The Rise of Consumer Capitalism in America, 1880 - 1930 2017051558, 9781138225466, 9781315399669

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The Rise of Consumer Capitalism in America, 1880–1930

This book offers a genealogical account of the rise of consumer capitalism, tracing its origins in America between 1880 and 1930 and explaining how it emerged to become the dominant form of social organization of our time. Asking how it was that we came to be consumers who live in societies that revolve around an ever-spinning circle of production and consumption, not only of goods, but also of events, experiences, emotions and relations, The Rise of Consumer Capitalism in America presents an extensive analysis of primary sources to demonstrate the conditions and forces from which consumer capitalism emerged and became victorious. Employing a Weberian approach that brings liminality to the fore as a master concept to make sense of historical change, the author links an in-depth empirical investigation to supple sociological theorizing to show how the encirclement of all aspects of life by the logic of consumer capitalism was a time-bound historical creation rather than a necessary one. A fascinating study of the appearance and triumph of the “ideology” of our age, this book will appeal to scholars of social and anthropological theory, historical sociology, cultural history and American studies. Cesare Silla is Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology at Catholic University of Milan.

Contemporary Liminality

Series editors: Arpad Szakolczai, University College Cork, Ireland Series advisory board: Agnes Horvath, University College Cork, Ireland Bjørn Thomassen, Roskilde University, Denmark Harald Wydra, University of Cambridge, UK

https://www.routledge.com/sociology/series/ASHSER1435 This series constitutes a forum for works that make use of concepts such as “imitation”, “trickster” or “schismogenesis”, but which chiefly deploy the notion of “liminality”, as the basis of a new, anthropologically focused paradigm in social theory. With its versatility and range of possible uses rivalling, and even going beyond, mainstream concepts such as “system”, “structure” or “institution”, liminality is increasingly considered a new master concept that promises to spark a renewal in social thought. In spite of the fact that charges of Eurocentrism or even “moderno-centrism” are widely discussed in sociology and anthropology, it remains the case that most theoretical tools in the social sciences continue to rely on taken-for-granted approaches developed from within the modern Western intellectual tradition, while concepts developed on the basis of extensive anthropological evidence and which challenged commonplaces of modernist thinking, have been either marginalized and ignored, or trivialized. By challenging the assumed neo-Kantian and neo-Hegelian foundations of modern social theory, and by helping to shed new light on the fundamental ideas of major figures in social theory, such as Nietzsche, Dilthey, Weber, Elias, Voegelin, Foucault and Koselleck, while also establishing connections between the perspectives gained through modern social and cultural anthropology and the central concerns of classical philosophical anthropology, Contemporary Liminality offers a new direction in social thought. Titles in this series: 1

Permanent Liminality and Modernity Analysing the Sacrificial Carnival through Novels Arpad Szakolczai

2

Power, Legitimacy and the Public Sphere The Iranian Ta’ziyeh Theatre Ritual Amin Sharifi Isaloo

3

Walking into the Void A Historical Sociology and Political Anthropology of Walking Agnes Horvath and Arpad Szakolczai

4

Home The Foundations of Belonging Paul O’Connor

5

Politics with a Human Face Identity and Experience in Post-Soviet Europe Arvydas Grišinas

6

The Rise of Consumer Capitalism in America, 1880–1930 Cesare Silla

The Rise of Consumer Capitalism in America, 1880–1930 Cesare Silla

First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Cesare Silla The right of Cesare Silla to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Silla, Cesare, author. Title: The rise of consumer capitalism in America, 1880–1930 / Cesare Silla. Other titles: Marketing e desiderio. English Description: 1 Edition. | New York : Routledge, 2018. | Series: Contemporary liminality | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017051558 | ISBN 9781138225466 (hbk) | ISBN 9781315399669 (ebk) Subjects: LCSH: Marketing—United States—History—19th century. | Marketing—United States—History—20th century. | Consumption (Economics)—United States—History—19th century. | Consumption (Economics)—United States—History—20th century. Classification: LCC HF5415.1 .S5613 2018 | DDC 339.4/7097309041—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017051558 ISBN: 978-1-138-22546-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-39966-9 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

To B. N., my face of light

Contents

List of tables and figures Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction: revisiting the genealogy of consumer capitalism through liminality

ix xi xiii

1

PART I

On the threshold of a new era: making way for modernity

25

1 A new economic life

27

2 Souls in transition

48

PART II

Making the consumer city: the theatricalization of urban life

61

3 The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 and the urban ideal

63

4 The city as spectacle

77

5 The presentation of self in urban daily life

90

PART III

The genesis of the consumer: “image-making” and the production of desire

105

6 The personality of business

107

7 The new basis of civilization

121

8 Subjects of desire

139

viii Contents PART IV

Marketing professionalism: the engine of consumer capitalism and its lasting effect 9 Marketing plan and consumer research

157 159

10 Relationship marketing and the experience economy

170

11 Planned obsolescence and the consumption engineer

188

Concluding remarks

195

Bibliography Index

197 222

Tables and figures

Tables 1.1 1.2

Population and labour force (1870–1930) Manufacturing (1890–1929)

30 32

Figures 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.9 6.1 7.1

Court of Honor, Columbian Exposition, 1893 Midway Plaisance and Ferris wheel, Columbian Exposition, 1893 Court of Honor, looking west, Columbian Exposition, 1893 Agricultural Building at night, Columbian Exposition, 1893 Columbia Avenue, Manufacturers and Liberal Arts Building, Columbian Exposition, 1893 Gazing at a window display, advertising card, ca. 1875 Crowd viewing display, Motter-Wheeler Co., Walla Walla, Washington, 1909 Display by Jerome A. Koerber for Strawbridge & Clothier, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1913 Bathing suit display by Joe Weiss for Wolff & Mark Co., San Antonio, Texas, 1908 Skating window by L. A. Rogers for Kline’s, Detroit, Michigan, 1917 A golf window by Malcolm J. B. Tennent for Meier & Frank Co., Portland, Oregon, 1914 Photograph window by C. D. Lovelace for Meyer-Jonasson Co., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1915 Window display by Arthur V. Fraser for Marshall Field & Co., Chicago, Illinois, 1919 Summer furniture by Marshall Field & Co., Chicago, Illinois, 1910 Fête de Printemps, interior display by Jerome A. Koerber for Strawbridge & Clothier, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1910 “A Fair Judge”, Cream of Wheat advertisement, MC, January 1906

65 67 68 69 74 91 91 94 96 96 97 99 99 101 116 127

x

Tables and figures 7.2

“If children kept store”, Grape-Nuts advertisement, CO, August 1918 7.3 “Healthy and happy on Grape-Nuts”, Grape-Nuts advertisement, AM, January 1921 7.4 “It’s time to drink Hires’ Rootbeer”, Hires’ Rootbeer advertising card, 1893 7.5 “The proposal”, Pears’ Soap advertisement, T&C, January 1905 7.6 “Gazing into the future”, Pompeian Beauty Powder advertisement, NYT, 23 September 1917 8.1 Advertising trade cards, ca. 1870–80 8.2 “The man who uses Ivory Soap”, Ivory Soap advertisement, LHJ, November 1901 8.3 “Thorough enjoyment of delightful summer days”, Murad cigarettes advertisement, T&C, August 1906 8.4 “He won’t be happy till he gets it”, Pears’ Soap advertisement, LHJ, December 1909 8.5 “She has an Overland – an’anything”, Overland Automobile advertisement, SEP, July 1917 8.6 ‘This car meets the dual want’, Pierce-Arrow Motor Car advertisement, T&C, October 1906 8.7 ‘Also elegance is needed’, Pierce-Arrow Motor Car advertisement, CLA, December 1908 8.8 ‘The Pierce-Arrow differs from other cars’, Pierce-Arrow Motor Car advertisement, CLA, December 1912 10.1–3 Frank Stein & Company Store, Oshkosh, Wisconsin, 1925 10.4 Beauty Salon at Blackstone’s department store, Los Angeles, California, 1928 10.5 Make-Up Room, Beauty Salon at Blackstone’s department store, Los Angeles, California, 1928

128 130 131 134 135 142 145 147 148 150 151 152 153 180 181 181

Acknowledgements

This book concludes a long period of work and research, going back to my period as a visiting Ph.D. scholar at Columbia University in New York. I therefore am indebted to many people and many institutions. While I cannot possibly list them all here, I express warm thanks to William Leach, who helped me during my research at Columbia University. I thank also the librarians at Columbia University, at New York Public Library, at University College Cork, at Humboldt University, at Catholic University of Milan, at University of Milan and at Biblioteca Sormani. My sincere gratitude is expressed to Kay Peterson at the Archives Center of the Smithsonian Institution, and to Robert Delap at the Department of Rights and Reproductions of The New-York Historical Society for granting me permission to search through their archives. During these years, I have enjoyed the counsel and criticism of numerous friends and colleagues. While they are not responsible for my errors, among them I wish to thank Julian Davis, Giulio De Ligio, James Fairhead, Edoardo Lozza, Mauro Magatti, Hans-Peter Müller, Sebastiano Nerozzi, Benedetta Nicoli, Egidio Riva, Giulia Rivellini, Roberta Sassatelli, Matteo Tarantino, Simone Tosoni, and especially Arpad Szakolczai. The completion of the book was made possible by the support I have received at crucial moments from the Center for the Anthropology of Religion and Cultural Change (ARC) at Catholic University; for this reason, I warmly thank its director, Mauro Magatti. My gratitude extends also to many other colleagues at the Faculty of Political Science and at the Department of Sociology at Catholic University. This includes Rita Bichi, Patrizia Cappelletti, Laura Gherardi, Paolo Gomarasca, Chiara Giaccardi, Davide Lampugnani, Massimiliano Monaci, Emanuela Mora, Monica Martinelli, Damiano Palano and Giancarlo Rovati. As it is the outcome of a long-term research project, this volume contains material that has been published elsewhere, especially in a previous Italian book, Marketing e desiderio. Chapter 3 appeared in a modified version in First Monday. I have completely rewritten and revised Chapter 3 and the whole material for the current book. Every effort has been made to locate and contact the copyright owners of material reproduced in this book. Omissions brought to the attention of the publisher will be corrected in a subsequent edition. Thanks are due to the following for granting permission to use their material in this book:

xii Acknowledgements Imperial Tobacco; B&G Foods; Post Foods; Procter and Gamble; Bella C. Landauer Collection of Business and Advertising Ephemera, PR 031, Department of Prints, Photographs, and Architectural Collections, The New-York Historical Society; Warshaw Collection of Business Americana and N. W. Ayer Advertising Agency Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Drawings + Documents Archive, Ball State University.

Abbreviations

AM AAAPSS BLC CIMM CLA CO DGE HB HBR HMM JAP LHJ MC MRSW NWA NYT OM PI PIM SEP TAM T&C WCBA WWD

American Magazine Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science Bella C. Landauer Collection of Business and Advertising Ephemera, PR 031, Department of Prints, Photographs, and Architectural Collections, The New-York Historical Society Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine Country Life in America Cosmopolitan Dry Goods Economist House Beautiful Harvard Business Review Harper’s new Monthly Magazine Journal of Applied Psychology Ladies’ Home Journal McClure’s Magazine Merchants’ Record and Show Window N. W. Ayer Advertising Agency Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC New York Times Overland Monthly Printers’ Ink Printers’ Ink Monthly Saturday Evening Post Theatre Art Magazine Town & Country Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC Women’s Wear Daily

Introduction Revisiting the genealogy of consumer capitalism through liminality

At the beginning of The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels depict in dramatic phraseology the revolutionary force of the modern bourgeoisie, who swept away revered conservatism and enthroned everlasting change at the core of civilization. The stamp of the new epoch was condensed in a well-known formula: “All that is solid melts into air.” What follows is even more apt: “all that is holy is profaned” (Marx and Engels 2007: 12). When reading the passage, a not so distant echo may be heard of the Nietzschean madman crying at the marketplace of the death of God: “The holiest and the mightiest thing the world has ever possessed has bled to death under our knives” (Nietzsche 2001: 120). A more sober view of the genesis of modernity was sketched by Max Weber in the Vorbemerkung, which opened his Religionssoziologie and was his last word for a long-term project he pursued having Marx and Nietzsche as background inspiring figures. The opening memorable sentence set forth the distinctive Fragestellung through which Weber addressed his question: he spoke about the “combination of circumstances” (Weber 2005a: xxviii) that led to the emergence in the West of cultural phenomena we, as the “heirs of modern European Kulturwelt” (Ibid.), like to think of as having acquired universal significance. That Western phenomena did not lie in a necessary line of evolution was especially true for the rise of “the most fateful force in our modern life, capitalism” (Ibid.: xxxi) and also for its corresponding human type, the Western bourgeois with “its distinctive character” (Ibid.: xxxvii). Still, Weber inserted the concept of the disenchantment of the world as the last stage of Western rationalization in the second edition of The Protestant Ethic, and this is consonant with the closing vision set forth in the earlier version about how “material goods” could “have gained an increasing and finally an inexorable power over the lives of men as at no previous period in history” (Ibid.: 124). In Weber’s vision, modern capitalism, stripped of the ethical-religious foundation that made possible its emergence in the first place, rests upon a mechanical functioning and thrives by shaping its adequate subjects through “economic” selection, eventually imposing itself as a phenomenon of universal significance. The dominance of formal, or instrumental, rationality was the unintended consequence of the joint of scientific rationalism and the disenchantment of the world as the last stage of religious rationalization, which, through inner-worldly asceticism, had turned the “Baxter’s cloak” into an iron cage. Clearly, Weber put together a subtle

2

Introduction

and disturbing version of a long-lasting fascination with the idea that the first mark of a gottfremden Zeit is unbound mastering of the world. Modernity certainly is a relentless “human”, perhaps “all too human”, project. Keeping in mind those imposing insights on modernity and descending from the heights of cultural criticism into the fields of historically oriented sociology, one must also note that Weber addressed his problem of universal history as an open question, for modern capitalism did not stand in his present as the ripe fruit of a necessary evolution but was rather the offshoot of a specific, even contingent, combination of circumstances. It was by tracing the historical emergence and development of that specific combination that he was able to properly assess the meaning of the resulting offshoot. This book will address its object of investigation, consumer capitalism, by reworking the genealogical sensitivity that seems to characterize Weber’s research, thus placing him closer than is usually done to Nietzsche and Foucault. Therefore, the contemporary relevance of consumer capitalism is treated here as the starting point of the research insofar as it is an open question: it is the fact that consumer capitalism has achieved such contemporary significance that must be made comprehensible through an empirical investigation of its emergence. The book’s Introduction lays the groundwork of the research presented in the following four parts and realized through an in-depth examination of primary sources interpreted with the assistance of the proper secondary sources at disposal.1 The Introduction presents both the theoretical and the methodological framework of the book; how the object of the research has been identified and defined and the way it has been investigated. Thus, the Introduction can be considered as the first, preparatory, part of the book, partly explaining its length. In the first section, the concept of consumer capitalism is set forth in light of the literature on consumption and the consumer society, and it is argued that a proper assessment of its contemporary significance would greatly benefit from the study of its historical emergence, which research has increasingly located in America at the turn of the nineteenth into the twentieth century. In the second section, through a reexamination of Weber’s mode of questioning, a genealogy of consumer capitalism is outlined. This genealogy will rely on the concept of liminality and it is the central core for the rest of the book. It is suggested that such genealogical analysis offers a promising research strategy to properly address the rise of consumer capitalism without resorting to one-sided explanations along the “structure–agency” or “material–ideal” divides. Finally, a brief presentation of the structure of the book closes the Introduction.

Consumer capitalism Since the time that Marx, Nietzsche and Weber wrote about the advent of modernity, mass production has been accompanied by the rise of consumption as a phenomenon of mass significance and the core of capitalism has shifted from production to consumption, giving the capitalist societies in which we still live their distinctive “consumer” mark. Since the second half of the twentieth century, and

Introduction 3 often associated with a supposed postmodern turn, contemporary societies have been portrayed as “consumer societies”. Certainly, consumer society is a slippery definition that, rather than being put to use as an analytical concept, has been frequently evoked as an evaluating label, either bemoaning debased materialism and rampant individualism or preaching the liberating and subversive power of consumer agency. Still, it is not merely a catchword for naming our affluent societies. At the very least, it has the merit of casting light on four well-established, though by no means trivial, facts about our societies: first, there is a difference between the use of things and the consumption of goods; second, consumption has become a mass phenomenon; third, an increasing number of contemporary events, relations and practices not related to “material” objects are encircled into the logic of consumption; fourth, people are defined, and often identify themselves, as consumers. Hence, to speak of the consumer society as an ideal-typical construction does not mean to deny or dismiss the whole range of historical, geographical, political and social differences of consumer patterns that a rich literature has increasingly brought out from the surface of sheer generalizations. Instead, it helps us to ponder what constitutes the specific difference, and therefore the distinctive character, of one among many feasible types of social order: the one inhabited by a human type, the consumer, who is involved in a “consumer culture”, a complex and ultimately rather coherent web of meanings underpinning that social configuration (Cohen 2003; Sassatelli 2007; Lury 2011). To clear up a possible source of misunderstanding, it must be noted here that for a phenomenon to be defined as one of mass significance, giving its specific stamp on a social order and its corresponding human type, does not require that all individuals or groups in the social ladder have to be involved in it on an equal basis. Rather, it ultimately depends on the argument that within a social order no one could live while remaining untouched by that phenomenon in one way or another, be it in terms of unwanted exclusion, creative involvement or aspiration to inclusion, be it in terms of critical distance, overt contestation or voluntary rejection. From this viewpoint, and notwithstanding that the label has entered the common language of Anglo-Saxon and European countries only in relatively recent times, and since then has been sweeping across the world, the consumer society is considered as a historical type of social organization emerging within modernity as a difference compared to what came before, for the phenomenon of consumption has come to play a role unseen at any previous period in history (Slater 1997; Clunas 1999; Stearns 2001; Sassatelli 2007; Trentmann 2016). The modern stimmung is not limited to the fact that different ways of consumption and bulks of goods began to appear in the commercial cities of the Italian Renaissance, or in the absolutist courts of Europe, and then spread through international trade and the exploitation of colonial produce, as already noted in the seminal works of Sombart (1967), Elias (1983, 2000) and also Braudel (1973, 1981), and later on detailed by scholarship in the fields of consumption and material culture (Mukerji 1983; Mintz 1985; Schivelbusch 1992; Fairchilds 1993; Findlen 1998; Hamling and Richardson 2010; Stobart 2012; Trentmann 2016). This would simply denote a quantitative difference in the manifestation of an otherwise universal phenomenon.

4

Introduction

As anthropologists have shown, the “world of goods”, to use the title of an influential book on the subject (Douglas and Isherwood 1979), has marked at varying degrees different cultures throughout history, and goods have always been “good to think”, that is, tools for naming reality, for making visible and reproducing social stratification and even for shaping the symbolic order of societies, as described by Mauss (1954) in his analysis of the function of gift exchange in archaic societies. There is instead a specificity connected to consumption in modernity that has not been seen before, a “something more” that gradually, though unevenly, emerging from the waning of the Middle Ages and penetrating deep into modernity, has markedly changed the phenomenon of consumption, as suggested by the plain fact that its meaning slowly ceased to convey waste and dissipation and began to assume positive connotations (Trentmann 2016). Therefore, speaking of a modern “consumer society” implies a difference about “modern consumption” that gives to this particular social order and its corresponding human type, the consumer, their distinctive shape. Broadly speaking, the consumer society differs from other types because it is based on a particular way of organizing the relationship between people and objects, and between human wants and the means for satisfying them. This way of organizing the relationship is not a “natural” one, nor should it be considered, from a genealogical standpoint, as the preordained outcome of linear “progress” or necessary “evolution”. Though it is sometimes overlooked due to the academic division of labour between economics and the other social sciences, or because of a facile distinction between “economic” acts of buying and “socio-cultural” practices of possession, modern consumption is tightly bound up with industrial capitalism, first and foremost because the former has reached the significance of a mass, dominant phenomenon in our societies thanks to the capacity for capital accumulation and mass production brought forth by the latter. Through the mediation of a complex apparatus of institutions, first among which rank the market, the money economy, the modern industrial factory and the rational organization of free labour, the relation between people and objects has undergone an increasingly sophisticated rationalization process that has transformed objects into consumer goods and has shaped people into consumers. To argue that modern capitalism is a necessary condition for the development of mass consumption does not, however, imply a one-way “materialistic” causality, or a strict economic explanation of modern consumption. Indeed, this book is in fact devoted to showing why that condition was not enough to unleash the specific socio-cultural dispositions necessary for consumption to flourish. As Sahlins subtly put it, radically departing from our own enlightened, progressive premises, there are in fact two courses to a life of plenty: “producing more or desiring little” (Sahlins 1972: 2). Notwithstanding this, once the path is set as it has been in modern Western history, consumer goods are strategically produced to be sold in the market for profit, vastly displacing subsistence economy, gift-giving, barter and household production. Moreover, the satisfaction of needs and desires is mostly accomplished through the consumption of commodities (Leiss 1988). Therefore, in strict Marxist parlance, the first difference of modern consumption is that through the capitalist mode of production

Introduction 5 goods are exchanged in the shape of commodities; that is, they are produced by extracting a surplus value from the activity of labourers and are sold for profit in the market, thus making possible the reinvestment in production and the endless circulation of capital (Lee 1993). This first mark of consumer societies suggests that it would be harmful to leave out of the picture the component of capitalism and, accordingly, the expression “consumer capitalism” is here preferred to the concept of “consumer society”. The association between desires and commodities reveals the second main character of consumer capitalist societies: the increasing importance of goods and consumer practices for structuring experiences, defining and molding identities, social values and social relations. It is not so much that experiences, identities, values and relations are organized and communicated through goods and consumer practices, as that happens in various types of societies; rather, it is that the former chiefly derive from the latter (Slater 1997). Whether attributed to the rise of modernity or more often to a supposed postmodern, or late modern, turn marked by structural and cultural transformations of capitalism (Harvey 1989; Jameson 1991; Boltanski and Chiapello 2005), variously relabelled as “post-industrial” (Touraine 1971; Bell 1973), “flexible” (Sennett 1998), “informational” (Castells 1996), “disorganized” (Lash and Urry 1987) and so forth, a distinct trait of the contemporary consumer is the link between identity-building and the consumption of goods, between meaning-giving and the practices of consumption. Through consumption, individuals and groups not only perform and reproduce social identities and relations pinned to various structures of political, cultural and economic power, as sociologists have described with increasing sophistication, going from Veblen’s concept of conspicuous consumption (Veblen 2007) to Bourdieu’s theory of social distinction (Bourdieu 1984); far more than that, they increasingly use consumption as an instrument to play with varied lifestyles, and as a means for the self-refashioning of plural, malleable identities and of fluid social relations, no longer strictly associated with fixed roles, positions and cultural patterns but rather woven into a complex process of de-institutionalization, individualization and self-reflexivity (Giddens 1990; Featherstone 1991; Beck 1992; Lash and Urry 1994; Beck et al. 1994; Bauman 2007; Kellner 2013, Mathur 2013; Ruvio and Belk 2013; Moran 2015). This book takes very seriously the second fundamental component of contemporary consumption but radically questions its postmodern mark by showing through the empirical investigation how the relation between identity-building and consumption, and between meaning-giving and consumer practices, was a driving force for the rise and the establishment of consumer capitalism in the first place. For now, it is important to note that this second mark of consumer capitalist societies points to the varied practices of appropriation through which social actors bestow meanings on commodities consumed that are very often different from the meaning assigned by the economic system. As shown by historians, anthropologists and sociologists of consumption, goods have a social life as they pass through rituals of possession that often de-commoditize them (de Certeau 1984; Appadurai 1986, Kopytoff 1986; McCracken 1988; Carrier 1994; Miller

6

Introduction

1987, 1998, 2012). For this reason, while the focus on the commoditized nature of consumption stresses the role played by the system of political economy, the focus on consumer practices sheds light on the varied, complex and often creative processes performed by social actors. It is, however, safe to maintain that a clearcut distinction between economy and society, or between the economic system and the spheres of consumption, though it may be analytically convenient for a preliminary conceptual clarification, is empirically untenable. The genealogical reconstruction will make apparent the degree to which the boundaries between the economic system and the spheres of consumption were porous in the statu nascendi of consumer capitalism and, actually, the very possibility to safely distinguish them as complementary components of the social order of consumer capitalism was an outcome of its historical emergence. At any rate, one is bound to note that, even in contemporary societies where the economic system and the spheres of consumption have reached their mature shape and relative autonomy, practices of appropriation happen against the background of the commodity value assigned by the economic system, which in turn can hardly ignore feedback coming from consumer agency and consumer knowledge. The pivotal role that “cultural intermediaries” such as marketers, cool hunters, fashion journalists, bloggers and influencers play in matching supply with demand testifies to this (Blumer 1969: du Gay et al. 1997; Leiss et al. 2005; Pettinger 2016). The controversial trend toward the conflation between the categories of the producer and the consumer also makes it apparent. The phenomenon of “prosumerism” is considered both as the herald of creative work in the new age of digital economy (Toffler 1980; Tapscott and Williams 2008), or as the harbinger of an updated voluntary serfdom under prosumer capitalism (Ritzer 2015b) where companies try to exploit consumers’ strong commitment to brands, by putting them to work as co-creators of value, for little or no pecuniary remuneration, even though rarely having full control over the process and the outcome (Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004; Ardvisson 2005, 2006; Ritzer and Jurgenson 2010). Leaving the debate on contemporary consumption aside to enter instead the field of historical investigations into its emergence, one may note a similar “theoretical divide” (Trentmann 2004: 374). The different focus placed on consumption as commodity or consumption as an object of culture somewhat mirrors the opposition between what Lury (1996) has termed “production-led” and “consumptionled” explanations of the increase in consumer demand, and what Sassatelli (2007) has relabelled as the “productivist” and “antiproductivist” thesis on the origin of the modern consumer society. Broadly following an economic framework, the productivist thesis explains the rise of consumption at the beginning of the twentieth century as a straightforward outcome of the revolution of modes of production, considering the existence of the individual demand for goods as a natural fact (Slater 1997; Trentmann 2006b; Sassatelli 2007). The construction of the homo economicus made of infinite needs and desires that are satisfied via adequate supply does not require an explanation, since it is a datum of the anthropological assumptions behind those explanations. Demand increased as a straightforward outcome of the industrial revolution and the growth in the spending capacity of

Introduction 7 people who acted as rational “utility maximizers” or, following a gloomier narrative embedded in critical tradition, as irrational “cultural dopes” manipulated by agencies of mass persuasion to consume more than they really needed. Those explanations highlight two important elements taken into account in this book: the significance of consumption as a mass phenomenon, with the role played by the economic sphere in its emergence; and the relevance of the process of commercialization in encircling more and more aspects of human life in a consumer logic. Equally, two serious shortcomings may be pointed out. First of all, those perspectives tend to equate the economic demand for goods with the social appropriation of goods, and the act of purchase with the act of consumption; in so doing, they obscure the socially constructed nature of the use value of commodities. Second, and accordingly, the mere presence of goods in the market ought not to be considered enough to produce the disposition to purchase and consume. As mentioned above, such a disposition is indeed based on a “consumer culture” that makes reasonable, sound and meaningful the acquisition and the consumption of goods. The problem is indeed to come up with a feasible account of the establishment of such “consumer culture”. This was exactly the point of entry for the antiproductivist explanations, which have demonstrated through many well-documented cases how growths in demand predated or accompanied the industrial revolution, dating back to the early modern period specific patterns of consumer desire both in Europe and in America (Roche 1981; Breen 1986; Schama 1987; Garber 1989; Shammas 1990; Perkins 1991; Fairchilds 1993; Weatherill 1996; Bianchi 1999). From this viewpoint, a consumer revolution played an active role in industrial developments, leading people toward “desiring more”, whether in terms of social emulation and craving for material accumulation (McKendrick et al. 1982; Mukerji 1983) or romantic hedonism (Campbell 1987), and also through the active role of promotional techniques and commercial incentives (De Vries 1975, 2008; McKendrick et al. 1982; Williams 1982). Research following this line of explanation has the merit of disclosing the social basis of economic change, thus showing how much the demand that was necessary to expand trade and absorb the output of productive capacity was culturally shaped, and this position will be further developed in the book to counterbalance the focus on the economic conditions of the rise of consumer capitalism. Still, the anti-productivist theses do not adequately question the historicity of consumption, that is, how and why the desire for objects and the use of things took the meaning of consumption only from a defined period onward; hence, they tend to overlook the cultural and social effects exerted by changes in the economic sphere and the part economic actors might have played in tying the satisfaction of desires to the practice of consumption and thus making people be increasingly addressed as “consumers” (Slater 1997; Sassatelli 2007). Accordingly, what is needed is an empirical investigation able to shed light on both drivers of the change: structural transformations of the material basis of social life, and socio-cultural changes pointing to the rise of a new form of subjectivity (see also Zukin and Maguire 2004). What is worth noting now, however, is that no matter how much consumers may rework goods in everyday practices, thus allowing the consumer meaning to depart

8

Introduction

radically from the one assigned by production, and in spite of the historical observation that consumer demand was in many cases a drive to the industrial revolution, capitalism is at the service of consumption as much as the other way around, for the latter is the fuel for the engine of the former. Supply requires continuous demand to set the wheels of industry and commerce spinning over and over. The point being made here is that, even though from the viewpoint of consumer agency the intended acts of de-commodification, or the collective boycott of a brand, are of the outmost importance, just as they are for the specific brand targeted or for the company whose product is de-commoditized, from the viewpoint of the overall functioning of capitalism, for the social reproduction of the consumer society, they are little less than minutiae, for what matters is that consumers play, and do not cease to play, the game of consumption. Taking a Foucauldian stance on the historicity of the forms of subjectivity, while to be free to choose, or not to choose, a good or a consumer practice is of paramount importance for consumers, they are nonetheless bound to that specific form of subjectivity to discover the “truth of their being” (Foucault 1990: 5) or to become who they are. One may say that it is the process of subjectivation as a consumer that lays the ground for the functioning of capitalism and therefore, following Trentmann (2006a, 2006b), to describe patterns of consumption and different ways of being consumers does not explain why and how the consumer as a specific type of subjectivity has emerged displacing other types. In this light, the debate about the consumer’s sovereignty or the active consumer is somewhat misleading, for the creative power of the consumer over the market rests upon the prior emergence of that specific subjectivity adequate to the creation and expansion of markets, and accordingly, it is the historicity of that subjectivity to which people are bound that must be tackled as a problem. Therefore, the genealogy of consumer capitalism is at the same time an inquiry into the emergence of its adequate form of subjectivity, for the emergence of the former depends on the existence of the latter as much as the other way around. Staying with the focus on contemporary trends, the relation between consumer subjectivity and the functioning of capitalism is especially visible if one pays attention to the most advanced forms of marketing “cultivating” the consumer and the communities of consumer practices (Smart 2010; Wenger et al. 2002) as the very fuel of economic dynamism and, therefore, trying to inflate the sphere of “productive” consumption. On the one hand, relationship marketing, affective economics (Berry 1983; Gummesson 1999; Jenkins 2006), brand hijacking (Wipperfürth 2005) and viral marketing (Jurvetson 2000; Barabási 2002) try to manage the power of the consumer over the market and his emotional bond with brands by involving him in the co-creation of value, whether in terms of shared knowledge, brand positioning or promotion. On the other hand, various forms of experience economy (Schmitt and Simonson 1997; Pine and Gilmore 1999; Schmitt 1999; O’Shaughnessy and O’Shaughnessy 2002; Magatti 2009) foster the tendency of the consumer to immerse his identity, experiences, feelings, events and relations in the sphere of consumption by way of their commercialization. Parenthetically, political marketing, health marketing, educational marketing, hospitality marketing, urban marketing and even self-marketing (Kotler 1981; Kotler et al. 1993;

Introduction 9 Kotler et al. 2003; Kotler et al. 2008; Gad and Rosencreutz 2002) spread the logic of instrumental rationality and economic efficiency into domains of society and aspects of human life that we like to imagine are responsive to radically divergent organizing principles. All in all, it is safe to assume that in our contemporary societies economic growth rests upon the continuous stimulation of consumption as the vital ingredient for social prosperity. In other words, to be a good citizen implies that one is a dedicated consumer, for the conception of the goods of the theoretical economy, related to a relatively recent jargon of values and interests, has displaced as the political philosophy of our times the conception of goods of practical philosophy, related to an older language speaking of virtues and beliefs. Hence, the idea that the “good life” has been objectified in the “goods life”, to borrow the superb image once set out by Mumford (1955: 105), is not so easy to dismiss if properly understood. It may be a cursory jeremiad against materialism and hedonism if one sticks to ethnocentric and also “moderno-centric” premises, or it could be addressed as a “problematization” of an outstanding worldview – the good in “goods” – embedded into a social order as the linchpin of its functioning and even incorporated into the way of life of a specific form of subjectivity, being both the social order and the form of subjectivity so well established at present as to be taken for granted, but which are nonetheless historically and geographically bounded. The rationale of the genealogical approach rests, therefore, on the fact that it does not suffice to recognize the need to adopt a multiperspectival standpoint on the rise of consumer capitalism, showing how it developed due to a multiplicity of causes resting on both economic and socio-cultural elements, often present at various degrees before it came into its full being. What is necessary is to investigate the conditions under which those separated historical threads that had developed autonomously were eventually joined to shape a difference compared to what came before. The literature has pointed out that the social order of consumer capitalism rose and emerged victorious in America during the crucial period spanning from 1880 to 1930 (Leach 1993; Lears 1994b; see also Fox and Lears 1983; Bronner 1989a). Within turn-of-the-century American consumer capitalism one may witness indeed how a number of crucial elements that have been identified as landmarks of contemporary societies sprouted and developed, reaching a remarkable degree of sophistication: a fully fledged mass production system welded to an elaborated system of distribution and retailing fostering mass consumption as a means to social affluence (Porter and Livesay 1971; Chandler 1977; Benson 1979; Trachtenberg 1982; Strasser 1989; Best 1990; Leach 1993; Fischer 2010; Porter 2006); the rise of the consumer both as a category of self-identification and of normative knowledge for various social actors like social reformers, advertising men, entrepreneurs and politicians (Lears 1983; Leach 1993; Sivulka, 2001; Spring 2003; Jacobson 2004; Brewer and Trentmann 2006); the link between citizenship and consumption through the mediation of the increasing spending capacity of families and individuals and their inclusion in consumption communities (Boorstin 1974; Sklar 1988; Best 1990; Livingston 1994; Cross 2000; Cohen 2001; de Grazia 2005; McGovern 2006); the development of modern advertising (Presbrey 1929; Pope

10

Introduction

1983; Fox 1984; Marchand 1986; Lears 1994a; Laird 1998; Sivulka 1998) and the beginning of marketing professionalism and what are now well-established marketing strategies strengthening the bond of intimacy between people and brands, and fostering the commercialization of more and more areas and aspects of life, from holidays and family relations, to events, experiences and sentiments (Hollander 1986; Fullerton 1988; Strasser 1989; Jones and Monieson 1990; Tedlow 1990; Schmidt 1991; Leach 1993; Jones and Richardson 2007). Sure enough, in building a bridge between American consumer capitalism at the turn of the nineteenth into the twentieth century and present-day society, one has to tread carefully. Research on globalization and “multiple modernities” (Tomlinson 1991; Featherstone et al. 1995; Robertson 1995, 2000; Eisenstadt 2003) has increasingly nuanced the American-driven history of consumer capitalism as agent of cultural imperialism, homogenization and Westernization (Wagnleitner 1994; Ritzer 2004, 2015; de Grazia 2005), showing how local and national traditions have filtered and appropriated Western consumer culture through hybridization and creolization (Pieterse 1995; Appadurai 1996; Garcia Canclini 2001). It is, however, safe to assume that that the very existence and vitality not only of significant patterns of indigenization, resistance, and responses to “American” consumer culture, but more importantly of cross-cultural consumer fluxes in a world economy in which the “West” is only a node among many others, demonstrates how consumer capitalism originating in its proper shape in turn-of-the-century America has globally spread and has become a phenomenon of global significance (Howes 1996; Clammer 1997; Bennett et al. 1999; Beng-Huat 2000; Stearns 2001; Brewer and Trentmann 2006; Watson 2006; Mathur 2013; Roberts 2016). At present, at least in Europe and North America, hardly anybody remains insulated, voluntarily or not, from basic, underlying “consumer” assumptions and few are left untouched by the social effects of society’s “capitalist” mode of functioning. On the one hand, the view that people are consumers whose needs and desires, whether personal or social, private or communal, are satisfied through consumer goods and practices is widespread; on the other hand, the commodification of social life through which an ever-expanding array of “goods’, whether they are objects, services, experiences, relationships and even people, are assigned with an economic value and exchanged in dedicated markets is today deeply rooted. This book aims therefore at treating consumer capitalism as a genealogical problem. Instead of studying its present shape with its many variations, it brackets the taken-for-granted nature of its existence to inquire into the conditions out of which consumer capitalism emerged and the eventual, lasting effect those conditions have exerted up to the present. It therefore does not take at face value either the blithe assumption that capitalism is the instrument for reaching the greatest happiness for the greatest number, or the idea that consumption is the vanguard of history. The book is focused on investigating how we have become what we have become, before assessing the significance of what we are, or voicing yet more criticism. For this reason, the book also tries to avoid the one-sided argument that understands consumption as the fruit of a mass-scale conspiracy plotted by the forces of capitalism. This line of interpretation has been furthered through more

Introduction 11 or less refined arguments attributing strong influence to agencies of mass persuasion, to the manipulating power of advertising and marketing in a more or less tacit alliance between political interests and economic “captains of consciousness” (Packard 1957; Galbraith 1958; Marcuse 1964; Horkheimer and Adorno 1972; Ewen 1976; Lasch 1978; Baudrillard 1981, 1996, 1998; Ewen and Ewen 1982). Notwithstanding how these accounts help indeed to shed light on the “alienating” force of consumer capitalism, they are in fact not satisfactory in explaining how it emerged in the first place. In Weberian parlance, one may wonder indeed how material causes alone could ever have produced the modern consumer, given that they were not even able to win over the human soul of the first capitalist carrier without the aid of ethical-religious driving forces. A word of caution is in order here. The specific angle of the inquiry, focusing on the historicity of the consumer as a form of subjectivity, and of consumer capitalism as a social order, and therefore attempting to understand their specificity against the background of other feasible types, leaves the book open to a fundamental criticism, for little (or less than due) attention will be paid to important differences in terms of roles, gender and ethnicity that literature has scrutinized in their relevance and implications. Yet, the focus is on the historical emergence of consumer capitalism as a difference with respect to what came before, and not on studying different forms of consumer practices and subjectivity. While nobody can dismiss the multiplicity of consumer trajectories, and the radical divergence among them, in understanding our contemporary capitalist societies and, especially, the opposing chances and constrains they exert on specific social actors and groups, it is equally important to avoid the tendency to take for granted what it means for a social human being to be a consumer who lives within consumer capitalism, a type of social order and a form of subjectivity historically and geographically bound. Having established the fundamental drawback of the line of reasoning taken here, the following paragraph shows how the research on the rise of consumer capitalism in America has been pursued by reworking through the notion of liminality the genealogical sensitivity that imbues the Weberian research on capitalism. This, then, is the point of entry for the analysis, both in terms of method and content.

Genealogy through liminality At the end of The Protestant Ethic Weber pictured a sombre and perplexing vision about the future of Western civilization. Sombre, for he admonished his readers about the fate of the last men (letzen Menschen) that “imagine they have climbed to a stage of humanity [Stufe des Menschentums] never before attained”.2 Perplexing, for he approached “the world of judgments of value and of faith” encumbering “a purely historical analysis” (Weber 2005a: 124). Still, the passage was neither expunged from the second version edited for the Religionssoziologie, nor was the last section extensively reworked, except for two small variations of words that did not alter the passage’s meaning.3 Weber composed his passionate but reasoned judgment by conjoining an allusion to the Nietzschean last men who “have invented happiness” (Nietzsche 1978: 17) and the Kulturkritik of the specialists

12

Introduction

without spirits, hedonists without heart, taken from an unknown source who had already been used by Schmoller (1900–04) to comment over the Maschinenzeitalter in the Grundriss der allgemeinen Volkswirtschaftslehre.4 The closing remarks suggest that in the background of the investigation, and even as its very driving force, stood something explicitly evoked at the beginning of the second part of the essay on “The logic of the cultural sciences”: one of “those ultimate problems” (Weber 2012: 169) to which the empirical sciences can give no answer, but which must be raised. As Hennis (1988) has argued, Weber explicitly and clearly mentioned his “ultimate” problem only when pushed by his critics to defend his thesis. In his final reply to Rachfahl he affirmed: “What interested me centrally was not what nurtured the expanding capitalism but the developing type of human being that was created out of the confluence of the religious and economic components” (Weber 2001: 106). If one returns to the end of The Protestant Ethic with this elucidation in mind, a close connection is made apparent between the historical investigation about the rise of the spirit of capitalism and the diagnosis of the present and the near future. More precisely, his problem and his method of inquiry were deeply interwoven, for it was the approach that made it possible for Weber to properly tackle the problem and even envision the arresting insight about the fate of the last man within mechanized capitalism, which fits indeed the characterization of an “antiprophetic prophecy” (Scaff 1989: 230). Given that Weber “took Marx seriously” (Dibble 1968: 99), the revolutionary force of modern capitalism was already looming large in his young work, especially in the empirical studies on the East Elbian rural labour, for he recognized in the ongoing upheavals the shift from patriarchalism to capitalism. Yet, he chose a Nietzschean stance on how the issue should be evaluated. The analyses of the empirical material have indeed, in many central passages, a distinct Nietzschean flavour (Hennis 1988; Scaff 1989; Albrow 1990; Szakolczai 1998), disclosing the untimely and perplexing “cultural value idea” (Weber 2012: 118) with which he approached the topic under investigation. Especially in the Korreferat of 1894, deliberately addressing the “meaning of the questions” (Weber 1993: 314), Weber scrutinized the “spiritual” effects on the workers exerted by the transformation of the organization of labour (Arbeitsverfassung), for against the “rosy blush” (Weber 2005a: 124) of enlightened literati and modern liberals, he was adamantly convinced that social policy was not aimed at creating “human happiness” (Weber 1993: 339), but, on the contrary, at protecting and sustaining “that which appears to us valuable in men: self-responsibility, a deep urge for what stands high, for the intellectual and moral goods of humanity” (Ibid.: 340). In 1895, he openly argued for his position in the solemn inaugural address delivered at Freiburg University. He stated that political economy, as a “human science”, “[does] not want to train up feelings of well-being in people, but rather those characteristics we think constitute the greatness and nobility of our nature”, since what really matters “is not how will human beings feel [sich befinden] in the future, but how they will be [sein]” (Weber 1980: 437). Hence, Weber committed himself to study modern capitalism in order to evaluate the “distinct stamp of humanity [Ausprägung des Menschentums]”, the specific “quality of the human beings who are brought up in those economic

Introduction 13 and social conditions of existence” (Ibid.). Although the identification of political economy as a political science was imbued with a strong nationalistic conviction and a Machpolitik perspective (Aron 1971; Mommsen 1984), it ultimately depended on Weber’s view that the nation-state was in his own times the life order best suited to preserve and protect the distinct cultural goods (Kulturgüter) representing the highest human achievements, and even to give human beings the optimal chance to freely shape and express their personality (Beetham 1974; Hennis 1988). Notwithstanding this, his position was fashioned in an overt rhetorical tone and through a deliberate “brutality of views” (Weber Schnitger 1975: 216) that concealed some serious shortcomings to his position, both at the personal and academic level, and which awaited the proper accident, his father’s sudden death after the famous family feud, to put Weber under the spell of a long-lasting nervous illness (Szakolczai 1998). On the one hand, his view of the scope of political economy departed from the abstract principles of classical economics but also from the ethical grounding of the historical school of which Weber was part as a member of the youngest generation (Schluchter 1988; Tribe 1989, 1995; Swedberg 1998); on the other hand, his personal viewpoint was both untimely, for he took as the ultimate value the spiritual enrichment of humanity rather than the relief of man’s estate (Mommsen 1984; Hennis 1988), and also too polemical in style and subjectivist in substance to lay the groundwork for unprejudiced concrete research (Szakolczai 1998). The solution was turning his personal commitment into a research programme that was scientifically legitimate and at the same time retained a personal meaning (Roth and Schluchter 1979; Turner 1992; Szakolczai 1998). The Methodenstreit and the discussion about the place of causal explanation within the cultural sciences gave Weber a proper field to ponder over his will to knowledge jeopardized by nervous illness, and eventually solve the puzzle. Specifically, it is in the essay on “Objectivity” that the two poles of tension were fully reworked and eventually coalesced into a “historical-genetic analysis” (Troeltsch 1987: 191) that was able, with the help of neo-Kantian language furnished by Rickert, to properly address his underlying problem inspired by Marx and Nietzsche and investigated in The Protestant Ethic. Weber developed his version of social science as a science of reality (Wirklichkeitswissenschaft) as the co-editor of the new series of the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, “the scientific problem” to which the journal was dedicated was explicitly enlarged, as the editors stated in the “Accompanying Remarks” of the first issue, to encompass “the general cultural significance of the development of capitalism” (Weber 2012: 97). He therefore began his analysis by revisiting the original double aim of the Archiv: “to extend the knowledge . . . of facts of social life” and to “educate the judgement of practical problems of social life” (Ibid.: 100–101). The aims clearly mirrored the two poles of Weberian tension, for the knowledge of facts resonated with scientific objectivity of the research, while the judgment of problems recalled the personal significance of the work for the researcher. The fecund articulation depended on the proper answer given to the following questions: “What sort of validity can be ascribed to the value

14

Introduction

judgements” and “in what sense do ‘objectively valid truths’ exist at all in the domain of the sciences of cultural life?” (Weber 2012: 101). As the positive limits Weber established about the scientific treatment of value judgments are common knowledge, there is no need to restate the obvious; what is worthy of more careful attention is the way he sustained his claim that the evaluation of the validity of a value is a matter of belief or a theme for speculative interpretation. Weber argued that the empirical sciences of his age had been developing supported by a “general unanimity” concerning goals “regarded as self-evident” or, to put it somewhat differently, they took for granted the validity of the value giving direction to the empirical research, whether it was public health, or the legislation protecting labour, or the “productivity” of the economy – in short and with “brutality’: human happiness and material improvement. However, while widespread support usually relieves scientific work from the burdensome duty of reflecting upon its ultimate presuppositions, it is unacceptable – Weber went on– “[to take] such an appearance of self-evidence to be the truth” (Ibid.: 104). Again as in his Freiburg address (Schluchter 1996), he targeted the vision of political economy as an “empirically based ‘ethical science’” (Weber 2012: 101) that mistook an appearance of selfevidence – that is, the general unanimity in identifying the value of economics in “increasing the ‘wealth’ of the state citizens” (Ibid.: 121) – for the truth. Yet he did more, for in making apparent that it is not possible any “presuppositionless” inquiry, whilst at the same time no presupposition can be empirically validated, he gave the same dignity as guide for the research to both unanimous, and untimely as it was his own, viewpoints, provided that they are acknowledged as depending by a value relation, thus establishing a difference between evaluation and value relation through the tool of the ideal type. As soon as he moved to the second question concerning objectively valid truths, Weber connected indeed the identification of the objects of empirical research to their cultural significance (Kulturbedeutung) for he made it plain that “there is no absolutely ‘objective’ scientific analysis . . . of ‘social phenomena’ – independent of special and ‘one-sided’ points of view, according to which [those phenomena] are – explicitly or implicitly, deliberately or unconsciously – selected as an object of inquiry” (Ibid.: 113). On this basis, Weber introduced his definition of the social science as a science of reality, stating clearly that the interest is in its “distinctive character”, in understanding “the interrelation and the cultural significance and importance of its individual elements as they manifest themselves today” (Ibid.: 114). The significance depends on the value relation of the researcher who selects from the “infinite multiplicity of events” (Ibid.) what is for him worth knowing. However, as Weber reflected in a handwritten note entitled “New Sciences”: “Objects enter into the realm of that which is worth knowing (wissenswerthen) when they become problems [Probleme]. When new questions [neue Fragen] arise” (Ibid.: 414). It is the merit of Bruun (2001) to have pointed out the importance of the expression “worth knowing about” [wissenswerth] to properly assess the sphere within which the concept of value-relation [Wertbeziehung] acquires its distinct Weberian meaning: that is, the realm of problems and questions, not that of facts or laws. Thus Weber turned his personal presupposition into a problem of

Introduction 15 knowledge, in terms that are enlightened by the second part of the definition of the science of reality that wants to inquire into “the reasons why the[se elements] historically developed as they did and not otherwise” (Weber 2012: 114). Weber summed up his position as follows: the scope of the research is “the knowledge about the culturally significant aspects of the manifestations of life” that cannot “be deduced, explained and made comprehensible by any system of law concepts” but has to be obtained by tracing back in the past “those individual, particular characteristics of the configurations that have significance and importance [for us] today in order to establish how they came into being” and, eventually, estimate “possible future constellations” (Ibid.: 116). As recognized by Szakolczai (1998: 148): “The aim is to scratch the surface of things, to restore the contingent character of what exists.” It is not by chance that, as noticed by Bruun (2007: 217), “the expression ‘significance’ often seems to refer . . . to its causal effects, its consequences”, for it is evident that the ideal type of the spirit of capitalism hold its significance for Weber exactly because of the lasting effects its conditions of emergence exerted on the present. Weber gave a concrete example which, if read in light of The Protestant Ethic essay, lays bare how the method applied helped to tackle the problem and shed light for the closing antiprophetic prophecy. The passage deserves a full quotation: The cultural significance of a phenomenon may reside in the fact that it occurs as a mass phenomenon; this is, for instance, the case with exchange in a money economy, which is, [as such,] a fundamental component of modern cultural life. But then it is [the] historical fact that it plays this role which must be made comprehensible in its cultural significance, and whose coming into being must be causally explained. The study of the general nature of exchange and of the technique of market transactions is extremely important – indeed, indispensable! – [as a] preliminary investigation. But not only does it leave unanswered the question of how [economic] exchange has historically achieved its present fundamental importance, but above all, what cannot be deduced from any of those “laws” is that which after all is our main concern: the cultural significance of the money economy – which is the sole reason for our interest in [that] description of transaction techniques, and the sole reason for the existence today of a scientific discipline dealing with those techniques. (Weber 2012: 117) That the cultural significance was connected to the evaluation of the human type who stands in close affinity with modern capitalism is manifested in the last pages of The Protestant Ethic, showing the lasting effect of the conditions of emergence of the spirit of capitalism and advancing the estimate about the future of the last man within victorious capitalism resting on a mechanical basis. It was then laid out in a higher theoretical form in his article on the Sinn der Wertfreiheit, where he made clear the vanishing point of his sociology (Müller 2007; Scaff 2014), arguing that “any ordering of societal relationships” (Weber 2012: 320) has ultimately to be examined “with respect to the type of human being” it gives the optimal chances

16

Introduction

to become the dominant one. That was necessary to make any empirical research “really exhaustive” and furnishing “the necessary factual basis for an evaluation” that for Weber was “deliberately subjective” (Ibid.: 321). At this point, in the first version of the essay prepared in 1913 for the discussion on value judgments at the Verein, he went back to the Freiburg address, revealing how the point drew to a close the starting problem expressed in 1895 in an “immature form” (Baumgarten 1964: 127). The connection signalled both proximity and distance, for if the ultimate concern was the same before and after the way he approached it was fundamentally different. Through his genetic-historical analysis he addressed his underlying problem both objectively and significantly. He connected the “ultimate standpoint” moving his “soul” (Weber 2012: 403) – how human beings will be within modern capitalism – with the inquiry on its conditions of emergence – “the reasons why [they] historically developed as they did and not otherwise” (Ibid.: 114) – in order to collect a factual basis for a subjective evaluation of its lasting effect – “it might well be truly said of the ‘last men’ in this cultural development: ‘Specialists without spirit, hedonists without heart, these nullities imagine they have climbed to a stage of humanity never before attained’” (Weber 2005a: 124).5 The focus on the conditions of emergence – the elective affinity between innerworldly asceticism and the rational conduct of the modern capitalist – allowed Weber to understand how capitalism could become victorious over the human soul, and the lasting effect that the conditions of emergence exerted up to the present: the prospective universality of mechanized capitalism, based on a methodical-rational way of life liberated from the specific cultural grounding that had made it possible in the first place. The recognition that the mechanization of capitalism and its universal significance were connected with the liberation from its ethical-religious matrix pointed to the comparative-historical studies of the economic ethics of world-religions under the question “Why only in the West?’ and it is testified by the insertion in the second version of The Protestant Ethic of the passages on the disenchantment of the world. Still, the idea that the last stage of the religious rationalization that gave birth to the rationalistic spirit of capitalism implied an absolute transcendence of God meant that the radical religious disenchantment conjoined with scientific rationalism to transform the world into “a causal mechanism” (Weber 1958: 350). Religious disenchantment and scientific rationalism jointly built a social bond exclusively tied up to instrumental rationality and its Technik: the objective calculation and the material supply of means for attaining subjectively intended ends. Here rested the unleashing of the subjectivist element of modern culture, connected with the “urban, aesthetic, ahistorical, and amoral Gefühlskultur” (Scaff 1989: 80) found in the milieu of emerging modernism and extensively anticipating what, revealing a regrettable lack of historical memory, has been often attributed to a more recent postmodern turn.6 The culture of feeling on the side of subjectivist culture complemented technical rationalization on the objective side of social order. Orphan of any stable meaning and collective truth, the individual is bound to the search for experiences and self-experimentation. A concern took up through scattered comments in Weber’s oeuvre that nonetheless anticipated what would

