, "when hip was hep, good was boss." That same year Life magazine reminisced about "The Nifty Fifties"-"it's been barely a dozen years since the '50s ended and yet here we are again, awash in the trappings of that sunnier time."

TI1is wistful view of the fifties first became evident about 1971 and 1972.lt

quickly exploded into a national craze that still pervades the popular images of the mid-century era. Numerous examples of fifties nostalgia exist in the seventies. It was the theme of movies like American Graffiti, The Last Picture 5/zaw, Let the Goad Times Roll, and The Way We Were. Television shows "Happy Days" and "Laverne and Shirley" recreated an idyllic fifties world of youth and innocence. The TV show "M*A *S*H" even managed to make people a little homesick for the Korean War. By February 1976, the fifties rock-and­roll parody Grease began its fifth season. It had become Broadway's longest running show by far, and this despite the fact that it never had name stars, hit songs, or a high budget.

Popular music in this post-Beatles period also saw a major revival o£ fifties rock. By the mid-seventies Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Rick Nelson, Fats Domino, Little Richard, and Bill Haley again were drawing mass audi-

From Douglas T. Miller and Marion Nowak, T/lf' Fifties: The Way We Really Were (Doubleday, 1977). Copyright© 1977byDouglas T. Miller. Reprinted by permission. Notes omitted.

307

308/13. WER 'E 1950s AMERICA'S "HAPPY DAYS"?

ences. Record companies were reissuing fifties hits on special golden-oldies LPs, and many radio stations were devoting several hours daily to an oldies fonnat. TI1e fifties musical revival spawned contemporary groups such as Sha-Na­Na, Flash Cadillac and the Continental Kids, and Vince Vance and the Valiants. These groups not only sang the oldies, they also revived the greaser look Vince Vance even got himself arrested while attempting to steal an Edsel hubcap. Nightclubs too have cashed in on nostalgia. Across the country, clubs have featured old music and special trivia nights with questions such as "Who played James Dean's girlfriend in Rebel Without a Cause?"

Another sign of the fifties fad has been in clothing. Leather motorcycle jackets, picture sweaters, pedal pushers, pleated skirts, and strapless evening dresses have been hot items in the last few years. In 1973, Monique, the New York Daily News fashion reporter, annow1ced: "the feeling of the fifties that will rule a large part of the fashion next fall is already apparent." A year earlier Cyrinda Foxe, a Marilyn Monroe look-alike modeling a dress from a fifties collection, claimed that "people just go crazy whenlwalk down the street! TI1e fifties were so much sexier."

W hat does all this nostalgia mean? Periods of intense longing for an ear­lier era indicate that people are dis­contented with the present. Excessive, sentimental nostalgia generally occurs during times of perceived crisis. Such has been the case in the seventies. The rise of the fifties enthusiasm coincided with widespread disillusionment and a grow­ing conservatism. For many people the 1950s came to symbolize a golden age of itmocence and simplicity, an era suppos­edly unruffled by riots, racial violence,

Vietnam, Watergate, assassinations. Peo· . · · as its only participants. They recall Bo ple numbed by the traumas of the sixties · . ·· ·Diddley and Buddy Holly, but ignore and seventies, desiring to forget the hor;: · 1 : Joe McCarthy and John Foster Dulles. rors of presidential crime, soaring prices,. · · Nostalgia is highly selective. No one is Cambodian bombings, Kent State, My · . , · . staging a House Un-American Activities Lai, the Manson case, the Chicago Con�. Committee revival, or longing for the vention, the murder of two Kennedy's, good old days of nuclear brinksmanship Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X, .·· and the deadly H-bomb tests. yearned for a quieter time. As a Cleveland Certainly, there was some fun in oldies-but-goodies discjockey put it,"my · fifties-the Coasters' songs, Lenny audience wants to forget its problems · · , Bruce's nightclub routines, Sid Caesar's and return to-or at least recall-those · · .TV antics. But in retrospect it was essen-happy high-school times-the prom, no

· : - tially a humorless decade, one in which wars, no riots, no protests, the convert· '·comic Mort Sahl could raise national ire ibles and the drive-in." Another DJ even . ·., . ·by cracking a sit1gle J. Edgar Hoover joke. saw the fifties music revival as a way to . . ·. Much of what strikes observers as quaint bridge the generation gap. "I get the feel· .: ·.· . . now-Nixon's Checkers speech, Norman ing that through ·this music some of the : '· ·· .·Vincent Peale's homilies, or tail-finned kids are finding. a back-door way of get· . . ..• : Cadillacs-were grotesque realities at l:he ting together with their parents." NostaV ·' · . ·-.time. It was more an era of fear than gia, then, is a pleasant distraction. One· ·fun. The bomb, communists, spies, and imagmes the past, and so overlooks . . Sputnik all scared Americans. And fear present. repression both of the blatant Me-

