America as a Consumer Nation, 1920-1970 This pap

This paper will discuss the idea that Americans began viewing themselves as consumers rather than producers during the Twentieth Century. The first part of the paper will reject the notion that the self-image of Americans changed from producers to consumers in the Twentieth Century and that a fundamental shift took place between groups and the definition of success in America. The second part of the paper will argue that Americans never held distinct self-images as producers or consumers prior to the Twentieth Century since almost all Americans were consumers in some form or another from colonial times to the present. The third part of the paper will argue that success in America has always been defined in terms of material wealth and that the changes which occurred in the Twentieth Century had to do with the greater availability of such wealth and how it should be utilized.

A popular interpretation of modern American society is that between 1920 and 1970 Americans were transformed from producers into consumers. The production of basic necessities became less important for the individual family as these items were mass produced and sold through retail outlets. Rather than work to produce these necessities directly for their families, workers began working in exchange for money, which was then traded for necessities. Increasing compensation by employers gradually provided workers with excess monetary wealth, enabling them to pu

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States and Europe. Despite the image of the American yeoman farmer which glowed about him, Thomas Jefferson earned his wealth growing one of the most sought after cash crops in the world at that time, tobacco. By the end of the Eighteenth Century, most American men earned their livings by hiring themselves out for cash wages, which were used to buy necessities for their families. American agriculture was capitalistic in nature and the farmers who owned their land worked to make money, rather than to simply survive. Even the traditional image of the West as populated by landowning farmers was more fiction than fact; most of those who lived and worked in the frontier regions throughout the Nineteenth Century were wage laborers. Clearly, then, Americans have been consumers since the colonial times and they are still producers to this day. Production leads to consumption in the individual family, even though that which is produced may be an electronic gadget, an automobile, or an aircraft, rather than food, clothing, or shelter. The major change which occurred during the last half of the Nineteenth Century and the early part of the Twentieth Century was that industrialization added entertainment to the categories of goods p
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Approximate Word count = 2519
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)