Introduction 17 have become a distinct mark of contemporary consumer culture expressed by the growing importance of concepts like personality and lifestyle (Bell 1978). The opposition unfolds along two separate conceptual spheres: on the one hand the reference to “the highest values that guide our life” (Weber 2012: 103) and “the inner devotion to the task” (Ibid.: 340); on the other hand the idol of “‘personality’’” (Ibid.: 340), “an increased attention . . . paid to nuances of feeling”, “the chase after “experiences’” and “the need to publicize” them (Ibid.: 321); and, above all, an increasing shift from a moral and ethical grounding of subjectivity to an aesthetical one that “tends to transform judgments of moral intent into judgments of taste” (Weber 1958: 342), evoking the hedonistic side of the last man. It may not be too far-fetched to maintain that, while not explicitly uttered, as pointed out by Schluchter (1996), a distinction between two concepts of subjectivity and human agency seems to emerge in Weber’s writings: one referring to the ethical conduct of life (Lebensführung) based upon character formation; the other, a new and emerging one, concerning the practical lifestyle of personalities divided between the adjustment to technical economic constraints – specialists without spirit – and the aesthetic chasing after experiences – hedonists without heart. This holds especially true if one considers that, for Weber, the “‘essence’” of an ideal mature human being “is to be found in a constant inner relationship to certain ultimate ‘values’ and ‘meanings’ of life . . . that in the actions . . . are translated into goals, and are thereby converted into teleological–rational action” (Weber 2012: 85), whereas nothing could be more distant than the idea “especially popular among young people”, that it is the search for experiences that “constitutes ‘personality’” (Ibid.: 340). However, Weber perceived that the subjectivist turn into experiencing and feelings, a “stylization of life” based on a malleable sense of identity, was not simply a fly out of the iron cage of the modern economic and technical cosmo, but it was, ironically, its deepest product, for the same rationalization, having disenchanted the world in terms of religious beliefs, was at the same time able to enchant life again by offering a wide array of sensual, emotional and aesthetic experiences, long before the contemporary means of consumption (Ritzer 2010). As Weber noted, discussing the theme “Culture and Technology” at the first meeting of the German Sociological Society, “all kinds of seemingly inexhaustible possibilities for the conduct of life and happiness” were related in modern life to the most astounding product of technology: “the modern metropolis, with its railways, subways, electric and other lights, shop windows, concert and catering halls, cafes, smokestacks, and piles of stone, the whole wild dance of sound and colour impressions that affect sexual fantasy, and the experiences of variations in the soul’s constitution” (Weber 2005b: 29). Here is the end-point of Weberian thought, pointing to the rise of a new phase of capitalist development at the interplay between the spread of economic rationalization and the unleashing of a culture of feeling; the time, indeed, when consumer capitalism took shape in America. Therefore, a number of crucial elements may be drawn by Weberian analysis, in terms of both methodological issues and concrete insights about the rise of consumer capitalism. Weber’s inquiry stemmed from his assessment of the

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Introduction

contemporary significance of capitalism considered as a question: while capitalism once established was able to educate and create the subject it needed through an external (i.e. material interest) or internal (i.e. ideal interests) selection of motives, a world image ingrained into an habitus adequate to the needs of economic accumulation had to be brought out in the first place for capitalism to establish itself as the dominant social order. The analysis thus pointed to the conditions of emergence of the methodical and rational conduct of life out of the “elective affinities [Wahlverwandtschaften]” between “forms of religious beliefs” and “the professional ethic [Berufsethik]” (Weber 2005a: 49),7 and more generally located Weber in a middle ground within the debate between materialistic and idealistic conceptions of historical change. The result cast light on the lasting effect of the conditions of emergence: the interplay between economic rationalization and the disenchantment of the world paving the way to mechanized capitalism complemented by a subjectivist culture chasing after experiences and personality development. Starting from Weber, it is possible to set forth a genealogical study of consumer capitalism that avoids one-sided explanations while putting his concrete insights into use. This book will develop such a study, complementing the genealogical approach with the notion of liminality. As is well-known, genealogy amounts to a problematization of what is taken for granted in the present in order to inquire into formative events. It is a method usually endorsed to escape the risk of presentism, often suffered by social sciences, especially sociology, which are generally meant to deal with contemporary issues (Dean 1994; Szakolczai 2000; Inglis 2014). Genealogy is an “effective history” that is present-relevant, for instead of focusing on the here and now it points to the conditions of emergence and the eventual lasting effects exerted by those conditions. The method was pioneered by Nietzsche when he posed the questioning of the “value” of values by tracing back “the conditions and circumstances under which the values grew up, developed and changed” (Nietzsche 2006: 7), instead of tackling them directly. It was later used and even theorized by Foucault (1983, 1979), though in a highly specific manner, not entirely satisfactory for a number of reasons but especially for its accent on “critique” as a sort of “anti-metaphysical metaphysics”, a vision emended by Foucault himself in his latest period of research in the shift of focus from power to subjectivity (Foucault 1990, 2005, 2010, 2011). As shown by Szakolczai (2000), however, a number of historically oriented social scientists, following the spirit of Weber, if not the letter, developed analyses that have a strong genealogical sensitivity in their visions of modernity, especially Elias’ work on the conditions of emergence of the court society and the sociogenesis and psychogenesis of civilization (Elias 1983, 2000). More recently, the genealogical approach has entered the field of historically oriented sociology and social sciences (Dean 1994; Szakolczai 2000; Mukerji 2007), even establishing connections (Owen 1994; Szakolczai 1998) and divergences (Gane 2002) between Foucault and Weber, and investigations on a variety of topics claimed to be genealogical in design and scope, from advertising (Falk 1994) to the modern consumer (Trentmann 2006b), from manners as infrastructures of social relations (Arditi 1998) to the modern public sphere

Introduction 19 (Szakolczai 2012), from modern citizenship rights (Somers 2008) to the liberal governance of poverty (Dean 2011). The concept of liminality, on the other hand, was developed within the field of anthropology. Thought it is now widely used in various fields of inquiry, and has been praised for a seemingly liberating character that points to fluidity, boundary transgressing and transitional spaces, suggesting a celebratory attitude toward postmodernism (Thomassen 2012b, 2015), the concept has a rather complex history. It was used for the first time by Arnold van Gennep (1960) to describe the middle stage in ritual passages, marked by conditions of uncertainty and dislocation of established structures under the direction of masters of ceremony. After half a century of relative obscurity, suffered because van Gennep was ostracized from French academic life (Zumwalt 1982; Thomassen 2009, 2012a), it was revived by the anthropologist Victor Turner (1967) as an important concept in the effort to go beyond structuralism and functionalism and toward a processual approach to culture and social life (Horvath et al. 2015). Though introduced as a relatively technical concept connected to the study of passage rites, denoting the transitional stage out of which someone that has been separated from his previous identity emerges as a difference having incorporated a new identity, it is a promising analytical concept for social sciences interested in understanding social change. As Eisenstadt realized (1978, 1995), the concept may be borrowed from its application in small-scale settings to fruitfully address the dynamics of large-scale change, and especially experiences of crisis arising due to natural disasters or political upheavals, experiences which are, moreover, often linked to the difficult distinction between genuine charismatic leadership and trickster-like figures emerging from society’s margins as self-proclaimed saviours (Horvath 1998; Szakolczai 2007, 2012; Thomassen 2014). In terms of its analytical qualities, liminality is able to capture the transient phase of social life characterized by a join dynamic of dissolution of order and order formation, involving experiences and agency of individuals and collectivities living through “the in-between”. The in-between is a condition in which ordinary distinctions between structure and agency, and ideas and interest as drivers of rationality, cease to properly function, opening the field for unexpected outcomes, thus making the interpretive understanding of lived experiences under those conditions a task of the outmost importance, as already perceived, even if not fully elaborated, by Weber in his distinction between ordinary and out-of-ordinary situations and the role played by charismatic figures and world images in leading social change (Szakolczai 2003, 2009). The concept of liminality helps, therefore, to fully elaborate the dynamic of social change Weber expressed through the “Switchmen metaphor” in the Einleitung: Not ideas, but material and ideal interests, directly govern men’s conduct. Yet very frequently the “world images” that have been created by “ideas” have, like switchmen, determined the tracks along which action has been pushed by the dynamic of interest. (Weber 1958: 280)

20

Introduction

In the “Switchmen metaphor”, “very frequently” can be conceptualized in terms of liminality. In liminal conditions the ordinary course of life is unsettled and structure is suspended; accordingly, the institutionalized pattern of material and ideal interests ceases to play its role in directly governing human agency, while at the same time the lived experience of transition pushes people toward a new form of stability. It is in the transition from a dissolving order to an emerging but notyet-established one that a different world image created by new ideas emerges as a decisive factor in the process of the structuration of the new social order, defining the direction along which the dynamics of interests will directly lead action after institutionalization is secured. It is therefore necessary that a world image arises, making reasonable to people the new way of life adequate to the establishment of the social order. Once the latter is secured, the world image comes to be unquestioned and its historical contingency is hidden behind the routine of daily life, where action is directly motivated by those “interests” that have been made acceptable in the first place by that same world image now concealed, as it was for “the rise of that ethical “lifestyle” that was mentally “adequate” to the economic stage of “capitalism” and thereby victorious over the human “soul’” (Weber 2001: 50). Two further points may be elaborated about the liminal transition toward consumer capitalism, and these are related to the series of analytical tools that will be used in the book’s empirical investigation. The first point is about the role of imitation and image-making in disseminating new ideas. Imitation is very largely downplayed in any rationalistic framework of human agency, even though the work of Girard (1977, 1987, 1991) has shown the role of mimetic desire in human conduct and Gabriel Tarde (1903) made imitation the central concept of his sociology. What is worth noting is that imitative behaviour increases in liminal conditions because rational choices are prevented as a result both of the fact that the structure on which established material and ideal interests are rationally based is suspended and because of the stressful condition of living through times of transition. For this reason, the formation of a new world image defining new patterns of interest is not simply based on a strictly rational debate within an ideal fully free public sphere, nor does it exclusively emerge out of a power confrontation among different social forces. Especially within modernity, new ideas are in fact disseminated first and foremost by the image-making of mass media, and especially advertising in the rise of consumer capitalism, and are adopted through imitative behaviour. This leads to the second point concerning the concept of social performance and the theatrical character of social life (Alexander 2004; Alexander et al. 2006). Building upon dramatist approaches and speech act theory, but also resorting to Goffman and Turner as classic reference points, the performative turn in the social sciences seeks to understand social actions as theatrical performances of meaning formation, the success of which is measured in terms of the ability to convince others that the performance is true. Whilst performances aim to simplify (re-fuse) the complexity of modern social life by reinvigorating social cohesion, thus revealing their historical derivation, what is important to note is that when social action is equated to social performance the conveyed meaning is measured by the degree of success. The concept of liminality radically historicizes such social performance.

Introduction 21 Not only is the theatricalization of social life (Szakolczai 2015) related to modern, and especially urban, conditions of relations between strangers, but it is especially connected to the joint effect of the main characters of liminal phases: when the grasp on reality is loosened because structures are suspended, blurring the distinction between reality and representation and sparking at the same time both the power of human agency and imitative tendencies, the theatrical character of social action is unleashed, imposing upon social life a web of “reality effects” produced by successful performances. It is not so much that the accent of reality is shifted from “the objective order of institutions to the realm of subjectivity” (Berger et al.: 74), but that this shift implies the emergence of a second reality of mediated social imaginaries displacing the first reality of common-sense and first-hand experience.8 To sum up the methodological approach taken in the book, the joining of genealogy and liminality furnishes complementary external “reference points” – the problematization of what is taken for granted and the liminal character of its historical emergence – through which it is possible to trace the conditions of emergence of consumer capitalism without imposing the reality of the present and the rationality of the outcome onto the past. Reduced to its backbone, the central argument of the book is that the social order of consumer capitalism grew out of a combination of historical circumstances pressing towards the reconfiguration of social life and the activity of specific kinds of forces attuning the needs of the economic system to the needs of people living through liminal conditions. Structural transformations due to mass production and technological revolutions pushed for the extension of markets and, coupled with socio-cultural changes, deeply affected the customary framework of reality, asking for a reconfiguration of social relations and identity. Central to all of this were the situated practices of new business professionals developing a series of business tools necessary to relate the new world of goods to the public for whom they were designed. Even beyond the conscious intentions of those practitioners, and with the crucial help of a series of social actors living through those same liminal conditions with a higher degree of reflexivity, the business tools were shaped in a way that placed consumption at the centre of social life. This was possible because the tools were effective in promoting consumer practices and goods as an adequate answer to the needs of a changing social life and of a new form of fluid subjectivity.

Structure of the book The book is divided into four parts. The first and the fourth parts centre on the beginning and the end of the period 1880–1930: this covers the historical circumstances out of which consumer capitalism emerged and its eventual institutionalization. The second and the third parts dig into the dynamics of consumer capitalism’s emergence. The four parts of the book should be read in sequence, and the fourth one should be considered as a long conclusion of the book. For this reason, at the end of this volume, readers will find only a few “Concluding remarks”.

22

Introduction

Part I presents the transitional nature of the period taken into account. Chapter 1 describes the structural transformations occurring during the second half of the nineteenth century in America – in particular, the focus is on the innovations in production and distribution and the accompanying managerial revolution, which contributed to a reconfiguration of the nature of work and to changes in economic life in general. The chapter presents the new business tools developed to meet the task of connecting the new world of goods to its public – this includes innovations in areas like trademarks and advertising, as well as show windows and store design. Chapter 2 describes how the structural changes presented in Chapter 1 affected the lived experience of people and how they operated in the context of socio-cultural changes in the liminal transition towards the new society. The joint impact of structural and socio-cultural changes is outlined by considering three crucial shifts – from making a living to earning a living, from traditional life to the urbanization of consciousness, and from the idea of character formation to the concept of personality development. Part II analyses the development of the consumer city and the theatricalization of everyday life. Chapter 3 describes the crucial role that the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 played in the establishment of the consumer city. The chapter shows how the Exposition was constructed to promote a new ideal of urban planning and argues that it was the exact manner in which this architectural lesson was taught – that is, through the staging of an ideal city – that had a stamping effect on the content of the very imaginary of the modern consumer city. Chapter 4 charts the shift from the spectacle of the ideal city to the idea of the city as spectacle, and it shows how there spread from Chicago both a movement of urban reform and various subtle influences on the modes of experience in urban daily life. Specifically, through the collaboration of a cadre of professionals and reformers, merchant princes and the new corporate institutions, the consumer city was promoted as the proper stage for the emergent public of consumer capitalism. Chapter 5 looks in greater detail at what happened along the streets of real cities in order to elucidate the development of the consumer city and its mode of living. The chapter illustrates how show windows and also interior decorations became means of socialization to the theatricalized “reality” of the consumer city; it also shows how they promoted consumer goods as the proper instruments for the different social performances urban actors began to act out. Part III focuses on the genesis of the consumer and the production of consumer desire via image-making in advertising. Chapter 6 describes the change in the understanding of business that ran parallel to the expansion of the national market at the beginning of the twentieth century. In particular, the chapter describes the strategies conceived for the task of selling a larger quantity of goods without resorting to price competition in a phase marked by cut-throat competition and the threat of overproduction. Also in Chapter 6, trademark reputation, the development of advertising from the “advertising-as-news” idea to the idea of persuasion and desire stimulation, the evolution of store management and the new service ethic are all analysed as strategies of business personalization. Chapter 7 presents the project of the democratization of desire of which the “service ethic” and the general

Introduction 23 promotion of consumption were part. Through the discussion of the life and work of Elbert Hubbard and Simon Patten, the chapter shows how the new basis of civilization implied a vision of the good life founded on the idea of connecting citizenship with inclusion in consumption communities. The second and third sections of the chapter are devoted to an analysis of a few cases of the construction of the consumer-citizen. Chapter 8 recalls the arguments of Chapters 6 and 7 and shows how the genesis of the consumer was the outcome of the interplay between the answers commercial actors gave to the structural transformations of the economic sphere and wider socio-cultural changes. Through an in-depth analysis of advertisements, the chapter describes the formation of the associative mechanism in advertising between the “personality” of the product and the “identity” of the consumer and argues how under liminal conditions the transfer became effective in reality, thus contributing to the shaping of the consumer as the form of subjectivity adequate to the functioning of capitalism. Part IV describes the rise of marketing professionalism and how it worked to foster the association between desire and consumption as the fuel of consumer capitalism. Chapter 9 describes how, during the 1920s, the marketing plan and consumer research emerged, with contributions from the social sciences and applied psychology, through a systematization of the positive outcomes of practices and business tools developed to boost sales and avoid overproduction during previous decades. The chapter then illustrates how practitioners became aware that the linchpin of economic progress was consumption and not production, so that, accordingly, marketing had both to listen to consumer demand and stimulate it. Chapter 10 describes how marketing practitioners anticipated later marketing strategies, such as customer relationship marketing and experience economy. The first section presents the strategies developed to implement relationship marketing on the basis of the cultivation of consumer goodwill and consumer loyalty to brands. The second section describes strategies implemented to foster demand through the stimulation of the five human senses as well as the consumer’s feelings and emotions. The last section describes strategies of business dramatization and the construction of pseudo-events, anticipating what would later be called experience economy, by working through emotional and aesthetic re-enchantment via rationalization. Chapter 11 concludes the genealogy of consumer capitalism and shows how marketing with its double function was the much-needed philosophy of production necessary to ensure the social reproduction of the association between desires and consumption. This association was the lasting effect of the conditions out of which consumer capitalism emerged.

Notes 1 I present here a list of the main primary sources used in the book, while detailed references are in the endnotes. On the historical circumstances of the period taken into account I have used and reviewed: Statistical Abstracts of the United States, 1882–1930; Historical Statistics of the United States, 1789–1945; The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (each number from 1890 to 1930 ca.) and Recent Social Trends in the United States: Report of the President’s Research Committee on Social

24

2 3

4 5 6 7 8

Introduction

Trends, 1933. I have reviewed the following business and professional publications to chart the evolution of practitioners’ thought on business tools, marketing and business organization: Printers’ Ink, weekly (each number from 1888 to 1930 ca.); Dry Goods Economist, weekly (each number from 1889 to 1906); Merchants Record and Show Window, monthly (each number from 1907 to 1930 ca.); Printers Ink Monthly (each number from 1919 to 1930 ca.); Harvard Business Review (each number from 1923 to 1930 ca.); Journal of Applied Psychology (each number from 1919 to 1930 ca.). For the analysis of the evolution of business tools like trademarks, packaging, advertising, trade catalogues and letters, show windows and store design, I have reviewed the material collected in the following archives: the Warshaw Collection of Business Americana and the N. W. Ayer Advertising Agency Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; the Bella C. Landauer Collection of Business and Advertising Ephemera, PR 031, Department of Prints, Photographs, and Architectural Collections, The New-York Historical Society. For show windows and store design, I have reviewed the Dry Goods Economist and Merchant Records and Show Window. For print advertisements, I have reviewed various publications: the American Magazine; Country Life in America; Cosmopolitan; Harper’s new Monthly Magazine; Ladies’ Home Journal; McClure’s Magazine; Overland Monthly; the Saturday Evening Post and Town & Country. In addition to autobiographies, handbooks, monographs and essays written by social and economic actors like advertising men, artists, architects, stage designers, social scientists, applied psychologists and so forth, I have used articles from other journals and publications: Architecture; Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine; Christian Union; Current Opinion; Everybody’s Magazine; House Beautiful; New York Times; Atlantic Monthly; Art Journal; Theatre Art Magazine; the North American Review; Philistine; Spur; Vanity Fair; Women’s Wear Daily. Translation modified. First, Weber replaced “metaphysical” (metaphysischen) with “ethical-religious” (religiösethischen) when speaking of the meaning attached to the pursuit of wealth within the Protestant ethic; second, he substituted “Chinese” (chinesische) with “mechanized” (mechanisierte) to characterize the eventual ossification coming with the last stage of cultural development. The Max Weber Gesamtasugabe (MWG) has published the first version of the essay in MWG I/9, the second one in MWG I/18, thus making it difficult to chart variations. An easier comparison may be based on the edition prepared by Lichtblau and Weiß, who reported variations in the Appendix (Weber 2016). See MWG I/18: 488, fn. 78. Translation modified. See also Schorske (1980). Translation modified. Parsons translated Wahlverwandtschaften as “correlations”. Berger et al. (1974) took the term “accent of reality” from William James. The term was also used by Schutz (1962) to explain the relation between the experience of different finite provinces of meaning and the constitution of social reality. The term “second reality” derives from Robert Musil and was reworked by Voegelin (1978, 1999).

Part I

On the threshold of a new era Making way for modernity

1

A new economic life

In 1932, Robert Lynd summarized the transformations of family life that occurred during the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries that he and his wife had previously chronicled when studying the city of Muncie in Indiana (Lynd and Lynd 1929). In the essay for AAAPSS he signalled that, while “it is usually said that the family has shifted since the industrial revolution from a producing unit to a consuming unit”, a parallel process of individualization of family members had evolved at the same pace, so that it is better to speak of “individual members” and “consumption by individuals” (Lynd 1932: 86). Lynd singled out two different, though related processes: first, the shift toward industrialism and the transformation of the family as a consumption unit which was nearing completion; second, the individualization of family members in their capacity for consumption and personal consumer choices which was still in the making but was already fairly advanced. What made Lynd express a statement about the individual consumer that sounds so familiar to us almost a century later happened in the span of a few dramatic decades going from the Gilded Age up to the Roaring Twenties, when the rural republic of Lincoln turned into the capitalist empire of Hoover. A few paragraphs later, Lynd could affirm that “today the great bulk of the things consumed by family members are not made in the home, and the efforts of family members are focused instead on making money and buying a ‘living’” (Lynd 1932: 87). Earning a living instead of making a living indicates a crucial displacement produced by industrial capitalism und urbanization demanding a new form of social organization. At the same time, individualization as a process in the making pointed to the emergence of a new form of subjectivity. Framed in Weberian terms, the process was about the rise of a new ordering of societal relations (Ordnung der gesellschaftlichen Beziehungen) and a corresponding human type (Menschlichen Typus). A new way of life emerged with the interplay of economic changes on the one hand, and social and cultural transformations investing the everyday life of people on the other. While promoting a steady displacement of home production by social production on the structural level of change, the move towards industrialization and corporate business exerted a deep impact on the form of family life and on the sense of the self, for social roles, even the most intimate personal relations, had to be renegotiated, while social identity had to be reconstructed in a way very different from the past. A corresponding crisis of cultural authority coming with

28

The threshold of a new era

the modern revolt against tradition and religious disenchantment deepened the social impact of the new economic life, provoking an attempted material recovery from a spiritual trauma and, at the same time, a spiritual cure for material wounds. An overview of what happened in that time span at the level of macro-historical changes is the first step the genealogical investigation demands. First of all, during the nineteenth century the American frontier moved westward faster than it had been moving during the previous two centuries following the first settlements on the Atlantic coast. There began in the first part of the century what historian George Rogers Taylor (1951) termed a transportation revolution: early on, canals and steamboats offered more effective means for the conveyance of goods, while later railroads dramatically stepped up the tempo of continental expansion and heightened the lure of gold for investors. In 1869, a few years after the close of the bloody Civil War, the Pacific Railroad was completed and opened for traffic. A transcontinental path eventually joined the whole country from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, connecting East and West even before all territories in the way were annexed. From then on the railroad system developed quickly, enabling speedy and efficient distribution of manufacturing products all over the country and easier mobility throughout states. The dangers of the frontier life were rapidly disappearing while mining, ranching and farming settlements spread in the territories in between. The regional integration was advanced by the completion of three more transcontinental railroads – the Southern Pacific, the Northern Pacific and the Santa Fe – thus accelerating the reunion between North and South made possible by the end of the war. With the declaration by the Census Bureau of the frontier’s closing in 1890, the “manifest destiny” of territorial expansion was fulfilled at the expense of Native Americans.

The American system of manufacturing and the managerial revolution The frontier’s closing and the new network of transportations were greatly beneficial to economic development, even if the most significant factor boosting growth was the shift from the non mechanical shop to the machine-tool factory. Together with technological developments in production, a number of further conditions made American economic progress possible: the amplitude of the national territory, the abundance of natural resources, a large amount of manpower and an increasingly sophisticated financial system (Temin 1975). Even agricultural production must not be underestimated in relation to the growth of national wealth and industrial progress. More than just being a drive towards westward settlements, agriculture supplied an unprecedented output for food staples and the widespread mechanization of farming taking place since the 1850s due to the scarcity of labour relative to land, as well as the new demand for specialized production, offered great impetus to industry (David 1966; Olmstead 1975; Cashman 1993; Von Tunzelmann 1995). Mechanization and growth in productive capacity came at the expense of the farmer who found himself running a personal enterprise in a world of impersonal forces regulating the commodity

A new economic life 29 market. Once dreams of soil and of simple abundance rooted in the yeoman tradition were overtaken by dreams of profit and success embodied in the figure of the Yankee farmer, the Western land was eventually incorporated into the Eastern industrial system (Hofstadter 1955; Hays 1957; Trachtenberg 1982). Many farms came under the control of Eastern capitalists, as did many cattle enterprises, for surplus from these markets was a valuable source of capital income. Independent farmers were then not only uprooted from a traditional way of making a living through household production and local exchange, but they were pushed, to get a better living, into the city and in industry. A look at figures made the overall trend clear.1 From the 1870s to 1920s, the employed population (the number of persons gainfully occupied, following the definition of the Bureau of the Census) increased more rapidly than the working-age population. However, in 1870 half the employed population was occupied in agriculture and only a small percentage in the manufacturing industry, whereas in 1930 agricultural workers had diminished to a ratio of one in four and manufacturing workers had grown to a peak of almost 26 per cent of the total labour force (see Table 1.1). Even the number of workers engaged in the conveyance of persons, goods and news, together with persons occupied in clerical and professional service, increased at a great pace thanks to urbanization and the mobility offered by new means of communication like transportation and telegraphic and telephonic services. Foreign immigrants joined peasants in the move to the cities, where they relocated their families and tried to adapt their commitment to their native culture to the new urban environment with its capitalist demands (Bodnar 1985; Porter 1996).2 The rise of the factory and the implementation of labour-saving technologies were met with ambivalent responses. While they ignited conflict between employers and employees, as a series of major strikes during the last three decades of the nineteenth century made clear, and were purveyors of new poverty and social degradation, they equally involved the prospect of new prosperity. The machine at large was a prime cause of what historian Edward Cheyney (1892) described as a revolutionary change, one that would bring the older promise of natural abundance to resonate with technological mastery over nature (Marx 1964; Nye 1994; Lears 1994a; J. C. Williams 2005; see also R. Williams 2005a). The development of canals, inland waterways and then the railroad network was crucial in lowering the cost of raw materials, implementing distribution and, as a consequence, in opening new industrial territories as, for example, the Grand Rapids furniture manufacturing industry that started with a shop set up by a cabinetmaker in 1836 and then, after expanding to include eight furniture makers in 1870, ended up as a spectacular cluster of 54 producers in 1910 (Scranton 1994; Cater 2005). The growth in dimensions, lines of products and the specialization of manufacturing during the last decade of the nineteenth century was a remarkable one. Scientific discoveries met advancement in technological application through industrial research laboratories and in America no fewer than 400,000 patents were issued during the Gilded Age. Smil (2005) has advanced a fascinating and controversial thesis about the period going from the late 1860s to World War I as the real technical watershed in human history. What is safe to say is that in America many

Notes: n.a. = not available

Working-age population (10 years old +) Employed population (10 years old +) Employment-to-population ratio Average annual rate of working-age population change (10 years old +) Average annual rate of employed population change (10 years old +) Female population Female employment (16 years old +) Employment in agriculture (% of total employment) Employment in manufacturing (% of total employment)

36,761,607 17,392,099 47.3%

24,636,963 n.a. 49.28% 18.46%

19,064,806 n.a. 52.07% 16.48%

1880

29,123,683 12,924,951 44.4%

1870

19.81%

30,710,613 3,596,615 43.61%

47,413,559 23,318,183 49.2%

1890

21.50%

37,178,127 4,833,630 37.66%

4.63%

57,949,824 29,073,233 50.2% 3.98%

1900

22.08%

44,639.989 7,010,643 30.37%

71,580,270 37,370,794 52.2%

1910

25.66%

51,810,189 8,277,901 25.17%

82,739,315 42,433,535 51.3%

1920

22.51%

60,637,966 10,545,740 21.46%

98,723,047 48,829,920 49.5%

1930

Table 1.1 Population and labour force (1870–1930): working-age population (10 years old and over); employed population (10 years old and over); employment-to-population ratio; average annual rate of working-age population change (10 years old and over); average annual rate of employed population change (10 years old and over); female population; female employment (16 years old and over); employment in agriculture (% of total employment); employment in manufacturing (% of total employment)

A new economic life 31 inventions and cutting-edge technological applications were put into full use and contributed to ease man’s estate so much that the population more than doubled, in 1900 being recorded by Census at around 76 million.3 The important role of industrial policy in the development of what British observers called the American system of manufacturers was pioneered during the first half of the nineteenth century by the Springfield Armory and was based on the interchangeability of parts in finished products. The firearms producer was pushed by government and contractors to develop armaments with interchangeable parts so that broken equipment could be returned to service by easily replacing the necessary part, thus reducing costs of production (Rosenberg 1969, 1972; Chandler 1977; Hounshell 1984; Best 1990). The drive towards interchangeability made the Springfield Armory a laboratory of innovations in technology and in the substitution of machinery for skilled work as a consequence of the necessity of a high degree of standardization and precision manufacture of components, paving the road to modern factory management (Chandler 1977; von Tunzelmann 1995). The system was soon adopted by important enterprises producing metal-based goods such as Pope, who produced Columbia bicycles; Remington, who produced rifles and typewriters; McCormick, who produced reapers; and, later on, Singer, who produced sewing machines (Rosenberg 1972; Hounshell 1984). The system based on interchangeable parts fabricated through specialized machinery was eventually coupled with the implementation of the assembly line system. This latter system originated in the slaughterhouses of Cincinnati, which developed an ingenious way of “disassembly” of pork carcasses based on a minute division of human labour, for the dead pigs were moved through a system of overhead rails from one worker to another, each performing a fixed operation (Arms 1959); it was then elaborated further in the meatpacking industry of Chicago led by Armour and Swift, which coupled the system with the use of the refrigerated railroad car to prevent deterioration during transportation (Yeager Kujovich 1970; Walsh 1982; Cronon 1991), and it was eventually made world-famous by Henry Ford through the success of his Model T (Chandler 1977; Nye 2013). Machine tool industry demanded a parallel innovation in the organization of labour. Nothing shows better than the railroad sector how much the system was triggered by the joint contribution of technological innovation and professional management in handling the vast size of the country, thus suggesting the direction American capitalism would take with the great merger movement and the rise of corporations. Even though the calculation of the economic impact of railroad development is a matter of debate for economists, it is nonetheless clear that the railroad sector absorbed the vast part of American investments in the second half of the nineteenth century and inaugurated the industrial structure of oligopoly that would arise in many branches of American capitalism in subsequent decades, making the social impact and economic return of the railroads indisputable in the long run (Temin 1975; Chandler 1977; Von Tunzelmann 1995; Field 2009). On the organizational side, the complexity of the railroad system spanning thousands of miles across different states and territories called for a sophisticated reorganization of management which developed a decentralized administrative hierarchy

32

The threshold of a new era

able to localize decisions where they were needed while at the same time devising a mechanism of central coordination and supervision able to keep the network integrated, thus controlling management and avoiding accidents. On the financial side, railroad consolidation required an amount of capital that traditional investors could not supply, thus triggering the development of financial instruments and transfer agents who handled railroad securities. It was in the railway sector, with its complex and large structure, that the modern business enterprise took shape, and it was there, too, that the rise of professional management and communication handling through the telegraph and later the telephone began (Chandler 1977). During the Progressive Era, and up to the Roaring Twenties, outstanding achievements were attained. Mass production was set in motion, as testified by the growing value of manufacturing output, for perishables, semi-durable as well as durable products. Throughout America, the output of food staples and derivative products tripled from the 1899 to 1929, as did that of tobacco. Also textile production increased almost threefold, while the output of leather products almost doubled, not to mention the remarkable rise in transportation equipment, in petroleum and chemical products (see Table 1.2). The link between the American system and the principle of flow in the modern business enterprise established a level of production never before achieved (Chandler 1977; Best 1990). Newcomers to the market that were able to build upon mass production methods lowering cost of production eventually gained a spectacular competitive advantage. The advent and establishment of the most important “captains of industry”4 like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and J. P. Morgan and the Table 1.2 Manufacturing (1890–1929) Value of output for finished commodities at producers’ current prices; physical output for major groups of manufacturing industries 1890

1899 1900

Value of output (in thousands of dollars) Perishables 2,854,433 n.a Semi-durables 1,076,900 n.a Durables 503,285 n.a Physical output (index number, 1929 = 100) Foods Tobacco products Textile products Leather products Transportation equipment Petroleum and coal products Chemical products Note: n.a. = not available

n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a.

30 30 38 64 7.3

1914

1919

4,285,784 n.a 1,403,860 n.a 629,037 n.a

7,419,849 8,349,257 18,826,797 2,352,822 2,681,948 7,030,907 1,280,743 1,553,358 3,967,940

n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a.

45 43 60 83 10.7

n.a n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a.

53 53 72 81 20

65 69 67 90 61

16

n.a.

21

39

31

n.a.

42

52

8.7 n.a. 19

1909 1910

n.a.

A new economic life 33 leading American manufacturers whose products became household names, like Ford, Eastman Kodak, Heinz, Campbell’s, Kellogg’s, Gillette, Coca-Cola, etc., heralded a new phase of the American economic life founded on the rise of big business and the related managerial revolution (Wiebe 1967; Chandler 1977; Noble 1977; Trachtenberg 1982; Sklar 1988; Porter 2006). As testified in previous decades by railroad expansion, any industry in which a coterie of large firms took the lead required financial and organizational innovations. The increasing volume and speed of throughput brought an enlargement in the size of factories that in many cases reached a financial value not to be met by single traditional entrepreneurs, given the high fixed-costs investments needed by capital-intensive production processes. A problem of transfer of ownership emerged particularly when the first wave of owner-entrepreneurs was ready to retire. A class of salaried, specialized managers took control over organizations, while ownership became widely scattered (Navin and Sears 1955; Chandler 1977; O’Sullivan 2001). The need for managerial control also depended on the necessity for administrative coordination of labour pushed by vertical integration.5 As James Young, director of the Wharton School, the first business schools to be opened in the country, recognized, these changes led to a sharper distinction between administrative and executive positions and the positions of other employees (Young 1906). It was in the United States that the concept and the practice of systematic management first arose during the last decades of the nineteenth century, being commonplace by the first decades of the twentieth century for a large American firm to be staffed by a cadre of professional managers (Litterer 1961, 1963; Chandler 1977; Nelson 1995; O’Sullivan 2001; Jacoby 2004).6 From the second half of the nineteenth century, a formal system of technical and scientific education was increasingly designed under industrial auspices. As reported by a researcher for the Hoover’s Committee, by the mid-1870s “many of the changes which have occurred in the American educational system are directly related to changes in the industrial system” (Judd 1933: 327; see also Nelson 1992); in addition, a business orientation of higher education “has already grown to be a necessity”, as the trade magazine PI claimed in 1895, admonishing critics of business orientation that “the idea in education which rejects the practical and useful, and is exclusive patron of the theoretical and beautiful, is in its last intrenchment and will not long withstand that mighty onslaught which public opinion is making against it”.7 Social economist Simon Patten, who worked at the Wharton School in close cooperation with Edmund James, was a strong advocate for specialization at the service of industrial efficiency and showed a strong sensitivity for an overall reformation of education oriented to economic requirement. Opposing the traditional beliefs of a liberal education, Patten warned that under modern conditions “a man should know his business before he knows the world” (Patten 1905: 231) and he argued that, whilst “the college has stood for culture”, “it must now stand for efficiency” since “efficiency and economy are great ideals whose import we are only beginning to realize” (Ibid.: 233). Though he could not help but attract harsh criticism from colleagues who charged him with the project of furnishing high-class servants for dominant corporations, he was nonetheless

34

The threshold of a new era

a plain-spoken herald of a new educational pattern which has since then revealed an indisputable staying power (Sass 1982). The reorganization taking place on the shop floor through principles of scientific management and the diffusion of higher education deeply affected the constitution of labour and widened the social distance between workers on the one hand and administrative personnel and employers on the other. The displacement of personal craftsmanship with scientific-based knowledge as the source for technical and organizational innovation brought about a significant process of labour de-skilling. In particular, the process of de-skilling broke apart the social basis of the management of production and the skilled workforce, with its mastery over the production process as the puddler at the furnace or the fitter in the armament sector, had together rested upon for several decades before. Additionally, through a hierarchical and functional division of labour, workers were now minutely controlled and increasingly left out of the learning processes that were geared towards generating competitive advantage. Old skills that took years to build up were lost in the process and workers found themselves considered as interchangeable parts, classified mostly according to seniority rights and with wages depending on their effective productivity (Livingston 1987; Lazonick 1990; Montgomery 1987; Best 1990; O’Sullivan 2000). This mechanization of human resources was faced with increasing resistance both at individual and collective level. As a response, the authoritarian stance of Taylorism was slowly tempered by focusing on the management of the so-called “human touch” (Gilbreth and Gilbreth 1916: 294; see also Rice 1992) and the “human factor” (Hopkins 1916: 67) increasingly through the contribution of industrial psychology (Scott 1911; Münsterberg 1913; Viteles 1932; see also Landy 1997; Jacoby 2004), and the collective discontent was domesticated by offering higher wages and a shorter working day (Noble 1977; Cross 2000).8

A business nation John Converse, the president of Baldwin Locomotive Works of Philadelphia and strong advocate of higher business education, made clear in writing for the AAAPSS that the term “business” had acquired a much broader significance in 1906 “than it had 250 or 200 years ago, when the first American colleges were founded” (Converse 1906: 116). In his plea for better and widespread professional education, he compared an older condition, where business meant relatively simple and scarce transactions happening at local markets, often resorting to barter over the use of money, with a novel condition made of frequent and complex exchanges based on prices fixed by the laws of an abstract market national in scope. The investigation into the rise of the market economy, earlier in Europe and later in the United States, and into the exact conditions and driving forces behind the displacement of the “market-place” for the “market-concept” (Casson and Lee 2011; see also Carrier 1994; Szakolczai 2016) is a matter of endless dispute among historians and far exceeds the scope of this book.9 What is nonetheless important to take into account for a genealogy of consumer capitalism are the changing

A new economic life 35 conditions unfolding in the distributive side of the new economic life. Changes that marked the shift from the days of the island communities fed by local markets, and periodically visited by fairs and itinerant merchants, to the incoming age of the business nation, built through webs of communication and transportation, where the new institutions of mass production and retailing loomed large (Wiebe 1967; Porter and Livesay 1971; Strasser 1989). Up to the first part of the nineteenth century, community life relied heavily on household production and generic goods bought at local markets; a distinct market-oriented mentalité was not fully developed and even the circulation of money was relatively scarce (Merrill 1977; Henretta 1978; Clark 1979; Lamoreaux 2003; Lears 2009).10 For ordinary people living in rural areas, trade with non-familiar people was limited to encounters with itinerant merchants, especially at country fairs (Schlereth 1989). As peddlers were strangers who were mostly committed to securing profitable sales at first encounter and were not interested in establishing a relation of trust, they resorted to every trick and seductive method to overcome resistance on the part of the purchaser, who in turn bargained to get the lowest possible price. Itinerant merchants were commonly depicted as cheats and tricksters and especially patent medicine sellers were seen as liminal figures who sold promises of cure and personal transformation through the purchase of dubious elixirs (Atherton 1945; Young 1961; Friedman 2004). However, peddlers and hawkers were the early promoters of the new commercial culture among local communities and developed effective advertising and marketing skills upon which later professionals hired by national manufacturers built their success (Jaffee 1991; Spears 1994; Church 2008). Moreover, the encounter with merchants often happened in liminal situations such as fairs and local festivities, where medicine shows and travelling spectacles were usually set up by flamboyant performers and confidence men in a colourful and often licentious context, related to the suspension of daily routine. They were therefore both agents of the marvellous, offering gratifying experiences of breaking boundaries, and economic agents, contributing to spill market exchange over accustomed boundaries in time and space (Lears 1994a, 2009). Although business life had to be founded upon a more stable basis, both in terms of professional organization and social recognition on the part of the public, and the new commercial orientation had to be fostered by a formal distancing from its undignified lineage in hucksterism and smutty jokes, the need to expand market exchange and promote new habits of consumption stimulated businessmen to refashion aggressive trade practices in a more commendable guise. The carnival commerce related to country fairs and itinerant merchants was therefore buried by dignified modern business, only to be brought back to life under a more systematic basis in the commercial aesthetic of the consumer city (see Chapter 4), the imagemaking of professional advertising (see Chapter 8) and the experience economy of marketing professionalism (see Chapter 10). Over the course of fifty years, the scale and scope of economic life dramatically changed and small shops, local markets and manufacturers, and country fairs and peddlers were replaced by department stores, chain stores, national corporations,

36

The threshold of a new era

corporate-driven commercial events and professional salesmen. The reconfiguration of the distribution system entailed two distinct, though related tasks: a more effective material conveyance of goods from producers to the market, and the cultivation of a bond of intimacy between the new economic institutions with their products and the personal lives of people. Once transportation and communication networks had knitted communities together and fostered interdependence among people even across great distances, the establishment of a national market rested upon the professional handling of distribution and the shift of control over the flow of high-volume trade from the independent wholesaler, who acted as the middleman between firms and local markets, to the manufacturer or the retailer (Porter and Livesay 1971; Strasser 1989; Tamilia 2006).11 Forward vertical integration was usually implemented to make distribution more efficient by companies as diverse as Swift in the meatpacking industry and DuPont in the explosives industry (Chandler 1959; Zunz 1990), while mail-order companies grew fast through direct selling at convenient prices to rural Americans (Boorstin 1974). However, for the impersonal market exchange to flourish, the second task had to be met to win over suspicion of mass-manufactured goods and overcome the customary ways of buying and selling. An interesting case regards the marketing pioneer and advertising genius Elbert Hubbard, who developed a selling policy for mass-manufactured soap that was able to meet both tasks; moreover, he embodied a supple business philosophy, upon which the policy was construed, that may be safely considered as point of entry for the full recognition of what was implied in the reconfiguration of the distributive system: demand creation in addition to the physical supply of goods (Shaw 1916). The story of Hubbard and the Larkin Company begins in the spring of 1872, when the Hubbards were visited by Justus Weller, Elbert’s cousin and partner of John Larkin in a small soap business. By coincidence, Weller arrived just when the family was engaged in their annual soap making, and he offered Elbert a position in the company as a travelling salesman, which Hubbard eagerly accepted. When three years later Weller and Larkin parted ways, Hubbard, at the age of 19, joined Larkin to work as the chief salesman of the new company. He continued peddling soap for the next three years and refined his selling techniques, by working on his performance and by not being afraid of experimenting with his personality and physical image (Champney 1968). As he would claim indeed during his second life (see Chapter 7) as founder of the Roycroft community in East Aurora, as spokesman of the Arts and Crafts Movement and as a celebrated lecturer, Hubbard insisted that “there is not so very much difference in the intelligence of people” but the great man “is able to get his goods into the show window and the other is not aware that he has either show window or good” (Hubbard 1898: 115). He argued for unremitted promotion on the principle that “the only man who should not advertise is the one who has nothing to offer” (Hubbard 1927: 64). Hubbard’s vision would later become the object of scorn and harsh criticism by Eric Fromm, under the label of the “personality market”, made of individuals who increasingly understand themselves as commodities whose success depends on their ability for self-salesmanship (Fromm 1947).

A new economic life 37 Promotion was second nature to Hubbard and his skills as a born salesman earned him a one-third ownership of the company after only three years of hard work, as well as putting him in charge of the entire commercial side of the business.12 Under his management, distribution was fully reworked along an ante litteram marketing orientation: he put the Larkin trademark on the wrapper and started a full mail-order selling plan pushed by the distribution of gifts to customers. With the slogan “from factory to family”, Hubbard delivered to families at the convenient price of $6 the “Sweet home soap”, a year supply of detergent, toilet soap and washing soap, packed together with a perfume bottle (Balch 1940). Hubbard then perfected a premiums system that was intended not merely as a sales booster but especially as a means to maintain close relations with the buying public. Premiums amounted to a retail value almost equal to the cost of the soap: from silverware and rugs, to the Chautauqua lamp and the Larkin desk, all were a blessing for the relatively humble houses that made Larkin’s market and therefore helped in establishing the company’s reputation among the targeted communities. However, the most astounding accomplishment of Hubbard’s selling strategy was the “Club Plan”, an ingenious system which made salesmen out of regular customers. Every housewife who joined a Larkin Club, contributing with a monthly subscription, was rewarded with a “Combination Box” of Larkin’s products and the accompanying premium. The housewives who were willing to become secretary of the club had to “think of four other relatives and friends or neighbors who want to make home cozy and comfortable with Larkin premiums” and ask them to join the club. Obviously, the secretary-housewife was rewarded with additional premiums for her sales service, and was able to enjoy also “be[ing] known as the Larkin Club Secretary”.13 Hubbard’s activity allowed the Larkin Company to grow from a small soap producer into a large mail-order house, for he was able to anticipate organizational solutions and business tools which would be perfected only in the following decades (Stanger 2000). Hubbard’s case illuminates the second task in the reconfiguration of distribution: the implementation of new business tools suited to engraining the new world of manufacturers and retailers, with their products and services, into the imaginative centre of social life, for the larger size and scope of the new economic life demanded a radical alteration in people’s relation to material goods if the output of manufacture was to be absorbed and commerce was to flourish (Schudson 1984; Laermans 1993; Leach 1993; Laird 1998; Sassatelli 2007). In turn, the new cultural orientation would have to contribute to reshaping the whole social order according to the tempo of modern life and the dynamic balance between continuous production and responsive consumption. In the first place, purchasing practices had to be detached from fixed boundaries in time and space and therefore it was necessary to discard for good the static and cyclical conception of life already put under pressure by the widening influence of the economic life. As the continuity of the neighbourhood existence and the contemplative love of nature had been anchoring the working life of people to non-economic values and were thus detrimental to the new needs of industrial production, they were a limitation to the spread of market exchange beyond traditional boundaries. The discussion as to whether summer

38

The threshold of a new era

was a dull season for sales is a case in point of how the developmental trend set in motion by structural changes was engrained into new habits through business practices. Writing in 1889, a contributor to PI – the leading trade magazine devoted to advertising founded one year before by advertising agent George Rowell (1906; see also Mott 1957) – suggested to the reader that the most advanced merchants had already been awoken to the fact that people’s wants were no longer governed by traditional practice, or by the mere necessities of life, like the wear and tear of fabrics that would lead them to buy new clothes. Still, advertising was promoted not so much as a tool for getting people to buy specific articles, but for promoting purchasing practices away from mere necessity and seasonality, thus implying that the new habit had still to be nurtured. In other words, even if purchasing practices were less and less restricted to fixed times, advertising had nevertheless to be kept in high gear exactly to reinforce that trend. In trying to expand sales through extensive promotion, advertisers were making the new shopping habit out of an emerging trend.14 What is worth noting is that the commercialization of society – that is, the extension of market exchange into the broader sphere of life and social signification – was brought about by what can be defined as the socialization of commerce. An article in DGE (an authoritative trade magazine for merchants and retailers) eloquently entitled “Be a citizen” makes this apparent. The author asked the retailer if he had ever tried to acquaint himself with the history of his own city or the characters who had lived there, or with those who lived within his borough, for that was “a good foundation to build upon”. He suggested that there is business advantage in being public-spirited, in showing interest “in the schools, churches, streets, lights, transportation, etc.”, for that is an effective way “to illuminate your sign, your trade mark, your goods, your location”.15 In order to pour commerce into society, businessmen must gain social recognition by latching on to their community, whether it was the neighbour for small shopkeepers, the city for department stores, or the nation as a whole for manufacturers. The author continued that one of the most effective ways to socialize business activities, to link trade to the broader community, is in showing interest in current events and festivities, remembering them in ads and windows or, perhaps, becoming the sponsor or organizer of events.16 Indeed, feasts were increasingly seen as opportunities for expanding commerce, thus reversing the socialization of commerce into a commercialization of the calendar (Schmidt 1991), and festivities were increasingly intermingled with commercial events promoting consumption (see Chapters 4 and 6), even anticipating what would have later been called affective or experience economics (Pine and Gilmore 1999; Jenkins 2006), centred on the exploitation of the emotional and experiential dimension of consumer practices (see Chapter 10).

