Week of March 27, Monday Lecture

I. Prosperity

II Why ?

• War Had Expanded Industrial Capacity
• Wartime Technological Advances
• Government Activity: GI Bill of Rights

IMAGE: Veterans Lined Up for GI Bill Benefits

• Above All Consumer Spending

III. Economic Transformation

• Agriculture

1. Mechanization and Corporatization
2. Migration
3. The Business of Farming

• Industrial Labor

1. White Collar Work: Large Bureaucratic Organizations
2. Blue Collar Work: Labor's Settlement
3. The Meaning of Work

IV. What Did The Affluence of The 50s Buy???

V. Suburbia:

• Sunbelt Cities
• Prewar Suburbs
• The Suburbinization of America

IMAGE: Moving Day in Suburbia

• New Houses

IMAGE: "This Is the Home You Ordered"
IMAGE: 1953 Living Room
IMAGE: Another 1953 Living Room
IMAGE: 1950s Backyard Patio
IMAGE: Another 1950s Backyard Patio

• Consumer Culture

IMAGE: The 1950s Dream Kitchen
IMAGE: Selling the Suburban Backyard

• Homogeneous Communities

IMAGE: Levittown, Long Island

• G. The Burbs and the Car

IMAGE: The Suburban Car
IMAGE: Car Advertisment

• Government Support
• Social Change

return to The Postwar Years

created: February 10, 2000
last updated: February 23, 2000

Copyright 2000, Mark Kornbluh