1. Chapter 28
The Affluent Society
By Destiny Johnson, Davina Clay-
Runkaputi, and Natasha Popowich

2. Economic Growth
Between 1945-1960 the gross national product grew 250% from
$200 billion to over $500 billion.
Unemployment during the Depression was 15-25%. In the 1950's
and early 1960's it remained 5% or lower.
Inflation was around 3% a year or less.
Causes of growth:
1. Government spending increased growth through funding
schools, housing, veterans' benefits, welfare, the $100 billion
interstate highway program, and above all military spending.
2. The baby boom contributed to the increase in consumer
demand and expanding economic growth.
3. The rapid expansion of suburbs
4. The number of privately owned cars was big for the autombile
industry.
5. Demand for new homes helped sustain a strong housing
industry
6. Construction of roads and highways

3. Rise of the Modern West
● Much of the growth of the West was from federal spending and
investment on the dams, power stations, highways, and other
infrastructure projects.
● Enormous increase in automobile use, suburbanization and
improved highway systems gave a large incentive to the
petroleum industry and contributed to the rapid growth in oil
fields.
● State governments invested heavily in their universities.
Especially the University of Texas and University of California
systems which became the nation's center of research that
helped attract technology-intensive industries to the region.
● Climate also contributed. Especially California, Nevada, and
Arizona which attract migrants from the East because of their
warm and dry climates.

4. The New Economics
● Keynesian economics which made it possible for government
to stabilize the economy without intruding into the private
sector.
● John Maynard Keynes argued that by varying the flow of
government spending and taxation and managing the supply
of currency, the government could stimulate the economy to
cure recession and dampen growth to prevent inflation.
● The new economics confirmed that an increase in private
demand stimulated economic growth and reduced
unemployment.
● By mid-1950's reformers concerned about poverty argued that
the solution wasn't in redistribution but in economic growth.

5. Capital and Labor
● Over 4,000 corporate mergers took place in the 1950's and large scale
organizations controlled an enormous proportion of the nation's
economic activity.
● Mechanization reduced need of farm labor
● Mechanization endangered the family farm
● Post War contract helped workers receive generous increases in
wages and benefits. In return unions refrained from raising other
issues.
● December 1955 the American Federation of Labor and Congress of
Industrial Organizations merged to create the AFL-CIO.
● Total union membership remained stable through 1950s at 16
million this was a result of shift in the work force from blue-collar to
white-collar jobs, it was also a result of new obstacles in to
organization.

6. Medical Breakthroughs
● Antibiotics first started with the discovery of Louis
Pasteur and Jules-Francois Joubert in France 1870s
where the produced evidence that virulent bacterial
infections could be defeated by more ordinary
bacteria.
● In 1928 Alexander Fleming accidentally discovered
antibacterial properties to an organism known as
penicillin.
● Progress in immunization: smallpox vaccine,
vaccine against typhoid, vaccine against tetanus and
a vaccine BCG against tuberculosis.
● In 1954 Jonas Salk introduced an effective vaccine
against the virus that killed and crippled thousands
of children and adults (including Franklin
Roosevelt).
● After 1960 an oracle vaccine developed by Albert
Sabin given out in a sugar cube made widespread
vaccination easier.

7. Pesticides
● Scientists were trying to develop new
chemical pesticides that could protect crops
from destruction by insects and protect
humans from insect-carried diseases.
● DDT was a compound discovered in 1939 by a
Swiss chemist named Paul Muller. He found
that DDT was harmless to humans and other
animals but was extremely toxic towards
insects.
● DDT was known as a wonderful tool for
controlling insects and saved thousands of
lives.
● Later scientists realized that DDT had long-
term toxic effects on animals and humans.

8. Postwar Electronic Research
● In the 1940s the first commercially viable
televisions was produced.
● Late 1950s scientists developed technology
for color television which became
available in early 1960s.
● In 1948 Bell Labs produced the first
transistor that was capable of amplifying
electrical signals.
● Integrated circuits made it possible to
create increasingly complex electronic
devices requiring complicated circuitry
and especially helped advance the
development of the computer.

