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Did the Protestant Ethic Disappear? The Virtue of Thrift on the Cusp of Postwar Affluence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2015

David Steigerwald
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Abstract

After World War II, the United States moved into what historians are now recognizing as a full-blown consumer society. Consumer society carried with it vast cultural changes, including shifts in fundamental values. Not least important were shifts in the practices of thrift, as seen in how Americans regarded personal savings and debt. Traditionally seen as opposites, those two economic behaviors became intertwined in the 1950s, as Americans continued to save, not to accumulate wealth but to spend and often even as they took on consumer debt. Thus, the 1950s were a tipping point between industrial capitalism and consumer capitalism.

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Enterprise & Society , Volume 9 , Issue 4 , December 2008 , pp. 788 - 815
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2008. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved.

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References

Bibliography of Works Cited

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Lynes, Russell. “Time On Our Hands.” Harper’s 217 (July 1958): 34–40.Google Scholar
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Potter, Helen Catherine. “Savings and Loan Associations and the Consumer Interest.” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 13 (Jan. 1954): 191–203.Google Scholar
Rickover, H.G. “The Decline of the Individual.” Saturday Evening Post 236 (March 30, 1963): 11–3.Google Scholar
Roe, Alfred L. “Bankers and Thrift in the Age of Affluence.” American Quarterly 17 (Winter 1965): 619–33.Google Scholar
Smith, Ralph Lee. “Postal Savings, America’s Poorest Buy.” Nation 199 (Sept. 21, 1964): 140–1.Google Scholar
Steigerwald, David. “All Hail the Republic of Choice: Consumer History as Contemporary Thought.” Journal of American History 93 (Sept. 2006): 385–403.Google Scholar
“The Savings Outlook.” Banking 59 (Aug. 1966): 32.Google Scholar
Whyte, William H. “Budgetism: Opiate of the Middle Class.” Fortune 53 (May 1956): 133–7, 164–7.Google Scholar
Young, Kenneth. “Savings and Loans: The 4.75% Bonanza.” Nation 195 (Dec. 8, 1962): 396–9.Google Scholar
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Consumer Instalment Credit. 4 vols. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1957.Google Scholar
United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. How American Buying Habits Change. Washington, DC: U.S. Dept. of Labor, 1960.Google Scholar
United States Savings and Loan League. Savings and Loan Annals, 1950–1965. Chicago: United States Savings and Loan League, 1950.Google Scholar
Schewe, Donald Bruce. “A History of the Postal Savings System in America, 1910–1970.” Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, Columbus, 1976.Google Scholar
Black, Hillel. Buy Now, Pay Later. New York: Morrow, 1961.Google Scholar
Calder, Lendol. Financing the American Dream: A Cultural History of Con-sumer Credit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Clarke, Sally H. Trust and Power: Consumers, the Modern Corporation, and the Making of the United States Automobile Market. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Cohen, Lizabeth. A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America. New York: Knopf, 2003.Google Scholar
Cross, Gary. An All-Consuming Century: Why Commercialism Won in Modern America. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Ewalt, Josephine Hedges. A Business Reborn: The Savings and Loan Story, 1930–1960. Chicago: American Savings and Loan Institute Press, 1962.Google Scholar
Ewen, Stewart. Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976.Google Scholar
Griffin, Al. The Credit Jungle. Chicago: H. Regnery, 1971.Google Scholar
Horowitz, Daniel. The Anxieties of Affluence: Critiques of American Consumer Culture, 1939–1979. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Jackson, Kenneth. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Katona, George. The Powerful Consumer: Psychological Studies of the American Economy. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960.Google Scholar
Kendall, Leon T., ed., Thrift and Home Ownership: The Writings of Fred T. Greene. Chicago: United States Savings and Loan League, 1961.Google Scholar
Kendall, Leon T. The Savings and Loan Business: Its Purposes, Functions, and Economic Justification. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1962.Google Scholar
Leach, William. Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture. New York: Pantheon, 1993.Google Scholar
Marchand, Roland. Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920–1940. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Mason, David L., From Building and Loans to Bail-Outs: A History of the American Savings and Loan Industry, 1831–1995. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Matt, Susan. Keeping Up With the Jonses: Envy in American Consumer Society, 1890–1930. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003.Google Scholar
McGovern, Charles F., Sold American: Consumption and Citizenship, 1890–1945. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Olney, Martha L., Buy Now, Pay Later: Advertising, Credit, and Consumer Durables in the 1920s. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Parsons, Talcott. The Structure ofSocial Action: A Study in Social Theory with Special Reference to a Group ofRecent European Writers. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1937.Google Scholar
