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The All-​Consuming Nation
The All-​Consuming
Nation
Chasing the American Dream
Since World War II

M A R K H . LY T L E

1
 3
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
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© Oxford University Press 2021

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and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lytle, Mark H., author.
Title: The all-consuming nation : chasing the American dream since World War II / Mark H. Lytle.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2021] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021027465 (print) | LCCN 2021027466 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197568255 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197568279 (epub) |
ISBN 9780197568286 (oso) | ISBN 9780197568262 (updf)
Subjects: LCSH: Consumption (Economics)—United States—History. |
Consumers—United States—History. | Sustainable development—United
States—History. | United States—Economic conditions—1945–
Classification: LCC HC 110. C6 L98 2021 (print) | LCC HC 110. C6 (ebook) |
DDC 339.4/70973—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021027465
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021027466

DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197568255.001.0001

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
 To my grandchildren,
Rowen, Shea, and Quinn Blood,
Mary Jane and Xander Lytle,
and my great-​niece and great-​nephew,
Tessa and Ethan Husted,
future stewards of the planet
The love of well-​being is there displayed as a tenacious, exclusive, uni-
versal passion; . . . but to add a few roods of land to your field, to plant
an orchard, to enlarge a dwelling, to be always making life more com-
fortable and convenient, to avoid trouble, and to satisfy the smallest
wants without effort and almost without cost. These are small objects,
but the soul clings to them; it dwells upon them closely and day by day,
till they at last shut out the rest of the world, and sometimes intervene
between itself and heaven.
—​Alexis de Tocqueville,
Democracy in America, Book II, Chapter XI
 Contents

Acknowledgments  ix

I . T H E C R E AT IO N O F A C O N SUM E R D E M O C R AC Y
Introduction: Cold War, Warm Kitchen,
and the Trump Dilemma  3
1. Postwar Choices  17
2. The Birth of a Consumer Democracy  37
3. The Dark Side of Consumption  66
4. The Era of Populuxe  93

I I . T H E E R A O F I D E N T I T Y C O N SUM E R I SM
5. Segmented America and the New Identity Politics  117
6. The American Way of Life Polluted  147
7. The Golden Age of Consumption  174
8. Consumers Go to War  198
9. The Consumer Movement  216
10. Identity Consumerism  237

I I I . T H E AG E O F L I M I T S
11. America Goes Green  261
12. Blue-​Collar Blues  287
13. Environmental Battlegrounds  306
14. In Debt We Trust  330
15. The Battles over Sustainability and Climate Change  361
viii Contents

I V. E - ​C OM M E R C E I N T H E AG E
O F G L O BA L WA R M I N G
16. Hi-​Tech Consumers  391
17. The All-​Consuming Nation Imperiled  420
18. Epilogue: Omens  443

Notes  459
Selected Bibliography  489
Index  499
 Acknowledgments

This book originated during a conversation I had with Chris Rogers and
Peter Coveney, both editors at Oxford at the time. Chris had been godfather
to several other projects, including the revitalization of After the Fact: The
Art of Historical Detection. Oxford was moving in new directions, and Chris
thought a book with elements of social, cultural, and environmental history
would be timely. After Peter and Chris left Oxford, my enthusiasm for a the-
matic textbook dwindled. It was then that Jim Davidson, my frequent coau-
thor and godfather to my children, helped me find a path for All-​Consuming
Nation. In one conversation, I complained that I wanted to foreground the
environmental consequences of mass consumerism and to integrate bio-
graphical sketches into the narrative. Jim pointed out that I’d reached a point
at which I could and should write the book I wanted, and so I did. When
I completed the manuscript, Susan Ferber steered me to Charles Cavaliere.
Charles recognized that I had not done the book as originally conceived
and persuaded Oxford to assign it to a new editor. For his support I am most
grateful. I was fortunate to have Nancy Toff take on the project for its final
leg. She is a savvy editor who helped me bring the manuscript to its final
form. Her assistant, Zara Cannon-​Mohammed, provided much needed and
warmly offered guidance on the finishing steps.
Writing history is generally an individual endeavor, but the collective
fruits of those labors shape the way others reconstruct the past. In my case,
historians of both consumerism and the environment illuminated many of
the paths I chose to follow. On the consumer side, Gary Cross proposed the
idea that consumerism was the triumphant ideology of the twentieth century.
Frank Trentmann, Thomas Frank, Lizabeth Cohen, and Victoria Da Grazia
all contributed important perspectives. An anti-​consumer tradition has also
been important in shaping our understanding of the role consumerism plays
in both the economic and cultural realms. Daniel Horowitz and Timothy Wu
have been among the most trenchant in this area, which has roots deep in
our Puritan past. John De Graaf, David Wann and Thomas H. Naylor, Annie
Leonard, Juliet Schor, Susan Strasser, Jackson Lears, and Richard Fox were
other enlightening sources. Meredith Lair deserves a special comment for
x Acknowledgments

her imaginative conception of the role consumerism played in fighting the

Vietnam War. Similarly, Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner revealed the
tawdry history of industrial pollution and the attendant cover-​ups as the
dark side of our consumer economy.
My shift from diplomatic to environmental history, while far from com-
plete, began after I entered graduate school at Yale. During a C. Vann
Woodward seminar, I asked a fellow student about his dissertation. He
explained he was working on nineteenth-​century American environmental
thought. The idea seemed so anomalous at the time that it made a deep im-
pression. That student was Donald Worster. Along with Bill Cronon, Richard
White, Bill McKibben, John McNeill, Roderick Nash, and others, Don helped
define environmental history as a vital field. I was lucky also to meet Jake
Hamblin and Kurk Dorsey at the point when we all pushed an environmental
perspective into the field of diplomatic history. My many colleagues with
whom I worked to build an Environmental and Urban Studies Program at
Bard College have been a constant source of inspiration and enlightenment.
Among them, I’d like to acknowledge William Maple, Kris Feder, Michele
Dominy, Susan Rogers, Noah Chasin, Gidon Eshel, Jennifer Phillips, Peter
Klein, Bruce Robertson, Eban Goodstein, and Myra Armstead. I’m equally
indebted to my history colleagues, who encouraged me to offer a variety of
courses that contributed to the writing of this book.
Numerous people have read the manuscript or made contributions, some-
times unwittingly, that helped me frame the project and clarify its arguments.
Mike Stoff, a stylistic perfectionist, has edited several of my projects and
made them better. Richard Aldous and I have taught together since we first
met at University College Dublin in 2000. Lucky for me, Richard became my
colleague at Bard, so I could avail myself of his editorial acumen. Matthew
Mutter was another particularly insightful reader. My brother, James (Torch)
Lytle was willing to take on the manuscript despite his confessed preference
for fiction. I also had the benefit of conversations with the members of my
book club and especially Vin Teahan, who was both encouraging and alert
to points that needed correcting. George Constable, a part of my summer
circle of friends for over fifty years, is one of the most voracious readers
I know and an astute editor. My son Jesse and friend Tom Stoenner also
volunteered to bring their judgment to bear. Jesse, along with my daughter,
Kate Blood, taught me that life could be better not by accumulating more, but
by having less.
 Acknowledgments xi

The freedom to follow one’s own agenda is one of the joys of teaching at
a liberal arts college. In that regard I am indebted to generations of Bard
College students who have challenged, expanded, enriched, enjoyed, crit-
icized, and inspired the material that became this book. My sister-​in-​law
Anne Brueckner, in recognition of my enthusiasm for acquiring cutting-​edge
consumer products, deserves credit for dubbing me “Appliance Rex.” Anne
brought me into the Lifetime Learning Institute at Bard, whose members
have joined in discussing many of the topics the book explores. Finally, and
far from last, my wife Gretchen has been infinitely patient and appropriately
skeptical about some of my broader generalizations. Her work in crafts and
keen eye have made me more sensitive to the aesthetics of consumption,
while her love for Nantucket has made ocean ecology a central part of our
life together.
 PART I
THE CR E AT ION OF A C ONSUM E R
DE MO C R ACY
 Introduction
Cold War, Warm Kitchen, and the Trump Dilemma

Sokol ‘Niki Park, a tree-​lined Moscow neighborhood, was an unlikely venue

for a Cold War showdown. But there in July 1959 Soviet premier Nikita
Khrushchev and US vice president Richard Nixon squared off to debate the
superiority of their respective political systems. Fortunately for the fate of
humankind, they fought with words and ideas, rather than nuclear weapons.
Even though the lanky Nixon at 5'11" towered over the 5'3" Soviet leader,
the two were well matched. Khrushchev was a bulldog of a man with an
earthy peasant humor. In his youth he worked as a laborer and became an
active trade unionist before joining the Bolsheviks. Since he only learned
to read in his late twenties, his success was all the more surprising. Those
who dismissed him as a crude peasant or even a buffoon misjudged the man.
After Stalin’s death in March 1953, Khrushchev outmaneuvered his fellow
conspirators to establish himself as first party secretary and premier.
No one had been a more outspoken critic of that regime than Vice
President Richard Nixon. Like Khrushchev he grew up poor, in his case
in rural Whittier, California, far from the corridors of power. As an ambi-
tious and sometimes cunning young politician, Nixon exploited the post–​
World War II Red Scare to build his political career. He once smeared his
Democratic senatorial opponent Helen Gahagan Douglas with the charge
that she was “pink right down to her underwear.” Nixon loyally served
Dwight Eisenhower, though Ike did not particularly care for his vice presi-
dent. By 1958 Nixon had his eyes firmly fixed on the White House. A show-
down with the Soviet premier on Russian soil promised to light Nixon’s path
to victory in the 1960 presidential election.
The trip to Moscow became possible after the two sides agreed in 1958 to
exchange demonstrations of “science, technology, and culture,” in order to
promote “peaceful coexistence,” a live and let live way to reduce Cold War
tensions. In June 1958, the Soviets made the first move when Khrushchev’s

The All-​Consuming Nation. Mark H. Lytle, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2021.
DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197568255.003.0001
4 The Creation of a Consumer Democracy

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev (second from left) and Vice President
Richard Nixon visit the model kitchen displayed at the American National
Exhibition in Moscow in 1958. While Khrushchev boasted of the superiority
of the Soviet system, Nixon cited this high-​tech kitchen as the essence of the
American way of life that gave consumers the freedom to choose.
Howard Sochurek/​The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images. S.O.S. is a registered trademark
of The Clorox Company and is used with permission. ©2021 The Clorox Company. Reprinted with
permission

good-​natured deputy, Frol Kozlov, opened a Russian exposition in New York.

