Transcript The Postwar Years at Home

The Postwar Years at
Home
Chapter 27
Businesses Reorganize
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Per capita income up
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GNP doubles
Economic growth
Conglomerates – Large
corporations that owns
smaller ones (ATT)
Franchises – right to
open business under
parent company
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Ray Kroc – mass
produces hamburgers –
rise of fast food industry!
Technology Transforms Life
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Television
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Computers – developed
during war
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ABC, CBS, and NBC
I Love Lucy, Mickey Mouse
Club
Transistor – circuit device
Reduced size of machines
Nuclear Power - electricity
Advances in Medicine
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Polio vaccine – Jonas Salk
Antibiotics - bacteria
Surgery – new techniques
Workforce, Suburbs, Highways
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White collar jobs – switch
service industries
Baby boom
Moving to the Suburbs
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Cars and Highways
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GI Bill – College & low
interest loans for houses
Levittowns – suburban
“cloned” homes
Interstate Highway Act 1956
Credit Cards – status symbol;
consumer goods again
The Mood of the 1950’s
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Comfort and Security
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Youth Culture – silent generation;
carefree
A Resurgence of Religion
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Response to “godless” communism
Billy Graham
Women – support role, raise
children, in suburbia w/new ovens
Men – work and support the family
Dr. Benjamin Spock – child
rearing; importance of Mother
Betty Friedan – The Feminine
Mystique – challenged roles
Challenges to Conformity
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Rock and Roll – Chuck Berry, Little
Richard, Bill Haley
Elvis Presley
Beatniks – rebelled against conformity;
rebellious
 Jack Kerouac
Domestic Politics and Policy
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Truman
People wanted goods, wage hikes
Took steps against labor
Taft-Hartley Act – 80 day cooling
off period
Fair Deal – extension of New
Deal – p. 780
Reelected in 1948
Ike – 1952 – K1,C2 (Korea,
Communism, Corruption)
Nixon VP – cut spending, reduce
gov., reduce taxes, “modern
republicanism”
Checkers speech
Demands for Civil Rights
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Truman – active in civil
rights, banned discrimination
in hiring; met opposition
Jackie Robinson
Brown v. Board of Ed. 1954
Montgomery bus boycott;
Rosa Parks
Little Rock; Gov. Faubus
posted national guard troops
at school to prevent
integration
Eisenhower places them
under federal control.