If you went back to the Golden Era, what would you notice first?

[vitanola]

Sounds to me like you're discussing more the 1930s than the 1940s.... From what I remember the wartime economy post December, 1941 put danged near anyone to work from there til the end of the Space Race in the early 1970s...

Yes, and any consumer goods which could be purchased would fly off of the shelves, including luxury items like phonograph records and mutation mink.

Remember that our national product of 1937 surpassed that of the 1928 peak, and that unit sales of motor cars, farm machinery, steel products, appliances and phonograph records were all approaching record levels before the WPB began to divert raw materials for the National Defense.

On the other hand, in the alternate universe occupied by a number of politically motivated "revisionist historians" who cchgn appears to follow, our economy was wonderful up until March 4, 1933, at which point it collapsed utterly, plunging Americans into an economic maelstrom from which they could not escape until January 20, 1953.

 

[jamespowers]

Yes, and any consumer goods which could be purchased would fly off of the shelves, including luxury items like phonograph records and mutation mink.

Remember that our national product of 1937 surpassed that of the 1928 peak, and that unit sales of motor cars, farm machinery, steel products, appliances and phonograph records were all approaching record levels before the WPB began to divert raw materials for the National Defense.

On the other hand, in the alternate universe occupied by a number of politically motivated "revisionist historians" who cchgn appears to follow, our economy was wonderful up until March 4, 1933, at which point it collapsed utterly, plunging Americans into an economic maelstrom from which they could not escape until January 20, 1953.

Hmmmmm:
http://www.quandl.com/NBER-National...ment-Rate-Seasonally-Adjusted-04-1929-06-1942

 

[LizzieMaine]

That is interesting. I know how on my first visit to Europe around 2000 how struck I was by the amount of smoking I saw compared to the States - even back then.

By the way, would you mind sharing your source for the statistics you referenced? I might have use for that and know the source will be asked for.

Center for Disease Control: Achievements in Public Health: Tobacco Use in the United States, 1900-1999

 

[Horace Debussy Jones]

First thing I'd notice would be the beautiful cars. Hundreds and hundreds of Packards, LaSalles, Hudsons, etc. I'd most likely be hauled away to the bug house for standing in the middle of the street gawking at ordinary Chevys and Plymouths.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I wonder if this is due to the additives? They say cigarettes today are much more addictive and that might count for higher consumption per smoker.

I had a great uncle who smoked one cigarette a day for decades (he quit because he didn't like the taste of the "new cigarettes" in the 1970s or 80s, I think). I don't know anyone who manages that today and I've heard that can't be done because they are so addictive.

I strongly recommend Richard Kluger's 1996 Pulitzer Prize-winning expose "Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War" for documented facts on just how the tobacco industry and the Boys from Marketing have meticulously and deliberately prostituted science over the decades -- and especially since the 1950s -- in order to more effectively peddle their poison.

 

[hatguy1]

I wouldn't say it's so much what's added to cigarettes today so much as what's absent from most 21st century individuals. We're just not as doggedly tough and determined as the people of that generation. My Grandpa, who was a Doctor, quit cold turkey the day he read the first Surgeon General's report on studies linking smoking to lung cancer (1959ish?). He never touched a cigarette again in his life. Unfortunately, I can't say the same thing . . .

My grandfather did something similar; he and my grandma spent their last several years in a nursing home. Grandpa'd been a several cigars a week and frequent chewer of tobacco for many, many decades of his life. However, in the nursing home he promised to my grandmother he'd finally give up his every form of tobacco use - and he never touched it again after entering the home. He spent several years in there before passing away.

 

[vitanola]

Hmmmmm:
http://www.quandl.com/NBER-National...ment-Rate-Seasonally-Adjusted-04-1929-06-1942

Yes, unemployment was sticky. The reorganization forced upon industry by the economic cataclysm resulted in greatly increased productivity per man hour, and so although economic activity (production) surpassed previous levels, constrained effective demand due to insufficient purchasing power kept unemployment levels high until the massive Keynesian stimulus which was Defense and later War production effectively replaced the consumer a spurchaser of last resort. Note, however that the official unemployment figures do not count workers as employed who were working on the CCC, the WPA or on PWA infrastructure projects. Note that at the peak of the 1938 slump 10,390,000 were counted as unemployed . Of those 10,930,000, 2,985,00 were working for the WPA, a further 300,000 were enrolled in the CCC, and another 935,000 were employed under PWA contracts. So 6,170,000 were out of work at the beak of the second dip. With a total workforce of 54,950,000 (that figure was not adjusted for "discouraged workers", by the way) that makes an effective unemployment rate of about 11.3%, far too high, of course, but much better than the published figures. The president explicitly forbade the Labor Department from counting workers employed on the various relief projects as "empoyed", for he felt that that could lead to terrible manipulation of this figure.

 

[jamespowers]

Yes, unemployment was sticky. The reorganization forced upon industry by the economic cataclysm resulted in greatly increased productivity per man hour, and so although economic activity (production) surpassed previous levels, constrained effective demand due to insufficient purchasing power kept unemployment levels high until the massive Keynesian stimulus which was Defense and later War production effectively replaced the consumer a spurchaser of last resort. Note, however that the official unemployment figures do not count workers as employed who were working on the CCC, the WPA or on PWA infrastructure projects. Note that at the peak of the 1938 slump 10,390,000 were counted as unemployed . Of those 10,930,000, 2,985,00 were working for the WPA, a further 300,000 were enrolled in the CCC, and another 935,000 were employed under PWA contracts. So 6,170,000 were out of work at the beak of the second dip. With a total workforce of 54,950,000 (that figure was not adjusted for "discouraged workers", by the way) that makes an effective unemployment rate of about 11.3%, far too high, of course, but much better than the published figures. The president explicitly forbade the Labor Department from counting workers employed on the various relief projects as "empoyed", for he felt that that could lead to terrible manipulation of this figure.

