Reading this
article
about the history behind our consumer driven society reminded me of
Gatto and The Underground History of American Education.
At the dawn of the American Industrial Revolution there was palatable
fear among the ruling class that all the world’s needs may be produced
on only 3 days work. This was not seen as a good thing by the guys
spending all their capital on labor saving machines. John E. Edgerton,
president of the National Association of Manufacturers said “Nothing
breeds radicalism more than unhappiness unless it is leisure.” Also
concerned was Charles Kettering, head of research at General Motors, who
in 1929 wrote an article titled “Keep the Consumer Dissatisfied,” in
which he proposed that it was imperative that American businesses not
just meet consumer needs, but constantly invent new ones that the
consumers would strive to fulfill. If Kettering’s name sounds familiar
it is because he is also the guy that put lead into gasoline, and he
invented the CFC’s that created the hole on ozone layer. That’s quite a
destructive legacy that Chuck left.
President Hoover was even in on it.
President Herbert Hoover’s 1929 Committee on Recent Economic Changes
observed in glowing terms the results: “By advertising and other
promotional devices . . . a measurable pull on production has been
created which releases capital otherwise tied up.” They celebrated the
conceptual breakthrough: “Economically we have a boundless field
before us; that there are new wants which will make way endlessly for
newer wants, as fast as they are satisfied.”
The sugar and corn merchants at Kellogg’s were not in on it. They
instituted 6 hour work days in 1930, a practice that doggedly stuck in
some departments all the way until 1985. Employees were almost
universally happy with trading some income for more leisure time.
Kellogg’s also gave everybody a raise to partially offset the 10 hours
lost each week. They also noted that by going to four 6-hour shifts they
could hire an extra shift of people, not a small thing in 1930. However,
after WWII new management started working hard to undermine the 30 hour
work week, event though over 70% of employees wanted to return to it
after the grueling 48 hour weeks supporting the war effort. The
employees lost, as they always do.
After WWII government and big business teamed up, as they often do, and
as usual, it was to the detriment of just about everybody else.
Advertising began to tie hard work to the American ideal of freedom, and
idle leisure as a danger to America. Americans with excess leisure time
would have time to get involved in their communities and government. If
you are exhausted by the work day it is less likely that you will be out
agitating for equal rights and fairness on the weekends. So here we are
today, where the average couple works 500 more hours a year than they
did in 1979. We are just greyhounds on the track, endlessly chasing a
mechanical rabbit that we will never catch.