THE 1950s:

1. THE 1950s: “Conservatism, Complacency, and Contentment” OR “Anxiety, Alienation, and Social Unrest” ??

2. Problems in the Postwar Era: Returning soldiers • Problem: • 10 million serving in the armed forces needed to return to American Society • Solution: • GI Bill of Rights 1944-gov’t to provide those who served in the military with: • tuition assistance • employment benefits for 1 year while looking for a job • low interest federal loans for homes, businesses or farms

3. Problems in the Postwar Era: Adjusting to peacetime economy • Problems: • $35 billion in gov’t war material contracts were cancelled • 1 million workers laid off • 25% increase in inflation • Decrease in wages • Strikes • Many predicted a postwar depression

4. Problems in the Postwar Era: Adjusting to peacetime economy • Solutions: • Congress est. wartime-like price, wage and rent controls • Supply needed to catch up to demand • Predictions of depression did not take into account that people sacrificed during the war and were “ready to spend”—this expanded the economy • Truman threatened to draft workers into the army if they did not return to work • Republican Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act stripping unions of rights they earned under FDR

7. Truman favored, but not passed by Congress: Compulsory health insurance Farming subsidies Passed Congress: Increased minimum wage Extension of Social Studies New Public works projects Low income housing/slum clearance Integration of armed forces/federal jobs Fair Deal

8. Democrats had lost favor because: Korean War stalemate McCarthyism China’s Communism Communism in East Europe Corruption in Truman administration Gov’t viewed as too powerful Truman chose not to run Republicans favored, but… Election of 1952

9. Eisenhower’s Vice presidential nominee, Richard Nixon almost lost his place on the ticket due to charges of corruption. Nixon saves his place by appealing to the television audience with the “checkers speech” https://mail.woboe.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eon9vWgqbY%26feature=related Eisenhower/Nixon Republican Ticket

11. Called for conservative spending, but liberal social policies Accomplishments of Ike Cut taxes Balanced budget Increased minimum wage Extension of SS and unemployment benefits Increased public housing Interstate highway system Est. Dept. of Health, Education & Welfare EisenhowerDynamic Conservatism or Modern Republicanism

12. Baby Boom It seems to me that every other young housewife I see is pregnant. -- British visitor to America, 1958 1957  1 baby born every 7 seconds

13. Baby Boom Dr. Benjamin Spockand the Anderson Quintuplets

14. Levittown, L. I.: “The American Dream” 1949 William Levitt produced 150 houses per week. Suburban Living $7,990 or $60/month with no down payment.

15. Suburban Living:The New “American Dream” • 1 story high • 12’x19’ living room • 2 bedrooms • tiled bathroom • garage • small backyard • front lawn By 1960  1/3 of the U. S. population in the suburbs.

16. Suburban Living SHIFTS IN POPULATION DISTRIBUTION, 1940-1970 1940195019601970 Central Cities 31.6% 32.3% 32.6% 32.0% Suburbs 19.5% 23.8% 30.7% 41.6% Rural Areas/ 48.9% 43.9% 36.7% 26.4% Small Towns U. S. Bureau of the Census.

17. Suburban Living:The Typical TV Suburban Families The Donna Reed Show1958-1966 Leave It to Beaver1957-1963 Father Knows Best1954-1958 The Ozzie & Harriet Show1952-1966

18. Well-Defined Gender Roles The ideal modern woman married, cooked and cared for her family, and kept herself busy by joining the local PTA and leading a troop of Campfire Girls. She entertained guests in her family’s suburban house and worked out on the trampoline to keep her size 12 figure.-- Life magazine, 1956 June Cleaver The ideal 1950s man was the provider, protector, and the boss of the house. -- Life magazine, 1955 1956  William H. Whyte, Jr. The Organization Man • a middle-class, white suburban male is the ideal.

19. Suburban Childhood Behavioral Rules of the 1950s: • Obey Authority. • Control Your Emotions. • Don’t Make Waves  Fit in with the Group. • Don’t Even Think About Sex!!!

20. A Changing Workplace Automation: 1947-1957  factory workers decreased by 4.3%, eliminating 1.5 million blue-collar jobs. By 1956  more white-collar than blue-collar jobs in the U. S. Computers Mark I (1944). First IBM mainframe computer (1951). Corporate Consolidation: By 1960  600 corporations (1/2% of all U. S. companies) accounted for 53% of total corporate income. WHY?? Cold War military buildup.

21. A Changing Workplace New Corporate Culture:“The Company Man” 1956 Sloan Wilson’sThe Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

22. Religious Revival Today in the U. S., the Christian faith is back in the center of things. -- Time magazine, 1954 Church membership: 1940  64,000,000 1960  114,000,000 Television Preachers: 1. Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen “Life is Worth Living” 2. Methodist Minister Norman Vincent PealeThe Power of Positive Thinking 3. Reverend Billy Graham ecumenical message; warned against the evils of Communism.