The new business tools The expansion of market exchange beyond customary boundaries fostered not only big business and vertical and horizontal integration but demanded novel solutions also on the part of smaller and medium-sized manufacturers and retailers (Scranton

A new economic life 39 1994; Laird 2000; Spellman 2012). The changing focus of the trade journal United States Economist and Dry Goods Reporter, issued since 1852, bears witness to the transformations unfolding in retailing. In 1888, the journal was bought by a well-known publisher of trade journals, Charles T. Root, who gave it a face-lift and changed its name to Dry Goods Economist (DGE). As the old edition of the journal had addressed the manufacturer and the middleman, being concerned with issues related to wholesale and distribution, the new edition was built upon the motto “What to buy and how to sell it”, and it mostly addressed the retailer, for – as Root contended – “the balance of power had passed from the jobber to the ultimate distributor”.17 The ability to affect demand was emerging as the best policy to make business flourish; thus a more active relation with prospective customers had to be implemented by retailers. A few business tools were developed to meet the task. By the end of the nineteenth century, the joint use of electric illumination and larger sheets of glass in shops and stores transformed the windows at street level, which were no longer merely openings to admit light and sun, but became literally “show windows”. The store front, with its signs and windows, could therefore be a means to attract the passers-by and the policy to just wait for customers to step into the store came to be seen as outdated for the “wide-awake retailer”,18 who wanted to be with the times. Accordingly, the retailer must attract customers into the store because, as DGE optimistically heralded already in 1893, “business men know that the channel to the people’s pocket is through the eye” and “a failure to please means a failure to sell”.19 The recognition that stores had to catch the public’s eye to attract sales called for a deep reorganization of retail. First, the store layout was changed for more pleasant shopping. Lighter and better doors were installed so that shoppers would not need to struggle in opening them and, at the same time, the path going from the entrance to the counter was better lit and freed of any obstacles impeding easy movement. Aisles were located to favour the combinations of purchases by placing complementary goods near each other and the use of electric illumination backed up the effectiveness of display beyond daytime hours, extending the time dedicated to shopping and taking a further step in the commercialization of the calendar. Goods indeed could no longer be stacked merely showing the great variety of the different stocks, but they had to be carefully and tastefully displayed to highlight every line of merchandise properly. Wooden counters were replaced by glass show-cases, which effectively displayed articles while keeping them free from dust and shoplifters. Mirrors were used not only to titillate customers with the chance of “a study of one’s toilet or costume” but also, through a judicious system of reflections, to make the medium-sized shop resemble the larger store and to allow its limited stock to “have the impression on the beholder of a vast magazine”.20 Second, it became necessary to employ someone endowed with taste and a certain artistic talent, who would be able to get beyond the “warehouse atmosphere” that had characterized stores. Even if he was not yet considered a trained expert, the window trimmer and store decorator was increasingly employed for arranging

40

The threshold of a new era

goods in windows and shelves. Half artisan, half artist, he needed to have good taste when it came to blending colours and using light effects to make goods stand out in their own individuality. In the earlier stage of development, retailers relied on decorations to attract people, who were persuaded to buy though communication about the size, quality, price and more specific uses of the product. While the aesthetic and sensorial aspects of products had not been considered important in swaying customers to purchase until marketing professionalism made them effective sales devices in a later stage of development (see Chapter 10), their importance was nevertheless recognized for creating a pleasant buying atmosphere. Decorators must also know merchandise thoroughly to effectively rotate displays and tempt purchasers with a novelty effect, even during the summer season, when turnover was lower and stores and windows usually take on a vacation look harmful to profit. That the new policy aimed at fostering sales even during dull seasons is a case in point of the reciprocal influence between structural changes – the modern trend in abandoning the seasonality of purchasing – and situated practices which contributed to grounding and reinforcing the general trend. In addition, on festive occasions or notable occurrences, window dressers were asked to prepare special displays; they dismantled displays showcasing regular merchandise and set up windows marking the event. Whether windows displayed Christmas or Easter scenes, or scenes from Robinson Crusoe or Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or celebrated the much-awaited baseball match with dolls about 40 centimetres in height representing the players, or celebrated the Hudson River Railroad Depot replicated by using handkerchiefs, they all were meant to attract crowds of people and win the approval of their local community. Though they contributed to the socialization of commerce, special windows failed to show actual goods in connection with the event they paid homage to, raising doubt among practitioners about their usefulness. What is worth noting is that the so-called “world of goods” (Douglas and Isherwood 1979) had yet to come, for even on the part of the most wide-awake businessmen there was no natural conjunction that could be immediately exploited between daily life events and articles of consumption. Consumer goods had not yet gained the central position in daily life that they would occupy at a later stage in the process, even though the course was fairly traced.21 The urge to establish the world of goods in the mind of consumers was a crucial issue for manufacturers, too. As they aimed to create a national market for their newly manufactured products, it was not enough to perfect the physical distribution of the new cornucopia of goods. It was necessary to let the American population know that new and various goods as diverse as soaps and creams, breakfast cereals, canned foods, cigarette brands, gramophones, sewing machines, cars and much more were made available, where and how they could be purchased and in what manner they could be used. As recollected by a writer for PI in 1903, “in the days when readers of PI were boys”, articles of domestic consumption were supplied by household production or were bought in bulk at the local grocer, and “coffee, tea, flour, sugar, soap, candle and the like had no name on them”.22 Producers now had to make the public acquainted with their name in association with their goods; they had to put their name on the box, as William Kellogg innovatively did

A new economic life 41 with his signature on the package. Trademarks were therefore extensively issued to ensure that a public previously used to household production and unpacked staples would now become familiar with the product. Trademarks were also promoted as guarantee of standardization, and so whoever bought a specific product knew that on repeating the purchase the quality would be unchanged. Producers then supplied markets with standardized packaged goods, making them clearly identifiable on sight and, more than anything, began to advertise extensively (Marquette 1967; Strasser 1989; Low and Fullerton 1994; Sivulka 1998).23 Advertisements in newspapers, magazines and journals, but also on billboards and mass transit networks, were invaluable means to catch the public’s eye and inform people about products for sale. Publicity was absentee salesmanship, a way of merchandising and gaining ground once personal trade had become just a small part of the whole of trade relations – now conducted in absentia, as Veblen (1954) put it. Since at the end of the nineteenth century the costs for printing billboards and for electrifying signs were remarkably reduced, and public transportation moved from the horse-drawn car to the electric-powered vehicle, merchants and retailers joined manufacturers in a race for outdoor advertising, which would reshape the social landscape of the city (see Chapter 4). Streetcar advertising witnessed a boom following the professionalization of lessees and the implementation of technical innovations in mass transportation and cards display. At the turn of the century, William Carleton and George Kissam realized a vast system of “full-time cars only” contracts by means of which their agency secured a better system of business through the introduction of new concave racks in which cards were better allotted and more easily read, and through an overall checking conducted by travelling inspectors of the cards in all the cars that the contract called for; moreover, the newly introduced electric cars completed six times a day the same route horse cars completed only twice, thus giving advertisers an expanded audience for their cards. By the beginning of the new century, the adoption of a standard-size card promoted by Barron Collier, owner of the Consolidated Street Railway Car Advertising Company, one of the largest company running spaces in over 11,000 cars in nearly 350 cities, helped establish one of the most effective advertising media. Streetcar advertising ensured, indeed, a level of certainty about circulation, being based on annual reports on the paying passengers and it then gave advertisers the chance to catch the traveller in his most receptive state of mind. Food packages, for example, were extensively reproduced in full colour in car cards in the hope that they would be spotted before all others on the grocer’s shelves. In order to truly stamp the product’s image on the public’s mind, streetcar advertisements were usually run for an extended period of time.24 Billboards and signs complemented streetcar cards in outdoor publicity. Billposting and sign painting were both long-established means of promotion and were used by circuses, theatrical performances and itinerant peddlers, but the medium was systematically developed and began to find a legitimate place in the advertising scheme once a series of business mavericks had the idea to formally lease spaces for outdoor publicity. They began to form their own companies that built boards on which advertisers could paste their bills. Soon enough, billposters

42

The threshold of a new era

formed the Associated Billposters Association and by regulating practices they eventually “regulated” competition by opposing non-members, who in turn called the association a trust. However, at the beginning of the twentieth century regulated display and standard-sized boards had been already adopted across the country and had attracted the most important national advertisers. Outdoor advertising of this new kind was established upon a few guiding principles: the effective design of posters; a relatively long duration of display for exerting a lasting impression on the mobile audience; a careful assessment of the location value according to the number of people who were supposed to pass the poster and also according to these people’s frame of mind at the time of passing; and the integration of billposting with streetcar advertising and printed advertisements.25 Above all, it was the revolution in mass publishing that was responsible for moving the advertising machine into a higher gear. The evolution of printing techniques reduced costs and sped printing up, thus increasing the number of newspapers and periodicals published, together with their circulation (Mott 1966). The spread of the news reading habit was met with ambivalence and caution about the overall influence on the reader’s mind, for if it was indisputable that modern life was dependent upon the press for knowledge of events, the newspaper tended to make “the intellectual life of its readers one continuous series of petty excitements” and “a veritable life of the social senses”, as cautioned by expert on city government Delos Wilcox (1900: 57) in the AAAPSS. In addition, during the 1890s the increasing popularity of 10c magazines like McClure’s, Munsey’s, Cosmopolitan and Ladies’ Home Journal turned the market upside down and deeply affected the literary diet of people (Wilson 1983; Fox 1984). Even though magazines did not exert “an almost incalculable influence” over the reader, as summed up in a survey conducted in 1892 (Blair 1892: 154), magazines and more broadly the new agencies of mass communication extensively contributed to the shape and dissemination of new cultural tastes, social values and general public opinion. Lastly, the emergent graphic revolution made possible the reproduction, at a relatively low cost, of illustrations and images alluring new middle-class readers, and forced publications to rely increasingly on advertising as a source of revenue (Mott 1957, 1966). Advertising expenditure in newspapers and magazines grew almost tenfold from the end of the 1860s up to the early 1900s and the number of advertisements in magazines increased by over 200 per cent during the last two decades of the nineteenth century (Presbrey 1929). Accordingly, the advertising agent who was once a space broker had to reinvent himself as a copywriter, for retailers and manufacturers no longer needed a middleman to chart the publishing market and secure the most convenient contracts, whereas they urged for skilled knowledge in conceiving and realizing advertisements directed at a national audience (Presbrey 1929; Pope 1983; Fox 1984; Pollay 1985; Laird 1998). The heyday of the businessman who considered promotion a necessary evil and wrote by himself plain texts in bold type gave way to advertising conducted on a professional basis. Yet it must be borne in mind that professional advertising was the ripe fruit of changing market conditions, as well as resulting from the successful attempt of the new professional class to debunk the popular idea that advertising was

A new economic life 43 economically wasteful, adding greatly to the sales cost of the goods. Advertising was indeed heralded, on the one hand, as one of the most important innovations in modern business, without which no retailing firm or manufacturing company could reasonably expect to really succeed; and, on the other hand, it was singled out as an exact “measure of civilization”, for progress in advertising meant a growth of wants and an expanding demand for goods, which in turn signalled a rising standard of living and a flourishing economy.26 The need to raise the social status of advertising prompted a movement for self-regulation based upon the claim that truth in advertising was the best and only policy, opposing the old tradition of tricks and humbugs in patent medicines promotion, even though at the turn of the century a considerable amount of billings still came from that class of goods. Entering the twentieth century, a growing interest in distancing the advertising of consumer goods from the advertising of proprietary remedies inevitably took place among ad men and agencies, for their professional reputation could no longer be established upon the promotion of what had by then come to be identified, in popular parlance, as a swindle; therefore, the movement eventually accepted the progressive legislation of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which ensured that product labelling would be more accurate and controlled. The obligation to stick with the truth did not, however, imply that anyone could be an advertising man, for as a spokesman for the profession brilliantly commented in PI, the activity required “constant study of its kaleidoscopic changes” and “intimate knowledge of the varied and varying tastes of the great public”.27 The new professionals were cohesive in persuading their audience that advertising had come to stay, having changed the blunt methods of yesterday into a fine art, while at the same time they were engaged in an impassionate discussion about its principles and methods. Landmarks of this early stage of modern advertising were the news-style of John E. Powers, copywriter for the department store Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia, and the motto “Keeping Everlastingly at it Brings Success”, coined by one of the most important agencies of the period, N. W. Ayer & Sons. Accordingly, on the one hand advertising must use clear and plain language and never misrepresent the article, for ads were news, telling readers what they want to know and where they can buy it, and on the other hand it must be systematic and persistent in order to fix the article’s merits in the mind of the readers, whereas a failure in keeping the name before the public meant that people could be attracted by a competing article and soon forget the former one.28 Although a sober and decorous conception of advertising was well suited to gain professional recognition within the business scheme, it was nonetheless conceived upon a work-oriented productive ethos already grasping to meet changing conditions that pushed for a more dynamic management of demand. As many contributors to PI began to suggest, the emphasis was not so much on what a merchant had to sell as on the ways he had of putting it so that people would buy it; as a consequence, advertisements must not only attract attention but above all they must convince their readers they need the goods advertised. Ad-copies with a more suggestive and attractive punch, whether in wording or type, were much needed. Yet, most importantly, practitioners were increasingly aware of the serious mistake that the businessman

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The threshold of a new era

usually made of thinking solely of his goods or his shop while engaged in constructing his advertisement, whereas the time had already come for the skilled adman to conceive ads by mentally placing himself in the position of the prospective customer. The new viewpoint was a remarkable step in advertising and overall marketing, for the advertising audience was now considered in the plural, thus laying the foundation for subsequent market segmentation (see Chapter 9). Basic differences related to sex, income and profession were now understood as variables to be considered when selecting appropriate media and in composing advertisements. On the one hand, extensive media coverage came to be dismissed in favour of a few selected publications read by the class of people most likely to need the product on offer. On the other hand ad-copies must be differentiated according to the type of reader they addressed. For example, the cultivated reader of a high-class magazine and the working-class reader of a cheap story paper must be appealed to differently, for example, by a tone appropriate to their status, since the friendly manner that wins the latter would be considered impertinence by the former.29 The relatively simple variables upon which differentiation was based depended not so much on the fact that the instrument was in its infancy, but on the fact that the modern subject was not yet developed into the multifaceted consumer of the mature consumer society. Parenthetically, the fact that advertising differentiation focused on such formal requirements as communicative tone, choice of vocabulary, length or brevity of the text, and not on the content of the message was due to the fact that a more complex vision of consumer goods had not yet developed. Whilst admen understood that if one wanted to see the enormous output of mass manufacturing absorbed, then advertisements were to ceaselessly arouse a desire for the new products, it was much harder for them to make that prescription into something concrete, for the “realistic” conception of consumer goods founded on the long-established work-oriented productive ethos, sticking with the use value of products, stood in the way of new solutions able to differentiate their symbolic meaning (Potter 1954; Lears 1984; Schudson 1984). From the first decade of the 1900s, this “realistic” conception was substituted by a more complex view conceived in response to growing competition and the threat of overproduction. Yet the rise of the new vision that connected goods with images of good life and promises of self-fulfilment was brought about not only by business practices pushing to find new market outlets under the pressure of new economic needs but also by a deep alteration of people’s relation to goods which made the new vision of goods socially acceptable.30 That alteration was part of a series of crucial transformations affecting social relations, personal identity and the perception of reality, which prepared the rise of consumer capitalism and will be discussed in the next chapter.

Notes 1 Statistical data on this and following points can be seen in Historical Statistics of the United States, 1789–1945, Washington, DC: US Dept of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1949. See also Fabricant (1940) and Kendrick (1961). Data analysis has been conducted with the assistance of Giulia Rivellini.

A new economic life 45 2 On immigration, the Americanization of foreigners and the Chinese Exclusion Act, see the special section The Immigration Problem, in AAAPSS, Vol. 24, (Jul.) 1904; the special issue Chinese and Japanese in America, in AAAPSS; Vol. 34, No. 2 (Sep.), 1909; Huebner (1906) and Hurlin and Givens (1933). 3 A series of articles and special issues of the AAAPSS chronicled American economic progress through technological, financial and industrial advancements. See especially Johnson (1893, 1895); Levasseur (1897); Aldrich (1900); Knapp (1902); Outerbridge (1905); Jones (1905); the notes on Industry and Commerce, in AAPSS, Vol. 17 (Mar., May) and Vol. 18 (Sep., Nov.), 1901; Industrial Notes, in AAAPSS Vol. 19 (Mar.), 1902; the special issues Finance, in AAAPSS Vol. 20 (Nov.), 1902; American Business Conditions, in AAAPSS, Vol. 34, No. 3 (Nov.), 1909 and Industrial Competition and Combination, in AAAPSS, Vol. 42 (Jul.), 1912. 4 Whether they were as “captains of industry” or “robber barons” mostly depended upon the critical stance scholars and commentators put forward about that economic order founded on big business and corporations. 5 A second path to big business followed horizontal integration, usually explained as the profitable answer to a socio-economic stalemate of increasing overproduction and severe price competition during the 1890s against a rise in real labour wages (Lamoreaux 1985; Livingston 1987; Porter 2006; see also Livermore 1935). 6 On the rise of professionalism, see Bledstein (1976). 7 PI 14/11/1895, Business Schools: 29. On vocational training, see the special issue Industrial Education, in AAAPSS, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Jan.), 1909 and Cawl (1924). On the education for business professions, see the special issue Business Professions, in AAAPSS, Vol. 28 (Jul.), 1906 and Twitmyer (1924). A short description of four schools of industry, including the MIT, is in New Roads to a Trade, CIMM, Vol. 23 (Dec.), 1882: 285–288. 8 On the labour problem, working conditions and labour management, see the special sections Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration, in AAAPSS, Vol. 20 (Jul.), 1902 and The Effect of Industrial Combinations on Labor Conditions, in AAAPSS, Vol. 42 (Jul.), 1912; the special issues Current Labor Problems, in AAAPSS, Vol. 21 (Jan.), 1903; Some Problems of Organized Labor, in AAAPSS, Vol. 24 (Sep.), 1904; The Improvement of Labor Conditions in the United States, in AAAPSS, Vol. 27 (May), 1906; Labor and Wages, in AAAPSS, Vol. 33, No. 2 (Mar.), 1909; The Settlement of Labor Disputes, in AAAPSS, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Sep.), 1910 and Personnel and Employment Problems in Industrial Management, in AAAPSS, Vol. 65 (May), 1916 and Wolman and Peck (1933). On industrial psychology, see also the special section Psychology and the Worker, in AAAPSS, Vol. 110 (Nov.), 1923 and Bingham (1923). 9 The scholarly literature on the topic is voluminous to be accounted, even if inadequately. On the rise of the modern market economy, see the classic work of Polanyi (2001) and Braudel (1981). On American developments, see Sellers (1991), Rothenberg (1992), Stokes and Conway (1996), Martin (2005) and Larson (2010). Essays covering both European and American developments are in Haskell and Teichgraeber III (1993). 10 The debate over the transition of rural America to capitalism is extensive and has spanned decades, opposing market historians, who see the American farmer as an early capitalist, and social historians, who insist that American farmers were embedded in pre-capitalist communities and did not become “utility-maximizers” until late in the nineteenth century. Summaries of the debate are in Kulikoff (1989) and Gilje (1996). See also Clark (1996), Wood (1999) and Bryer (2012). 11 On the growing interdependence of the late nineteenth-century society, see Haskell (2000). 12 Later in his life, Hubbard condensed and published his experience as a salesman and a businessman; see Hubbard (1909, 1913). 13 Larkin letter to a prospective Club secretary, in BLC Series I Scrapbooks, Box 89 Folder 3, Larkin Co.

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14 See PI 1/9/1889: 54, Then and Now. See also PI 10/7/1907: 12, The Fallacy of Summer Dullness and PI 31/7/1907: 27, The Summer Dullness Illusion. 15 DGE 30/1/1892: 40, Wide Awake Retailing. 16 See DGE 3/12/1892: 53, The Event Ads; DGE 4/6/1892: 11, Wide Awake Retailing; DGE 9/11/1889: 22, Window Examples and PI 11/12/1895: 52, Window Dressing. 17 PI 19/10/1904, The “Dry Goods Economist”: 20, 18. 18 “Wide Awake Retailer”, then “Wide Awake Retailing”, was the name of the famous column issued by DGE offering tips on intelligent and progressive selling. 19 DGE 28/1/1893: 57. Window and Interior Store Decoration. See also PI 16/9/1891: 259, Signs as Advertisements; DGE 9/1/1892: 40, Wide Awake Retailing and DGE 16/12/1893: 45, The Wide Awake Retailer. For an overview on show windows, see Marcus (1978), Leach (1989) and Iarocci (2013). 20 DGE 22/8/1891, The Use of Mirrors: 19. About the physical rearrangement of the store, see DGE 4/6/1892: 13, Showing Goods; DGE 30/11/1889: 22, Retailer; DGE 14/12/1889: 22, Retailer; DGE 3/1/1891: 15, Well Arranged Stores and DGE 13/7/1893: 34, Showing Dress Goods. 21 On single goods expositions and the use of colors and lights, see DGE 25/7/1891: 75, New York Windows; DGE 25/2/1893: 53, Window and Interior Store Decorator; DGE 22/8/1891: 38, Artistic Window Dressing; DGE 19/9/1891: 43, Hints on Window Dressing; DGE 26/9/1891: 43, Window Color Combination; DGE 12/12/1891: 21, Holiday Window Dressing; and DGE 10/9/1892: 8, Electric Light in Stores. On the distinction between alluring decorations and persuasive information, see DGE 8/8/1891: 37, The Art of Window Dressing and DGE 17/3/1894: 59, Window and Interior Store Decoration. On changes in window trims, interior dressing and merchandise displayed, see DGE 28/7/1894: 47, Window and Interior Store Decoration; DGE 6/1/1894: 55, Wide Awake Retailing; DGE 7/7/1894: 47, Window and Interior Store Decoration; DGE 14/7/1894: 47, Window and Interior Store Decoration; and DGE 18/5/1895: 61, Wide Awake Retailing. On special displays, see DGE 21/12/1889: 15, Some Brooklyn Windows; DGE 25/7/1891: 76, New York Windows; and DGE 21/12/1889: 27, Macy’s Window and DGE 16/11/1895: 66, Wide Awake Window Dressing. 22 PI 29/7/1903: The Retailer Doomed: 3. 23 On the value of trademarks, see the manual issued by the J. W. Thompson Company (Thompson 1911). See also PI 1/3/1889: 396, A Curious Phase of Advertising; DGE 25/4/1896: 13, The Value of a Trade-mark; PI 6/4/1898: 24, The Value of Trade-Marks; and PI 4/2/1915: 18, Identification Important to Secure Good Quality. For the name on the box and William Kellogg’s signature, see BLC Series I Scrapbooks Box 55 Folder 3 Chase Sanborn Tea and Coffee (1889); BLC Series I Scrapbooks Box 94 Folder 5 Oliver and Maiden Jewelers, The Name on the Box; WCBA Vertical Files Box 1 Cereals Folder Kellogg’s Corn Flake Co.; and Heimann (2005: 498-499). 24 On the development of streetcar advertising, see PI 6/4/1892: 443, Street Car Advertising; PI 17/8/1892: 194, Street Car Advertising; PI 26/7/1893: 93, Street Car Advertising; and PI 25/11/1896: 24, Street Car Advertising. On circulation data and reflections about effective ways of streetcar advertising, see PI 16/5/1894: 601, Street Car Advertising; PI 16/11/1904, 43: Street Car Advertising; PI 15/2/1905: 8, Street Car Advertising and PI 18/4/1906, Street Car Advertising in New York City, and PI 2/2/1910: 54, Food ad and the Street Car. 25 On the evolution of outdoor advertising and regulation, see PI 26/6/1907: 9, Outdoor Advertising; PI 6/2/1907: 9, In Behalf of the Billboards; and Gudis (2004). On guiding principles, see PI 29/6/1898: 8, Posters and the Public Mood; PI 6/7/1904: 20, Billboard Advertising; again PI 6/2/1907: 33, In behalf of the Billboards; and PI 24/7/1895: 17, Road-side Ad. 26 On the needs for professional copywriting and extensive advertising for business success, see PI 1/7/1889: 645, Typographical Show-Windows; PI 1/5/1889: 506, Improved Business Methods; and PI 1/3/1889: 391, An Argument for Employing an Advertising

A new economic life 47

27 28

29

30

Agent. On advertising as a measure of civilization, see PI 1/2/1889: 362, Advertising a Measure of Civilization; PI 15/8/1889: 36, Anecdotes of Advertising; and Fogg-Meade (1901). PI 1/10/1888: 170, Advertiser and Agent. On honesty as the best policy and the rejection of barefaced swindles, see PI 15/7/1888: 19, Bottom Hints Advertisers; PI 15/6/1889: 610, How to Write an Advertisement; PI 18/1/1890: 235, Bargains in Advertisements; PI 8/7/1891: 16, Not Commendable Advertising; PI 11/11/1891: 546, Ethics and Advertising; PI 17/8/1892: 163, Honest Ad the Best; DGE 16/12/1893: 47, Three of a Kind; DGE 2/11/1889: 17, The Retailer; DGE 10/3/1894: 63, Wide Awake Advertising and PI 28/2/1894: 230, Tell the Truth. On advertising as a fine art, see PI 15/8/1888: 71, The Advertising Man. On newsstyle and constant advertising, see PI 15/4/1889: 480; PI 15/4/1889: 468, Display; PI 9/4/1890: 599, Be Direct and Discreet; DGE 28/10/1893: 33, Judicious Advertising; DGE 1/8/1891: 13, How to Write an Ad; PI 16/4/1890: 636; DGE 7/7/1894: 49, Ads to Fit the Times; PI 1/9/1889: 57, Be Systematic; PI 26/8/1891: 177, Repetition in Advertising; PI 15/9/1888: 123, Practical Advertising; and Powers (1903). On this early stage of modern advertising, see also Presbrey (1929). On criticism of news-style advertising and the claim for more suggestive and interesting ad-copies, see PI 2/7/1890: 9, Literary Art in Advertising; PI 18/11/1891: 579, Shopkeeper Advertisements; PI 20/1/1892: 83, The Point of View; PI 20/7/1892: 51, Suggestive Advertising; PI 21/5/1890: 830, Modern Style in Advertising; PI 15/12/1888: 278, Wording an Advertisement; PI 1/4/1889: 444, On Composing Advertisements; and PI 15/12/1888: 277, What’s in a Name; see also Curti (1967). On formulating ad-copies according to the ideas of the public, see PI 30/4/1890: 687, An Open Secret; PI 4/6/1890: 884, On Writing Advertisements; PI 3/5/1893: 562, Advertising Jewelry; and PI 22/11/1893: 541, How to Make a Live Ad. On readership segmentation and targeted advertising, see PI 25/1/1893: 250, Duplicate Advertising; PI 28/5/1890: 860, On advertising differentiation; PI 3/5/1893: 550, Advertising for Women; PI 14/10/1891: 406, Specialization in Advertising; PI 1/1/1889: 305, Brain as a Factor of Advertising; PI 15/6/1889: 621, Advertising and Advertisements; and PI 15/7/1889: 24, Preferred Position in Advertising. When speaking about the “aura” surrounding commodities, Tomlinson (1990) has recognized how the early stage of modern advertising was “realistic” in tone, while he has postdated the shift toward a new vision of consumer goods after World War II.

2

Souls in transition

The passing from varieties of local markets, feeding relatively autonomous and stables communities, to a national market laying the foundation for a mobile society was part of a larger restructuring which greatly affected people’s lived experience. That lived experience was still accustomed to, even if increasingly dissatisfied by, a worldview and engrained habits that were already slipping from people’s comprehension. Sociologist William Ogburn fashioned his hypothesis of the cultural lag precisely to come to terms with the imbalance between extensive material progress unfolding during those years and the delayed social adjustments (Ogburn 1922). However, the new economic life, shorn of the harsh realities of scarcity and traditional authorities, seemed to promise a future of liberation and self-realization for those who were dissatisfied with the older life, and this process, ambiguous as it was, complemented the needs of businessmen seeking ways to expand markets in order to keep the engine of industry moving. It is important to note that there was no one-way influence going from material culture straight to adaptive non-material culture. Given the genealogical approach adopted here (see the Introduction), the analysis in this chapter will pay attention to both historical circumstances relevant under liminal conditions: the one comprising structural transformations pushing for new economic practices and social adjustments; the other related to socio-cultural changes affecting the customary understanding of reality and questioning the sense of the self. The chapter will then complete the framework by sketching how structural changes affected the lived experience of people and how they coupled with socio-cultural changes in the liminal transition towards the new society. It was upon this set of circumstances that the business tools presented above were developed and came to be effective in shaping consumer capitalism and its corresponding type of subjectivity: the consumer. The joint impact of structural and socio-cultural changes will then be outlined by considering three crucial shifts – from making a living to earning a living, from traditional life to the urbanization of consciousness and from the idea of character formation to the concept of personality development.

Earning a living Family was the crossroads of transition because traditional roles and gender relations went through a deep reshaping out of which emerged what both Lynd (1932,

Souls in transition

49

1933) and Ogburn (1933) termed as the individualization of family members. While new ideas prompted by an increasingly secular mentality besieged traditional ideas about marital relations and child rearing, making divorce more widespread, the loosening of the traditional economic function assigned to the family meant domestic stability depended upon the self-realization and happiness of family members. At the same time, relations that were due to the enlargement of people’s social circles and the rise of new social institutions like clubs, associations, commercialized amusements, movie theatres, etc. offered alternative ways for spending spare time, and these ways were adapted to the needs of separate ages and sex groups, so they became sources for social recognition outside close family relations. From the last decades of the nineteenth century families were reshaped in structure, decreasing in size and becoming diversified in composition, first and foremost in urban areas, where families living with relatives under one roof were waning. As pointed out by Mildred Parten (1932), who analysed data from surveys on three cities, already in 1920 the average American family was smaller than the typical family consisting of husband, wife and three children, and, while in rural areas families with children were still relatively numerous, a large number of couples without babies lived and worked in cities. The greater decline in family size was among the rising occupation classes, especially the professional, the proprietary and the clerical. The proportion of families provided for in multiple dwellings rapidly increased, as well as the number of homes smaller than the older units. The meaning of home living was reconfigured, for the home was no longer an owned safe haven symbolically expressing security and stability, but a rented space with little emotional attachment, favouring mobility habits of relocation from one apartment to another (Frank 1932; McKenzie 1933; Ogburn 1933). As suggested by Hurlin and Givens (1933), the shifting occupational pattern mirrored the decline of traditional habits and the rise of new ones. American families were in fact caught in a remarkable transition from making a living to earning a living at the turn of the twentieth century (Lynd and Lynd 1929). The old conception of the family as an organic unit founded upon a production basis had been abandoned when the colonial times gave way to the democratic experience and husbands increasingly left home to enter industry. A clear-cut line was drawn between family roles where once there was equivalence: man was considered as the breadwinner in the family, increasingly having a public and active role in politics; woman was pictured as a private, genteel figure of moral superiority, housekeeper and safe haven for men and children (Boothe 1932; see also Griswold 1993). The death knell of the patriarchal family was eventually sounded with the migration of women into industry and the professions, mostly out of economic necessity, especially in the lowest income group. By the beginning of the twentieth century women started to collect wages in growing numbers and were increasingly given the right to dispose of their earnings. The employment of women 15 years old and over increased nearly threefold from 1890 to 1930, a growth from less than four million to more than ten million, while the entire female population increased during the same period only twofold. The most spectacular growth was witnessed during the first decade of the century, when the female population grew 20 per cent, while the number of employed women increased 45 per cent (see Table 1.1).1

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The threshold of a new era

Furthermore, progressing into the new century, not only were unmarried young women, and mature women who had never married or were already separated, entering the job market, but also many wives began to seek a job to sustain the family income, even if facing strenuous resistance from old-fashioned employers. A look at changes over time in the major occupational groups where women were employed mirrored the historical shift from country to town and from agriculture and household economy to industrial and corporate capitalism. While at the end of the nineteenth century women were mostly employed in agriculture and domestic service, over the span of a few decades up to the eve of the Great Depression, both clerical, trade and professional groups rose from quasi irrelevance to significant percentages, and at the same time older jobs rapidly decreased or showed smaller increases. There was a need for women workers especially in the fashion industry, where the American system and the assembly line boosted the production of ready-to-wear garments. However, if a substitution of skilled with unskilled work happened also for women in the productive sector, a demand for increasingly professionalized work was felt by retailing, and especially in mushrooming department stores, which contributed to the spectacular growth of salespeople and clerks from a negligible number in the 1870s to a total of almost eight million in 1930. On the other hand, the small representation of women in many professions, like engineering, law and medicine, testified that the shrinking gap between women and men was far from closed. Indeed, the discrepancies concerning working conditions and wages of men and women demonstrated this fact starkly (Yudelson 1905; Hutchinson 1929; Breckinridge 1933; Hurlin and Givens 1933). Delays and opposing tendencies notwithstanding, the advanced position in the economic system, together with the granting of suffrage, was giving women a new share in social life on different levels. Leaving the home to contribute to the family’s earnings, women entered the public space and became vigorously active in several movements for securing the same rights men got in previous decades and for implementing social welfare legislation. They also became active in movements like the temperance movement, which aimed to reduce alcohol consumption, and in union movements pushing for safer working conditions in factories. As the nineteenth century passed into the twentieth, the old ideal of womanhood which was rooted in a revered tradition of religious fervour and domesticity was debased by new views about equality and individuality fuelled by urban industrialism and by what labour leader Sophie Yudelson aptly described as “the modern ethics advocating an increase of human happiness in this world rather than in some other one” (1904: 347). Therefore many women entered the job market in search of economic independence, and for the same reason many young people sought a vocational education. The modern demand from progressive sectors of society for freeing women from domestic duties and giving them independence and economic self-sufficiency was indirectly facilitated by the promotion of time-saving appliances for domestic use and the need to supply workers for the industrial boom. Women’s work and leisure time was now freed from the family space and from circles of women friends living similar lives (Yudelson 1904; Boothe 1932; see also Cordery 1996).2

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Women were therefore asked to live in a different world, one demanding different virtues and abilities from those to which they were accustomed. The shift from the private home to the enlarged social sphere and the need to renegotiate their multiple social positions put women into a precarious, though promising position made of conflicting roles, varying social prescriptions and new ethical values opening up unnoticed possibilities for self-fulfilment and life expression, a new condition in which – as Patten put it – “volition will displace coercion” and “enthusiasm for social ends will replace the moral restrictions that bind us to the past” (Patten 1913: 90). Out of that liminal condition emerged a new ideal of femininity and a set of woman-related practices which deeply resonated with the culture of emerging consumer capitalism (Leach 1984). If the division of labour and urbanization had transferred the economic function from the home, public school had attenuated the link between family and education and it was remoulding the relation between work and training. While on the one hand mechanization released many workers from arduous manual work, it displaced many long-established jobs, impoverishing not only the social standing of many workers, but also their chief position in the family. Big business promoted retirement systems, removing aged people who could no longer keep up with the pace of work. Accordingly, a rising cult of mobility fostered a youth culture debasing the social value of elderly people. Youth was associated with values of dynamism and change, and was increasingly played against middle-aged and elderly people. As the president of a private employment agency candidly admitted, “the infusion of a little young blood into the establishment has a good effect” on “the older men and make[s] them realize that they are not indispensable” (Hapgood 1906: 61; Wolman and Peck 1933). Ties of filial obedience were then relaxed by the displacement of the economic function from the home to the factory and the spread of democratic ideals about equality, youth as a progressive force and the recognition of the child’s individual dignity (Young 1906; Goodsell 1932; see also Achenbaum 1974). With the cultivation of youth culture, there was a crucial shift in the understanding of childhood as an autonomous sphere of life. A veritable “discovery of the child” (Frank 1933: 751) took place thanks to the contribution of scientific research and reform activism, children being conceived as growing dignified persons, with as many individual differences as characterized adults. Accordingly, child rearing came under a deep scrutiny, with far-reaching modifications in education, medical assistance, and care of physical and mental hygiene. The discovery of a significant relation between an unsatisfactory childhood and adult social malaise and deviant practices triggered programmes of social welfare promoted by administrative agencies, and efforts at educating parents in principles of child rearing were carried out by pioneer social workers, educators and psychologists. Laws were enforced to make school attendance compulsory, and they also delayed the working age. Even if the enactment of progressive regulation was dispersed in time and wide variations existed among the states, a process towards the social protection of a new autonomous life sphere was set in motion through the decline of child labour and the increasing commitment to children’s education and well-being, which

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The threshold of a new era

amounted to the recognition of their autonomous status with respect to adults. Children were therefore primed to fill the new sphere of leisure, for play came to be considered as an indirect but effective instrument for fostering children’s development, and spare time became a vital ingredient in the educational recipe. Children were now focused on by agencies and institutions previously unnoticed or limited in number, like magazines and periodicals, as well as radio broadcasting and movie pictures, all competing with family and school in the child’s character formation. Among them, a few business tools played a crucial role in the shaping of the new consumer child, by working upon the progressive vision of youth and parental relations emerging via the contribution of reformers and social scientists (Frank 1933; Hurlin and Givens 1933; Judd 1933).3

The urbanization of consciousness In opening their report for Hoover’s Committee on the communication revolution, sociologists Willey and Rice contended that “impressive as technological changes have been in other fields, there is no more striking example than in communications on how they operate to instigate social change”. Both the “agencies of transportations” and “the agencies for the transmission of messages” were contributing to shape a “system whereby contacts are established between individuals with a maximum of ease over an area of ever increasing radius” (Willey and Rice 1933: 167). The revolution in transportation and communication that refashioned a land of island communities and transformed it into an integrated nation brought forth a process of space–time compression affecting both social relations and cultural circulation. Means of point-to-point communication such as the postal service, telegraph, telephone, and agencies of mass impression like the newspaper and the magazine, the radio and the motion picture, together with networks of transportations, facilitated and multiplied social contacts on the one hand, and offered people news, information and a vast landscape of images and signs by which it was impossible to remain untouched. The revolution in communication was strictly interwoven with the displacement of the country for the city, defining an entirely new living mode both in terms of individual behaviour and social organization. The end of the nineteenth century was dominated by the growth in the number of cities with more than 100,000 residents, for many cities’ populations were expanding at a dramatic pace due to the flow of immigrants coming especially from Europe and those leaving the countryside to earn a better living in factories. Once at the service of rural districts, urban areas came to be the nodal points of the new business web and the country became but a satellite of the city. As reported by a researcher for the Hoover’s Committee on social trends, “we are coming to think of the city not only as an agglomeration of people but as a way of living, with an influence extending far beyond its own borders” (McKenzie 1933: 443; see also James 1899). Yet throughout the nineteenth century conditions hardly met the dreams of city homesteaders. They were usually overcrowded, unsafe due to crime and pollution, burdened by corruption and poverty, and by poor integration and housing

Souls in transition

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problems. However, the attraction of the new space was irresistible, the city being safer than the previous conditions from which people had fled and also full of increasing opportunities. Entering the new century, tenement housing for the working class, urban mass transit and public hygiene were all improved thanks to the rise of new professionals like engineers, managers and architects, who were at the service of city government and progressive reformers (Mohl 1985; Barrows 1996; Lough 2016).4 On the brighter side, therefore, the living standard of the working class was uplifted through the improved distribution of filtered water and the safer removal of sewage, drastically lowering the risk of epidemic diseases. The diffusion of sanitary bathrooms and kitchens with running water made new homes comfortable places to live and, as a result of improvements in bulbs and a reduction in cost, the use of domestic electricity advanced. Moreover, the new groups of salaried officials and white-collar workers, whose buying power increased in line with the shortening of the working day, increased the urban middle class asking for leisure activities and services (Ogburn 1933; see also Peiss 1986). The restructuring of social organization taking place in the city, together with the revolution in communication and transportation which fuelled it, set in motion a distinct process of “urbanization of consciousness” (Berger et al. 1974: 65). In other words, the city was the key site where the changing modes of experiencing reality within modernity took shape (Sennett 1977; Schorske 1980 Frisby 1986). Earliest sociologists were keenly aware of the process. In “The metropolis and mental life”, Simmel contended that the foremost element of metropolitan life was the “intensification of nervous stimulation” (Simmel 1950: 410). Simmel, like Weber, believed that it was in city life that rationalization and Gefühlskultur merged, producing an outpouring of aesthetic and emotional stimulation: “the whole dance of sound and colour impressions” (Weber 2005b: 29) and “the rapid crowding of changing images” (Simmel 1950: 410). Unlike the quiet tempo of rural life and small towns where people were associated with daily routines, urban dwellers were caught in a whirlwind of impressions demanding incessant mobility that made any attempt to give personal experience a unifying meaning ever elusive. Against the “overwhelming power of metropolitan life” (Simmel 1950: 411), individuals resorted to “intellectuality”, remaining at arm’s length from what occurs and evaluating it in an increasingly objective and calculating way. Where Weber talked of instrumental rationality penetrating into brotherly relations, Simmel highlighted the connection between “the money economy and the dominance of the intellect” (Ibid.). However, though Simmel argued that “nobody can say whether the intellectualistic mentality first promoted the money economy or whether the latter determined the former” (Ibid.: 412), one may venture to say that disenchantment, having made it impossible to rationally determine goals of action, enthroned as the supreme criterion the calculating aspect of rationality – indicating which means are the most adequate to reach the subjectively intended end. Consequently, means–end rationality became equivalent with economic rationality, making the latter suitable to metropolitan life. As Cooley (1915) put it, pecuniary evaluation is a distinct social institution of universal measurement of value that under modernity has been raised to the pinnacle of social organization,

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as it was the standard means through which not only the value of things, but also the value of social relations, could be assessed with respect to individual realization. Intellectualism – the calculating consideration of life – is therefore the condition, as well as the effect, of metropolitan life, in that the latter could not have been possible in its current form without the willingness of the individual to accept increasingly objectively calculated relations. The world image promoted by disenchantment and intellectualism made the metropolis the most fertile soil where the new form of subjectivity would germinate. In turn, the metropolis confirmed that the new human type perfectly matched the demands of the age and contributed to its selection as the dominant one. Park made a similar argument speaking about the city, for he contended that “this vast organization which has arisen in response to the needs of its inhabitants, once formed, impresses itself upon them as a crude external fact, and forms them, in turn, in accordance with the design and interests which it incorporates” (Park 1915: 578). Genealogically speaking, the conditions of emergence posed by the disenchantment of the world and intellectualism became the foundations upon which the new social order and its corresponding type of subjectivity were established and ended up being taken for granted. The type of calculating, instrumental rationality made possible by the disenchantment of the world and economic rationalisation were in fact those best suited to the new social conditions. As Simmel pointed out, “the continuous external contacts with innumerable people” (Simmel 1950: 415) required an approach to relationships based only on “the objective measurable achievement” (Ibid.: 411); otherwise, people would have been overwhelmed by them. Park (1915) shed light on both directions of influence when he suggested that the rise of interest-driven relations was determined by the new desire to express individuality attained through vocational activities, to which the division of labour gave both occasion and demand. A deep consequence may be outlined about the process in the making: if the modern mind was becoming “more and more calculating” (Simmel 1950: 412), it means that the subjective evaluation of social relations was shaped into a calculating operation that, in turn, gave social action the shape of a performance that was acted out to produce a planned effect. The social differentiation of the metropolis, excluding the immediacy of social intercourse that came to be more and more mediated by roles and social positions, fostered a theatricalized concept of social action as a performance. Historicizing Goffman, the metropolis came to be the stage where everyday life was dramatized and a web of effects of reality produced in accomplished performances via different masks increasingly displaced a reality of immediate and intimate relations. Through theatricalization, whatever had the chance and the ability to become real in its effects became real – that is, it was socially accepted as something real in the drama of social life.

From character to personality In 1979, the historian Warren Susman (2003) published a foundational essay in social history in which he postulated that turn-of-the-twentieth-century America underwent a major shift from a vision of the self centred on the concept of

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character to a new one revolving around the idea of personality, a shift reminiscent, both in content and time frame, of the new conception of personality and the chasing after sensations and experiences that Weber maintained was increasingly popular among young people. The older notion of character was rooted in a longestablished tradition in Western thought, stemming from classical philosophical discourse about virtue ethics, from Socrates to Aristotle, up to nineteenth-century Victorian morality. On the other hand, the notion of personality was a relatively new concept introduced by psychology to objectively study human psychic traits on a normatively neutral basis, though it reflected more profound changes in the cultural milieu and soon enough it came to be a substitute in common parlance for character in referring to self-identity (Collini 1985; Cushman 1990; Nicholson 1998; Banicki 2017). The traditional culture of character was displaced by a modern culture of personality, and the main difference between the two modal types of person resulting from the alteration was that, while the old one was keenly devoted to “moral imperatives”, the new one showed “an increasing interest in self-development” (Susman 2003: 276; see also Nicholson 1998; Brinkmann 2010; Ringmar 2016). Accordingly, from the former viewpoint, character had to be forged in order to lead one’s life in obedience to ultimate ethical values rooted in tradition or metaphysical beliefs, while from the latter the development of personality meant finding the sources of the self within one’s inner being. The older vision of the self held that a person came into his own through compliance with ideals, while the new vision cleaved individual differentiation. As one manual among many in the self-help literature that mushroomed at the turn of the century preached: “Personality is the quality of being Somebody” (Ibid.: 277).5 As the indefinite pronoun suggests, what was really at stake was the individual form of the personality rather than its content. In the new culture, a personal quality was not valued according to its endowed meaning, for every meaning was elusive and transient under modern, disenchanted conditions, but insofar as it enabled differentiation, individualization and therefore personal and social distinction from one’s fellow beings. As Simmel perceptively pointed out, one of the most striking outcomes of this new outlook on life was the diffusion of “metropolitan extravaganzas”, whose meaning indeed “does not at all lie in the contents of such behaviour but rather in its form of ‘being different’, of standing out in a striking manner and thereby attracting attention” (Simmel 1950: 421). Susman pinned the rise of the new social type on change in the social order that, following Patten, he saw in terms of the shift from a producer to a consumer society. Parenthetically, by suggesting how the process in the making was related to secularization, as the needs of the inner self grew stronger whereas “the rituals of the external church grew feebler” (Susman 2003: 272), he made a valuable suggestion about a kind of force in play and drew a picture remarkably akin to the one coming through the pages of The Protestant Ethic about the displacement of the ideal type of capitalist entrepreneur by his late epigone possessed of his own sense of self-importance; unfortunately, he founded his analysis upon the premise that it was the change in the social order that “demanded a change in the people in it” (Ibid.: 275). The genealogical standpoint takes a broader view to properly capture

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both directions of influence, and therefore also the influence of the human type on social order. The focus on the liminal phase when a social order has already vanished but the new one has yet to come into full being makes apparent the role that ideas and world images play in the slow engendering of social practices and social imaginary at the basis of the new social order. Specifically, the analysis shows how the shift towards individualization and the culture of personality was related not only to structural changes chiefly classified under the title “urban industrialism”, but also to changes in ideas and world images mainly related to rationalization and the disenchantment of the world. Consequently, the genealogical approach will develop a more capacious argument in explaining how the changing perception of the self resonated with emerging business developments, and how they eventually coalesced in the rise of consumer capitalism. Secularization was indeed a well-established cultural strain of the age, eroding the long-established religious world image of life under God’s rule and affecting the life stance and social practices of a growing, increasingly educated, young middle and upper middle class. As Fry (1933) argued for the Hoover’s Committee, religious organizations made more impressive gains in wealth than in membership during the period under scrutiny. Even when involvement in church life increased, it was in favour of non-traditional sects rather than old organized confessions like the Roman Catholic, and in connection with agencies providing social and recreational facilities supplementing religious activities. Church participation was slowly but steadily acquiring the character of the secular jollity of a social club, debasing its divine foundation, as a reverend writer for Christian Union admonished already in 1883.6 Churches were in fact becoming more and more involved in promoting recreational programmes rather than confining themselves to the spiritual side of life as in the past. The secularization of Sunday quickened the trend by which a dominant role was taken by leisure activities like cycling, swimming, dancing or trips to public parks and Luna parks or competitive sports like football and baseball, providing outlets which absorbed energies previously devoted to religious devotion and sterner habits of life (Hart and College 1933; Lynd 1933; Steiner 1933). Overall, organized religion was irreversibly losing influence over public opinion, whereas scientific knowledge spread and gained authority, as made apparent by circulation data showing losses by religious periodicals and gains by scientific ones (Goodsell 1932; Hart and College 1933). At the same time, systematic records of approving and disapproving opinions toward concepts or values related to religion in leading national magazines at various dates during the period 1905 to 1932 showed that, while in 1905 more than a half of the opinions surveyed showed a general appreciation of churches and ministers, already in 1920 the percentage of approving opinions had dropped to 25 per cent. Accordingly, among broadly religious topics, only those concerning the application of the Gospel to economic and social problems, together with the ones about personal religious experience, were favourably addressed. From 1905 to 1930, questions related to the fulfilment of personality and the achievement of happiness on earth were increasingly discussed and praised, especially with reference to psychic research and blended spiritualism. On the contrary, topics enmeshed in

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ecclesiasticism, dogmas and metaphysical beliefs like the divinity of Jesus or life after death sank to a new low point in public esteem. Even debates about delicate topics such as birth control and sex were openly raised in magazines, and opinions fluctuated up to a very modern reversal during the 1920s, when the idea gained momentum that love, and not marriage, was the only justification of sexual relations. However, though the general disapproval of sexual freedom was common, it was mostly based on scientific sanctions, while religious arguments were increasingly discarded as irrational taboos (Hart and College 1933). It must be remembered, however, that sensational magazines consistently reflected more favourable attitudes towards religion than those shown in magazines of opinion and intellectual periodicals having more restricted circulation. The more secular social imaginary was therefore prepared and fostered by a national minority of upper and increasingly middle class over a more traditional working-class majority, and it did not go unquestioned. As Jackson Lears (1994b) understood, secularization was a cultural strain which was not unfolding without discontent and discomfort. As William James (2004) aptly described, “Mind-cure movement” together with other “psychoterapic cults” (Leuba 1912) sprouted up at the turn of the century along with the decline of traditional Christian beliefs.7 Those movements spoke to all those people for whom “the conception of salvation has lost its ancient theological meaning” (James 2004: 103) and who, nevertheless, suffered with growing intensity the spiritual homelessness coming with the modern collapse of any overarching framework of reality. Yet secularization was literally suffered through, even by those who were eager to dismiss the supernatural framework giving life its proper meaning in order to embrace the new modern order, as shown by the increasing spread of the malady of the age: neurasthenia – or “Americanitis”, as it was rechristened by James, who, like Weber, suffered from the condition (Radkau 2009). In other words, the move towards the culture of personality and individualism was related to a crisis of cultural authority opening the possibility for emancipation but nevertheless producing a diffuse sense of weightlessness that ended up in a vaporous, dissected sense of the self, reinforcing the tendency towards theatricalization. Secularization and the crisis of cultural authority undermined the old conception of character as much as the demands of a growing personality seemed to be mandated under urban industrialism. The urban living and industrialism that promoted the pluralization of life-worlds dovetailed with secularization and the crisis of cultural authority that pushed towards the “individualization of mental and psychic traits” (Simmel 1950: 420). They all conjoined to debunk the familiar framework of meaning which made people experience a solid sense of a unified, shared reality external to the self. The individual was therefore invited “to find his ‘foothold’ in reality in himself rather than outside”, thus according subjectivity “previously unconceived ‘depths’” (Berger et al. 1974: 74). This is why the same situation adumbrated by Weber surfaced in Lears’ conclusion, for at last the ghost of The Protestant Ethic haunted people through the stamp it gave to their life – the methodical-rational style – even though it had long been vested of its religious-ethical foundation. As a matter of fact, inner-worldly asceticism conjoined with intellectualism in shaping action as

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a rationalized performance and offered to the examined self lacking a clear core the “habits of introspection” (Lears 1994b: 49). Yet why was this man who was devoted to his inner self increasingly susceptible to outer stimuli, so much so that David Riesman (et al. 1961) has defined him as “other-directed”? The antinomy is only apparent, as a closer look at Riesman’s work will show. In The Lonely Crowd he lays out a correlation between types of character and types of social order that followed one another in three different epochs. Concerning Western history, the first type marked by a tradition-directed character gave way to a new type as the Middle Ages collapsed under the impact of modern revolutions. The new type that emerged was inner-directed, because it acquired early in life an internalized set of goals through which, in turn, social conformity was secured. In discussing the second type, Riesman establishes a direct connection between the inner-directed type and the Weberian subject “imbued with the ‘Protestant ethic’” (Ibid.: 18; see also 124). It was only around the turn of the twentieth century that “a whole range of social developments associated with a shift from an age of production to an age of consumption” (Ibid.: 6) prepared the advent of the third and last other-directed type, increasingly “sensitized to the expectations and preferences of others” (Ibid.: 8). From the genealogical viewpoint, the main drawback of the typology is that it has been developed without due attention to the liminal transition between phases. Riesman made it clear that he was interested in analysing the link between character and society and, especially, “the way in which society ensures some degree of conformity from the individuals who make it up” (Ibid.: 5). He has therefore restricted himself from going any deeper into the shift among phases. Yet in this way the analysis prevented him from considering the role that changing world images play during liminal transitions in giving birth to what follows and moulding its actual shape. Within Riesman’s framework, to identify a type of character one should inquire what individuals look at when seeking meaningful guidance from society. The first type is moved by tradition, the authority of the “eternal yesterday”; the inner-directed is moved by goals, values and fixed moral standards internalized through socialization between family and school; the other-directed is guided by outer forces like peer groups and peer surrogates such as urban stimulation, the theatre, the radio, the cinema, magazines and newspapers, advertising, and so forth. Riesman’s analysis did not focus on the subjective meaning attached to social action. From a Weberian viewpoint rooted in interpretive understanding, it is important to take into account the belief in the legitimacy of the different sources for guidance on the part of social actors. By inserting in the framework such theoretical specification and a genealogical sensitivity for liminal conditions, the typology may be reworked as follows: a first historical type believing in the legitimacy of its sources, either tradition or an internalized set of values; and a second historical type that under secular conditions and a deep crisis of cultural authority no longer believes in the legitimacy of any stable framework of meanings, whether it comes from tradition or societal values. This kind of subject is the one who looks to his inner core to find guidance, and therefore he is somehow inner-directed; he nevertheless does not find any fulfilling point of reference and,

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eventually, he cannot help but look to outer stimuli to feed the inner depth of his malleable and ever-changing identity. Having completed the preliminary outline about the combination of the historical circumstances related to both structural and socio-cultural changes, the next chapters will follow the rise of consumer capitalism by looking at the construction of its central place, the consumer city; the genesis of its adequate type of subjectivity, the consumer; and the development of its engine, marketing professionalism, by analysing how the business tools and the professional knowledge of their practitioners developed, with the help of different kinds of forces, in a way that attuned the needs of the economic system with those of people living through liminal conditions.

Notes 1 Even if data for the female working-age population (15 years old and over) are not available, the comparison between female employment (15 years old and over) and the entire female population is useful to illustrate the general trend. 2 On changes about women and their place in society, see the whole range of contributions in the special issues Woman’s Work and Organizations, AAAPSS, Vol. 28 (Sep.), 1906; Women in Public Life, AAAPSS, Vol. 56 (Nov.), 1914; Women in the Modern World, AAAPSS, Vol. 143, 1929. On the working conditions of women, see also the special section “The condition of working women in the United States”, in AAAPSS, Vol. 27 (May), 1906. On the suffrage movement, see the supplement Significance of the Woman Suffrage Movement, in AAAPSS, Vol. 35 (May), 1910, and the special section Woman and the Suffrage, in AAAPSS, Vol. 56 (Nov.), 1914. 3 On children and family changes, see the special issue The Modern American Family, AAAPSS, vol. 160, 1932. On the problem of child labour, its regulation, and compulsory education, see the special section The Child Labor Problem, in AAAPSS, vol. 20 (Jul.), 1902; the special issues Child Labor, AAAPSS, Vol. 25 (May), 1905; Child Labor, AAAPSS, Vol. 27 (Mar.), 1906 and Child Labor, AAAPSS, Vol. 29 (Jan.), 1907; the supplements Child Labor and Social Progress: Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Meeting of the National Child Labor Committee, in AAAPSS, Vol. 32 (Jul.), 1908; Child Workers of the Nation: Proceedings of the Fifth Annual meeting of the National Child Labor Committee, in AAAPSS, Vol. 33 (Mar.), 1909; Child Employing Industries, in AAAPSS, Vol. 35 (Mar.), 1910; and Uniform Child Labor Laws, in AAAPSS, Vol. 38, (Jul.), 1911. A systematic overview of the child labour situation and state legislation as of 1906 are in Goldmark (1907). 4 On turn-of-the-century multiplication of organizations for municipal and civic reform, see Notes on Municipal Government. The Activities of Civic Organizations for Municipal Improvement in the United States: A Symposium, in AAAPSS, Vol. 25, n. 2, 1905: 157–199. On housing conditions and sanitary problems in different cities, see the special section The Housing Problem, in AAAPSS, Vol. 20 (Jul.), 1902, Veiller (1905), the special issue Municipal Problems, AAPSS, Vol. 23 (Mar.), 1904, and the special issue Housing and Town Planning, AAAPSS, Vol. 51 (Jan.), 1914. 5 Susman quotes Henry Laurent, Personality: How to Build It, New York, 1915: IV. 6 See Charles Cuthbert Hall, “The Church. Is it a Social Club – or a Divine Foundation?” Christian Union, vol. 27, n. 19, 1883: 370–371. 7 As noted by Lawrence Scaff (1998, 2011), it was in connection with the charting of “sectarian”, mostly formal, remnants of older beliefs in a secularized world that Weber (1958: 308) made reference to in his encounter with William James during his American trip.

