Peace, Prosperity, and Progress Notes

Peace, Prosperity, and Progress

Introduction

The 1950s are remembered as an age of affluence due to events like the rapid development of Lakewood, California.
Lakewood transformed from lima bean fields to a community of 90,000 people between 1949 and 1953.
Post-World War II, there was high demand for housing due to returning soldiers starting families.
Lakewood offered affordable homes to white, middle-class homebuyers, symbolizing their new prosperity.
The GI Bill of Rights enabled veterans to buy homes with no money down, needing only a steady job and ability to keep up with payments.
A two-bedroom house in Lakewood cost $7,575$ , featuring modern amenities like stainless steel kitchen counters and electric garbage disposals.

Postwar Inflation, 1945-1955

Inflation is defined as a general increase in the price of goods and services over time.
Post-war inflation spiked due to the lifting of wartime price controls in 1946.
Prices increased due to high demand for consumer goods surpassing supply.

Postwar Politics: Readjustments and Challenges

Harry Truman became president after Franklin Roosevelt's death in April 1945.
Truman's initial task was to end the war and transition the country to a peacetime economy.
Truman proposed the Fair Deal, a package of reforms including increasing the minimum wage, aid to agriculture and education, and a national health insurance program.
Republicans in Congress resisted Truman's Fair Deal reforms.
The end of the war led to the cancellation of billions of dollars in war contracts, causing defense workers to lose their jobs.
Inflation soared after wartime price controls were lifted, leading workers to demand wage increases.
In 1946, nearly 5 million workers went on strike in key industries like steel, coal, and oil refining.
Truman threatened to use armed forces to run railroads during a railroad worker strike, but a settlement was reached before action.
In the 1946 congressional elections, Republicans gained control of both houses of Congress for the first time since the 1920s, running under the slogan "Had Enough?"
The Twenty-second Amendment, passed in 1947 and ratified in 1951, limited the president to two terms in office to prevent a president from becoming a "president for life."
The Taft-Hartley Act, passed in 1947, placed limits on the power of unions, outlawing the closed shop and sympathy strikes.
Truman vetoed the Taft-Hartley Act, but Congress overrode his veto.
Truman established the President's Committee on Civil Rights in 1946 to investigate racial inequality.
The committee called for an end to segregation and discrimination in voting, housing, education, employment, and the military.
In 1948, Truman desegregated the armed forces by executive order, bypassing Congress.
In the 1948 election, Truman faced challenges from the Progressive Party led by Henry Wallace and the States' Rights Democratic Party (Dixiecrats) led by Strom Thurmond.
Wallace advocated for friendlier relations with the Soviet Union, while Thurmond ran on a platform of complete segregation.
The Republicans nominated Thomas E. Dewey, who was favored to win.
Truman launched a "whistle-stop" tour, making 356 stops to speak directly to voters and criticize the Republican Congress.
Truman narrowly won reelection in what was considered a major upset.
Truman continued to propose his Fair Deal programs, but a coalition of conservative southern Democrats and midwestern Republicans blocked most of his reform efforts.
Congress agreed to a modest expansion of Social Security benefits, an increase in the minimum wage, and support for slum clearance.
In the 1952 election, the Democrats nominated Adlai Stevenson, and the Republicans nominated Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Eisenhower won the election and embraced a program he described as "modern Republicanism."
Eisenhower expanded Social Security and oversaw a peacetime arms buildup.
Eisenhower warned about the growing power of the "military-industrial complex" in his farewell address in 1961.

Economic Growth Creates an Age of Affluence

In 1940, Dick and Mac McDonald opened a drive-in restaurant in San Bernardino, California.
The McDonald brothers streamlined their business by narrowing the menu to hamburgers, replacing carhops with a self-service counter, using paper wrappers and cups, and setting up the kitchen like an assembly line.
By the end of the 1950s, middle-class families enjoyed a level of affluence beyond what their Depression-era parents and grandparents could have imagined.
Post-World War II, Americans had saved billions of dollars and were ready to spend, encouraging businesses to expand production.
By 1955, the U.S., with only 6 percent of the world's population, produced almost half of the world's goods.
Real income, measured by the amount of goods and services it can buy, doubled for the average American family by the mid-1950s compared to the 1920s.
Suburban shopping centers lured consumers away from downtown shopping districts, offering easy parking and a wide array of shops.
By 1964, there were more than $7,600$ shopping centers across the U.S.
Businesses spent $8 billion a year on advertising by 1955 to encourage consumption.
Large stores issued charge cards, and in 1958, American Express launched the first all-purpose credit card.
Planned obsolescence was used to create a desire to own something newer and better sooner than necessary.
By the end of the 1950s, service industries were growing in importance compared to manufacturing industries.
In 1955, General Motors became the first U.S. corporation to earn more than $1 billion a year.
In 1948, GM signed an agreement with the United Auto Workers union, guaranteeing regular wage hikes tied to a cost-of-living index.
Ray Kroc visited McDonald's in 1954 and convinced the McDonald brothers to hire him as a franchising agent.
Kroc opened his own franchise restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois, and by 1963, McDonald's had sold more than 1 billion hamburgers.
Kemmons Wilson founded the Holiday Inn motel chain after a frustrated family trip in 1951.
By the 1960s, motel chains had become a fixture on America's highways.
By the end of the 1950s, white-collar workers outnumbered blue-collar employees for the first time in history.

