The Daily Signal - The Rise of American Consumerism: Department Stores, Victorian Ideals, and Communism

Episode Date: December 9, 2019

It is no secret that Americans love to shop! Whether in department stores, small boutiques, or online - America is a powerhouse of consumerism. But it was not always this way. Professor Josh McMullen, interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Regent University in Virginia Beach, VA explains the rise of consumer culture in America. McMullen delves into the striking similarities between advertising then and now, the influence of transportation and department stores on consumerism, and the importance of consumption in the battle against communism in the mid-1900s.   Also on today's show: We read your letters to the editor. You can leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write to us at [e-mail]. And we share a good news story about the “Mountain Man Santa” in Kentucky that delivers gifts to the poor.   The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or your favorite podcast app. All of our podcasts can be found at dailysignal.com/podcasts.   Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Monday, December 9th. I'm Virginia Allen, and co-hosting with me today is my colleague Philip Reynolds. Welcome, Philip. It's great to be here. Up on today's show, Philip and I talk with our former history professor, Dr. McMullen, about the rise of consumer culture in America. When did Americans start purchasing so many goods? What was the first department store?

And is there a connection between the rise of communist Russia and the rise of consumerism? Dr. McMullen answers these questions and more. We also share your letters to the editor and a good news story about one man's generous approach to gift giving at Christmas time. Before we get to today's show, Philip and I would like to tell you about a new podcast from the Heritage Foundation. It's called Millennial Myths. The show is created by members of Heritage's Young Leaders program for audiences of all generations. The podcast focuses on debunking some of the most common myths among young Americans. The host and producer for this season is Tiffany Roberts, a recent graduate of Cleveland State University. You can find millennial myths on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen.

You'll find recent episodes on the so-called climate crisis, why the cost of rent is so high, and the truth about gender identity. Stay tuned for today's show. Coming up next. If you're tired of high taxes, fewer health care choices, and bigger and bigger government, it's time to partner with the most impactful conservative organization in America. We're the Heritage Foundation, and we're committed to solving the issues America faces. Together, we'll fight back against the rising tide of homegrown socialism, and we'll fight for conservative solutions that are making families more free and more prosperous. But we can't do it without you.

Please join us at heritage.org. We are joined on the Daily Signal podcast by Dr. Jop. McMullen, interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Regent University in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Dr. McMullen, thank you so much for joining us. That's very wonderful to be here. Thank you. Dr. McMullen, let's start with an easy question. How long have you been teaching history?

And was that something you always knew you wanted to do? I've been teaching history, I guess, at the university level for close to 12 years now, almost 10 of those here at Regent University. I've always been fascinated by history. Even as a child, I tended to really enjoy nonfiction kind of history books. My undergraduate degree was actually in biblical studies, but I did make the transition over to history when I was in seminary. I first began as a church historian and then eventually went on to do doctoral work in American history. And both Philip and I graduated from Regent University, and we were both privileged to have you as a professor and to take your history classes. And I remember sitting in your history classes just being amazed at how you were able to really make history come alive.

And one of my favorite subjects that we discussed in your U.S. history class was the rise of consumerism in America. You know, it's so easy to forget that there was a time before Amazon Prime where, you know, we couldn't just buy anything when we wanted to, but that there actually was a shift in society and this didn't just happen by accident. And you break down that shift in American history when the home really began to become a place of consumption instead of production. Can you explain a little bit of that transition? Sure, I'd be happy to. So, particularly in the colonial era, you know, the home really was kind of a place of production. I mean, that was either family farms. And so you were producing crops either for, you know, to sustain yourself or maybe to also engage in trade. Or if you were an artisan, you know, a baker, a butcher, your shop tended to be connected to your home or very close to your home. And so work and feel. family life. There wasn't a sharp distinction. These things overlapped. I mean, even children, if we think about it, children often engaged in farm work. They also tended to be apprentices and they learn the trade of their father or their grandfathers. This is why so many of our last

names are based on maybe the trade of our family. But they're, but you know, we do. begin to see a shift in the late 1700s and early 1800s in American culture, there's this kind of what we might call bifurcation between work and home life, where people begin to leave home to go to work. And that seems, of course, completely normal to us now. I mean, it's hard for us to actually imagine anything different than that. But that was not always the case. And so the home then, in some ways, after work gets taken out of the home and put into a business or a factory or the office, the home then becomes, particularly during the Victorian era, during the 19th century, as really a place of consumption, right? We purchase things. We put them in our homes on display.