Part II

Making the consumer city The theatricalization of urban life

3

The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 and the urban ideal

“There certainly has been nothing like it.”1 With these words Heinrich Roeckl, owner of J. Roeckl in Munich, the largest glove manufacturer in Germany, spoke about the Chicago World’s Fair when interviewed by DGE. Held in Chicago to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America, the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 may be considered as one of the first events of a kind later defined as “media events” (Dayan and Katz 1992). Under liminal conditions, this “event” became a national “rite of passage”to modern urban life for rural and traditional America (Downey 1981; Susman 1983; Harris 1990). The Fair was visited by about 27 million people and many more had a mediated experience thanks to newspaper coverage, public discussions all over the country and images printed in many magazines and journals. Moreover, the circulation of the first souvenirs prolonged the experience of the Fair both in personal and collective memory far beyond its closure on 30 October 1893. Objects, from silver trays to paper cutters and powder boxes, were stamped with the Fair’s mark or logo and sold as a remembrance of the exhibit.2 These artefacts eventually were permanently displayed in museums and became tools to promote the modern social imaginary of America that the Columbian Exposition helped make a material reality (Rydell 1989; Bronner 1989b). Picture postcards, too, were used to spread images of the Fair and, as urban marketing evolved, they became instruments to advertise the city and create its brand identity (Amendola 1997). Considering the Columbian Expo as a fin-de-siècle approximation of contemporary media events helps to shed light not only on the mediated experience made possible by extensive media coverage, but also, and more significantly, on the fact that the organizers recognized the Fair’s “event potential”, exploiting it through the Department of Promotion and Publicity, directed by Moses Handy. For the first time in the history of International Exhibitions, a division dedicated to the organization of communication and public relations was set up with the task – in very contemporary marketing language – of “creating the event”, of selling the excitement of participating in an event and transforming the public into actors of the event (Harris 1994).3 The idea was that the fairgoer, being a spectator, was at the same time an actor in the spectacle, as the public was an essential part of the event itself (Bennett 1988; Roche 2000). From this viewpoint, fairgoers must be involved in order for the event to be a hit. As a matter of fact, Handy and his

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colleagues recognized that a purposive and professional handling of advertising and public relations would be decisive for the success of the Fair as much as its inner features. The Department planned the Fair as a special epoch-making event. We can say that Chicago World’s Fair was an event in itself – its inner potential – as much as it was strategically constructed as an event by the Department, being a pioneer experiment in urban and experience marketing. It was a pseudo-event (Boorstin 1992) because it was strategically planned in order to become something worth experiencing and remembering. The inner potential of this “event” was rationally exploited, empowered and nurtured through a managerial handling of advertising and public relations.

The representation of the “White City” Henry Adams defined the Fair as “the first expression of American thought as a unity” (Adams 1946: 343) and Lewis Mumford stated that the Fair was the first manifestation of “the rise of a new order in America’s economic life” (Mumford 1933: 124). The Fair was indeed one of the first cases in which the interplay among urban planning, communication technologies and marketing strategies – a mark of the contemporary production of urban space (McQuire 2008) – can be observed. Such interplay emerged as the outcome of a process of interactions among several social actors who eventually marketed and shaped an imaginary of the city and of urban everyday life adequate to the new economic order of consumer capitalism (Harris 1990). Here we come close to the direct aim of the “event” and the means by which the organizers tried to accomplish it. Such an aim and means made the Columbian Exposition different from previous fairs. The Exhibition was not only a modern, industrial version of medieval fairs, where buyers and sellers from all over the world could meet, present their products and exchange them – as in the past4. Nor was it merely an opportunity to celebrate and showcase to the world the achievements reached by the organizing nation – like previous exhibits. For the first time, the Exposition was constructed to promote a new ideal of urban planning, as Daniel Burnham, the architect who coordinated works at the Fair, explicitly stated: The World’s Fair came, and disclosed what all were unconsciously waiting to receive, a lesson in landscape architecture. What the matter was with our public improvements, the Columbian Exposition made forever plain. Here, studied on the spot by millions, and by millions more through the activities of the Bureau of Publicity and Promotion, a great truth, set forth by great artists, was taught to all our people. This truth is the supreme one of the need of design and plan for whole cities.5 It was the exact manner in which this lesson in urban design and planning was taught – that is, through the staging of an ideal city – that had a stamping effect on the content of the very imaginary of the modern city, even beyond the planned aim of architects and organizers. It was a half-purposive, half-unintended outcome of a colossal performance. The chapter will therefore attempt to show how the Chicago

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World’s Fair is both a place to which one may trace the genesis of the modern consumer city and an opérateur of such emergence. Under the supervision of Daniel Burnham, a group of architects built an ideal Chicago, in direct comparison with the real one; very interestingly the Fair’s city was called the “White City”, in contrast to the real black and grey, industrial Chicago. Thus, the Fair became “a controlled experiment of a larger urban planning movement” (Hines 1974: 74; see also Ross 2013)6 and it was intended to surpass each and every previous Fair. And it did, at least in scope and magnitude: the site spanned around 2.75 square kilometres, with nearly 1 square kilometre of buildings, greatly exceeding the London and Paris Exhibitions of 1853 and 1889. The Fair was built a few kilometres south of Chicago city centre along Lake Michigan’s shore, being encircled by Washington Park at its west end and by Jackson Park at its southeast end. Its focal point was the Court of Honor (see Figure 3.1), bounded to the west by the Transportation Building and to the east by the lake. At its centre, the Administration Building, with its huge dome, stood out against a beautiful basin. The main buildings were grouped around the court: among them, the monumental Manufacturers and Liberal Arts Building, where new American brands and products – together with goods from all over the world displayed in 6,000 exhibits – were for the first time presented to the nation and the world; the Machinery Hall, where the

Figure 3.1 Court of Honor, Columbian Exposition, 1893

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most advanced engines and machinery were showed; the Anthropological Building, where visitors were educated about the history of life on Earth and new anthropological and ethnological findings; and the Electricity Building, dedicated to the display of the revolutionary power of electricity and its application in everyday life. Every building was well connected by avenues and boulevards and many canals and basins crisscrossed the fairground, giving a Venetian atmosphere to the whole complex (White and Ingleheart 1893). Even if conceived autonomously by each appointed architect, the “White City” found its harmony in a neoclassical motif apt to set forth the lesson of landscape architecture and the celebratory scheme organizers had in mind (Hines 1974). The important point to stress here is that the White City was a temporary construction akin to a theatre set. All buildings were constructed in the knowledge that they would have to be dismantled at the end of the Fair. They were made by a new construction material called “staff” – made of a mixture of plastic, cement and other materials – which was marble-like, but not real marble. Its use not only made possible the neoclassical and sumptuous effect desired by the architects, but it also produced the impression that the buildings were permanent constructions of high architectural value (Hines 1974; Ewen 1988). However they were not, as one of the architects of the group, Henry Van Brunt, made clear when he affirmed that “it must be borne in mind . . . that all this is not architecture in its highest sense, but rather a scenic display of architecture, composed (to use a theatrical term) of ‘practicable’ models, executed on a colossal stage”.7 In taking the form of a colossal representation, the White City “staged” an ideal city and made its comparative function very effective. Yet, in the eyes of the visitors the illusive representation was accepted and the Fair was experienced as something real. Being temporary, the architectural landscape was constructed in order to appear and to be experienced as something permanent. Thus, the reality of the city was compared to the reality of the Exposition, which, being a planned representation, was relieved of all the negative aspects always present in inhabited urban spaces. The purpose of planning an ideal city in comparison with a real one was performative in itself, because it contributed in shaping the imaginary of the modern American city. I will support this statement with three further examples. The first has to do with the extensive use of bird’s-eye views at the Fair. These perspectives made possible something special that we can define as a new mode of observing the city: it shifted the sight line from an internal position, the position of participation – the position of the actor – to an external position, the position of separation – we could say the position of the spectator. This perspective was neither natural nor usual at that time. Hence, the city was experienced as a spectacle. Here one finds a careful and fully purposive staging of a (theatrical) representation, aimed at promoting a new vision of the city, a very urban ideal. Perhaps it is not by chance that the first Ferris wheel in history was built at the Exposition (see Figure 3.2).8 It was built in order to make possible the experience of the Fair and the White City from an external, vertigo-inducing and breathtaking perspective.9 One may also note that for many fairgoers the first sights of the Fair were the magnificent vistas opened up once the Administration Building was

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Figure 3.2 Midway Plaisance and Ferris wheel, Columbian Exposition, 1893

ascended through one of its elevators, and the outer open colonnade, surrounding the whole dome, was reached. The second example of the performative element of the Fair in shaping the imaginary of the modern city regards the careful positioning of the buildings, an urban landscape realized in order to produce specific effects on fairgoers. The Fair’s entrances are very telling in this respect. People were forced to enter the

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Fair through only two entrances, from the Transportation Building or from Lake Michigan shore. They were both planned to produce an effect of monumentality. The first was directly connected to the Administration Building with its beautiful dome. Built in the style of the French Renaissance and enriched by many statues and decorations, the building was intended as an “ouverture”10 for visitors reaching the Fair by land. The second entrance by the lake opened up the most beautiful vistas on the basin and the Court of Honor (see Figure 3.3). They were therefore strategically planned in order to impress the visitor, as a handbook of the Fair explicitly stated: It does not matter by which of its entrances you approach the Fair – whether you come by water ... or whether you come by rail and, passing through the splendid vestibule which this building forms, stand in the Plaza, with the fountain in the foreground and the Basin beyond ... It does not matter, for in either case your point of view will have been carefully planned for as a first point of view. First impressions always count for much; and the way in which our Fair builders have thus provided only two great entrances, but have given each of them monumental magnificence, and opened in front of each the most splendid and harmonious of their vistas, is certainly one point where they have proved their superiority to the builders of any previous exhibition. (Wade 1893: 60)

Figure 3.3 Court of Honor, looking west, Columbian Exposition, 1893

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From the beginning, the fairgoer was positioned to face and be astounded by a masterful representation, as the spectator at a theatre (Harris 1993). The third example concerns what electrical engineer McFarlan Moore defined as a “huge advertisement”, going from the “Ferris Wheel to the electric fountains”:11 the use of electric illumination. At the Fair, over 90,000 lights were used and the electric power for night illumination was three times more than that used for evening illumination of Chicago (Barrett 1894; Adams 1995). Electric illumination at night was a “wondrous enchantment” and “the most spectacular sight at the fair” (Platt 1986: 20). Nightly illumination sharpened the contrast between the white of the buildings and the dark of the sky, making the great Basin of the Court shimmer as though in a dream (see Figure 3.4). The electric fountains contributed to the enchanting effect, as visitors stood “at points of vantage about the great court each evening to watch the ever-changing beauties of these fountains”; they gazed at how the projector lamps illuminated “in the most pleasing manner the ever– varying streams of water projected through the nearly 400 apertures provided” (White and Ingleheart 1893: 306–307). In brief, the White City with its Court of Honor was strategically planned as a monumental staging of an ideal city (Trachtenberg 1982). It was a land of enchantment freed from pain and poverty, with beautiful marble-like buildings, basins, avenues, palaces of consumption, spectacles, entertainments and wonders.

Figure 3.4 Agricultural Building at night, Columbian Exposition, 1893

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This theatrical tendency was motivated by the idea that the whole exhibition should impart an “object lesson”, a form of education which depends less on language than on pictures and images, thus stimulating a notion of a visual vocabulary as the most effective medium for knowledge (Bronner 1989b; Harris 1993). Through the mixture of expositions and spectacles, the Fair taught a lesson about civilization and progress: from the ethnological displays of the Anthropological Building to the showcase of technologies in the Machinery and Electricity Buildings, through the exposition of industrial products in the Manufacturers and Liberal Arts Building to the American Court of Honor at the centre, everything was part of a great lesson for the eyes. Even the “picturesque exotica” of the Midway Plaisance (see Figure 3.2), with its wonders, entertainments and exhibitions of customs and traditions of other civilizations, reinforced the narrative of the Fair.

The Midway Plaisance With its Midway Plaisance, the Chicago World’s Fair was the first modern International Exposition in history to have an explicit link at its roots to medieval and carnivalesque fairs. The organizers took some of the festive aspects of the previous World’s Fair – in Paris in 1889 – and went a step further. They incorporated on the border of the fairground, but within the site, an avenue 1.5 kilometres in length “lined on both sides with so remarkable a collection of shows of one sort or another that one man could never hope to find them all in a lifetime were he compelled to search through the world for himself” (White and Ingleheart 1893: 561). This strip of land was conceived and perceived as places of multi-sensual stimulation and enchantment, being composed by entertainments, spectacles and simulations of all sorts.12 One could, for example, admire the wondrous beauty of the Blue Grotto of Capri, replicated within a rough rock mass 53 metres long, 30 metres wide and 46 metres high. Approaching the grotto through a jagged rent, fairgoers were enchanted by the intensity of the deep-blue tint of a pool of crystal water kept in continual motion by mechanical means that simulated the waves and the ebb and flow of the sea. Around the pool a pebbly beach was filled with ornamental cases displaying curios from the island, from coral shells and fruits to historical relics and photographs of daily life at Capri. The cyclorama of the Hawaiian Volcano of Kilauea, too, was intended to give a memorable experience to the public. Within a building 43 metres in diameter and 18 metres high, the majesty of the Volcano was accurately replicated through an immense painting circling the walls, a clever use of electrical illuminations and mechanical devices which simulated the effects of lava and flames. The point of view selected for the visitor was the centre of the crater, from where it was possible to gaze at the volcano activity with its hot and seething lava spurts forming lakes of gleaming fire, and huge puffs of smoke and sulphurous gases rising from rents and fissures; in the distant background the Pacific Ocean and the capital Honolulu in quiet repose could be sighted by the visitor, making the representation very charming and effective. Of the same kind, the Scenic Theater exhibition was a remarkable one, as well as the Pompeii

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panorama. In the first case, the scenic effects of “A Day in the Alps” were produced by 250 electric incandescent lights: from the sunny morning through an afternoon thunderstorm and then into the silent night, with stars brooding over it all, all the varying atmospheric changes you could find were staged for the public who gazed at the spectacle relieved from the outdoor muggy weather by means of nine electric fans. In the second case, a vivid representation of the ancient Italian city destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius offered the chance of a glimpse at its architecture, customs and the daily public life once animating it. The proficiency of the Fair’s organizers in establishing representations and memorable experiences was evident in another kind of simulations, having to do not so much with the beauties of nature as with fascinations of the human landscape. Having feared the power of the Volcano, and having admired the wondrous mountains of Europe, as well as the beauties of the Mediterranean Sea, fairgoers also wandered along the streets of many European and African cities, and through the campsites and villages of exotic tribes from countries as distant as Lapland and Oceania. One of the most accurate urban reproductions was the “Old Vienna”, made of thirty-six buildings among which towered the Rathaus (City Hall). In this Austrian village one could attend Mass, celebrated according to the Austrian custom, were one interested in sacred activities; or, if one were more attracted by profane activities, one could buy all sorts of Viennese wares in more than thirty stores. At the village a branch of the Imperial and Royal Bank of Austria was also established, showing the working of banking affairs in the Empire. Fairgoers could then visit the German Village, where they could find exact representations of houses ranging from the ones of the Bavarian mountain region, of the Black Forest, of Lower Saxony and Spreewald, among others. A short distance away, in the “Chinese Village”, an immersion in that millennial civilization was at hand: one might visit a temple or shop at a bazaar or taste Chinese cuisine while listening to the native music. One might then move towards the South Sea Island Village, where natives from Sumatra, Borneo, Samoa, Fiji and New Zealand made trinkets and performed dances and spectacles. Fairgoers could suddenly find themselves in a snowy “Lapland Village” where thirty-seven Laplanders showed all the articles used in the Arctic houses, such as sledges, snowshoes, fur clothing and fishing tackle. Passing the East Indian Village and thorough the Ottoman’s Arab Camp, one reached the south shore of the Mediterranean Sea. There one found the Algerian and Tunisian Village, with a hall of a thousand-person capacity where dance spectacles were offered. Within the village one might happen upon a Bedouin camp or meet snake charmers, jugglers and dancing girls. Very close, “The Street in Cairo” – a remarkable reproduction of Bayn al-Qasrayn in Cairo – came to life when the Muezzin called the faithful to prayer in the mosque. Along the street, fairgoers could admire oriental façades, bazaars, picturesque shops, minarets and flower-gardens, as well as camels and donkeys, and people from everywhere as Turks, Arabs, Nubians and Kabyles. In the end, you might go back to Europe, and visit the wonders of Ireland or reproduction of important monuments such as St Peter’s in Rome or the Eiffel Tower in Paris. To push the Fair experience to the limit, and realize as

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fully as possible the potential of the bird’s-eye views, organizers put within the Midway, in addition to the above-mentioned Ferris wheel, a Captive Balloon, able to carry around twenty persons and offering three flights per hour to a height of almost 450 metres. The Midway Plaisance was a controlled space of wandering and experiences that made possible a safe solicitation of the senses, a carnival freed from violence and the elements of uncertainty always present in the past. The visitors were offered multi-sensory and entertaining experiences. Technology and savagery, past and future, far and near, the familiar and the exotic – all were mixed in an architectural, musical and cultural patchwork very close to postmodern taste. Elements from different epochs and distant countries were brought together in the same space and at the same time. Such space–time compression, together with the theatrical nature of the Fair, ignited the power of imagination by stimulating senses and emotions, thus constituting a remarkable step towards the society as spectacle (Debord 1977). As recognized by one of the architects of the Fair, Louis Sullivan, the Columbian Exposition offered a multi-sensory and entertaining experience which produced an effect of overstimulation on the public (Sullivan 1949: 324). The ethnocentric display of customs, traditions, artefacts and even civilizations, with their achievements or primitiveness, became therefore an experience of divertissement and entered into the everyday life of the masses (Rydell 1984, 1989). The Midway Plaisance was indeed a direct source for the development of theme parks and Luna Parks such as Coney Island in New York (Kasson 1978). It is no wonder if in the Midway Plaisance we may find, one hundred years early, an established partnership between entertainment and business, which will become a trademark of the so-called “experience economy” and its many famous examples of admixtures of spectacle and catering business like the Hard Rock Café or Rainforest Café (Pine and Gilmore 1999; Ritzer 1999). This was the case of the Hungarian Orpheum: The exhibit consists of a café and concert pavilion, contained in a building 75 × 195 feet, with a covered garden on the roof. The theater is in the lower part, and concert are given every half-hour. The performers are Hungarian artists, brought direct from Budapest, Hungary’s capital city. The native costumes and mode of life of the different nationalities which compose this empire are shown. The roof-garden is filled with chairs and tables where meals, lunches, etc., are served. The guests are waited upon by seventy-five Hungarian maidens, dressed in their rich National costumes; and at intervals Hazay Natzy’s famous Hungarian band discourses choice music. There is also a gipsy band under the leadership of Paul Olah. (Wade 1893: 212) The autonomous work of young impresario Sol Bloom and Harvard anthropologist Frederick Ward Putnam, who was the appointed supervisor of the anthropological expositions at the Fair, put the Midway Plaisance at the centre of the Fair, even though the intentions of the organizers were to keep it separated from the dignified and solemn lessons of the White City. As Orvell (1989) has pointed out, both

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the popular Midway and the dignified White City did indeed share an aesthetic of replication that offered to the fascinated public pleasurable experiences by combining information, education, entertainment and spectacle within a theatricalized environment. Far from remaining a sideshow, the Midway therefore joined the White City in shaping an imaginary of the ideal city fraught with consequences for American life. Manufacturers, too, were inspired by these fair’s traits and conceived new amusing and pleasant ways of displaying their products. For example, Baker Cocoa, in its dedicated pavilion, arranged a complete catered service around the renowned breakfast chocolate served by young maidens dressed in the costume’s of Liotard’s La Belle Chocolatière, which was chosen as the distinctive trademark of the product in 1883 (Wade 1893). Again in the Agricultural Building, under the supervision of its advertising manager the American Cereal Company set up a Panorama called “The Procession of Seasons”, displaying in an artistic way the life cycle of the grain, from seeding to harvesting and through manufacturing up to the ready-to-eat product. Even a windmill was operated by machinery run by American electric motors, making the American Cereal Company exhibit a case in point of what will later be called “edutainment’. Lever Brothers, the British soap enterprise, commissioned the production of a model of the Windsor Castle as the chief attraction of its exhibition.13

The spectacle of the ideal city Within the long-term historical shift from fair-grounded, local markets, where merchants from time to time exchanged goods, up to “market capitalism”, which connects producers and consumers on an ongoing basis (Harris 1978; Szakolczai 2016), the Columbian Exposition came to be a turning point because it was able to exploit the inner theatrical feature of fairs as a means for profit and success. Moreover, it enhanced the new “palaces of consumption”: the department store was the adequate space for commerce in the emerging consumer capitalism and the fitting form of commercial culture for the new urban ideal, as the case of Manufacturers and Liberal Arts Building shows (Lewis 1983). Around 520 metres long and 245 metres wide, three times larger than St Peter’s Basilica, the “main building”, as it was popularly called, could accommodate up to 300,000 people. Four different entrances stood in the middle of each façade, opening to two main roads. Columbia Avenue (see Figure 3.5), 15 metres wide, ran between the north and south doors, intersecting at the centre with another street that connected the eastern and western portals. The main avenues divided the interior of the building into four rectangular aisles, which were further divided by other intersecting aisles where the exhibits were installed, each angle and every walkway illuminated by electric lamps. The whole complex produced the effect of “a beautiful city enclosed by marble walls and roofed in with a dome of glass” (Wade 1893: 119). The setting gave the fairgoer a vivid impression of walking through a small city under one roof, where an enormous complex of stores were animated by their lavish and exotic showcases made to catch the public’s eye (Lewis 1983). A commercial city was staged and

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Figure 3.5 Columbia Avenue, Manufacturers and Liberal Arts Building, Columbian Exposition, 1893

“self-sufficient citadels” of consumption became possible in the eye of the public. Not by chance the Columbian Exposition boosted the spread of department stores in every American city and the amelioration of their services and conveniences.14 There is, however, a final point we must consider in order to fully grasp the impact the Chicago World’s Fair exerted on the social imaginary of urban daily life, and out of which the consumer city emerged. This point has to do with the impressive transformation the Fair’s site underwent during a short time span before the opening, because a major portion of the site chosen was one of unimproved land, consisting of swamps, marshes and sand hills. The accomplishment was everywhere regarded with a mixture of marvel and admiration, for in a few months a great city was built out of that inhospitable strip of land: Where once was rank grass of the marshes is to be seen the most luxuriant of green turf. Where the path was rough with the rise and fall of the shifting sand are level parkways, vistas of sylvan beauty, terraces of most artistic conception. Where was then a rough and wave-beaten shore, strewn with the refuse of a generation’s drift, is now a sea-wall of stone, a pavement of the same unyielding material, and the beauty of cleanness and purity. Where was

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then a marsh, whose stagnant waters were divided but by hummocks of mud and sand, are now the clear flowing waters of the beautiful system of lagoons, and, rising out of them, the walls of a city of white palaces, the architectural triumph of modern history. (White and Ingleheart 1893: 62–63)15 In making the most of modern construction engineering know-how, organizers transformed a savage land into a beautiful landscape of Venetian effect. In a Faustian undertaking, the limits of the environment were overcome, showing everybody that modern man is able to transmogrify nature at will: from the desert, an oasis; from scarcity, abundance; from poverty, prosperity. Built via domination of natural constraints, the Chicago World’s Fair emerged as an enchanted land, a fairy-tale stage upon which the modern consumer city must flourish. Through the colossal staging of a representation which showed something temporal as permanent, the Fair “created an over-empowering emotional impression” (Lewis 1983: 44) that moulded a vision of what an ideal city should be. The “most illusive piece of scenic architecture” ever built – as critic Montgomery Schuyler (1961: 204) described the Fair – made a dream-like and fairyland environment real for visitors. As in theatre, the staging of an illusion, an enchantment, had real effects on people who experienced it – fairgoers looked at the Fair, a staging, a representation, as a concrete possibility for a real city. They thought the city could be the enchanted city of the Fair with all its wonders and spectacles, freed from the negative elements always present in real cities and real life. As Lewis Mumford recognized, the World’s Fair “suggested to the civic enthusiasm that every city might become a fair” (Mumford 1933: 130). The imaginary of the modern American city was shaped by the experience of the Fair with its mixture of divertissement, spectacles and fairyland environment; a place where dreams come true and the personality of the citizen can be expressed through every kind of stimulus and experience. In trying to promote “the full acceptance of a new way of life, new values and a new social organization” (Susman 1983: 7) through the staging of a representation of an ideal city at the Fair, the temporary characters of fairs as liminal and out-of-the-ordinary situations were shifted into the imaginary of urban space and everyday life, making permanent and ordinary in the city what was liminal and out of ordinary in fairs – all the time showing what role consumer goods could play in this dramatic shift. Therefore, the next chapters will look in greater detail at what happened along the streets of real cities in order to disentangle the complex interplay among economic forces and socio-cultural transformations out of which the consumer city and its mode of living took shape.

Notes 1 DGE 8/6/1893, A Tribute to the World’s Fair: 17. 2 See DGE 28/9/1893: 22, What Chicago Retailers are Doing. 3 In order to arouse the excitement about the event, organizers offered visitors the chance of entering the grounds for an admission fee of 25c and watch the spectacular progress

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Making the consumer city of the construction site during the months before the opening of the Fair (Bolotin and Laing 1992; Findling 1994). Medieval fairs were half-religious and half-carnivalesque (Bakhtin 1968; see also Burke 1978), a mix masterfully captured by Brueghel’s painting The Fight between Carnival and Lent (1559). Fairgrounds were liminal spaces (Turner 1967; Susman 1983; Szakolczai 2016; see also Belk et al. 2003), that is in between places and out-of-theordinary situations where the exchange of luxuries and exotic goods took place once or twice a year in a colourful, licentious, even violent context that revitalized the ancient “techniques of ecstasy” (Ehrenreich 2007). International Expositions share with medieval fairs the liminal and out-of-the-ordinary trait and, as we shall see in studying the Columbian Exposition, even the carnivalesque and festive aspects. Daniel Burnham, White City and Capital City, CIMM, vol. 63, n. 4: 619. The City Beautiful movement stemmed from the experience of the White City and exerted a deep impact on American urban planning and landscape architecture for years to come. More broadly, the Fair’s organizers were an active part of that turn-of-thecentury progressive movement that wanted to foster progress and reformation through social planning and rationalization (Hines 1974; Schlereth 1981; McCabe 2016). Henry Van Brunt, Architecture at the World’s Columbian Exposition, CIMM, vol. 44, n. 1: 88. It is further evidence of the growing importance of the aerial view for the new imaginary of the city that the Department of Promotion and Publicity sponsored a competition for a bird’s-eye view of the fairground. The winning image was printed in 100,000 copies and distributed around the world to advertise the Fair (Rydell 1989). At the Paris 1889 Expo, something similar was realized in the form of the view of Paris from the tallest structure humans had ever built: the Eiffel Tower. The difference between the Chicago Ferris wheel and the Paris Eiffel Tower is that the former was built in order to view a representation of an ideal city, while the latter afforded a view of a real city. Henry Van Brunt, Architecture at the World’s Columbian Exposition, CIMM, vol. 44, n. 1: 90. PI 8/11/1893, Electricity in Advertising: 491. Sources on the various attractions at the Columbian Exposition are (unless otherwise specified) the following guides to the Fair: Flinn (1893), Wade (1893) and White and Ingleheart (1893). On Cereals Company, see WCBA Vertical Files Box 1 Cereals Folder 2 Quaker Oats. On Lever Brothers, see WCBA Vertical Files Box 6 Soap Folder 3 Lever Brothers. As an example, a Siegel-Cooper department store was built in New York three years after the Fair closed and a replica of the statue, The Republic, made by Daniel Chester, which adorned the Court of Honor at the Fair, stood in the centre of the store’s ground floor, as a direct tribute to the Columbian Exposition which inspired the concept of department stores as self-sufficient citadels (Lewis 1983). See also, for example, Henry Van Brunt, Architecture at the World’s Columbian Exposition, CIMM, vol. 44, n. 1: 81–99; and Hines (1974).

4

The city as spectacle

At the turn of the nineteenth century the walking city gave way to the new city reshaped by mass transportation, electric illumination and civic improvements. Cities now began to accommodate a new generation of city users crowded in a horizontally and vertically limited space where residential, commercial, industrial, religious and educational structures were jumbled together during previous decades without a rationale. The new social geography of the city was characterized by a process of residential suburbanization differentiated by income and wealth and by the zoning of central districts in terms of specialized functions, such as finance, commerce and public government, usually housed in the first skyscrapers. The Fair suggested how social differences encoded in different districts from suburbia to the city centre could be kept together through a planned juxtaposition of the White City and the Midway Plaisance typical of the new bourgeois culture. Public and social institutions that benefited everyone, from parks to museums, and from sports facilities to theatres and music halls, were opened up to a paying audience and were no longer the preserve of privileged subscribers. While these places set the stage for events where social differences could be reasserted by the act of stylized public appearance, they nevertheless contributed to reinvigoration of civic pride and produced a common urban environment. In the new arena high and low could meet and even conflate into a middle class that enjoyed increasing spending capacity and that was shaped more by acts of display and appropriations than through fixed positions in the productive system. People were therefore enmeshed in a vibrant spectacle of images, planned views and representations that addressed them both as actors and spectators. Human relations were increasingly mediated by technologies of communication and a planned organization of social spaces that moulded a brand-new mode of living. From Chicago spread both a movement of urban reform and architectural planning exerting a deep impact on American cities and also more subtle influences on the modes of experience in urban daily life. While the direct legacy of the White City was the development of the City Beautiful movement, promoting a new philosophy in public architecture and urban planning, the Midway Plaisance stimulated the development of amusement parks, spectacles and travelling carnival shows. Civic improvement and entertainment were incorporated into a complex

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vision merging business and art and promoting the city as a spectacle for the emergent mass audience of consumer capitalism. The double visual vocabulary promoted by the Fair was translated into the new city via the collaboration of a cadre of professionals and reformers, merchant princes and the new corporate institutions (Hines 1974; Kasson 1978; Schlereth 1981; Harris 1990; McCabe 2016).1

Marketing the city A primary lesson the Columbian Exposition taught through the Department of Promotion and Publicity to urban stakeholders, from dwellers to politicians, and from professionals to businessmen, was the need of the systematic promotion of bigger and better cities. They had to be displayed to the public on a stage of urban competition using the whole array of business tricks previously employed to sell products and services. A distinct image for the city had to be built and consequently advertised in order to attract commercial activities, inhabitants, investments and tourism. As a contributor to PI brilliantly recognized, “competition is bringing cities into the arena which a few years ago was occupied only by retail merchants”.2 As a matter of fact, the 1860s witnessed the growth of cities of all sizes, even small county seats and medium towns, especially in the South and the West, and they all began to aggressively advertise through a Barnumesque, bombastic style of communication. Newspaper advertising generally exaggerated the merits of the city and praised small shopkeepers as though they were merchant princes or presented normal residences as palatial homes designed by great architects; also circulars and personal letters were sent to prospective investors with flashy promises of extraordinary returns. Even when plain advertising was used, the Board of Trade or the Chamber of Commerce usually issued leaflets nicely printed and full of illustrations but lacking any marketing punch.3 The Columbian Exposition and the success of the Department of Promotion and Publicity made clear that professional advertising was necessary in place of both baseless balloon system of promotion and amateurish improvisation, which were detrimental to effective urban development. Success or failure in urban growth depended, indeed, on the effective capacity of cities to rationally attract both investments and people. In the short span of a few decades, a refined system of urban promotion developed, anticipating by a century what is now termed “urban marketing”. Promoters understood that public communication had to deploy the right means to achieve its end. If the primary aim was to attract manufacturers, promotion must focus on what interested them most: transportation facilities, freight rates, cost of labour and tax rates; alternatively, if the primary goal was a growth in dwelling population, public transit, schools, municipal services and job opportunities had to be sponsored and reliable information about residential offers had to be packaged in a seductive way. It was also important to plan a proper budget for promotion expenditures, to be divided between general advertising and sales agents seeking a contact with prospective

The city as spectacle 79 investors and residents. Last but not least, it was necessary to plan urban development with a successful marketing effort in mind.4 The city became the reference point for a growing common interest of diverse actors as residents and entrepreneurs, merchants and city users discovered how their well-being and fortunes depended on the attractive capacity of the urban complex. Each node benefited from the empowerment of the others and by the expanding of the whole grid. All of them concurred in promoting their city as a vibrant place of services and opportunities. A promotional disposition pervaded, indeed, many sectors and activities, both public and private – from institutions like schools and universities, local administration, banks and political parties, to varied professionals like politicians, insurance agents, physicists and literati, up to service facilities like hotels, all extensively flaunted their activities, and in turn they advertised the city. Merchants especially began to act as a body through effective institutional marketing favoured by boards of trade and city government. They realized that effective general advertising for the city would attract more customers for their personal businesses because – as a contributor for DGE reminded to the dubious reader – “to advertise the town is to advertise one’s business always”. 5 Institutional advertising set forth by merchants promoted a new commercial aesthetic that went in hand with projects laid out by progressive movements for beautifying the city and, at the same time, was favoured by local politicians and city managers who saw chances to increase their influence over citizens through effective cooperation in urban reform and city improvement.

Commercial aesthetic and the carnival spirit Burnham and urban reformers intended to beautify the city so as to inspire inhabitants to better moral standards and more civilized behaviour. The city centre, where working-class employees worked in retail and leisure institutions for middle- and upper-class inhabitants, stood as the symbol of a renewed community built upon a new sense of cohesion and better social control gained through a process of life standardization. As Central Park in New York City had been realized by Fredrick Olmsted to reform public conduct by offering a space for dignified recreation, urban landscape architecture of subsequent decades advanced a project of benign coercion through spectacle and disciplined amusement effective in displacing the menace of street life and promoting a relaxed bourgeois culture (Trachtenberg 1982).6 As social economist Simon Patten made plain in his best seller The New Basis of Civilization, the City Beautiful movement set out to nurture the working man and to fit him for the new social life via an “education through the eye” that would “reverse the accustomed order and place the aesthetic pleasures before the drill of moral restrains”; in so doing they would be aroused to actively participate in the new economic life made up of a balance of production and consumption, or of “eight hours of work and eight hours of rest” (Patten 2010: 42). The civic virtue of country life must be adapted to the new in-building locus of civilization: the consumer city. Patten assigned a crucial role to the theatre in promoting

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standardized leisure as the reward for hard work, because theatre was able to instil in the mind of the citizen “the pleasurable outgo of varied emotions” in place of “the contemplative love of nature” (Patten 2010: 44) inherited from earlier country life. The success of the shift meant nothing less than social progress. As he had already detailed in a previous work, Patten argued that it was only in sweeping away the ideals of country life that people could get in touch “with the many social institutions which city life makes possible” (Patten 1896b: 146) and, through mass participation, the growth of civic refinement could be effectively pursued. According to this vision, the cultivation of aesthetic feelings promoted by beautification of the urban space would contribute to the moral uplift of the masses and, eventually, to the standardization of social life around the imperatives of specialized work and mass consumption. Cities became the social infrastructure for the marketplace to continually grow upon a dynamic way of life unfettered by old habits harmful to material prosperity. The new urban ideal moulded a vision of social order established on the celebration of mass market and consumer goods. The city was designed as a spectacle on the basis of a changing conception of the public as a spectator and the citizen as a consumer.7 As it will be considered in greater detail later (see Chapter 7) urban reform was part of a broader project of democratization which gave consumption a leading role. A commercial aesthetic combining monumentality and business developed through the collaboration between reformers and economic institutions. Merchant princes sought leading architects to erect business cathedrals that would bring more fame and money, as was the case with Daniel Burnham and John Wanamaker and the building of the new palatial emporium in downtown Philadelphia in 1911. New commercial and public buildings hoisted in the place of old ones mirrored the double nature of the rising commercial aesthetic. As with the White City, their inner functional needs, which were determined by the new corporate order, were concealed by dressing their “fronts” as spectacles of style and design to celebrate urban life. In the interest of civic beautification and elevation of taste, a mural movement took off after the Columbian Exposition with the task of decorating public and commercial spaces and found the collaboration of many merchants, entrepreneurs and institutions of retailing (Bogart 1995; Burns 1996). At the same time, the movement contributed to the public acceptance of outdoor advertising, which was progressively refined through the contribution of painters, designers and decorators. As the first decades of the century wore on, the conjunction of art and commerce deepened and the new commercial aesthetic was strategically used by mass-market businessmen to promote themselves as masters of urban ceremonies. Manufacturers and department stores allied with hotels, restaurants, theatres, civic organizations and even city government in order to promote amusement and attract business. Spectacles of all kinds proliferated, from turn-of-the-century artisanal shows related to religious, civic or popular celebrations, and designed to win public confidence, up to refined, colossal events made by marketing professionals during the 1920s and engineered to secure consumers’ loyalty by giving them dramatized consumer experiences (see Chapter 10).

The city as spectacle 81 During the last decades of the nineteenth century merchants and manufacturers were used to patronize circus parades and open-air spectacles in order both to gain favour as promoters of public amusement and draw excursions to the exhibits of general business. Though the ways in which such amusements were infused with the commercial punch – clowns announcing bargains from local dealers or parading animals decorated with advertising coverings – more resembled the days of the peddler and humbug promotion than the modern dignified advertising and modern commercial aesthetic in the making, what was going on was nothing less than a process of incorporation of popular entertainment into a new middle-class consumer culture. A further step in the movement is especially visible if one pays attention to the evolution of spectacles like street fairs and food exhibitions, which offered the public handsomely arranged cornucopias of mass-manufactured new products lined along city streets or in dedicated areas. Exhibits of the kind were extensively advertised as cities’ attractions in order to stimulate urban tourism centred on the spectacle of the consumer city. The difference between modern exhibits and old country fairs was marked by two related innovations that the Columbian Exposition made clear: first, the need for systematic control wielded from above over the entire organization in order to effectively realize the institutional endeavour of promoting the consumer city; second, the increased attention exhibitors paid to the display of goods as a chief means to conjure a favourable atmosphere to win the public’s interest. What is worth noting is that institutional collaborations were based on the underlying principle that spectacles and shows were useful both for marketing the city and promoting trade. Therefore, they must conjoin commerce, culture and amusement in effective displays of well-arranged goods, of decorated buildings and streets, and of special parades full of diverse attractions. On occasion, cities took on a gala appearance and the distinction between daytime and nighttime was blurred through the use of supplementary illumination, “the idea being to amuse the crowds continuously,”8 as a contributor for DGE suggested. As a matter of fact, the tenebrous nightly landscape of the old city was progressively enlightened via street lamps, show windows and signs, introducing artificially illuminated hours into the business cycle. During the twenties, Times Square came to epitomize the commercialization of the whole day, domesticating nightly deviant practices while at the same time making the city at night a wondrous spectacle for the public (Taylor 1991). The size and scope of shows and exhibits depended on how much money could be raised through institutional collaborations. Department stores ranked high for their spending capacity and organizational skills. For example, the “Fete Internationale”, organized by the department store Strawbridge & Clothier of Philadelphia, towered among many other exhibits. The show resembled a World’s Fair on a smaller scale. Having required months of preparation, the show consisted of fifty exhibits of nations that contributed their products to the merchandise distributed by the store, each of them accurately decorated to represent the country and patronized by natives. A close collaboration was arranged with the Commercial Museum of Philadelphia, to which was devoted a large part of the store

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for instructive displays of cultural artefacts. Interesting collaborations were also established between department stores and brand-new radio broadcasters. Wanamaker’s arranged a broadcasting studio in the store to celebrate the progress of communication and gave patrons and the larger public a chance to see how radio broadcasting worked. Various displays then educated the public as to the varying uses of radio: at home, in the office, in the farmhouse, in the hospital and even in the motorboat. In 1925, Bon Marché of Seattle mounted an exhibit intended to celebrate the many possibilities of radio broadcasting and, incidentally, to advertise a line of gowns. In a large show window of the store, a radio studio was mounted and a stage was set for a style show arranged with a concert. Each musician wore a new gown sold by the store, and before they begun to perform, for the benefit of the listeners in the store and within the range of the broadcast signal, the radio speaker gave a description of the dress worn. In this way, the public was provided with threefold entertainment as “they were treated to the sight of a broadcasting room in operation, were given an opportunity to view the gown displayed by the artists and to hear the musical program”. 9 An outstanding example of collaboration between different city institutions was reported by MRSW, describing the work of the Committee of the Fifth Avenue Association in planning, for 1920, the first “Fifth Avenue Week” set to be held during the days before Easter to celebrate Fifth Avenue and the linkage between commerce and arts. Each retail store, bank, hotel and restaurant along the avenue was involved in the organization, making the event a real urban celebration of cultural entertainment, extensively advertised across the country. During the week, both sidewalks of the avenue were intended to be lined with booths where works by American artists were displayed for the passing audience. For the occasion, an agreement among retailers was secured for show windows to be adorned with a cultural touch, exposing until 11:30 pm, thanks to electric illumination, the history of the department store and the development of merchandising by contrasting apparel sold at the time the store was founded with that sold at present. All activities and special displays realized were collected into a general programme, printed and extensively distributed. The programme drew to a close with a magnificent fashion show at the Waldorf Astoria, as reported by MRSW.10 Clearly enough, sponsored events were realized in order to imbue city life with a new commercial spirit. In this way, the new institutions of consumer capitalism actively participated in social life, producing a veritable socialization of commerce. Moreover, as their power grew, so their influence was extended over public life, because their spectacles became urban rituals around which the whole population gathered on planned occasions. The movement was part of the commercialization of the calendar, because economic institutions punctuated every occasion and festivity with a new consumer culture founded on a mesmerizing commercial aesthetic promoted through spectacles. Not by chance, during the 1920s, New Yorkers witnessed the birth of what has become the iconic example of the shift to consumer culture and commercial aesthetic: Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. As a matter of fact, Macy’s parade took

The city as spectacle 83 a step further than Christmas shows sponsored by businessmen over the previous decades, which were in turn rooted on popular ragamuffin parades held on religious occasions and having a carnivalesque tone (Leach 1993). Through the marshalling of many different aspects Macy’s set up a colossal spectacle intended to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas while in fact being a secular ceremony of a capitalist cathedral and its consumer religion. The planning was sophisticated and the organization managerially arranged by the display and the advertising departments. Attention was given to minute details, like the uniforms of people parading, themes for floats, schedule, route and, indeed, extensive advertising. Organizers received permission from city authorities to hold the parade on Thanksgiving Day from 9:30 am to 12 noon and secured an extensive number of city policemen to patrol the streets. As reported by MRSW, the parade started at 100 Forty-Fifth Street and was followed by the crowd all the way down to the store, at the intersection of Thirty-Fourth Street and Broadway. Floats illustrated “The Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe”, “Three Men in a Boat”, “Little Red Riding Hood” and many more fairytales and nursery rhymes. Animated by professional musical bands, and by various performers like clowns, men on stilts, acrobats and even wild animals in cage, the spectacle was thrilling and it was fittingly completed when Santa Claus reached the store and a giant curtain was raised over a window-stage where a marionette show was performed under the supervision of Tony Sarg, a famous theatre designer and puppeteer. The following years’ parades continued to exploit the combination of colors, lights, entertainments and theatrical effects to spark a thrilling atmosphere. In 1926 the finale was literally staged – or dramatized (see Chapter 10) – by using mechanical devices and a narrative climax. When Macy’s was reached, the whole parade stopped and looked at Santa Claus ascending a flight of red-carpeted steps to his throne on the top of the marquee; at his signal, musicians blew their trumpets and the windows were opened for the benefit of the public. In 1928, Santa Claus was escorted by a colourful fellowship of clowns and queens, pirates and princess and the inevitable trumpeters. Once the parade stopped in front of the store, Santa Claus superintended the release of hundreds of balloons, and, once he was seated on his throne, curtains rolled back from the store’s windows and revealed a Christmas spectacle of marionettes designed by Tony Sarg, “who acted as master of ceremonies”.11 If in earlier decades events were organized by businessmen to celebrate festivities and perform a service to the community in order to win over public confidence, in the last stage of development festivities became mere opportunities to organize commercial events as part of professional marketing (see Chapter 10). What Luna Park impresario Frederick Thompson, the man who shaped Coney Island, once defined as the trick of the trade for amusement parks, the “carnival spirit”,12 it was domesticated and shaped into disciplined amusement as the necessary counterpart of specialized work in the functioning of consumer capitalism. Through the exploitation of domesticated carnival spirit and the promotion of a new commercial aesthetic, businessmen and economic institutions had been expanding their influence over social life shaping the visual landscape of urban dwellers, not least by disseminating outdoor advertising through billboards, car cards and electric signs.

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Outdoor advertising It’s really quite bewildering, whene’er I take a walk Around these two big villages of Brooklyn and New York: Great advertising signs I see, stuck up in every place, And even in the railroad cars they stare me in the face! The fences, walls, and gable ends of houses, now proclaim, In great, big painted letters, many articles of fame. The street-cars, and the trains that run on elevated roads, Have also fallen victims to these advertising modes!13 These are the opening lines of a humorous, half-bitter poem that chronicled the spread of outdoor advertising in American cities, from buildings along streets, to elevated railroads and inside streetcars. The poem depicted the city as a spectacle of commercial imagery made possible by the frenzied activity of merchants and manufacturers in search of good prospects for their lines of business. They took advantage of the relatively low cost for printing illustrated poster, perceived as the “more violently modern”, “more impudent thing arisen in our day”,14 as well as for electrifying advertising signs. As argued in Chapter 1, streetcar advertising grew up along with the implementation of public transport, especially with the shift from the horse-drawn car to the electric-powered vehicle. As soon as the first subway lines were introduced in 1904, many competitors bid for the advertising privileges in car and stations and the underground was papered with cards and bulletins. Mass transit potentially captured the sight of a great number of people given that already in 1905, in New York alone, it carried more than two million people daily. It was especially useful to manufacturers offering convenient goods at reasonable prices for the masses, and also to local retailers, as reported by Barron Gift Collier, owner of the Consolidated Street Railway Car Advertising Company, one of the largest company running spaces in over 11,000 cars in nearly 350 cities. Streetcar advertising pioneers were Brent Good, the proprietor of Carter’s Little Liver Pills, and soap maker Sapolio, which was credited with one of the earliest and most successful streetcar advertising card series: “Spotless Town”. Designed by James K. Fraser and extensively employed by Artemas Ward, then advertising manager for Sapolio, each series depicted a different character living in the clean town and using Sapolio in his daily business. “Spotless Town” was so successful that it “set a standard in car cards”.15 While at the turn of the century streetcar card advertising was more similar in shape to the outdated advertising cards than to the recent poster, and were thus reminiscent of mawkish lithographs given away with staple goods in the good old days, the twentieth-century cards became more original and well designed. Advertising grew in variety and the number of advertisers increased remarkably: from Quaker Oats to Uneeda Biscuit, from W. B. Corsets to Bermuda Steamboat Line, from breakfast food Grape-Nuts to Campbell’s, from Omega Oil to department stores like Saks. By 1906, Wanamaker’s in New York could run its first

The city as spectacle 85 advertising campaign of daily bargains, both in elevated train lines and subway lines, as improvements in the system of changing cards secured a fast and efficient turnover of advertisements. The development of streetcar advertising was met with great enthusiasm, and even forecast the embedded digital screens of today: The card of the future will be artistic. And it will be changed every minute. An inventor will come along one of these days with light, simple apparatus for displaying a dozen changes in each space. The car card will become infused with life, keeping passengers amused and interested. The same mechanism, doubtless, will show street names and other useful information.16 Once the elevated railway was put in operation, billboards and signs were hoisted to the level passengers transported could read them. What would now be called a socio-spatial production of the city (Tarantino and Tosoni 2013) was occurring as urban development entwined with commercial practices shaping the social landscape of the city with iconic symbols of a new world of goods and services. At the same time, ordinary people living or working in the city became spectators whose sight was progressively commanded by the spectacle of the consumer city. They were therefore amused and entertained not only by advertising cards inside cars but by miles upon miles of signs that whooshed past without interruptions. Among many users of billboards were tobacco and liquor producers, then also Sapolio, Pearline and Higgins soap manufacturers, Dixon’s Stove Polish, Reckitt’s Blue, many local retailers and even periodicals like Everybody’s Magazine, covering with large posters one hundred big cities and also mining and manufacturing centres.17 The spectacle was colourful and rather quirky for on the same elevated road – as reported by a contributor for PI – “a man with ailing feet is tempted dozens of times, between the City Hall and Harlem, to step off and have his pain relieved” or “to be shampooed or to have their hair cut and banged”; whether it was the druggist, the dressmaker, the department store or the canned food “all sorts of odd things, in the way of advertisements, can be found suspended up in the air”.18 Even if, at the turn of the century, many billboards were not works of art, lacking originality and clinging to the lettering more than to the pictures, there were remarkable exception likes the Turkish Trophies. The cigarette poster, featuring a Constantinople scene of minarets, mosques and bazaars on the background of the paint, was so well composed that it resembled what people were used to seeing on the backdrops at the theatre. Turkish Trophies’ posters were used so much in New York that the city took on an Oriental appearance. Hoardings were a great spectacle from the Battery to the Bronx, and were the first things spotted by a visitor as he walked the city. The landscape was enlivened by gigantic reproductions of trademark characters already familiar to the public, for they were reproduced on print advertising and product’s packages. Walking Manhattan one could find “Jim Dumps” of Force cereal reproduced in great details on the left side of the street, while just opposite a Mennen’s poster was hoisted up in the front of another building; going downtown, the same walker could spot the yellow poster of Cremo

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Cigar at the Macy’s corner, as well as many electrically lit boards at Madison Square or a Wilson whiskey sign “with its siphon bottle pouring real water”.19 The boardwalk of Atlantic City was another landmark for billboards and signs, like the famous sign of the Gillette safety razor, and especially for the spectacle of nightly illumination, for it made extensive use of electric lights and colours to create a dazzling atmosphere and promote consumer goods. However, the mecca of night and day outdoor advertising was obviously Times Square, which took on its form after the war and especially during the 1920s. With its gigantic signs, flashy displays and intriguing amusements following one another as years passed, the square perpetuated the spectacle of the consumer city (Taylor 1991; Leach 1993). As a contributor to PI reported, Times Square was “a veritable night serenade of advertising, its electric signs being so ingenious as to rouse interest in the most blasé metropolitanite”.20 Broadway theatres, as usual, were prime among urban institutions to make the most through electric signs, used as a “ballyhoo” system to catch the public eye, especially once fluorescent lamps were phased out by neon signs (Starr 1998).21 Technical developments in using electricity in advertising made possible the hoisting of signs towering over cities and raising the name of business organizations up in the sky. The waterproof electric sign forming the name “Butterick”, built by the Electric Motor & Equipment Company in the west wall of the Butterick Publishing Company’s building in New York, was astounding. The letters, which were 4.5 metres high, with the exception of the capital “B” at 21 metres, needed 1,134 lamps to be run, and it could be seen even from the Jersey Shore or from the ferry boats in the North River. Moreover, in big cities it was possible to gaze at beams of light projected by searchlights powerful enough to flash its phantom-like message across many blocks and possibly seen for miles around. Advancement in electric illumination also made dynamic advertisements possible, like the one placed by C/B corset, displaying a sign with strong sex appeal: a young woman was made of electric lights wearing a stylish gown and a bewitching hat, only to be suddenly stripped of both, and left with “her corset and other unmentionables plain in sight”.22 Whether they were rented or bought by advertisers, the electric signs extended even to medium and small stores in Western cities, also covering the country in between, together with billboards along railways and highways. In the countryside, signs and hoardings were planted haphazardly everywhere along streets, on the roofs of barns, and running along fences; and it was not unlikely to find signs painted on the foot of mountains and hills. Whether it was in cities or in the country, the proliferation of outdoor advertising came not without protest, for it was understood how it was about to change the national landscape and have consequences on public taste and general habits. City governments sometimes interfered with the dissemination of billboards and electric signs, preventing the publication of what were considered objectionable pictures and images in the street, often following petitions made by working-class and ordinary people denouncing posters for offending public morality. Such debates indicated a conflict between two kinds of morality: an “old-fashioned” one, which judged pictures by the ethical meaning

The city as spectacle 87 conveyed and by the risk their extensive use had in defacing natural scenery; the other, “progressive”, appreciating advertising images and signs as artefacts heralding a society of abundance, or as works of art to be assessed solely in terms of aesthetic value. As a matter of fact, with the professionalization of advertising, and thanks to the contribution of commercial artists who increasingly offered their skills to business, outdoor advertising was refined and the dispute greatly diminished. While advertisers understood that spoiling the landscape was harmful to the reputation of a business, they nonetheless suggested that effective solutions were not to be found in restrictive legislations but in promoting and improving the aesthetic value of advertisements. It was argued that, through the cooperation of artists and advertisers, as well as the local communities, billboards or signs could be designed so that they would seem to belong in the very spot in which they were placed. As outdoor advertising progressed, so public taste changed, accustomed to the commercial aesthetic that signs and billboards contributed to shape.23 Starting from the city, the new environment of promotion, advertising, enticement and disciplined amusement slowly spread through the whole national landscape and altered the perception of reality of people increasingly exposed to it. Through the contribution of the new commercial aesthetic prompted by businessmen with the contribution of artists and reformers, the city as spectacle gave the social fabric a theatrical aspect appropriate to the emerging consumer culture necessary to absorb the enormous output of mass production.

