Examining The Post-Industrial Age

Examining The Post-Industrial Age:
Traditional Values vs. The “Cancer of Early Consumerism”


It is difficult to address the effects of consumerism on modern value systems, for our contemporary views of culture have incorporated consumerism, and all it entails, so it is nearly impossible to separate the two. Though many Americans would not readily see the connection, a common saying may be applied here: “Fish don’t know they’re wet.” To correct this perceptive problem, we must turn our attention to the infancy of consumer-culture, just after the Civil War, during which the values were not so intermixed. Through an abstractive process, one may discover the initial effects consumerism had on “traditional values,” as during this period the two cultures can be seen as distinct entities. Reading Elaine S. Abelson, When Ladies Go A-Thieving, and Roy Rosenzweig, Eight Hours For What We Will, covering the 1870’s—1920’s post-industrial America, provided us with just that glimpse.

To look at the effect of consumerism on traditional values, we must first define what the traditional values were at the time. Abelson’s research explored values through the looking glass of women’s roles, which, prior to the spread of consumerism, were “traditional housewives: home and family were their occupation” (p. 9). According to Abelson, these roles changed drastically: “shopping became a main work activity of the middle-class woman” (p. 28).
Rozensweig, who focused on the immigrant populations of the period, describes values on an ethnic level grounded in the “homeland,” language and the church (e.g. “entry into Worcester of large numbers of ‘new immigrants’ from southern and eastern Europe in the years after 1890 crosscut the working class with further ethnic, religious and linguistic divisions” (p. 17). Such boundaries disintegrated as a result of many aspects consumer culture, especially entertainment: “Perhaps, one small indication of this gradual development is the increasing frequency of intermarriages between Worcester Catholics of different ethnic backgrounds” (p. 182).

Consumerism went far beyond having a mere “corrosive effect” on traditional values; it assimilated them—perhaps one could say it even consumed them. Values not required or deemed necessary by consumerism became discarded as psycho-degradable. If the “melting pot” was truly just a grand illusion, as some might assert, then the effects of consumerism, through its ability to mold the population into one cohesive (controllable?) unit, became a close second to that ideal.

As a comparison to the periods examined by Abelson and Rosenzweig, we can look at the contemporary immigrant populations: “only three generations to become a full-blooded American” is a modern theme. Japanese, who are driven to excel in their homeland, gradually take on the relaxed behavior of Americans—while their practice of saving income, quite high by American standards, is slowly transformed into the practice of consuming (percentages vary, but the trend is consistent).

We can also look overseas at other cultures where consumerism is in its infant stages: the invasion of television—a form of the entertainment industry (see below)—into India has been a hot topic of late. First, the companies invade the home, then they begin changing the way people think about themselves via the programming. “Western” music and “western” clothing is advertised extensively. Soon, immigrants who arrive in America will already be conditioned to our consumer culture, and will not have to wait the common three-generation period.

Is “consumerism” itself a culture? Based on the concept of “value systems,” it could be fairly easy to set up an argument in defense of a consumer-culture existence—at least by today’s standards. We even have a Consumer Confidence index for economics which projects a desire to purchase, and has definitive effects on stock exchanges. However, prior to the period examined by Abelson and Rosenzweig, consumerism was merely an aspect of culture—a trait, which became caught up in the trend of mass production after the Civil War:

“After the Civil War, with vast increases in production and productive potential, and with a dramatic increase in the resources available to a new middle class, consumer values literally revolutionized society” (Abelson, p. 4-5).

“The profound change in consumption patterns was the direct consequence of technological development and market expansion. The links between production and consumption were clear. Needs multiplied because there was more to be had and an increasing standard of living that made more things feasible” (p. 25).


Consumerism is a direct by-product of the industrial age. Without the presence of mass-production, phenomena such as advertising and value adjustment (e.g. credit—“buy now, pay later”), etc., may never have manifested. Prior to industry, such relationships between producer and consumer were much like present-day farmers’ markets, small specialty shops, or corner vendors, wherein certain rituals apply: bartering, first-name-basis casualty, extension of ethnic values in both oral and physical communication, etc. With the advent of the industrial capacity to mass-produce, it became necessary to increase demand (supply, with such vast resources, especially in the United States, was not an issue).