American visitors saw social realist art, heavy industrial equipment, space
capsules, and a model of a nuclear-​powered ice-​breaking ship. “That’s what
we use atomic power for,” the Soviets bragged. Sputniks on display reminded
Americans of their failure to launch their own satellites into space. Nor did
the exhibit lack for the stuff of Soviet domestic life: fashions, furs, kitchen-
ware, TVs, chrome-​laden cars, a model Moscow apartment, and long rows
of washing machines and refrigerators that few Russians could find in stores,
much less afford. Khrushchev knew that in the world of consumer goods the
Soviets lagged far behind their American rivals. He remained optimistic, at
least publicly, that having “launched a rocket into space,” Soviet ingenuity
would soon increase the supply of home appliances. In that way Khrushchev
recognized the growing importance of consumer goods as a measure of a
successful government.
 Introduction 5

Most Americans who toured the exhibition suspected that it reflected

Soviet dreams rather than Russian realities. A writer in the New York Times
suggested that it strove “for an image of abundance with an apartment few
Russians enjoy, with clothes and furs that are rarely seen.” Time magazine tol-
erated the show because once the Americans set up their display in Moscow,
they would “make the Russians more restlessly aware of the gulf between
U.S. and Soviet standards of living.” As if to vindicate Time’s sour assessment,
few Americans took the opportunity to buy the Soviet goods offered for sale
when the exhibition closed.1
At the heart of the exhibit Americans selected to display in Moscow
was a mock-​up of a six-​room, suburban ranch house, furnished by Macy’s
Department Store with the latest in appliances. Complementing the typ-
ical suburban kitchen was a second, futuristic Whirlpool “miracle” kitchen
run by a computer. With the push of a button a dishwasher came to the table
to collect dirty dishes. Then, a robot swirled around to clean and polish the
floors, while mannequins arranged as a happy family watched their remote-​
controlled color television. For the Americans who planned the exhibit, these
kitchen appliances, present and future, more than any ideology represented
the true essence of American life.
By the time Nixon reached Moscow to open the exhibit, Khrushchev
was spoiling for a fight. Republicans in Congress, as they had done for six
straight years, passed a “Captive Nations Resolution” that directed President
Eisenhower to designate a week in which Americans prayed for the freedom
of those held under the tyranny of communist rule. The feisty Khrushchev
saw the resolution as political grandstanding meant to insult the Soviet
Union. On first meeting Nixon in the Kremlin, he treated his American guest
to an array of barnyard epithets that made even his translator blush. Given
that harsh greeting, Nixon recognized that his trip involved more than an op-
portunity to show off the latest in American consumer goods. At stake were
the bragging rights between the world’s two great powers. Each leader hoped
to show that his way of life was superior in every way, including the consumer
goods that would likely appeal to those people around the world taking sides
in the Cold War struggle.
As he welcomed Khrushchev to the exhibit, Nixon deftly steered his host
toward the model suburban house. On the way, the Soviet premier could not
resist chiding Nixon for the insulting Captive Nations Resolution: “If you
would not take such a decision which has not been thought out thoroughly,
as was approved by Congress, your trip would be excellent. But you have
6 The Creation of a Consumer Democracy

churned the water yourselves—​why this was necessary God only knows.”
Khrushchev then wrapped his arms around a nearby Soviet worker attending
the opening and said, “Does this man look like a slave laborer? [Waving at
others] With men with such spirit how can we lose?” Nixon dodged the ques-
tion and Khrushchev’s claim that “in another seven years we will be on the
same level as America. When we catch you up, in passing you by, we will
wave to you.” He turned instead to the exhibit and said, “I will not comment
on the various points that you raised, except to say this—​this color television
is one of the most advanced developments in communication that we have.”
Where Khrushchev saw conflicting political economies separating the
two sides, Nixon shrewdly framed Soviet-​American differences in terms of
consumer technologies, in this case color televisions that could entertain
millions and open the world to images that transcended national bound-
aries: “There are some instances where you may be ahead of us, for example
in the development of the thrust of your rockets for the investigation of outer
space; there may be some instances in which we are ahead of you—​in color
television, for instance.” The Soviet premier refused to concede even that
point. “No, we are up with you on this, too. We have bested you in one tech-
nique and also in the other,” he assured his adversary.
By then they had arrived at the model American house, just where Nixon
wanted them to go. This one, he explained, “is like those of our houses in
California.” “We have such things,” Khrushchev replied, but Nixon pressed
his advantage. Americans built such kitchens by the thousands to make life
easier for their women. The premier replied that his country rejected “the
capitalist attitude toward women.” Nixon, however, had a larger point to
make. The consumer cornucopia on display before them was affordable for
most American veterans and workers. “Our steelworkers, as you know, are
on strike,” he admitted. “But any steelworker could buy this house. They
earn $3 an hour. This house costs about $100 a month to buy on a con-
tract running 25 to 30 years.” Better yet, “American houses were built to last
only 20 years, so builders could sell new houses at the end of that period.”
“We have steel workers and we have peasants who also can afford to spend
$14,000 for a house,” a defensive Khrushchev replied. As for Nixon’s boast
about planned obsolescence, Khrushchev was having none of it. The Soviets
build for permanence, he insisted, “We build firmly. We build for our chil-
dren and grandchildren.”
When Nixon pointed proudly at a television monitor that showed “what
is happening in other parts of the home,” Khrushchev went on the offensive.
 Introduction 7

“This is probably always out of order,” he said. “Don’t you have a machine that
puts food into the mouth and pushes it down? Many things you’ve shown
us are interesting, but they are not needed in life. They have no useful pur-
pose. They are merely gadgets.” Merely gadgets? For most Americans, the
appliances Khrushchev so blithely dismissed were the center of their way of
life. Convenience, ease of use, and efficiency made them indispensable in a
modern society.
On the all-​important question of who had a right to proper housing, the
Soviet leader found an opening of his own. “All you have to do to get a house
is to be born in the Soviet Union. You are entitled to housing,” Khrushchev
crowed. There was no better example than the man standing before Nixon.
“I was born in the Soviet Union,” he explained, “So I have a right to a house.”
The contrast was as clear to him as it was dramatic. “In America, if you don’t
have a dollar—​you have the right to choose between sleeping in a house or on
the pavement. Yet you say that we are slaves of communism.”
That wasn’t quite the case, but the point was well made, and Nixon changed
the subject, returning the debate to the issue of freedom, by which he meant
the freedom of choice in the marketplace. He described the kitchen as an-
other example of the superiority of American values: “We do not claim to
astonish the Russian people. We hope to show our diversity and our right
to choose. We do not wish to have decisions made at the top by government
officials who say that all homes should be built in the same way.” In none too
subtle terms, he was suggesting that Americans were free not because they
elected their leaders, but because they had the right to choose how or where
they wanted to live and, by implication, whether to buy a Whirlpool, GE, or
Frigidaire refrigerator or a Chevy, Ford, or Dodge. Wouldn’t it be better to
have just one type of refrigerator, Khrushchev wondered aloud, so long as it
worked?
Nixon could not easily forget that this argument about consumerism was
set against the backdrop of a nuclear arms race. “Would it not be better to
compete on the relative merits of washing machines than on the strength
of rockets,” he asked his host. “Is this the kind of competition you want?”
To which he might have added, a competition the Americans were sure
to win. Khrushchev agreed, “Yes that’s the kind of competition we want.
But your generals say: ‘Let’s compete in rockets. We are strong and we can
beat you.’ But in this respect we can also show you something.” A sober
Nixon added that neither side should “put the other in a position where he
in effect has an ultimatum. In this day and age that misses the point. With
8 The Creation of a Consumer Democracy

modern weapons it does not make any difference if war comes. We both
have had it.”2
Jump ahead now forty-​two years as George W. Bush addressed a nation
shocked by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In choosing the World
Trade Center in Manhattan and the Pentagon in Washington, DC, as targets,
the Islamic jihadists had struck a painful blow at the symbols of American
financial and military power. On September 20, before a joint session of
Congress, the president condemned the attackers as evildoers and warned
of a long struggle ahead. He also recognized that the attacks coincided with
a weakening economy, a faltering stock market, and a decline in consumer
spending. As one way to demonstrate the nation’s resolve in the war against
terrorism, he asked the American people for their “continued participation
and confidence in the American economy.” While the “terrorists attacked a
symbol of American prosperity,” he assured Congress, “they did not touch its
source. America is successful because of the hard work, and creativity, and
enterprise of our people.”
A week later, Bush spoke to representatives of an industry the
September11 attacks had particularly devastated—​the nation’s airlines.
“When they struck, they wanted to create an atmosphere of fear,” the presi-
dent told his audience of airline pilots, flight crews, and officials at Chicago’s
O’Hare airport, “And one of the great goals of this nation’s war is to restore
public confidence in the airline industry.” How would he achieve this worthy
objective? By urging the American people to live as they had always lived,
by working hard and buying large. “Get on board,” he urged the traveling
public. “Do your business around the country. Fly and enjoy America’s great
destination spots. Get down to Disney World in Florida. Take your families
and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed.” By that he meant feeling
free to move around the country without fear and to spend freely while
doing so. To be fair, Bush did not mean to trivialize the sacrifices he called
on the American people to make. Rather, he acknowledged that leisure and
consumption were vital elements of the American way of life that promoted
a sense of well-​being in unbroken rituals of spending to acquire both mate-
rial things and experiences.
Bush sharpened his point in a radio address just a week later. To give the
economy the boost it needed to overcome the impact of September 11, the
president wanted to apply recent tax cuts now. The current crisis provided
an opportunity to do so. “In other words, instead of waiting for next year’s
tax relief to happen,” he said, “let’s put it into this year, to bolster consumer
 Introduction 9

spending.” His message to the American people invoked the holiday most
devoted to consumerism—​Christmas: “We want you to have more money to
spend, particularly as we head into the Christmas season. We want our con-
sumers feeling confident.” For Bush, one way to put the country back on track
after the recent tragic events was to put the consumers back in the stores.3
Bush’s response to September 11, much like the “Kitchen Debate” between
Khrushchev and Nixon, brought together two central strands of life in post–​
World War II America—​mass consumerism and the defense of the American
way of life. What Richard Nixon made clear in Moscow and George W. Bush
reiterated in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, is that the United
States has spent the past seven decades or more trying to persuade people
around the globe that its “way of life,” based on ever expanding access to con-
sumer goods, is superior to socialism, fascism, Marxism, Islamic-​terrorism/​
fascism, or any other “ism” that challenges the capacity of consumer capi-
talism to provide citizens a high quality of life.
A number of historians have linked the spread of American values abroad
to the celebration of consumerism at home. Several themes emerge from
their analysis. For one, well before World War II many American business
leaders, such as department store magnate Edward Filene and automaker
Henry Ford, worked to “Americanize” Europe. New or expanded markets
were but one advantage they sought. In addition, they believed that selling
America’s goods would convert other people to an American way of life.
One historian traced what she saw as the inexorable triumph of “the Market
Empire,” “a great imperium with the outlook of a great emporium.” Another
went so far as to identify the American idea of a consumer-​based society as
an ideology that triumphed in the twentieth century over such competing
ideologies as socialism and Marxism. In an era of declining citizen participa-
tion in politics and public life, one could argue that consumerism, not liberal
democracy, won the Cold War. Or, as historian Gary Cross put the point,
“consumer culture is democracy’s highest achievement, giving meaning and
dignity to people when workplace participation, ethnic solidarity, and even
representative democracy have failed.” Beyond that, he argued persuasively,
“The American Way of Life in the twentieth century, based on popular access
to consumer goods, has replaced the older American Dream of property or
independence.” Americans who once struggled for equal rights have largely
settled for equality in the marketplace. Indeed, marketplace equality has de-
fined the consumer democracy the United States established after World War
II, though its roots reach deep in the nation’s history.4
10 The Creation of a Consumer Democracy

