Data as Product and the
Growth of the Social Sciences

Previous Intro Note: Herbert Hoover, Economic Mastermind

Many social science studies and surveys were compiled under the leadership of the executive branch of the federal government during the 1920s. Armed with an immense faith in the power of data and data-collection to bring about improvements in the standard of living, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover led government, business leaders, philanthropic foundations, and social science research agencies to cooperate in the undertaking of studies whose goal was to collect data that would promote economic stability and prosperity. Hoover's tenure as secretary of commerce coincided with the widespread growth and recognition of the social science disciplines. (INTRO NOTE Hoover)

A variety of short studies, researching and assembling statistics on business practices and business climate conducive to maximum efficiency, were undertaken by the U.S. Department of Commerce by Julius Klein, Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover's hand-picked director of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce. These studies constituted a species of market research that was invaluable to business. The findings were made widely available, virtually without charge, in the form of government-issued bulletins and pamphlets. (DETAIL NOTE Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce)

The Coolidge-Consumerism collection contains a number of these government-sponsored business surveys, of which it is possible to mention just a few. The Government Printing Office publication Retail Store Location (1924) advised merchants on how to select the best location for their business. The National Retail Credit Survey (1930) presented information based on questionnaire data, gathered in 1925-27, regarding patterns of retail credit favored for purchases of different types of consumer products (automobiles, refrigerators, radios, clothing, and so forth). The U.S. Department of Labor also sponsored studies of interest to business and industry, such as Cooperative Movement in the United States in 1925 (Other than Agricultural), published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 1927.

The collection of statistics and survey data extended to the private sector as well. Midas Gold, A Study of Family Incomes, "Overselling" and Time-Payments as a Broadener of Markets (1925) was published by the Butterick Publishing Co., which also brought out the mainstream consumer magazine The Delineator. (DETAIL NOTE Butterick and Better Homes) The Heller Committee for Research in Social Economics at the University of California in 1925 conducted the study Spending Ways of a Semi-Skilled Group: A Study of the Incomes and Expenditures of Ninety-eight Street-car Men's Families in the San Francisco East Bay Region (1931). (INTRO NOTE Labor) The business networkrepresented by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce invited Commerce Secretary Hoover to deliver a data-rich speech, The Problem of Distribution, before its January 1925 National Distribution Conference, and subsequently (in 1929) published it. Noted survey-taker Daniel Starch, under his own copyright, undertook An Analysis of Over 3,000,000 Inquiries Received by 98 Firms from 2,339 Magazine Advertisements (1927). (INTRO NOTE Advertising)

And the same Wilbur C. Plummer who was to conduct the National Retail Credit Survey (1930) for the Department of Commerce undertook Social and Economic Consequences of Buying on the Instalment [sic] Plan (1927) for the American Academy of Political and Social Science, of which Secretary of Commerce Hoover was a vice president. Plummer's career is characteristic of the complex network of collaborations between government, academe, and social science think-tanks that produced an outpouring, during the twenties, of studies and statistics. The avalanche of studies solidified the standing of the social science disciplines during the decade.

Even now, the end of the trajectory for a data-driven prosperity still lies ahead of us, in the future. Developments during the 1920s paved the way for a significant breakthrough in industrial production and consumption that is just getting underway in this, the last decade of the twentieth century. Termed "mass customization," the new development envisions the use of computers and computerized data to tailor mass-produced, rough-cut clothing into garments custom-fitted to the physical dimensions of the individual consumer. (See, for example, the front-page New York Times article, "Digital Blue Jeans Pour Data and Legs Into Customized Fit," November 8, 1994.) This union of mass-production industrial processes and the data-intensiveness and data-dependency central to economic growth in the 1920s with the legacy of Herman Hollerith's experiments with data-processing in the first years of the century seems likely to bear fruit in startling new levels of mass consumerism and mass-consumer satisfaction. (DETAIL NOTE Herman Hollerith)

Included in the Coolidge-Consumerism collection are selections from the final set of surveys in the Department of Commerce's "Elimination of Waste Series," Recent Economic Changes in the United States (1929). Under the direction of Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover and with funding from the Carnegie Corporation and the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Foundation, and investigations undertaken by the social science research agency, the National Bureau of Economic Research, work on the survey was begun in January 1928 and completed in February 1929, the month before the expiration of Coolidge's term. (INTRO NOTE Hoover) Though published in 1929, it primarily reflects back on the prosperity of the years when Calvin Coolidge was president (1923-1929). Selected chapters from Recent Economic Changes are offered here in their entirety, in machine-searchable format. (DETAIL NOTE Recent Economic Changes)

A sister study, Recent Social Trends in the United States, was conducted by the President's Research Committee on Social Trends under the direction of HerbertHoover at the beginning of his term as president (1929-1933). (INTRO NOTE Herbert Hoover) The Rockefeller Foundation funded the investigations, the Social Science Research Council contributed various services and additional personnel, and a number of federal departments and bureaus provided assistance, including the U.S. Department of Commerce, the Bureau of the Budget (U.S. Department of the Treasury), the Federal Reserve Board, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Department of Labor, and the Women's Bureau (U.S. Department of Labor). Edward L. Bernays, the age's leading public relations consultant and a pivotal figure in the orchestration of promotional spectacles targeted at consumers, is among those listed in the Acknowledgments. (DIRECTORY NOTE Edward L. Bernays Papers)

Although this giant in the social science field did not reach publication until 1933, it, like Recent Economic Changes, focuses principally on the 1920s and the interrelationship of social and economic trends during the twenties. Selected chapters from Recent Social Trends are offered here in their entirety, in machine-searchable format. (DETAIL NOTE Recent Social Trends)

Due to the timing of their publication at the onset of the Great Depression, both Recent Economic Changes and Recent Social Trends disappeared from view without much residual attention, even though they went through several printings around the time of their release. These monuments to the evolving social science disciplines make it possible to appreciate the events of the Coolidge era through the eyes of leading experts of the period, and thus constitute primary sources in their own right. Taken in their totality, the studies very likely constitute the age's richest self-portrait. Even the selected chapters offered here make evident the way in which, in a forecast of our own age, data and information, even beyond consumer goods, were fast becoming perhaps the ultimate commodities.

Recent Economic Changes and Recent Social Trends, as well as a number of full-length spin-off studies, can be found at most major research libraries. It was felt that including chapters with the greatest bearing on mass consumerism would point the way to the full set of studies for those interested in the broader overview of the period which these volumes in their entirety abundantly provide.

Previous Intro Note: Herbert Hoover, Economic Mastermind