23. Religious Revival Hollywood: apex of the biblical epics. The Robe The Ten Commandments Ben Hur1953 1956 1959 It’s un-American to be un-religious! -- The Christian Century, 1954

24. Consumerism 1950  Introduction of the Diner’s Card All babies were potential consumers who spearheaded a brand-new market for food, clothing, and shelter. -- Life Magazine (May, 1958)

25. Consumerism

26. The Culture of the Car Car registrations: 1945  25,000,000 1960  60,000,000 2-family cars doubles from 1951-1958 1958 Pink Cadillac 1959 Chevy Corvette 1956 Interstate Highway Act largest public works project in American history! • Cost $32 billion. • 41,000 miles of new highways built.

28. The Culture of the Car America became a more homogeneous nation because of the automobile. First McDonald’s (1955) Drive-In Movies Howard Johnson’s

29. The Culture of the Car The U. S. population was on the move in the 1950s. NE & Mid-W  S & SW (“Sunbelt” states) 1955  Disneyland opened in Southern California. (40% of the guests came from outside California, most by car.) Frontier Land Main Street Tomorrow Land

30. Anti Conformists The “Beat” Generation: • Rejected fears of Cold War • Accused US of war mongering • Highlighted poverty and racism in US • Believed in extreme freedom & independence (drug use & free love) • Accused of being communists • Forerunners of Counterculture (Hippies) • Jack Kerouac On The Road • Allen Ginsberg  poem, “Howl” “Beatnik” “Clean” Teen

31. Television 1946  7,000 TV sets in the U. S.1950  50,000,000 TV sets in the U. S. Television is a vast wasteland. Newton Minnow, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, 1961 Mass Audience  TV celebrated traditionalAmerican values. Truth, Justice, and the American way!

32. Television – The Western Davy CrockettKing of the Wild Frontier Sheriff Matt Dillon, Gunsmoke The Lone Ranger(and his faithfulsidekick, Tonto): Who is that masked man??

33. Television - Family Shows Glossy view of mostly middle-class suburban life. But... I Love Lucy The Honeymooners Social Winners?... AND… Losers?

34. Teen Culture In the 1950s  the word “teenager” entered the American language. By 1956  13 mil. teens with $7 bil. to spend a year. 1951 “race music” “ROCK ‘N ROLL” Elvis Presley “The King”

35. Teen Culture “Juvenile Delinquency” ??? 1951 J. D. Salinger’sA Catcher in the Rye James Dean inRebel Without a Cause (1955) Marlon Brando inThe Wild One (1953)

36. Boom Times United States was the world’s greatest economic power. Baby boom during the 1950s Consumerism was rampant, with new houses filled with new appliances with new cars in the driveways. Employment was high and wages rose. The Critics Kenneth Galbraith called America the “affluent society” and criticized American for being overly focused on its own wealth. Michael Harrington complained that the nation’s poor had been forgotten. William H. Whyte noted a loss of individuality among the growing class of business workers. Eisenhower’s farewell address to the nations warns of increasing power of the military-industrial complex American Culture in the 1950s

37. Additional factors: Rural poor migrated to cities 5 million African Americans moved from the South to urban areas Consequences: Less spending to support businesses Property and income taxes declined Cities could not afford updated/improved education, public transportation, police and fire departments White Flight: Middle Class exodus to the suburbs from cities

38. [. . . ] Poverty—grim, degrading, and ineluctable—is not remarkable in India. For few, the fate is otherwise. But in the United States, the survival of poverty is remarkable. We ignore it because we share with all societies at all times the capacity for not seeing what we do not wish to see. Anciently this has enabled the nobleman to enjoy his dinner while remaining oblivious to the beggars around his door. In our own day, it enables us to travel in comfort by Harlem and into the lush precincts of midtown Manhattan. But while our failure to notice can be explained, it cannot be excused. "Poverty," Pitt exclaimed, "is no disgrace but it is damned annoying." In the contemporary United States, it is not annoying but it is a disgrace. [. . . ] Primary source: John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society, 1958. Caption: Galbraith's classic study of 1950s America discusses the irony of the existence of significant poverty in affluent America.

39. . . . [T]ens of millions of Americans are, at this very moment, maimed in body and spirit, existing at levels beneath those necessary for human decency. If these people are not starving, they are hungry, and sometimes fat with hunger, for that is what cheap foods do. They are without adequate housing and education and medical care. . . . This book is a description of the world in which these people live; it is about the other America. Here are the unskilled workers, the migrant farm workers, the aged, the minorities, and all the others who live in the economic underworld of American life. . . . The millions who are poor in the United States tend to become increasingly invisible. Here is a great mass of people, yet it takes an effort of the intellect and will even to see them. . . . The other America, the America of poverty, is hidden today in a way that it never was before. Its millions are socially invisible to the rest of us . . . . Thus, one must begin a description of the other America by understanding why we do not see it. . . . Primary source: Michael Harrington, The Other America: Poverty in the United States, 1962. Background information: With this book, writer and social activist Michael Harrington helped launch the New Left movement of the 1960s and its concerns about American poverty and social injustice.

40. [. . . ] The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night—"she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question—"Is this all?" [. . . ] Primary source: Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 1963. Background information: Founder of the National Organization for Women (NOW), Betty Friedan wrote this influential treatise critiquing the loneliness and dissatisfaction felt by many suburban housewives in postwar America.