So the home, and really the family kind of shifts pretty dramatically. in American life after the, you know, the early 19th century. Yeah. So, you know, this shift of work identity, really, that we see taking place, it was very important, you know, to that era, especially I know I remember in our U.S. History 1 class, we talked about the Victorian era, and that was kind of one of the hallmarks of the Victorian area, this work identity. Could you go a little more in depth about sort of the things?

thought process behind this shift in work identity. And the thought processes behind that and, you know, behind this larger amount of consumption that started to take place. You know, there is this interesting shift, particularly in identity. And so in the Victorian era, you know, you have pretty strong and what we might even say, strict kind of female and male roles. And of course, there have always been male and female roles in all periods of society. But in the Victorian area, you really begin to see this kind of rise of the Christian gentleman who kind of goes out into the marketplace. He leaves

the home, goes out into the marketplace, kind of does battle. The marketplace is this kind of this jungle, this place where, you know, he's really got to fight tooth and nail. and then he comes home and the home is kind of a place where he is you know, he's the gentleman. He, you know, he, it's full of etiquette and we see this,

we see a real shift with women as well where, you know, the Victorian mother, you know, she almost kind of takes on, she gets really separated from work. She's no longer really seen as a worker. she's kind of seen more in a domestic role. And that domestic role in a lot of ways also takes on a consuming role, a consumption role. In the colonial period, men really probably did as much purchasing as women to the best of our knowledge.

But once we get into the Victorian era and then even further into the 1900s, we see that men are kind of seen as the workers and women in many ways are kind of seen as the, as the consumers. And so there's this kind of interesting gender role change that is affected by the market economy and the role of consumption in American life. Dr. McMullen, let's talk for a moment about the rise of the department store. What was the very first department store and how did Americans react to its establishment? The department store really, you know, it wasn't like it was unveiled at one moment.

these stores developed over time. And so there's actually a lot of debate surrounding, which was really the truly the first department store in terms of how we think of it as a department store. So the Bonn Marsh in Paris makes a case that it's really the first. You have others like Macy's. And in New York, of course, we think of, you know, the Thanksgiving Day parade. and you've got Marshall Fields in Chicago, Wanamakers in Philadelphia. So, you know, all of these now department stores can kind of try to make a case that they were truly the first.

But they all really begin to emerge in the mid-1800s. And by the late 1860s, really 1870s and 1880s, the department store, kind of we know it, really emerged. And, you know, I think Americans at this point were already embracing consumerism that, in many ways, the middle class and consumption were almost synonymous, right? And kind of American thought is, you know, you've reached a particular status, and basically that status means that you're able to consume. I think one, I guess, if there was one criticism of the department stores, it was the fact that so many young women worked in department stores. And in some ways, this gave those women a little bit more social and economic independence. And some critics of the department store may have seen it as loosening maybe the moral fiber of the Victorian family. But really most of these women, at least in the 1800s working in department stores, were not kind of radical feminist.

They liked the independence that the job gave them, the economic and the social independence. But most of them still went on to get married. They would quit their job. They would quit their job at the department store and kind of really become that kind of domestic matriarch of the Victorian era. and so their time in the department store was more of a kind of a period of life rather than a new self-identity. Now that does change once we get into the 20th century, but throughout the 1800s, we kind of see that's the role that department stores play. It's really interesting. Yeah, absolutely.

Now, to sort of shift gears here, and yes, pun intended, but to shift gears, let's talk about road infrastructure. and I think that's something that not a lot of people realize is something that, you know, influences us day to day, but how would you say that road infrastructure really, what sort of role did it play in the rise of consumerism? Yeah, that's a great question. Well, in the early period of the department store, so 1860s, 1870s, 1880s, it was the railroad that played a key role because the railroad really did primary. two things. It allowed those goods to be brought in at cheaper rates to these department stores.