Marriage, Families, and a Baby Boom

After World War II, marriage rates and birthrates increased, leading to the largest population boom in U.S. history.
In 1946, there were almost 2.3 million marriages in the United States.
The average age of marriage in the 1950s was 20 for women and 22 for men.
The baby boom occurred from 1946 to 1964, with a peak of 4.3 million births in 1957.
By 1964, four Americans in ten were under the age of 20.
The baby boom boosted sales for diaper services, baby food bottlers, home sales, furniture, appliances, and cars.
Schools struggled to accommodate the increasing number of children, with California opening new schools at the rate of one a week.
Most baby boomers grew up in traditional families, with working dads and stay-at-home moms.
The importance of marriage and family was emphasized in marriage manuals.
Dr. Benjamin Spock advised mothers to devote themselves full-time to raising their children.
Television shows reinforced traditional family roles, such as Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best.
In the "traditional" 1950s family, the father worked, and the mother stayed at home raising the children.

Population Shifts to Suburbs and Sunbelt States

In 1941, Bill and Alfred Levitt won a government contract to build homes for war workers and revolutionized the process of building homes.
By war's end, housing was in short supply, and returning veterans were eager to buy homes.
In 1947, the Levitt brothers began work on Levittown, the first planned community in the nation, located on Long Island.
By 1951, they had built 17,447 homes around Levittown, and they went on to build two more Levittowns in Pennsylvania and New Jersey by 1960.
The Levitts built small, boxy homes with two bedrooms and one bathroom, using mass-production techniques to speed up production and keep prices under $8,000.
The first Levittown in New York was a bedroom community, with residents commuting to jobs in New York City.
Between 1950 and 1956, the number of Americans living in suburban communities increased by 46 percent.
These new suburbanites were overwhelmingly white and middle class.
Americans were moving from the northern half of the country to the Sunbelt.
Manufacturers and other businesses began locating in the Sunbelt due to low labor costs and less entrenched unions.
Between 1950 and 1960, California's population grew by 50 percent, from about 10.6 million to more than 15.7 million people.
Two advances in technology made this population shift possible: massive water projects and the development of room air conditioners.

The Triumph of the Automobile

In 1957, Ford introduced a new car called the Edsel, which ultimately failed due to lack of public enthusiasm.
Life in the suburbs depended on access to an automobile, with families needing not just one, but two cars.
Cars became a status symbol, and automakers encouraged car owners to trade in last year's models for new ones.
By 1958, more than 67 million cars were on the road, and close to 12 million families owned two or more cars.
In 1956, Congress authorized the construction of a nationwide interstate highway system.
President Eisenhower supported the interstate highway system, remembering how useful the autobahns in Germany had been during World War II.
By 1960, about 10,000 miles of interstate highway had been constructed.
The interstate highway system made travel by road faster and safer, created economic opportunities, and increased Americans' dependence on cars and trucks.

Technological Advances Transform Everyday Life

In 1953, Charles Mee contracted polio, which was one of the most feared diseases of the 20th century.
The first polio epidemic in the United States, in 1916, left 27,000 people paralyzed and 9,000 dead.
President Franklin Roosevelt established the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis in 1938 to seek a cure for polio.
Dr. Jonas Salk developed the first polio vaccine, which was tested on 2 million schoolchildren in 1954.
Statistics showed the vaccine to be as much as 90 percent effective in preventing polio.
Surgical techniques advanced rapidly in the 1950s as well. The first open-heart surgery and the first kidney transplant were performed. The first pacemaker, a device designed to regulate the beating of a patient's heart, was developed. Medical researchers also began to experiment with heart transplants.
Antibiotic drugs, such as penicillin and streptomycin, were used to cure diseases.
A child born in 1950 could expect to live to the age of 68, and by 1960, the average life expectancy had reached 69.7 years.
Scientists explored peaceful uses for nuclear energy, including the generation of electricity.
The first full-scale nuclear power plant opened in Shippingport, Pennsylvania, in 1957.
Radioactive isotopes were used in the diagnosis and treatment of disease.
In 1946, engineers from the University of Pennsylvania built ENIAC, one of the earliest electronic digital computers.
The invention of the transistor in 1947 led to dramatic improvements in computer design.
By 1959, transistors had replaced vacuum tubes, and computers began to appear in more workplaces.