The Coolidge-Consumerism collection assembles a wide array of Library of Congress primary-source materials from the 1920s, reflecting the prosperity of the Coolidge years, the nation's transition to a mass-consumer economy, and the role of government in this transition. The multi-media materials include rare and hard-to-find items from the General Collections, both books and magazines, as well as documents from personal and organizational papers in the Manuscript Division, photographs from the Prints and Photographs Division, and a modest sampling of motion picture footage and radio excerpts of speeches by President Coolidge from the Motion Picture and Recorded Sound Division. (DIRECTORY NOTE Menu)
The juxtaposition of materials on mass consumerism with materials on President Coolidge and the Coolidge administration should make possible fresh insight into the president often fondly underestimated as "Silent Cal." In addition, students, scholars, and general readers will be able to explore the ways in which the second decade of the twentieth century laid the groundwork for our own consumer and information-age culture.
Not exhaustive on any one subject, the collection seeks, rather, to suggest connections among the concepts, technological developments, structures and organizations in the society that worked to reinforce the mass-consumer economy. Just a few of these connections can be appreciated by knowing, for example, that the legacy of Frederick W. Taylor fueled "scientific efficiency" at full throttle during the 1920s; combined with "standardization" of industrial parts and processes, whose successes were tracked by means of statistics and surveys, production ran ever upward. Highway construction advanced interstate trucking, which in turn facilitated product distribution; and personal mobility, made possible by the automobile, boosted shopping as well as the use of leisure time for tourism. Thrift was redefined to mean "wise spending," while advertising and the easy availability of consumer credit drove up consumer buying. Motion pictures became a centerpiece of the debate over how to spend the extra leisure time provided by a shorter work.
Many of the "new" technologies and industries, such as automobiles, electric power, and radio, had evolved in the decades before the twenties. But it was the 1920s, primed by the industrial acceleration achieved during World War I, that saw the production and distribution of goods on a mass scale, contributing to a higher standard of living. Widening electrification of plants, factories, and households, in conjunction with the aggressive application of advertising techniques and greater acceptance of installment buying, pushed the post-World War I economy to a new level, one which was experienced in most sectors of the population as prosperity.
Road construction authorized by the Highway Act of 1921 and the resulting growth in interstate trucking, as well as developments in street and highway safety and regulation of parking, developments pushed forward by the Department of Commerce's annual national conference on street and highway safety, hastened the mass movement of goods. Increased automobile ownership brought enormous growth in auto-related industries and services: in rubber, gasoline, steel, and plate glass; in maintenance and repair shops and gas stations; as well as in goods and services catering to the new tourist boom, including roadside overnight accommodations, roadside refreshment stands, and camping equipment. (INTRO NOTE Automobiles)
By the end of the twenties, nearly half of the American population had purchased automobiles, radios, and such durable consumer goods as refrigerators and vacuum cleaners. New industries produced goods and services that the public found irresistible, and consumer credit made it easy for people to buy on time, even when they did not have the income. Chain stores and mail-order houses proliferated. The stage was set for the mass-consumer culture.
Within the Department of Commerce, initiatives fostered by the Bureau of Standards and the Division of Simplified Practice and mandated by Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover's "war on waste" (INTRO NOTE Herbert Hoover) reflected the impact of efficiency engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915) on the business world, and set the tone for a phenomenally successful national effort to maximize worker, managerial and industrial productivity. (INTRO NOTE Taylorism) Standardization was responsible, for example, for the formulation of standard weights for loaves of bread, standard sizes for cans, and uniform rating of canned goods for quality, as well as for the standardization of packaging units -- the numbers of cans or boxes packed for shipping per carton. (DETAIL NOTE Standardization) At a time when there was little uniformity in such matters, these changes immeasurably facilitated distribution, retailing and accounting. (DETAIL NOTE Standardization)
Armed with data from manufacturers' inventories, market surveys and retail credit studies, many of them undertaken under the auspices of the federal government, producers were able to satisfy and also to create consumer needs on a scale unknown before then. Businesses used advertising to inculcate new tastes and desires, "educating" the public about the existence, benefits, and operating how-to's of unfamiliar products through a variety of marketing approaches. (INTRO NOTE Advertising)
The collection will sample a cross-section of magazine and newspaper advertisements, the majority from 1926, the high point of the decade's prosperity. (INTRO NOTE Newsstand 1926) Outdoor billboard and electric-sign advertisements were widespread, a form of product-promotion that, because it was primarily pictorial, could be appreciated not only by well educated, but by less literate and foreign-born consumers as well. Radio "advertisements," which at that time consisted of programs sponsored by banks, industrial manufacturers of consumer products, and department stores, also served consumerist goals. (INTRO NOTE Radio)
The two impulses, one the "war on waste," the drive to economize and streamline through standardization measures, the other, the impulse to stimulate consumer buying and maximize consumer choice -- and business profit -- by manufacturing and, in turn, advertising a multitude of choices in style and color, even within the same price range, were at odds. Leading economist Paul Mazur, in Some Problems of Distribution: The Development of Chain Store Merchandising and Its Economic Effects (1929), addressed the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses phenomenon and argued that frequent changes in "style," particularly evident in the automobile, clothing, shoe, and home furniture and furnishings industries, could be summed up by the term "planned obsolescence." Such planned obsolescence, he maintained, drove mass consumerism.
Not only did Americans have more money to spend; agitation for a shorter work week (from six days to five and a half to, in some cases, five) meant that they had more leisure time (INTRO NOTE Leisure) in which to spend it. For many, this amounted to more time in which to shop, as well as to participate in the consumer economy in other ways. Movie houses catered to the increase in leisure time, amid anxious debates over the morality of many of the new films and the ethics of Sunday screenings. "Wholesome," family-oriented leisure was championed by recreation and playground associations.
Not all sectors of the population, however, were able to participate fully in the consumer economy. Among those who could not were the financially pressed farmers (INTRO NOTE Farmers), white and black, and others in rural areas, where electrification was slow in coming; and low-income families, including many African Americans (INTRO NOTE African Americans) and immigrants (DETAIL NOTE Immigrants), in the cities.
In addition to criticism of the consumer economy leveled from the viewpoint that prosperity was not a fact of life for everyone, critiques represented many other points of view. Some criticized the consumer society as dangerous to consumers, either because it depended on artificially created "needs" whose satisfaction required people to spend beyond their means, which they did by availing themselves of overextended credit mechanisms; or because many seductively advertised products were shoddy, overpriced, or otherwise fraudulent.
Stuart Chase, who pursued this line of inquiry in Your Money's Worth: A
Study in the Waste of the Consumer's Dollar (1927), started a consumer-product testing
and rating organization,
Many ordinary Americans, moreover, were anxious regarding where the sudden abundance of money and leisure time would lead the country, and insisted on education for "thrift" (INTRO NOTE Thrift) and family-centered forms of recreation (INTRO NOTE Leisure) as necessary and wholesome antidotes. President Coolidge's chaste image offered reassurance in an era of such momentous changes.