Notes 1 On urban reformation and the beginning of professional city planning, see Crawford (1910), Howe (1912), the special issues Housing and Town Planning, AAAPSS, Vol. 51 (Jan.), 1914, Planning for City Traffic, AAAPSS, Vol. 133 (Sep.), 1927; and McKenzie (1933: 481–487). See also Scott (1969), Marcuse (2011) and Hall (2014). 2 PI 30/7/1890, A Coming Profession: 110. See also PI 2/7/1890: 10, Advertising your Town and PI 19/11/1890: 531, Advertising in Philadelphia. 3 On small and medium city advertising, see PI 15/7/1891: 27, Town Booming and PI 18/11/1891: 580. On bombastic promotion see PI 12/7/1893: 35, Advertising Real Estates Investments. On unprofessional promotion see PI 16/12/1891: 731, Advertising a Town. 4 See PI 16/12/1891: 731, Advertising a Town; PI 18/11/1891: 580; PI 28/9/1892: 371, Building a City by Ad; PI 20/4/1892: 505, Advice on Town Advertising and PI 9/2/1911: 54, Advertising a City as a Department Store. 5 DGE 29/10/1904, Wide-Awake Retailing: 83. On institutional advertising; see also Bird (1906: 87–93). On educational institutions, see PI 15/6/1889: 613, Advertising a School; PI 7/5/1890: 723, Hints on School Advertising; PI 9/9/1891: 243, School Advertising; PI 13/5/1891: 644, Advertising an Educational Institution; PI 27/3/1895: 3; Some School Advertising; PI 27/3/1895: 8, Advertising for School; PI 27/3/1895: 16, How to Advertise a School; and PI 27/3/1895: 18, To make a School Successful. On insurance advertising, see PI 11/6/1890: 918, Insurance Advertising; PI 23/10/1895: 17, Insurance Advertising; and PI 27/11/1895: 47, Insurance Advertising. On bank advertising, see PI 4/1/1892: 3, A Bank President View in Ad; PI 14/3/1894: 293, Advertising a Bank; PI 11/9/1901: 16, To Advertise a Bank; and PI 2/9/1896: 32, Bank Advertising. On political marketing, see PI 14/10/1896: 23, Political Propaganda and Advertising; PI 28/10/1896: Advertising a Presidential Candidate; PI 4/11/1896: 8, Political

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7 8

9 10 11

12 13 14 15

16

17 18 19 20

Making the consumer city Advertising; PI 30/6/1910: 39: The Senator Campaign and the Use of Testimonials; PI 3/5/1917: 103, Advertising Elect the Major of St Louis; and PI 27/9/1917: 81, Ad to Figure in Campaign to Re-Elect major Mitchell. On professionals advertising, see PI 20/8/1890: 180, How doctors Advertise; PI 21/1/1891: 115, Advertising by Professional Man; PI 25/3/1891, 424, Is a Physician Justified in Advertising?; PI 16/3/1892: 364, Small Authors Advertise?; and PI 25/12/1895: 6, Advertising Architect. On hotel advertising, see PI 15/6/1889: 609, How to Advertise a Hotel; PI 28/5/1890: 843, Advertising a Hotel; PI 20/5/1891: 677, Hotel Advertising; PI 13/3/1895: 5, Preparing Hotel ads; and PI 24/4/1901: 8, Advertising Hotels and Resorts. About the turn-of-the-century movement for securing public parks in American cities as part of the City Beautiful movement and urban reform, see Crawford (1905), the Notes on Municipal government. Parks and public playgrounds: The Record of a Year’s Advance: A Symposium, in AAAPSS, Vol. 26 (Nov.), 1905, and the special issue Public Recreation Facilities, in AAAPSS, Vol. 35, No. 2 (Mar.), 1910. About the “showcased” city, see Taylor (1989). DGE 6/7/1901, All About Street Fairs: 6. On circus parades and open-air spectaculars, see PI 24/7/1895: 20: The Circus in the Wild and Wooly West and PI 24/7/1895: 21 Spectacular Shows. More on street fairs and food exhibitions are on PI 26/10/1892: 516, Advertising at New York Food Exposition; PI 22/2/1893: 290, The Food Exposition; and PI 29/11/1893: 575, The Philadelphia Food Exposition. On the role of electricity for commercial aesthetic, see PI 8/11/1893: 491, Electricity in Advertising. MRSW 5/1925, The Last Show Window Stunt: 21. About Strawbridge and Clothier, see MRSW 4/1910: 44, Fete Internationale. About Wanamaker’s, see MRSW 4/1924: 20, Radio Exposition at Wanamaker’s. MRSW 2/1920: 44, Merchants Plan Art Week and MRSW 3/1920: 30, Notes from New York. MRSW 12/1928: 36, Notes from New York. See also MRSW 12/1927: 18, Parades Open Christmas Season; and MRSW 12/1929: 38, Macy’s Christmas Parade. The 1924 Parade is in MRSW 12/1924: 24, Macy’s Parade. For the Parade of 1926, see MRSW 12/1926: 22, Macy’s Christmas Parade. For a glimpse of an older Christmas parade, see MRSW 10/1913: 21, Drawing Christmas Crowds. Frederick Thompson, “Amusing the million”, Everybody’s Magazine: 379, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Sep.), 1908. PI 19/11/1890, Advertising Signs: 517. PI 27/1/1897, The Age of the Poster: 8. PI 8/1/1902, Street Car Cards: 24. About the subway, see PI 19/10/1904: 14, The Subway Advertising. Data on circulation are in PI 18/4/1906: Street Car Advertising in New York City. About typologies of streetcar advertisers, see PI 25/11/1896: 24, Street Car Advertising and PI 15/2/1905: 8, Street Car Advertising. PI 8/10/1902, Card Car Reflections: 4,6, which also discuss the old chromo. On manufacturers and retailers using streetcar advertising, see PI 2/9/1903: 32, Street Car Ads; PI 28/10/1903: 11, Saks’ Street Car Advertising; PI 6/9/1905: 123, Campbell’s Soup – A Street Car Story; and PI 14/10/1908: 12, A New Development in Car Signs. About Wanamaker’s campaign, see PI 4/4/1906: 28, A Daily Street-Car Card. PI 16/11/1904, Billboard Advertising: 41. PI 21/6/1893: 731, Bill-Posting Notes. PI 1/9/1889, Signs in the Air: 59. Information about users of billboards are in PI 21/6/1893: 731, Bill-Posting Notes and PI 16/11/1904: 41, Billboard Advertising. PI 20/1/1904, Paint: 8. On billboards mentioned, see also PI 12/8/1903: 10, The Hoardings of New York. About the lack of art, see PI 23/10/1901: 12, Billboard Art. On Turkish Trophies, see PI 6/11/1901: 10, Advertising Turkish Trophies. PI 22/9/1909, Ingenious Electric Advertising: 16. The article made a reference to the Gillette sign. For another electric sign of the kind, see also PI 4/5/1910: 16 Trade Psychology and the Electric Signs.

The city as spectacle 89 21 On the extensive use of billboards and signs by theatres, see PI 8/3/1893: 343, Some Facts Between Sign Advertising; PI 5/6/1895: 27, Electric Advertisements; and again PI 22/9/1909, 16 Ingenious Electric Advertising. 22 PI 4/5/1910, Trade Psychology and the Electric Signs: 16. On the Butterick sign, see PI 6/9/1905: 11, The Largest Electric Sign. On advertising projections through searchlights, see PI 25/12/1895: 41, Electricity in Advertising. 23 On the use of signs in medium cities and stores, see PI 14/2/1906: 18, Electric Light and Power Advertising and MRSW 9/1919: The Electric Sign. On signs and billboards in the countryside, see PI 22/11/1893: 554, A War of Signs and PI 7/12/1892: 755, Defacing Natural Scenery. On restrictions and petitions, see PI 14/6/1892: 806, Poster Advertising denounced and PI 22/9/1909, 16 Ingenious Electric Advertising. On the development of outdoor advertising and growing general appreciation of its visual landscape, see PI 8/3/1893: 343, Some Facts Between Sign Advertising; PI 24/4/1924, How Outdoor Advertising Can be Part of Natural Landscape; and PI 22/9/1909, 16 Ingenious Electric Advertising.

5

The presentation of self in urban daily life

When Veblen spoke of the transition from conspicuous leisure to conspicuous consumption, he perceptively recognized the link between modern urban daily life with its theatrical nature and the role consumer goods could play in such an environment. Specifically, he contended that once social differentiation “has gone farther and it becomes necessary to reach a wider human environment, consumption begins to hold over leisure as an ordinary means of decency” (Veblen 2007: 60). Consumer goods, particularly for “the city population” (Ibid.: 61), began to exercise a growing importance in the staging of one’s own social position. Conspicuous consumption was therefore not only an instrument of social distinction for the upper class but also a means of social equalization through imitation for lower classes (Simmel 1904). Thus, social competition articulated a theatricalized dynamic of both social distinction by the upper class and social emulation on part of the lower classes through conspicuous consumption.1 However, while Veblen recognized the often-overlooked role imitation plays in social life, his analysis is nonetheless flawed, as it has restricted imitation to pecuniary emulation (Lears 1989). A reading like Veblen’s fails to recognize the fundamental connection between imitation and liminality, thus underestimating the temporal dimension of social life. The tendency towards imitation (see the Introduction) becomes stronger in liminal phases because the weakening of the structures that support meaning deprives individuals of a secure reference upon which they can meaningfully behave (Szakolczai 2009; Thomassen 2014; Horvath et al. 2015). During the period under scrutiny, show windows became a powerful means of socialization to the theatricalized “reality” of the consumer city, for they were veritable screens to look at if one wished to understand the traits and needs of urban daily life. As reported by a commentator in 1901, show windows “are never without their crowds about them” and people, especially the less affluent newcomers, “look at that which, seen from the outside, becomes an education to them”.2 Their appealing power was humorously depicted in many chromolithographs, like the one for a New York jeweller of a street urchin who was about to steal a smoke from a cigar held by a man behind his back, while the man gazed at the jeweller’s window display (see Figure 5.1). One need only consider that new displays often created pavement congestion outside department stores as crowds appreciated their success (see Figure 5.2).3 Along streets and avenues,

Figure 5.1 Gazing at a window display, advertising card, ca. 1875

Figure 5.2 Crowd viewing display, Motter-Wheeler Co., Walla Walla, Washington, 1909

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therefore, show windows and also interior displays literally staged scenes of social relations and portrayed how one should behave in the urban social arena (Marcus 1978). By displaying social life in connection with consumer goods, they placed the presentation of self in everyday life at the centre of social life and, in so doing, they all contributed to a strengthening of the theatrical accent of urban daily life (Goffman 1959; Sennett 1977; Laermans 1993; Blanchard 1995). The pluralization of social life-worlds (Berger et al. 1974) forced the inhabitant of the metropolis to prepare as many presentations of self as there were roles to play and settings in which to act. Increasingly varied and accessible consumer goods were offered as tools suited to the various different social performances that an urban social actor had to act out. The final part of this chapter will be devoted to detailing this process.

All the world’s a stage The new increasing theatricality of public appearance is testified by the growing popularity of theatrical representations that took the form of lifelike imitations (Orvell 1989). As secularization deepened, Protestant hostility waned and the theatre gained influence over the urban public. Commercial communications took advantage from this trend, often stressing the similarity between social life and theatre. For example, a booklet by an importer of fine foods stated that social life was a pièce de théâtre to be staged, while the ad-copy of a kitchen product suggested that the young wife depicted cooking in the illustration was like a theatre actress, given the grace of her dress and bearing. Eventually, many advertisements and brochures borrowed the famous line by Shakespeare to declare that the entire world was a stage.4 Moreover, theatre came to be a landmark in establishing new fashion trends and, given the wide publicity it permitted, it was frequently used as a medium for product endorsement by actresses and singers, who were paid to name the brand during plays and exhibitions. It was also fairly common to buy advertising spaces in the theatre programme.5 The importance of portrayal in social life is also apparent in the direct influence that theatre had on window dressers and interior decorators. Not only were theatre lighting techniques used in shop windows and department stores; more interestingly, stores and windows were eventually understood as actual stages upon which the drama of social life was enacted (Schivelbusch 1988; Leach 1993). In his seminal work on advertising in America, Roland Marchand (1986) has established a direct connection between the tableaux vivants that became popular in the last decades of the 1800s and the advertisements that appeared in magazines between the 1920s and 1930s. This link may be safely extended to show windows of previous decades. If tableaux vivants staged a snapshot taken from a story (often a religious one) that could easily be recognized by the spectator, windows and ads enacted scenes of everyday life where the social relations, roles and settings of life in the metropolis were portrayed.6 It is true that advertisements and show windows depicted “slices-of-life” by mostly mirroring a limited, well-to-do stratum of American society, reflecting life

Presentation of self in urban daily life 93 ideals and social habits closer to the social environment of their creators than of their readers. However, the recognition of this should not obscure two further primary facts: first, windows were representations of an ideal of modern life to which the middle and working classes aspired and, therefore, they contributed to making real the ideal portrayed through imitative behaviour; second, given their theatrical nature, through the very act of staging, they backed up the modern tendency to the theatricalization of reality, where identity is a play of impressions exerted through studied performances and the “real” is what becomes real in its effects. Show windows needed to make the most of this trend in order to become effective sales devices and, at the same time, they contributed to making theatricalization the mark of urban life.

Setting the stage It is worth looking at the completion of this process in greater detail. As mentioned before (see Chapter 1), show windows were considered as eye-catchers to attract the passer-by but they were usually unable to make use of the attention won by putting over a good selling punch. This was considered a serious shortcoming given the importance show windows had in placing the real article in front of a public that may not be reached by newspaper advertising. While many turn-of-the-century window dressers looked upon their work from the viewpoint of beauty of arrangement, what was in fact needed was the transformation of attention into a desire for the good displayed. Entering the twentieth century the profession underwent a shift from the idea of the window dresser as a mere decorator – the window trimmer – to considering him as the person in charge of the display of goods – the display manager (Leach 1989). The manager had to promote selling through goods display. This he did by offering dynamic and moving displays that showed goods in a living context. Windows began to tell an entertaining story. On the one hand, through mechanical devices special displays were set forth, giving life to enchanting scenes, as in the case of Christmas displays reproducing a Lilliputian village or Barnum’s circus in order to promote toys; on the other hand, daily displays began to show products in their daily context through the use of wax figures, which portrayed the main character of the story – the user of the goods for sale.7 Wax figures became in a short time real works of art, making their similarity to real people more convincing as they were able to reproduce lifelike flesh tints, a growing range of human expressions and a remarkable number of natural poses (see Figure 5.3). As a contributor to MRSW wrote in 1914: The better class of wax figure today is a real work of art in modelling and finish. The old strained and artificial smirk has given way to a really human expression and the flesh tints are as lifelike as art and skill can make them. The posing of the modern figure is a vast improvement over the old. Consequent to the “humanizing” of wax figures, their use has increased to a remarkable degree among stores of the better class.8

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Figure 5.3 Display by Jerome A. Koerber for Strawbridge & Clothier, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1913

The possibility of “humanizing” mannequins allowed shops to display the product in a concrete relation with its owner or, more precisely, with a representation of its owner, often identified as a portrayal of the authentic modern man or woman. Hence, wax figures were used not just to display clothes and accessories, but also in windows displaying different lines of products. The story told – or, rather, portrayed – was one that associated products with the context of their use, that is, an association between goods, their users and the various social roles and social intercourse of urban daily life.9 The construction of a proper background setting became essential in order to produce this lifelike effect and create an alluring window atmosphere. Such a technique was already well-known and largely adopted by the young and cosmopolitan generation of new American artists, who gave their studios a consciously planned “art atmosphere” in order to generate desire for their pieces and boost sales (Burns 1996; see also Chapter 8). This is not the only resonance between the arts, as they were increasingly attracted by commercialism and the market, which drew from the arts in order to elevate its status, since retailers and commercial actors drew extensively from the theatre as a narrative model. Just as a successful theatrical production required proper set management, the successful dressing of commercial

Presentation of self in urban daily life 95 windows and interiors required a shift from the idea of mere space decoration to the idea of professional stage setting. Display managers therefore began to systematically draw on the professional repertoire of theatre stage managers.10 In many cases, the resonance became an allegiance, because the know-how was directly imported into the world of commercial promotion by well-known set designers and architects offering their services to department stores. This was the case, for example, of Lee Simonson, a consultant working for Macy’s, and Norman Bel Geddes, display manager at Franklin Simon & Co. in New York and organizer of Macy’s Parade in 1926: both were successful set designers and architects who contributed to imbue show windows and department store interiors with theatrelike staging.11 Among many others, the case of Frank Baum is worthy of consideration. In his early years, the world-renowned writer of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz pioneered a systematic study of window trimming and decoration, building upon his previous experiences in theatre (Baum 1900). He founded the National Association of Window Trimmers and the first ever monthly journal entirely devoted to store windows: The Show Window: A Journal of Practical Window Trimming for the Merchant and the Professional.12 Lastly, one must mention Joseph Urban, who, having moved to the United States from fin-de-siècle Vienna, as a successful architect, stage designer and decorator, created the successful “Promenade de Toilettes” at Gimbel’s department store in New York. Over the years, he promoted through his work a vision of commercial aesthetic that was intended to transform the urban landscape, combining music, colours, lights and decorations in a liberating experience for the modern man. Urban’s architectural vision was theatrical in nature, as he believed that public spaces should be designed according to the same rationale with which a stage setting is created (Aronson 2000). His vision also spoke to the corporate turn of American life, as this comment on the relation between architecture and advertising starkly suggests: Architecture and advertising – the two outstanding practical arts of America – were bound to collide. At their highest there is indeed a natural affinity between the two. A beautiful building is the sandwich board of its owner. Renaissance palaces advertised the power and culture of the Medici. The American Radiator Company, Mr Bush and his terminals, the Bell Telephone Company, the stores of Woolworth, and the Shelton Hotel are better known today because of the work that Hood, Corbett, Walker, Gilbert, and Harmon have done at their drawing boards.13 These and other figures – who worked on the border of arts, culture and commerce – tuned business tools to the cultural, social and aesthetic trends of their day, very often beyond their conscious intentions (see also Chapter 8).

The mirror self As far as windows are concerned, the idea that increasingly gained ground was to stage consumer goods in relation with their owners in the widest range of

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circumstances of everyday life: from children in a classroom, suitably dressed and provided with all the equipment that a perfect student needs, to leisure time spent in sporting activities or social events; in all cases, the message was that every social occasion demands its proper consumer goods if one wants to carry out one’s own social role in a proper way (see Figures 5.4, 5.5 and 5.6). The same held true to mark festivities and special occasions such as a dinner scene depicting a family reunited around a table, waiting for the college boy coming

Figure 5.4 Bathing suit display by Joe Weiss for Wolff & Mark Co., San Antonio, Texas, 1908

Figure 5.5 Skating window by L. A. Rogers for Kline’s, Detroit, Michigan, 1917

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Figure 5.6 A golf window by Malcolm J. B. Tennent for Meier & Frank Co., Portland, Oregon, 1914

home for Thanksgiving, the whole array of furnishing and china on the table being well arranged, and indispensable, to celebrate the event. Having become tools for social performance, consumer goods also acquired a ritual value, marking the time and spaces of the pluralized social life where people were asked to perform.14 The same rationale was used during special displays inside stores. What Jerome Koerber, the display manager at Strawbridge and Clothier (see Figure 5.3 and also Figure 6.1), argued concerning how to organize a special display is particularly interesting: In all of these displays, different as they are, there is the same idea and that is to provide a setting that will eliminate the ‘store’. In other words the intent has been to show the gowns in surrounding somewhat similar to that in which they are to be worn. Here they are exhibited amidst surroundings that are congenial, so to speak, instead of being shown in an environment of showcases, shelf boxes and other store furniture.15 The act of displaying consumer goods in the setting in which they would be used meant staging a representation of reality that would help elicit the desired effect: stimulating the imagination and creating desire. Such a portrayal, designed to sell products, corroborated the new image of urban life and, in contributing to the strengthening of its theatrical nature, carried out a role that went well beyond the economic sphere, to the point where it penetrated social relations themselves. Show windows and interior displays of places of consumption, such as department stores, encouraged a trend in social theatricalization where consumer goods played a central role as essential tools for the success of the various different performances that take place on the urban stage. As far as this aspect is concerned, it is worth considering the arrangement of Macy’s show windows for the opening of the autumn season in 1913. Described by the MRSW as

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“an epoch making event in window display”, they portrayed scenes during the intermission at the theatre: The figures were of well-bred women and a man or two, with wraps, gowns and evening clothes exactly suited to the occasion, the background furnishing just the right setting. You have seen Du Maurier’s pictures. Well, there is something of the refined, half-bored expression in the faces of those women – something studious, fully conscious of their preferred social position, and nothing of the ingratiating smile that seeks to win the place . . . Their attitudes, clothing and relation to each other were charmingly apropos.16 It is not difficult to imagine how much this “humanizing” of wax figures and the accurate reproduction of everyday life exerted a deep impact on people who saw them displayed in commercial centres. The mirror was no longer limited to projecting a two-dimensional image of the self; it literally “embodied” the image of the self. A new addition to the range of the artistic reproductions of man filled society with mirrors of the self, of others and of various forms of relationships. These stylized but lifelike copies made by the mass-market industry stretched beyond the well-defined bounds of theatres and museums, penetrating into everyday life thanks to show windows and interior displays. As they were an imitation of life, they earned the chance to become life models to be imitated. Another example that illustrates this education as to the presentation of self in everyday life is the autumn opening display of a department store in Pittsburgh. In this case, the portrayal of everyday life was made clear by the scheme adopted: the setting was made of lifesize enlargements of a photograph put in the background, showing various well-posed men and women, in attractive and appropriate surroundings, wearing the identical garments that were displayed in the foreground. The idea that show windows with their goods were actual representations, and were images mirroring real life, was made explicit through the use of a picture of real social scenes. One picture showed a luncheon in a fashionable restaurant where a lady and her companion were getting ready to sit down at the table that had been reserved for them, not before having handed their coats to the zealous waiter who was to serve them throughout their meal (see Figure 5.7). Another one showed a mother and daughter at the cinema entrance as they bought their tickets, looking confident and relaxed and, above all, properly dressed and sporting the right accessories. A last one showed a lady as she got out of a car parked at the side of the road, right outside the club she was about to enter, not before having allowed passers-by to admire her as she posed seductively and self-confidently, dressed and made up in the most appropriate way for someone who has to be seen in public.17 Perhaps the most extraordinary example of how show windows could stage the right forms to support the presentation of self in a setting of social prestige and refinement were those of Arthur Fraser, display manager at Marshall Field’s in Chicago.18 Fraser, who was also inspired by theatre professionalism, managed to merge in his displays the value of art with mannered elegance. Having grasped the growing influence of commercial aesthetic, which raised consumer goods to

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Figure 5.7 Photograph window by C. D. Lovelace for Meyer-Jonasson Co., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1915

Figure 5.8 Window display by Arthur V. Fraser for Marshall Field & Co., Chicago, Illinois, 1919

the status of artistic objects, he used this potential to suggest, using images in his windows, that the owner of the consumer goods displayed would be elevated to the position of a man of elegance and refined taste (see Figure 5.8). This type of display exploited the mimetic nature of desire, stimulated by the presentation of consumer goods endowed with a performative power: that of shifting the

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subject from a condition of scarcity to one of plenty. The suggestion was that ownership of the goods could change the status of the owner, and not simply in terms of social position. It also referred to more private, intimate, aspects of existence by prompting a desire for existential fulfilment through the portrayal of a meaningful life. The image of well-dressed men and women in refined and elegant poses, in settings of luxury or idyllic harmony, was a powerful way of stimulating the desire to imitate, and it fed the theatrical imaginary of social relations.19 The expressions on mannequins’ faces – whether they looked at each other or at their image reflected in a mirror – exuded satisfaction and self-confidence; they seemed to offer observers advice on what they needed to do to be elegant and refined too, so as to be successful in social relations and, last but not least, to feel satisfied. In other cases, especially where furniture was on display, actors were left out of the scene and the pleasure of imagining oneself in the furnished setting was left to the consumer’s imagination. In promoting a new “commodity aesthetics” (Haug 1986), show windows and interior displays suggested a role that the products put on display could carry out in the creation not only of domestic interiors but also of gender experimentation attuned to the new culture of personality breaking boundaries of fixed roles and costumes (Agnew 1989; Halttunen 1989; Blanchard 1995). A contributor for House Beautiful proclaimed this new gospel when he declared that “the expression of personality is the thing to be aimed at in the common framework of our life” and therefore “houses and furniture, no less than dress and manners, must become a part of that unspoken language by which we communicate our tastes and ideas”.20 For example, in the case of a display showing furniture in a study, the careful arrangement of armchairs, candle holders, rugs and paintings – all placed around the focal point of the scene, an elegant fireplace – directly suggested an association between that furniture and the creation of domestic intimacy. Another similar case showed summer furniture put on display where, thanks to a skilled technique for arranging furnishings and a painted backdrop that reproduced a view of the Italian countryside, the possibility of living the ideal of country life in the rustic elegance of a terrace with view, far from the frenzy of city life, was suggested (see Figure 5.9).21 Whether related to changes at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the interior domesticity of the middle class was built on furnishings replicating aristocratic taste, giving them “a new vocabulary of expression based on the language of the upper class” (Orvell 1989: 50), or connected to later changes at the beginning of the twentieth century, when the search for authenticity in design matched the search for individuality on the consumer side, house furnishing was marketed through a commodity aesthetic touching the most intimate chords of the individual and family life, thus promoting consumer goods as a linchpin of modern life. Lowering the costs of production and making the process of manufacturing more efficient, the new machine tool industry flooded the market with such a vast array of diverse pieces for interior decoration that the most effective strategies of display and advertising were needed in order to avoid overproduction. And so it was for perishable goods as well.

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Figure 5.9 Summer furniture by Marshall Field & Co., Chicago, Illinois, 1910

In sum, the whole range of elements necessary for effective display, required to inject life into windows and to showing goods as they would be used in everyday life, indirectly played an educating role, very often without practitioners being aware of it. At the same time, the world of goods – to use Mary Douglas’ expression – was becoming a strong ally of the modern urban trend towards social performance and the presentation of self. Windows and interior display theatrically represented images of social life that intercepted an emerging trend of urban life, that is, action as a social performance and the self as an actor playing different roles. Indeed, windows and interior displays helped make this urban trend the dominant one, disseminating it along the streets, in shops and windows. Consumer goods were shown as proper tools for the social performance and the presentation of the self and, at the same time, the social performance and the presentation of the self were displayed as the proper mode of living in the city. Face-to-face, intimate relations with known persons were replaced by mediated relations between strangers who perform, playing the right social role to exert the right impression on others to win social recognition and the self-confidence which comes with it. A different type of subjectivity was in the making, for the restructuring of social life in the city involving role play and social recognition brought with it also a deep redefinition of the sense of self and the perception of reality, paving the way for a distinct modern culture attaching the satisfaction of desires to the consumption

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of goods. Part III will follow the genesis of the modern consumer as the outcome of the elective affinity between economic necessities and socio-cultural transformations, since the stimulation of desire necessary to the competitive market and avoidance of overproduction took on a shape adequate to the existential needs of the new subjectivity.

Notes 1 For Simmel too, imitation is a “psychological tendency” (1904: 132) that plays an important part in the social life of the metropolis. 2 CIMM, 3/1901, Shopping in New York: 651. 3 On the interplay between theatre and commerce, see Agnew (1986). On sidewalk congestion due to the attractive power of displays, see also DGE 13/6/1896: 74, Wide Awake Window Dressing; MRSW 8/1909: 54, The Power of Window Advertising; MRSW 3/1924: 28, Crowd Viewing Display; PI 18/11/1915: 20, The Retailer’s Store Window as an Effective Advertising Medium for the Manufacturer;and BLC Series I Scrapbooks Box 94 Folder 5 Wood Bros. Jewelry. 4 See BLC Series I Scrapbooks Box 55 Folder 5 Cresca, Cresca Foreign Luncheons Booklet 1910; BLC Series I Scrapbooks Box 56 Folder 3 N. K. Fairbank Company, Cottolene Primer Booklet, 1903; and BLC Series 1 Scrapbooks Box 167 Folder 2 Between the Acts Little Cigars. On Mennen’s borated talcum powder, see Heimann (2005: 419) and MRSW 5/1922: 5. 5 On theatre and fashion, see DGE 20/2/1892: 17, The Birth of Styles, DGE 13/10/1900: 7, The Origin of Style; DGE 23/3/1901: 7, The Origin of Style; DGE 23/5/1903: 52, Fashions at Theaters; and DGE 19/9/1903: 37, Influence of Stage. On actresses and singers as testimonials, see the advertisement by Sempre Giovine in Heimann (2005: 537), BLC Series I Scrapbooks Box 89 Folder 3 Pears’ Soap; WCBA Vertical Files Box 6 Soap Folder 31 Palmolive Soap, and WCBA Vertical Files Box 6 Soap Folder 1 Lever Brothers, Lux Toilet Soap. On theatre and advertisement, see PI 4/12/1901: 16, Advertising from the Stage, PI 17/7/1913: 46, Advertised Goods on the Stage; and PI 11/9/1907: 14, The Theater Program as an Advertising Medium. 6 On theatre and show windows see MRSW 7/1916: 37, Novel Lighting Effects; PI 16/12/1915: 57, Putting the Dramatic Punch into Window; MRSW 9/1921: 13, From Stage to Display Window; MRSW 5/5/1922: 13, All the World’s a Stage, Including You Display Window; and PIM 4/1921; 42, Making the Theatre Helps with Your Window Display. On cinema and show windows, see MRSW 3/1922: 43, Joint Display and MRSW 5/1924: 7, The King of Educators. On show windows and tableaux, see DGE 11/7/1903: 113, Window Dressing and DGE 19/12/1903: 43, Window Dressing. 7 On the shift from beauty to stimulation and the professionalization of window trimming, see DGE 18/1/1896: 70, Wide-Awake Window Dressing, PI 1/6/1898: 38, Window Dressing Again, PI 13/2/1895: 13, Straw Hat Fleischman; DGE 22/8/1903: 79, Window Dressing; PI 16/7/1914: 26, Making the Window Display “Say Something”; and MRSW 4/1919: 17, Display Man Publicity and Sales Promoter. On living displays mechanical devices, see PI 14/1/1915: 49, Timeliness in Window-Display “Copy”; PI 12/8/1915: 20, Experiences in Building Window Display; PI 27/12/1899: 12, Holiday Window Attraction; PI 9/4/1914: 71, An Investigator’s Report on Windows Display; and MRSW 4/1913: 38, Mechanical Display. 8 MRSW 7/1914: 31, Wax Figures. Koerber’s display is in MRSW 9/1913: 21. On Wax Figures, see also PI 1/9/1897: 18, Window Dressing; PI 5/8/1903: 8, The Shop Window Figure; PI 30/10/1907: 34, The Wax Window Dummy; DGE 11/7/1903: 115, Store Equipment; PI 19/11/1908: 19, Wax Figures that Sell Goods in the Show Windows; MRSW 4/1909: 62, Wax Forms; MRSW 9/1923: 10, Better Homes Through Better

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9

10

11 12

13

14

15 16 17 18

19

20 21

Displays; MRSW 10/1923: 25, Opening Display; MRSW 7/1924: 34, Kickernick Underwear Demonstration; and MRSW 1/1926: 18, Wax Mannequins Do Great Job. For a brief account of the history of mannequins, see Strege (2013). See MRSW 2/1916: 35, Popularity of Wax Figures. About the true modern American woman, see MRSW 8/1928: 72, New Indestructible Mannequins Interpret True Modern Feminine Figure. On window setting and the display of many lines of products in windows, see 18/11/1915: 20, The Retailer’s Store Window as an Effective Advertising Medium for the Manufacturer. MRSW 12/1917: 39, Good Background. See also MRSW 7/1908: 28, How to Paint a Background; MRSW 2/1917: 30, The Value of Scenic Painting; and MRSW 8/1924: 28, Special Window Display Always Pays Dividend. On this and more points about show windows set-up, see Burdg (1925) and Rogers (1924). By Simonson, see The Necessary Illusion, TAM, Dec. 1919: 91 and The Painter and the Stage, TAM, Dec. 1917: 3. By Bel Geddes, see The Store Window a Stage; Merchandise the Actor, WWD, 19/11/1927: 1. On Baum’s philosophy of life and the role played by his bestseller in promoting among youngsters and adults a positive view of the incoming world of consumer goods – with special reference to urban daily life – see Leach (1991a, 1991b, 1993). Very interestingly, Baum visited the World’s Columbian Exposition several times. NYT, August 19, 1928, Wedding Theatre Beauty to Ballyhoo: 70. By Urban, see also The Stage, TAM, April 1919: 125. On Urban’s philosophy, see the article Joseph Urban’s Philosophy of Color, in Architecture, May 1934: 257. On fin-de-siècle Vienna and the spirit of modernism, see Schorske (1980). See MRSW 8/1912: 20, School Window; MRSW 5/1914: 25, A Golf Window; MRSW 5/1908: 26, Sporting Goods Display, MRSW 1/1917: 31, Skating Window; MRSW 11/1915: 20, A Display of Evening Wear; MRSW 8/1916: 29, A Display of Gowns; MRSW 5/1908: 16, A Bathing Suit Display and MRSW 6/1923: 32, Display Bathing Scene; and DGE 5/11/1904: 61, Window Dressing. MRSW 4/1912, Formal Interior Display: 16. MRSW 10/1913, Notes From New York: 36. See MRSW 12/1915: 13, Something Different. About Arthur Fraser and his style, see Marcus (1978) and Leach (1993). Examples of Fraser’s “associative” windows are in MRSW 8/1909: 19; MRSW 9/1909: 19; MRSW 11/1913: 25; MRSW 10/1919: 30; MRSW 4/1920: 24; MRSW 9/1921: 20; MRSW 11/1921: 40; MRSW 11/1922: 27; MRSW 10/1924: 7 and MRSW 10/1927: 7, The Highest Point of Display Achievement. On more examples of windows associating consumer goods and success in social relations, see MRSW 4/1914: 41, An Early Spring Setting; MRSW 12/1914: 14, A Display of Lingerie; MRSW 2/1915: 17, An Opening Display; MRSW 5/1915: 15, A Black and White Display; MRSW 7/1915: 17, Spring Opening Display; MRSW 6/1916: 11, Spring Opening Display; and MRSW 4/1916: 18, A Beautiful Display. HB, March 1899, Vol. 5, No. 4, On the Relation of Domestic Architecture to Furniture Design: 179. See MRSW 12/1908: 20, Library Display; MRSW 4/1910: 16–17, Marshall Field Summer Display; MRSW 4/1922: 19, Fraser Furniture Display; and MRSW 4/1927: 22, Fraser Display.

Part III

The genesis of the consumer “Image-making” and the production of desire

6

The personality of business

During the first decades of the twentieth century manufacturing stepped up the pace and a growing volume and variety of consumer products, including foods and beverages, clothes and accessories, toys, soaps and beauty products, as well as durables like cars, electric appliances and furniture, poured onto the market. At the same time, expenditure for print advertising dramatically increased following the American magazines’ boom of previous decades (Presbrey 1929; Mott 1957; Pope 1983)1. A change in the understanding of business ran parallel to the expansion of the national market. Discussions about the necessity for truth in advertising and commercial communication became more complex without necessarily becoming any clearer. There was a semantic shift from the concept of “truth” to the concept of “credibility”, the term being more in tune with the demand for efficiency in publicity and growth in revenues. What mattered was not so much the truth of what was communicated, but rather its credibility – that is, the ability of a commercial communication to appear and to be trusted as an honest message. And the same applied to businessmen and their work. The argument can be illustrated with the following example. Chas F. Jones, who ran the column “Store Management” for PI, discussed a slogan coined by an advertising expert. Though the name is not revealed, the motto could easily be attributed to Elbert Hubbard: “Success depends not so much upon what you are, but what you make people think you are”.2 Jones objected that it is harder to make people believe something false than it is to make them believe a plain-spoken truth. You can readily win over the public by claiming qualities that you really possess rather than inducing misleading perceptions. What Jones ignored, however, was that in business and commercial promotion the concept of truth, understood as indicative of what is real and objective, was being relativized and turned into something closer to the outcome of a well-executed performance. The shift had to do with broader changes in the customary understanding of reality as a consequence of the crisis of cultural authority attached to traditional institutions, and of the concomitant pluralization of social life-worlds, which together paved the way for the theatricalization of everyday life (see Chapters 2 and 5). The credibility of one’s reputation became the outcome of an effective communication of selected traits rather than the honest presentation of one’s

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commercial offer. The new slogan, to quote the title of a PI article, was “Making the Truth ‘Sounds True’”.3 The reorientation had a deep impact on the field of market competition for two reasons. First of all, going beyond the mere use value of goods or services, it made possible a strategy of individualization through differentiation by building a distinctive “personality“ for the business, told by the “story” of the “characters” behind the product’s manufacturer or the merchant.4 Second, the turn allowed businesses to pin the persuading power of publicity to the elicitation of immaterial values surrounding the commercial offer, whether it was a product or a service, rather than to the information about functions or properties. The chance to build an effective personality for a business was no longer restricted to the real qualities of goods, merchandise, or even the entrepreneur behind them, for it could be concocted by careful image-making linked to a broader repertoire of fluid meanings. In discussing the role played by the personality in business, a DGE contributor claimed that success for a businessman did not rest just on “technical knowledge and executive ability” but especially on the possession of “that quality in human nature which attracts and interests others”. However, being attractive depends on “personal traits”; it is an unstudied gift of charismatic personalities. The DGE writer wondered whether an objective disability for success may be fended off, and suggested there is indeed an effective but ambiguous solution that “would make us appear on the surface different from what we really are at heart”. Thus, if one is to be successful in business, one must indeed identify the exterior traits of a model – his pose, gestures, manners as the outer manifestations of inner virtues – and “endeavor to emulate his attractive qualities”.5 It was indeed possible to emulate genuine charisma. First one must profile the external traits of charismatic qualities and then try to reproduce them. The source of contemporary brand identity (see Chapter 10) lies here, where the will of the entrepreneur to infuse his business with his personality was transmogrified into the business personality artificially synthesized through managerial image-making and communicative performances. On the one hand, the growing importance of immaterial traits of business made “truth claims irrelevant” (Lears 1987: 142), both in terms of economic efficiency and social legitimacy; on the other hand, by shifting attention from honesty to credibility, the movement for truth in advertising resulted in the image-making of the business personality.

“What’s in a name?” One of the first instruments for building the personality of business and its reputation was the trademark that was used on each occasion of contact with the public in order to make that public acquainted with manufactured goods and new retailing institutions – in advertisements and roadside hoardings, on packages and labels, the store front sign and in wrapping papers.6 In a phase marked by cut-throat competition and the shadow of overproduction, the trademark became central, since the task to win over competitors and secure new market outlets was accomplished only when “the name of a man, or an article,

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becomes so well known as to be recognized as a synonymous of the business”.7 As already touched upon (see Chapter 1), the hucksterism of patent medicine promotion caused an official movement of distancing by professional advertising men, while at the same time it was regarded as a reference point, as it had made apparent how profitable was the ability to stamp the products’ names on the mind of the consumer. Taking the mechanism of mental association between products and names from patent medicine, professional advertising worked out a strategy for personalizing business that could turn mere acquaintance into good reputation, pioneering what is today brand reputation management. A widely used technique to build a personality associated with a positive reputation was the endorsement of a testimonial. At first, testimonials were usually sought from ordinary people who were willing to testify to the quality of the product, and it was better if these people were favourably known within their particular community. Later, these people were substituted by famous personalities and the technique was stepped up, for it tried to associate the reputation of a renowned person with the product; clearly a second application of the mechanism of mental association for building the personality of business.8 Trademark reputation was important not only for market competition but also for effective and profitable distribution. Manufacturers had to change the balance of power in the chain of distribution in order to secure more profit. As outlined in Chapter 1, on the one hand they had to cut loose from middlemen and eliminate their control over the process of transferring goods from factory to the dealers’ counters, as jobbers and wholesalers aimed at securing the distribution of products that gave them, and not the manufacturer, a greater profit; on the other hand, they had to provide against the capacity of the retailer for substitution, that is “the operation of persuading a purchaser to give up his intention to buy a certain article and to accept another in place of it”.9 Trademark reputation was a trump card to bypass the middleman, for it established a direct link between the producer and the consumer. Once products’ names had been secured in the public’s mind, it became the norm that when a purchaser was offered two products at a slightly different price, and the cheaper one was unknown, he usually chose – as PI recognized of soaps – the pricier trademark “on its reputation”.10 From this viewpoint, and going back to the necessity of personalizing business, the name had to be carefully selected also, as highlighted by the following article pondering over the weakness of the name of a household borax: What is necessary in this case is a more distinctive name for the borax. Pacific Borax would be better than Pure Powdered Borax, because it is more individual. It would stick better in a person’s memory. A woman that would insist on having Pacific Borax might not be so insistent for Pure Powdered Borax if the druggist said his borax possessed the quality of purity and pulverization.11 An effective name must convey an individualized meaning and, as is clear from the aforementioned case, it had to be detached from concrete properties shared by all competing goods in the same class. The president of Royal Baking Powder

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claimed that even if he had to invest fifteen million dollars to establish his trademark as market leader, a competitor would have spent at least the same amount, probably much more, “to tear it down” (Powers 1903: 58). The consolidation of trademark reputation was an expensive but invaluable strategy and it is not by chance that it was during the crucial turn-of-the-century decades, witnessing the advent of big business and the vertically integrated enterprise, that many brand names that are still well-known today acquired their market dominance (Livermore 1935; Livesay and Porter 1969; Chandler 1977; Porter 2006).

Advertising takes command While markets expanded along with competition and productive capacity, it became clear that the strategy to familiarize the public with the product was not enough to secure business success. N. W. Ayer & Sons’ motto “Keeping Everlastingly at it Brings Success”, coined in 1886, was somehow surpassed in the early twentieth century, being too naive for the new market complexity.12 To catch the public’s eye and inform the consumer about a good meant being only halfway successful, since it did not guarantee that the product would be chosen from among the many others of the same type. The product must be differentiated and its personality must be made unique so that it would be selected. Advertising took command in engineering the crucial advantage. An anecdote concerning Albert Lasker, of Chicago’s advertising agency Lord and Thomas, illuminates the changing viewpoint. For a long time Lasker had been looking for a bright and terse definition of what advertising was, when one evening in May 1904 he welcomed into his office a young adman, John E. Kennedy, who gave him the answer he craved: advertising is “salesmanship in print” (Cruikshank and Schultz 2010).13 The definition pointed to the persuasive nature of advertising, dismissing the comparison with the news: advertising sought not simply to let somebody know there is something to buy, but make him think that it is worth buying. Indeed, ten years before, Claude Hopkins had formulated this idea clearly when he stated that an advertising man, like a businessman and a salesman, “should learn first the limits to which a business already reaches, then seek to extend them”; he should know “how to create a demand without waste” and “how to make goods move”.14 As Thomas Russell of PI reminded the reader, up to a few decades before it had been possible for a manufacturer to rocket to success, as in the celebrated case of the British soap manufacturer Pears in the 1880s, by having the trademark name as the sole wording of a full-page illustration, kept everlastingly before the public in magazines and newspapers, following the Ayer’s strategy. However, under new market conditions, businessmen “recognize the necessity of offering some argument to show why one particular proprietary article should be patronized rather than another”.15 The reversal of the relation between production and consumption is particularly visible here, as the urge was to sell what had already been produced. Within the emerging consumer capitalism, growth would be fuelled and overproduction would be cancelled only through progressive demand management and the ability to sell

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a larger quantity of goods without resorting to price competition.16 One of the first answers with which advertising men met the challenge of engineering demand was the “reason-why copy” approach. If advertising was “salesmanship in print’, admen had the task “of putting before the reader, or even the casual skimmer, of a newspaper, the things which are most calculated to make a buyer of him”;17 that is, admen must put into the “copy” the “reasons why” people should buy the specific article advertised. The approach aimed to turn the curiosity aroused for the product by “eye catching” strategies into a conviction of its value. The “reasons why” a product is worth purchasing were instruments for the differentiation of the goods that otherwise were in danger of being very similar to one another; accordingly, the customer’s choice would have depended more on price or on the advice of the shopkeeper behind the counter than on an advertisement simply aiming to keep the name of the article before the public. Together with trademarking and packaging, advertising served to personalize the product and firmly establish its reputation in the mind of the prospective purchaser, making the manufacturer “independent of the good will of the dealer”.18 Persuasion in advertising developed along a second path, called “human interest copy”, usually advanced as an alternative to the “reasons-why” approach because it made appeals to the emotional, affective and more irrational dimensions of human nature rather than to the rational aspect of the mind – in a word, it used suggestion instead of argument as a persuasive device (Curti 1967; Kuna 1976; Beard 2004). As Daniel Pope (1983) recognized, the two were not based on alternative premises about human behaviour, but were equally valid approaches depending on varying marketing conditions. Claude Hopkins, for example, was a proponent of the “reasons-why” form of advertising, though he was at the same time well aware that if an ad-copy is – to use his words – “something calculated to excite great interest”, then “we cannot overlook human nature in advertising”.19 Rather than depending on opposing views of human nature, the alternating positions the admen took between the two approaches mirrored the ambiguous stance they had in evaluating the intellectual and moral character of common people, usually considered immature and irrational but nonetheless exalted as the ultimate judge of the economic offer.20 However, such shifts between approaches were indicative also of more subtle social and cultural transformations, as well as of careful reflection that was backed up by academic research concerning human nature and its invariant traits. Psychology in particular made a decisive contribution to studying the drivers of the customer’s choices, incorporating into the practitioner’s debate buying motives as diverse as the ones related to the power of the unconscious or the stimulus–response model. Aided by the work of academics (see also Chapter 1) like Walter Dill Scott, Professor of Psychology and Advertising at Northwestern University, Hugo Münsterberg, Professor of Experimental Psychology at Harvard, and Harry Hollingworth, Lecturer in Psychology at Columbia University, who all pioneered applied psychology for business, admen killed two birds with one stone: they were finally able both to portray their profession as built upon a scientific basis while mapping the “strings” of human nature that were more receptive to specific classes of goods.21 If human nature was considered optimistic, then the appeal

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should point out the most joyful aspects of life; if man was considered imitative by nature, he must be advised to buy those goods used by the upper class in order to look like them;22 if man was considered a sexual animal, then advertising must employ images and meanings evoking sensuality and erotic satisfaction; if he was prone to routine behaviour, then the habit to buy a type of product must be turned into loyalty to a specific trademark.23 Whether those strings were responsive to advertising appeals due to cultural and social specificities of the time, or whether, on the contrary, they were related to constant traits of human nature mattered little; from the viewpoint of the adman, what mattered was that they worked. From a genealogical standpoint it is nonetheless important to note that the progressive prevalence of the “human interest” approach over the “reason-why” approach, and the growing importance of emotional, affective, non-rational ads’ appeals over the more rational ones, is in accordance with the cultural transformations identified in the book as distinctive of the liminal period under scrutiny. The crisis of cultural authority and the collapse of the traditional framework of reality due to disenchantment were producing, on the one hand, a shift from the concept of character to the idea of personality (see Chapter 2), resulting in the growing importance of the non-rational sphere of existence and the search for experiences and self-experimentation; on the other hand, they gave way to a theatricalized conception of social identity and social relations that bore an affinity with the spread of consumption, as argued in detail above (see Chapters 2 and 5). The shift from “reason-why” to “human interest” was testified to by the fact that advertisements began to convey meanings and images that were increasingly detached from any concrete quality or character of goods. There was no actual correspondence between what was claimed in an advertisement and the thing advertised when Cadillac was attached to “distinction”, Pepsodent to “beauty and its consequences”, Camel to the “joy of life” and Coca-Cola to “the beauty of young womanhood”,24 to mention but a few examples. Chapter 8 will suggest a feasible account of how the associative mechanism central to the “human interest” approach emerged and worked. At the moment, let it be noted that both the “reason-why” and the “human interest” approaches were conceived against the earlier “advertising-as-news” idea. The comparative evaluation of Erving Fletcher, fiction writer turned advertising manager for Saks & Co. in New York, explains the difference: An advertisement which labors to describe the complex mechanism of an automobile is academic. An advertisement which aims to show that an automobile will enable me and my family to renew our associations with the green fields is human. The first advertisement suggests the problem of keeping the car in order, the second advertisement suggests the possibilities which an automobile offers for enjoyment. Persuasive advertisements were deployed to stimulate desire, whether referring to the “uses of the article for sale” or the “happiest phases” of its usage. Always, the persuasive touch in ad-copy was “meant to lend warmth to the colorless recital

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of that description”,25 The use of illustrations made possible by half-tone engraving hastened the departure from the “realistic” conception of consumer goods, favouring image-making around goods advertised. The debate about the use of illustrations in advertising traces this course with remarkable clarity. Starting around 1895, many interventions appeared in PI discussing the best use of illustrations in advertising, exhorting businesses to use them to catch the readers’ eye while at the same time ensuring that they were germane to the article advertised and allowed the visualization of one concrete trait or at least some “association of ideas”.26 In earlier discussions, illustrations sticking with material traits of the products were preferred, as the following reflection on their relation with the copy suggests: It seems to me that there has lately been a tendency in illustrated advertising to pay too much attention to the picture part, and not enough to the reading matter. The endeavor is, of course, to get the most artistic as well as the most appropriate picture possible, but the minute a picture becomes too artistic and beautiful it loses all connection with the matter advertised, and also its value as an advertisement.27 Some worried that the extensive use of pictures would send the profession backwards into the age of advertising cards, which were the first forms of picture publicity conceived by manufacturers in order to promote their business. Distributed in the streets and outside theatres, circuses and shops, advertising cards usually failed to show any picture of the product or the service for sale, and merely reproduced the name and the price of the product or service, together with contact details.28 From the beginning of the twentieth century, with the help of psychology, admen increasingly appreciated the persuasive power of pictures. While general reading attention was diminishing, images were understood as mental shortcuts given that “as the “eye is the window of the soul”, so it is also the quickest-acting medium for the transmission of one man’s thought to another man’s mind”.29 A truth-bearer quality was extended to images over words, and that capacity of the image was connected to the most elementary traits of human nature. Following the motto “Seeing’s believing’, the reader was cast as a baby whose first contact with the world is through the senses of touch and sight.30 Whether images essentially possess that truth-bearer quality, or whether it is a specific disposition of modern man to be persuaded by images, what was important for business was an image’s ability to arouse people’s desire. Image-making embodied for the public the association between the product and the intended meaning, making it part of the social imaginary of the time.31 The power of image-making was magnified first by photography and then by cinema. The effectiveness of such instruments as the camera to reproduce reality was used in advertising in order to “faithfully represent an actual scene from real life”.32 Depicting goods in scenes from the everyday life of people in order to show how such goods were truly part of real life was the main task in advertising – as it was for the design of show windows (see Chapter 4). The ability of contemporary image-making to “[add] “action” or a touch of life to a cut”33 was invaluable in advertising’s pursuit.

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Store management and the service ethic The managerial revolution that had a deep impact on activities at the level of the factory shop floor also affected the organization of retailing institutions. Department stores were primary among retailers, where a change took place due to the progressive separation between ownership and management (see also Chapter 1).34 As pointed out by Paul Mazur, a leading investment banker working for Lehman Brothers and by the 1920s a collaborator of Harvard Business School, the “one man organization” had manifested many “inherent weaknesses” (Mazur 1927: 37).35 These weaknesses were in fact amended once the new principles of organization were applied. For example, in 1903 the general manager of the retail branch of Marshall Field & Co. called for the application of scientific principles in “modern merchandising” exactly on the grounds that the retail store could no longer be “the sole idea of the proprietor”, who himself until the recent past “did most of the work”.36 Therefore, specialists for each branch of activity were trained with specific managerial qualifications, such as the merchandise manager and the floor (or aisle) manager. The task of the former was to supervise the activities of buyers purchasing single lines of products, thus relieving “the firm and the general manager of a part of details for which they have little time”.37 The floor (or aisle) manager looked after an assigned area, supervising salespeople and ensuring that “customers receive that attention that results in immediate sales and future business”.38 That the department store was “a combination of stores within a store”39 implied a “rounding out” process towards the coordination of staff and divisions and a systematic management of sales data and stock inventory in order to improve publicity and secure provisions upon a more empirical base. The growing importance of “information-handling systems” (Yates 1989) became a standard reference to legitimate the rise of management in stores and shops.40 Even the work of salesmen and saleswomen (women being employed in sales to a greater extent than in other professions) was reinvented, and a once humble and poorly paid job became, over the span of a few decades, a crucial variable in the business equation, due especially to the fact that the emerging service ethic was considered the backbone of general store policy. If traditional clerks were asked only to have a decent knowledge of merchandise and to be mild-mannered with customers by simply following the basic rules of education, the new managerial reorientation disclosed a more subtle potentiality in playing with etiquette and manners, as Mills recognized when he observed how “kindness and friendliness” were turned into “aspects of personalized service” (Mills 1951: 182). 41 The rationalizing process changed a cultural habit of civility into a planned performance, in which every aspect was calculated to produce the intended effect, as it was in the case discussed in a DGE article about a simple rule of behaviour for saleswomen during working hours, that is, not “discussing their private affairs in place of giving their entire attention to the customer”.42 Through managerial rationalization, ethical behaviour became a working performance. If “the success of any retail establishment is largely dependent upon the character of the sales forces”,43 then it follows that clerks must be trained in order to produce the intended effect on the

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public, achieving what has been previously discussed about the personalization of business through the alternative path of training personalities in business. The ideal performance expected from the top-notch personality was disassembled in its specific gestures, poses, activities, manners and words, and then taught through handbooks and courses to employees. In this way the shop clerk was trained to be a professional seller, whose whole performance, from his clothes to his attitude, was intended to express the store personality based on a service ethic that allowed the customer to be at ease in the shop.44 The salesperson became a skilled performer whose representation built the illusion of a non-commercial relation between seller and purchaser. The ability to recognize the customer by name ranked high among various tricks that made the salesperson look like the costumer’s friend; so, too, did the prohibition against soliciting business, since the well-versed salesman is able to make the customer express his or her own wish by “a simple exchange of glances” and, above all, because “the customer is more likely to buy in that place where she is greeted politely and without that too eager yearning for sale-making”.45 Even if it is acknowledged that the desire of great merchants like Wanamaker or captains of industry like Kellogg was to build a business mirroring their personality, the passing of the activity from the owner to the management and the rationalizing process that followed inverted the ideal: once the motive force of action, the noble purpose of injecting personality into business became a useful instrument to obtain an intended effect. The rational aim of action was transmogrified into the rationalized means of a performance. It is not by chance that versatility emerged as a shining virtue for the business personality, for “it can turn itself instantly from one object to another, assuming the proper manner for each, it can be serious with the grave, cheerful with the gay, and trifling with the frivolous”.46 As economic life entered increasingly into everyday life, commercial exchanges increasingly veiled their economic nature, assuming the appearance of noneconomic, even friendly, relations. A trickster’s logic was in motion, but it was more subtle and complex than the older one of peddlers, with their gross ploys and plain humbugs. It was a logic built upon an illusory character of friendship that could work only because it was generally accepted by both sides of the relation, retailing institutions and their patrons; and, for that reason, the logic was very powerful in its lasting effects, which were real because they were considered real in the new social environment. It was the joining of all the ingredients that summoned up a place of wonder where once there was a simple shop. The department store gradually became “a palace of consumption” the aim of which was “to dazzle, delight, and seduce the customer” (Benson 1979: 202; see also Chapter 4). Store design was indeed a vital component in order to succeed and, as it was at the Exposition, electric lighting and technological marvels like elevators and moving stairways were used both as attractions themselves (retail institutions being the only places to have them at that time), and as a means to implement the most up-to-date selling principles, like positioning the customer close to the best shelfdisplayed merchandise, or making circulation easier and faster to and fro between aisles and floors. The same applied to the use of ventilation or the installation of restaurants and nurseries for infants. They were vital components of the service

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ethic necessary for the business, because it was generally acknowledged that “the store that now gets the most business is the one that offers its patrons the best service and the greatest comfort”.47 In line with the efforts towards service and comfort that would gratify public taste, department stores set up special decorations at regular intervals during the year, usually inspired by exotic, Oriental or historical themes like the Monte Carlo setting at Macy’s for the opening show of evening gowns, or the Japanese garden setting at Wanamaker’s in New York, composed of “a temple, waterfall, bridges and trees”.48 Here again the purpose was twofold: entertainment through “spectacular methods of bringing people [through the] doors”,49 and sales-making by showing goods in enticing settings. That purpose held especially true for runway shows and fashion weeks, which served a broader project of democratization of luxury based upon the development of the American textile industry of ready-towear garments over custom-made clothing and later Parisian fashion (Leach 1993; Schorman 2003; Marcketti and Parsons 2007). The department store became a themed stage. Whether it was the celebration of the Ville Lumière, as in the case of the “Conférence de Paris” at Wanamaker’s or the “Promenade de Toilettes” at Gimbel’s, or exoticism and orientalism, as in the case of the “Garden of Allah”, again at Wanamaker’s, or the “Fête de Printemps” (see Figure 6.1) celebrated in a Japanese setting at Strawbridge & Clothier, the passing of time was marked by

Figure 6.1 Fête de Printemps, interior display by Jerome A. Koerber for Strawbridge & Clothier, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1910

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changes in merchandise through special opening displays, and commemorations of all sorts were increasingly punctuated by special decorations, amounting to a further step in the commercialization of the calendar and the conjunction of special events and humdrum routine with the new economic life.50 The work of store design and the underlying service ethic disclosed a compelling argument in favour of a deeper conception of consumption in contrast with the plain idea of purchase: the act of buying was to be viewed as an experience for the customer. It became important, therefore, to diversify the consumer’s practices of appropriation. The shopping experience must be varied and “innovations that will attract, amuse and instruct” the customer were to be ceaselessly conceived; otherwise, the situation described by a contributor to DGE would result: “Mrs Shopper comes in to-day, to-morrow, next week, next year; and she knows full well that the dress goods, the laces, the notions, or any of the other stocks which the store contains, will present identically the same appearance as they did the ‘last time she was here’”.51 It was upon the principles of the service ethic that professional marketing would develop pioneering strategies of relationship marketing and experience economy (see Chapter 10). However, turn-of-the-century America had first to accomplish a preliminary task of mass democratization via consumption.