Large numbers of Americans seem to believe that possessing mate-

rial goods brings them a sense of well-​being. The desire to acquire those
things and the sense of success, security, and finally happiness that goes
with possessing them drive consumers to work hard at jobs that otherwise
offer little satisfaction. Certainly, we know that Americans work more hours
than do the citizens of other industrial countries. Further, the marketplace
has been more democratic and egalitarian than other arenas of American
life. Goods once available only to the rich, such as international travel, pri-
vately owned homes, personal transportation, restaurant meals, higher ed-
ucation, and global communications, are accessible to the broad mass of the
American population. Even those denied access to good housing or schools
because of their race, ethnicity, or gender identity have found more accept-
ance in stores, where one person’s credit card is as good as another’s.
While economic inequality has remained a fact of life into the twenty-​
first century, Americans generally believed until recently that their material
circumstances would be better than those of their parents, and their children’s
even better than theirs. That faith has tempered tensions bred by differences
of class, gender, region, religion, ethnicity, and, to a lesser extent, race that
could have made the nation’s politics more divisive and violent. How else can
we explain why among the advanced industrial nations, the United States
has never had a significant class-​based labor party? Nor has the country ex-
perienced long periods of labor strife for over three-​quarters of a century,
much of it a time of peace and prosperity with a cornucopia of widely avail-
able consumer goods and services. Where lack of access to the marketplace
has existed, social protest erupted. Early leaders of the civil rights movement
discovered that segregationists who resisted their pleas for equal treatment
on the basis of constitutionally guaranteed rights proved far more sensitive
when demonstrators boycotted local stores or sat in at lunch counters. What
protestors could not achieve as aggrieved, even militant, citizens, they could
often accomplish as boycotting consumers. Those who occupied segregated
lunch counters almost literally defined a key aspect of their right to equal cit-
izenship as their right to consume.
For the three decades after World War II, Americans turned their material
dreams of a post-​Depression American way of life into reality. Wages rose
steadily and, except for an occasional hiccup during brief recessions, un-
employment and inflation remained low. New suburbs sprawled across the
landscape, making homeownership practical not only for the middle class,
 Introduction 11

but also for blue-​collar workers. One-​car families became two-​and even
three-​car families, often buying a new model every two or three years.
To accommodate all those cars, the federal government committed itself
to an interstate highway system that made it possible to crisscross the na-
tion without entering a major city. American industry poured out a vast array
of consumer goods for home, work, leisure, and personal pleasure. New
materials made many of these goods cheaper, lighter, portable, and dispos-
able. Armed with new machines as well as synthetic fertilizers, pesticides,
and hybrid seeds, the nation’s farms produced abundant foods at affordable
prices. As fewer dollars went for food (from about one-​third before World
War II to less than one-​sixth by 2015), more were available for non-​essential
purchases. The consumer sector came to account for some 70 percent of the
economy.
Dark clouds occasionally crossed these generally sunny skies. In the early
years of the Cold War, the Democrats, with Harry Truman in the White
House, chose a defensive style of containment to counter a perceived Soviet
communist threat, while the Republicans under Dwight Eisenhower adopted
a more belligerent rhetoric with such phrases as “brinksmanship,” “more
bang for the buck,” and “Mutually Assured Destruction,” or MAD. Since con-
sumerism played a key role for both, the differences between the two presi-
dents and their parties were more cosmetic than real. Most leaders believed
that American prosperity made possible huge military buildups, while still
maintaining an abundance of consumer goods. Americans were willing to
rebuild the war-​torn economies in Europe and Asia because they saw mate-
rial prosperity as a bulwark again communism.5
By the late 1940s, a few farsighted critics began to identify the damaging
effects that mass consumption imposed on the natural world. High levels of
consumption, neo-​Malthusians William Vogt and Fairfield Osborne warned,
could simply not be sustained if humans wanted to survive on the earth.
Beginning in the late 1960s and increasingly in the 1970s, ecologically in-
clined environmentalists such as naturalist Rachel Carson, biologists Barry
Commoner and Paul Ehrlich, and consumer advocate Ralph Nader extended
their critique. Too many people consuming too many goods, they argued,
threaten the natural systems on which life depended. As if to vindicate the
critics, the postwar consumer order by the 1970s began to fail. At that time
scientists began to notice disturbing trends in global temperatures, increases
in polluted air and water, and rapid growing species extinctions.
12 The Creation of a Consumer Democracy

The political and cultural battles that erupted in the 1960s, environ-
mentalism prominent among them, would dominate the American public
agenda into the twenty-​first century. Other issues, such as civil rights, class
inequality, and the war in Vietnam, expanded into battles over gender and
sexuality, ethnic and racial identity, affirmative action, the imperial presi-
dency, nuclear arms and the Cold War, and the destruction of the environ-
ment. The United States entered an age of limits in which what had been
going up since World War II—​wages, employment, industrial productivity,
and America’s dominance as a hegemonic power—​went down, and what
was supposed to go down—​inflation, political divisiveness, and American
fear of foreign competition—​went up. Political and economic conservatives
challenged the Keynesian assumptions of the postwar order and especially
Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. No longer would they accept maximum
employment and regulation as the basis for activist government economic
policies. For them the control of inflation and wealth creation, promoted by
lower taxes and deregulation, should have top priority. Evangelical Christians
re-​entered the political fray from which they had been absent since the 1925
Scopes Trial in Dayton, Tennessee. They warned of a profound moral decay
inspired by a liberal media and a permissive culture. Historian Philip Jenkins
aptly described the period from 1975 to 1985 as “the Decade of Nightmares.”6
Perhaps, we should be amazed that the American consumer democ-
racy flourished as long as it did. The United States did become, as wartime
planners urged, a high-​wage, high-​consumption society striving toward
“maximum employment.” That abetted the growth of an affluent middle class
which, in turn, bred political stability and a broad consensus that Americans
enjoyed the world’s highest standard of living. All the same, every system, no
matter how robust, has a finite life expectancy, and America’s postwar con-
sumer democracy was no exception. It staggered through a series of busts
and booms in the 1970s into the early twenty-​first century before encoun-
tering several severe economic crises. Those crises, beginning with the col-
lapse of the dot.com bubble in 2000, the housing and credit bubble of 2008,
and the Covid-​19 pandemic in 2020, suggested that the United States’ ability
to sustain the model of economic growth and maximum employment it had
pursued since World War II was declining.
Social scientists identified a disorder of another kind, which they dubbed
“Affluenza.” By that they meant, “a painful contagious, socially transmitted
condition of overload, debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from the dogged
pursuit of more.” It resulted in nonexistent savings, maxed-​out credit cards,
 Introduction 13

burdensome mortgages, and under-​funded retirement plans. The authors

of Affluenza suggested, “the commercialization of cradle to grave life in
America is making us all poorer in spirit, in security, in sense of belonging,
and in a wholesome environment.” As one popular adage asserted, “When in
doubt, shop.” Or consider that “he who dies with the most thing wins.” Come
weekends, Americans are more likely to find spiritual comfort at the mall
rather than the church, synagogue, or mosque of their choice.7
Affluenza has not been limited to consumers. By 2007 tax cuts, seemingly
endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and unchecked spending at almost all
levels of government created a mountain of public debt. Shrewd operators
of hedge funds and other financial institutions developed ways to turn debt
into money (and thereby even more debt). Longer-​term trends accounted
for much of this indebtedness. Between 1980 and 2008 consumer debt rose
from $355 million to $2.6 trillion—​at a rate faster than the economy grew.
Government debt grew with it. To fund that debt the United States borrowed
heavily from the rest of the world. The Chinese alone held massive reserves
in United States Treasury securities. And as US debt soared, the dollar
steadily lost value against other currencies such as the Euro and Japanese
yen. Those Americans who traveled abroad discovered how much less their
dollars could buy. Finally, in 2007 the nation’s financial system crashed as the
housing market collapsed and undermined the value of mortgage-​backed
securities based on rising real estate prices. Americans faced an economic
crisis that threatened to restore levels of unemployment and poverty not seen
since the Great Depression. Massive consumer and government debt raised
doubts that the “all-​consuming nation” could be restored to health.8
More ominously, as financial markets collapsed, the reality of global cli-
mate change could no longer be ignored as polar ice caps melted, sea levels
rose, coastal regions faced widespread flooding, and many species verged
on extinction. Al Gore, George Bush’s political rival from the 2000 election,
won an Oscar for his documentary An Inconvenient Truth, and a Nobel Peace
Prize for his tireless efforts to warn the United States and the world that the
time to address the threat of climate change was shrinking. That did not stop
Bush from putting the economy ahead of the environment. As one of his
first efforts to distance the United States from the environmental agenda and
notions of international governance, he repudiated the American commit-
ment to the 1997 Kyoto agreement on greenhouse gas emissions.
By 2009, newly elected president Barack Obama faced the ultimate di-
lemma for a nation of shoppers: How to revive a consumer economy without
14 The Creation of a Consumer Democracy