Additionally, since we live in a society . ·· . . ·Carthyite type rind the more subtle, per­that prizes youth. over age, there is a.' · · :;•vasive, and personal daily pressures to natural tendency for nostalgia on the part . conform. of the aging generation. For those who , . Astute social critics have found the grew up in the fifties, the happy images . · . ;fifties anything but the good old days. To of that decade are a positive t"eassurance

' · · the late Paul Goodman it was an" extraor--a reclaimit1g of. fadmg youth. . dinarily senseless and unnatural" time. too in the mid-seventies the general . American society, in his words, was "a realization that energy, propperity, and·· ·. · Closed Room with a Rat Race as the cen­growth are not ·limitless undoubtedly : .. ter of fascination, powerfully energized makes Americans a more retrospective, . · ·• i by fear of being outcasts." To Michael nostalgic people. We may die tomorrow, .. -Harrington the decade "was a moral dis­but we wish to remember it as a good

· , :.aster, an amusing waste of life." Nor­world while it lasted. · · man Mailer bluntly described the fifties

But whatever the reasons for the. ·• .· ·, .as "one of the worst decades in the his­fifties revival, the image of that decade� · ·:·. : tory of man." . .. conveyed by current nostalgia is badly· · ;,Meet the Typical American," an-distorted. The a'rtifacts of the fifties are · nounced a 1954 Reader's Digest article. sill with us. The facts are less clear. "The average American male stands five Lookit1g back on that period, people feet nme mches tall, weighs 158 pounds, today see it as a time of fun :and: prefers brunettes, baseball, beefsteak and innocence, a soda-shop world with youth· .·. . . French fried potatoes, and thinks the abil-

;·_:�<H::. . .. ... � ;.

NO Miller am .. ) .wak/309

ity to run a home smoothly and efficiently is the most important quality in a wife." The average American woman, the arti­cle continued, "is five feet four, weighs 132, can't stand an unshaven face." This typical female preferred marriage to a ca­reer. As the average weights of men and women might suggest, many Americans were on the heavy side. TI1e prevalent styles encouraged this. Women in pleated skirts falling a few inches below the knees were expected to be shapely in a plump sort of way. Bikinis were largely limited to the girlie magazines. But big breasts, symbols of motherhood , were definitely in vogue. For men, excess flab was easily concealed beneath baggy pleated pants, suits and shirts that did not follow body lines, boxer shorts and bathing trunks, B�rmudas with knee-length socks. So ill this decade of suburban prosperity, many people carried paunches as if they were symbols of success.

T he goals of these "average" Amer­icans were not radical. What George Meany said of organized labor in the mid-fifties would have applied to most groups: "We do not seek to recast Amer­ican society. We do seek an ever-rising standard of living by which we mean not only more money but more leisure and a .richer cultural life."

Leisure and culture-Americans took to these as never before. About one sixth of all personal income was spent on leisure pursuits. In record force people painted-by-numbers, drank, gardened, watched TV, traveled, listened to mu­sic, hunted and fished, read Reader's Di­gest condensed books. Doing-it-oneself became a national fad. Everything from home permanents to boat buildmg had millions of amateur practitioners. In 1954 it was reported that 70 per cent of all wallpaper bought was hung by novices,

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310 /13. WERE THE 1950s AMERICA'S "HAPPY DAYS"?

while some 11 million weekend carpen­ters drilled, sawed, and sanded some 180 square miles of plywood with their 25 million power tools. In California, the Pan Pacific Do-It-Yourself Show even exhibited separate pieces of fur that could be assembled into a do-it-yourself mink coat. For persons of a more seden­tary nature, American industry produced quantities of amusing junk-cigarette lighters that played "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," whisky-flavored toothpaste, mink-trimmed clothespins, Venus tooth­picks, Jayne Mansfield hot-water bottles.

Americans could do just about any­thing. Or so at least they were told in hundreds of books purportedly revealing the secrets of how to make love, how to tap one's secret source of strength, how to mix a good martini, how to get thin or fat, how to be popula1� powerful, famous, rich.