Notes 1 See Historical Statistics of the United States 1789–1945, US Government Printing Office, Washington DC, 1949 and Presbrey (1929) and Pope (1983). 2 PI 15/9/1897, Store Management: 36. See also PI 21/7/1897: 19, Store Management. 3 PI 7/1/1915, Making the Truth “Sounds True”: 82. See also PI 15/1/1902: 3, Wanamaker Advertising: An Analysis. 4 See PI 21/1/1900: 12, Excellent Views on Advertising and PI 4/8/1910: 42, The Personality of a Product. 5 DGE 17/8/1901, Personality Important: 61. 6 See DGE 5/9/1891: 5, What’s in a Name?; DGE 7/11/1891: 40, Wide Awake Retailing; PI 16/9/1891: 258, Signs as Advertisements; and PI 23/9/1891: 296, Signs of the times. 7 PI 8/1/1890 [page not ascertainable]. 8 See PI 25/6/1890: 965, Getting Testimonial from Public Man; PI 2/7/1890: 21, Facts and Testimonial; and PI 13/1/1892: 60, No-To-Bac. On uses and abuses of testimonials, see also PI 31/5/1893: 665, Tricks of the Trade; PI 3/7/1895: 16, Testimonial Ad and PI 31/7/1895: 3, The Use of Testimonials. For the importance of using the personality of a unique testimonial instead of using many to increase prestige of the product, see also PI 19/1/1911: 40, Human Nature and the Testimonial in Advertising. 9 PI 16/3/1910: 44, Kicks and Halfpence. See also PI 18 /11/1903: 3, The Value of Advertised Trademark and the advertising handbook by Calkins and Holden (1905). 10 PI 25/5/1904: 41, Standardization. See also PI 15/6/1889: 27. 11 PI 27/11/1901: 41, The Package and the Name. On name selection, see also PI 21/9/1892: 341, Concerning Nomenclature and PI 27/2/1913: 24, Guiding Points in the Selection of a Trade Name. 12 On the history of N. W. Ayer & Son, see Hower (1939). 13 See also Pope (1983) and Fox (1984); the interview with Kennedy in PI 11/4/1906: 40, Reason why Reason-Why Copy is Best; and the article by Lasker in PI 4/5/1922: 105, What Advertising Means to America.

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14 PI 12/8/1896, The Young Man in Advertising: 6. On the double task, see also PI 25/12/1907: 32, Why Does the Clothing Merchant Advertise? Charles Austin Bates, too, described advertising as “Printed Salesman” in 1896 (Fox 1984). On Hopkins, see his autobiography My Life in Advertising (1927) and the handbook Scientific Advertising (1966). 15 PI 11/2/1903, The Art of Putting Things: 46. 16 See PI 10/1/1900: 8, Advertising and Economics. 17 PI 11/2/1903, The Art of Putting Things: 46. 18 PI 11/4/1906, Reason why Reason – Why Copy is Best: 41. 19 PI 30/10/1895, Sensational Advertising: 3. 20 See, for example, the debate on PI 20/1/1892: 90, An Old Advertiser’s Advice and PI 18/12/1895: 33, The Public’s Skepticism. About the idea of the common people as the “greatest patrons” of the advertising tradesmen, see PI 27/11/1895: 15, Advertising for the Common People. 21 On Scott see his handbooks (1903, 1908), the article in PI 3/8/1904: 10, Psychology and Advertising, and also Kuna (1976). On Münsterberg, see Psychology and Industrial Efficiency (1913) and his essay in PI 21/10/1915: 25, Prof Muensterberg Attempts to Apply Psychology to Advertising. On Hollingworth, see his Advertising and Selling (1913). About psychology and advertising, see also PI 6/7/1904: 39, The Psychology of Advertising; PI 16/6/1910: 20, What Psychology Can Teach Us; and PI 23/1/1913: 140, On Psychology as Part of an Advertising Course. On the “string” of human nature, see PI 13/3/1907: 34, The Harp of One String. On psychology applied to salesmanship, see Stevenson (1923). 22 The driver of conspicuous consumption (Veblen 2007) is understood and exploited by admen. 23 On optimism, see PI 14/8/1907: 28, Expectancy in Advertising. On conspicuous consumption, see PI 13/5/1908: 30, Human Nature in Advertising. On “sex appeal”, see PI 21/7/1909: 10, The Sex Appeal in Advertising and Heimann (2005: 76–77). On habit, see PI 2/1/1913: 41, Habit and its Influence on Consumer Demand. 24 HBR, 1/1928, The Unknown Quantity in Marketing: 190. 25 PI 20/3/1913, “Human Interest” as the Chief Force in Copy: 17–18. See also PI 16/3/1911: 52, Advertising the Service Rather than the Commodity. 26 See PI 2/1/1895: 4, Pictures in Advertising. 27 PI 6/4/1898, The Part the Picture Plays: 24. See also PI 26/11/1902: 64, Pictures in Advertising. 28 See the many examples in BLC. In depicting dream-like scenes of idyllic natural environments, usually with young babies enjoying the fruits of a fecund and benevolent earth, those first pictures prefigured the outstanding feature of later advertising, which was founded on the attachment to goods of those states of mind and desires evoked in illustrations (see Chapter 8). 29 PI 15/6/1898, A Cut Argument: 3. 30 PI 30/12/1896, The Picture Habit: 4. See also PI 11/2/1903: 46, The Art of Putting Things. 31 See PI 3/1/1900: 3, History of a Catchy Picture, and also PI 11/4/1912: 32, Illustrations that Tell a Story. 32 PI 1/1/1914, Stage Models to Make Illustrations Life-like: 17; PIM 1/1920: 51, Artistic Setting for Photographs. 33 PI 1/4/1908, Illustrations in Advertising: 28. 34 On the history of American department stores, see Pasdermadjian (1954), Hendrickson (1979), Leach (1984, 1993), Whitaker (2006). On Macy’s, see Hower (1943). For a discussion of the evils and benefits of the rise of the department store in relation to small business retailing, see DGE 2/2/1895: 27, The Renaissance of the General Store; DGE 9/2/1895: 27, Against Department Stores, and DGE 23/2/1895: 28, The Department Store.

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35 The National Retail Dry Goods Association entrusted Mazur with conducting a twoyear survey on the operation and organization of retailing in collaboration with Harvard Business School. Principles of Organization Applied to Modern Retailing (Mazur 1927) presented the results of the survey. 36 DGE 12/12/1903, The Modern Merchant: 18; see also PI 18/9/1901: 8, The “Rounding out” Process. On the growing plea for specialization, see PI 15/3/1905: 12, Specialization, the Key-Note of the Age. 37 DGE 31/10/1903, The Merchandise Manager: 17. 38 MRSW 8/1910, The Floor Manager’s Duties: 30. See also DGE 15/2/1902: 36, AisleManager’s Work and DGE 4/7/1903: 24, Management of Store Help. 39 DGE 7/1/1899, Department Methods: 14. 40 On the need for cooperation and systematic management, see PI 18/9/1901: 8, The “Rounding out” Process; PI 25/9/1901: 37, System in the Sales Department; PI 17/7/1895: 3, How Atlanta Exposition is Being Advertised; PI 23/9/1903: 18, System; DGE 17/8/1901: 93, Window Dressing and Interior Decoration; and MRSW 12/1922: 24, System and its Relation to Display; and Benson (1986). On saleswomen, see also Peiss (1986). 41 On the old-fashioned characterization of shop clerks, see DGE 30/4/1892: 12, Employer and Employé; DGE 2/4/1892: 40, Wide-Awake Retailing; DGE 7/7/1894: 45, WideAwake Retailer; and DGE 23/3/1895: 5, Factors in Successful Retailing. For an early investigation on conditions of work for women and children in two department stores in Chicago, see MacLean (1899). 42 DGE 5/9/1891, Pointers for Retailers: 13. 43 MRSW 6/1911, Adequate Store Service: 21. 44 On handbooks and training courses, see PI 11/10/1893: 398, Store Management; PI 19/11/1902: 52, A School For Sales People; DGE 19/9/1903: 73, Wide-Awake Retailing; DGE 4/1/1902: 17, Training of Salespeople; PI 2212/1909: 18, Boston Cooperative School of Retailing and Salesmanship; PI 5/8/1915: 33, How Department Stores are Training their Clerks; PI 24/2/1916: 17, Sales Manuals that Please the Salesman; and MRSW 7/1911: Saleswomen and Salesmen. See also Nystrom (1914), then Professor of Political Economy at Wisconsin University and afterwards Marketing Professor at Columbia University, and again Benson (1986). On the service ethic, see MRSW 7/1911, Saleswomen and Salesmen: “We want you to know that we recognize every customer in this store as more than a casual guest of the store – as an invited guest of the store” (23). See also PI 22/11/1928: 25, Servants of the Customer; MRSW 6/1911: 21, Adequate Store Service; and PI 4/10/1917: 98, Still Holds that the Customer is Always Right. The New York Siegel-Cooper store’s rules are reported in DGE 4/7/1903: 24, Management of Store Help and DGE 11/7/1903: 5, Frank Talk to Empolyees; MRSW 1/1908: 16, Newspaper Advertising; PI 16/3/1911: 52, Advertising the Service Rather than the Commodity; PI 29/3/1917: 93, Does the Consumer Really Want Service After All?; and PI 16/5/1929, Is Capitalism Being Transformed by Advertising? 45 DGE 18/8/1900, Wide Awake Retailing: 85. On the configuration of the friendly performance, see DGE 27/7/1893: 43, Recognize Your Customer by Name and DGE 23/5/1896: 61, Wide Awake Retailing. 46 DGE 6/1/1894, Art In Selling Goods: 21. On the personality of great merchants or entrepreneurs injected into business, see PI 14/10/1908: “The personality of John Wanamaker is injected into the advertising of his New York store by frequent editorials, his name being appended in a signature . . . Even though Mr Wanamaker does not write all of them, it is good practice to let him have a constant voice in advertising” (14). See also PI 29/6/1916: 125, Personality in Store and Ads. 47 MRSW 10/1910, Serving Light Refreshments: 25. On nurseries as conveniences, see DGE 24/10/1903: 51, The Modern Department Store. On moving stairways, see PI 3/7/1901: 8, The Theatrical Side of Keeping Shop. On lighting, see MRSW 11/1912: 64,

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Our Cover Design. On ventilation, see DGE 22/3/1902: 19, The Store Atmosphere and DGE 10/12/1904: 49, Store Equipment. MRSW 5/1915, A Japanese Garden: 29. For the Monte Carlo setting, see MRSW 5/1914: 29, Macy’s Monte Carlo Setting. More on decorations and settings is in MRSW 3/1912: 42, Notes from New York. DGE18/4/1904, The Store Entertainment: 33. On the “Conférence de Paris”, see MRSW 11/1909: 50, Notes From New York. The “Garden of Allah” is in MRSW 5/1912: 36, Notes from New York. On the “Promenade de Toilettes”, see MRSW 11/1915: 40, Notes from New York. The “Fête de Printemps” is in MRSW 2/1910: 21, Strawbridge & Clothier Interior Display. On interior decorations and fashion displays in general, see also Leach (1984). On seasonal special displays, see also MRSW 1/1911: 20, Special Interior Display. The commercialization of the calendar advanced so far that a speaker at a convention of display men in 1926 could affirm: “Today, we can tell the calendar by our show windows” (MRSW 11/1926, Display and Its Relation to the Commercial World: 23). DGE 18/3/1899, Window Dressing and Interior Decoration: 62. See also PI 29/3/1917: 93, Does the Consumer Really Want Service After All?

7

The new basis of civilization

The “service ethic” and the general promotion of consumption were part of a broader project in the democratization of desire that aimed at strengthening the relationship between different classes of citizens in the new social and political order of corporate America. A new political anthropology linking citizenship with consumption was put forward and it assigned to the economy a profound duty of national renewal based upon solidarity pinned to income rather than status, and to inclusion in consumer circles rather than civic involvement and class consciousness (Leach 1993; Cross 2000; de Grazia 2005; see also Best 1990 and Livingston 1994). Once “objects of possession and envy”, things were now to be considered “vehicles of community” (Boorstin 1974: 89) for inconspicuous consumption became a means of social improvement, and the powerful urge of “keeping up with the Joneses”, stripped of any moral condemnation, was understood as beneficial to the expansion of the new consumer economy (Lasch 1991; Matt 2003). The search for national unity and social solidarity was translated into the language of material prosperity and assigned to the new economic life, as the consumer democratization brought about by business was the ground upon which a higher standard of living would be realized in a few decades. Yet, the new basis of civilization implied a revolution at the very foundations of American life, as Protestant and Republican traditions were suspicious of comfort and affluence, as well as of big business and impersonal economic forces promoting mass production. Those hindrances from the past had to be dismissed in favour of a vision of the good life adequate to the new modern conditions, revolving around the promotion of specialized work and hedonistic leisure (Harris 1981; Leach 1993; Lears 1994a). The case of Elbert Hubbard illustrates the transition, for the young soap salesman, during his second life, took on “a prophetic role” (Champney 1968: 73) in teaching how personal fulfilment could be met within industrial capitalism. In 1893, Hubbard sold his half ownership in Larkin Company and devoted his life to making art and culture a profitable undertaking. After a brief attempt to get a formal education at Harvard University, which he quickly abandoned due to incompatibility with the academic environment, in 1894 Hubbard crossed the ocean and landed in England, where he visited William Morris, leader of the British Arts and Crafts Movement and a fervent socialist. Deeply influenced by Morris’s

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critical stance on the aesthetic of industrial production and the profound iniquity of the organization of labour under capitalism, Hubbard embraced the cause of the Arts and Crafts Movement and founded a community at East Aurora, where he and his associates established a press shop, “The Roycroft Shop”, employing handicraft methods in printing books. Hubbard parlayed his promotional skills in the new cultural enterprise, changing his appearance from a well-groomed businessman to that of a stylish Bohemian providing spiritual guidance. He also became a controversial lecturer, as well as collaborator for Cosmopolitan and an advertising consultant; and the earnings from these activities enabled him to inject more and more new capital into the Roycroft business (Walle 1984). The community was immediately identified with Hubbard and his flamboyant personality, and he cemented this association through the publication in 1895 of The Philistine, a monthly magazine of aphorisms and sarcastic and irreverent short stories that promoted his philosophy of life and his business. Hubbard’s philosophy, though it began as a rejection of modern industrialism, turned first to a deep criticism of established religions and eventually to the promotion of – in Hubbard’s words – “a system of life” (Hubbard 1908b: 157) that was consistent with the corporate reconstruction of American life. Hubbard was fully convinced that human beings “want health now, not happiness after death” (Ibid.: 158), and, accordingly, institutionalized religion had to be dismissed, for it demanded from people a renunciation of material life harmful to real happiness. As he stated in his book Health & Wealth, and argued as the “Kernel of Roycroftism” (Ibid.), “theology, by diverting the attention of men from this life to another, and by endeavoring to coerce all men into one religion, constantly preaching that this world is full of misery . . ., has forced on men the thought of fear” (Hubbard 1908a: 45). Echoing the positions of the mind-cure movement and the psychotherapeutic cults (see Chapter 2), Hubbard maintained that fear was the source of all evils, for wealth depended on healthy-minded attitudes rather than on favourable external conditions, and therefore, if “what we call diseases are merely symptoms of mental conditions”(Ibid.: 17), it follows that one cannot be cured of a disease, since it is the symptom of a mental condition that the individual must take care of himself. However, as he prophesied elsewhere, this would be simple enough once one had understood that “there is no devil but fear, and nobody and nothing can harm you but yourself” (Hubbard 1905: 50). In short, Hubbard came up with an individual solution to a collective problem, substituting a call for social change with a search for personal adjustment to the new conditions of life. The short story “A Message to Garcia”, which Hubbard (1901) published for the first time in The Philistine in 1899, and that became in short time a publishing phenomenon, selling millions of copies, makes the substitution clear. The story concerns Rowan, a soldier that during the war between the United States and Spain was required to deliver a letter to Garcia, the leader of the Cuban rebels. Rowan acted promptly, with complete dedication to the cause and without asking for explanation as to the meaning of the task entrusted to him. The message was clear: this is how every man should behave in fulfilling his daily duties, because it is from the ability to act efficiently in one’s own sphere, with a

The new basis of civilization 123 free, happy heart, however marginal or incomprehensible the assigned task may seem, that personal and collective well-being results. The criticism of industrial society was overturned, for the deep cause of discontent resided in the inability of people to meet the required tasks rather than in the external, objective conditions of life. While he had started from a critical position towards industrialism, Hubbard ended up, in fact, embracing modern capitalism, for he interpreted the growing rationalization of work as a necessary requirement for both the self-realization of individuals and the social welfare of communities. In a similar way, social economist Simon Patten clearly understood that the new basis of civilization demanded the joint promotion of the rationalization of work and the democratization of desire. He theorized the advent of an age of abundance under corporate auspices and recognized the role that a progressive balance between work and consumption would play in the new societal configuration. In promoting a new education for the consumer-citizen Patten played an active role in the restructuring of American life that was orchestrated in close cooperation between educational institutions like business schools and academic research centres, and cultural, social and political forces as diverse as social reformers, artists and designers, together with businessmen and the related professional-managerial corps.

Consumption as progress Born and raised on the family farm encircled by the green fields of Illinois, where nature had shown itself to be benevolent and fertile, Patten trained in the academic milieu of the younger generation of the historical school of economics at the University of Halle in Germany, where he was persuaded of the necessity of applying academic knowledge in the name of social reform. He recognized the passing of the era of scarcity and theorized the emergence of an economy of abundance around which a new social order should be built. At the Wharton School in Philadelphia – where, in 1888, he was appointed as Professor of Political Economy by his friend and then Dean of the School, Edmund James – he found a congenial environment to develop his new-fashioned, rather heterodox vision of the relation between economy and society (Tugwell 1923). In his first work, which he dedicated to his mentor Johannes Conrad, paying homage to his vision concerning the premises of political economy while scrutinizing it deeply, Patten attempted to reverse the Ricardian law by attempting to show how “the main causes of rent, and of the increased price of agricultural produce, are not of a physical, but of a social nature” (Patten 1885: 11). His main aim was to historicize economic theory and to show that the principles conceived in past epochs were not fitted for the pressing demands of the present. He ventured to suggest the building of a new dynamic economics able to come to terms with the laws governing societal configurations, laws which are derived from the “particular combination of natural forces of which the society makes use” (Patten 1892: 38). Here consumption enters the economic field, playing a leading role because Patten recognized how the value of goods consumed is socially determined, and changes under different combinations of physical conditions and man’s reactions

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to those conditions. Such combinations broadly fell into two categories: social environments of scarcity typical of primitive ages, where the consumption of goods was characterized by an “absolute utility” related to the limited “satisfaction of mere living”; and social environments of abundance typical of modern times, where the consumption of goods implies a “positive utility” defined as the “sum of satisfaction that can be added to bare living” (Patten 1892: 40). The former situation is marked by a pain economy, the latter by a pleasure economy. In Patten’s view, the pain economy of primitive men was not based on a general shortage of food, but on man’s dependence on the natural cycle in which periods of abundance alternated with periods of scarcity and, therefore, needs were not turned into desires due to the irregularity of consumption. The civilizing process made the relationship between food and needs less immediate, and thus enabled different forms of response. As he had maintained in The Consumption of Wealth, by reducing costs and making many more commodities accessible, modern production was made efficient and forced “into channels through which a greater variety of growing desires can be gratified” (Patten 1889: 29–30). In this new stage, “a new standard of life is formed through which the feelings and mental characteristics of men are changed” (Patten 1892: 38). Social progress, therefore, is not a consequence of the growth in the production of goods already consumed, but is based upon the variety of goods consumed which defines a new standard of life and moulds a new mental habit. On this basis, a moral revolution was about to jostle puritanical litanies of material restraints out of history, because in the economy of abundance the efficiency of social organization is measured with respect to the ability to gratify the highest number of pleasures. The differentiation of desires, and not their limitation, allows the elimination of all behaviours contrary to social development, because “the economic equilibrium working through desire tends to make all persons equal, independent, and self-sustaining” (Patten 1902: 236). In this way, cries against social inequality or against the power of big business must be dismissed, for the interests of workers and capitalists, and of employers and employees, tend to meet along the path of social progress fostered by mass consumption. The satisfaction of desires in an evolved society is worked out through cooperation between classes and the integration of the disadvantages in the circuits of consumption (Patten 1902; see also Patten 1896a). Patten could therefore state: “[the old] habits, instincts and feelings we have inherited from our forefathers are no longer safe guides for us to follow” (Patten 1889: vi). As he lyrically argued in his bestseller, The New Basis of Civilization (Patten 2010), hindrances to progress “are falling before the young genius of the mechanical age”; here, “famine no longer threatens a country where railroads carry freight” (Ibid.: 6); “the desert is sawn, and waste land is made fertile” (Ibid.: 7); “the grocery window” is “stacked with ‘breakfast foods’, unimagined ten years ago”; sugar, once a luxury for the privileged ones, “gives its heat to the workingman” (Ibid.: 8); and “the preservation of food by canning” and “refrigerated express” adds many staples to “the laborer’s menu” (Ibid.: 9). For Patten, a new ethic had to arise in support of the new civilization of abundance, which could grow only

The new basis of civilization 125 if fuelled by a continuous transformation through which products transfer energy to individuals and these individuals in turn use energy to create new products. For Patten, the logic of abundance does not tolerate the idea that its surplus be “conserved as a permanent fund” (Ibid.: 11). The task was therefore one of turning citizens into consumers, promoting “the aesthetic pleasures before the drill in moral restraints and the theory of saving” (Ibid.: 42) because – as Patten had already discussed in an earlier theoretical essay – “aesthetic goods may be said to be goods without that point of satiety which is found in simple economic goods” (Patten 1896b: 92). Patten maintained that it was necessary to stimulate “the love of life”, favouring “amusements and recreations of parks, theatres, ‘Coney Island,’ [and] department stores”, for only in this way would it be possible to “stir and spur desires” (Patten 2010: 42) necessary for the new times. The man of “few wants and less imagination” (Ibid.: 43) was inadequate for the progress of civilization. The progress of civilization towards what Patten (1896b) defined a “social commonwealth” depended on the exclusion of any metaphysical meaning; that is, “no religious motive causing persons to value individual redemption in a future life more highly than the improvement of the conditions of their descendants in this life” (Patten 1896b: 102). Not by chance, Patten exemplified the themes and viewpoints shared by Hubbard, the “mind-cure movement “and psychotherapeutic cults (see Chapter 2), since for all of them what is sought is fulfilment in this world, not salvation in a future one. Indeed, for Patten, “Christ is the idealization of the greatest possibilities of human beings” and the progress of society through the promotion of the ethic of consumption, which allows social cooperation and social inclusion, fosters the achievement of “ideals not greatly differing from those which the progress of the Christian religion has created” (Patten 1896b: 108). In this passage from a metaphysical view linked to the idea of salvation to a secular framework attached to the therapeutics of self-realization (Lears 1994b), Patten contributed to the definition of a logical and ideological framework appropriate to the emerging order of consumer capitalism, first and foremost by theorizing the leading role that consumption would play in the new economic regime and the corresponding need to educate the new consumer-citizen for the sake of social progress (Leach 1993; Lears 1994a; Sklansy 2002). If Hubbard suggested an individualistic adjustment to the new social conditions posed by big business and specialized work, Patten envisioned the positive role consumption could play in channelling those adjustments more decidedly along the path of economic prosperity.

The good American family An examination of how people were introduced into the new consumer culture shows how the process was the outcome of a complex interplay. On the one hand, social reformers, politicians and public institutions fostered a new political economy of the democratization of desire needed to found social cohesion on a cultural basis parting from old republican virtues; on the other hand, businessmen and captains of industry, assisted by the new professional-managerial corps, worked

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with people’s needs and expectations in search of new market opportunities and continuity in the flow of commodities. Children are an especially important case in point, as the discovery of the untapped youth market was at the same time a construction of that market, for economic actors tried to ensure that emerging trends toward the recognition of a youth culture expressing an autonomous and dignified age of life between infancy and adulthood would be economically profitable (Spring 2003; Jacobson 2004; Cook 2004; see also Chapter 2). The first step in the process was the intuition that children were a valuable vehicle to attract adult customers, and this was especially evident in special window expositions that usually attracted many passers-by on the pavement but did not secure their entrance into the store until those windows were designed with specific attractions for children.1 Given that “if a store can succeed in attracting the children, they will bring a lot of their elders with them”,2 boys’ and girls’ wax figures were inserted in fitting settings, and special shop windows were trimmed with alluring scenes: the “Life in the Jungle” display featuring a mechanical tiger set was installed at a store in Minnesota, and the Christmas windows at Sibley’s in Rochester also displayed the life in the jungle through the use of animal toys. One year later, Sibley’s presented a spectacular series of scenes, with themes ranging from Noah’s Ark to the nursery rhyme “The Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe”, and from fairy tales such as “Hansel and Gretel” to Santa Claus’ workshop, where he was preparing his Christmas toys.3 Another step in the commercialization of the calendar was taken in recognizing how the relation between festivities and consumer goods is made more effective if it arouses the interest and curiosity of children, not to mention their desire for toys.4 The Christmas spirit was increasingly pinned to rituals of consumption that, in turn, gave the festivities an irresistible secular tone. However, thanks to progressive discoveries about the value of toys as educational tools that stimulated cognitive abilities and facilitated the child’s happy development, merchants and manufacturers were given good reasons to suggest that purchasing toys should not be confined to birthdays and general festivities; hence, they began to advertise toys as legitimate optional expenditures throughout the year.5 As a further step, advertising directly appealed to the consumer-children as legitimate subjects of desire able to express their preferences like any grown-up consumer because, as Lynd reported (1933: 886), “merchants testify that children are buying more things today unassisted by their parents”. From Cream of Wheat depicting its prospective consumer girl as a fair judge of the product (see Figure 7.1), through Grape-Nuts putting the little consumers in the position of a mature grocer warmly patronizing the brand over competitors (see Figure 7.2), and from Mellin’s Food portraying a chubby baby enthroned in her highchair as witness and testimonial of the brand, up to Paramount Pictures appealing to well-informed youngsters in order to bring parents to the cinema, all and sundry acknowledged the extent to which “juvenile needs . . . represent a tremendous volume of business for the country”.6 Strategies aimed at making brand names part of the everyday life of children, persuading them to consider their favourites as friends carrying what they longed for: Campbell’s used illustrated stories enlivened by funny

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Figure 7.1 “A Fair Judge”, Cream of Wheat advertisement, MC, January 1906

characters to promote its canned soups; Coca-Cola distributed the “Alphabet Book of Coca-Cola” which, while teaching language in a funny way, promoted an entire alphabet of meanings related to the drink; Kellogg’s granted premiums conceived for boys and girls, such as the “Jungleland Funny Moving Picture Book”; and

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Figure 7.2 “If children kept store”, Grape-Nuts advertisement, CO, August 1918

Royal Baking Powder supplied every home with a cookbook in the form of an illustrated book telling of the palatable adventures of a friendly character called “The Little Gingerbread Man”.7 The building of a youth market coincided with compelling work on the idea of good parenthood, with advertising cooperating with social reformers to alter

The new basis of civilization 129 child rearing and education, for, as Ogburn (1933: 705) argued, “the new and changing perplexities of modern life require education for parenthood” (see also Chapter 2). Advertising made the most of the situation through the new scientific understanding that the ability to bear children does not carry with it the necessary qualifications to rear them; accordingly, when it came to many activities that were previously the preserve of the home, parents were now encouraged to rely upon professionals, for, as a leading business researcher and social scientist maintained, “the natural mother of children may not be the best possible person to prepare their food, and with modern machine methods in the manufacture of clothing, children could well dispense with the ill-fitting and ugly creations of their inexpert parents” (Boothe 1932: 83). Therefore, ads began to associate the new world of goods with successful parents, who nurture their children responsibly by following the most up-to-date scientific insights on education, intimate relations and health. This strategy was carried out in different ways; sometimes the appeal to successful parenthood played with positive feelings, as in the advertisements depicting a healthy baby having sweet dreams after his good and loving parents gave him Grape-Nuts (see Figure 7.3); sometimes the appeal took advantage of widespread fears about babies’ health, as in the case of advertisements promoting a different diet made of vegetables and cereals against the insalubrious effects of meat consumption.8 In many cases, advertisements encouraged the establishment of new family habits, such as the one promoted by Kodak, of making a picture story of the growing children to secure memories that in the long run could be irretrievably lost. As everyday life was changing under new social, economic and cultural circumstances, in order to turn a product into a necessity many ads attached their brands to specific situations or daily routines, as is evident in Pears’ Soap refrain: “Goodmorning! Have you used Pears’ Soap?”; or one might consider Hires’ Rootbeer, whose advertisement portrayed a young girl pointing at a clock and joyfully exclaiming: “It’s TIME to drink HIRES’ Rootbeer’” (see Figure 7.4); Shredded Wheat Biscuit with its slogan, “This is the Way I spell Breakfast”, tried to identify breakfast with its biscuit; and Uneeda Biscuit (pronounced “you need a biscuit”) tried to make its name a compelling suggestion of consumption.9 New consumption possibilities had to be promoted and suggested because, in making the new world of goods, supply did not easily find its corresponding demand. As one of the first interpreters of advertising recognized, “[the] progress of industry became dependent upon the making of new consumers” (Presbrey 1929: 338). It is for this reason that the first forms of cooperative advertising campaigns developed among producers of underconsumed goods, as in the case of the fruit growers of California who joined together into the California Fruit Grower Exchange. They cooperated in order to turn oranges and lemons from being considered luxuries into staple articles of diet and, at the same time, they tried to increase the number of lemons and oranges consumed against substitutes by means of advertisements celebrating the fruits’ nutritive value and through books of recipes suggesting a vast array of the fruits’ culinary uses. This is one of the first marketing campaigns that, through the use of general advertising, branding, packaging, the distribution of booklets, and a premium system, aimed at

Figure 7.3 “Healthy and happy on Grape-Nuts”, Grape-Nuts advertisement, AM, January 1921

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Figure 7.4 “It’s time to drink Hires’ Rootbeer”, Hires’ Rootbeer advertising card, 1893

educating the consumer as to new possibilities in consumption, while at the same time opening new markets and expanding older ones (see Chapter 9).10

The modern American woman (and man) Education as regards to the changing roles in family relations went side by side with a broad reshaping of personal and gender identity along modern lines, starting with personal care and appearance. The industry that made the shift from the

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household economy of the past to the mass market of the present most visibly was the industry of personal hygiene, which developed during the years under examination. While until the second half of the nineteenth century the annual household production of soap was a long-standing custom of American families, in approaching the new century many industries began to manufacture soap and other products for personal hygiene. At the same time, along with the urbanization process there arose the question of public sanitation, which required new levels of personal hygiene. Advertisers quickly understood how social questions and the corresponding transformations in personal habits could be fostered for the benefit of the market (Norris 1990; Sivulka 2001). They framed industry as the scale of civilization – as suggested in the ad of soap manufacturer B. T. Babbitt – and mass production was cast for the job of improving sanitary conditions while, it was suggested, also making life easy for people living in a changing social environment. Cleanliness became a condition for something more than personal health. Soaps, creams, talcum powder and the whole coterie of products for personal hygiene came to be seen as necessities for the good citizen, whose roles, in family and in social life, were undergoing deep restructuring, as was the perception of personal identity.11 The history of personal hygiene products exemplifies the way in which in a theatricalized reality social recognition that was won through impression management and social performance increasingly corresponded to self-realization. John Woodbury’s battle cry, “Beauty for the Million”,12 expressed the fact that the aim of corporate business for sales improvement was attuned to social trends heralding aesthetic values over old-fashioned virtues. Thus, exploiting both the fear of social exclusion and the romance conveyed by social aspirations, advertisements acted as ready-to-use instructions for the beautification of the modern woman (Peiss 1998).13 Booklets describing products for maintaining or restoring glowing, youthful skin proliferated. “Beauty” became “a duty” for “every intelligent woman”, both in terms of the social recognition and the happiness that purportedly went hand in glove: “No woman who finds herself neglected in the social world can know the true meaning of happiness.”14 Opera singers and actresses were often used to endorse products used by people to disguise themselves as beautiful characters of the drama of social life, and even articles originally developed for the sole purpose of personal hygiene, such as toothpastes, were advertised on the basis of the appeal of self-realization through beauty, for “a Miss is as good as her smile”,15 as a Colgate advertisement insisted. “The modern idea” underlying each ad of this kind was declared by a Luxite Hosiery copy: “Look your best– not on state occasion only – but always.”16 In many cases, there were hints at products’ presumed magical qualities, with more or less explicit references to esoteric formulae. Hence, Sempre Giovine (“forever young”) soap was a brand based on the dream of eternal youth and it used a fictional, though credible, narrative about the product’s extraordinary properties, claiming that they were derived from an ancient beauty formula that had

The new basis of civilization 133 been preserved by a noble Italian family and was now discovered again by Sempre Giovine. In a similar way, a Pears’ ad depicted a young woman in a nightgown with a Pears bar in her hand, looking straight at the viewer and claiming: “This only is the witchcraft I have us’d.”17 The arcane tone surrounding the beauty formula was at the same time democratized and placed within reach of all women because “the possession of a beautiful skin” is something – as a Woodbury ad declared – “that any woman can have if she will”. The chance to become beautiful was potentially universal, for beauty is the positive outcome of a planned effect rather than a gift of nature, the secret lying in simply taking care of oneself by using the right products. Beauty thus became a social duty “for the American woman”.18 Mimetic desire was stimulated once the American woman was portrayed asserting and practising the social duty of beauty. After all, why shouldn’t an American woman conform to what had now become the American woman? Mimetic desire and social recognition were perceptible in the looks scattered in every show window and advertisement: the way others look at us and how we look at others. The same duty was demanded more and more of men, to whom shaving, clothing and grooming were especially important aspects of personal appearance and success in business and romance.19 Controlling body odour was a vital component both for men and women, as was having fresh breath, which opened up the mouthwash market. Reference to success or failure in social relations was shown in illustrations, as in the cases of the famous advertisement for Odorno deodorant, showing the negative effect of bad body odour when a woman’s arms are wrapped around her partner as they danced, or the Listerine mouthwash’s ad that portrayed a sad woman whose verdict was “Often a bridesmaid but never a bride”, indicating without any doubt how much bad breath was a serious impediment in the search for a husband.20 The perfect example of the association between caring for one’s appearance and success in love was the Pears’ soap advertisement where a young woman was shown intently reading a letter containing a proposal of marriage; above the illustration, the ad copy states “Good fortune always comes in Pears’”. Lower down, the message is even clearer: “A Pears’ Soap complexion is irresistible.”21 The effect of Pears’ soap was meant to be so irresistible that any doubts a man had about asking for his fiancée’s hand in marriage would disappear (see Figure 7.5). If another advertisement for a face cream could assert that “clothes do not make the man – or woman”, it was not because one’s appearance was not a decisive factor in establishing who you are, but because “a sallow, worn or wrinkled face will spoil the effect of the handsomest clothes, for women and men alike”.22 Clothing, grooming and cosmetics were becoming central features of everyday life at a time when action was turning into performance and social identity was increasingly based on the well-supported effects of such performances and impression management. In this connection, a remarkable advertisement was launched by Pompeian Beauty Powder in 1918 (see Figure 7.6). The picture showed a young woman as she looked into a mirror after applying the make-up. The woman did not see herself reflected but, via the real effect generated by the use of the right products, she saw a future projection – a “gaze into the future”: basking in

Figure 7.5 “The proposal”, Pears’ Soap advertisement, T&C, January 1905

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Figure 7.6 “Gazing into the future”, Pompeian Beauty Powder advertisement, NYT, 23 September 1917

social recognition and self-realization, she stood happy in the theatre with her future husband or fiancé. The ad-copy unmistakably strengthened the message: “Women are always looking forward to dances, dinners, theatres, and the love and admiration that ever attend beauty.”23

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Notes 1 Children were also used by advertising as an indirect means to attract business. See, for example, PI 20/4/1916: 72, Fleischmann’s Drive to Interest Children in Their Yeast and PI 27/9/1928: 10, Turning the Milk of Human Kindness into Human Interest. Another way to attract children was the use of birthday presents; see PI 28/10/1908: 11, Clinching Boys Trade in Clothing. 2 MRSW 11/1908, Mechanical Christmas Display: 40. 3 On Sibley’s Christmas displays, see MRSW 10/1913: 16, Notable Toy Display. On jungle displays, see MRSW 10/1912: 21, Special Christmas Display and MRSW 12/1923: 16, Display. It must be noted that special windows were considered as a form of general advertising aimed not only at attracting customers – young and old – into the shop to buy merchandise, but were also seen as a means of strengthening the personality of a business and its reputation, while promoting the service ethic on the basis of which the beautiful and entertaining window show was offered to the urban public. As the display manager at Sibley’s explained: “The purpose of the series was to serve as a general advertisement for the store at large rather than to sell any particular line of goods” (MRSW 10/1913, Notable Toy Display: 17). 4 Santa Claus became the herald of the link between Christmas and consumer culture because, yesterday, like today, “old Saint Nick is rudely roused from his slumber, has his face washed with benzene and is sent forth on his annual mission of awakening Christmas spirit – and incidentally loosening the pocket-books of those who behold his rubicund countenance” (PI 9/12/1908, Santa Claus Value as a Salesman: 20). For examples of advertisements using Christmas as a sales tool, see ads in Heimann (2005: 49, 54, 413). 5 See PI 13/10/1909: 28, How Toys Might be Advertised; PI 6/5/1915. 66, Trading Up in the Toys Advertising; and Ives Toys’ ad in Heimann (2005: 333). 6 PI 23/1/1913, The Possible Markets: 3. On the consumer-children, see also PI 30/9/1896: 4, How Children Affect the Success of the Retailer; PI 28/10/1908: 11, Clinching Boys Trade in Clothing; and PI 21/3/1906: 12, A Specialty Store for Children’s Clothes. Advertisements are found as follows: Cream of Wheat in WCBA Vertical Files Box 1 Cereal Folder Cream of Wheat, MC, 1/1906: 107. Grape-Nuts in WCBA Vertical Files Box 2 Cereal Folder 7 Postum Cereal Co., CO, 8/1918: 109; Mellin’s Food in BLC Series I Scrapbooks Box 59 Folder 2 Mellin’s Food; Paramount Pictures in LHJ 1/1922: 28. 7 On the product as children’s friend, see WCBA Vertical Files Box 3 Cosmetics Folder 11 Mennen, Baby’s Best Friend, 1909. On Campbell’s, see BLC Box 54 Folder 2 Campbell’s (1912) and Heimann (2005: 552–553). On Coca-Cola, see WCBA Vertical Files Box 1 Beverages Folder 8 Coca-Cola, Alphabet Book of Coca-Cola. Kellogg’s is in NWA Box 53 Cereal Folder 1 Kellogg’s, Jungleland Funny Moving Picture Book. For Royal Baking Powder, see BLC Series I Scrapbooks Box 61 Folder 2, The Little Gingerbread Man. 8 On good parents and publicity, see WCBA Vertical Files Box 1 Cereal Folder Egg-OSee, 1907; Kellogg’s and Pabst Extract in Heimann (2005: 503, 593); WCBA Vertical Files Box 1 Cereal Folder Cream of Wheat; WCBA Vertical Files Box 7 Soap Folder 11 Ivory Soap, 1898; WCBA Vertical Files Box 7 Soap Folder 2 Ivory Soap, T&C 1911. On Grape-Nuts, see WCBA Vertical Files Box 2 Cereal Folder 7 Postum Cereal Co., Grape-Nuts, TAM 1/1921: 93. On the negative effects of a bad diet, see again WCBA Vertical Files Box 1 Cereal Folder Egg-O-See, 1907 and PI 13/4/1916: 49, The Justification of Copy Frightfulness. On cereals as meat substitutes, see WCBA Vertical Files Box 2 Cereal Folder 3 The Natural Food Co., Shredded Whole Wheat Booklet, 1908; BLC Series I Scrapbooks Box 52 Folder 1 Quaker Oats and WCBA Vertical Files Box 1 Cereal Folder Battle Creek Food Co.

The new basis of civilization 137 9 Kodak advertisement is in LHJ 1/1922: 35. Pears’ Soap is in WCBA Vertical Files Box 7 Soap Folder 1 Pear’s Soap 1894; see also LHJ 2/1893: 14. Hires’ Rootbeer is in BLC Series I Scrapbooks Box 13 Folder 6 Hires’ Rootbeer. Shredded Wheat Biscuit is in WCBA Vertical Files Box 2 Cereal Folder 1 The Natural Food Co., Shredded Wheat Biscuit, 1910. See also Cream of Wheat ad in LHJ 4/1910: “Children everywhere ‘watch the clock’ for time to eat Cream of Wheat” (front advertisement). 10 On the California Fruit Grower Exchange, see PI 14/1/1915: 39, Developing the Market to Absorb your Maximum Output, Clark (1922: 251–254) and Heimann (2005: 565). On cookbooks and booklets to educate the consumer, see WCBA Vertical Files Box 1 Baking Powder Folder 13 Cleveland Baking Powder, Booklet 1892; BLC Series I Scrapbooks Box 61 Folder 2 Royal Baking Powder Booklet and Rumford Baking Powder Cook Book; BLC Series I Scrapbooks Box 54 Folder 1 Bovox Booklet; BLC Series I Scrapbooks Box 57 Folder 1 Jell’o Booklet and PI 6/5/1920: 17, Making a Brand of Salt Different Through Advertising. For more cases of cooperative marketing, see PI 27/4/1916: 78, The Financing and Successful Organization of a Co-operative Marketing Campaign and PI 7/8/1906: 30, Broad-Gauge Advertising. 11 Babbitt’s ad is in WCBA Vertical Files Box 1 Soap Folder 13 Babbitt, Cleanliness is the Scale of Civilization; see also PIM/1/1926: 104, Advertising that Builds New Interest in Everyday Things. On personal hygiene as duty, see WCBA Vertical Files Box 1 Cosmetics Folder 26 Colgate, Colgate’s Talc Powder 1922 and BLC Series I Scrapbooks Box 174 Folder 2 Calox, The Tooth Brush Army Booklet and Colgate’s Antiseptic Dental Powder; BLC Series I Scrapbooks, Box 89 Folder 3 Sapolio. For examples of the task of changing the enduring habits of housekeeping, like the laundry on Monday or the home-baking of family bread, see PI 16/8/1923: 109, Advertising to Overcome an Ancient Habit and PI 11/5/1916: 17, When Business Personality Becomes and Asset. 12 See PI 1/3/1893: 307, Beauty for the Million. 13 On the construction of consumption as feminine and the woman as a consumer in Europe and America, see Leach (1984), Loeb (1994), Lears (1994a), de Grazia and Furlough (1996), Roberts (1998). 14 WCBA Vertical Files Box 4 Cosmetics Folder 40, Booklet How to Secure a Beautiful Complexion and Beautiful Eyes and How to Preserve Them: 7. On beauty as a duty for every intelligent woman, see WCBA Vertical Files Box 1 Cosmetics Folder 25 Cocroft, Susanna Laboratories, 1925, Booklet The Overnight Way to a New Complexion and WCBA Vertical Files Box 1 Cosmetics Folder 2 Althea, Toilet Co., Booklet Hints for the Toilet. See also further booklets in WCBA, Cosmetics section, and in BLC Series I Box 173 Folder 1 Md Ruppert Complexion Specialist, booklet How to be Beautiful. 15 Colgate’s Ribbon Dental Cream (1913), in Heimann (2005: 275). 16 Luxite Hosiery’s ad (1917) is in Heimann (2005: 459). On testimonials, see WCBA Vertical Files Box 6 Soap Folder 1 Lever Brothers, Lux Toilet Soap, “Yes I am 39 years”; WCBA Vertical Files Box 6 Soap Folder 31 Palmolive Soap; WCBA Vertical Files Box 7 Soap Folder 5 Pears’ Soap; Sempre Giovine Facial Soap ad in Heimann (2005: 402) and PI 20/9/1917: 25, Warding Off Saturation Point by Changing Advertising Appeal. 17 Pears’ Soap ad is in WCBA Vertical Files Box 7 Soap Folder 1 Pears’ Soap, The Puritan 1899. On Sempre Giovine soap, see WCBA Vertical Files Box 4 Cosmetics Folder 16 Sempre Giovine. 18 Djer-Kiss ad is in WCBA Vertical Files Box 4 Cosmetics Folder 18 Djer-Kiss Face Powder, in CO, 1918. See also WCBA Vertical Files Box 7 Soap Folder 2 Pears’ Soap, in T&C 1906. 19 See, for examples, WCBA Vertical Files Box 3 Cosmetics Folder 36 Pompeian – Natural Beauty, True Cleanliness (ca. 1907) and Pompeian Massage Cream; AM 5/1908; WCBA Vertical Files Box 7 Soaps Folder 11 Ivory Soap, 1901, the ads by Arrow Collars and Joungfelo Cravats in BLC Series I Scrapbooks Box 255 Folder 2; the ad by Luxite Hosiery (ca. 1917) in Heimann (2005: 459) and the ads by Spur Ties and Arrow

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Shirts in Heimann (2004: 458, 461). On the social duty of beauty and mimetic desire, see also PI 26/1/1912: 45, Harper’s Bazaar Publicity; PI 13/4/1910: 20, Profiting by the Personal Appeal and Luxite Hosiery’s ad in Heimann (2005: 461). Odorno and Listerine ads can be seen in Watkins (1949: 30, 72). About the good odour as woman’s asset, see Mum’s deodorant ad in Heimann (2004: 405). On the skin you love to touch, see Woodbury Soap’s ad in Watkins (1949: 48). WCBA Vertical Files Box 7 Soap Folder 3 Pears’ Soap, T&C 1905 and also Christian Nation 8/2/1905: 16. Pompeian’s ad is in WCBA Vertical Files Box 3 Cosmetics Folder 36 Pompeian Mfg Co., AM, 5/1908. WCBA Vertical Files Box 3 Cosmetics Folder 36 Pompeian Mfg Co. Pompeian Beauty Powder, in NYT, 23/9/1917: advertisement. A similar scheme was used also by Resinol Soap, CO, 7/1918: 133.

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Subjects of desire

The whole array of new business tools, from trademarks to advertising, became capable of infusing into products and services an aura of uniqueness that effectively gave an “identity” to a given brand. Proliferating massively as they did, such branded offerings together generated a civilization of plenty wherein consumer goods were elevated “to the class of personality buffers” (Lynd 1933: 868) and people could acquire a sense of gratifying individuality and self-confidence just by going shopping. The modern subject found in consumption a practicable path to follow in the search for a malleable identity and self-fulfilment under new historical conditions for his or her desires were increasingly indexed to ready-to-use consumer goods. However, this condition resulted from a complex process of adjustment between the business aim for profit and the subjective longing for meaning rather than from corporate-driven brainwashing conducted on a mass scale. The analysis here, then, explodes one-sided arguments entrapped in the material–ideal and structure– agency divides, because the genesis of the consumer was the outcome of both economic actions and a wider spectrum of socio-cultural forces at play.