9. Postwar Computer Technology
● Computers began to perform
commercial functions for the first time
as data-processing devices.
● First significant computer of the 1950's
was the Universal Automatic Computer
(or UNIVAC) was the first computer able
to handle both alphabetical and
numerical information.
● Mid 1950's the International Business
Machines Company (IBM) introduced the
first major data processing computers.

10. Bombs, Rockets, and Missiles
● In 1952 the U.S successfully detonated the first
hydrogen bomb.
● In the U.S early missile research was conducted
by the Air Force and there were significant
success in developing rockets traveling several
hundred miles.
● By 1958 scientists created a solid fuel to replace
the volatile liquid fuels of the earlier missiles and
produced miniature guidance systems ensuring
that missiles could travel to reasonable precise
destinations.
● A new generation of missile known as the
Minuteman with a range of several thousand
miles was the basis of American atomic weapon
arsenal.
● Scientists created a nuclear missile that could be
used by submarines known as the Polaris which
could launch from below the surface of the ocean
by compressed air.

11. The Space Program
● The American space program started in 1957 after
the Soviet Union announced they launched an
earth-orbiting satellite (Sputnik) into outer space.
● Centerpiece of space exploration became the
manned space program established in 1958 called
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA).
● May 5, 1961 Alan Shepard was the first American
launched into space.
● February 2, 1962 John Glenn became the first
American to orbit the globe.
● July 20, 1969 Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin, and
Michael Collins successfully traveled in a space
capsule into orbit around the moon.
● First space shuttle successfully launched in 1982.
● January 1986 the Challenger exploded after taking
off killing all seven astronauts.

12. The Consumer Culture
● Among the most striking social developments of the postwar
era was the rapid expansion of a middle-class lifestyle
● Growing absorption with consumer goods was a result of:
○ Increased prosperity
○ Increasing variety and availability of products
○ Advertisers' ability in creating a demand for products
○ Growth of consumer credit
● Prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s was consumer driven as
opposed to investment driven
● Consumer crazes
○ Hula hoop
○ The Mickey Mouse Club creates demand for Mickey Mouse
products

13. The Landscape and the
Automobile
● The Federal Highway Act of 1956, which took $25 billion for
highway construction, was one of the most important
alterations of the national landscape in modern history
● Encouraged movement of economic activities out of cities and
into suburban areas
○ "Edge cities"
● More automobiles and highways = easier for families to move
into homes that were far from where they worked
● Shift from train to automobile led to:
○ Proliferation of motels
○ Spread of drive-in theaters
○ Encouraged the creation of fast-food chains and large
supermarket chains

14. The Suburban Nation and Family
● Suburbanization was partly a result of important innovations
in home-building, which made single-family houses affordable
to millions of people
● William Levitt, made use of mass-production techniques to
construct a large housing development on Long Island, near
New York City ("Levittown")
● Many Americans wanted to move to the suburbs because
○ The enormous importance postwar Americans placed on
family life after five years of disruptive war
○ Attraction to the idea of living in a community populated
by people of similar age and background
● Most suburbs were restricted to whites
● Like earlier urban neighborhoods a hierarchy emerged of
upper-class suburban neighborhoods and more modest ones

15. The Suburban Nation and Family
(Cont.)
● The enormous cultural emphasis on family life in the 1950s
strengthened popular prejudices against women occupying
jobs
● Dr. Benjamin Spock's Baby and Child Care was first published
in 1946
○ Approach to raising babies was child-centered, as opposed
to parent-centered
○ The purpose of motherhood, was to help children learn
and grow and realize their potential
● As expectations of material comfort rose, many middle-class
families needed a second income to maintain the standard of
living they desired - led to women working outside of home
despite social pressure to stay out of workplace

