You may remember Frederick Winslow Taylor,
I introduced him as an efficiency
expert, he studied Bethlehem Steel. Consider the strides
over the course of the early 20th Century that are made in terms of the
rationalization of business,
management styles. And also
in those same vein or in that same vein
consider (consider)
things like capital financing and distribution networks in the degree to,
which they
are refined by the 1920s. Because by that time
many of these distribution chains, many of these networks have been
I mention refined earlier but they've been expanded,
so that you begin to see things in the 20s like networks of car
dealerships.
Right? Franchising
allows corporations to deal with private interest locally,
but it to expand nationally. One other innovation of the 1920s that
we see
is the grocery store and one of the first chains was the A&P.
But we'll see for instance the
Piggly Wiggly coming out of Memphis, Tennessee. Business methods matter
and they too are cultural. They have to do with how you view the work that you are
doing.
Let me throw out a third element here then and that is I think another major factor
of the 1920s and the business expansion that occurs
and that's advertising and that's fairly huge
as well. Remember during the First World War
the degree to which propaganda
had become - propaganda had become
and element to build this 100% Americanism, to build a national
patriotism,
so that total mobilization for the war effort would be possible.
In other words the inculcate the habits, the thinking, the culture of
national discipline, so that you didn't have to waste government resources
constantly
regulating, overseeing, and enforcing laws.
It's much cheaper when you can convince people it in their own
interest to obey laws than to spend time, money, and effort forcing people
to obey laws. Well that lesson
is one that is I think very readily learned by the marketing agencies that
emerge in the 1920s.
They build upon this tradition of government posters and government -
government marketing efforts for Liberty Bonds etc. The idea for instance of
celebrity endorsements is huge.
Takes off in the 1920s as do
color advertisement, but it's not anything particularly new
because now the there they're using these methods
to advertise things like appliances.
How do you sale appliances?
All you have to do really is look around today if you watch
TV or even watching something online in their advertisements
by and large...sex continues to sell.
It emerges I think
most forcefully in the 1920s though there are elements of
this kind of relationship between advertising and sex that go
much further back. Maybe to the ancient world
and further, but let me just suggest one and that's some of the first
playing cards or collecting cards. We normally think of them nowadays or
have as baseball cards that come with the pack of chewing gum.
And yet it was, it was a sales
marketing tool to put those
playing cards or picture cards
not only baseball players, but of actresses not in bubble gum packs initially,
but in cigarette packs. This goes back to Buck Duke and American Tobacco Company.
Somewhat lurid pictures of
actresses that even Buck Duke's own father,
devout Methodist, didn't care for these methods that his son was willing to use
to sell cigarettes.
1920s, I think and we'll talk more about the cultural changes taking place,
but this notion in advertising that you can now use
openly, sexuality is a tool for marketing,
emerges with a vengeance.
So it's not entirely new, but it sure is more powerful.
and more overt. In essence what you advertise
is not the appliance itself per se, but the ideal, the dream,
the fantasy, that if you use
one particular product; for instance I have a have a a poster that often use
for a
Listerine then that products use will make you more
appealing either in terms of masculinity or femininity. In other words if you're
trying to attract the young lady in the 1920s and you want to
be able to get close or intimate, then you better use Listerine.
Personal hygiene products - how you sell them
to a society that by and large hasn't used them
before the 1920s? Well you convince people
that in order to be successful in love, they need to use your product.
Marketing, advertisements,
sex, using the new technology especially radio,
but also the newspapers that have been growing in popularity since the
late 19th century,
using all the media, all the technology available,
you're trying to market, you're trying to sell, and
you'll use sex to do it. That's one of those identifiers
I think of the 1920s.
And one of the examples of that I often use in
lecture is a book by a fellow named Bruce Barton.
It's a book that came out 1925
called the "Man Nobody Knows."
And it tells the story of, (tells the story of)
a figure, sort of the greatest
manager who forged
in a very short time an organization
intended to spread a message. In other words a marketing
organization. This marketing organization
within a matter of just a few short years
was able to essentially conquer the world.
Because of the techniques that were used, the products sold, the techniques used
etc.
It turns out that the example Bruce Barton relies upon
for his model salesperson, model sales manager,
was a Jewish
leader. In fact, Jewish leader from Israel.
Barton points to no less a religious figure than Jesus Christ is sort of the
greatest sales manager
the world has ever known. "The Man Nobody Knows,"
the title is a reference to Christ.
It's an interesting conception to me this blending of
good business and good religious practice.
That the one to be juxtaposed against another.
But most importantly about the 1920s, I think it says
how impressive and important
business had become. As one saying goes business
had become the business of America.
That is important. I've gotta a little cartoon again then I often use for these
lectures of
a little salesman because it seemed that everyone was into the market, everyone
had something to sale, everyone saw the possibility in the 20s
for getting rich. Now everyone's always
you know an exaggeration, but nonetheless;
that you could get rich there is a possibility. So here in this,
in this cartoon a little salesman comes up to knock on a door
he's got a little suitcase, a briefcase, product to sell.
In the next square he is welcomed in the door
by the homeowner, what appears to be the homeowner, and he is escorted to a chair
and this little salesman with his little mustache is then given a huge
sales pitch by the homeowner.
And the last block of the comic shows the little salesman
highly agitated and disappointed because instead of selling something
the salesman has become the customer
and he's walking away with a book
that the homeowner had sold to him.
That just goes to show that cartoon kind of gets at this notion that in
America in the 1920's it seemed that everybody was out to make the buck.
Everybody seem to have been out
well conducting the business of America, which was business.
But to foreshadow just to bit and then to wrap up this segment,
I'd like to suggest one other consideration here in terms of this the
business of America's business
and that is exactly how much of
the business success of the 1920s
was based on credit. Now
you've heard, you know you're smart folks, you've heard
about the stock market collapse of
1929 leading into the Great Depression.
But...
it wasn't just in stocks that people had
borrowed money and invested.
One of the key ingredients allowing
middle America, working class America
to purchase automobiles and to have access to appliances that culturally;
remember the Americans begin to think we we must have these new appliances, we
need to have these new appliances;
otherwise we're not keeping up with the middle class otherwise;
we're not keeping up with our neighbors. It becomes a kind of cultural drive
as well as a drive for greater leisure, which again
goes back to culture. But back to the original point here
sorry for the digression. Not everybody's gonna be able to afford the goods
that define one as part of this growing sort of middle America
in the 1920s. Not everyone is going to be able to afford the new car,
appliances, and the radio and it's going to be tough.
What let's more people afford it than not
more people than might have otherwise will be
installment credit.
The idea that instead of taking out a bulk
loan,
the producer of the good, the business in question will
either provide access to credit and allow you to pay back weekly,
or arrange for credit to allow you pay back weekly
or monthly. This kind of installment plan
buying became a defining factor
of the 1920s affluence
and that is a point worth making.
That this affluence, so impressive on the surface during the 1920s
was supported by speculative borrowing
in the markets, supported by installment plan credit
for lower classes in much as the middle class,
and
you start putting that all together with those sectors of the economy that didn't
reach the heights.
Sectors like the coal industry where prices continued to be low.
Iron and steel, where prices continued to be low.
You start thinking about not all sectors firing on all cylinders and it
makes you wonder how very stable after all
that post boom and bust economy of the 1920s
really was.
We'll pick up next time really (really) focused in
on cultural aspects of the 1920s
and the Jazz Age.