compounding the problem of global warming? Obama addressed that issue

head-​on in 2014 when he pledged the United States to join 144 nations to
meet the goals reached in the Paris Agreement on Climate. In addition,
he issued new regulations to extend gas mileage for autos, limit air pollu-
tion, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Donald Trump won the hearts,
minds, and votes of many conservatives who rejected Obama’s efforts to re-
duce the nation’s carbon footprint. They denied climate change and resented
government regulations designed to meet commitments to goals set in
Paris. Ultimately, in 2017, Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris
Agreement, much to the dismay of political leaders around the globe. Shortly
after, hurricanes Harvey and Irma, two of the most powerful storms ever re-
corded, devastated parts of Texas and Florida.
Climate change was only the most severe manifestation of looming eco-
logical disaster. Mountains of trash piled up in landfills no longer adequate
to handle all that consumers threw away. Much of that trash contained toxic
materials that leached into nearby ground water. Across the United States,
chemical discharges, acid rain, toxic metals, and other byproducts of the
mass consumer society tainted virtually all sources of fresh water. Mercury,
lead, and chemical discharges fouled the air. Soil erosion and suburban
sprawl combined to reduce the nation’s once seemingly unlimited agricul-
tural lands. Overfishing wiped out the stocks of most major food species. Out
in the Pacific Ocean, a mass of floating plastic garbage created a dead zone
twice the size of the state of Texas. These were the physical manifestations
of consumer excess on a massive scale, as standards of living rose around
the world.
What has gone wrong? How has the promise of the postwar era produced
these increasingly dystopian conditions? For one, postwar planners, business
and political leaders, and the average American failed to recognize certain
flaws in their promotion of an ever-​rising standard of living. In the stampede
to promote consumption, they might have wondered, when was enough,
enough? Creating wealth may have seemed like a social good, but to what
ends would Americans put that wealth? Was it enough to build bigger and
more gas-​guzzling cars and energy-​intensive houses? Might Americans not
imagine a society based more on non-​material measures of the good life?
Might they not have adopted a lifestyle that allowed them to tread more
lightly on the earth?
In reality, a minority of Americans, generally unheeded, raised just those
questions. Since the Puritan era, Jeremiahs as prophets of disaster have long
 Introduction 15

warned against the perils of worshiping Mammon. For them, the focus on
things of this world distracts from the worship of God. In the postwar era,
intellectuals developed a secular variation on this theme. They railed against
the corrupting influences of consumer capitalism, mass media, and adver-
tising. “Opposed to excessive commercialism and the consequences of chan-
ging patterns of comfort and luxury,” writes historian Daniel Horowitz, “they
proposed varying combinations of genuine work, self-​control, democracy,
public welfare, high culture, meaningful recreation, and authentic self-​
hood.” Some social critics and environmentalists such as Lewis Mumford
and Ralph Nader seemed intent on promoting a new secular Puritanism op-
posed to mass consumption. Others condemned capitalism for its manipu-
lation of consumer appetites to promote a wealth-​generating economy with
little regard for economic inequality or environmental destruction.9
Critics of postwar consumer democracy were generally muted in the 1940s
and 1950s, when McCarthyism made dissent both dangerous and unpop-
ular. The leveling effects of postwar prosperity subdued class-​based analysis,
as did an American cultural ideal of rugged individualism. In the 1960s and
1970s, dissenters translated those warnings into a body of ideas that have in-
formed public discourse over the last four decades. Their reservations about
our consumer democracy have fallen into three major categories: the failure
to eliminate or substantially mitigate persistent and often severe inequality;
the spiritual inadequacies of a materialistic society; and, most critically, the
environmental destructiveness of an energy-​intensive, mass-​consumption
economy that strives to “improve on nature.”
The All-​Consuming Nation follows those themes from the prosperous
postwar decades to the current era, when powerful evidence suggests that
our consumer democracy faces the consequences of its excesses in the dete-
riorating global environment. It identifies those points in the history of the
postwar era when other choices beckoned and when Americans could have
chosen to go down other roads. The triumph of consumer capitalism in the
postwar era accounts for both the prosperity that once brought political and
social stability and today’s economic inequality that has created growing
civic discord and political gridlock.
Creative destruction has been the defining characteristic of that consumer
capitalism. In the wake of the Great Depression, Harvard economist Joseph
Schumpeter noted that “the perennial gale of creative destruction” would
shape the evolution of advanced economic systems. Indeed, Schumpeter
believed it was “the essential fact about capitalism.” He wrote, “The same
16 The Creation of a Consumer Democracy

process of industrial mutation—​if I may use that biological term—​that in-

cessantly revolutionizes the economic system from within, incessantly de-
stroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one,” thrives on the belief
that new technologies generally improve on earlier ones and thereby gen-
erate more wealth and personal satisfaction. Think how much more flexible
and convenient cell phones are than the landlines they are replacing. Yet, it
once took vast numbers of operators and linemen to keep those landlines
working. What became of those workers when technology eliminated their
jobs? Apple, despite having a far higher market value than AT&T, employs
fewer people.
Schumpeter anticipated that some form of social democracy would con-
tain the excesses of capitalism’s destructive forces. The New Deal and Lyndon
Johnson’s Great Society did adopt a host of measures—​unemployment in-
surance, social security, unionization, Medicare and Medicaid—​to protect
workers when circumstances beyond their control took their livelihoods
away and their ability to consume. In the recent past we have seen many of
those protections eroded, and the inclination to extend them or provide new
ones, such as Obamacare, come under intense assault. So, too, have efforts
to protect the world from the destructive force of global warming. The All-​
Consuming Nation may have triumphed in the post–​World War II era, but by
examining past trends, we can better understand why the global community
needs another model to survive in the twenty-​first century.10
 1
Postwar Choices

Months after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the end of World
War II, troop ships from Europe and Asia swarmed into American harbors.
The soldiers on board, many of whom had been away for four years, were
eager to be home. For all their euphoria, they could not help but wonder what
they were coming home to. Would their wives and families welcome them
back? Where would they live? How would they live? What would they do
with their lives?
Wartime planners had those questions very much in mind when they
thought about the future. They remembered the aftermath of World War I,
when the government had no plan to convert the economy to peacetime pro-
duction. The military services discharged millions with little thought of how
they would readjust to civilian life. War industries shut down, in the process
leaving millions of workers unemployed. While it lasted only a few years, the
economic dislocation that followed had been troubling. Labor unrest and vi-
olence became widespread, until Warren Harding’s call for a return to “nor-
malcy” signaled a new era of political stability and economic prosperity. Ten
years later, when the economy collapsed, the nation faced the longest crisis
in its history. Despite the New Deal’s energetic tinkering with economic
planning, regulation, and social programs, only the onset of World War II
brought a sustained recovery.
Would the end of the government’s wartime spending bring back the
conditions of the 1930s? Would businesses restore the flow of consumer
goods Americans had missed once the United States entered World War II?
No one knew for sure, since business leaders, politicians, and economists
could never agree on what caused the Great Depression. All the same,
many Americans spent the war years thinking, not only about the cur-
rent conflagration, but also about what kind of society would emerge from
the war.

The All-​Consuming Nation. Mark H. Lytle, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2021.
DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197568255.003.0002
18 The Creation of a Consumer Democracy

From War to Peace

Franklin Roosevelt had addressed that concern in broad strokes. In January

1941, eleven months before Pearl Harbor, he announced the “four free-
doms”—​of speech and of worship and from fear and from want—​as prin-
ciples for which Americans stood. The following August, Roosevelt and
British prime minister Winston Churchill met secretly off the coast of
Newfoundland. There they agreed to what became known as the Atlantic
Charter—​a set of ideals that would serve as war aims. Neither nation would
seek territorial gains, and both recognized the right of all people to govern
themselves. To ward off the economic nationalism that aggravated depres-
sion conditions, they would lower trade barriers and improve global eco-
nomic cooperation in order to improve the welfare of all people. Since those
principles threatened the foundation of the British Empire, it is no surprise
that Churchill’s agreement was less than enthusiastic. Soviet premier Joseph
Stalin never even gave them lip service.
Obviously, Roosevelt planned for peace with his mind partially fixed on
what he learned from World War I and the recent depression disaster. As
he remarked to a radio audience in a Fireside Chat, the United States would
not triumph over fascism and militarism only to see its victorious soldiers
“demobilized into an environment of inflation and unemployment, to a place
on the bread line or on a corner selling apples.” Liberal disciples of the British
economist John Maynard Keynes thought the war had taught useful lessons
about the role of government in creating postwar prosperity. Having mobi-
lized the nation and its resources, as economist Robert Nathan commented,
“can we not mobilize our resources for peacetime consumption? If we can
build vast quantities of battleships, airplanes, guns, ammunition, tanks, and
other weapons to kill our enemies, can we not devote the same resources
after the war to building houses, automobiles, electrical devices, schools,
hospitals, and other goods so much needed to raise the standard of living
of all our people?” In essence, the key to a prosperous future was economic
growth, sustained by full employment, high wages, and mass consumption.
The United States would become a consumer democracy in which opportu-
nities for its citizens in the marketplace would have the same priority as tra-
ditional civil rights and liberties.1
Americans planned that consumer democracy around some widely
shared assumptions, though they often disagreed, sometimes bitterly, over
how to put their ideas into practice. Keynes framed an idea that became a
 Postwar Choices 19

Outside Detroit, Ford Motors operated the giant Willow Run bomber plant.
Wartime necessity drew many women into the industrial work force, and at
Willow Run they operated such machines as this Rockwell hardness tester
(left). The wages they earned supplemented family incomes and provided many
women with economic independence.
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-​DIG-​fsa-​8e11147

gospel for many postwar economists. “Consumption,” he asserted in his

General Theory, “is the sole end and object of all economic activity.” In
accepting that premise, planners determined that economic growth was
critical to the American way of life, a concept that included notions of per-
sonal liberty, democratic politics, and free enterprise capitalism. Rather than
improve living standards by dividing a limited economic pie, as socialists
were inclined to do, the United States would grow the pie. In that way, even
if inequalities persisted, the broad majority could look forward to a rising
levels of consumption. Liberals, heavily influenced by Keynes, saw mass con-
sumption, not mass production, as the driver of sustained economic growth.
Steady employment at high wages would give people the power to consume.
Many business leaders agreed, but unlike the Keynesians they saw the private
sector, not the government, as the key to mass consumption and economic
growth.2
20 The Creation of a Consumer Democracy

