1. The Affluent Society
CHAPTER 28 By Emely Navarro
Monica Zhang
Jessica Clemente
Alexis Montilla

2. Sources of Economic Growth
1. Government spending
-public funding of;
schools housing, veterans benefits, welfare,
and the $100 billion interstate highway program
2. Military spending
-Economic growth was at its
peak during the first half of the
1950s, when military spending
was highest because of the
Korean War.
3. Baby Boom
-The national birth rates
reversed a long pattern of
decline with the so-called baby
boom.
4. Suburban Growth
White Flight: the move of white
people into the suburbs

3. The Rise of the Modern West
• The West experienced dramatic changes as a result of the
new economic growth.
• Population expanded dramatically; cities boomed;
industrial economy flourished.
• By the 1960s, some parts of the West were among the
most important industrial and cultural centers of the nation
in their own right.
• What contributed to this growth were federal
spending, military contacts, an increase in automobile use
giving a large boost to the petroleum industry, and the
climate.

4. The New Economics
• The exciting discovery of the power of the American economic
system was a major cause of the confident tone of much
American political life in the 1950s.
• The belief that Keynesian economics made it possible for
government to regulate and stabilize the economy without
intruding directly into the private sector.
• The British economist John Maynard Keynes had argued as
early as the 1920s that by varying the flow of government
spending and taxation and managing the supply of
currency, the government could stimulate the economy to
cure recession, and dampen growth to prevent inflation.
• By the mid-1950s, Keynesian theory was rapidly becoming a
fundamental article of faith—not only among professional
economists but also among much of the public.

5. Capital and Labor
• Over 4,000 corporate mergers took place in the 1950s and
a relatively small number of large scale organizations
controlled the nation's economic activity.
• Business leaders made concessions to unions in order to
prevent strikes from interfering with growth.
• By the 1950s, large labor unions had developed a new kind
of relationship with employers known as the “post-war
contract”
• Workers in large unionized industries received increases in
wages and in return the union agreed to refrain from raising
other issues.
• The success led to the reunification of the labor movement
with the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of
Industrial Organizations merging to create the AFL-CIO.

6. Science &
Technology
Boom!

7. Medicine
• Antibiotics: more ordinary bacteria that can defeat
virulent bacterial infection
• Sulfa drugs: derived from sulfanilamide
• Penicillin: organism with antibacterial properties
• Immunization: protection against bacterial disease
o TB vaccine: Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG)
• Vaccines against viral/virus infection
o yellow fever vaccine (1930s)
o influenza vaccine (1945)
• Salk Vaccine (1954): effective against polio (injection)
o 1960- oral vaccine as sugar cube developed
•
•
Decline in mortality/death rates for infants & youth
Avg life expectancy rose by 5 yrs, to 71.

9. Pesticide
• Chemical pesticides: used to
protect crops from
destruction by insects and
protect humans from insect-
carried diseases
• Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroetha
ne (DDT!)
o discovered by Paul Muller
o used in Pacific islands
during WWII
o saved thousands of lives

10. Electronics & Computers
1. TV- 1940s
• broadcast programming
• color tv (1950s)
2. Transistors- 1948
• amplified electrical signals
• mini devices
• aviation, weaponry, & satellites
3. Integrated circuitry- late 1950s
• combined electronic elements
into 1
4.Computers
• UNIVAC
• IBM

12. Rockets & Missiles
& Bombs, OH MY!
• In 1952, the U.S successfully detonated the first hydrogen
• The development of the hydrogen bomb gave considerable
bomb.
impetus to a stalled scientific project in both the U.S. and the
•
Soviet Union.
American & Soviet leaders struggled to build longer-range
•
missiles (ICBMs)
The Minuteman & The Polaris missiles

13. Space Race

14. The American Space
Program
• The Shock of Sputnik
o Americans very alarmed
o massive failure for U.S.
• National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA)
• first American space pilots or “astronauts”
o nation’s most revered heroes
• Mercury Missions
o Alan Shepherd- 1st American in space
o John Glenn- 1st American to orbit Earth
• Apollo program- purpose to land men on the moon
o July 20, 1969: Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin, and
Michael Collins successfully traveled in a space
capsule into orbit around the moon
o then they detached a smaller craft from the
capsule, landed on the surface of the moon, and
became the first men to walk on a body other than
earth

