The American Dream

Car culture in the mid to late 20^th century can be summed up as cutting edge. Technology was being pushed further and so was design. The car was becoming a part of life that was more and more necessary for the average American, and America was designing itself especially for the car. From drive-in movie theaters of the 1950s to cohesive shopping centers with parking, the car was now a permanent aspect of the nation. More to the point vehicles saw a wave in design and function from the chrome covered cars of the 50s, to Hot Rods and sports cars, to SUVs and trucks. “In a world of increasing conformity…these vehicles gave their owners a distinctive individuality.” [1] The car also offered varying levels of equality for blacks and women who could purchase and ride off in any vehicle helping them, in the case of blacks, avoid as Cullen quotes Thomas J. Sugrue “the insults of Jim Crow.” [2]

The California version of the American Dream is basically upward mobility with little effort. Cullen puts it best in the first line of Chapter six in The American Dream when he says “The American Dream was never meant to be a zero-sum solution: the goal has always been to end up with more than you started with.” [3] Beginning with plucky Americans traveling West in search for gold, to the entrepreneurs of Las Vegas, and finally to the glitz and glamour of Hollywood movie stars today, California and its inhabitants epitomize the dream of wealth without work but a heaping amount of luck. 

If taking the California Dream down to its core it is about money, the vast accumulation of wealth and the freedoms from want that it can bring. Late 20^th century car culture is many things including freedom, individualism, and at times obsession. This, to me, is what they have in common. Both can bring out the best in people giving them freedom to go where they want and when, both can help create and display characteristics of the individual, and both can become obsessions that take over ones thoughts. It is specifically this last idea where I see the most significant connection. Las Vegas and the gambling it represents can become a serious problem for some people driving them to spend hours at a time at games of chance, losing life savings, homes, and family members (wives and husbands who seek divorce). Cars and those who collect them and restore them also can become an obsession, where someone invests serious amounts of money they may or may not have, spends a great deal of time at car shows and tracking down missing parts, and then also neglects family members (and possibly loses them).

However the California Dream also feeds the car culture of America. It is the ideal of having that perfect car, be it an expensive foreign sports car or for the teenager just simply a car that can also be considered a California Dream. For the California Dream is not necessarily realistic, and perhaps owning a car worth three times as much as ones house isn’t either.

American culture is ever changing. Our wants, needs, creations, they are always becoming better, different, and more expensive. In the last 50 years alone telephones went from indoors attached with a short cord, to cordless phones capable of being walked around the house, to car phones, to large cell phones being totted everywhere, to smaller and smaller cell phones that now it seems are as important to our lives as our cars if not more so. American culture rapidly changes, and it is sometimes impossible to keep up, but it is this ever changing atmosphere that pushes technology and innovation.  It pushes men and women to think larger and dream bigger, and imagining that anything is possible if one tries and works hard enough is the American Dream.

[1] John Heitmann, The Automobile and American Life (North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2009), 134.

[2] ibid., 135.

[3] Jim Cullen, The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea That Shaped a Nation (New York: Oxford Press, 2003), 159.

Cars and Homes

Beginning in the early 1900s with the creation of the automobile and culminating in the late 1940s with the returning soldiers and home ownership, American culture had grown to be decidedly materialistic. During the first decade of the twentieth century the automobile was becoming an important aspect of American culture. In 1910 alone 200,000 cars were made. [1] At first very expensive and therefore only available to a select few, “sometime during the second decade of the twentieth century the automobile became a primary article of consumption for Middle America.” [2] The automobile quickly became important to the average American. Fords and Packards, as well as the Oldsmobile were influencing music and songs were created touting their names. Clothing styles were influenced as well with driving jackets, gloves, and hats becoming chic and fashionable. The car was a status symbol, as well as becoming a necessity to daily life, and it was just one innovation that drove consumerism. The invention and eventual popularity of the radio and in the 1940s the television added to this collection of wants in America.

After World War II, Americans wanted to get back to living their lives. Soldiers came home, started families, and got back to work and seemingly ordinary life. America itself was experiencing a good economy after the war and with the growth of suburbs home ownership became a new dream of most Americans. Suburban style home building started around the beginning of the twentieth century and continued on even to the present day. The combination of living within community and with one’s own space, but not as crowded as the city or as rural as the country had become popular with middle class America. Owning a home was really the idea of owning a piece of America. It created a sense of community and ownership to the country not just the actual house. As Cullen says, “the greatest fervor appeared to come from immigrants”, who in 1900 Detroit made up a large part of the home owning community, and possibly doing so made them feel much more connected to other Americans. [3] Whatever the case most all people of America had becoming mass consumers of new products and homes, as well as appliances, radios, clothes, and many other things.