Planners also assumed that widespread homeownership would be cen-

tral to the new consumer society. As early as the 1920s, Herbert Hoover
had argued that a home of one’s own would be “the foundation of a sound
economy and social system.” Numerous New Deal programs sought to re-
alize that ideal, and at the end of World War II, Office of Price Administration
(OPA) director Chester Bowles made that case. Linking mass consumption
to economic growth, Bowles wrote, “In the construction industry lies per-
haps our greatest single opportunity, not only to correct our shocking lack
of decent homes, but to increase the purchasing power of our people.” New
homes, of course, meant increased demand for new appliances, furniture,
and household goods.3
World War II also restored American faith in the productivity of American
industry, as well as the inventive genius of the nation’s scientists and engin-
eers. Who could have imagined during the depression years that factories
in the United States would turn out materials to supply two major and sev-
eral secondary war theaters simultaneously, and still provide sufficient goods
to improve the standard of living at home? All the same, production never
kept up with domestic demand fueled by full employment and high wartime
wages. Workers poured much of their unspent earnings into war bonds and
other savings that would be available when industry resumed its domestic
production.
Much that Americans sought to consume would be new and improved
as the war accelerated technological development. The successful creation
of the atomic bomb confirmed American faith in the human capacity to
turn natural forces to human purposes. In the postwar era, nuclear energy
promised to became a source of cheap and clean energy. Other technolo-
gies clearly anticipated new consumer goods. Radar and sonar, for ex-
ample, could be applied to television, an evolving medium that promised
to transform broadcasting and popular culture. New designs for airplanes
made possible expanded commercial aviation, bringing transcontinental
and overseas travel within the reach of far more people. Plastics and other
synthetic materials could make clothing, building, and consumer goods
cheaper and more available. Hybrid seeds might lower costs and improve
production on the nation’s farms. And if insects threatened those crops, hy-
drocarbon pesticides such as DDT offered a solution superior to the chem-
icals it replaced. The first widespread use of penicillin gave doctors a major
weapon for fighting infectious diseases.
 Postwar Choices 21

No industry did more to demonstrate the superiority of American mass

production technologies than the automobile industry. During the war,
car production ceased, but the auto industry manufactured 20 percent of
all war goods, including millions of trucks and light vehicles such as the
Jeep that introduced Americans to off-​road recreational driving. As peace
approached, Americans yearned to revive their love affair with their cars.
Mass auto-​mobility freed car owners from dependence on public transporta-
tion. Such flexibility would allow real estate developers to build houses where
land was cheap, outside cities. In that way the dream of mass homeownership
and mass consumption were linked. Because the auto industry employed ei-
ther directly or indirectly about one out of every six workers and paid high
wages, it offered a model of how a full-​employment, mass-​consumption
economy could work.4
That economy would most certainly be dependent on cheap and plentiful
oil. During World War II, Petroleum Administrator for War Harold Ickes
pointed out that “about 60 percent, or nearly two out of every three tons,
of supplies sent to our expeditionary forces are oil.” The amount of oil the
military consumed defied simple description. A single armored battalion
burned 10,000 gallons of diesel fuel to move 100 miles. The US Fifth Fleet
consumed oil at the rate of 3.8 billion gallons per year. Such extravagant
consumption took a toll on American oil reserves as Americans supplied
some 80 percent of the Allies’ oil. Ickes wondered publicly if the United
States could “fuel another war?”5
That fear of looming oil shortages marked a sharp departure from the
1930s, when low prices and huge surpluses bedeviled the industry. It did not,
however, weaken the nations’ commitment to a hydrocarbon-​based energy
economy. Postwar planners never seriously discussed the possibility of de-
veloping alternative energy. Instead, they wondered where they would find
new sources of oil. All eyes pointed toward the Middle East, where petro-
leum geologists discovered vast untapped reserves. Questions then arose
over just who would develop those reserves—​the British or the Americans?
Would it be private oil companies or the US government? How would the
United States assure access to sufficient reserves to meet the nation’s future
needs? Ickes, for one, thought the government should buy an oil company
with Middle Eastern concessions, and go into the oil business. Private oilmen
and political conservatives viewed this idea as yet another dangerous step
toward socialism. Yet, both sides agreed with State Department economic
22 The Creation of a Consumer Democracy

adviser Herbert Feis, who stated, “Oil, enough oil within our certain grasp,
seemed ardently necessary for greatness and independence in the twentieth
century.” That need for foreign oil to power postwar consumerism as well as
to secure the national defense guaranteed that the United States would as-
sume a leading role in world affairs once the war ended.6
What kind of world that would be provoked considerable debate. The
United States had not gone to war against Italian Fascists, Nazis, and Japanese
militarists only to see other anti-​democratic or totalitarian states dominate
the international system. Roosevelt spelled out that determination in the
“Four Freedoms” and the Atlantic Charter. As the war progressed, it became
ever clearer that the United States could not promote democracy and free
enterprise if it retreated into its isolationist pre-​war stance. One diplomat
pointed out that the United States could not “be indifferent to the welfare
of any part of the world, no matter how remote, because sooner or later it
will affect our peace.” After all, before the war, few Americans worried about
events in Ethiopia, Indo-​China, or even Poland, yet aggression in those re-
mote places paved the American road to war.7
Conservatives of varying stripes gravitated between suspicion and out-
rage as they watched the president spin out his plans for the postwar world.
Former isolationists saw the United Nations as a Rooseveltian scheme
to create a world government that undermined American sovereignty.
Conservative anti-​communists believed that Stalin had a plan for world
domination. Roosevelt, surrounded by his leftist advisors, they feared, was
either too soft to deal forcefully with the Soviet dictator, or worse yet, was
plotting to sell out the United States and its freedoms. Some, such as the bel-
licose General George Patton, even urged a preemptive war to prevent the
Soviets from gaining a major foothold in Europe.
Out of those fears of the threat of Soviet ambitions, the Cold War came
to preoccupy policymakers in Washington every bit as much as the fear of
a postwar depression. Truman’s forceful response—​the Truman Doctrine,
the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Airlift, and more generally “containment”—​
confronted conservatives with a dilemma. Most profoundly despised the
idea of the “state” that they associated with tyranny, restrictions on individual
freedoms, censorship—​even mind-​control, and intrusive police agencies. As
anti-​statists, they railed against big government, high taxes, and economic
regulation they associated with the New Deal. Republicans sought to pro-
mote those ideas in order to recapture the White House, which Roosevelt
had denied them for four terms. Yet, they also wanted the government to root
 Postwar Choices 23

out subversion at home and create a military-​industrial complex sufficiently

powerful to wage Cold War abroad. To them, Stalin’s totalitarian commu-
nism was worse even than the evils of Hitler’s national socialism. As histo-
rian John Lukacs argued, these conservatives opposed socialism, but they
embraced nationalism that, like the Hitlerian kind, celebrated the “people” in
a tribal or clannish way.8
Harry Truman appreciated the contradiction between nationalism and
opposition to the state. “Our international policies and our domestic policies
are inseparable,” he observed. “Our foreign relations inevitably affect employ-
ment in the United States. Prosperity and depression in the United States just
as inevitably affect our relations with other nations of the world.” Truman’s
more conservative secretary of state, James Byrnes of South Carolina, struck
a pose somewhere between Truman and his conservative adversaries. “To
the extent that we are able to manage our domestic affairs successfully,” he
noted, “we shall win converts to our creed in every land.” As a result, Truman
preempted the conservative initiative to use Cold War politics as a path to the
White House. The United States under his watch would foster prosperity at
home, while it promoted democratic freedoms abroad.9

Full Employment

As peace approached, New Dealers worried less about the spread of com-
munism and more about promoting a full employment economy. In essence,
where conservatives rallied around nationalism, liberals promoted con-
sumer democracy. John Maynard Keynes gave them the tools they needed.
Before his path-​breaking work in the 1930s few economists understood the
workings of capitalism. None had an adequate explanation for the boom-​
and-​bust cycles that wreaked havoc on both business and labor. Traditional
economists saw investment and production as the key to a healthy economy.
If the government wanted to encourage prosperity, they recommended it
take steps that promoted investment in the private sector and adopt policies
that removed inefficiencies and bottlenecks from the economy. The liberal
Keynesians turned this model upside down. They believed that “full em-
ployment” provided the path to a new age of abundance. The government
should focus its attention on creating demand by assuring “continuous full
employment” at high wages. Once possessed of purchasing power, American
workers would stimulate production through increased demand. Or, as one
24 The Creation of a Consumer Democracy

planner put it, “the job of the future will be to build up mass consumption
great enough to use this mass production.”10
Among the more aggressive liberal Keynesians, Alvin Hansen offered
a set of prescriptions to achieve a “high-​consumption” economy in which
consumers, rather than producers, would be key to economic growth. For
Hansen, the government had a vital, though limited role to play to “ensure
and underwrite an adequate volume of purchasing power and effective de-
mand,” essential for “the growth and expansion of private enterprise.” Social
welfare programs, public works, public housing, as well as loans to foreign
governments and to private businesses, would all help to sustain a healthy
economy. More important, and with an obvious nod to Keynes, Hansen
believed that whenever the private economy faltered, the government
should step in with deficit spending to stimulate demand. “We cannot in this
country change the propensity to consume rapidly enough to achieve full
employment without a considerable volume of loan expenditure by the gov-
ernment,” Hansen argued.11
A mixture of “faith and fear” underlay Hansen’s case for full employment.
Hansen was confident the government could adjust taxing and spending to
keep the economy growing. He feared that if the government failed to use
those powers, the soup kitchens and armies of the unemployed would return.
Overall, however, he was confident that wartime prosperity could continue
in the future without restrictions on free enterprise and “within the frame-
work of a free market.”
The National Resources Planning Board (NRPB) similarly advocated for
government action to make sure that jobs existed “for all who are willing and
able to work.” Before conservatives killed the Board in 1943, it issued a report
that called for a vast increase in programs that aimed to protect those suf-
fering through no fault of their own: the unemployed, disabled, and elderly.
Support for education and public health would be vital as well. Like Hansen,
the NRPB believed that these government programs were the best means to
guarantee a full-​employment economy, because “the unemployment com-
pensation systems, suitably amended, offer a speedy and almost automati-
cally operating mechanism for distributing funds for those who will spend
them.” The NRPB thereby linked two elements of its postwar planning—​
generous welfare state benefits and a full-​employment economy.12
These ideas received a warm reception in the White House. In his 1944 State
of the Union message, Franklin Roosevelt called for a second Bill of Rights
“under which a new basis for security and prosperity can be established for
 Postwar Choices 25

