The 1950s
Peace, Prosperity and Progress
• Fast growing
towns/suburbs
• G.I. Bill prompts home
construction
• WWII and Depression
had slowed houses
• New affluence and
prosperity
Postwar Politics – Section 2 Intro
• Truman had never wanted to be president
• After the war he wanted to get the country
back to peacetime economy
Rocky Transition to Peace: The Fair
Deal
•
•
•
•
Full employment
Increase Minimum wage
Nat’l health insurance
Social Security benefits
• Affordable housing
• Environmental / Public works
• Civil Rights Legislation
Rocky Transition to Peace: The Fair
Deal
• Republicans did their best to stop these
reforms
• Government officials lost jobs at end of war
• Price controls were lifted, prices were high
• Inflation soared – workers wanted raises
Rocky Transition to Peace: The Fair
Deal
•
•
•
•
1946 – 5 million workers walked off the job
Key industries such as steel, coal, oil
Railroad goes on strike
Truman threatened to call on armed forces
but the strike was settled before that was
needed
Republican Congress
• 1946 Congressional Elections
• Republicans win
• 1st time since 1920s Congress Republican and
President Democrat
• 22nd Amendment passed by Republicans so a
liberal president (like FDR) couldn’t run more
than2 terms
Taft-Hartley Act
• Placed limits on unions
• Outlawed closed shops – where employer only
hires union members
• Banned sympathy strikes
• 80 day cooling off period
• Truman vetoed
• Congress override
Civil Rights
• President’s Committee on Civil
Rights
• Investigate racial inequality
• Called for end to segregation and
discrimination in voting, housing,
education, employment and military
• Congress refused to act
• 1948 Truman sidestepped and
desegregated the armed forces –
executive order
1948 Election
• Democratic party split into three groups
• 1. Henry Wallace – Progressive Party – more
liberal than Truman – didn’t like Truman’s
containment policy
• 2. Dixiecrats – Southern – States’ Rights
Democratic Party – Strom Thurmond – gov. of
S. Carolina – wanted complete segregation of
races
1948 Election
• Republicans nominated New York Governor
Thomas Dewey
• Favored to win
1948 Election
• Truman – “Whistle-stop” tour
• Bashed Republicans who wouldn’t pass his acts
in Congress
• Won by a slim margin
• Continued to push the Fair Deal but Congress
kept blocking during his 2nd term
• Did agree to some expansion of Social Security
• Increased minimum wage and support slum
clearance
Eisenhower
•
•
•
•
1952
Adlai Stevenson – Dem.
Eisenhower – Rep.
Eisenhower:
–
–
–
–
–
Led allies in WWII
Head of NATO
Winning smile
Agreeable manner
“I Like Ike”
Eisenhower
•
•
•
•
•
Nixon was his running mate
Nixon was a member of HUAC
Ike wins in a landslide
Won a 2nd term four years later
“conservative when it comes to money and
liberal when it comes to human beings.”
• Military-industrial complex
Economic Growth and Affluence
• Things were moving faster – food,
supermarkets, drive-ins
• McDonalds – streamline their menu to be
faster.
– Hamburgers
– Self-Service counter
– Paper wrappers – no washing plates
– Kitchen like assembly line
McDonalds
• 1948
• Economic Boom in our
country
• Middle class families
were experiencing a
level of affluence
beyond anything their
parents could imagine
Economic Growth
• Americans saved billions
during WWII
• Factories now converted to
production to consumer goods
• Income rose
• Mid 1950s American family
had twice as much real income
to spend as the average family
of the 1920s
Economic Growth
• Shopping Centers is where
people were instead of
downtown shopping
districts
• Easy parking
• Air Conditioning
Economic Growth
• Advertising
• Charge cards
• Sears – 10 million accounts
by 1958
• American Express issues 1st
all purpose card
Economic Growth
• Planned obsolescence
• “the desire to own
something a little newer, a
little better, a little sooner
than is necessary.”