15. 1950s "Americana"
Culture

16. The Consumer Culture:
• The Walt Disney-
• Consumers also really
Prosperity fueled the produced TV show the
liked new products Mickey Mouse Club was a
automobile industry
like;
•
craze.
dishwashers, garbage Public interest in this TV
disposals, television show contributed to
and stereos. The Disneylands sucess
prosperity was
consumer driven

17. The Landscape and the Automobile
Effects of the AutoMobile and
• Between 1950 and
1980, the nation's
Highway.
population increased by 50
• Reduced the time to travel percent, but the numbers
• Trucking was more of automobiles owned by
convenient Americans increased by
• Long, steady decline in 400 percent.
railroads
• Travel by automobile a lot
faster
• Encouraged economic
activities Creation of fast
food restaurants

18. Suburbia
• by 1960, a third of U.S. population
living in suburbs
• Suburbanization: result of home-
building innovations, which made
single family homes available &
affordable
• William Levitt creates "Levittowns"
• Young couples rushed to purchase the
inexpensive homes
Why move to suburbs?
1. importance of family life
2. community life
3. race/ethnicity

19. Suburbia (cont.)
• prevailing gender roles
reinforced
o working men
o prejudice against working
women
• women pressured to be stay
at home mothers
• HOWEVER, by 1960, a third
of all married women were
part of the paid workforce...
why?

20. Television Culture
• 1946: 17,000 tv sets in the U.S.
• 1957: 40 million tv sets in the U.S.
• National Broadcasting Co. (NBC), Colombia
Broadcasting System (CBS), & American Broadcasting
Co. (ABC) started out as radio companies
• driven by advertising; sponsors had direct/powerful role
in programs
• televised news, sports, entertainment programs
• most programs created ideal image of American life
o white, middle-class, suburban family
o again, reinforced gender roles
o e.g. Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best, I Love
Lucy, etc.
• but there also shows that conveyed the opposite of the
"ideal" image
o e.g. The Honeymooners, My Little Margie, Amos 'n'
Andy

21. Travel, Outdoor Recreation, and
Environmentalism
• Paid vacation for American workers and the association of the
idea with travel had entered American culture.
• Travel and recreation were popular especially in the nation's
national parks --> permanent surge in attendance in the 1950s.
• Battle over development of wilderness areas--> Echo Park.
o Cause: The federal government's Bureau of Reclamation
proposed building a dam across the Green River, so as to
create a lake for recreation and a source of hydroelectric
power.
o In 1950, "Shall We Let Them Ruin Our National Parks?"
o Result: Congress blocked the project and preserved Echo
Park in its natural state in 1956.

22. Organized Society and Its Detractors.
• Increasing proportion of White-collar workers worked in corporate
settings with rigid hierarchical structures.
• Americans were becoming convinced that the key to a successful
future lay in acquiring the specialized training and skills necessary
for work in large organizations.
• The American educational system changed curriculum and
philosophy.
o Elementary and secondary schools: science, mathematics, and
foreign languages.
o Universities: expand their curricula.
o "Multiversity"
• William H. Whyte Jr, The Organization Man (1956); David
Riesman, The Lonely Crowd (1950).
• Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March (1953); J. D.

23. The Beats and the Restless Culture
of Youth
• Beats: a group of young poets, writers, and artists
who wrote harsh critiques of what they considered
the sterility and conformity of American live, the
meaninglessness of American politics, and the
banality of popular culture.
• The restlessness was a result of..
o prosperity itself
o Limitless possibilities
o declined power of such traditional values as
thrift, discipline, and self-restraint.

24. Cont.
• Phenomenon of "juvenile
delinquency"
• Many young people began to
mimicked popular images of
juvenile criminal gangs.
• James Dean, in such movies as
Rebel WIthout a Cause
(1955), East of Eden (1955), and
Giant (1956), conveyed a
powerful image of youth culture in
the 1950s.

