Beginning in the 1900s, industry and economy reached a boom state. The early 20th century marked a period of reform and expansion in many areas as well. Advertising and consumer consumption would become big areas of reform and expansion with the growth of industry and consumer reform societies to the outcry for more truthful advertisment. Progressives, Women’s movements, and Henry Ford and his assembly line would become characteristic icons of the time. As consumers took a closer look into the products they were buying and working class person’s began to demand better working conditions, America hit a crossroads between industry and consumer satisfaction. Industrial reform for consumers would be the answer to inconsistencies that existed between product, price, and consumer satisfaction. The First consumer wave marked a shift toward recognition “the centrality of consumers to the nation’s economy and polity” (Cohen). The companies, that were producing goods began to realize that patrons were the driving force behind there success and failure and so they began to begin efforts toward targeting consumers on a more massive scale. This targeting of more consumers did not help with the sometimes substandard quality of the products they produced.
Progressive and Everyday Citizens Efforts at Reform
The Progressives, a group focused on the raising the living standards of the working class, began at this time to promote everyday citizens involvement in industrial reform. Progressives, as well as other American citizens began to realize the value in fighting for better quality goods. Consumers should be guaranteed some type of accountability from industries in their food and goods quality.
The Food and Drug Administration and the federal Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.Many people had begun to complain about the quality of the food and drugs they were receiving.With the passage of the food and drug act, drugs had contain the ingredients they advertise. Consumers would know more of what they were putting into their body.
New York Jewish Immigrant Wives Kosher Meat Boycotts in 1902
The price of kosher beef rose and smaller kosher butchers went on strike to prompt lower prices but the prices did not go down and the consumers were made to pay higher prices. As many as 20,000 Jewish women went on strike to boycott the price hikes. “The kosher meat boycott was an early demostration of the political consciousness of Jewish women in New York Ghettos.”
The National Consumer’s Leauge (NCL)
Middle class progressive women began organizations like NCL in response to the substandard quality of goods and the lack of involvement by the government in protecting consumers against terrible food and other goods conditions.
The Jungle
Published in 1906, by Upton Sinclair. The Jungle was a fiction account of the life of the working class and the the quality of substandard food and the terrible conditions under which workers work in the food industries how their wages reflect a serious disassociation with the American standard of living at the time.
Henry Ford’s Assembly Line
Starting in the late 1900s, by 1913 Henry Ford’s Assembly line was the first industrious means of assembling the car. It helped to rise the popularity and availability of automobiles and other products. The Assembly line was a quick and effective means of producing a simple and affordable car. That average citizens could afford. The level of production brought down the price to produce the goods and make them more affordable to all. The Assembly line not only made good more accessible but also perpetuated the growing American consumerist spirit of consumption.
Rise of Advertising
In the 1910s, adverting products of the assembly line became more widestream. “With the automobile came advertising which employed the appeals of a better, more luxurious life; kitchen appliances, radios” (Bauer). In the last few decades before the emergence of advertising on a wide scale, much of the advertising to customers was done on a local scale but with the growing distribution of products in the 1900s, national marketing began. Appealing to national markets was accomplished with the “technical advances of more uniformly produced and packaged branded goods” (Bauer). The rapid growth of investment in advertising is seen the short 15 year span between pre-WWI and WWI. Between 1900 and 1915, advertising grew from $500 million to $1.3 billion (Bauer). Along with the rise in advertising their was call for more reform in the truthfulness the advertising claims. Some products were not of the quality the advertisements promised leaving consumers unhappy and the validity of the advertising and company in question. Samuel Dobbs and the Associated Advertising clubs of America (now American Advertising Federation) worked to “curb untruth in advertising” which spurred the “truth in advertising” campaign in 1911.
Popular goods of consumption between 1900-1930
Because electricity was becoming more popular in American households, so did electric appliances. Things such as the electric toaster, waffle irons, Hoover vacuums, the radio, the automobile had become favorite commodities of the U.S. public. As new approaches to retailing emerged so did the idea of buying on credit. American citizens were able to buy these popular and useful items without the worry of saying up for them. American purchases of cars, pianos, and other big-ticket items nearly doubled over the 1898-1916 period because of credit (Cross).
Conclusion:
The early 1900s were a period of unprecedented growth in industry and advertising. In these few decades we see the emergence of mass production, national advertising, and reform in industry and in the production of products. Consumption of goods would become a dominate part of the American economy, companies would not only try to target the nation’s needs as a whole but appeal to an individual’s wants. With “discretionary spending (beyond that for the necessities of housing, clothing and food) increased form 20 percent to almost 35 percent in the first three decades of the century” (Cross). We see that the 30 years of so followed, we’re over all years of great promise with the dawning of the Great Depression in the 1930s this promise would be shaken and the spirit of consumption would be stunted.
Sources:
Bauer, Raymond A. and Stephen A. Greyser. Advertising in America: The Consumer View. Boston: Harvard University. 1968.
Cohen, Lizabeth. A Consumer Republic. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 2003.
Cross, Gary. An All-Consuming Century. New York: Columbia University Press. 2000.
Jewish Virtual Library. The Kosher Meat Boycott of 1902. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/bc1902.html
History of Consumerism since 1865 