US Test

The Liberal consensus just means that the political center of America, represented by both Republicans and Democrats, promoted and agreed on several basic policy positions that had formerly (before WWII) been held only by those considered more left of center.

They advocated a growth economy, an expanding role for the federal government, and the United States to take a leading role as a global power. The majority and mainstream in both parties supported social welfare programs, expanding civil rights protections for minorities, expanding the infrastructure like highway and bridge construction, and a great increase in military spending and the size of the US military.

We have already seen how the liberal consensus also reflects that Democrats and Republicans both turned against communism and socialism as viable political positions both at home and abroad.

Both Truman (a Democrat) and Eisenhower (a Republican) and their followers in office, Kennedy and Johnson (both Democrats), supported strong sometimes outright military Cold War foreign policy strategies to contain communism abroad, and mild police-state tactics to delegitimize communist sympathy at home.

Eisenhower Argued that he was a “modern Republican”—that meant that he accepted most of the social programs and foreign policy that had been established under Roosevelt and Truman, but he wanted to slow or stop the increase in expansion of those programs. Eisenhower did not agree with the conservative elements in the party who wanted to roll back the New Deal. He expanded Social Security, increased the minimum wage, created the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and started a federal program for polio vaccinations. He also supported government construction of low-income housing, though he repeatedly claimed he favored more limited spending than had Truman.

He therefore represented a ‘middle way’ and also personified the liberal consensus—a Republican for big government and military expansion. While he tried to stop the high rate of spending increases, Democratic control of both houses of Congress during his later years in office saw federal spending increase on domestic programs rise from 31% of the total to 49% of the total. Overall spending however stayed below the rise in the GDP so that the ratio of spending to GDP declined 2%.

Inflation and unemployment were both low through almost all the 1950s—it was a decade of immense growth in wealth for many and for the country at large. Personal income rose between 25% and 45% in real dollars just during Ike’s two terms. The credit card made its debut, and more Americans than ever could afford nice homes (often in the suburbs) and second cars. 25% of people lived in suburbs.

The poverty rate declined during Eisenhower’s terms, so even though 1 in 5 (about 40 million) remained poor, there was not a whole lot of attention paid to them during his terms. For the vast majority of Americans, it seemed like a time of economic security and consumer bounty compared to the Depression and the scarcity during the war years.

By the end of the Eisenhower years, 35% of women worked and they held nearly a third of the available jobs. Mostly because they worked at lower paying jobs (rather than that they were all paid less for the same work), women made about 60% of what men earned—for the same main reason, black women earned only 42% of white men’s income. A steelworker with a wife and children could afford to buy a home, an automobile, a refrigerator, and a television—all things that just a generation before would have been out of his reach. In many cases, he also had a retirement program, health benefits, and paid vacations. Of course those who did not work for one of the tremendously profitable firms were often left out—smaller companies and individual shops could not afford to provide such benefits. By 1957 there were more white-collar and service jobs than blue-collar jobs in manufacturing and manual labor.

Continuing under Eisenhower, loyalty policies still allowed federal bureaucrats to dismiss any employees they found suspect for any number of reasons, and thousands were fired for their politics or personal lives.

 \n Eisenhower hated McCarthy though—and McCarthy’s continued attacks against Republican officials now infuriated Ike. Still, Eisenhower would not call McCarthy out publicly—“I just won’t get into a pissing contest with that skunk,” Eisenhower wrote to his brother.

Joseph Nye Welch, an attorney representing the U.S. Army in the McCarthy hearings, said, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” to Joseph McCarthy during one of the Senate hearings on June 9, 1954. This was seen as a very dramatic moment—and it was televised.

Finally the Senate had had enough, and, with Eisenhower’s back room support, they censured McCarthy at the end of 1954.

This image is of Levittown, Long Island, NY.

It was a planned community built of nearly identical houses begun in the 1940s.

The assembly line approach and cheaper raw materials made them very inexpensive, and new road projects allowed them to be built in the suburbs where land was much cheaper as well.

Levittown only allowed white residents. There was no law at this time forbidding discrimination against people in housing.

Similar suburbs (many all-white, but not all of them) popped up throughout the United States from the 1940s through today.

Along with the growth in suburbs throughout the country, the population in the Sun Belt (South and West--the yellow part of the map) increased during the Cold War.

California became the most populous state, and air conditioning was invented and greatly increased the comfort level of living in hotter areas.

The movie industry, defense and technology spending, and automobile factories all moved to the South and West.

These were right-to–work states after the Taft-Hartley Act (you did not have to join unions) with low taxes and cheap land that allowed for cheaper labor and production costs. The U.S. government took advantage of these savings for defense spending just as did private companies.

 \n Farm production increased exponentially due to efficiency in machinery and fertilizers even as the number of farmers and farm workers declined precipitously.

Larger mega-agribusinesses benefitted the most from the farm subsidies put in place during the New Deal and continued through the Truman and Eisenhower years.

 \n College enrollment doubled between 1940 and 1960—it would double again in the next decade.

More people were finishing high school and the increased prosperity allowed many students the luxury to take several years out of their work lives.

States subsidized the cost of college so that it was almost free (my first tuition bills as late as the 1980s at UT Austin were $250-$400 per semester).

For once African Americans benefitted more than other groups—relatively—their numbers enrolled in college rose almost 2.5 times, though they were still proportionately far fewer of those enrolled than their percentage in the population.

Women actually lost ground proportionately—but only because so many more men attended.

The GI Bill one of the major reasons for this increase.

Look how low the birth rate was in 1940 during the Great Depression! It remained low during WWII with so many young men away.

But when those young men returned from war, the economy was booming and there was no longer any need to put off having babies! People born from 1945-1965 are colloquially known as “Baby Boomers.”

You see a slowing again during the economically depressed years of the late 1960s-1970s and then another boom as the Boomers themselves have their own kids in the economically growing 1980s-1990s.

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