16. The Birth of Television
● In 1946, there were only 17,000 sets in the country; by 1957,
there were 10 million television sets in use - almost as many
sets as there were families
● The television industry emerged directly out of the radio
industry and like radio, the television business was driven by
advertising
● By the late 1950s, television news had replaced newspapers,
magazines, and radios as the nation's most important vehicle
of information
● Much of the programming created reated a common image of
American life - an image that was predominantly white,
middle-class, and suburban
○ Ozzie and Harriet
○ Leave It to Beaver
● Also contributed to the sense of alienation and powerlessness
among groups excluded from the world it portrayed

17. Travel, Outdoor Recreation, and
Environmentalism
● Construction of the interstate highway system and the
increasing ability to buy cars due to prosperity contributed
dramatically to the growth of travel
● Many visitors to national parks came in search of wilderness
which is evident in the fight to preserve Echo Park
● Bureau of Reclamation proposed building a dam across the
Green River, which runs through Echo Valley, to create a lake
for recreation and a source of hydroelectric power
● In 1956 Congress - bowing to public pressure - blocked the
project and preserved Echo Park in its natural state
● The controversy was a major victory for those who wished to
preserve national parks

18. Organized Society and Its
Detractors
● For the first time in the 1950s, white-collar workers came to
outnumber blue-collar laborers which led to more Americans
becoming convinced that the key to a successful future was to
acquire specialized skills necessary for working in large
organizations
● The American educational system began experimenting with
changes in curriculum and philosophy
○ Elementary schools gave increased attention to the
teaching of science, mathematics, and foreign languages
● "Multiversity" - represented a commitment to making higher
education a training ground for specialists in a wide variety of
fields
● William H. Whyte Jr. - The Organization Man (1956)
● David Riesman - The Lonely Crowd (1950)

19. The Beats, the Restless Culture of
Youth, and Rock 'n' Roll
● Other critics of bureaucracy, and of middle class society in
general, were a group of young poets, writers, and artists
generally known as the "beats" (derived from "beatniks")
○ Jack Kerouac - On the Road (1957)
● This restlessness among young Americans was a result of
prosperity itself and a growing sense among young people of
limitless possibilities, and of the declining power of such
traditional values as discipline and self-restraint
● Tremendous public attention was directed at the phenomenon
of "juvenile delinquency," and in both politics and popular
culture there were dire warnings about the growing
criminality of American youth, however youth crime did not
dramatically increase in the 1950s
● James Dean became an icon among the youth

20. The Beats, the Restless Culture of
Youth, and Rock 'n' Roll (Cont.)
● Elvis Presley became a symbol of a youth determination to
push at the borders at the conventional and acceptable
● The rise of such white rock musicians as Presley was a result
in part of the limited willingness of white audiences to accept
black musicians
● The rapid rise and enormous popularity of rock owed a great
deal to innovations in radio and television programming
○ "Disk jockeys"
○ Encouraged the sale of records
● "Payola" scandals - secret payments from record promoters to
station owners and disk jockeys to encourage them to
showcase their artists

21. On the Margins of the Affluent
Society
● Michael Harrington - The Other America
● Most of the poor experience poverty temporarily which was
an indication of how unstable employment could be at the
lower levels of the job market
● Native Americans constituted the single poorest group in the
country, a result of government policies that undermined the
economies of the reservations and drove many Indians into
cities, where some lived in a poverty worse than that they had
left
● Rural Americans
○ Steadily shrinking farm population
○ Declining farm prices
● Black sharecroppers and tenant farmers continued to live at
or below subsistence level throughout the rural South
● Migrant farmworkers (Mexican-American and Asian-
American workers) and those living in rural areas without
much commercial agriculture lived in desperate poverty

22. The Inner Cities
● White families moving from cities to suburbs and African
Americans moving from the countryside into industrial cities
led to inner-city neighborhoods becoming poor "ghettos"
● Similar migrations from Mexico and Puerto Rico expanded
Hispanic neighborhoods at the same time
● Inner-city communities remained poor during growing
affluence because:
○ New migrants were victims of their own pasts
○ Creation of a "culture of poverty"
○ Combination of declining blue-collar jobs and racism
● Economic opportunities that had helped earlier immigrant
groups rise up from poverty were unavailable to most of the
postwar migrants
● "Urban renewal": the effort to tear down buildings in the
poorest and most degraded areas to provide new public
housing for poor city residents