However that being said it took opportunistic entrepreneurs and occasionally the government to drive materialism along. Entrepreneurs such as Henry Ford, Billy Durant, Charles Franklin Kettering, and even Harley Earl would create car companies (Ford and Durant), find innovative uses for new materials (Kettering), and stylistically change the way vehicles looked (Earl) making them fashionable and stylish as well as useful and innovative. On the government side World War II would bring government contracts to car makers that unintentionally helped spur along further innovation. The Jeep for example, made by Ford during World War II and for American troops was not only a well-loved car by the soldiers, but also “became an important utility vehicle for American farmers” after the war. [4]

In the end really everything affected each other. Opportunistic manufacturers built innovative cars, radios, and other goods that became popular to Americans, and also received government contracts. Government contracts brought new innovations in vehicles as well as standardization of roads. The newer cars and better roads got more Americans to buy new cars and pushed their materialism. Though I feel materialism was a more important definition of American culture during the early twentieth century, the government as well as opportunistic individuals and entrepreneurs all drove one another.

http://inventors.about.com/od/timelines/a/twentieth.htm

This website gives a simple timeline of inventions of the twentieth century. Looking over the many things invented between 1900 and 1950 I was amazed at how many things I don’t even think about having to have been invented, because to me they always existed. Whatever did children before 1903 do without Crayons? Or 1943 and the slinky?

[1] John Heitmann, The Automobile and American Life (North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2009), 19.

[2] ibid., 24.

[3] Jim Cullen, The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea That Shaped a Nation (New York: Oxford Press, 2003), 148.

[4] John Heitmann, The Automobile and American Life (North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2009), 123.

The Vice District

Chicago’s vice district, known as the Levee, was a segregated section of the city that housed brothels, dance halls, gambling, drugs, bars, and many other technically illegal activities. Wikipedia defines vice as “a practice or a behavior or habit considered immoral, depraved, or degrading in the associated society.” [1] This is exactly what was located in the Levee of Chicago, everything that the rest of the city knew existed but didn’t want to see on a daily basis. That same thought is what black/white segregation is about as well. White people knew blacks existed but for the most part did not want them on their buses, in their movie theaters, in their diners, or really anywhere that they had to see them and interact with them. 

During the Gilded Age and Progressive era I believe that vice created the most impact on American culture. In the case of vice in Chicago it was the starting point for a movement that would change laws for all Americans. Segregation, though it too had a part in the Levee, was not seen as an evil (except of course to those who it affected) for common society. Whereas vice in Chicago and the white slave idea, that of young girls being coerced or forced into prostitution, was brought right to the doorsteps of white America. 

It was Clifford Roe and his work on the Mona Marshall case that first began the crusade against white slavery. After that, “suddenly there were hundreds just like her, girls who turned victim as soon as they wandered past the sanctioned boundaries of their lives.” [2] Publications were being printed and the knowledge that young girls were being tricked or trapped into lives of prostitution spread throughout the city. People were outraged at the idea that not only are young white girls being targeted, but that they’re supposed captors were being protected by crooked politicians who favored the Levee district. Arrests were made but many of the arrested were soon back on the job in a high turn around rate. Something had to be done, and “on December 6 (1909), Congressman James R. Mann of Chicago introduced a bill titled the White Slave Traffic Act.” [3] Known as the Mann act, it prohibited the interstate transfer of females for immoral purposes. After some change in politics and more reformers pushing for change, the Levee district was closed for good by 1914. 

The white slave trade scared the Nation. They believed any minute someone was going to walk through their front door and steal their daughters away into a life of crime, sin, and lots of horrible things.  It wasn’t just Chicago however. All over America people took notice and locally put stops to vice districts in their own cities. “Atlanta, Georgia, announced that the city’s brothels would all close within five days owing to the efforts of a group called Men and Religion Forward,” [4] leaving one madam so distraught that she killed herself. Everywhere people were afraid to let their daughters out of the house. This reaction is largely because it was happening to white girls, and they were seen as helpless victims of horrible men. To further differentiate most of the men involved were believed to be immigrants, those of whom already were looked down upon in society.

I want to close by saying in retrospect to the entire history of American culture I feel segregation is much more important and culturally damaging, but to this specific time period the fight against vice was hugely popular and important as people believed it affected them more personally.

http://chicagocrimescenes.blogspot.com/

This person created a blog showcasing all the spots relevant to the time period, including the Everleigh club, Vic Shaw’s Brothel, Freiberg’s Dance Hall, and Colosimo’s Café. Also posting pictures of what those locations look like today.

 

Finally, a solid gold piano because I was very curious about the Everleigh sister’s absolute favorite thing.

[1] “Vice,” Wikipedia, accessed September 15, 2012, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vice

[2] Karen Abbott, Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America’s Soul (New York: Random House, 2007), 129.

[3] ibid., 207.

[4] ibid., 277.