Production became a self-serving process, and thus, to sustain industry, consumerism had to be modified (if not outright manipulated) by the very forces that stood to benefit: high-class company owners. Such a modification is evidenced by the change in producer attitude towards advertising—not merely by the language employed in this tactic, but also in the quantity of advertisements set to bombard and condition—effectively changing the value systems of consumers. If modification is a term utilized to provide a sense of adaptation, then the only difference between modification and manipulation in this case is the intent of the producer. The argument can go either way depending on where, and how much, emphasis is placed.

But it seems that it is not enough merely to control people at the “point of sale.” Consumerism invaded leisure time as well:
“…the dominant culture itself was changing; it gradually came to accept active recreation, even on Sunday. But the arguments of the market were probably even more persuasive in changing elite and middle-class views of recreational promoters…The leisure market had grown substantially by the 1890’s. Working people had more money and more free time to spend it in” (Rosenzweig, p. 179).


Who would ever have thought that the simple acts of going to the movies or to an amusement park might have been the result of a manipulative agenda to pacify the masses? If that question seems accusatory, it is for good reason. Industry needed to improve the quality of life of the working and middle class, but without sacrificing major resources (e.g. time, capitol, land)—and what better way than to design an effective, efficient method which could pacify the workers in bulk?

However, the phenomenon of entertainment must be looked at even closer. Entertainment grew over the decades into a necessary counterpart to consumerism, becoming an industry itself—we use the term “entertainment industry” so casually today, yet we have forgotten that in the past, people did just fine entertaining themselves (e.g. singing carols, walking, writing letters, etc.). Playing music at home was replaced early this century with the radio and records, removing us from the cultural roots, inspirations and influences that permeated the medium that had been handed down through the generations. Even walking, which is a natural activity for most people, has been absorbed by consumerism—we are now told the best shoes to wear to make us feel “empowered” and “free.”

Today, the entertainment industry does not have to rely solely on movie theaters or amusement parks or gambling casinos to carry out its primary function of pacifying. You can have the entertainment “piped right into your home”: television, radio, and the internet. We hardly know how to do anything for ourselves now, for we have musicians playing music for us (we as consumers become the million-man audience, purchasing CD’s at $15-plus—which cost less than a tenth of that amount to produce). We have football, basketball and baseball players exercising for us. We have soap operas to conduct discourse on emotional situations for us. Technology has worked in favor of consumerism to keep its costs down, and pacify at even greater levels of efficiency.

But there are still further important aspects to be gleaned by returning our attention to Abelson and Rosenzweig. By reading both Abelson and Rosenzweig in sequence one not only gets a different perspective of consumerism of the post-industrial period (in contrast to the contemporary perspective), the perspectives themselves often take drastic approaches. Abelson cites a breakdown in morality—and the subsequent scapegoating of women on sexist grounds (e.g. “The underlying, gender-based image of the kleptomaniac remained unaffected either by scientific developments or by intellectual trends” (p. 200))—within the group of middle-class women, while Rosenszweig focuses on the breakdown of ethnic values within groups of immigrant workers (e.g. “In effect, the rise of the amusement park eroded some of the traditional bases of authority in Worcester’s ethnic communities” (p. 182)).

Sometimes these perspectives, which on the surface are both contra-elite (directed against the upper-class owners and producers), appear to contradict each other as well. Rosenzweig takes a positivist stance. Abelson is a bit more harsh toward consumerism, defending consumers as being victims of a manipulative process.

However, one could go even further than Abelson. An analysis of consumerism, and its path of destruction over the landscape of traditional values, might lend to a more severe perspective on consumerism. It is ironic, that Americans worried for so many years during the 20th century about the spread of the “cancer of communism” as a possible assault on our “traditional values,” yet those very same Americans have overlooked the form of cancer, consumerism, which is intrinsic to American culture—perhaps even endemic to America during the post-industrial age.



Works Cited

Abelson, Elaine S. When Ladies Go A-Thieving. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1989.

Rozenzweig, Roy. Eight Hours For What We Will. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.