But it was Culture that American boost­ers boasted of most. "Once in a great while a society explodes in a flood of new ideas, new tastes, new standards," claimed Fenton Turck in a 1952 Reader's Digest article. "A fresh and exciting age emerges, alive with expanding oppor­tunities. Today's Americans are living in one of these extraordinary periods." Turck talked of a great flowering of cul­ture. As evidence of this he cited such things as increased attendance at con­celts, opera, and theater. Art museums, opera companies, and symphony orches­tras all multiplied in the fifties, as did the sale of quality paperbacks and classical records.

Culture had status appeal and an increased portion of the population had both the leisure and money to dabble in it. Perhaps the apogee of the era's culture boom was reached in April 1960, when the Parke-Bernet Galleries held a huge

art auction to benefit the Museum Modem Art. The New York City auction room was linked via dosed-circuit TV

to similar rooms in Chicago, Dallas, and··. Los Angeles. The auction was a

·

success; an Utrillo went to a Dallas··,· millionaire for $20,000, A Cezanne tq a·: New York c�llector for $200,0,00. on a Hans Hartung had reached the · · $10,000 level before anyone noticed it was hung upside down. "We're ready for our renaissance," claimed poet Louis· : Unterrneyer at mid-decade. "Westward ., the course of culture!"

In addition to celebrating American culture and living standards, many ·

people saw the United States in the .. middle of the twentieth century as having · · a peculiar and providential mission. '!We ·::

are living_ in one of the great watershed:: periods of history," asserted Democratic ·

presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson . in the 1952 campaign. Tius era "may ·

well fix the pattern of civilization for . many generations to come. God has for us an awesome mission: nothing:· less than the leadership of the free ·· world." The editors of Fortune felt the ·

same. "There come tirries in the history of every people," they wrote, "when·: destiny knocks on their door with an.

iron insistence." In American history, as they read it, destiny had so knocked:. three times: "Once when we faced the.· seemingly impossible odds of British ·• power to gain our independence: once at · .. · Fort Sumter, when we faced the bloody :· task of preserving our union: and it is .! knocking today [1951] ... . Our outlook. is the same as it was at the time of the Revolution; and again at the time of the ·

Civil War: the shape of things to come. depends on us: our moral decision, wisdom, our vision, and our will."

That America would succeed in fulfill­. ing its God-given mission few doubted.

· .: The future was bright. "Our spiritual ·

· road map," predicted philosopher Morris .. :'Ernst, "will carry the direction pointers:

·1976-TI1is Way-Energy, Leisure, Full Life."

Yet despite the varied and frequent · .versions of "America the Beautiful," .. doubts and anxieties were also present.

. ;The fifties was a time of tensions and ·insecurities. Early in the . decade the

· _1,1sually optimistic Norman Vincent Peale .· . . spoke of an "epidemic of fear and worry"

in the United States. "All doctors," he declared, "are having cases of illness

·which are brought on directly by fear, and aggravated by worry and a feeling of insecurity." For some Americans the

.. greatest anxieties stemmed from the cold . war. "Our nation," warned a late-fifties

· · civil defense pamphlet, "is in a grim struggle for national survival and the preservation of freedom in the world."

· And of course there was the constant threat of nuclear destruction which left people, in the words of one mid-fifties ·observer, "in a state of suspension, ·waiting to see whether the Bomb is going

.·.to fall or not." ·

,. For other people, the speed of so­.. cial and economic change generated

uncertainties and cast doubts on old certitudes. The new prosperity and

. changing lifestyles, while materially ben­.. efiting many, caused insecurities. Tradi­

tional ethnic neighborhoods were break­. ing down as newly prosperous people . fled to suburbia. Yet this very mobility

created rootlessness. Many people sim-. ply discovered that abundance was not :enough. In any case Americans became quite self-critical and made best sellers of books telling them of their shortcomings.