Hmmmm.....In contrast, Hitler had Germany at full employment in 1935 (in three years)….. Even Keynesian economist John Kenneth Galbraithe was impressed.


I would be more than happy to notice back then that people dressed decently---no matter what their station in life. A friend of mine who was a merchant marine in that time period said that no one ever knew you were a merchant marine or what. You went out and dressed in a suit and no one knew if you were a banker or bricklayer. Now everyone looks like a brick layer.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Now everyone looks like a brick layer.

And most of them think it's beneath them to actually lay bricks.

 

[sheeplady]

I strongly recommend Richard Kluger's 1996 Pulitzer Prize-winning expose "Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War" for documented facts on just how the tobacco industry and the Boys from Marketing have meticulously and deliberately prostituted science over the decades -- and especially since the 1950s -- in order to more effectively peddle their poison.

Thank you- that looks fantastic!

 

[jamespowers]

And most of them think it's beneath them to actually lay bricks.

Agreed! Hard work might hurt their little minds.

 

[Alice Blue]

If I were transported back to 1940, I'd want to see the new Quabbin Reservoir and hear what people thought about it. In the course of the 1930s the Swift River valley was dammed up to provide drinking water for Boston, and four Western Massachusetts towns were submerged. The townspeople were "relocated."

http://www.onenewengland.com/article.php?id=218
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quabbin_Reservoir

 

[plain old dave]

Let's see.

1940 Oak Ridge: What would become the Townsite in about 2 years was Anderson County, Tennessee farmland. Robertsville and Scarboro were unincorporated communities.

1940 Knoxville: Fountain City was still the largest unincorporated town in the US, home to Knox County's Central High School. "North Knoxville" (what the gentrifiers insist on calling Fountain City) was Lincoln Park and Park City, "West Knoxville" ended just East of Bearden. All told, most of modern Knoxville was still in Knox County but the one thing I would probably notice first about downtown Knoxville would be the burnt coffee smell. JFG Coffee was roasted in Knoxville, Tennessee for many years just a few blocks from where Martha White Flour was ground.

 

[Guttersnipe]

I suppose the first thing I'd notice is the killer view of Golden Gate Park from my kitchen and dinning room windows, which is now blocked by another building!

 

[David Conwill]

If I were transported back to 1940, I'd want to see the new Quabbin Reservoir and hear what people thought about it. In the course of the 1930s the Swift River valley was dammed up to provide drinking water for Boston, and four Western Massachusetts towns were submerged. The townspeople were "relocated."

http://www.onenewengland.com/article.php?id=218
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quabbin_Reservoir

I can only hope at least one would cite this to you:

H.P. Lovecraft, an American science fiction and horror writer, wrote "Dunwich Horror" and "The Color Out of Space", two short stories which took place in the valley before it was flooded for the reservoir.[12]

And say it was the best possible outcome for that area. :lol:

 

[Indyoriginal]

Interesting idea...and I agree with a lot of the comments. The smells, the lack of digital technology etc. One thing that I'm surprised no one (at least that I've seen) has mentioned is segregation. Honestly, aside from the buses, restrooms, and water fountains, I really don't know how this all played out in society. But if I were sent back and saw a restroom that said "White Only" or something to that effect, I bet I'd be shocked (despite knowing full well that it's all historical fact). Still, just such a foreign thought to me. Much more so than the lack of all things clean, commercial, and digital.

Overall though, I do wonder if the pace of life, and some of the simplicity that we've left behind, would be much preferable to the way we "live" today.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Interesting idea...and I agree with a lot of the comments. The smells, the lack of digital technology etc. One thing that I'm surprised no one (at least that I've seen) has mentioned is segregation. Honestly, aside from the buses, restrooms, and water fountains, I really don't know how this all played out in society. But if I were sent back and saw a restroom that said "White Only" or something to that effect, I bet I'd be shocked (despite knowing full well that it's all historical fact). Still, just such a foreign thought to me. Much more so than the lack of all things clean, commercial, and digital.

Overall though, I do wonder if the pace of life, and some of the simplicity that we've left behind, would be much preferable to the way we "live" today.

Legally-entrenched segregation of the "Whites Only" bathroom variety was a Southern/border state phenomenon - there were no formally segregated bathrooms or drinking fountains or trains or buses in the North. However, there was nothing to prevent a business from declining to serve persons it chose not to serve, and it was generally understood that most of the "better" hotels and restaurants in Northern cities accepted only a white clientele. This form of segregation was business driven, however and not imposed thru sanction of law.

Restrictive covenants in deeds in the United States allowing landowners to specify that the property may not be sold to "Negroes, Hebrews, or anyone not of the white race" were legal until the late 1940s, but various practices in the banking and mortgage industries effectively kept blacks out of certain neighborhoods well into the 1970s and '80s.

 

[sheeplady]

Much more so than the lack of all things clean, commercial, and digital.

I don't know about the cleanliness and commericalness though. Advertising, while still in its infancy was prominent (You only need to look at any publication of the time to see how much was present) and lots of places (around here at least) aren't very clean. I'd actually expect the area I live in to be cleaner as it was a boom time rather than a time of decay, like it is presently.

 

[Guttersnipe]

 

[LizzieMaine]

And if you think that's bad, go back another fifty years to the late Victorian era, when literally every flat surface in a city and in most small towns was plastered with advertising, layers and layers of it.

That said, it was advertising, not modern psychological marketing. I'd take a wall full of "Camel Aids Your Digestion" any day over the manipulation we have nowadays.