all.” Roosevelt’s vision expanded his Four Freedoms. It included “useful and
remunerative employment,” sufficient earnings for adequate food, clothing,
and leisure; a business world free from the suffocating hand of monopolies;
decent housing for every family; security in the face of old age, sickness, un-
employment, or debilitating injury; and a good education. “All of these rights
spell security,” Roosevelt told Congress, “And after this war is won we must
be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to the
new goals of happiness and well-​being.” No one more forcefully made the
connection of consumerism to full employment and the rights of citizens to
economic security and personal well-​being.
Most conservatives supported the idea of consumer-​driven prosperity, but
they shuddered at the specter of an expanded role for government to achieve
it. Despite their defense of personal and economic freedoms, many did sup-
port one of the most expansive and generous programs for extending gov-
ernment benefits: the GI Bill of Rights. In October 1943, President Roosevelt
sent Congress a message recommending a broad array of benefits for vet-
erans, though no specific legislation. Planning of the particulars took place
in the War Department, the NRPB, and, especially, the American Legion, a
conservative veterans’ lobbying organization. All seemed to agree on a broad
program covering jobs, healthcare, finances, and education.
In early 1944 the American Legion offered a blueprint for what Congress
called the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, or what the Legion referred to
as the GI Bill of Rights. The provisions reflected many of the welfare and
employment goals the NRPB recommended and Roosevelt endorsed.
Conservatives supported the bill because it was limited to veterans and,
hence, not a blueprint for an expanded welfare state. More important, it was
extremely popular with the public who would be voting in the 1944 national
election. About the only objection in Congress came from Representative
John Rankin, a diehard segregationist, who worried that 50,000 Mississippi
Negroes would use their benefits “to remain unemployed for at least a year.”
The act that Congress passed offered veterans both protection from po-
tential economic uncertainty after the war and a path into good jobs and
the middle class. It did not promise jobs, but gave veterans preference in
gaining work, plus occupational guidance and unemployment benefits while
they looked. A new government agency, the Veterans Administration (VA),
would have authority to guarantee loans that allowed veterans to start small
businesses, buy a farm, or purchase a home of their own. Homeownership
ranked among the highest aspirations Americans had expressed during the
26 The Creation of a Consumer Democracy

war. Finally, the bill recognized that education and job training were crit-
ical to fruitful employment. So Congress provided tuition payments and
living allowances so that former GIs could learn a trade, finish high school,
or pursue higher education. Later amendments added healthcare to the
bill’s provisions. These were benefits that liberals would have given to all
Americans; conservatives would tolerate such largesse only for those who
had served their nation. Segregationists sympathetic to John Rankin tried
but failed to make skin color an additional criterion.13
Since the GI Bill limited its benefits solely to veterans, the liberal Keynesians
saw a “full employment” bill as an additional way to secure the purchasing
power essential to a postwar consumer democracy. Conservatives wel-
comed that consumer democracy only so long as the private sector had a free
hand to determine production, employment, and wages. To them, welfare
benefits and high wages raised the specter of inflation, so they preferred tax
cuts and deregulation as safer means to promote consumption. The standoff
between liberal New Dealers, who by now were almost all Keynesians, and
conservatives, who clung to the idea of unfettered free markets, triggered
a battle that limited, but did not eliminate, the role that government would
play in the postwar growth of the consumer economy.14
Staunchest support for a “full employment” bill came from lib-
eral Democrats, union leaders, especially the Congress of Industrial
Organization’s (CIO) Political Action Committee, and progressive elements
in agriculture such as the National Farmers Union (NFU). Those liberals
were almost all Democrats. Many other Democrats, the majority from the
South, seldom supported New Deal–​style reforms like the full employ-
ment bill. They formed an informal coalition with anti-​statist conservatives
in the Republican Party that became the majority in Congress for much of
the postwar era. That union made the ideological differences within the two
parties deeper than the differences between them. Legislation succeeded less
often along party lines than by building bipartisan majorities.
In January 1945 the Senate began to consider an employment bill bowing
to conservatives by endorsing “free competitive enterprise,” but declaring
that “all Americans able to work and seeking work have a right to a useful
and remunerative jobs,” and then adding, “it is essential that continuing
full employment be maintained in the United States.” Under the terms of
the bill, each year the president would provide an estimate of the number
of jobs necessary to sustain full employment. Whenever it appeared that
the private sector failed to generate sufficient jobs, the government would
 Postwar Choices 27

engage in Keynesian countercyclical fiscal policies of loans, spending, and

public works to create the desired employment levels. With a carrot, liberal
supporters promised that this proposal offered “a firm assurance that unem-
ployment will never again be permitted to become a national problem”; and
with a stick, warned that it was “probably our only alternative to an otherwise
irresistible drift toward real socialism.”15
Conservatives were unimpressed with either the carrot or the stick. They
agreed unemployment was an issue, but not one they believed the govern-
ment should have power to address. Some warned darkly of the huge bu-
reaucracy that would produce jobs, determine who would get them, and
force people to take work they did not want. Supporters of the bill under-
stood that full employment was an ideal to which they aspired, not a practical
reality. They substituted the phrase “maximum employment” to soften the
opposition. That did not address the concern of conservatives who feared the
expense and inflationary potential of high wages. Some employers worried
that high wages would prevent them from hiring workers for non-​skilled
jobs. Finally, numerous conservatives did not buy into the new Keynesian
paradigm of government deficits. To them, deficit spending was another ruse
to grow the government and especially the power of the executive branch.
Conservatives ultimately succeeded in killing the Full Employment Act
of 1945. One year later a much weaker bill, now retitled the Employment
Act of 1946, emerged from Congress. The provisions of the bill were so ge-
neral as to be virtually meaningless. They required nothing concrete from
the federal government other than a commitment in principle to promote
conditions “under which there will be afforded useful employment for those
able, willing, and seeking to work, and to promote maximum employment,
production, and purchasing power.” The only tangible provision of the bill
established the Council of Economic Advisors to provide the president with
policy recommendations to promote “employment, production, and pur-
chasing power,” though the president had no obligation to adopt the council’s
recommendations. Some disappointed liberals saw the bill as a symbol of
growing impotence in the face of the powerful congressional coalition of
conservative Republicans and Southern Democrats. Others believed the
bill had established a vital Keynesian principle—​a government with definite
responsibilities to promote full employment and consumption.16
Union workers stood to be beneficiaries of the full-​employment concept
and had thus been in the vanguard of the postwar project for a consumer
democracy. With few exceptions, their leaders rejected socialism and were
28 The Creation of a Consumer Democracy

generally anti-​communist. The war had been good for their cause. Under the
guiding hand of the War Labor Board, unions won new powers over labor
contracts. Membership grew by over 40 percent during the war years, so that
in 1945 almost 15 million workers held union cards. As peace approached,
unions sought to consolidate their gains and make further advances in wages
and working conditions. In 1944, thousands of grassroots strikes interrupted
war production. This activism produced some gains, but it also hardened the
determination of conservatives to curtail the power of labor.
The gauntlet was thrown once the war came to an end. Peacetime meant
layoffs, shorter hours, and an end to much overtime pay. Rather than rising,
wages fell by about 30 percent, while postwar inflation pushed consumer
prices upward. Workers, angered by their loss of purchasing power, walked
off the job from coast to coast. Such unrest proved a political headache for
Harry Truman. Labor unrest, he complained, “hampered the return to
peacetime production.” The problem became even more severe in 1946. Over
the course of the year, the worst in the history of labor-​management conflict,
almost 5,000 walkouts idled some 4.6 million workers.
A strike by railroad workers posed a particular threat to postwar reconver-
sion. In May 1946, A. F. Whitney and Alvanley Johnson visited Harry Truman
at the White House. These two, old drinking buddies of the president, led
the most powerful railroad labor unions. Truman thought they were on the
verge of an agreement to avoid a crippling national railway strike. When
Whitney and Johnson told him the agreement was dead, Truman shouted,
“If you think I’m going to sit here and let you tie up this whole country, you’re
crazy as hell.” “We’ve got to go through with this,” Whitney replied. “Our men
are demanding it.” Truman warned that if they failed to reach an agreement
within forty-​eight hours, the government would take over the railroads.
Battle on!
Despite Truman’s threat, the railway workers struck. Seldom in the nation’s
history had a president been so outraged. Truman wrote a speech asking for
legislation authorizing him to draft striking workers into the military, if a
walkout created a national emergency. He planned a radio address in which
he intended to lambaste “effete union leaders” who he suggested had ties to
communism. And in what must rank as one of the most hyperbolic bits of
presidential rhetoric, Truman planned to close by saying, “Let’s put trans-
portation and production back to work, hang a few traitors, and make our
country safe for democracy.” With such a friend in the White House, labor
need not look far for enemies. More temperate aides persuaded Truman to
 Postwar Choices 29

revise the speech, but he still insisted on congressional action to authorize

him to draft strikers. Even as he was addressing Congress, union leaders
agreed to end the strike on terms he had proposed, and Truman dropped his
request for legislation. The White House called it a major victory. Liberals
and labor leaders disagreed. The New Republic called Truman’s request to
Congress the “most vicious piece of anti-​union legislation ever introduced by
an American president.”17
A deep fissure had opened in the liberal–​New Deal coalition. Labor’s
postwar truculence achieved little beyond increased enmity on Capitol Hill.
There, a coalition of business-​oriented Republicans and anti-​union Southern
Democrats were determined to strike a blow against what they called “Big
Labor.” They combined in 1947 to produce the Taft-​Hartley bill. For Senator
Robert Taft, son of former president William Howard Taft, the battle against
“Big Labor” was a crucial step toward what he hoped would be his nomina-
tion as the GOP’s candidate for the White House. Popularly known as “Mr.
Conservative,” Taft had been a staunch foe of the New Deal and creeping
socialism, and, as a non-​interventionist, an outspoken foe of American in-
volvement in World War II.
Popular and congressional opinion favored Taft in his battle against
unions. Striking at the heart of their power, his bill banned “closed shops”
in which new workers were required to belong to a union as a condition
of employment. Another section allowed states to outlaw “union shops”
in which workers were required to join unions soon after they were hired.
More troubling to labor, the bill empowered the president to acquire a court
order mandating an eighty-​day “cooling off ” period, if a judge determined a
strike threatened the national interest. And in the spirit of the growing red
scare, the bill required all union leaders to sign an affidavit swearing they
were not communists. Management faced no similar requirement. Those
unions in which leaders refused to sign lost access to the NLRB, whose past
interventions had protected union organizing from a wide array of hostile
management tactics. Union leaders damned Taft-​Hartley as a “slave labor”
act, and Truman, eager to mend fences, vetoed it. Both the House and the
Senate then overrode his veto by comfortable margins.18
Successful passage of Taft-​Hartley marked the beginning of a long, slow
decline for union organizing. A number of factors influenced that decline.
For one, New Deal liberalism and the push for a more energetic state inter-
vention in the economy declined as prosperity returned. For another, pro-
gressive management more readily accepted a partnership with labor and
30 The Creation of a Consumer Democracy

thereby undercut the case for union militancy. Auto manufacturers, for ex-
ample, increasingly saw well-​paid workers as among their most loyal con-
sumers. Further, with demand for cars strong, the industry could ill afford
protracted labor disputes. A number of key industries such as steel and
mining, with especially strong unions, faced falling employment, in some
cases because of new technologies and in others because of shifts in demand.
In transportation, electric power, and home heating, for example, oil and
natural gas increasingly became the fossil fuel of choice. Production and re-
fining of petroleum were far less labor intensive than coal mining. Finally,
white-​collar workers who were less likely to be unionized dominated the
major growth areas in the postwar economy: education, healthcare, and
government.