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NO Miller and Nowak/311

In this light, some of the most impor­tant social and cultural phenomena of the fifties are more understandable. The overwhelming emphasis on the family gave people a. sense of place and per­sonal identity. The massive return to reli­gion provided individuals with a sense of security; it reassured them that the traditional moral verities were still valid. Sustained and successful attacks against progressive education were anotherman­ifes tation of the search for traditional, ab� solute values. So too was the intellectual emphasis on consensus. Historians, soci­ologist, and other social scientists played down conflict and instead stressed the harmonious and enduring nature of American democratic values. Blacks and other nonwhites, who did not share equally in America's bounty, were as­sured by the white media that they never had it so good. Generally speaking, nei­ther racial nor economic classes were rec­ognized. Critics of this celebrated consen­sus, whether from right or left, tended to be treated as psychological deviants suf­fering from such cliche ills as status anx­

iety or authoritarian personality. Non­conformists and rebels were subject to harsh conformist pressures. No wonder then that bipartisan banality flourished. Both major political parties clung tena­ciously to the same center, maintaining the status quo while mouthing provincial

·Protestant platitudes and preparing for Armageddon ....

If one were attempting a precise periodization, the fifties could well be divided into three parts: 1948-53, 1954-57, 1958-60. These three periods might then be labeled "The Age of Fear," "The Era of Conservative Consensus," and "The Time of National Reassessment."

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312/13. WERI ) 1950s AMERICA'S "HAPP Y DAYS"?

Tite Age of Fear: TI1e post-World War II era really begins around 1948. By then the nation had essentially adjusted to a peacetime economy; depression had not recurred and people were coming to believe in the possibility of perpet­ual prosperity. At the same time, the cold war had become a debilitating re­ality. A chronology of terror began un­folding. In 1948 a communist coup was successful in Czechoslovakia and the So­viets blockaded western access to Berlin. TI1at same year in the United States, talk of treason and communist infiltration be­came commonplace, especially after a for­mer New Deal State Department official, Alger Hiss, was accused by W hittaker Chambers of having passed secrets to the Russians. TI1e following year, 1949, the Soviets exploded their first atomic bomb and Mao Tse-tnng's communist forces were victorious in China. Early in 1950 President Harry S. Truman annonnced plans to begin development of a hydro­gen bomb (it was perfected by 1952); Sen­ator Joseph McCarthy added the loudest voice to the already sizable outcry of anti­communist witch htmters. Nineteen fifty also saw the conviction of Alger Hiss for petjury, the arrest and trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg as atomic spies (they were executed in 1953), the outbreak of the Korean War, and Senator Estes Ke­fauver's televised criminal investigations that dramatically revealed the extent and power of organized crime.

Such events shocked and frightened people, and the last years of Truman's presidency proved a trying time-a pe­riod of suspicions, accusations, loyalty oaths, loathings, extreme chauvinistic. Americanism. Republicans, attempting to regain power, were not averse to charging the Democrats with being "soft on communism,"'' though in reality both.

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parties were excessively 1954; The Geneva summit conference Tensions raised by Korean fighting, the Soviets in 1955; the lack of posed communist infiltration, spy new spy sensations after 1950; continued loyalty investigations, inflation, · , and, above all, the election of and the bomb reached near hysteric er to the presidency. portions in the early fifties. Dissent .· . When Ike was first elected in 1952, suppressed, conformity demanded. ·.one Pennsylvania housewife remarked: the exception of a few legitimate "It's like America has come home." And onage cases, none of which really ; :so it seemed to millions. W hile politics gered national security, most victims of the

. ·· . traditionally means conflict, Ike appeared anti-red mania were guilty of little more than • . . to people as above politics. He was

holding unpopular opinions. Not only the · . . the heroic general come to unite the national government, but thousands of... .

nation in peace and prosperity as he had local commw1ities as well felt obliged to . defended it earlier in war. Democratic

search out and destroy suspected subver- ·•. presidents Roosevelt and Truman had for sive views. Teachers, government work- 20 years emphasized a politics of class ers, entertainers, and many others were . strife and crisis. With Eisenhower came dismissed. Textbooks were censored and· .... the appearance at least of a politics of libraries closed. unity and classlessness. His boyish grin

Yet such fear and repression, plus pros- .· .. and downhome homely face, his simple perity, also made Americans seem united . ,. . ·sincere platitudes about home, mother, under a national faith.Seeing the worldin ·· and heaven, his circumlocutions when dualistic terms of good versus evil, . difficult issues came up, all these things ple celebrated the Urtited States as the·: endeared him to millions and made him bastion of freedom, democracy, and "peo-. ·· , a symbol, not of party, but of national pie's capitalism." Intellectuals defended ·consensus. Americans, tired of constant America and searched for enduring crises and the hysteria of the age of sensual values of the country's past and . fear, found in Ike a symbol of hope and present. A noncritical conservative cori- . · confidence. sensus emerged offering hope and re- And so, by the mid-fifties there came a assurance during this age of fear. The · brief happy moment-the quintessential widespread emphasis on religion and the • fifties-prosperous, stable! bland, reli.-family gave further solace. The combined.· gious, moral, patriotic, conservative, do-anxiety and hope of this period is well mestic, buttoned-down. Huge tail-finned illustrated in the title of a 1950 song� . • cars sold in record numbers, Tlte Power "Jesus Is God's Atomic Bomb." of Positive Thinking and Tlte Man in tlre