• Ex. Clothing issues new
fashions every season –
want the newest thing
• Today – Apple/Phones
Economy Shifts from Goods to Services
• Start of 1950s industry dominated by goods
like steel, appliances and cars
• End of decade – services dominated the
economy
• General Motors – largest manufacturing
company
Economy Shifts from Goods to Services
• GM successful due to relationship with
workers
• 1948: cost of living index – workers got steady
raises based on inflation and cost of goods
• GM had years of labor peace
Economy Shifts from Goods to Services
• New Service industries compete for
consumer’s money
• Fast Food
• McDonalds: fast, cheap, clean, tasted good, no
tips
• Fast food easy with young kids
Economy Shifts from Goods to Services
• Motels
• Kemmons Wilson took family on car trip from
Tennessee to Washington, D.C.
• Trouble finding decent place to spend the
night:
– Some were clean, some were dirty
– Some charged extra for kids
– Had to go place to place to find out
Economy Shifts from Goods to Services
• Wilson built the 1st Holiday Inn
Blue-to White-Collar
• Start of 1950s: Blue Collar – factories, skilled trades,
plumbing, car repair
• Worked Hourly
• Durable blue collar shirts manual laborers wore
• End of decade: white collar outnumbered blue collar
•
•
•
•
Doctors; lawyers
Engineers, managers, office staff
Weekly/yearly salary
Worked in office so wore white shirts because
wouldn’t get dirty
• Both groups prospered in the 1950s
Marriage Boom  Baby Boom
• Largest population growth
in history
• Depression: marriage and
births dropped
• Post WWII – future looked
brighter
• 1946: 2.3 million marriages
in the U.S.
• 1950s – average age 20 for
women; 22 for men
Marriage Boom  Baby Boom
• Sales for diaper services and food bottlers
boomed
• Homes sales boomed – young families flocked
to suburbs
• Factories worked over time to fill these new
homes with furniture and appliances and cars
Marriage Boom  Baby Boom
• Schools had hard time finding room for millions
of children reaching school age at the same
time
• California opened
schools at rate of
1 a week
• Some schools did
2 shifts: morning
and afternoon
Working Dads; Stay at Home Moms
• Traditional families – dad worked, mom stayed
home
• Family was most important
• Dr. Benjamin Spock – women shouldn’t work
outside home unless economically necessary
Working Dads; Stay at Home Moms
• Mothers devote themselves
to raising kids
• No distractions – it could
damage children
• Father was breadwinner
• Mother took care of kids
Working Dads; Stay at Home Moms
• TV showed people the ideal
family
• Leave It to Beaver: June
Cleaver
• Father Knows Best: Jim
Anderson
• TV taught kids the roles
they should play when they
grow up
Working Dads; Stay at Home Moms
• “The happiest time of the day is when Father
comes home from work”
• Women didn’t go to college during this time
• Strong emphasis on marriage
• Many dropped out or got married right from
college
Suburbs and Sunbelt States
• 1941 Bill and Alfred Levitt
• Government contract to build thousands of
homes for war workers in Norfolk, VA
• In beginning everything went wrong
• No skilled workers, tight
schedules
• Broke construction into
27 steps
• Assembly line of homes
Suburbs and Sunbelt States
• During Depression – housing industry suffered
• End of WWII – GI Bill
– Veterans wanted homes
• Levittown – first planned community in the
nation
– Long Island – 20 miles from NYC
• Built 2 more Levittowns – In Pennsylvania and
New Jersey
Suburbanization
• Levittown, NY – Planned
residential community
• Simple, similar-looking
homes
• To escape crime,
provide better life for
kids, affordable homes
• Baby Boom – 19451961
– Young couples delayed
starting new life until
after WWII
– GI Bill
Suburbs and Sunbelt States
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Levittown homes almost identical
2 bedrooms; 1 bathroom
36 houses a day
Priced under $8,000
Did not sell to African Americans
