The Gospel of Consumption and the better future we left
behind
PRIVATE CARS WERE
RELATIVELY SCARCE in 1919 and horse-drawn conveyances were still
common. In residential districts, electric streetlights had not yet
replaced many of the old gaslights. And within the home,
electricity remained largely a luxury item for the
wealthy.
Just ten years later
things looked very different. Cars dominated the streets and most
urban homes had electric lights, electric flat irons, and vacuum
cleaners. In upper-middle-class houses, washing machines,
refrigerators, toasters, curling irons, percolators, heating pads,
and popcorn poppers were becoming commonplace. And although the
first commercial radio station didn’t begin broadcasting until
1920, the American public, with an adult population of about 122
million people, bought 4,438,000 radios in the year 1929
alone.
But despite the
apparent tidal wave of new consumer goods and what appeared to be a
healthy appetite for their consumption among the well-to-do,
industrialists were worried. They feared that the frugal habits
maintained by most American families would be difficult to break.
Perhaps even more threatening was the fact that the industrial
capacity for turning out goods seemed to be increasing at a pace
greater than people’s sense that they needed them.
It was this latter
concern that led Charles Kettering, director of General Motors
Research, to write a 1929 magazine article called “Keep the
Consumer Dissatisfied.”...
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