And so the department stores, you know, they don't rise in a vacuum. They rise in the context of all kinds of industrial revolution and transportation developments. So, and then the railroad also could bring people on the outskirts of the cities or these kind of just beginning suburbs into the department stores. So the train played a key role in that early part of the consumer. era in America. But post-World War II, we do see that roads play a very key role in the development of kind of a what we might call modern American consumer culture. You know, we tend to think of the 1950s as kind of this car crazy culture. The interstate highway system is built during this time. And so we do see that roads play kind of a key role, right? So people can take

vacations. They can live in the suburbs. They can travel further to work. They can, you know, drive to stores. There's a whole industry of consumption that arises around roads. So, you know, think about just, you know, Thanksgiving was very recently. Think about the kind of consumption that would have happened because of all. of that holiday travel. You've got hotels and motels. You've got fast food. You've got all kinds of things that just cater to people traveling the roadways. But again, with those roadways, just like with trains, we see increased transportation through trucking, which allows goods and services to be done more cheaply, which brings down prices of consumer goods, which allows people to spend more or to get more, you know, kind of bang for their buck. It allows people

to travel to stores. So roads are really tied. Transportation in general has always been tied very closely to consumer culture in America. And with that rise of consumerism, obviously all those products now needed to be advertised so that people would buy them. And what are some of those, maybe early advertising trends that we're even still seeing today? Yeah, there's been some wonderful cultural historians who have done work on advertising in America. And it really is shocking how closely the advertising strategies of our own era match some of the advertising strategies of the 1910s, 1920s. So from the very beginnings of advertising, you begin to see celebrity endorsement.

So, I mean, you have celebrity endorsements dating all the way back into the 1920s. And, of course, celebrity endorsements are a huge aspect of advertising in the modern era. you know, you want this basketball player or this football player or, you know, this, you know, this musician to endorse your product, whatever that product may be. So that kind of celebrity, that celebrity status, there's always been an appeal to image as well. So very early on in the 19, teens and 20s, we see that beauty products were the most advertised consumer products. that's probably, I don't know what the exact statistics today would be, but I'm assuming that beauty products still tend to be some of the most heavily advertised products that we have on the market. So there's easily this appeal to image from the very beginning, right? You want to look this way because first impressions matter.

And many of the commercials that we see today still appeal to that first impressions matter kind of mentality. So, yeah, it's striking similarities between early advertising and today. Yeah, now, this whole rise in consumerism that, you know, has been going on for quite some time, but we definitely, I think, do you see somewhat of a boom, and you can confirm or deny this, but a boom in the 1950s. And that's right around the time when, you know, we have communist Russia really growing in power and the Soviet Union expanding. Is there a link between this expansion of Congress?

communism and America's fear of communism and the rise of consumer culture. Yeah, I mean, I think that there is. I mean, I think it's important to realize that consumer culture had developed earlier than the Cold War, but that the Cold War really expanded it and maybe increased it. I think that one of the key ways that as a culture, and there are many ways that America defined itself in the face of kind of Soviet communism. But one of the key ways that Americans wanted to distinguish themselves from Soviet communism was to be this land of abundance, this land of economic, particularly abundance. We wanted to show that, that, you know, democratic capitalism literally could produce the goods in comparison to, you know, these descriptions of the Soviet Union as kind of these bleak, non-consumeristic, you know, this land where, you know, no one had access to the latest and greatest goods. And so this is absolutely tied to American identity in the 50s and 60s is, you know, here's a family, an average family who can afford the latest washing machine.

They can afford this nice home in the suburbs. They can enjoy this good meal. This is a comparison to, you know, this, you know, Soviet family who lives in, you know, Soviet block housing, who lives on rations. food, who doesn't have the latest technology. So there really is this comparison with kind of the Soviet Union. I think one of the places that we see this very clearly is in this Nixon-Kruchev debate. So there's this debate in Moscow in 1959 between Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev. And they're having this debate in...

this model American home. So the United States had gone over there as part of the United States Information Agency. We don't necessarily need to get in the details, but there was this model American home. And Nixon and Khrushchev have this debate in this model American home. And Nixon is kind of trying to, he's basically pointing at this model American home and saying, this is where our average American family lives. This is what they have. Clearly, Democratic capitalism, is better than Soviet, you know, communism. And so I think that's a key kind of moment. And I think it really illustrates the importance of consumption in the battle against communism in the 50s, 60s, and even into the 70s and 80s.