“Everybody lives on the same side of the tracks”
Saturday Evening Post, 1954
Suburbs and Sunbelt States
• Many Americans moved from Northern States to
Southern States
• Warm-weather states
• Business began locating in the south:
– Low Labor Costs
– Unions less entrenched
– Tourist industry grew in this area
• Sunny beaches; Disneyland
Suburbs and Sunbelt States
• California population grew 50% during the 1950s
• 2 pieces of technology made this possible:
– 1. Dams on major rivers in the Southwest to get
water to the arid Southwest
– 2. Air Conditioning - summers
bearable in places like
Florida and Arizona
Cars
• Edsel Car – 1957
• We Didn’t Start the
Fire: “Edsel is a no
go”
• Too flashy
• Too big
• 3 years and Ford
gave up on the Edsel
Cars
•
•
•
•
•
Suburbs exist because of cars
Not much public transit in suburbs
Fathers drove to work
Mothers to shopping centers and grocery stores
Many families started needing 2 cars
Cars
• Cars became a status symbol
• People were encouraged to trade in old cars to
keep up with neighbors
• 1958 – more than 67 million cars were on the
road
• 12 million families owned two or more cars
• 65% of all working people drove to work
Highway System
• 1956 Interstate Highway System – connect
major cities around the country by a network
of super highways
• Eisenhower supported
– Inspired by autobahns in Germany
• 1960 – 10,000 miles of interstate high ways
• Today – 45,000 miles of highway
Highway System
•
•
•
•
Travel by road long distances and safer
Roadside businesses pop up
Access to all parts of country improved
Americans’ dependence on cars and trucks is
increased
Technology
• Polio – one of most feared diseases of the
20th century
• 1916 – first polio epidemic in the U.S.
– 27,000 people paralyzed and 9,00 dead
• For 40 years, epidemics struck every summer
• 1952 was the worst
• 60,000 new cases
Technology
• Polio – one of most feared diseases of the
20th century
• 1916 – first polio epidemic in the U.S.
– 27,000 people paralyzed and 9,00 dead
• For 40 years, epidemics
struck every summer
• 1952 was the worst
• 60,000 new cases
Technology
• Polio vaccine
• 1954: first trial
• 2 million
schoolchildren take
part
• Statistics showed it
was 90% effective
Technology
•
•
•
•
•
•
1st open heart surgery
First kidney transplant
First pacemaker
Heart transplant research/experiments
Penicillin discovered
Life expectancy rose
Nuclear Energy
•
•
•
•
Electricity: nuclear energy
Nuclear power plants
X-rays
Nuclear medicine – radioactive iodine to treat
thyroid cancer
Computers
• 1946; University of Pennsylvania
• 1500 square feet of floor space – 2 Levittown
homes
• 300 multiplications per second
• Led to dramatic improvements in computer
design
Conformity
• Business leaders,
society frowned
upon free-thinkers
• People wanted the
approval of those
around them
The Changing Workplace
• Growth of whitecollar jobs
• Multinational
corporations
expand overseas to
save money
• Franchises open
chains stores
http://www.roadode.com/classicindex.shtml
Radio changes identity
• Television could produce
soap operas, comedies,
dramas
• Radio stations broadcasted
recorded music, news,
weather, sports, and talk
shows
• Automobiles saved radio
industry
Rock ‘n’ Roll
• Alan Freed – Cleveland DJ
• Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry
• Elvis – most popular musician,
strong stage presence
– Sullivan Show featured Elvis
– Gyrating hips…filmed from waistup
• Many adults disliked it
– Immoral, gibberish,
– Challenged racial beliefs
– Led to generation gap
The Beat Movement
• Beats (Beatniks) – white
writers and artists
– Jack Kerouac, Allen
Ginsberg
• Tired of sterility and
conformity of American
life
• Laid foundations for
cultural rebellion of the
’60s
Television of the ’50s
•
•
•
•
•
• Movie attendance
dropped
• Cinemascope brought
viewers back –
panoramic screens with
color
I Love Lucy
Toast of the Town
The $64,000 Question
The Lone Ranger
Dragnet