Tire Era of Conservative Consensus: conservative consensus and celebration • of America continued into the mid-fifties, . and fortunately for national nerves the. fears and anxieties began to ebb. Several. factors contributed to this: the death Stali.D and the end of the Korean War in· · 1953; the downfall of Senator McCarthy ·•

Gray Flannel Suit sat atop the best-seller ·lists, and the "Spirit of Geneva" seemed

. to diffuse itself over the globe. Domesti­

. 'cally no problem appeared more press­ing than the specter of juvenile delin-

. quency, though in reality young people · · overwhelmingly accepted the values of

their elders and dedicated themselves to the bourgeois goals of security, sociabil-

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NO Miller and 1\i,_ . .. k /313 ·

it:y, domesticity. They went steady, mar­r.ied young, had lots of children, lived the conforming life of "togetherness."

Crises still existed. Poverty, racism, sexism, and militarism all threatened America. But Eisenhower and most citizens tried to ignore such ills. The sting seemed gone from the times, and a cheerful nation overwhelmingly re­elected Eisenhower in 1956. Just before that election, David Riesman and Stewart Alsop visited a new suburb south d Chicago to poll voters. They found people vague about politics but liking Ike. "Most of the people we spoke to were young housewives, often interrupted in their midday television program .... " 111ey were educated but complacent. "As one looked over that flat Illinois prairie at all the signs of prosperity," generalized Riesman, "it was not hard to see why these people were so bland politically and responded to the same qualities in Ike . ... These people were not self-made men who remembered their struggles against hardship but, rather, a society-made generation who could not believe society would let them down .... " These were the model fifties figures -suburbanized, bure�ucratized, smug, secure.

Tlte Time of National Reassessment: Eisen­hower's second term quickly revealed how precarious the mid-fifties plateau of repose actually was. Even before that new term began, America's foreign rela­tions suffered major setbacks. Just prior to the 1956 elections, fighting broke out in Egypt and Hungary. In late October,

·Anglo-French-Israeli forces invaded the Suez region of Egypt in an attempt to regain the canal which Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser earlier had nation­alized. Third World anticolonial resent-

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ment and threatened Soviet intervention convinced the Eisenhower administra­tion that the invasion must. be ended. America pressured Britain, France, and Israel to wiU1draw. They did so. How­ever, these nations' humiliation embit­tered them toward the United States. Westem unity seemed seriously weak­ened. During these same tense days of late October and early November 1956, the Soviet Union, taking advantage of the dissent among the Westem powers, harshly crushed an anticommunist up­rising in Hungary that had broken out only a week before the Suez war. For a few weeks the world hovered on the brink of nuclear war. And while both crises were over at about the same time as Eisenhower's November re-election, they greatly intensified intemational tensions. Suez and Hungary clearly revealed the 1955 Geneva sunm1it to be only a tempo­rary thaw in the cold war.

Less than a year later, the domestic tranquillity of the mid-fifties was also disrupted. In September 1957, American racism was shockingly unveiled when the school-integration issue reached crisis proportions in Little Rock. Eisenhower, who was not sympathetic to the civil rights movement, reluctantly was forced to send troops into that city to insure compliance with the Supreme Court's 1954 desegregation decision. But the ugly scenes in front of Central High School laid bare for Americans and the world this nation's deep-seated racial tensions.

Then a month later in October 1957, the Soviets launched Sputnik I, the world's first earth-orbiting satellite. Americans were profoundly shocked. National self­confidence seemed shattered in the light of Uus demonstrated Soviet superiority in space science. Calls for an expanded arms race accelerated. American afflu-

ence, once the nation's pride, now . widespread cheating in schools and of a blamed for enfeebling the populace. Pro-, · • gro up of New York cops working for a

gressive education, which had been ·.·burglary ring. ·

the defensive throughout the decade,,' By May 1960, when the Soviets an-was quickly de:ri:wlished as people de-; : nounced that Francis Gary Powers had manded intellectual discipline with more . been shot down in a U-2 spy plane emphasis on science, mathematics, and.. over Russian territory, the American language.