25. - Rock 'n' Roll was one of the most powerful signs of the
restiveness of the American youth.
- Elvis Presley became the symbol of a youth determination to
push at the borders of the conventional and acceptable.
- The rise of rock 'n' roll was due to radio and television
programming.
-Radio and television were important to the recording
business because they encouraged the sales of records.
- Record promoters were so eager to get their music on the air that
they made secret payment to station owners. These payments
were called "payola's" and they created many scandals.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFtAOltn7iw

26. The "Other America"
• 1962, The Other America was published; about the continuing existence of
• poverty in America
great economic expansion of the postwar years reduced poverty
•
•
dramatically but did not eliminate it
most of the poor experience poverty intermittently and temporarily
this poverty was a poverty that the growing prosperity of the postwar era
• seemed to affect hardly at all
among those on the margins of the affluent society was many rural
• Americans; not all farmers were poor
but the agrarian economy did produce substantial numbers of genuinely
• impoverished people
migrant farm workers and coal miners fell to the same kind of poverty

27. Inner Cities
• As white families moved from cities to suburbs in vast numbers, more and more
inner-city neighborhoods became vast repositories for
•
the poor
ghettos from which there was no easy escape
o African Americans helped this growth
o similar migrations from Mexico and Puerto Rico expanded poor Hispanic barrios
• in many American cities at the same time
“urban renewal”: the effort to tear down buildings in the poorest and most degraded
areas

28. The Rise of the Civil Rights
Movement
The Brown Decision and "Massive Resistance"
What was it? The Brown Decision:
• Brown v. Board of Education of Involved lawyers that spent
Topeka (May 17, 1954)- years looking at the "separate
considering the legal
but equal" doctrine. These
separation of public schools in
Kansas led to the Courts
lawyers filed a suit against the
rejection of Plessy v. Ferguson school boards of
(1896): ruled that communities Topeka, Kansas and several
could provide blacks with other cities that became the
separate facilities as long as basis of the Brown decision.
there were equal white
facilities.

29. How did the case begin?
The Conclusion:
• The doctrine of "separate but
equal" had no place because
• It all started because an anything separated, especially
schools is inherently unequal.
African American girl had to
travel several miles to attend a
• The following year the court
issued a decision called the Brown
black school although she lived II (1954) which said that schools
next door to a white school. should be desegregated "with all
• When this case appeared in deliberate speed".
court they came to the o This left specific decisions up to
conclusion that school lower courts.
segregation had lots of
damage to the people it
affected regardless of the
quality of segregation.

30. "Massive Resistance"
• Strong local opposition in the South was known as Massive
Resistance.
• This produced long delays and bitter conflicts.
o More than 100 southern member of Congress signed a
"manifesto" in 1956 denouncing the Brown decision and
urging their constituents to defy it.
• Southern officials worked to obstruct desegregation, enacting
"pupil placement laws" allowing
school officials to place
students in schools according
to their scholastic abilities and
social behavior.

31. The Effect of Desegregation
The Brown decision didn't end
segregation but launched a battle
between the federal, state and local
government authority.

32. The Expansion Movement:
• Rosa Parks arrested on December 1, 1955 in Montgomery
Alabama for refusing to give her seat to a white passenger.
• Her arrest produced outrage in the African
American community & helped leaders
organize a bus boycott in hopes of ending seat
segregation.
• The boycott would have failed if the Supreme
Court didn't state that segregation in public
transportation is illegal.
• Martin Luther King Jr.- important
leader in the civil rights movement . He was also chosen to lead the
Montgomery Bus Boycott.
• King's approach to black protest was based on a doctrine of nonviolence.
• He wanted African Americans to engage in peaceful demonstrations, to
allow themselves to be arrested or beaten and to respond to hate with love.