Parsons, Talcott. The Social System. Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1951.Google Scholar
Riesman, David. Abundance for What? And Other Essays. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964.Google Scholar
Russell, Horace. Savings and Loan Associations. Albany, NY: Matthew Bender, 1956.Google Scholar
Schudson, Michael. Advertising, the Uneasy Persuasion: Its Dubious Impact on American Society. New York: Basic Books, 1984.Google Scholar
Shay, Robert Paul. Regulation W: Experiment in Credit Control. Orono, ME: University Press, 1953.Google Scholar
Tucker, David M. The Decline ofThrift in America: Our Cultural Shift from Savingto Spending. New York: Praeger, 1991.Google Scholar
“Excerpts from Eisenhower’s Economic Report to Congress.” New York Times, 25 Jan. 1956, p. 18.Google Scholar
“Franklin the American.” New York Times, 17 Jan. 1956, p. 32.Google Scholar
“Franklin’s ‘Second Lifetime’ Was the Richer,” Washington Post, 15 Jan. 1956, p. E3.Google Scholar
“Loan Associations Note Thrift Week, Jan 17, Thru 23.” Chicago Tribune, 1 Jan. 1956, SWD.Google Scholar
“Savings Increased by 13 Billion in ’51.” New York Times, 17 April 1952, p. 45.Google Scholar
“Spending, Saving Bolster a Boom.” New York Times, 14 May 1955, p. 24.Google Scholar
“The Stamp Collector.” Chicago Tribune, 8 Jan. 1956, p. D11.Google Scholar
“13.6 Billion Saved by Americans in ’52.” New York Times, 22 April 1954, p. 48.Google Scholar
“Wagner to Hail Franklin’s Year.” New York Times, 8 Jan. 1956, p. 48.Google Scholar
‘“War Baby’ Bond Has a Birthday.” New York Times, 1 May 1956, p. 43.Google Scholar
Attanasio, Orazio P. “Cohort Analysis of Saving Behavior by U.S. House-holds.” Journal of Human Resources 33 (Summer 1998): 575–609.Google Scholar
Commager, Henry Steele. “Franklin Still Speaks to Us.” New York Times Sunday Magazine. January 15, 1956: 10–13.Google Scholar
Dietz, Arthur O. “Consumer Credit: The $36 Billion Question.” Vital Speeches of the Day 22 (May 1, 1956): 440–4.Google Scholar
Gehman, Richard B. “How to Save Money In Spite of Yourself.” Saturday Evening Post 224 (Dec. 15, 1951): 103–7.Google Scholar
Gokhale, Jagadeesh, Kotlikoff, Laurence J., and John, Sabelhaus. “Understanding the Postwar Decline in U.S. Savings: A Cohort Analysis.” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 1 (1996): 315–20.Google Scholar
Hofstadter, Richard. “Have There Been Discernible Shifts in American Values During the Past Generation?” in The American Style: Essays in Values and Performance, ed. Morison, Elting E.. New York: Harper, 1958.Google Scholar
Johnson, George H. “Home Owning Families, the Backbone of the Community.” Vital Speeches of the Day 21 (May 5, 1955): 1241–3.Google Scholar
Larrabbee, Harold A. “Poor Richard in an Age of Plenty.” Harper’s 212 (January 1956): 64–68.Google Scholar
Lears, T.J. Jackson. “From Salvation to Self-Realization: Advertising and the Therapeutic Roots of the Consumer Culture, 1880–1930.” In The Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History, 1880–1980, eds. Wightman, Fox Richard and Lears, T.J. Jackson. New York: Pantheon, 1983.Google Scholar
Lewis, Robert E. “Some Factors in the Growth of Consumer Credit.” Journal of Finance 11 (May 1956): 249–56.Google Scholar
Lindholm, R.W. “Consumer Credit and Economic Growth.” Challenge 13 (Dec. 1964): 20–2.Google Scholar
Lynes, Russell. “Time On Our Hands.” Harper’s 217 (July 1958): 34–40.Google Scholar
Matherly, Walter J. “The Regulation of Consumer Credit.” Southern Economic Journal 11 (July 1944): 34–44.Google Scholar
Moore, Geoffrey H. “The Quality of Credit in Booms and Depressions.” Journal of Finance 11 (May 1956): 288–300.Google Scholar
Murphy, Austin S. “The War Against Personal Thrift.” Vital Speeches of the Day 33 (Jan. 1, 1967): 169–71.Google Scholar
Parsons, Talcott, and Winston, White. “The Link Between Character and Society.” In Culture and Social Character: The Work of David Riesman Reviewed, eds. Martin, Lipset Seymour and Leo, Lowenthal. New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1961.Google Scholar
Peterson, Rudolph A. “Debt in the New Economic Environment.” Challenge 13 (Dec. 1964): 15–9.Google Scholar
Potter, Helen Catherine. “Savings and Loan Associations and the Consumer Interest.” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 13 (Jan. 1954): 191–203.Google Scholar
Rickover, H.G. “The Decline of the Individual.” Saturday Evening Post 236 (March 30, 1963): 11–3.Google Scholar
Roe, Alfred L. “Bankers and Thrift in the Age of Affluence.” American Quarterly 17 (Winter 1965): 619–33.Google Scholar
Smith, Ralph Lee. “Postal Savings, America’s Poorest Buy.” Nation 199 (Sept. 21, 1964): 140–1.Google Scholar
Steigerwald, David. “All Hail the Republic of Choice: Consumer History as Contemporary Thought.” Journal of American History 93 (Sept. 2006): 385–403.Google Scholar
“The Savings Outlook.” Banking 59 (Aug. 1966): 32.Google Scholar
Whyte, William H. “Budgetism: Opiate of the Middle Class.” Fortune 53 (May 1956): 133–7, 164–7.Google Scholar
Young, Kenneth. “Savings and Loans: The 4.75% Bonanza.” Nation 195 (Dec. 8, 1962): 396–9.Google Scholar
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Consumer Instalment Credit. 4 vols. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1957.Google Scholar
United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. How American Buying Habits Change. Washington, DC: U.S. Dept. of Labor, 1960.Google Scholar
United States Savings and Loan League. Savings and Loan Annals, 1950–1965. Chicago: United States Savings and Loan League, 1950.Google Scholar
Schewe, Donald Bruce. “A History of the Postal Savings System in America, 1910–1970.” Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, Columbus, 1976.Google Scholar