· propensity for critical self-evaluation had Sputnik clearly struck the major become obsessive. A presidential Com-

against mid-fifties tranquillity. But other •· mission on National Goals, which Eisen-developments in the last three years : hower had esti;iblished after Spuh1ik, of Eisenhower's presidency added to · produced a ponderous report, Goals for

American doubts and increased the Americans. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund tional penchant for soul-searching. At . issued their own version, Prospect for

about the same time as the Soviet America. Life, Look, the New York Times

successes, the American economy be;· and other mass-circulation publications gan to slump. By the spring of 1958, a./ ·. f�:atured articles and whole issues dis-major recession existed; unemployment · · cussing national purpose and the future had climbed to 7.7 per cent of the .. role of America. Leading social and polit-tal labor force, the highest rate . · ical writers began turning out books with 1941. That same year congressional com- · titles like American the Vincible and What

mittees disclosed .conflict-of-interest vi· · · · Ivan Knows and Johnny Does1t't.

olations by presidentia,l appointees and Much ofthe national debate focused on charges of influence-peddling by Vice- · · dissatisfaction with the quality of Amer-PresidentNixon's fonner campaign man-. ican life. Conformity and materialism, ager. Even Ike's closest, most trusted and •. critics argued, had dulled Americans into influential adviser, Sherman Adams, ......... ,.,!J�:;,,.

· a complacent averageness. "Our goal has

dismissed for taking bribes. Adams, it .. become a life of amiable sloth," corn-

was revealed, had accepted· expensive ·. plained Time editor Thomas Griffith in gifts from Bernard Goldfine, a wealthy : 1959."We are in danger of becoming a vi-

businessman with cases pending before .. brating and mediocre people." "Looking

the government. On tour in Latin Amer- . at some of the institutions we nourish and

ica that year, Nixon was· ·spat upon, . ··defend," Robert Heilbroner noted, early jeered, and stoned. A year later, Charles . in1960, "it would notbe ciifficult to main-Van Doren, a handsome young · lain that our society is an immense stamp-tor from Columbia University, scion ' ing press for the careless production of an eminent literary family, revealed to·. .. · trnderdeveloped and malformed human

investigators .fuat the brilliance he ·.beings, and that, whatever it may claim displayed in winning vast sums on a. · to be, it is not a society fundamentally TV quiz show was fake. The show:'· had been rigged. At about the, �:moo·:,_,.,,,_, time famed disc jockey Alan Freed, the .

self-appointed father of rock and roll, · became involved in a. payola scandal. Among other revelations were exposes of ·

NO Miller and Nt

concerned with moral issues, with seri­ous purposes, or with human dignity." Such laments swelled into a national cho­rus of self-reproach as Americans once more showed themselves to be an anx­

ious, self-conscious people. Yet there remained an underlying note

of hope in this intramural abuse. Most doubters viewed their disparagements as enterprises of self-correction. "Amer­ica the Beautiful" would soar once more if only we could speed up economic growth, put a man on the moon, de­velop a more flexible military estab­lishment, rekindle a spirit of national self-sacrifice, and so on and so on. John F. Kennedy's 1960 campaign epito­mized the schlzophrenic national mood of doubt and hope. In this, many oth­ers concurred . Walter Lippmann stated in July 1960, "We're at the end of something that is petering out and aging and about finlshed." He was not unhappy about this; rather he sensed that a new and bet­ter day was coming. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., already active with Kennedy people, also lamented the late fifties but foretold "a new epoch" of "vitality," "identity," and "new values ... straining for expres­sion and for release."

The fifties, then, is not a neat single unit. The decade began with terror and af­fluence uniting a people under a national faith. The mid-fifties, desperately tired of crises, continued that faith in a more ca­sual and relaxed manner. Yet by 1960, that mask of faith was drawn aside to reveal a changing face: regretful, doubting, yet also looking in hope to a rebirth.

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POSTSCRIPT

Were the 1950s America's "Happy Days"?·

TI1e period after World War II was one of both affluence and anxiety for most Americans. Dubofsky and Theoharis emphasize the affluent side. The American economy not only brought prosperity to its increasing white-collar and stable blue-collar workers at home; it also revived the economies of the Westem European nations and noncommunist Asian countries. The increased wealth of the American worker in the 1950s brought about a consumption craze. Installment buying for automobiles and appliances and single-family homes purchased with long-term mortgages, financed in many cases at low interest rates by the government on behalf of the veterans, were the order of the day.

