The Post-War Boom
I can explain America's postwar economic growth, & I can analyze its effects on the American lifestyle.
After World War II ended, Americans turned their attention to their families and jobs. The economy prospered. New technologies and business ideas created fresh opportunities for many, and by the end of the decade Americans were enjoying the highest standard of living in the world. The American dream of a happy and successful life seemed within the reach of many people in what the economist John Kenneth Galbraith called “the affluent society.”
The Impact of the GI Bill To help with this goal, Congress passed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, or the GI Bill of Rights, in 1944. In addition to encouraging veterans to get an education by paying part of their tuition, the GI Bill guaranteed them a year’s worth of unemployment benefits while job hunting. It also offered low interest, federally guaranteed loans. Millions of young families used these benefits to buy homes in the quickly expanded suburbs surrounding American cities. For many people, the suburbs embodied the American dream of an affordable single-family house, good schools, a safe, healthy environment for children, and congenial neighbors just like themselves. In order to keep up with this increased demand, developers like William Levitt and Henry Kaiser used efficient, assembly-line methods to mass-produce houses. Levitt, who bragged that his company could build a house in 16 minutes, offered homes in small residential communities surrounding cities, called suburbs, for less than $7,000. Levitt’s first postwar development—rows of standardized homes built on treeless lots—was located on New York’s Long Island and named Levittown. These homes looked exactly alike, and certain zoning laws ensured that they would stay the same. Despite their rigid conformity, Americans loved the openness and small-town feel to the planned suburbs. In addition to buying their own homes, many families that had delayed having additional children for years no longer waited, and the nation enjoyed a postwar baby boom. During the late 1940s and through the early 1960s, the birth rate (number of live births per 1,000 people) in the United States soared. At the height of the baby boom, in 1957, one American infant was born every seven seconds—a total of 4,308,000 that year. The result was the largest generation in the nation’s history. Women's Roles
During the 1950s, the role of homemaker and mother was glorified in popular magazines, movies, and TV programs such as Father Knows Best and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. Time Magazine described the homemaker as “the key figure in all suburbia, the thread that weaves between family and community—the keeper of the suburban dream.” In contrast to the ideal portrayed in the media, however, some women were not happy with their roles; they felt isolated, bored, and unfulfilled. According to one survey in the 1950s, more than one-fifth of suburban wives were dissatisfied with their lives. Betty Friedan, author of the groundbreaking 1963 book The Feminine Mystique about women and society. Learn more about the impact of Betty Friedan's 'The Feminine Mystique' at 50 in this article from the New York Times
Automania
Suburban living made owning a car a necessity. Most of the new suburbs, built in formerly rural areas, did not offer public transportation, and people had to drive to their jobs in the cities. In addition, many of the schools, stores, synagogues, churches, and doctors’ and dentists’ offices were not within walking distance of suburban homes. In response, new car sales rose from 6.7 million in 1950 to 7.9 million in 1955. The total number of private cars on the road jumped from 40 million in 1950 to over 60 million in 1960. Interstate Highway System
The more cars there were, the more roads were needed. “Automania” spurred local and state governments to construct roads linking the major cities while connecting schools, shopping centers, and workplaces to residential suburbs. The Interstate Highway Act, which President Eisenhower signed in 1956, authorized the building of a nationwide highway network—41,000 miles of expressways. The new roads, in turn, encouraged the development of new suburbs farther from the cities. Towns along the new highways prospered, while towns along the older, smaller roads experienced hard times. The system of highways also helped unify and homogenize the nation. With access to cars, affordable gas, and new highways, more and more Americans hit the road. They flocked to mountains, lakes, national parks, historic sites, and amusement parks for family vacations. Disneyland, which opened in California in July 1955, attracted 3 million visitors the next year. By the mid-1950s, nearly 60 percent of Americans were members of the middle class, about twice as many as before World War II. They wanted, and had the money to buy, increasing numbers of products. Consumerism, buying material goods, came to be equated with success.