Consumer Consciousness

The person most central to the transition from wartime to civilian pro-
duction was OPA director Chester Bowles. It is hard to imagine a person
better equipped to understand the dynamics of a consumer democracy
than Bowles. After graduating from Yale in 1924, Bowles joined with class-
mate William Benton to create the advertising firm Benton and Bowles. The
middle of the Great Depression seemed an unlikely moment to launch a new
agency, but their timing could not have been better. Battered consumer-​
goods companies often changed ad agencies as a way to buoy plummeting
sales. Benton and Bowles in response created a number of radio-​based soap
operas and comic strip “situation copy.” The firm also pioneered techniques
in “product research and consumer studies,” or what is now thought of as
market research. Surveys of consumer preferences allowed Benton and
Bowles to design ads targeted at wants and needs that the consumers them-
selves had identified.19
Bowles never felt at home in what critics often dismissed as the “ad
game.” He left Benton and Bowles in 1941 for a long career in public service.
In 1943 Roosevelt appointed him to head the OPA, established to control
wartime inflation through its power to set limits on both prices and wages.
Bowles brought a pro-​consumer bias to the agency. He created a Consumer
Advisory Committee, staffed with consumer advocates, and appointed a
woman to head the Office of Consumer Relations Advisor. With a limited
staff and a huge directive to manage the consumer economy, Bowles turned
 Postwar Choices 31

to volunteers. Close to 200,000 people across the country served on local

boards, and some 3 million people stepped in to help when OPA distributed
rationing books.20
Active participation in the war effort nurtured, as Bowles understood it
would, a growing consumer consciousness as ordinary citizens combined to
promote the war effort by fighting waste and inflation. Responsible consump-
tion became patriotic behavior. Americans took “The Consumer’s Pledge for
Total Defense” and the “Ten Commandments for Consumers.” They vowed
to obey OPA restrictions on rents, prices, and rationing. And when they
saw cheating, they reported it to the authorities. In addition, they planted
“Victory Gardens,” canned homegrown fruits and vegetables, became “Uncle
Sam’s Scrappers” and “Tin Can Colonels,” and donated raincoats and hot
water bottles to scrap rubber drives. The chorus to the Consumer’s Pledge
Song (sung to the tune of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”) promised,

I will be a wise consumer,

Gladly do so with good humor,
That’s the way to win the sooner
To Peace and Victory!

Bowles recognized that to succeed the OPA had to nurture a common sense
of sacrifice. Rather than keep up with the Joneses, patriotic consumers would
keep down with the Joneses. The system of rationing would also have to be
fair. Cheating, black marketeering, and unequal access to coveted goods
would destroy the sense of shared sacrifice. Roosevelt himself justified the
OPA’s rationing program “so that scarce goods, may be distributed fairly
among consumers and not merely in accordance with financial ability to pay
high prices for them.” Opinion polls showed that Bowles had hit the right
note. Consumers understood the need for rationing and valued the sense of
participation in the war effort.21
As the agency asserted its authority, it became a lightning rod for attacks
on big government. Business leaders and conservatives, seeing OPA as so-
cialism run amok, lay in wait to dismantle it at the first opportunity. Business
owners charged that OPA bureaucrats set prices too low and wages too high
and thereby deprived them of their rightful profits. Their fears of OPA as a
growing bureaucratic monster were heightened when consumer advocates
in the agency, with Bowles’s support, tried to impose quality standards as well
as rationing. These advocates proposed labels that graded canned goods so
32 The Creation of a Consumer Democracy

Movie and theater star Judy Canova, like many celebrities, supported the war
effort through drives to collect vital materials such as steel and rubber. Canova
donated her slingshot to the drive. Such gestures were often more symbolic
than essential, since synthetic rubber soon replaced the natural rubber in short
supply.
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-​USE6-​D-​006089

that consumers could comparison-​shop and know the condition of the goods
they pulled off the shelves. The National Canners Association denounced the
proposal as a “war” in which “our system of private enterprise is at stake.”
Consumers complained about shortages of restricted goods ranging from
meat to shoes to rayon stockings and gasoline. Congress agreed and passed
legislation prohibiting the OPA from imposing the labeling requirement.22
Bowles turned some of his attention to the factor he saw at the very heart
of the postwar consumer democracy: housing. The shortage of adequate
homes at affordable prices, he believed, posed the single major obstacle to
successful reconversion. “Today nearly 50 percent of all our homes are in
need of replacement or major repairs,” he observed. “Yet at the close of 1945,
there were 1.25 million families doubled up with relatives or friends—​that
means at least 2.5 million families living in cramped quarters.” Bowles saw
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enabled him to win the magic mead (cf. stanzas 104–110).
Concerning Othrörir, here used as the name of the vessel containing
the mead, cf. stanza 107 and note.

143. This and the following stanza belong together, and in many
editions appear as a single stanza. They presumably come from
some lost poem on the authorship of the runes. Lines 2 and 3 follow
line 4 in the manuscript; the transposition was suggested by Bugge.
The king of singers: Othin. The magic signs (runes) were commonly
carved in wood, then colored red. [62]

144. Dain and Dvalin: dwarfs; cf. Voluspo, 14, and note. Dain,
however, may here be one of the elves rather than the dwarf of that
name. The two names also appear together in Grimnismol, 33,
where they are applied to two of the four harts that nibble at the
topmost twigs of Yggdrasil. Alsvith (“the All-Wise”) appears nowhere
else as a giant’s name. Myself: Othin. We have no further
information concerning the list of those who wrote the runes for the
various races, and these four lines seem like a confusion of names
in the rather hazy mind of some reciter.

145. This Malahattr stanza appears to be a regular religious formula,

concerned less with the runes which one “writes” and “tints” (cf.
stanza 79) than with the prayers which one “asks” and the sacrifices
which one “offers” and “sends.” Its origin is wholly uncertain, but it is
clearly an interpolation here. In the manuscript the phrase
“knowest?” is abbreviated after the first line. [63]

146. This stanza as translated here follows the manuscript reading,

except in assuming a gap between lines 3 and 5. In Vigfusson and
Powell’s Corpus Poeticum Boreale the first three lines have
somehow been expanded into eight. The last two lines are almost
certainly misplaced; Bugge suggests that they belong at the end of
stanza 144. Thund: another name for Othin. When home he came:
presumably after obtaining the runes as described in stanzas 139
and 140.
147. With this stanza begins the Ljothatal, or list of charms. The
magic songs themselves are not given, but in each case the peculiar
application of the charm is explained. The passage, which is
certainly approximately complete as far as it goes, runs to the end of
the poem. In the manuscript and in most editions line 4 falls into two
half-lines, running:

“In sickness and pain | and every sorrow.”

[64]

148. Second, etc., appear in the manuscript as Roman numerals.

The manuscript indicates no gap after line 2.

152. The sending of a root with runes written thereon was an

excellent way of causing death. So died the Icelandic hero Grettir the
Strong. [65]

156. House-riders: witches, who ride by night on the roofs of houses,

generally in the form of wild beasts. Possibly one of the last two lines
is spurious.

157. The last line looks like an unwarranted addition, and line 4 may
likewise be spurious.

158. Lines 4–5 are probably expanded from a single line. [66]

159. The sprinkling of a child with water was an established custom

long before Christianity brought its conception of baptism.

161. This stanza, according to Müllenhoff, was the original

conclusion of the poem, the phrase “a fifteenth” being inserted only
after stanzas 162–165 had crept in. Delling: a seldom mentioned god
who married Not (Night). Their son was Dag (Day). Thjothrörir: not
mentioned elsewhere. Hroptatyr: Othin. [67]
163. Some editors have combined these two lines with stanza 164.
Others have assumed that the gap follows the first half-line, making
“so that—from me” the end of the stanza.

164. This stanza is almost certainly an interpolation, and seems to

have been introduced after the list of charms and the Loddfafnismol
(stanzas 111–138) were combined in a single poem, for there is no
other apparent excuse for the reference to Loddfafnir at this point.
The words “if thou mightest get them” are a conjectural emendation.

165. This stanza is almost totally obscure. The third and fourth lines
look like interpolations. [68]
[Contents]
VAFTHRUTHNISMOL
 The Ballad of Vafthruthnir
[Contents]

Introductory Note
The Vafthruthnismol follows the Hovamol in the Codex Regius. From
stanza 20 on it is also included in the Arnamagnæan Codex, the first
part evidently having appeared on a leaf now lost. Snorri quotes
eight stanzas of it in the Prose Edda, and in his prose text closely
paraphrases many others.

The poem is wholly in dialogue form except for a single narrative

stanza (stanza 5). After a brief introductory discussion between Othin
and his wife, Frigg, concerning the reputed wisdom of the giant
Vafthruthnir, Othin, always in quest of wisdom, seeks out the giant,
calling himself Gagnrath. The giant immediately insists that they
shall demonstrate which is the wiser of the two, and propounds four
questions (stanzas 11, 13, 15, and 17), each of which Othin
answers. It is then the god’s turn to ask, and he begins with a series
of twelve numbered questions regarding the origins and past history
of life. These Vafthruthnir answers, and Othin asks five more
questions, this time referring to what is to follow the destruction of
the gods, the last one asking the name of his own slayer. Again
Vafthruthnir answers, and Othin finally propounds the unanswerable
question: “What spake Othin himself in the ears of his son, ere in the
bale-fire he burned?” Vafthruthnir, recognizing his questioner as
Othin himself, admits his inferiority in wisdom, and so the contest
ends.