Apostles of modernity The genesis of the consumer involved a reconfiguration through which the sense of the self and the meaning of reality were reshaped by the contribution of the new business tools outlined above. Just as show windows and merchandise display helped theatricalize urban daily life, so too did a new style of personality-based advertising contribute in answering to the opposite longings of the modern subject for self-refashioning and authenticity (Lears 1994a; Outka 2009). As argued above (see Chapter 2), when moving away from the idea of character formation to embrace the ideal of personality development, the modern subject was overwhelmingly attracted by fluidity and experimentation, while at the same time pushed to the limit by the rapidity of changes and the sense of weightlessness due to disenchantment and the crisis of cultural authority (Lears 1994b; Orvell 1989). Therefore, while conceiving himself as inner-directed and as having erected individuality and uniqueness as ultimate values, the modern subject was in fact unable to find any stable point of reference inwardly, thus turning to outer stimuli that took

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the form of mass-manufactured desires that spread through a spiralling process of social imitation. Through the association of an ever-changing set of meanings attached to consumer goods, advertising offered a way out of this paradoxical search for a malleable identity under disenchanted conditions. The associative mechanism via image-making was the product of the sensitivity of business practitioners as to how to make the fears and desires of the new subject economically profitable through consumption aspirations, but it was especially the outcome of the answers the same practitioners gave to social and cultural transformations they lived through with a high degree of reflexivity – the new style of personality-based advertising was the unintended embodiment of those answers. The process of embodiment is especially visible if one pays attention to the contribution that the arts made in the development of the associative mechanism based on image-making. As the theatricalization of social life was nurtured and made profitable through the contribution of stage designers, architects and decorators (see Part II), modernism and commercial art nurtured and made profitable the subjectivist and fluid conception of reality and identity, for they contributed in conceiving the role that consumer goods would play in the assembly of the self and the satisfaction of desires under modern conditions. Figures who worked at the borders of the arts, culture and commerce were therefore “apostles of modernity” (Marchand 1986). The special sensitivity those figures had to the changing conditions of modern life they were living through made them able to attune the new business tools to the cultural, social and aesthetic trends of the time, even beyond their conscious intentions (Lears 1994a; Bogart 1995).1 More specifically, Gilded Age American artists (Bogart 1995; Burns 1996), more than anyone, found themselves experiencing the disenchantment of advancing modernity, and feared for their personal identity within an increasingly commercial world, the main risk being that their art would become a decorative tool for a materialistic, superficial life. The main problem, then, was to create a piece of art destined for a market dealing more and more with commodities. The strategy conceived was that of presenting the work of art as the direct expression of the artistic personality of the artist. In this way it was possible to loosen the market’s authority, for the value of a piece came to be measured by artistic personality, which depended on the artist’s ability to calculatingly cultivate and effectively present his public image. A case in point concerns the evolution of the painter’s studio and the construction of its art atmosphere as a means of visibly mirroring the artistic personality (Burns 1996). During the second half of the nineteenth century, and especially during the crucial decades from the late 1870s to the 1890s, the “plain”, introverted artist of the past, speaking only through his oeuvre, lived alongside the new artist, who was fully conscious of the significance of his personality and was a clever seller of himself, ready to convince the market of his value over and above that of all others. The construction of the artistic value of a work of art went through the careful staging of the artistic ambience of the workplace. As a Cosmopolitan report on New York City studios revealed, there was a striking opposition between the new studios and the “old-fashioned” ones, like the one of J. G. Brown, with his “ruddy and vigorous” personality, and that of

Subjects of desire 141 W. H. Beard – “a queer space” where “a few stuffed animals serve as models for the fables in paint that he sends forth”. In these old studios were found workshops not meant to become showrooms, while in the new ones, the art ambience was an intriguing blend of workshop settings and Wunderkammer atmosphere, like that of a New York sculptor, who was also an affable entertainer, and whose studio was furnished “with an addition of superb tiger skins and plaster reproductions of antique sculptures to the conventional tapestries, rugs and carvings”. One might consider also the case of another painter who divided his time, as did many others, between a backstage area where he practised his art, and a front-of-house space where he displayed himself as an artist. He was like a “monk, who paints in a cell in the Fourth Avenue Studio Building” while owning “a more elaborate abidingplace, but it is mostly for show”.2 Needing to publicize their work and make sales without devaluing their position by being seen to act as merchants, artists began to use their studios as showrooms that, while they contributed to publicizing the artist’s personality and boosting sales, were at the same time devised in a way that concealed such functions. Given that the artistic personality was always in motion, due partly to its inner workings and partly also to the push and pull of competition in the market, artists began to advertise their personality as dynamic and refined. The association between the personality and the painting, and the ever-changing relation set in motion by the avant-garde yearning for novelty, liberated a great deal of potential in terms of consumer goods as harbingers of identity. Caught amidst a crisis of cultural authority that bore much freedom, but pressed also by the new economic life, artists devised an ingenious way of playing the field between the hitherto conflicting imperatives of commerce and authenticity. In the process, they demonstrated to the world of commerce how to go about promoting the role of consumer goods and acts of consumption as instruments of self-refashioning and the satisfaction of desire. From the strategy of getting personalities’ endorsements, advertising arrived at the most refined associative mechanism of professional image-making and the sophisticated personality-based style of promotion inspired by the arts and the artists. The evolution of the meanings attached to, and conveyed by, advertising can be appreciated through a closer look at advertising cards and print advertisements. As already mentioned (see Chapter 6), advertising cards were the first forms of publicity conceived during the nineteenth century by manufacturers in order to promote their business. They did not show a picture of the product but instead used images of an idyllic natural environment, usually with young babies that looked more like angels or the elves of fairytales playing and enjoying the fruits of a fecund and benevolent earth (see Figure 8.1). The atmosphere pointed to a past in which man lived in closest proximity to, and in perfect harmony with, nature – a far cry from the industrial and urban revolution, where the artificial environment of the efficient factory was displacing the fecund earth of rural life. In all these ad cards there was a pervasive nostalgia for a lost world, while the contemporary world pushed the individual’s capacity to assimilate change to the limit (Orvell 1989; Lears 1994a, 1994b). In many cases the harsh reality of industrialism and urbanization was set aside through the use of iconography related to exoticism and orientalism, pointing

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Figure 8.1 Advertising trade cards, ca. 1870–80

to a remote world of harmony between man, nature and deities; and, when this was not set aside, it was transfigured through Romantic painting of Eden-like visions of a natural felicity between man and machine (Marx 1964).3 A reconfiguration of the relation between the sense of self and the meaning of reality was required in order to provide the nostalgia for the past, and discomfort at the present, with the proper support. Consumer goods were the missing link, showing the way toward configuration, as is testified by the shift from the older advertising cards to the new print advertisements, in which images of self-fulfilment and self-expression began to be associated with the consumer good advertised. A shift from the religious and traditional idea of salvation and simple living to the artistic and modern principle of self-expression and self-realization as the ethical duty of a meaningful life took place while the symbolic dimension supplied to goods began to outstrip their material use value (Lears 1983; Williams 2005b). In this way a subtle connection between the search for meaning and the new world of goods was suggested. An overview of soap advertisements is necessary to accurately trace the evolution, because soap came to involve a very important concept: purity. Entering the twentieth century, advertising appeals began to shift away from the material qualities of featured products towards what might be called characterological or even spiritual qualities possessed by products – qualities that by implication might in turn be passed on to loyal purchasers. In the case of soap, for example, this can be illustrated by noting the difference between Ivory’s well-known technical claim about its soap “9944⁄100% pure”, and the famous Pears advertisement, “Bubbles”, which gave a quite different spin to the idea of purity. The ad used the famous painting by Millais, A Child’s World, depicting a young boy, the exemplar

Subjects of desire 143 of purity of spirit, to connect the purity of the soul of the young boy with the soap, and thence with the soap’s user. The meaning conveyed by the artist’s picture, the small boy as symbol of human purity, was attached through the advertisement to the consumer good, and by the association between the meaning of the image – spiritual purity – and the product’s effect – cleanliness – it was suggested that the latter was the means to achieve the former. The image-making promoted cleanliness gained through the use of soap as a means for achieving spiritual well-being. Pastor Henry Ward Beecher had already heralded this vision when he endorsed Pears’ as the best soap in the world and, adapting a Leviticus quote, he assured his flock that “If cleanliness is next to godliness, soap is a means of grace” (Norris 1990; Lears 1994a).4

From the personality of the product to consumer identity As already pointed out (see Chapter 6), the major practical problem manufacturers faced during the decades consolidating the new order of economic life was that of overproduction, which was exacerbated by the aggressive competition in many lines of business despite vigorous efforts towards horizontal integration through mergers and acquisitions (see Chapter 1). A more effective solution was figured out by posing the following question: how are you going to differentiate your product and allow it to excel when products of different makes are in reality very much alike?5. The answer to the question lay in the way advertising could attach a whole range of existential meanings to consumer goods through image-making, thus providing the means of the assembly of the self in a theatricalized and increasingly fluid reality. The first step was the associative transfer to the product of the personality of the “pilot of its business”,6 or the testimonial endorsing it, thus suggesting a direct relation between the product and the traits of the personality attached to it. The mechanism is perfectly stated in the ad-copy for the “Mary Garden” perfume by Rigaud, which is “identified with the spirit and personality of the great soprano herself and is equally effective in expressing the personality and charm of Everywoman” (Heimann 2005: 395). The “star’s” personality was embodied in the product, making it unique as the only one able to express the personality of the user. The same mechanism was used to give an allure of distinctiveness to many different products, as in the case of a pancake brand sold by Quaker Oats that used a fictional character from a popular song to transfer the virtues of the character to the pancake itself: Aunt Jemima was a mammy cook, famous throughout the old South in those golden days “befo’ the Wah” . . . Aunt Jemima was a genius – in a land of excellent cooks she stood supreme. And the achievement that she valued most was her recipe for the most famous of her delicious dishes – Aunt Jemima pancakes . . . Today we offer you those same taste-tempting pancakes. Fragrant, light fluffy, golden brown, made from Aunt Jemima’s own secret recipe. May we serve you?7

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This was a process of “humanization”8 of the products, transferring traits and qualities from real or imagined persons to the goods advertised on the basis of a shift of the accent of reality from common sense and first-hand experience to mediated social imaginaries that made real anything that had the power to impose and to sustain itself as something real. The progressive detachment of reality from the customary system of meanings explaining it, and the language expressing it, went along with a constructivist world image based on the seduction of feelings and imagination more than on metaphysical truths and the authority of tradition. Under such conditions, the new imaginary that was made up of a whirlwind of images, signs, symbols and words developed, and it created a reality of material objects enlivened by the attachment of the immaterial traits of personalities. To take a few examples, Coca-Cola was associated with “the beauty of young womanhood”; the personality of the Silhouette model of Jordan Motor Car was characterized by “honest goodness”; a Playboy model embodied the spirit of the modern American woman looking for adventure; Pall Mall became cigarettes that were as famous as the Washington Monument of Philadelphia or the Statue of Liberty in New York, to which they were associated through the picture.9 The associative mechanism was at work for goods related to the display of social status and social role as well. What is worth noting is that advertisements did not simply suggest the customary idea that consumer goods vary accordingly with social stratification, but promoted the idea of anticipatory socialization: if one wanted to be seen as part of an upper social group, then one must consume the right set of goods; and the social conditions of urban life made the instrument quite effective (see Chapter 5). An ad’s copy for Thomas Flyer automobile stated: “More than a thousand level headed businessmen Testify To The Absolute Reliability And The Unquestioned Leadership Of The THOMAS Under Any And All Conditions”.10 While it seems that the frank aim of the advertiser was to promote the intrinsic merit of the product and its high standing against competitors, the copy nonetheless makes it clear that the product’s personality was built upon the association with the businessman, disclosing a more subtle reversal of meaning: if businessmen use this car, then this car is the car of the businessman. If the character of the testimonial – the businessman – was used to infuse the product with personality, at the same time the converse was made possible: it is the ownership of the car that makes the owner a real businessman. The personality of the product shifted to the identity of the owner in two steps. In a first step, the good signified through the association with a personality became the signifier of the same personality. The same held true for any meaning related to distinction, traits of personality or frames of mind. Furthermore, in general, the display of social distinction mingled with the search for individualization. Of interest, then, are the advertisements of an early twentieth-century phase in which the associative mechanism was not fully developed, for then the denotative ad copy simply argued for the intrinsic merits of the product while a connotative picture suggested a second meaning related to the good as the operator of distinction and thus of identity-making. Ivory Soap’s publicity is a case in point: the text laboured to describe the positive effects of soap on the skin, while the picture portrayed the medium close-up of a well-dressed,

Subjects of desire 145 pleasant young man looking straight ahead, suggesting the performative effect of Ivory upon the identity of the consumer, in terms of both social distinction and self-fulfilment (see Figure 8.2). A series of ads for Chesterfield moved along the same lines: if the text for these ads extolled the flavour and fragrance of the

Figure 8.2 “The man who uses Ivory Soap”, Ivory Soap advertisement, LHJ, November 1901

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tobacco blend, the images portrayed a young man, sitting relaxed while smoking a Chesterfield, showing his satisfaction and self-confidence to the reader; on the one hand, the ad-copy pointed to the satisfaction due to good smoking, and on the other, the picture suggested an imaginary of satisfaction and self-confidence that the cigarette made real.11 The same mechanism was at play in ads where goods were related to social occasions and everyday life, and in the meantime goods were becoming something more than useful instruments for ventures in social life; they were becoming markers of happiness, as a Murad’s ad clearly shows (see Figure 8.3): the drawing portrayed a group of young men and women smoking Murad cigarettes at Manhattan beach; the copy declared that, “Thorough enjoyment of delightful summer days at the pleasure resorts seems incomplete without the delicious mildness and the rare, attractive fragrance of MURAD CIGARETTES”. The ad suggested that the experience would be “incomplete” without a Murad, and in turn it prompted the idea that it was only by smoking Murad that the pleasurable experience of vacation would be “thorough”.12 In different ads, both Pall Mall and Murad contended that in refined places you do not need to mention the name of the cigarette, because the brand smoked by elegant men is well-known.13 The fact that both brands used the same association with elegance and refinement clarifies the socially constructed nature of the association: there are no classy cigarettes other than the ones that are able to impose themselves as being the socially accepted cigarettes of classy people. Once the association is established, the association becomes real in its effects. A personality for every product was ready at hand: the “American character” associated with Bull Durham tobacco; the “American gentleman” associated with London Life and Pierce-Arrow; the “man of cultured taste” associated with Pall Mall; the “thinker” associated with Grape-Nuts; the “man who knows” and the “man of affairs” associated with the Lozier’s car and with Bull Durham Tobacco; “fashionable people” associated with Lyon’s dentifrice; the “discriminating women” associated with both Buick and ScotTissue. In each case, “what was used . . . to provide a meaning in reality for the product, [was] taken over by, and signified by, the product itself” (Williamson 2010: 36).14 This is evident in advertisements where the joint effect of image and copy connected sentiments, emotions or life expectations to goods. Such is the case of Pabst Blue Ribbon, which was the “evening glass of cheer”, reinforced in the illustration showing a happy wife serving the glass of beer to her relaxed husband; or of Clysmic water, which “sparkles its good fellowship at the club”; or indeed of the Pears’ soap ad depicting a bathing baby crying as he can’t reach the bar of soap that has slipped out of the tub, the meaning being “He won’t be happy ‘till he gets it!” (see Figure 8.4). Similarly, a Lifebuoy soap ad depicted three generations of a family – grandpa, baby and mummy playing together – with “LOVE, LAUGHTER, AND LIFEBUOY”. A Wrigley’s advertisement related the chewing gum to romance and love through an effective connection between image and copy: the ad suggested that giving the one you love the “courting confection” of Wrigley’s will make her bright smile brighter, not really because – as the copy stated – the gum

Figure 8.3 “Thorough enjoyment of delightful summer days”, Murad cigarettes advertisement, T&C, August 1906

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Figure 8.4 “He won’t be happy till he gets it”, Pears’ Soap advertisement, LHJ, December 1909

“is a continuous aid to teeth-breath-appetite-digestion” but, due to the positive effect of the courtship, the “courting confection” is made possible.15 In a swirling world of images it is no wonder that through advertising a transfer of external qualities of reality and internal states of subjectivity to products flourished. However, the second step in the associative mechanism implied a fundamental, though somehow slippery, shift. It is one thing for a product to ‘mean’ the signified attached to it – Murad representing the classy man, for example; it is another thing for the product to be the meaning attached to it – Murad as the cigarette of classy men – for in this second case the product becomes an operator of the signified: every man who smokes Murad becomes a classy man. For this shift to be triggered and become effective, the liminal condition was indispensable. For only in liminal situations is the habitual frame of reality suspended, allowing imagemaking to generate the reality of consumer goods as buffers of personality and operators of desire; and only in liminal situations does imitative behaviour have the power to make real that which bears the power to become socially considered as real. Thus, even if there is no real connection between Murad and refinement, in the liminal situation Murad became the operator of refinement because it was able to disseminate the association via image-making, and, thence, to become socially accepted as the cigarette of classy people through imitative behaviour. There are no classy cigarettes making people classy but those found in a disenchanted world of subjectivist culture in which that is real which is socially considered real. Emerging

Subjects of desire 149 under liminal conditions, the world of goods became real because the new subject found in it a proper environment for the assembly of a self attuned to the modern demands of experimentation and individualization. It was upon such an unstable reality and a malleable sense of the self that the consumer emerged as the new human type adequate to the rising social order of consumer capitalism. Therefore, the consumer was not conjured up as a devilish corporate creature designed to absorb the endless flux of productive output. Nor was he the culmination of a progressive lineage of liberation from material scarcity and spiritual pain. The consumer was the outcome of a revolution in the material conditions of life and an unprecedented loss of meaning that together called forth a deep restructuring of social existence which took the shape of consumer capitalism through the joint effects of social, cultural and economic forces. The extent to which the associative transfer from the product’s personality to the consumer’s identity was the outcome of a process in which actors involved were not fully conscious of what was happening may be appreciated via the interesting example of Cadillac and its advertising manager, Theodore McManus. In 1915, a Cadillac competitor organized a campaign pointing to some technical problems in the engine of the new Cadillac model. McManus published a response letter, titled “The Penalty of Leadership’, in the Saturday Evening Post of 2 January 1915 and there he argued that fierce denial and detraction is the punishment set aside for anyone or anything that is outstanding. Neither Cadillac nor the competitor were mentioned in the text, but the letter met with such outstanding approval that, for years, thousands of copies were sent out on request. The event contributed to stamping the social imaginary of Cadillac as the car of leaders, and consequently suggested that whoever thought of himself as a leader must drive a Cadillac (Watkins 1949; Fox 1984). The personality of the Cadillac moved to the identity of the owner. It must be noted that McManus is the same adman who, just a few years later, wrote a plea against the widespread kind of advertising to which he inadvertently contributed and which “ascribes to the product practically all of the felicity of life”; MacManus recognized that “beauty, health, learning and success” are no longer “the hard won rewards of virtue, character, education and endeavor”, but “they can be bought in the first drug store or shop”.16 An Overland ad (see Figure 8.5) explicitly shows the associative mechanism recognized by McManus. The ad is divided into two sections, representing the same scene at different times. The first tableau depicts in the foreground a living room where a wife stands embittered in front of her husband, who is sitting discomforted and ashamed in his armchair, while in the background the street lies empty in front of the house; the copy states: “She hasn’t an Overland – or anything”. The second tableau shows the same setting from a different perspective: now the house is located in the background, while in the foreground we find the new main character of the ad, the Overland bought by a proud husband for his grateful wife, sitting in the driver’s seat with a smiling countenance. The copy underlines the product as operator of happiness and domestic harmony: “She has an Overland – an’ everything”.17 The shift from an appeal to the concrete, technical qualities of goods to the promotion of articles as operators of social distinction, identity-making and

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Figure 8.5 “She has an Overland – an’anything”, Overland Automobile advertisement, SEP, July 1917

self-fulfilment is made apparent if one follows the developments of advertisements for Pierce-Arrow’s car manufacturer. In a 1906 ad for Town & Country (see Figure 8.6), the copy illustrated the merits of a car as follows: “This car meets the dual want of the average American car-owner – a dependable car and a luxurious city carriage in one and the same automobile.”18 Only two years later, the prospective consumer is reminded that “in a car for city use not only comfort but also elegance is needed”, and the message was reinforced through an illustration which depicted the car riding next to a monument, thus associating the artwork’s beauty with the vehicle’s elegance (see Figure 8.7).19 The relation between car and social life was initially based on the usefulness of the former for the latter: “the wider life with its business, sport, society, depends on transportation from place to place”.20 But eventually the car was promoted via the images of social distinction, as in the 1912 ad where a drawing displayed an elegant woman ready for a dance, or for the theatre, stepping out of the vehicle with the help of her partner (see Figure 8.8). The same mechanism was at play in a 1915 ad depicting a group of distinguished men and women driving up to a country party with a Pierce-Arrow.21 The association between the personality of the car and the identity of the owner was explicitly suggested in a 1915 ad copy: “Justifiable confidence rides beside the man who drives or is driven in a Pierce-Arrow Car.”22 As a matter of fact, an ad in 1924 maintained that, “after all, a man’s possessions are a measure of the man himself”; from this it follows that the car – as well as any good possessed – “reflects . . . the character and social standing of its possessor”, as a 1928 PierceArrow ad recognized.23

Subjects of desire 151

Figure 8.6 ‘This car meets the dual want’, Pierce-Arrow Motor Car advertisement, T&C, October 1906

While, in 1899, adman Charles Austin Bates was convinced that “the character of the advertising must depend upon the character of the goods advertised”,24 just two decades later advertising would be able to reverse the relation by associating, through image-making, any possible meaning with the goods advertised. At the same time, while an Arrow Collar ad in 1908 could affirm that “AN ARROW COLLAR will not make a man well groomed, but well groomed men wear Arrow

Figure 8.7 ‘Also elegance is needed’, Pierce-Arrow Motor Car advertisement, CLA, December 1908

Figure 8.8 ‘The Pierce-Arrow differs from other cars’, Pierce-Arrow Motor Car advertisement, CLA, December 1912

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Collar”,25 under liminal conditions in which the sense of reality was blurred and imitative tendencies increased, the associative mechanism turned goods into operators of social distinction, identity-making and self-fulfilment. The world of goods created by mass production and promoted by advertising and the whole set of new business tools offered a suitable means for the restructuring of the self and the meaning of reality pointing to the satisfaction of desires through acts of consumption. The restructuring contributed to the shaping of the consumer as the adequate form of subjectivity for the new social order of consumer capitalism, which conflated the good life with goods. The elective affinity between the modern subject’s perpetual longing for experiences and self-refashioning, and the commercial promotion of consumption as the fuel of capitalism which gave birth to the consumer, had to be fed by professional marketing.

Notes 1 For a discussion of modernism in America, see also Bell (1987), Hollinger (1987), Lears (1987), Roeder (1987), Singal (1987). 2 CO, The Studios of New York, 5/1889: 8, 20, 16. On American painter’s studios, see also Studio-Life in New York, The Art Journal, Vol. 5, 1979: 343–345; 353–355; Vol. 6, 1980: 1–4; The Summer Haunts of American Artists, CIMM, Vol. 30 (Oct.), 1885: 845–860 and McCoy (1966), Cikovsky (1976), Blaugrund (1982). 3 On advertising cards reproducing works of art, see PI 3/5/1893: Great Artistic Conception for Theater Poster. Many turn-of-the-century advertising cards are in BLC Series I Scrapbooks Box 57 Folder 2 and 3; Box 62 Folder 3; Box 64 Folder 2; Box 89 Folder 3; Box 94 Folder 1; Box 170 Folder 1; Box 172 Folders 1 and 4; Box 173 Folder 2. 4 See WCBA Vertical Files Box 7 Soap Folders 1 and 4 Pears’ Soap. About Ivory see, for example, LHJ 2 1894: front advertisements. About Bubble, see PI 3/4/1907: 37, Non-Existing Persons in Advertising Illustrations, Sivulka (2001) and, for example, OM 12/1912: IX. For “Cleanliness is next to Godliness”, see HMM, 2/1884: 76. For discussions of Pears’ and other soaps’ advertisements, see also PI 12/2/1890, 366: Pears’ Advertising; PI 15/1/1890: 269, Soap and sentiment and PI 1/1/1890: 214, John Hooper Advertising agent. 5 PI 3/4/1907, Wanted – A New Way to Advertise an Automobile: 27. See also PI 2/3/1904: 34, Advertising by Suggestion. 6 PI 29/6/1916, Personality in Store and Ads: 125. 7 BLC Series I Scrapbooks Box 52 Folder 3 Aunt Jemima. 8 PI 13/5/1915, Why the “Trade-Character”?: 12. On this “humanization”, see also PI 1/2/1917: 57, Making the Trade-Name Fit the Particular Appeal of the Line. 9 Coca-Cola’s ad is in WCBA Vertical Files Box 1 Beverages Folder 11. Silhouette’s is in WCBA Vertical Files Box 8 Automobile Folder 16 Jordan, Jordan Silhouette. For the Playboy model, see Watkins (1949: 50–51). About Pall Mall, see WCBA Vertical Files Box 1 Tobacco Folder 17 Pall Mall. 10 Heimann (2005: 132–133). 11 For Ivory, see WCBA Vertical Files Box 7 Soap Folder 11 Ivory Soap, in LHJ 11/1901: front advertisements. For Chesterfield, see, for example, Heimann (2005: 98) and AM, 2/1920: 6. 12 On Murad, see WCBA Vertical Files Box 1 Tobacco Folder 9 Murad, in T&C, 18/8/1096: 46. 13 See WCBA Vertical Files Box 1 Tobacco Folder 9, Murad, in T&C, 11/17/1906: 35 and also in MC, 12/1906: 145. On Pall Mall, see WCBA Vertical Files Box 1 Tobacco Folder 17 Pall Mall, 1917.

Subjects of desire 155 14 Bull Durham’s ads are in NWA Series 2 Proofsheets, Box 418 Tobacco, Bull Durham; see also WCBA Vertical Files Box 1 Tobacco Folder 11 Bull Durham, 1915. For Pall Mall, see WCBA Vertical files Box 1 Tobacco Folder 17 Pall Mall, 1911. Buick’s and ScotTissue’s ads are in Heimann (2004: 269). London Life’s, Loziers’, Dr Lyon’s and Grape-Nuts’ ads are in Heimann (2005: 99; 154, 158, 269, 492). For Pierce-Arrow, see CLA, 11/1908: 96. 15 For Pabst Blue Ribbon and Clysmic Bottled Water, see Heimann (2005: 45, 47). For Pears’ Soap, see WCBA Vertical Files Box 7 Soap Folder 2 Pears’ Soap, in LHJ 12/1909: back advertisement. For Lifebuoy Soap, see WCBA Vertical Files Box 6 Soap Folder 3 Lever Brothers, Lifebuoy, 1916. For Wrigley’s ad, see WCBA Vertical Files Box 15 (oversize) Chewing gum Folder 1 Wrigley, 1912. 16 PI 28/3/1929, The Advertiser’s Audience: 3. 17 See SEP, 14/7/1917: 40–41. 18 See WCBA Vertical Files Box 10 Automobile Folder 15 Pierce-Arrow, in T&C, 10/1906. 19 See WCBA Vertical Files Box 10 Automobile Folder 15 Pierce-Arrow, in CLA, 12/1908/133. On Vehicles and work of art see also WCBA Vertical Files Box 10 Automobile Folder 19 Pierce-Arrow, 1915. 20 WCBA Vertical Files Box 10 Automobile Folder 19 Pierce-Arrow, 1915. On this point, see also ads in WCBA Box 10 Automobile Folder 12 Peerless, 1914 and Folder 14 Pierce-Arrow, 1910. 21 See WCBA Vertical Files Box 10 Automobile Folder 14 Pierce-Arrow, in CLA 12/1912: 29 and Folder 19 Pierce-Arrow, 1915. Among many others, see also the Baker Electrics ad in Heimann (2005: 140) and in CLA 12/1912: 101, depicting the cars in front of a theatre’s entrance, suggesting the association with social prestige. 22 WCBA Vertical Files Box 10 Automobile Folder 20 Pierce-Arrow, in T&C 7/1915. 23 See WCBA Vertical Files Box 10 Automobile Folder 19 Pierce-Arrow, 1924 and Heimann (2004: 83). 24 PI 27/12/1899, Getting the Facts: 42. 25 See NWA Series 2 Proofsheets Box 255 Folder 2 Arrow Collars, 1908.

Part IV

Marketing professionalism The engine of consumer capitalism and its lasting effect

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Marketing plan and consumer research

The process through which the construction of social identity and the production of desire were attached to consumer goods and consumer practices was framed by Harvard Business School “marketing pioneer” Arch Shaw (Copeland 1958b) as the “social justification of differentiation of commodities” (Shaw 1912: 718). Compared with the older economic conditions, the process of commodity differentiation that was unfolding during the time he was writing in 1912 was making possible, he contended, “a more accurate adjustment in supplying human wants” (Ibid.: 719). The market was therefore at the service of the consumer because “the more highly differentiated the scale of commodities is, the more accurately will it be possible for the individual consumer to satisfy his varied material wants” (Ibid.: 720). As the analysis has shown, the consumer’s varied material wants were not a natural fact, as implied in Shaw’s argument. They were in fact an historical outcome arising under liminal conditions from the interplay between socio-cultural changes investing the sense of identity and social relations of “souls in transition” on the one hand, and business tools conceived in order to tackle economic problems of overproduction and competition on the other. In his book published in 1928, Paul Mazur framed the process just the other way around. He argued that American prosperity, which was “fairly well developed by 1914” (Mazur 1928: 25), arose because “desire was enthroned in the minds of the American consumer, and was served abjectly by the industries that had enthroned it” (Ibid.: 50). Shaw and Mazur separately identified two of the conditions of the emergence of consumer capitalism that at the time of its making were de facto intertwined. The mutual influence between the social demand for commodity differentiation and the enthronement of desire in the mind of the consumer paralleled the two conceptions around which marketing oscillates: an instrument for serving the already existing wants of the consumer, and a tool for stimulating new desires. This bipolar spirit embodied in marketing is the lasting effect stamped on consumer capitalism by its conditions of emergence. These final chapters thus describe the rise of this marketing professionalism up to the 1920s and highlight two lines along which it developed. The first is the path of integration of business tools and channels of trade towards the idea of the marketing plan and the practice of consumer research; the second involves the process through which marketing professionalism made a system out of earlier

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strategies, thus anticipating allegedly postmodern forms of marketing such as customer relationship marketing and the experience economy. In conclusion, these two strands will be gathered up to delineate a specific condition of the emergence of consumer capitalism and its lasting effect up to the present. To begin with the path of integration, it must be noted that marketing did not develop its professional know-how on the basis of a progressive discovery of a reality that was always there but had previously gone unnoticed; on the contrary, it established itself because business tools and business practices had contributed to the making of its target object: consumer demand. Marketing professionalism and the modern consumer emerged through a reciprocal effect: the former would not have emerged without the latter, who, in turn, would not have become the dominant form of subjectivity for the new society if business tools had not stimulated his emergence by promoting the new world of goods. It is, then, worth looking at how the marketing plan and consumer research emerged after World War I, and especially during the 1920s through a systematization of the positive outcomes fostered during previous decades.

Marketing takes command It was exactly when the evolution of a new sophisticated subject – the modern consumer – was aknowledged that marketing entered the business equation. Harvard Business School established the Bureau of Business Research to study the integrated process of distribution and selling, and in 1914 introduced a compulsory marketing course in its graduate programme (Copeland 1958a). Only two years before, Arch Shaw, one of the men behind the establishment of the Bureau, had recognized that “the most pressing problem of the business man” was “systematically to study distribution” (Shaw 1912: 706).1 As Copleand recalled in his history of Harvard Business School, the term “marketing” abandoned the old reference to “trade in raw commodities” to comprehend “the whole process of physical distribution, demand activation, merchandising, pricing, and other activities involved in the exchange of products and services” (Copeland 1958a: 43). The widening of markets required the integrated management of the distributive chain securing cooperation from each player involved. As explained in the previous chapters, the new complexity was due to the success that the whole array of business tools, from advertising to window display, from trademark to store design, allowed in creating new markets and expanding the old ones through the activation of consumption. The parallel between the first and the second edition of the advertising handbook by Earnest Elmo Calkins, one of the greatest admen of his age, makes clear both what brought about the complexity and what that implied for businessmen. In 1905, the first edition placed a high value on advertising and the trademark. These, it was argued, helped manufacturers to stay close to their prospective consumers, thus avoiding the string of middlemen between them. In 1915, the second edition – a fully reworked book, as noticed in the preface – made no reference to the elimination of middlemen, and the description of “the channels of trade” (Calkins and Holden 1905: 33–62) was turned into a discussion of “the

Marketing plan and consumer research 161 necessary steps for marketing a new product” (Calkins 1915: 151–182; see also Ivey 1921). Under the new complexity, manufacturers and retailers must secure each other’s goodwill. While manufacturers needed their products to be on the dealer’s shelves so that advertising would not go to waste, dealers needed the nationally renowned articles to generate high sales.2 At the same time, as a result of the growing influence that mass retailing was exerting on the public, it was acknowledged that the chance of having a brand “advertised by name under the name of a store of high standing, implies the endorsement of that store and secures that store’s whole trade as a possible market”.3 The condition was well understood by the Geo. P. Rowell Advertising Agency, which promoted a “community of interest” among manufacturers and retailers built upon the conviction expressed by one of its junior partners: “Let the manufacturers’ policy include the retailer and the retailer will reciprocate”.4 As masterfully sketched by a national leader in the canning industry, Frank Van Camp of Van Camp Packing Company, “thorough distribution always helps and frequently is necessary to the success of an advertising campaign”. If the good is stored by the retailer during the early stages of the advertising campaign, the consumer will probably have “his attention called to it by the retailer who has his money invested”5 and the risk for substitution with the ‘just as good but cheaper’ article will be considerably lowered.6 The work of cooperation in the distributive chain ran parallel with a search for the integrated management of the many functions having to do with the exchange of products and services. As Calkins argued before the Advertising Men’s League in 1911, the time “when the sales manager and the advertising manager were competitors” and “each tried to claim credit for the sales” was long gone, because it had now been acknowledged that they both worked for “the securing of distribution and demand”. 7 The same held true for the relation between the display manager and the advertising manager, or the relation between the former and the sales manager, because they all worked for the “extension of business-building efficiency”.8 No matter how many types of organization actually were devised, the different functions were logically linked to the higher purpose of the transfer of products and service to the final consumer, and the whole array of business tools developed by each department was considered as part of an overall marketing function.9 The role of advertising was especially reworked by the new marketing orientation and the advertising profession underwent a further change. The idea of advertising as an autonomous trick of the trade was replaced by the conception of advertisements as part of a general advertising campaign integrated into the marketing plan; as a consequence, the advertising man was assigned the more general task of investigating market conditions and distributive channels as the solid ground upon which a campaign could be designed. Having started as a space broker and then evolving into a professional copywriter, by the second decade of the new century the advertising man was already becoming a marketing advisor (Pope 1983; Laird 1998). Advertising agencies began to plan their advertisements in close cooperation with the client’s advertising and sales departments, and the whole process was monitored by general management. It was not possible to

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design an effective advertising campaign without an in-depth knowledge of the company’s marketing needs and general business strategy. Along those lines, scientific planning became the rationale of the adman’s work as a marketing advisor. As clearly stated by the advertising manager for Kellogg’s, the launch of a campaign must be “preceded by careful thought as to the character and peculiarities of those to whom it is addressed, and a full recognition of the opportunities for error and failure, as well as the chances for success which it is likely to encounter”.10 Successfully performing such a far-reaching task implied, first of all, answering the question raised by the advertising manager of Burroughs’ Adding Machine Company: “How can I accurately measure the probable force of my advertising?”11 The answer was sought along three lines of investigation: attempting to study the relationship between general promotional efforts and sales results; trying to test the effectiveness of media used; and assessing the value of the copy itself. Even though it was clear that there is no objective method to evaluate the impact of a specific advertisement or appeal on an individual’s act of purchase, aggregated sales data were considered as mass psychological reactions to promotional stimuli and thus susceptible to statistical analysis. A common scheme of analysis was to identify some tangible factors of the campaign – such as the advertisement being run at different periods of the year, the different media used or the different sizes of the copy in the same media – and then correlate with variations in sales volume during a given period. The use of statistical analysis was not restricted to the study of past records but in some cases was applied to future advertising through tests of efficacy. For example, a list of media was drawn up where two different copies of the same advertisement were separately run, then inquiries from prospective consumers and actual sales were followed up to determine which copy proved more effective. The same strategy was applied to test the value of two or more different media. However, tests were not considered conclusive because many disturbing elements may affect the reliability of results as spurious correlations. For example, the evaluation of different national magazines could be invalidated by a third variable not taken into account– such as the effectiveness of local retail advertising, or perhaps the weakness of the sales forces – as the real determinants of increasing or decreasing in sales.12 A second type of test, taken from applied psychology, was used to prevent these shortcomings. The test moved into the “laboratory”, where different types of advertisements were presented to selected samples of target consumers in order to assess different elements of the ad, such as the level of comprehension allowed by the copy-text, the perceived relevance of the illustration, the persuasiveness of the slogan, and its appeal. Two methods were extensively used: “the method of direct effect” and “the order of merit”. In the first case, samples of people selected to represent different groups of the total population were asked to score (along a range going from very strong to very weak) each appeal conceived for the advertised product. In this way, the most effective appeal for each group was readily ascertained by simply totalling the individual score made by every appeal. On that empirical basis, the adman was able to determine, through a simple comparison among groups, if a multiple-appeals campaign was needed, or whether a single

Marketing plan and consumer research 163 advertisement for the whole population would suffice. The relatively simple differentiation of the advertising audience of previous decades (see Chapter 1) was replaced by scientific market segmentation developed on an empirical basis. For the second method, individuals of the targeted class of consumers were handed several slightly different draft versions of the same appeal and asked to rank them according to the degree of perceived effectiveness. Through adding up the individual results, a classification of the persuasiveness of different copy could be arranged. The use of these methods was not limited to analysing appeals or illustrations, but also extended to the copy’s typeface. It was recognized that “each type-face expresses a definite idea or feeling, or creates a definite image”, and so it “not only affects the typographical section of the advertisement, but influences the effectiveness of the entire advertisement as well”.13 In addition, tests were used to assess the value of trademarks, their name and logo, and even trade-characters. In the case of the trademark name, tests were conceived for selecting new names and for testing already-existing ones. For the selection of new names, a sample of consumers was given a list of options to rank. In texting existing names, the method of mental association was profitably used to determine which trademarks were thought of first and most frequently, and for what specific reason. As George Hotchkiss, head of the Department of Advertising and Marketing at New York University, made clear, “any preference on the consumer’s part presupposes that the name of the manufacturer or brand occupies a place in his mind closely associated with the type of commodity”; however, familiarity with the name “is [only] the first step toward purchasing it”, because there is a difference between mere familiarity and “respect and admiration”.14 Thus what was sought in testing the name, the logo, advertising and the trade-characters was the establishment of a positive association in the mind of the consumer with the name of the business, and not mere acknowledgement. The trade-character as “a means of creating human interest”15 around the product was vital in order to move from the relatively simple conception of the personalized business and its presence in the public’s mind, to the marketing strategy of creating what in contemporary marketing is called a “brand identity” upon which to establish a strong brand reputation. It is not by chance that when marketing professionalism emerged, the use of the legal word “trademark” was progressively abandoned in favour of the more connotative and polysemic “brand”.16

Consumer demand – the controlling factor Marketing mass-manufactured consumer brands required empirically based knowledge about the buying habits and motives of purchasers who had now become sophisticated consumers. Market demand needed to be systematically studied, and advertisements understood from the purchaser’s point of view. The time had long passed since “the closest contact that the production end of the business had with its final market was the retailer, through the company’s own salesmen”.17 The consumer’s point of view was obtained through different methods of inquiry. For example, if one wanted to test the relative value of his streetcar

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advertising, patrons of the advertised line were interviewed about the ad-cards they noticed while riding: the ones they remembered the most, or that they appraised as cleverest or best illustrated or, also, those they disliked the most. Personal interviews were also used by manufacturers to secure first-hand sales information from consumers about their buying motives. Alternatively, if data were needed about the amount of money American women spent on clothes a survey was organized, like the one arranged by Macy’s. This revealed, interestingly, that affluent women usually spent no more money proportionately on clothes than the average woman. Studies of the kind were even useful to disclose unexpected buying habits on the basis of which new selling appeals could be conceived, as in the case of washing machine advertising, which also became appealing to men once men’s fascination with the mechanical efficiency of the appliances was discovered.18 Marketing professionalism profited greatly from the work of social scientists and their toolkit with respect to the management of consumer demand, for it was only through empirical investigation that one was able to ascertain the real identity of the consumer, upon which a proper offer (or pitch) could be based. It must be remembered, however, that in previous decades the consumer’s identity could not be properly measured, purely because that identity was not developed into its mature shape. The development of the modern consumer happened thanks to the activity of businessmen who, during the previous decades, had the task of imagining the consumer’s identity through rules of experience. Once the genesis of the consumer was completed, thanks in part to their contribution, the consumer no longer had to be imagined but could be scientifically studied by marketing. The appraisal of market conditions went along with the scientific study of the consumer and was especially intended to tighten cooperation between manufacturers and retailers. In particular, the national market was subdivided into trading areas useful to forecast sales quotas and plan distribution more carefully and with less waste. Information about trading areas gathered through dealers’ or salesmen’s investigations was used to differentiate advertising efforts and sales strategies, thus supplementing market segmentation of consumer subsets along with the territorial variable.19 Market research came to be the solid foundation upon which promotion, distribution and sale were closely planned. Its value was first acknowledged for the marketing of a new product, as in this case a careful assessment of market conditions and prospective demand was crucial. However, a growing appreciation extended also to established markets, as the research assisted in charting new market potentialities and unnoticed consumer demands. As a contributor to PIM remarked, the fact that a manufacturer “is not getting all the business that it could get is not revealed unless a market investigation of some sort is made”.20 Market research gathered information on several crucial issues concerning the marketing process: the study of trading areas and distribution, the study of the prospective consumer, the analysis of sales results and sales methods, the analysis of advertising results, the appraisal of competitors and the forecast of market potentialities. The integrated consideration of the whole set of questions focused on by market research was to become the backbone of business practice.21

Marketing plan and consumer research 165 Market research made clear that the vital element of the business cycle was consumer demand, for if “this could not be created the rest of the machinery would lie idle”.22 Therefore the demand side ranked higher than the supply side, and the marketing plan had to be guided by the recognition, expressed by the President of the International Advertising Association, that “there is but one real sale – and that is the transaction in which the article comes into the hands of the ultimate consumer whose destructive use stops its further movement”.23 Thus, the integrated management of promotion, distribution and sales, which involved the whole array of business tools and their executives, must point at that final transaction; accordingly, every middleman in the chain depended on the demand of the final consumer, the inquiry into which was entrusted to market research. Each function came to be part of an overarching marketing plan that monitored the whole process of exchange aimed at reaching the final consumer. The advertising campaign, too, became only one element, though a crucial one, of the marketing plan and advertising as a taught subject came to be absorbed into marketing courses. Advertising agencies therefore underwent a thorough reorganization and were progressively converted into marketing agencies, assisting their clients with an integrated analysis of distribution, promotion and sales strategies, as the pioneering J. W. Thompson Company did at the beginning of the 1920s (Mazur 1928; Silva 1996a, 1996b).24 Entering the 1920s, as evidenced by the earliest marketing handbooks, “marketing” had already become the word most commonly used to designate the exchange process through which a good or a service passed from a seller to a consumer for money (Cherington 1920; Copeland 1920; Clark 1922). Accordingly, the marketing plan was intended for the management of all the operations and functions necessary to the fulfilment of the exchange. For Melvin Copeland, the man behind the marketing course at Harvard Business School (McNair 1957), the marketing plan “must start with a consideration of the consumer; the next step is to adjust the plans of retail and wholesale distribution and the advertising program in accordance with the analysis of the buying habits of consumers among whom the market for the product is to be developed”.25 Therefore, the marketing plan covered: the analysis of market conditions, past, present and prospective; the analysis of the consumer, his habits and motives; the appraisal of competitors; the study of the product, its brand identity and its package; the determination of retailing price; and the formulation of the advertising campaign in accordance with distributive and sales policies.26 It must be noted that through marketing professionalism consumption displaced production as the linchpin of the economic process and paved the way to a final, crucial business innovation at the foundations of rising consumer capitalism: demand-driven manufacturing process. The principle upon which the displacement took place was clearly set out by Hugh Chalmers of Chalmers Motor Company, a company that after several years of booming sales eventually faltered because of overproduction. Chalmers contended that, while the making of a product is wholly within the control of the manufacturer who possesses the right “models, machinery, materials, men and money”, so much so that he can make “1,000,000

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or 10,000,000 thereof”, the same is not true for its marketing, because “the fact that you can sell 10 units” of the product “does not mean that you can sell 1,000, let alone 1,000,000 or 10,000,000”; as a consequence – he concluded – “the converse is much more nearly true – that if you can sell you can make” and, therefore, “so much more vital is the market than the ability to manufacture”.27 In accordance with the principle declaring that production depends on consumption, product making had to be guided by the consumer demand revealed through market analysis. For example, an in-depth analysis of consumers’ buying motives, or a product test conducted on prospective consumers, could help to adjust the method of manufacture or even the product itself. Sounding out consumers’ varying wants was required in order to turn ordinary production into regular sales, thus saving established industries from going out of business.28 The view of consumer demand as the prime mover of consumer capitalism implied that “the process of laying out a marketing plan for a commodity should begin with the creation of that commodity”. 29 Well before the foundation concept of the marketing mix was popularized (McCarthy 1960; Kotler 1967), the marketing plan formulated an integrated vision of marketing tools intended to manage the four Ps (place, promotion, price and product) through market analysis and the appraisal of the consumer. The genealogy of consumer capitalism has shown the extent to which the emergence of marketing professionalism that answers to consumer demand tells only half the story, the one about the mature, sophisticated consumer of the 1920s; the other half of the story concerns the way in which the consumer grew up during previous decades at the interplay between socio-cultural changes that altered people’s relation to goods and business practices that worked on the production of desire. Not only response to wants, but also desire creation was at the basis of the marketing that fuelled the engine of consumer capitalism. Donaldson Brown, Vice-President of General Motors, had this idea clearly in mind when he spoke about how the relation between demand and supply affected economic growth. He contended that, while the stability of employment depended “upon the correct adjustment of supply to consumer demand”, the growth of employment depended “upon the growth in consuming power”.30 Therefore, national prosperity depended on the increase in consumption, as Brown argued when he described the methods of forecasting consumer demand laid out in the marketing plan for General Motors: I should state that we recognize two aspects in connection with these activities. One of these may be called the statistical, the other the constructive aspect. The statistical efforts, as the name implies, are directed toward ascertaining the statistical facts bearing upon future consumer demand. The constructive efforts are directed toward improving probabilities.31 Through research, the marketing plan appraised the prospective market and, on this statistical basis, worked to “favorably affect the consumer demand”32 for the product. In other words, on the one hand, marketing must answer the existing demand; on the other, it must increase the same demand through effective stimulation. As it concerns “the need or desire for the product, which may be

Marketing plan and consumer research 167 real or imaginary, latent or active”,33 marketing fosters demand by finding – or creating – all the consumer wants that are still unnoticed, perhaps because they are non-existent before marketing professionalism makes them exist in the mind of the consumer. Practitioners were well aware that consumer capitalism emerged because consumption had become the main instrument for the fulfilment of desires; accordingly, they soon realized its wheels could be set in motion only if product differentiation were constantly fuelled, alongside the proliferation of people’s desires.

Notes 1 See also PI 27/5/1908: 3, What Lies Deeper than Advertising. 2 See MRSW 10/1908: 17, Cooperating with the Manufacturer; PI 15/6/1916: 3, A National Distribution Based Solely Upon Consumer Demand and PI 25/11/1915: 25, Armour Theory of “Consumer Acceptance” Through Advertising. See also the cooperative strategy set up by Palmolive to market its soap in PI 9/6/1910: 30, Putting a New Soap on Dealers’ Shelves. 3 PI 4/1/1905, A Scheme of Enormous Possibilities: 31. 4 PI 8/3/1905, The Relation of Store Manager to Advertising: 59. 5 PI 8/9/1909, Advertising and the Consumer: 24. PI 16/1/1907: 14, The Part the Retailer Plays. 6 On cooperation between manufacturers and retailers, see PI 15/1/1914: 23, The Retailer as Center of Consumer Campaigning; PI 8/1/1914: 98, Retailer Will Co-operate if Rightly Approached; and Hess (1924). The cooperation between manufacturers and retailers was also carried over to window display and store design. See MRSW 7/1912: 11, Advertising Windows; PI 18/11/1915: 20, The Retailer’s Store Window as an Effective Advertising Medium for the Manufacturer; MRSW 12/1914: 18, Connecting Up; PI 3/7/1924: 147, For Manufacturers Interested in Better Window Display; MRSW 4/1913: 38, Mechanical Windows; PI 13/6/1906: 3, General Publicity Sells Ingersoll; PI 17/7/1913: 3, How To Get Your Display into the Dealer’s Window; PI 25/2/1915: 64, Manufacturers’ Window Displays in Big Department Stores; and PIM 12/1922: 94, Chevrolet Lends Flavor of Realism to Dealer’s Window. At any rate, there were mixed views on the topic because of the value that window and interior decoration had in building the personality of the store. About different reasons for approval or rejection of manufacturers’ displays by retailers, see PI 20/4/1910: 51, Retailers and Trademark Window Display; PI 26/8/1915: 49, The Big-Store Window-Display Man – Who He Is; PI 20/1/1916: 25, Department Store Man Tells why He Accepted or Rejected Window Displays; and PIM 12/1919: 24, Windows and the Display Man. 7 PI 23/2/1911, The Securing of Distribution and Demand: 32. See also PI 21/10/1903: 10, Selling Merchandise. 8 MRSW 9/1914, Co-operation in Display: 37. On cooperation for efficiency, see also MRSW 4/1919: 17, Display Man Publicity and Sales Promoter; PI 23/11/1904: 48, The Relation of the Department Store Advertising Manager to the Selling Force; MRSW 1/1915: 38, The Ad and the Window; MRSW 5/1919: 25, The Importance of Co-operation; MRSW 5/1924: 13, New Appeal in Clothing Display; MRSW 11/1929: 7, What the Merchandise Manager Expects of the Display Manager; and PI 9/3/1910: 71, Team Work Between Sales and Advertising Offices. 9 See MRSW 9/1921: 26, Advertising and Window Display; PI 23/2/1911: 32, The Securing of Distribution and Demand; PI 2/5/1912: 24, Advertising and the Sales Manager; and Sullivan (1924). 10 PI 11/8/1910, Selling and Advertising Points Gleaned from the Kellogg Experience: 3. On the advertising man as a marketing advisor, see also PI 19/1/1910: 4, Advertising

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14 15 16

17

18

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and the Sales Plan; Kynett (1924) and Resor (1924). On cooperation between agencies and advertising and sales departments, see PI 10/2/1916: 25, The Organization of the Advertising Department and PI 24/2/1916: 77, The Organization of the Advertising Department. PI 26/1/1910, More Science in Advertising: 58. On the analysis of past records, see HBR 1/1929: 185, Analyzing Advertising Results I; HBR 4/1929: 312, Analyzing Advertising Results II; PI 11/7/1906: 3, How a Large Boston Store Checks its Ads; see also Starch (1923). On analysis to design advertising campaigns and on tests of efficacy and spurious correlations, see PI 18/5/1910: 33, Why Not an Institute for Advertising Research?; PI 26/9/1929: 36, Test Campaign Gives Toothpaste Its Copy Theme; PI 22/5/1913: 3, How Keyed Returns May Throw Light in Medium and Copy; and PI 6/9/1928: 89, How to Test Copy. PIM 7/1924, Test to Determine the Best Type for Your Advertisements: 31; see also JAP 12/1923: 312, A Study of the Appropriateness of Type Faces; PIM 2/1921: 25, Decoration which Build an Atmosphere for the Product; and PI 6/9/1928: 89, How to Test Copy. On applied psychology, see JAP 9/1918: 270, The Value of Relevancy in Advertising Illustration; JAP 3/1923: 1, The Conditions of Belief in Advertising; JAP 12/1923: 364, Measuring the Comprehension of Advertising; and JAP 3/1925: 5, The Curve of Forgetting for Advertising Material. On the “method of direct effect”, see PIM 9/1923: 26, Selecting the Selling Appeal and JAP 6/1924: 232, Advertising Appeals Selected by the Method of Direct Impression. About the “order of merit” test, see PIM 10/1923: 46, Another Method for Selecting the Selling Appeal and PI 24/1/1929: 3, What Advertising Appeal Will Most Effectively Sell My Product?. See also the works by Harry L. Hollingworth (1913), Psychology Instructor at Columbia University and pioneer in business research, Daniel Starch (1914), teacher at Wisconsin University and then at Harvard, and Kitson (1923). On segmentation, see also PIM 1/1926: 81, Specifics – How Research Digs Them Out. PI 9/2/1922, How Well Known is Your Brand?: 17. PI 13/5/1915, Why the “Trade-Character”?: 10. On name selection, see PI 2/1/1913: 44, Habit and its Influence on Consumer Demand. On mental association, see PI 9/2/1922: 17, How Well Known is Your Brand?; JAP 9/1917: 275, Association-Reactions Applied to Ideas of Commercial Brands of Familiar Articles; and JAP 3/1925: 60, The Free Association Method as a Measure of the Efficiency of Advertising. At the beginning of the 1920s, the word “trademark” ceased to be used by practitioners, except when speaking of legal issues such as trademark registration or infringement. PI 1/3/1928, Testing the Product for its Consumer Use: 159. On the consumer’s point of view, see PIM 7/1925: 35, Advertising from the Prospect’s Point of View. More on changes in the demand of the consumer is in PI 11/4/1929: 101, What’s Around the Corner in Marketing? On interviews, see PI 26/5/1921: 3, Letting Your Customers Set You Right. On streetcar advertising, see PI 2/9/1903: 32, Street Car Advertising. On Macy’s survey, see MRSW 9/1923: 38, Women and Their Clothes. On new selling appeals, see PI 2/6/1921: 126, When it is Advisable to Change the Advertising Appeal? A Lifebuoy ad built on the study of the consumer is in PI 17/4/1913: 94, Copy that Has Punch. For a study of differences in the use of toothpaste between the well-to-do and the lower classes, see JAP 6/1923: 173, The Basis of Toothpaste Sales in Representative Communities. Booklets were devised on an extensive study of the consumers they were addressed to: see PI 16/4/1914: 49, Building the Catalogue to Meet Market Conditions; PI 23/4/1914: 28, Catalogues that Fit the State of Mind of the Consumer; and PI 4/6/1914: 54, Study of the Product for Catalogue Purposes. On trading areas and sales quotas, see PI 19/7/1928: 81, Recent Development in Advertising Research; PIM 11/1928: 46, Measuring Markets for Advertised Merchandise;

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22 23 24

25 26

27 28 29 30 31 32 33

PIM 12/1928: 48, Measuring Markets for Advertised Merchandise (2); Stone (1924); and Booz (1924). On appraisal of market conditions, see also PI 4/8/1909: 26, Using Inquires to Push Business with Dealers; PI 4/1/1917: 32, Devising Special Sales Plan for Dealers; PIM 10/1927: 75, Before You Advertise Appraise the Market; and PI 16/5/1912: 28, Getting the Salesmen to Help the Advertising. On cooperation between manufacturers and dealers, see the case of General Motors in Clarke (2003). PI 14/5/1925, Consumption Statistics Good Place to Find New Markets: 143. See also PI 18/12/1913: 17, The Importance of Market Analysis in a Young Industry and PI 20/5/1915: 33, Making a Survey of Possible “Demand” and Developing It. On the growing importance of market research, see also HBR 4/1923: 308, The Planning and Preparation of an Advertising Campaign; PI 28/6/1923: 134, Getting the Facts in Commercial Research Work; Cherington (1924); and Babson (1924). The value of “quantitative analysis of the market and a qualitative analysis of the consumer’s demands” (MRSW 12/1924, Dollars and Sense: 18) was appreciated also by the retail sector. Research departments dedicated to data analysis were established in business organizations and later within advertising agencies; see PI 2/3/1922: 77, Just What Can a “Merchandising Department” Accomplish? and PI 20/4/1922: 25, How to Obtain Dependable Business Research. See HBR 1/1923: 175, The Progress of Commercial Research; PI 20/4/1922: 25, How to Obtain Dependable Business Research?; PI 7/6/1923: 3, Commercial Research as a Basis for Advertising and Selling Campaign; PI 9/2/1922: 142, Applying the Market Survey to Business; PIM 6/1926: 41, The Value of Research in Sales Management; and MRSW 2/1929: 42, The Trend of Distribution. For a general introduction to commercial research see also Duncan (1919). PI 13/5/1908, The Commercial Value of an Advertised Trademark: 3. PI 18/10/1928, Rationalism and its Place in the Merchandising Scheme: 98. For the advertising campaign as part of the marketing plan, see PI 27/4/1916: 78, The Financing and Successful Organization of a Co-operative Marketing Campaign. On advertising as a topic within marketing courses, see the case of Harvard Business School in PI 24/6/1915: 118, Harvard Economic Approach to Advertising Problems. HBR 4/1923, Relations of Customers’ Buying Habits to Marketing Methods: 288–89. See PI 5/3/1914: 85, The Merchandising Policy Behind the Advertising Plan and PIM 4/1929: 35, Six Basic Marketing Errors. On the description of a marketing plan, namely the one set out by Procter & Gamble for shortening Crisco, see PI 9/1/1913: Efficient Planning Before Advertising. PI 17/5/1917, Chalmers on the Fundamentals of Marketing: 102. See PI 28/6/1923: 134, Getting the Facts in Commercial Research Work; PI 17/1/1924: 92, Sounding Out Consumers’ Preference in Advance; PIM 9/1923: 26, Selecting the Selling Appeal; and PI 1/3/1928: 159, Testing the Product for its Consumer Use. PI 26/4/1928, Why Merchandising is more than Marketing: 140. PI 17/5/1928, Consumer Demand – The Controlling Factor in Sales: 94. Ibid.: 95. Ibid.: 96. HBR 4/1926, The Developing of a Basic Purchase Power Index By Counties: 276.