TI1ere were cracks in the economy, to be sure. Dubofsky and Theoharis point out that most nonwhites, especially blacks and Hispanics, did not share · in the general prosperity. Some of "the old standbys of industrial America­railroads, coal mining, textiles, and shoe manufacturing-continued a decline that had begun in ·the 1920s." Labor union membership in general dropped, and individual farms fell into the hands of agribusinesses. Finally, many poor people, especially those with incomes under $4,000 per year, were spending more than they eamed. ·

l'vliller and Nowak focus on the negative side mentioned in passing by Dubofsky and Theoharis. TI1ey point out that in a society "that prizes youth over age," there is a tendency on the part of the older generation to re­create through television, movies, and books a nostalgic past that never really existed. Americans, say Miller and Nowak, lost their motives and became anxious as they moved to their "little boxes" in the suburbs. They became overweight, were obsessed with their status, and were afraid of communists. who might overthrow the American govemment. ·

Both readings can be criticized for giving an unbalanced assessment of the 1950s. Dubofsky mentions the cracks in the affluent society. Blacks would push their demands for school desegregation, which the Supreme Court ordered in the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas decisions of 1954 and 1955, and demonstrate successfully for political and legal equality in the 1960s.

TI1ere is an enormous bibliography on the 1950s. A recent sympathetic overview is Michael W. Schuyler� "The 1950s; A Retrospective View," Nebraska History (Spring 1996), which summarizes the major social and economic cur­rents of the 1950s. Also supportive of the absence of extremes is Stephen J. Whitfield's "The 1950s; The Era of No Hard Feelings," South Atlantic Quar­terly (Summer 1975). Alan Ehrenhalt's "Leaming from the Fifties," Wilson

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Quarterly (Summer 1995) is a brilliant case study of Chicago, Illinois, that points out the high price some people in the 1950s paid to enjoy the good life. The starting point for the critical cultural studies of television, film, and literature is Guile McGregor, "Domestic Blitz; A Revisionist History of the Fifties," American Studies (Spring 1993).

TI1ere are a number of excellent monographs on the 1950s. Eric F. Gold­man, TI1e Cntcial Decade at1d After: America, 1945-1960 (Random House, 1960) remains a great read' �d· pushes the view that Americans had developed "a broad concem about the public issues of the day."

In a class by themselves are Paul A Carter's Another Part of tlze Fifties (Columbia University Press, 1983) and journalist David Halberstam's The Fifties (Willard Books, 1993), a book that is eminently readable in its portraits of 1950s he:roes like Charles Van Doren, Marlon Brando, and Bill Russell. Some of the same material is covered from a more conservative viewpoint by Jeffrey Hart, ed., When the Going Was Goocl: Life in the Fifties (Crown Publishers, 1982).

President Dwight D. Eisenhower dominated the politics of the 1950s in the same way that one of his predecessors, Franklin D. Roosevelt, did the depres­sion decade and World War II. In the 1950s the public loved Eisenhower, but the intellectuals did not. Early assessments of him as an ineffectual, old man who let his staff make the decisions can be found in Dean Alberton's collec­tion of articles Eisenhower as President (Hill & Wang, 1963). Revisionists who have researched through the private papers and diaries of the president and his staff have concluded that he really was in charge .. See Fred I. Greenstein, Tize Hidden Hand Presidency Qohns Hopkins University Press, 1994). Past revi­sionist arguments that he was in charge but fumbled anyway are assessed in the chapter entitled "Vicissitudes of Presidential Reputations: Eisenhower," in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Cycles of American History (Houghton Mifflin, 1986). A major biography that is sympathetic to its subject remains Stephen A Ambrose's Eisenhower: Soldier and President (Simon & Schuster, 1990).

Other worthy books on a variety of 1950s topics include TI1omas C. Reeves, ed., McCarthyism, 3rd ed. (Robert E. Krieger, 1989); Harold G. Vatter, The U.S. Economy in the 1950s (University of Chicago Press, 1985); James Gilbert, A Cycle of Outrage: America's Reaction to the Juvenile Age (Oxford University Press, 1986); and Karal A Marling, insAs Seen on TV: The Visual Culture of

. Everyday Life in the 1950s (Harvard University Press, 1994).

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