The whole poem is essentially encyclopædic in character, and thus

was particularly useful to Snorri in his preparation of the Prose Edda.
The encyclopædic poem with a slight narrative outline seems to
have been exceedingly popular; the Grimnismol and the much later
Alvissmol represent different phases of the same type. The
Vafthruthnismol and Grimnismol together, indeed, constitute a fairly
complete dictionary of Norse mythology. There has been much
discussion as to the probable date of the Vafthruthnismol, but it
appears to belong to about the same period as the Voluspo: in other
words, the middle of the tenth century. While there may be a few
interpolated passages in the poem as we now have it, it is clearly a
united whole, and evidently in relatively good condition.

[Contents]

[69]

Othin spake:

1. “Counsel me, Frigg, | for I long to fare,

And Vafthruthnir fain would find;
In wisdom old | with the giant wise
Myself would I seek to match.”

Frigg spake:

2. “Heerfather here | at home would I keep,

Where the gods together dwell;
Amid all the giants | an equal in might
 To Vafthruthnir know I none.”

Othin spake:

3. “Much have I fared, | much have I found,

Much have I got from the gods;
And fain would I know | how Vafthruthnir now
Lives in his lofty hall.”

Frigg spake:

4. “Safe mayst thou go, | safe come again,

And safe be the way thou wendest!
Father of men, | let thy mind be keen
When speech with the giant thou seekest.”

5. The wisdom then | of the giant wise [70]

Forth did he fare to try;
He found the hall | of the father of Im,
And in forthwith went Ygg.

Othin spake:

6. “Vafthruthnir, hail! | to thy hall am I come,

For thyself I fain would see;
And first would I ask | if wise thou art,
Or, giant, all wisdom hast won.”

Vafthruthnir spake:
7. “Who is the man | that speaks to me,
Here in my lofty hall?
Forth from our dwelling | thou never shalt fare,
Unless wiser than I thou art.”

Othin spake:

8. “Gagnrath they call me, | and thirsty I come

From a journey hard to thy hall;
Welcome I look for, | for long have I fared,
And gentle greeting, giant.”

Vafthruthnir spake:

9. “Why standest thou there | on the floor whilst

thou speakest?
A seat shalt thou have in my hall; [71]
Then soon shall we know | whose knowledge is
more,
The guest’s or the sage’s gray.”

Othin spake:

10. “If a poor man reaches | the home of the rich,

Let him wisely speak or be still;
For to him who speaks | with the hard of heart
Will chattering ever work ill.”

Vafthruthnir spake:
11. “Speak forth now, Gagnrath, | if there from the
floor
Thou wouldst thy wisdom make known:
What name has the steed | that each morn anew
The day for mankind doth draw?”

Othin spake:

12. “Skinfaxi is he, | the steed who for men

The glittering day doth draw;
The best of horses | to heroes he seems,
And brightly his mane doth burn.”

Vafthruthnir spake:

13. “Speak forth now, Gagnrath, | if there from the

floor [72]
Thou wouldst thy wisdom make known:
What name has the steed | that from East anew
Brings night for the noble gods?”

Othin spake:

14. “Hrimfaxi name they | the steed that anew

Brings night for the noble gods;
Each morning foam | from his bit there falls,
And thence come the dews in the dales.”

Vafthruthnir spake:
15. “Speak forth now, Gagnrath, | if there from the
floor
Thou wouldst thy wisdom make known:
What name has the river | that ’twixt the realms
Of the gods and the giants goes?”

Othin spake:

16. “Ifing is the river | that ’twixt the realms

Of the gods and the giants goes;
For all time ever | open it flows,
No ice on the river there is.”

Vafthruthnir spake:

17. “Speak forth now, Gagnrath, | if there from the

floor [73]
Thou wouldst thy wisdom make known:
What name has the field | where in fight shall meet
Surt and the gracious gods?”

Othin spake:

18. “Vigrith is the field | where in fight shall meet

Surt and the gracious gods;
A hundred miles | each way does it measure,
And so are its boundaries set.”

Vafthruthnir spake:
19. “Wise art thou, guest! | To my bench shalt thou
go,
In our seats let us speak together;
Here in the hall | our heads, O guest,
hall we wager our wisdom upon.”

Othin spake:

20. “First answer me well, | if thy wisdom avails,

And thou knowest it, Vafthruthnir, now:
In earliest time | whence came the earth,
Or the sky, thou giant sage?”

[74]

Vafthruthnir spake:

21. “Out of Ymir’s flesh | was fashioned the earth,

And the mountains were made of his bones;
The sky from the frost-cold | giant’s skull,
And the ocean out of his blood.”

Othin spake:

22. “Next answer me well, | if thy wisdom avails,

And thou knowest it, Vafthruthnir, now:
Whence came the moon, | o’er the world of men
That fares, and the flaming sun?”
Vafthruthnir spake:

23. “Mundilferi is he | who begat the moon,

And fathered the flaming sun;
The round of heaven | each day they run,
To tell the time for men.”

Othin spake:

24. “Third answer me well, | if wise thou art called,

If thou knowest it, Vafthruthnir, now:
Whence came the day, | o’er mankind that fares,
Or night with the narrowing moon?”

[75]

Vafthruthnir spake:

25. “The father of day | is Delling called,

And the night was begotten by Nor;
Full moon and old | by the gods were fashioned,
To tell the time for men.”

Othin spake:

26. “Fourth answer me well, | if wise thou art

called,
If thou knowest it, Vafthruthnir, now:
Whence did winter come, | or the summer warm,
 First with the gracious gods?”

Vafthruthnir spake:

27. “Vindsval he was | who was winter’s father,

And Svosuth summer begat;”
. . . . . . . . | . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

[76]

Othin spake:

28. “Fifth answer me well, | if wise thou art called,

If thou knowest it, Vafthruthnir, now:
What giant first | was fashioned of old,
And the eldest of Ymir’s kin?”

Vafthruthnir spake:

29. “Winters unmeasured | ere earth was made

Was the birth of Bergelmir;
Thruthgelmir’s son | was the giant strong,
And Aurgelmir’s grandson of old.”

Othin spake:

30. “Sixth answer me well, | if wise thou art called,

If thou knowest it, Vafthruthnir, now:
Whence did Aurgelmir come | with the giants’ kin,
Long since, thou giant sage?”

Vafthruthnir spake:

31. “Down from Elivagar | did venom drop,

And waxed till a giant it was; [77]
And thence arose | our giants’ race,
And thus so fierce are we found.”

Othin spake:

32. “Seventh answer me well, | if wise thou art

called,
If thou knowest it, Vafthruthnir, now:
How begat he children, | the giant grim,
Who never a giantess knew?”

Vafthruthnir spake:

33. “They say ’neath the arms | of the giant of ice

Grew man-child and maid together;
And foot with foot | did the wise one fashion
A son that six heads bore.”

Othin spake:

34. “Eighth answer me well, | if wise thou art

called,
 If thou knowest it, Vafthruthnir, now:
What farthest back | dost thou bear in mind?
For wide is thy wisdom, giant!”

[78]

Vafthruthnir spake:

35. “Winters unmeasured | ere earth was made

Was the birth of Bergelmir;
This first knew I well, | when the giant wise
In a boat of old was borne.”

Othin spake:

36. “Ninth answer me well, | if wise thou art called,

If thou knowest it, Vafthruthnir, now:
Whence comes the wind | that fares o’er the
waves
Yet never itself is seen?”

Vafthruthnir spake:

37. “In an eagle’s guise | at the end of heaven

Hræsvelg sits, they say;
And from his wings | does the wind come forth
To move o’er the world of men.”

Othin spake:
38. “Tenth answer me now, | if thou knowest all
The fate that is fixed for the gods: [79]
Whence came up Njorth | to the kin of the gods,—
(Rich in temples | and shrines he rules,—)
Though of gods he was never begot?”

Vafthruthnir spake:

39. “In the home of the Wanes | did the wise ones
create him,
And gave him as pledge to the gods;
At the fall of the world | shall he fare once more
Home to the Wanes so wise.”

Othin spake:

40. “Eleventh answer me well, | . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . .
What men . . . . . . | in . . . . . . home
Each day to fight go forth?”

Vafthruthnir spake:

41. “The heroes all | in Othin’s hall

Each day to fight go forth; [80]
They fell each other, | and fare from the fight
All healed full soon to sit.”

Othin spake:
42. “Twelfth answer me now | how all thou
knowest
Of the fate that is fixed for the gods;
Of the runes of the gods | and the giants’ race
The truth indeed dost thou tell,
(And wide is thy wisdom, giant!)”

Vafthruthnir spake:

43. “Of the runes of the gods | and the giants’ race
The truth indeed can I tell,
(For to every world have I won;)
To nine worlds came I, | to Niflhel beneath,
The home where dead men dwell.”

Othin spake:

44. “Much have I fared, | much have I found,

Much have I got of the gods:
What shall live of mankind | when at last there
comes
The mighty winter to men?”

Vafthruthnir spake:

45. “In Hoddmimir’s wood | shall hide themselves

Lif and Lifthrasir then; [81]
The morning dews | for meat shall they have,
 Such food shall men then find.”

Othin spake:

46. “Much have I fared, | much have I found,

Much have I got of the gods:
Whence comes the sun | to the smooth sky back,
When Fenrir has snatched it forth?”

Vafthruthnir spake:

47. “A daughter bright | Alfrothul bears

Ere Fenrir snatches her forth;
Her mother’s paths | shall the maiden tread
When the gods to death have gone.”

Othin spake:

48. “Much have I fared, | much have I found,

Much have I got of the gods:
What maidens are they, | so wise of mind,
That forth o’er the sea shall fare?”

[82]

Vafthruthnir spake:

49. “O’er Mogthrasir’s hill | shall the maidens pass,

And three are their throngs that come;
They all shall protect | the dwellers on earth,
Though they come of the giants’ kin.”

Othin spake:

50. “Much have I fared, | much have I found,

Much have I got of the gods:
Who then shall rule | the realm of the gods,
When the fires of Surt have sunk?”

Vafthruthnir spake:

51. “In the gods’ home Vithar | and Vali shall dwell,
When the fires of Surt have sunk;
Mothi and Magni | shall Mjollnir have
When Vingnir falls in fight.”

Othin spake:

52. “Much have I fared, | much have I found,

Much have I got of the gods: [83]
What shall bring the doom | of death to Othin,
When the gods to destruction go?”

Vafthruthnir spake:

53. “The wolf shall fell | the father of men,

And this shall Vithar avenge;
The terrible jaws | shall he tear apart,