1950s

1
1950s

• Focus Question
• Why are the 1950s remembered as an age of
  affluence (prosperity)?

2
Rocky Transition to Peace

• Truman announced set of reforms the Fair Deal
• Raise minimum wage
• Enact national health insurance program
• With rising prices and unemployment, workers
  wanted wage increases and striking

3
Congress Responds Taft-Hartley Act

• T-H Act limits power of unions to combat and
  prevent strikes
• Closed shop or workplace where an employer agrees
  to hire only members of a certain union outlawed
• Bans sympathy strikes by other unions

4
Truman Defeats Dewey
5
Election of 1948Truman Defeats Dewey

• Truman campaigns on a whistle-stop tour to win
  the reelection against Dewey
• Trumans Fair Deal reforms blocked by Republican
  Congress
• Congress did pass Trumans proposal to raise
  minimum wage

6
Election of 1950 Ike takes the middle of the road

• I like Ike
• Modern Republicanism voted in to office with
  Eisenhower
• Social Security Benefits expanded
• Arms buildup during peacetime to combat the Cold
  War
• Interstate system designed built

7
Consumer Demand Economic Growth

• Due to large savings and more real income,
  people spend more money than ever before
• Businesses advertise offer charge cards
• New improved products encourage customers to
  get the newest product and latest designs

8
Economy Shifts from Goods to Services

• GM becomes the first US business to earn more
  than 1 billion a year
• GMs success based on guaranteeing its workers
  wage hikes that were tied to the cost-of-living
  index

9
Economy Shifts from Goods to Services

• Fast-food restaurants and motel chains begin to
  compete for consumer business
• New companies are selling franchises (agreements
  to operate a business that carries that companys
  name and products)

10
Blue-collar to White-collar Job Shift

• White-collar workers outnumber blue-collar
  workers for the first time in US History
• Blue-collar workers are part of middle class
• White-collar workers are usually salaried, while
  blue-collar workers are paid by the hour

11
Marriage Boom leads to Baby Boom

• Marriages increased greatly
• Married at younger ages
• Increase in marriages leads to more babies being
  born baby boom
• More diapers, baby food, homes, cars, schools are
  needed to accommodate these new kids

12
Family Roles

• Dr. Spock encourages women to stay home to raise
  children in his books
• Mass media (TV, magazines, movies) portray
  traditional family with working dads and
  homemaker moms
• The number of women attending college dropped and
  many who do attend drop out to get married

13
Leave it to Beaver Father Knows Best TV families
14
Middle Class Families Move to the Suburbs

• New planned communities are providing needed
  housing for middle class families
• New suburban communities revealed homogeneity
  being white and middle class
• Americans move to the sunbelt
• Population shift possible with invention of air
  conditioning and water projects

15
The Suburbs
16
The Middle Class Dream

• Increased number of people commuting from the
  suburbs led to the production and sale of cars
• Cars are a status symbol new and better designs
  each year
• Interstate system needed
• New business along interstate gas stations,
  motels, restaurants

17
Life Expectancy

• Dr. Salk created polio vaccine
• Surgical techniques created saving lives
• Use of antibiotics to treat diseases increases
• Advances in medicine increase life span by 2
  yrs

18
Nuclear Energy Computers

• Nuclear energy used for electricity
• First electric digital computer called ENIAC
  performs 300 multiplications per second
• Invention of transistor has allowed for smaller
  and more reliable computers

19
Suburbia and Conformity

• fostered conformity materialism
• same age, class, income
• Suburbs consisted of uniform, unidentifiable
  homes
• organization men working for large corporations
  or government
• Children grew up valuing fitting in above
  thinking for themselves

20
The Beats

• Rejected all forms of convention
• Shunned traditional jobs and materialism of
  American life
• Men wore beards.
• Men and women wore
• dark clothes and berets
• Studied Eastern religions Hinduism and Buddhism

21
Beat Literature

• Based on feelings adventures
• Writing often flowed
• in a stream of
• consciousness and
• could go for pages without a period or punctuation

22
Youth Culture

• Rock n Roll was a new style of music that
  teenagers embraced
• Radios and record players were inexpensive
• Elvis Presley represented rebellion against music
  and manners of older generations
• Hollywood catered to teens
• Teens developed their own language

23
Two Americas

• Poverty was a moral and economic problem
• People who needed assistance viewed as lazy
• Elderly and children were misfortunate because
  they couldnt work
• Working poor had jobs

24
Two Americas

• Poverty line is the minimum amount of income
  needed to meet basic needs
• Poor lived in cities
• Mass produced clothing allowed for assimilation
  into society
• No political power

25
Inner Cities

• African Americans, Puerto Ricans, Mexican
  Immigrants
• Industry jobs disappeared from cities
• Housing Act of 1949 destroyed many homes where
  low-income groups lived

26
Rural Life

• Migrant workers, farmers, Appalachias residents
• Small farmers couldnt compete with corporate
  farms
• Migrant workers given low pay at corporate farms
• Coal industry declined leading to no work for
  Appalachia's miners

27
Americas Poorest Citizens

• American Indians
• Termination policy of 1953 ended federal aid to
  tribes, withdrew land protection, distributed
  tribal land among individuals
• Voluntary Relocation Program encouraged Native
  Americans to move to cities

28
Poverty

• By 2000, overall poverty rate in the US decreased
  by half
• Recession following 2001, the rate grew
• Poverty rates of older Americans and children has
  dropped due to SS payments
• African Americans made the most gains. More than
  half were in poverty in the 1950s, now this rate
  is 25 three times higher than that of whites