33. What led to the Civil Rights Movement?
Cause: Effect:
African Americans realized after - Jackie Robinson signed to
WWII that they had more power Brooklyn Dodgers.
and potential, but their broader view - President Eisenhower attempted
of the world made their place in it to desegregate the workplace.
smaller. They speeded the pace for Passed the civil rights act-
racial change. protection for Africans who
• The growthurban black communities encouraged a civil rights movement.
wanted to vote.
• Leaders of of an urban black middle class flourished after WWII.
o men and women who were more educated realized how much they had to lose compared to
• Television & other forms of culture showed racism towards blacks.
those who were uneducated.
o reminded the blacks that the whites were majority. Black- minority

34. "What Was Good for ... General
Motors"
• Many business leaders had reconciled themselves to at least the
broad outlines of the Keynesian welfare.
• Charles Wilson, president of General Motors, was certain that
"What was good for our country was good for General Motors, and
vice versa."
• Eisenhower's consistent inclination:
o he supported the private development of natural resources;
lowered federal support for farm prices; removed last limited
wage and price controls; opposed the creation of new social
service program; reduced federal expenditures; balance the
budget.

35. The Survival of the Welfare State
• President resisted to dismantle welfare policies of
the New Deal.

36. Cont.
• Federal Highway Act of 1956
o The largest public works
project in American history.
o It vastly accelerated the growth
of suburbia.
• In 1956, Eisenhower ran for a
second term, and received
nearly 57 percent of the
popular vote and 457
electroal votes to
Stevenson's 73.

37. The Decline
of
• By 1954, the crusade against subversion
was beginning to produce significant popular
opposition >> anticommunist passion was
beginning to abate.
• Signal: political demise of Senator Joseph
McCarthy.
• Army-McCarthy Hearings.
• McCarthy died as a victim of complications
arising from alcoholism.

38. Dulles and "Massive Retaliation"
• Dulles argued that the United States
should pursue an active program of
"liberation," which should lead to a
•
"rollback" of communist expansion.
Dulles was incredibly anticommunist and
wanted to stop communist expansion
through the process of “massive
retaliation”, which was the use of nuclear
•
weaponry.
The motivation was partially economic
because many people thought nuclear John Foster Dulles
warfare would be cheaper than
traditional weaponry.

39. France, America, and Vietnam
•Frances fall in Dien Bien Phu further pushed France out
of Vietnam, and pulled America towards it.
•America's alliance with Israel caused strife with the
Middle East. The CIA and Iranian military leaders
worked to elevate the Shah, Muhammad Reza Pahlevi
to a high position. He ruled closely to the United States.
•America had less luck with Egypt. Dulles withdrew
American aid when Egypt formed a trade alliance with
the Soviet Union. When Israel attacked Egypt
Eisenhower encouraged a truce for fear of another world
war.

40. Cold War Crisis
• The Eisenhower administration confronted were a series of crises in the
Middle East, a region in which the US had been little involved until after
WWII.
• Israel proclaimed its independence on May 14, 1948
• American policy was less effective in dealing with the nationalist government
of Egypt, under the leadership of General Gamal Abdel Nasser, which
began to develop a trade relationship with the Soviet Union.
• Cold War concerns affected the American relations in Latin America as well
when the Eisenhower administration ordered the CIA to help topple the new
leftist government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman in Guatemala, a regime that
Dulles argued was potentially communist.
• In 1957 resistance to Batista, Cuba’s leader, began to gather strength under
the leadership of Fidel Castro. Castro created a new government and
cemented an alliance with the Soviet Union.

41. Europe and the Soviet Union
• The direct relationship with the Soviet Union and the
effort to resist communist expansion in Europe
remained the principal concerns of the Eisenhower
administration.
• Relations between the Soviet Union and the West
soured further in 1956 in response to the Hungarian
Revolution.
o Hungarian dissidents had launched a popular uprising in
November to demand democratic reforms.

42. Images of the Hungarian Revolution

43. The U-2 Crisis
• On November 1958, Nikita Khrushchev
renewed the demands of the predecessors
that the NATO powers abandon West Berlin.
• Only days before it had the scheduled
begining of the Paris meeting, however, the
Soviet Union announced that it had shot down
an American U-2, a high -altitude spy plane
over Russian territory.

44. Eisenhower Leaves
• After eight years in office Eisenhower failed to
resolve the tensions between the US and the Soviet
Union.
• In his farewell address in January 1961 he warned of
the "unwarranted influence" of a vast "military-
industrial complex".