So interesting. Wow. So for anyone who's interested in learning more about the history of this rise of consumerism in America, do you have any great resources that you could recommend? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot out there. I mean, people have been, you know, doing a lot of great work in this field for many, many years. I think one of the leaders in this field is an historian by the name of T.J. Jackson Lears. Lears is spelled L-E-A-R-S. And he's been doing work for several decades now in the area of consumerism and American culture. advertising. But there's a lot of others as well. There's a classic book on advertising in the American Dream by Roland Martian. There's even some great books out there that talk about the intermingling of economic and political policy in the United States with consumerism. So Elizabeth Cohen has written a book called A Consumers Republic. which is excellent in that area.

And I think there's also kind of a fun read by Lee Eric Schmidt. It's called Consumer Rights. And it talks about the intermingling of consumerism and holidays in America. So he looks at Easter. He looks at Christmas. He looks at Valentine's Day. And that's kind of a fun read for people who really enjoy those holidays, but they can kind of also see the intermingling of consumerism, you know, with those holidays.

So those are just a few resources that people could go to. Well, you know what? Thank you so much for coming on today, Dr. McMullen. We really appreciate your time. Well, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. Yeah, it's a pleasure. Are you looking for quick conservative policy solutions to current issues?

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I've been away from news reports, but I am really pleased we now have an attorney general that does his job. Your letter could be featured on next week's show. Send an email to letters at dailysignal.com or leave a voicemail message at 202-608-6205. What the heck is trickle-down economics? Does the military really need a space force? What is the meaning of American exceptionalism? I'm Michelle Cordero. I'm Tim Desher.

And every week on the Heritage Explains podcast, we break down a hot button policy issue in the news at a 101 level. Through an entertaining mix of personal stories, media clips, music, and interviews, we help you actually understand the issues. So do this. Subscribe to Heritage Explains on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcast today. Kianis Deadman Heritage Foundation intern is back in studio with us today. for the last time her internship ends this week,

and we are so sad to see her go. But before she leaves, she's here to share one more good news story with us. So, Keana, over to you. Thank you so much, Virginia. It's finally beginning to look a lot like Christmas here in D.C. with all the Christmas lights and Christmas trees going up. But one man in Kentucky has been preparing for Christmas since October. On a street rightly named Santa Lane,

Jordan Howard has been collecting and wrapping Christmas gifts for the poor families of Kentucky. Howard continues on a 44-year tradition that began with his father, Mike. Mike was known as the Mountain Santa in the Harlan County, Kentucky area after he began delivering toys to struggling local families in 1975. However, in 2017, the kind Santa developed advanced lung cancer and wasn't able to continue. That's when Jordan stepped in to continue the tradition. Both his mother and father passed away shortly after that Christmas, and he says he now continues the Mountain Santa tradition in their honor.

His father's words guide his effort. Dad told him before he passed, he said, you've got to have the Lord in it. So that's what I'm doing. Howard isn't alone in his efforts. The community has come together, and in October had already gathered 1,000 gifts. He believes he'll have around 4,000 when they begin deliveries on December 14th.

The community joins him in his Santa Lane workshop to wrap all the toys. It's a feeling that you can't describe. You don't think that a community would come together like they have to continue to keep doing this. But it's just, it's awesome. It is. It's just amazing. I don't know. It's just, it's something. I think Howard and his community service, is just a beautiful reminder of the true spirit of the Christmas season.

Kiana, thank you so much for sharing that good news story. It's certainly appropriate here as we're in the midst of Christmas shopping and gift giving. Really encouraging. All right, we're going to leave it there for today. The Daily Signal podcast comes to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation. You can find it on the Rurcache Audio Network. All of our shows can be found at daily signal.com slash podcasts. You can also subscribe on Apple Podcast.

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