Remaking Consumption

The consumer did not, of course, appear full blown in the early twentieth-century United States. Mass consumption of certain goods—notably addictive substances such as tobacco, opium, rum, gin, coffee, and tea—arguably fueled the Industrial Revolution and even Europe’s colonial domination of Asia, Latin America, and Africa. This consumption also defined the methods by which later commodities were produced, distributed, and consumed. But, since these items were physically addictive and required little marketing, merchants generally paid little attention to how these and other goods were marketed or displayed, assuming that when people needed their products, they would buy them. It was this attitude in the United States of a century ago that was to undergo a profound change.

The change did not occur naturally. In fact, the culture of nineteenth-century America emphasized moderation and self-denial, not unlimited consumption. People, workers in particu- lar, were expected to be frugal and save their money; spending, particularly on luxuries, was seen as “wasteful.” People purchased only necessities—basic foodstuffs, clothing, household utensils, and appliances—or shared basic items when they could. If we look at a typical inventory of the possessions of an American family of 1870–1880, we find a pattern very different from that of today. In 1870, 53 percent of the population lived and worked on farms and produced much of what they consumed. One Vermont farmwife recorded making 421 pies, 152 cakes, 2,140 doughnuts, and 1,038 loaves of bread in one year. Household items were relatively simple—a dinner table, wooden chairs, beds, and perhaps a carpet or rug. There were a few appliances to aid housework—cookstoves, eggbeaters, apple parers, pea shellers, and coffee mills—but most other housework required muscle; even hand-cranked washing machines were not available until the late 1870s.