23. The Civil Rights Movement
● Brown v. Brown Board of Education of
Topeka (1954)
○ Opposing Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
■ Led to Brown II decision
■ Massive Resistance in the South
● 100 Southern Congress members signed a Manifesto
● Ignoring of Ruling by Some White School Districts
● Pupil Placement Laws
○ Shuttlesworth v. Birmingham Board of Education
■ Desegregation of Central High School in Little
Rock, Arkansas
● Eisenhower federalized National Guard and sent troops
to Little Rock

24. Civil Rights Cont.
● December 1, 1955 : Rosa Parks arrested in
Montgomery, Alabama.
○ Leads to Bus Boycott by African Americans
○ Supreme Court declaring segregated seating in
public transportation illegal
● Jackie Robinson signed to the Brooklyn
Dodgers (1947)
● Civil Rights Act (1957) : desegregate the
federal workforce and provide federal
protection to African Americans that
wanted to vote

25. Causes of the Civil Rights Movement
● Growth of an Urban Black Middle Class
● Television : national audience
● Cold War : embarrassed the United States
● Political Mobilization of Blacks

26. Eisenhower Republicanism
● Cabinet filled with wealthy corporate lawyers
and business executives
○ Charles Wilson : "What was good for our country
was good for General motors, and vice versa."
● Supported private development of natural
resources
○ lowered federal suppot for farm prices
○ removed the last limited wage and price controls
○ opposed the creation of new social service programs
● Extended the Social Security System to 10
million people and unemployment
compensation to 4 million
● Federal Highway Act of 1956

27. Adios McCarthyism!
● January 1954, McCarthy attacks Secretary
of the Army Robert Stevens and armed
services
○ Army-McCarthy Hearings
■ 1st congressional hearings to be televised
○ December 1954, Senate votes 67 to 22 to
condemen McCarty for "conduct unbecoming of
a senator"

28. War and Stuff!
● Secretary of State: John Foster Dulles
introduces "massive retaliation"
● Korean War ended on July 27, 1953 at
Panmunjom
○ cease fire line created at 38th parallel
● France v. Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam
○ 12,000 French troops surrounded at the village of
Dien Bien Phu
○ French defense collapses on May 7, 1954
○ Agreement reached at Geneva convention

29. Cold War Crises
● May 14, 1948 : Israel declares
independence
○ Palestine begins fighting new state
● Muhammad Mossadegh :nationalist
prime minister of Iran resists Western
Corporations
○ U.S. CIA elevates Muhammad Reza Pahlevi to
absolute ruler
● Egypt develops trade relationship with
the Soviet Union

30. Crises Cont.
● 1956 : Dulles withdraws American forces
from Aswan Dam
○ Nasser seizes control of the Suez Canal from the
British
● October 29, 1956, Israeli forces attack
Egypt
● Britain and France invade, but failure of
the U.S. to join forces them to leave

31. More Crises..... :/
● In 1954: Eisenhower toppled leftist
government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman in
Guatemala
● In Cuba, Fulgencio Batista (friendly with
U.S.) had been in charge since 1952
○ 1957: popular movement of resistance to Batista
gains strenth with Fidel Castro in charge
○ January 1, 1959, Castro establishes new
government in Havana
● Castro and Soviet Union strike an alliance

32. Europe and the Soviet Union
● 1955: Eisenhower and NATO leaders
meet with Nikolai Bulganin at Geneva
Conference
● Hungarian Revolution begins in 1956
○ Sours relations betweens the Soviet Union and
the West
○ Soviets enter Budapest to crush uprising
○ U.S. refuse to intervene

33. U-2 Crisis
● November 1958: Nikita Khrushchev
demanded that NATO powers abandon
West Berlin
● Eisenhower and Khrushchev agree to meet
in each other's countries and in Paris in 1960
● Soviet Union shoots down American U-2
○ No more Paris and No more visit to Soviet Union