New Products One new product after another appeared in the marketplace, as various industries responded to consumer demand. Newsweek magazine reported in 1956 that “hundreds of brand new goods have become commonplace overnight.” Consumers purchased electric household appliances—such as washing machines, dryers, blenders, freezers, and dishwashers—in record numbers. With more and more leisure time to fill, people invested in recreational items. They bought televisions, tape recorders, and the new hi-fi (high-fidelity) record players. They bought casual clothing to suit their suburban lifestyles and power lawn mowers, barbecue grills, swimming pools, and lawn decorations for their suburban homes. |
The Advertising Industry
The advertising industry capitalized on this runaway consumerism by encouraging even more spending. Ads were everywhere—in newspapers and magazines, on radio and television, and on billboards along the highways—prompting people to buy goods that ranged from cars to cereals to cigarettes. Advertisers spent about $6 billion in 1950; by 1955, the figure was up to $9 billion. Since most Americans had satisfied their basic needs, advertisers tried to convince them to buy things they really didn’t need. Television became a powerful new advertising tool. The first one-minute TV commercial was produced in 1941 at a cost of $9. In 1960, advertisers spent a total of $1.6 billion for television ads. By 2001, a 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl cost an advertiser $2.2 million. Television had become not only the medium for mass transmission of cultural values, but a symbol of popular culture itself. Compared with other mass media—means of communication that reach large audiences—television developed with lightning speed. First widely available in 1948, television had reached 9 percent of American homes by 1950 and 55 percent of homes by 1954. In 1960, almost 90 percent—45 million—of American homes had television sets. Clearly, TV was the entertainment and information marvel of the postwar years.
The Rise of Television Early television sets were small boxes with round screens. Programming was meager, and broadcasts were in black and white. The first regular broadcasts, beginning in 1949, reached only a small part of the East Coast and offered only two hours of programs per week. Post–World War II innovations such as microwave relays, which could transmit television waves over long distances, sent the television industry soaring. By 1956, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)—the government agency that regulates and licenses television, telephone, telegraph, radio, and other communications industries—had allowed 500 new stations to broadcast. This period of rapid expansion was the “golden age” of television entertainment—and entertainment in the 1950s often meant comedy. Milton Berle attracted huge audiences with The Texaco Star Theater, and Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’s early situation comedy, I Love Lucy, began its enormously popular run in 1951. At the same time, veteran radio broadcaster Edward R. Murrow introduced two innovations: on-the-scene news reporting, with his program, See It Now (1951–1958), and interviewing, with Person to Person (1953–1960). Many consider Murrow's 1954 special titled "A Report on Senator Joseph McCarthy" to be a major step toward McCarthy's downfall.
Watch Edward R. Murrow's Special Report and Joseph McCarthy's Response.
Stereotypes and Gunslingers
Not everyone was thrilled with television, though. Critics objected to its effects on children and its stereotypical portrayal of women and minorities. Women did, in fact, appear in stereotypical roles, such as the ideal mothers of Father Knows Best and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. Male characters outnumbered women characters three to one. African Americans and Latinos rarely appeared in television programs at all. Television in the 1950s portrayed an idealized white America. For the most part, it omitted references to poverty, diversity, and contemporary conflicts, such as the struggle of the civil rights movement against racial discrimination. Instead, it glorified the historical conflicts of the Western frontier in hit shows such as Gunsmoke and The Lone Ranger. The level of violence in these popular shows led to ongoing concerns about the effect of television on children. Radio and Movies
Although TV turned out to be wildly popular, radio and movies survived. But instead of competing with television’s mass market for drama and variety shows, radio stations turned to local programming of news, weather, music, and community issues. The strategy paid off. During the decade, radio advertising rose by 35 percent, and the number of radio stations increased by 50 percent. From the beginning, television cut into the profitable movie market. In 1948, 18,500 movie theaters had drawn nearly 90 million paid admissions per week. As more people stayed home to watch TV, the number of moviegoers decreased by nearly half. As early as 1951, producer David Selznick worried about Hollywood: “It’ll never come back. It’ll just keep on crumbling until finally the wind blows the last studio prop across the sands.” But Hollywood did not crumble and blow away. Instead, it capitalized on the advantages that movies still held over television—size, color, and stereophonic sound. Stereophonic sound, which surrounded the viewer, was introduced in 1952. By 1954, more than 50 percent of movies were in color. By contrast, color television, which became available that year, did not become widespread until the next decade. Learn more about the most popular feature films of the 1950s.
Although the mass media found a wide audience for their portrayals of mostly white popular culture, dissenting voices rang out throughout the 1950s. The messages of the beat movement in literature, and of rock ‘n’ roll in music, clashed with the tidy suburban view of life and set the stage for the counterculture that would burst forth in the late 1960s.
The Beat Movement Centered in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City’s Greenwich Village, the Beat Movement expressed the social and literary nonconformity of artists, poets, and writers. The word beat originally meant “weary” but came to refer as well to a musical beat. Followers of this movement, called beats or beatniks, lived nonconformist lives. They tended to shun regular work and sought a higher consciousness through Zen Buddhism, music, and, sometimes, drugs. Many beat poets and writers believed in imposing as little structure as possible on their artistic works, which often had a free, open form. They read their poetry aloud in coffeehouses and other gathering places. Works that capture the essence of this era include Allen Ginsberg’s long, free verse poem, "Howl," published in 1956, and Jack Kerouac’s novel of the movement, On the Road, published in 1957. This novel describes a nomadic search across America for authentic experiences, people, and values. |