10 Relationship marketing and the experience economy

In 1924 Paul Cherington, director of research of J. W. Thompson Company and former professor at Harvard Business School (Maynard 1941; Copeland 1958a), addressed an assembly of business consultants on marketing. He stated that “in addition to the actual transfer of ownership”, modern marketing has two further functions: a first one aiming at “the setting up and preservation of direct relations between maker and final user” and a second pointing “to keep the flow of actual goods moving from large-scale producer to his innumerable final patrons”.1 As argued by Cherington, modern marketing was not limited to the physical transfer of products but involved the development of marketing devices that could create a stable relation between buyer and seller while stimulating consumer demand and the flow of goods from producers to consumers. The former task impressively anticipated what more than half a century later would have been defined as relationship marketing, being presented as a novelty in marketing management. On the contrary, the search for consumer retention and satisfaction was considered by practitioners to be a vital ingredient of marketing since its beginning. The same holds true for the latter task, because marketing professionalism pointed to the systematic exploitation of the sensory, emotional and aesthetic dimensions related to goods, as well as the places and practices of consumption, even though these tactics are considered the discoveries of the contemporary experience economy. Given these misconceptions, it is worthwhile focusing on the analysis on such developments.

Goodwill and brand loyalty The new marketing orientation considered business tools not simply as a means to reduce the physical distance between buyers and sellers, or as instruments to ensure economic transactions and increase their numbers; they were conceived as marketing devices that would reproduce under modern conditions the personal and usually friendly relations clients had with merchants and artisans in the good old days.2 The strategy developed in marketing circles to replace personal trust with corporate loyalty rested on the increasingly central role of consumption in the everyday life of people within consumer capitalism. The moral foundation of consumer capitalism, expressed in its ability to supply an ever-expanding array

Relationship marketing, experience economy 171 of human desires through consumption, reinvented the meaning of economic relations and their social role. Marketing built its customer orientation upon that historical turn. The first task was to develop consumers’ relationship to the business on mutual trust, akin to confidence in personal relations. The goodwill of a trade was defined as “the probability that the old customers will resort to the old place” and it was based on a “state of things that has grown up through a long period and been prompted by large expenditure of money”.3 In other words, goodwill was found in the people “who have confidence” in the store or the brand “because they have learned that it can be trusted to do the right thing under all circumstances”. Every businessman should therefore plan “to win permanent friends rather than merely buyers of today offerings”.4 The ability to turn buyers into friends through the creation “of a feeling of confidence on the part of the purchasing public”5 rested upon the new role of consumption in the identity-making and self-fulfilment of people, who were supposed to be grateful to those providing such an essential service. Moreover, market research suggested a positive correlation between consumer’s loyalty and sales revenues. A series of studies conducted among retailers revealed that 80 per cent of the total sales of the average store was made to regular customers, and only 20 per cent to new customers, thus making advertising that aimed at getting new clients less profitable than that which aimed at regular customers. A new principle suggesting that customer retention is more profitable than getting new customers was advanced among practitioners, both in retailing and in manufacturing. In addition, customer retention became a source of competitive advantage because many profitable suggestions could be obtained from the engaged consumer.6 Marketing professionals, then, secured profitable customer relationships by focusing on the satisfaction of their clients and on customer retention strategies. Companies turned their trademarks into brands, and they used the personality of their business to build and communicate a distinctive identity, which capitalized on the prestige of their familiar products and generated goodwill for their new articles (Schwarzkopf 2010).7 Customer loyalty and stable, mutually beneficial relations were thought to follow the effective communication of brand identity. The movement for truth in advertising that had become a planned search for credibility in business activities became the pursuit of consumer loyalty in relationship marketing and brand management. Personalized communication with consumers was vital to make them feel like a friend of the company and, accordingly, marketers figured out solutions that could add a personal touch to mass communication. For example, in the lead-up to Christmas, many companies sent letters personally signed by the president conveying Christmas greetings to their customers.8 A remarkable solution for systematizing the “personal touch” and establishing a relation of “friendliness” with clients was adopted by the Charles B. Knox Gelatine Company. Every time a request was sent for the famous “Dainty Desserts” and “Good Economy” books printed by the company, Dear Mrs Knox – as the president of the company was known to her clients – replied with a signed letter to her client written in a friendly manner and asking the name of her grocer and whether she had any friends

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interested in the books. A letter was then mailed to the grocer asking for a list of fifty customers, to whom books would then be sent together with the personalized letter from the president. In this way, Mrs Knox was able not only to build her market upon a system of direct communication with clients and retailers, but she also became “a personality to every user of her product with about the same force and effort that she would be in person with a few”.9 The personal touch was used to make regular customers out of occasional buyers. Indeed, many shops collected through their salesmen the personal data of people buying for the first time and then followed it up by sending to these customers personalized letters about sales news, special offers and even small gifts for special occasions like birthdays.10 Via a detailed card recording system, retailers and manufacturers catalogued the required data and were able to build a regular market and cement customer satisfaction. From this viewpoint, the spread of the telephone was a blessing because it gave marketers the possibility to talk to their new friends and show them how much they cared for them by asking about their family affairs, because, as a contributor for MRSW suggested, “that makes them feel that you are not so engrossed in business as to be insensible to the little hints that make the bond of friendship stronger between the storekeeper and his customers”.11 Like a growing friendship, the more people bought from the same company or store, the more they got to know each other in mutual trust. Even though the close relation was established in order to loosen the pocket book of the consumer for corporate ends, it was nevertheless understood as mutually satisfactory. It must also be noted that the personal and friendly contacts systematically exploited by relationship marketing were based on ideas discovered via business tools during the previous decades – a central idea being the importance of building a personality for a business and the benefit of “humanizing” massmanufactured products and business institutions (see Part III). A second way to implement relationship marketing on the basis of consumer satisfaction was to offer clients information and facts helpful for their life and only in a roundabout way related with the products, thus evidencing the interest the company had in their clients as true friends. For example, the Mennen Company gave out Aunt Belle’s Baby Book, a mini-treatise on the care of babies which entered more than 100,000 American homes and helped new mothers in child rearing. The president of Mennen made apparent the strategy behind the publication when he explained that it was intended as a way to keep close to the buying public and, accordingly, “the book would be successful only as a sincere attempt to educate mothers in the proper care of their babies”. Therefore – he added – “it mentions our own products only when necessary, and briefly, as we mention many other articles”. Indeed, the target was not immediate sales but the establishment of goodwill. Funnily enough, this marketing strategy was used as the wording for the book promotion: “Friendship is the best investment we know”, because every mother helped in child rearing by Mennen’s book “will be a good friend of ours all her life”.12 Approaching a contemporary marketing discourse on corporate social responsibility, and incidentally serving brand reputation management, was a booklet handed out by Macy’s department store in New York. Having an influential position in the community, the store took on the responsibility of trying to educate its shoppers in

Relationship marketing, experience economy 173 the modern science of budget system; that is, organizing their family budget according to scientific principles. An impressive amount of data on the relation between family income and expenditure on apparel was collected from different surveys and reports and in collaboration with different institutions, which was then processed into a complete budget scheme suggesting the optimal amount of expenditure on apparel for each income class. This impressive work was sustained by a firm belief “that the education of women in the fundamentals of proper retail buying will not only be of benefit to the individual but to stores as well”; this made possible, in Macy’s view, a steady increase in the purchasing power of its clients because “just as retail business progresses financially under a sound merchandising policy so would the individual”.13 By educating its customers in rational expenditure, Macy’s was at the same laying the foundation of its long-lasting success. It killed two birds with one stone, as it made friends out of customers and ensured that money regularly flew from their pockets into its cash registers. At any rate, there were plenty of strategies to secure consumer retention and all of them revolved around brand identity and its reputation. For example, Ford published a monthly magazine to keep clients updated about the brand community; the Pabst Brewing Company invited clients to visit its plants in Milwaukee; Marmon organized a marketing plan based on the firm creed that the transaction was far from being completed once the car had been sold, and therefore adopted a strategy of following up with car owners to secure customer satisfaction. As described by applied psychologist Edward Strong in a review essay on the evolution of the theories of selling, there had been a growing appreciation among scholars concerning the view that the objective of selling was not merely to close a sale but to secure satisfied customers. More practically put, in the brilliant formula advanced by an advertising manager: “It is the repeat customers that make the volume of our business – not the sampler.”14 In addition, satisfied and regular consumers were key to profitability for they effectively became salesmen and advertisers of the product: they plead with retailers to stock the item and spread their appreciation among their friends. Practitioners wondered how it was possible to cash in on these satisfied customers in a more systematic way to get them “to make a definite effort of some kind toward influencing sales”15 and they realized they must stimulate the tendency people have to talk about those things which personally interest them, and to make them “enthusiastic boosters”16 of their personally preferred brands or shops. Businesses’ dedication to their consumers must be reciprocated by the latter, not simply in terms of goodwill, but in terms of brand loyalty and cooperation. Marketers must establish and foster consumer loyalty for consumption communities because through this sense of participation their collaboration could be activated (Mazur 1928; Boorstin 1974). A very interesting case is the marketing plan laid out by Ivins Bakery of Philadelphia, who found a very effective strategy to build upon its consumption community. First, the Bakery sent out its sales force to obtain from grocers the name and address of women respected by their neighbours and then it sent them “The Ivins Chest Gem”, a well-designed japanned box containing an assortment of products to test. If the housewife accepted, she would receive

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a request to join the Ivins “Board of Advisors”, a board made of 1,200 selected members who had the task of testing products and providing seals of approval of quality, thus turning the testimonial into a dignified advisor. Of course, the plan was extensively advertised through local newspapers in order to raise general interest and generate word-of-mouth selling. Consumer loyalty was therefore built upon the activation of consumers’ pride in being trustworthy judges of products, and thus consumers were made advertisers and sellers for the bakery. As a result, it was expected that the 1,200 women would speak of their approval to “at least three or four of their neighbors and friends” and, accordingly, it was estimated that “a half million women in Philadelphia will hear by word of mouth about the Ivins products and the approval of them by other Philadelphia women”.17 The direct activation of consumers transformed the abstract mechanism of testimonial advertising into personal and effective word-of-mouth selling through the same consumers, and this happened well before the viral marketing made possible by the advent of social media. In fact, the boundaries between production and consumption were eroded and the consumer developed practices very close to contemporary prosumerism founded on brand loyalty. Indeed, consumers were not only activated as advertising or selling agents, but they were stimulated to make suggestions about ad-copy and selling appeals, new uses for the product, ideas about selling points, package and product design.18 Practitioners recognized a mutual relation between market share and active consumer loyalty, as a columnist for PIM made clear when speaking of the activity of the manufacturer: No matter how perfect his product may look to him today, improvement is not only desirable but not to be deferred, if he wants to hold his market and extend it. Finding out how to make that improvement and realizing that one of the most unfailing sources of ideas for improvement is the ultimate user or consumer of his product, have led manufacturers to revolutionary discoveries in a better use of materials, simplification of operations and improvement in merchandising methods.19 Especially in markets approaching saturation where new consumers are harder to get, the cultivation of consumer satisfaction and brand loyalty are vital to win and hold competitive advantage. In the Roaring Twenties’ mature markets, customer management became crucial and not only relationships were targeted as a means of consumer satisfaction, but emotions, aesthetic sensitivity and inclination towards novelty also were strategically stimulated and exploited by marketing professionalism.

The commercialization of sentiment The associative mechanism became a powerful instrument to accomplish the second task Cherington had assigned to modern marketing: to stimulate consumer demand and help mass-manufactured goods flow from producers to consumers

Relationship marketing, experience economy 175 more and more quickly and easily. The mechanism capitalized on the intangible dimensions attached to consumer goods, and advertising appeals “to sentiment, ambition, a sense of luxury” replaced “logic and pointed argument”. In accordance with this shift, the skilful adman must recognize – as the novelist already did – that “it is only in the vocabulary of very careless thinkers that the word ‘truth’ and ‘fiction’ are regarded as antithetic”.20 Truth in advertising and marketing was no longer referred to any objective virtue of the product; it was in fact related to the correspondence between lived experience on the part of the consumer and the performative effect on part of the good. A commercial claim about a good was true when its purchase or use produced in the consumer’s lived experience the sentiment, emotion or meaning attached via image-making and the associative mechanism (see also Chapter 8). Advertising fiction was true every time it was experienced as true in the consumer’s life; it was true if it had the power to become socially considered as true, regardless of whether it reflected a tangible element of the product. As a contributor to PIM remarked, “one of the greatest powers of the imagination is to make the non-existent exist”21 and in consumer capitalism the second reality of mediated social imaginaries fed by advertising and marketing took the place of the first reality of commonsense and first-hand experience each time the association came to be real in its consequences. In other words, Cadillac did indeed sell “distinction” once it was socially considered as a means of leadership and the Cadillac’s owner considered himself, and was considered by others, as a leader; and Camel did in fact sell “joy of life” every time somebody smoked a Camel and felt joyful. There had been no relation between joy and Camel, or Cadillac and leadership, until a more malleable understanding of reality as a social construction emerged under liminal, disenchanted conditions, blurring the distinction between truth and falsity, the real and the unreal. It is upon this malleability that the effects of image-making via the associative mechanism were made possible. What was needed was a socially accepted belief spread through imitative behaviour in an increasingly theatricalized reality. Practitioners soon discovered the lucrative power of selling ideas and feelings rather than mere products and, in accordance, advertising emphasis shifted “from the sale of articles to the sale of satisfaction”,22 as the vice president of a hat company made clear when he explained how his company switched the selling appeal from “telling consumers how well our hats are made to how well our hats make them look”.23 As the salesman of Eastman Kodak explained when asked about what he sold: “It is not the article that the most successful merchant stresses; it is the happiness which will arise from the possession of it”; therefore, he went on, “I sell sentiment . . . I sell an idea, a hope, a vision, a comfort: I sell beauty, longing, love and friendship; I sell tenderness and sympathy and human relations.”24 Businessmen became aware they must create an emotional impression in the mind of the prospective consumer that invested the product with ideas and emotions and made it desirable. Consumer desire was aroused neither by the object itself nor by the meaning attached, but by the subjective conviction of their association in real life. Thus the mechanism moved appeals from material wants that goods satisfy to the states of mind they help realize. As a remarkable

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piece for PIM held, pointing to the case of soap, people want the feeling that comes from soap, and cleanliness and good appearance are only needed “in order to be popular”. In the end, as the advertisement for Jordan Motor Car that was quoted by the PIM article declared, consumers bought products in order to “feel like somebody” because they “can’t look like everybody else”.25 Marketers then began to realize they were able to foster demand also through the five senses, because – as one of them made clear – “each mind uses the data acquired through these senses in forming opinions which influence decision”.26 From packaging to branding, from advertising to store design, every element of the marketing plan must be designed so as to take into account which of the five senses was the decisive factor in the sale of each product or service. For example, retailers understood the power of smell to attract attention and its connection with anticipation in the consumer’s mind of the pleasure of consumption; therefore, department stores located the perfume department where people passed continually, and merchants, like grocers, used the power of smell to compound the effect of eye-catching windows by fanning pleasant odours out on the pavement (and electrical fans were actually used). The focus on the senses in consumer research helped in the discovery of new selling points related to specific goods, like the attractive scent of leather in clothing or cedarwood in furnishing. Cheramy, Inc., used smell to launch an ingenious marketing plan for its perfume, Cappi, which was instilled with a French atmosphere via its packaging and advertising, which were assembled by using French-style images and decoration. Cappi was then sold as the perfume giving every American woman the lifestyle of a Parisian woman on summer holiday at the countryside. The sense of taste was crucial not only for food products but also for medicines and toothpaste, and not simply in terms of the taste quality of the product, but also in terms of its appealing power over the eye – many a masterly illustrated advertisement could whet a reader’s appetite. From this viewpoint, it is not by chance that colours were studied so as to understand how they swayed consumers’ moods. Even the sense of touch could be appealed to through a clever synthesis of picture and copy, as in the famous ad for Woodbury soap, whose illustration showed a man dancing with a woman while the copy flattered: “A skin you love to touch”.27 Touch was centrally important in packaging and product design, especially for beauty products based on smoothness and softness, and for products where fabrics or special finishes were a feature of the article sold. Last but not least, the sense of hearing was crucial, especially in store design, because each sound in the store must be evaluated according to the favourable business atmosphere it evoked.28 Marketing increasingly involved the five senses in its plan to boost sales and strengthen consumer retention. It was acknowledged that every time a positive feeling was formed in the mind of the consumer in connection with a brand or a service, a building block had been added in the construction of a strong relationship. Marketers knew that, through the stimulation of “a man’s emotions via senses”, they were able to make him feel “a warmth in his heart for the institution” and, consequently, increase his “confidence in its business”.29 The whole mechanism was made possible by the increasingly secularized culture of feeling

Relationship marketing, experience economy 177 that produced favourable conditions for the new malleable conception of the self and the corresponding cultivation of sensuous and aesthetic dimensions of life. Emotions were absorbed into the economic process and what was defined by early twentieth-century critics as “the commercialization of sentiment”30 fully anticipated what has come to be framed in contemporary marketing as affective economics (Jenkins 2006). An economy in which emotions are systematically used to add economic value to services and products and create a deeper connection between consumers and brands has existed since those critics were writing. During the first decades of the twentieth century, and especially during the 1920s, the socialization of commerce went so far that it generated a twin or mirror image: the commercialization of society. As businessmen started to portray themselves as public servants in order to generate social respect out of common mistrust (see Chapter 1), the progressive commercialization of the calendar meant that the whole arc of events and its tempo – from Christmas to Thanksgiving (see Chapters 4 and 6) – was punctuated by goods and rituals of consumption. In the last stage of this progression, or perhaps decline, from the socialization of commerce to the commercialization of society, marketers strategically conceived the year’s significant events, not for public service but to generate consumption and to incorporate more and more aspects of life into the commercial sphere. The creation of the experience economy required the commercialization of sentiments and the dramatization of business, and both revolved around the performative power that consumption had acquired thanks to the interplay of socio-cultural changes and marketing activism.

Dramatizing business and the creation of pseudo-events As soon as the selling power of ideas and sentiments surrounding consumption was discovered and systematically exploited, marketers found that consumption had a further value for the consumer, and this was related to the nature of appropriation and places of purchase. Once again the finding was disclosed with the help of theatrical reasoning: Something of the same art which the playwright uses to give otherwise sordid and commonplace events a dramatic significance is at hand of the business man, and business men are more and more learning how to make use of it. Instead of letting the new product lose itself in the vast ocean of undistinguished commodities, the wise manufacturer dignifies it with a name and surrounds it with definite characteristics. Instead of permitting the natural and unrelated course of events to control its destiny, he selects and arranges a series of events which will work together towards the general purpose. In other words he “stages” his campaign; he “dramatizes” his product.31 In offering this comparison between business and theatre, the editorial for PI made it clear that marketing should animate goods, practices and places of consumption that otherwise would risk going unnoticed. Anticipating contemporary experience economy (see Pine and Gilmore 1999), marketers understood that an

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event must be created around the launch of a new product, as happened with the new fourteen Buick models marketed in 1924. A well-studied marketing plan was laid out in order to sell the excitement for the new models and establish in consumers’ mind that 1 August, the release date, was “Buick Day”.32 National newspapers’ advertising served to count down the days left before release and extensive news reporting was secured to back up the public relevance of Buick Day. Finally, through an open-door policy adopted to foster confidence, Buick dealers all over the country arranged their windows and interiors to welcome the one million customers who gathered to inspect the new Buick models. Following the theatrical theme, electric illumination generally ceased to be a technical question and instead was incorporated into the dramatization of consumption, as evidenced by a professional study of its “psychological influence”33 on the consumer. Lights were widely used to enliven products, just as they were used to focus spectators’ attention on actors in theatres. Marketing for the alarm clock Big Ben relied on an advertising campaign that applied the most advanced methods in retouching pictures to dramatize what otherwise might have remained a commonplace object. As explained by the adman responsible, the easy way to advertise the alarm clock would have been to show “Jim Jones jumping out of bed at six a.m.” – that is, showing the clock in connection with its concrete use; but the adman chose instead “[to] humanize the product” and “give it a personality”. This was done with amazing shrewdness: by showing only the alarm clock in the illustration, but retouched in a spectacular way thanks to lights that made the clock’s nickel sparkle, and a subtle use of shades, Big Ben “burned in the page”.34 The effect was backed up by the reference to the clock as a “He”. A simple alarm clock was therefore humanized and made unique, and very soon its user felt an intimate connection with Big Ben sprout from inside, and, ultimately, as a contributor for PI confirmed: “Big Ben grew up with us and ticked its way into our hearts”.35 It is worth emphasizing that business dramatization influenced a consumer already inclined to let himself get carried away into a land of enchantment which breathed life into inanimate objects that were nothing less than purveyors of existential meaning. As Marchand put it, “the public propensity to animism – the belief that all objects are alive” (1986: 358) blended with the desire that consumer culture fostered to re-personalize life through relations of intimacy with brands and commercial institutions. The re-personalization of life under corporate auspices and the propensity to animism in a weightless age were deeply interwoven with the “magic system” of consumer capitalism, to borrow the effective expression used by Raymond Williams (2005b) in his analysis of advertising approaching sixty years ago. The religiously disenchanted, turn-of-the-century culture of feeling prepared a receptive ambience for what should be understood as forms of aesthetic and emotional re-enchantment through consumption, well before the alleged postmodern turn in post-World War II consumer societies (Ritzer 2010). Equally, the possibility for re-enchantment rested upon the modern rationalizing process, for it was rationalization that gave marketers the ability to strategically stage events on the basis of the planned effects of enchantment on consumers’ experience. It was thanks to rationalization that marketing professionalism was able to build brand

Relationship marketing, experience economy 179 loyalty and dramatize consumption, as the following examples related to purchasing practices and places of consumption will clearly illustrate. Marketers realized that a proper stage must be set up in order to turn an ordinary act of appropriation into a remarkable occurrence in one’s life. The service ethic (see Chapter 6) was therefore worked over and moulded into a sophisticated experience economy that turned mere buying practices into real shopping experiences, where consumers were treated as guests in self-sufficient citadels that stimulated the senses, imagination and appetite for novelty. Both palaces of consumption like department stores, and smaller shops like the new concept stores, offered different kinds of entertainments and amusements that lent a dramatic punch to acts of purchase. The aim was to concoct a unique shopping experience combining pure sociability and an acquisitive atmosphere (Leach 1993; see also Benson 1979). Regarding concept stores, one might consider the store that was opened as an Old English-type private mansion by a progressive merchant in 1924; it was saluted by MRSW as “the most modern shop, newly constructed in the United States”.36 First of all, the shop was located in a residential district far from the congested city centre, where stores were usually located. The choice of site was based on the opinion that automobiles had come to stay and had been permanently changing people’s habits. Therefore, not only a convenient parking space for twenty-five automobiles was arranged just outside the shop, but also an enticing show window was made for the passing automobile out of the house itself, as it was surrounded by a fence with thirty English-style streetlamps and a pleasant garden. However, the most striking idea concerned the interior design, for the merchant joined entertainment with commerce in the same space, giving his shop the distinctive character of a social club. Where articles were displayed for sale, tea could be drunk and cards could be played by patrons, for two tearooms and a card room were arranged and fitted with all conveniences; and, in addition, a large pipe organ was located in the rotunda, where organists gave concerts for customers (see Figures 10.1, 10.2 and 10.3). Turning to a second example of pioneering concept stores, it is worthwhile considering the one that was set up by Blackstone’s in Los Angeles. The store focused on the idea of shopping as an experience. In the Beauty Salon, a make-up room generated $200 sales every month on the basis of the “product test” (see Figures 10.4 and 10.5). The room was furnished to simulate a restroom full of mirrors, and it was cunningly illuminated, allowing consumers to test two different make-ups, one for the day and one for the evening – the daily use of two makeups being touted by the Salon manager as the new norm for the discriminating American woman. The stage was therefore set to provide a thorough experience of make-up, based upon the conviction that “just selling a jar of cream or a lip stick or a box of powder is not necessarily a satisfactory transaction”.37 Real satisfaction resulted from a complete experience of products and the places where they are sold, the purchase being merely the final act of a deeper practice. Therefore, the client was invited to enter the make-up room in order to try, as described by the manager, “the different creams and lotions and the different shades and makes of rouges and powders to be sure that she is purchasing the shades that blend with her

Figure 10.1–3 Frank Stein & Company Store, Oshkosh, Wisconsin, 1925

Figure 10.4 Beauty Salon at Blackstone’s department store, Los Angeles, California, 1928

Figure 10.5 Make-Up Room, Beauty Salon at Blackstone’s department store, Los Angeles, California, 1928

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coloring and the creams and lotions that her skin needs”. The test, offered along with expert advice, made the specific shopping experience, and helped to build brand loyalty based upon the democratization of beauty and make the most of that. As the manager concluded, making it possible for everyone to wear every kind of cloth, presuming that one “is careful to select the correct shades in rouge and powder”, was “not only the means of selling more cosmetics” to the client, but it helped the business in “making a permanent customer of her”.38 In Los Angeles, several examples of the first outdoor shopping centres were located, inspired to earlier Parisian arcades’ architecture (see Benjamin 1999) and anticipating the shopping malls of today in their use of a motif through the court as a means of distinction (Ritzer 2010). Called “shopping courts”, they were usually located in residential districts and accommodated between twelve and forty shops of different kinds. They were planned according to a commercial aesthetic that was actually closed to a postmodern pastiche juxtaposing different architectural styles, so one finds the Hollywood Court inspired by Egyptian style and a southern Californian Court built in Moorish-Spanish style, and indeed many others of English, Southern Colonial, Oriental or Italian design. In all cases, the ensemble effect blurred the commercial ambience of the court while retaining its sales power: it presented more than a gathering of sales points, and rather offered an enticing shopping experience.39 The dramatization of business aimed at customer retention by orchestrating memorable events or experiences involving the emotions, senses and imagination of the consumer. It developed on business tools like store design, and practices such as the service ethic, arranged in order to attract the public’s eye and get customers into the store. Hence, marketing professionalism made a system out of previous acquisitions and exploited the consumer’s disposition towards emotionality and feeling, not simply to attract him and build a favourable impression for brands and retailing institutions, but above all as a means to stimulate consumption and seize consumer retention. Once again, marketing professionalism understood that what had to be sold were the emotions, meanings, experiences and images of fulfilment attached to goods. In fact, the re-enchantment of consumption was achieved by fabricating events that were related to social occasions no longer extraneous to marketing plans. Events, special decorations or expositions set out by stores, shops or manufacturers were no longer the way to win social recognition; they were elements of a marketing strategy orchestrating profitable consumer experiences playing with senses, imagination and emotions. Therefore “means of consumption” (Ritzer 2010)40 were planned in order to produce “a drama of merchandising where the qualities of every product are enhanced by the staging of the event”.41 As the following examples of Christmas events illustrate, consumers’ relations to material goods became more subtle given the experiences and emotions made possible by the dramatization of consumption. The Christmas event at Wanamaker’s store set a monumental exhibit inspired by “Jack and the Beanstalk” in the toy department. The scene was composed of mountains, valleys, Swiss chalets and a towering giant’s castle, rising a floor or two above the scene, with Jack climbing

Relationship marketing, experience economy 183 to the top of the castle via the beanstalk and a mechanical device. In addition, a promenade was built, at the end of which boys and girls could find Santa Claus, who gave each of them warm greetings and a souvenir pin marked with a few words indicating that it had been given on a visit to the Christmas display at Wanamaker’s. The Christmas exhibit made by Wurzburg’s department store in Grand Rapids involved a 1,000-square-metre space in which the store arranged a gigantic Toy City that made the toy department a living fairytale. The Toy City developed along streets and avenues, with arches covered in Smilax vine and hung with large red bells, and lined on both sides by homes for each class of toys. Living characters from nursery rhymes and famous stories animated the city. Not only were boys and girls caught up in wandering through that enchanted village, but they could even pay Santa Claus a visit at his castle headquarters or take a picture with one of his much-hyped presents, to be displayed in the photo gallery presented along one of the main avenues.42 The extent to which this was “rationalized” re-enchantment the reader can see for himself. However, the dramatization of business was not restricted to child exhibits but extended further to events and experiences realized for adult clients. Department stores extensively used defined themes to attract and entice customers, once again anticipating later “theming” strategies and simulated environments (see Gottdiener 2001; Ritzer 2010). The special exhibits that Macy’s store set up in 1925 and 1926 purported to celebrate camping life. In each exhibit, a whole floor was used to simulate the experience of the outdoors and the wilderness, so it was full of camps, tents, a log cabin and all sorts of camping equipment. A lake was constructed where real trout amused themselves, and even a waterfall was replicated with running water. Boy Scouts and Camp Fire girls in uniform greeted guests, thus contributing to the atmosphere. The use of specific themes could be based upon special products or fabrics, like the cotton week or the silk week at Macy’s, when both windows and interiors were decorated with paintings recalling camping, and then there was the very interesting case of a fur exhibit orchestrated by Meyer’s department store in Greensboro. The well-planned advertising campaign excited the public, and the special event was a hit, because the store masterly carried the motif in both windows and interiors. Windows displays were devoted to the story of the furs, showing typical Arctic scenes with floating icebergs and polar bears, all illuminated by green and blue electric lights that gave a Nordic effect. It is worth noting how the effect was rationally produced through careful study by the window decorators, for it was achieved by the use of white tissue paper treated with a coat of cold water paint and sparkling glitter, over poultry wire, which gave it a peculiar glistening effect under electric lights. Interiors simulated a vast Nordic landscape, and the floor was transformed into a trapper’s camp, with a cabin from whose rafters hung drying skins. Other events then exploited big news or historical anniversaries, like the discovery of King Tut’s tomb or the three hundredth year of New York.43 In all cases, it is worth emphasizing that each historical event or social occasion had been used eventually in order to create the dramatized exhibit, and not the other way around, as it was in the first stages of the process. Accordingly, the

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dramatization of business and more generally marketing professionalism are deeply related to what Boorstin (1992) has defined as pseudo-events. Pseudo-events lay a planned second reality of fabricated events on the ordinary flux of everyday life, thus overshadowing spontaneous events. Pseudo-events have been made possible by the graphic revolution that enabled an increasing number of media to flood the social imaginary with images of all kinds. They are promoted as something worth experiencing and remembering and, therefore, they are carefully prepared to affect the public as intended. If they work, pseudo-events are self-fulfilling prophecies, like 1 August as “the Buick Day”, and they are an effective means through which marketing plays with the imagination and the emotions of consumers. Needless to say, their strength rests upon the preeminence that subjective conviction holds over any objective structure of reality in disenchanted modernity.44 One of the most striking examples of this is Edward Bernays, the self-proclaimed founding father of public relations, who fabricated the event related to the arrival of the Ballets Russes in America. He himself recounted in great detail the work he did for the Metropolitan Opera Company in his memoirs. The Opera House signed a contract with Diaghilev, legendary founder and impresario of the Ballets Russes, for a full North American tour from January to April 1916. The Ballets Russes had already taken Paris by storm with a sensuous blend of dance, music, scenery and colour, artistically assembled by scene designer Léon Bakst and masterly performed by great dancers, with Nijinsky and Karsavina towering as leading ballerino and ballerina. The Ballets Russes epitomized the “modern spirit”45 and modernist aesthetic conceived against outmoded tradition, Dionysian spontaneity over Apollonian dignity (Garafola 1989; Szakolczai 2012). Bernays was set the task of educating the American public concerning the ballet, previously an object of scorn in the American Puritan tradition. First of all – as he recollected – the public must be persuaded about the significance of the event and “anticipation” had to be built “so that people would line up at the box office” (Bernays 1965: 104). He therefore carefully studied his product and the prospective public in order to lay out a fourfold plan: tout the ballet as a novelty among art forms; appeal to special and influential groups of the public; herald the great impact the ballet would exert on American life; and incite curiosity about the personalities of the company, whose interpersonal relations were “full of medieval intrigue, illicit love, misdirected passion and aggression” (ivi: 102). He distributed an illustrated booklet presenting the company and its characters, and then developed an advertising campaign with extensive media coverage to build anticipation.46 And he made sure the ballet actually had the impact on American life he had announced by collaborating with leading manufacturers and retailers so that the former would develop “products inspired by the color and design of the Bakst décors and costumes” (ivi: 108), and so the latter would have them well arranged in show windows and shelves during tour time.47 As already noted, theatre was a leading force in determining fashion trends and influencing public taste; however, trying to determine the direction of trends through planned collaborations among different institutions was a pioneering undertaking, for which Bernays has to be credited.

Relationship marketing, experience economy 185 Approaching the tour, Bernays was informed that Nijinsky was interned in Hungary and shortly after that Karsavina was at home taking care of her newborn. And later, when he was told that at the time the deal was made with Diaghilev the impresario had neither Nijinsky nor Karsavina under contract, this fact did not mattered Bernays. The cold cynicism through which Diaghilev beguiled and fooled Bernays, paired with Bernays’ non-judgmental temperament, which helped him to fabricate public opinion. Bernays eventually promoted the ballet as “the original, one and only” Ballets Russes, even if the group of dancers recruited by Diaghilev had never danced together before, save for two European performances set up in a rush before the American tour started to see if they could work together. Bernays set up a “pseudo-event” that would have the desired effect on the public’s mind, and in so doing he ignored any connection with reality, because his pseudo-event would fabricate its own reality. The first reality of a relatively normal happening – the arrival of a mutilated version of the Ballets Russes, whose success nobody could determine in advance – was displaced by the second reality of a pseudo-event fabricated by Bernays and the collaboration of media, merchants and manufacturers. The pseudo-event was a hit because it was planned so as to be a hit.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16 17

PI 17/1/1924, How Advertising Eases the Growing Pains of Marketing: 119. Ibid. See also PI 8/10/1925: 166, The New Advertising. MRSW 2/1912, Good Will: 34. Ibid.: 35. See also BLC, Series I Scrapbooks Box 2 Folder 5, Good Will, 1921. PI 30/10/1907, Does Advertising Inform?: 12. On the profitability of customer retention, see PI 15/2/1923: 142, Forgetting the Old Customer to Take on a New One; PI 10/5/1923: 182, Old Customers Better than New Customers; and PI 30/3/1923: 166, Why Cost of New Customers is Prohibitive. On profitable suggestions from consumers, see PI 8/1/1914: 86, Taking Advantage of Consumers Criticism. PI 29/5/1913, Make your Copy Believed from the Start: 71. PI 9/10/1924, Christmas Opportunities to Cement Customer Relations: 25. PI 23/11/1922, Systematizing the Personal Touch: 84. MRSW 10/1911, Getting a Personal Following: 50 and PI 28/10/1908: 11, Clinching Boys Trade in Clothing. MRSW 2/1918, Telephone Service: 16. See also PI 28/7/1909: 30, Merchandising By Wire. PI 13/7/1922, How Mennen Get Contact with Users of its Product: 62. PI 7/6/1923, Making Merchandise Managers of Shoppers: 140. PI 24/3/1921, How Many Customers Make a Market?: 6. On Ford see WCBA Vertical Files Box 5 Automobile Folder 8, 10, 16, 17, 18. On Pabst see WCBA Vertical Files Box 3 Beer Folder 16, An Invitation. On Marmon see PIM 7/1923: 26, When the Consumer Writes Your Advertising. PI 14/8/1924, Getting One Customer to Produce Five More: 105. Ibid.: 106. PI 18/5/1922, Consumer, Dealer and Salesmen Tied Up with the Factory: 152. On consumers as salesmen and advertisers see also PI 21/10/1920: 185, The Consumer as a Salesman; PI 24/3/1921: 3, How Many Customers Make a Market?; PI 8/4/1915: 53, Getting Old Customers to Help You Sell; PI 14/8/1924: 105, Getting One Customer to Produce Five More and PI 7/2/1924: 28, Getting Old Customers to Land New Ones.

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18 On ad-copy and selling appeals, see PI 22/4/1915: 20, Letting the Consumer Write Your Copy; PIM 12/1921: 86, An Advertiser Who Gets His Customers to Write His Advertisements and PI 21/10/1920: 145, Two Thousand Women Tell Why They Want Washing Machines. On new uses see PI 12/2/1920: 25, What the Final Consumer Can Tell You About Your Product. On selling points and service see MRSW 4/1909: 34, Treatment of Customers. On product design and packaging see PI 6/12/1928: 122, Open Your Door to Customer Suggestion and PI 18/7/1929: 49, Consumers Change This Package. 19 PI 29/8/1929, Consumer’s Suggestion is Adopted as New Design for Product: 77. 20 PI 29/7/1920, Emotion in Advertising Copy: 35. 21 PIM 3/1927, When Imagination Plays with Illustration: 44. 22 HBR 1/1928, The Unknown Quantity in Marketing: 190. 23 PIM 7/1927, Carrying the Style Theme from National Advertising Down to Counter Displays: 84. 24 PI 13/7/1922, Selling Human Sentiments More Successful than Product: 106. On selling ideas and feelings rather than products, see also PI 2/4/1925: 133, When the Idea Is More Important than the Product; PI 22/8/1929: 186, Is Selling an Emotional Process?; and MRSW 1/1926: 26, Window Display that “Make ’Em Hungry”. 25 PIM 6/1926, Why Shun the Abstracts? That’s Where we Live: 46, 137. On emotional impression, see also PIM 5/1923: 52, Copy that Moves the Feeling; PI 8/1/1920: 85, Where Does Sentiment Belong in Advertising?, and Wallace (1924). 26 PIM 6/1925, Do you Appeal to the Sense that Sells?: 128. 27 See Watkins (1949: 48-49). 28 See PIM 6/1925: 128, Do you Appeal to the Sense that Sells?; PIM 12/1929: 71, Should Salesman Understand the Five Senses?; PI 21/1/1915: 132, Advertising that Appeals to Senses the Coming Type and PI 15/2/1917: 28, Tuxedo Tobacco’s New Campaign Based Upon a Sense Appeal. 29 PIM 6/1925, Do you Appeal to the Sense that Sells?: 133. On the use of senses, see also PIM 12/1929: 71, Should Salesman Understand the Five Senses?; PI 21/1/1915: 132, Advertising that Appeal to Senses the Coming Type; and PI 15/2/1917: 28, Tuxedo Tobacco’s New Campaign Based Upon a Sense Appeal. Cappi perfume is in PI 27/4/1922: 34, Building a Perfume Business on a Single Odor. On the use of colour, see MRSW 12/1923: 24, Color the Ruler of Moods; PIM 6/1923: 130, The New Spirit of Color in Advertising; MRSW 7/1919: 26, The Effects of Color Contrasts; and MRSW 6/1919: 18, Study of Color Harmony. 30 PI 13/9/1928, Sentiment? We Need More of It in Advertising: 26. 31 PI 16/12/1915, Dramatizing Business: 117. See also PI 19/8/1920: 93, The Dramatization of Advertising Ideas and PI 3/2/1921: 61, Copy Based on Stage Technique Makes Big Hit. 32 PI 6/9/1923, How Buick Brought in 1,000,000 People to Inspect New Models: 19. 33 MRSW 6/1923, The Psychology of Store Lighting: 27. 34 PI 19 7/1917, Revolutionary Methods in Retouching: 37. See, for example, the Big Ben ad in CO 10/1917: 158. 35 PI 19/8/1920, Making the Inanimate Object Live in the Advertising: 81. On the use of light to dramatize products, see also PI 13/5/1920: 60, Spotlighting the Advertised Goods and PIM 10/1922: 40, Human Interest and Light. The physicist Matthew Luckiesh (1915, 1923), Director of General Electric’s Lighting Research Laboratory, was a key figure in pursuing applied research on the use of light and colour in advertising and merchandising. 36 MRSW 5/1925, The Vision of a Progressive Retailer: 9. 37 MRSW 6/1928, Selling More Cosmetics: 39. 38 Ibid.: 40. 39 MRSW 9/1927, The Shopping Court of Hollywood: 37.

Relationship marketing, experience economy 187 40 The underlying argument of the present investigation is that it does not help to draw a distinction between “new” (post-World War II) and “old” (turn-of-the-century) means of consumption. Even if Ritzer built the success of his thesis upon a marked distinction, in the first edition of Enchanting a Disenchanted Word he seemed to agree that “there is little or nothing qualitatively new” about the new means of consumption, except that earliest forms “were generally non rational”. The whole discussion of marketing professionalism should offer a detailed exposition of how marketing and, accordingly, the means of consumption were rationalized especially during the 1920s. The same point can be made about re-enchantment, given that both rationalization and re-enchantment are part of a long-term process “and there is no clear dividing line”; only “quantitative increase associated with the new means of consumption” (Ritzer 1999: 176). Does the quantitative increase legitimate the use of the terms “new” and “post” as they are applied to contemporary consumer capitalism? From the genealogical point of view of this book, aiming to explain more capaciously the surprising fact that there is no qualitative difference between modern and postmodern means of consumption, the distinction ceases to be necessary once it has been shown that the distinctive – that is, qualitative – elements of the means of consumption originated at the turn of the last century out of a specific interplay among social, economic and cultural transformations. In conclusion, if the reasoning is correct, it then would be unnecessary to add “post” to what has been qualitatively identified as “modern”, or to add “new” to what are simply means of consumption. 41 PI 22/3/1923, Food Expositions That are Backed Up by Advertising: 121. 42 For Wanamaker’s, see MRSW 12/1919: 40, Wanamaker’s Big Toy Exhibit. For Wurzburg’s, see MRSW 10/1918: 44, Toy City at Wurzburg’s. More examples are in MRSW 12/1920: 22, At Wannamaker’s and MRSW 6/1924: 13, Wanamaker’s Circus Week. 43 For the camping life exhibit, see MRSW 5/1925: 23, At Macy’s and MRSW 5/1926: 25, Feature Display at Macy’s. On the silk and cotton weeks, see MRSW 4/1921: 22, Cotton Week at Macy’s and MRSW 3/1923: 20, Silk Week at Macy’s. For the fur exhibit, see MRSW 9/1926: 9, Putting Over a Fur Sale. For event-related exhibits, see MRSW 3/1923: 20, Egyptian Setting and MRSW 11/1925: 22, Notes from New York. 44 The contemporary infatuation of media intellectuals and public discourse with posttruth is perhaps explained by a profound lack of historical memory. It is also worth noting that there is a deliberate denial at work in the cases of intellectuals who, while now resurrecting the unfashionable idea of truth to unmask travesty in politics, had been largely responsible for having buried truth in the first place. 45 New York Soon to See Russian Famous Ballet, NYT, 5/12/1915. See also the North American Review, 2/1916: 286. 46 See, for example, Vanity Fair, 12/1915: 48–49; Current Opinion, 1/1916: 29; and The Spur, 1/12/1915: 20. 47 For example, Lord & Taylor, Gimbel’s and Wanamaker’s all supported Bernays’ campaign; see MRSW 2/1916: 30, Notes from New York.

11 Planned obsolescence and the consumption engineer

The Roaring Twenties were a crucial decade for the genealogy of consumer capitalism. Marketing emerged with an overarching role in business organization, and practitioners became fully aware of the contribution business tools had played in making major transformations of social life profitable for businesses. They realized that the shift from bare announcements of previous decades, to the persuasive advertising of the present, boosted desire and differentiation. Accordingly, a growing appreciation of the associative mechanism caught on among admen, as did a sense of the compelling power of image-making and mimetic desire in stimulating purchases. Finally, it was acknowledged how much theatricalized goods displays helped to spread the drama of consumer desire related to ventures in urban life.1 By the end of the Roaring Twenties, consumer capitalism had been firmly established and America welcomed a new consumption-based economy to replace the old production-based one. Consequences of this reorientation are epitomized by the well-known story of the competition between Ford and General Motors (GM). When, in 1908 Henry Ford, introduced the Model T to the car market, he followed a classical economic strategy to the letter: he supplied the market with a highquality mass-manufactured car sold at a convenient price for the American middle class. In a few years, the Model T dominated the market, accounting in 1916 for one third of the total number of automobiles sold in the United States. Holding its market leadership until the 1920s, it then lost its market share to GM, whose marketing strategy developed under Alfred Sloan’s supervision and was perfectly attuned to the new consumer turn of the American economy. Following a policy of yearly change, through a planned input of novelty and differentiation in style and design, GM injected a variety of cars into the market that matched the desire for self-expression felt by consumers. The famous marketing plan, “A car for every purse and taste”, achieved effective market segmentation and mass customization (Tedlow 1990). The marketing strategy developed by Ford was not wrong in itself, but it simply did not fit with the changing nature of consumer demand, which was increasingly related to personal and social fulfilment through consumption. On the contrary, the new GM marketing policy, based on ongoing product innovation and differentiation, was successful because the fashion-conscious modern consumer had arisen as the ideal type in the new consumer society. The modern

Obsolescence and consumption engineer 189 subject built his social and personal identity on consumer goods, and by means of them he found social recognition through emulation and individual expression through differentiation.

A philosophy of production The sophisticated modern consumer arose as the type of subjectivity adequate for the social order of consumer capitalism. He emerged thanks to the contribution of business tools and marketing professionalism, which supplied a population living through liminal conditions that undermined old certainties with a consumer culture of material prosperity and self-fulfilment, thus providing answers for their existential anguish. Via business tools and marketing professionalism, consumer capitalism substantiated the principle Patten erected concerning the new abundance economy: “the standard of life is determined not so much by what a man has to enjoy, as by the rapidity with which he tires of any one pleasure”; and, accordingly, “to have a high standard means to enjoy a pleasure intensely and to tire of it quickly” (Patten 1889: 51). In his groundbreaking essay “Beauty the New Business Tool”, published in the Atlantic Monthly, Calkins (1927) used, as Mazur (1928) would use one year later, the Ford–GM story in order to make clear the passing of production-driven economy and the growing importance of a commercial aesthetic for consumer capitalism. He stated that, because “efficiency was not enough” to satisfy the growing desires of people, beauty “became a factor in the production and marketing of goods” (Calkins 1927: 147). The commercial aesthetic Calkins framed in terms of “beauty” passed from being used as a means to allure people in advertisements, show windows, interior decorations and in packages, to the infusion of product manufacturing with design and style. As noted by the advertising manager of Larkin Company, “it isn’t sufficient that merchandise shall have quality”, it “must be beautiful” for “we are living in a new age of beauty”.2 Calkins made explicit what was already common sense in business practice: the engine of consumer capitalism worked through the marriage of observing and stimulating consumer desire. If the mechanism jammed, overproduction would occur. In fact, the same capitalist “civilization” prone to overproduction due to its great productive capacity must be able to avoid this threat through a continuous adjustment. As suggested by Frederick, it is exactly because “over-production is the green fruit of an aggressive civilization” that solutions must be figured out in order “to ripen it into full fledged consumption with a good philosophy for its digestion” (Frederick 1930b: ix). But what does it mean to digest consumption? As Calkins stated, it is to constantly turn “over-production” into “under-consumption” (Calkins 1930: 116), because what was found was that “prosperity lies in spending, not in saving” and “increased profits come from increased production made possible by increased consumption” (Ibid.: 117).3 In this view, market saturation would be reached only if three special conditions came along at the same time: first, “population ceases to increase and young men therefore stop growing into the age of prosperity and independence”; second, “wealth distribution remains permanently fixed in amount and as between

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people”; and, third, “the article is indestructible”.4 Otherwise, overproduction always means underconsumption and a misleading marketing strategy. In a public speech given in 1921 at the meeting of the American Engineering Council, the then Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover, discussed the question of overproduction and advanced a solution centring only on adjustment in the “productive power”, which must shift “to new articles from those that have reached the saturation point”. In a prompt reply, a PI editorial highlighted what Mr Hoover was ignoring: the capacity of the economic system through marketing “to move the saturation point further and further into the future, to turn luxuries into practical necessities and to shorten the process of distribution”.5 The double task Calkins assigned to what he named the “consumption engineer” precisely matched the double function consumer capitalism working through marketing must perform in order to prosper: on the one hand, getting to know the consumer through market research for a consumer-driven manufacturing process; on the other hand, turning luxuries into practical needs and stimulating consumer desire through promotion of novelties, styles and design. For Calkins, on the one hand “the consumption engineer will study the consumer not only to style goods according to his preference . . . but he will see to it that the consumer is financially able to pay for them” (Calkins 1930: 116), thus pointing to a growing social acceptance of consumer credit and instalment selling as a means to enhance the buying power of individuals and families (Boorstin 1974; Olney 1991; Calder 1999), and on the other hand, the consumption engineer “must help us use up the kind of goods we now merely use”, that is to create an “artificial obsolescence” (Ibid.: 120) by means of which people get dissatisfied by the value they attach to goods well before their utility is over. In other words, the consumption engineer would have been able to strategically move the saturation point.6 It seems that it is not by chance that, in a public speech given in 1925 at the Annual Convention of the Associated Advertising Clubs, the same Mr Hoover recognized advertising as “one of the vital forces in our entire industrial and commercial system”. Advertising, and marketing generally, took over “the job of creating desire” and “the good will” necessary to tighten the relation of manufacturers and retailers with consumers. In doing so, the economic system, Hoover argued, “creates demand, and from demand we create production, and thence around the cycle we land with increased standards of living”.7 Marketing, with its double function, was the much-needed philosophy of production (Frederick 1930a) that practitioners were looking for. The marketing philosophy was well aware that consumption must be constantly activated through planned obsolescence and desire stimulation so that the engine of capitalism would not run out of fuel. However, its condition of emergence rested on the elective affinity between the economic necessity of keeping the flow of goods in constant motion and the longing for self-fulfilment and fluid identity-making of the modern subject. Consumption emerged as one of the main instruments for self-realization and identity-making and, accordingly, the resulting pluralization of desires was met by differentiation in mass-manufactured goods. The association between the satisfaction of desires and the consumption of goods

Obsolescence and consumption engineer 191 thus became the fuel of consumer capitalism. The social reproduction of that association ensured the staying power of this particular social order and its corresponding human type.

Marketing lifestyles Not surprisingly, while the Weberian conduct of life was waning, as a worn-out ideal, together with the duty of character formation, the modern concept of lifestyle, along with the corresponding ideal of personality development, entered the vocabulary of everyday life. In particular, the search for distinctive style, mixed with the lure of novelty and an appetite for design and mass customization, all promoted by advertising and marketing techniques, responded to the need for planned obsolescence in more and more lines of consumer goods, from ready-towear clothes to automobiles and home furnishing (Marchand 1986; Ewen 1988, 1990). All this resounded with the needs and desires of the modern consumer, who was in a constant tension between longing for individualization and the need for social recognition in the new mass society. Calkins recognized how the idea of style was gaining momentum, as it was extended from fashion “to include nearly every article of human use, towels, telephones, typewriters, fountain pens, bathrooms and refrigerators, as well as furniture, draperies, motor cars and radios” (Calkins 1930: 121).8 Moreover, the search for style differentiation through “aesthetic innovation” (Haug 1986) was in tune with the new fluidity of social life and social identity and, therefore, it could be used to boost the social trend of lifestyles differentiation through planned obsolescence. For Calkins, This new influence on articles of barter and sale is largely used to make people dissatisfied with what they have of the old order, still good and useful and efficient, but lacking the newest touch. In the expressive slang of the day, the “date”. People buy a new car, not because the old one is worn out, but because it is no longer modern. It does not satisfy their pride. (Calkins 1927: 152) Here again one observes a reciprocal causation at the emergence of style as a marketing device and lifestyles as modes of self-expression. On the one hand, a social trend towards differentiation in lifestyles grew along with the social need for individualization; on the other, marketing offered style differentiation in goods as an adequate tool to give a concrete shape to that social trend. Therefore, through the contribution of marketing professionalism, lifestyles differentiation through consumption as an emerging social trend became the common practice of selffulfilment and identity-making in consumer societies. The constant manufacturing of new styles in almost every line of product went along with the search for novelty, social distinction and individualization on the part of the consumer. As architect and designer Frederick Kiesler explained, “architects, painters, artists, writers are no longer the vassals of ruling powers, church, or king”. Rather, Kiesler

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argued, “they are the subjects of industry” (Kiesler 1930: 75), because their applied arts had become the link between daily life and the fine arts through which new ideas, images and visions of life conceived by the artistic imagination were transferred into everyday life as “artificially stimulated needs” (Ibid: 71) to be satisfied through consumption and style differentiation by ordinary people. Once they were socially accepted, they became the consumer’s “genuine needs” (Ibid.). The planning of style and design change was assisted by the applied arts and therefore developed through the double function of marketing: carefully balancing the observation and the stimulation of consumer demand divided between search for individualization and social recognition. From this point of view, on the one hand it was necessary “to produce something ‘new and different’ every six months or every year”, but on the other hand “it would be wiser to emphasize the necessity of studying particularly each class of taste and of creating styles which would anticipate these desires”. On such a strategic basis, the process of product differentiation would be mitigated through the “elimination of the bad lines, and a concentration on the better ones, which should not only reduce the cost of manufacturing, but increase the desirability”.9 Within this endeavour of consumption engineering (Sheldon and Arens 1932) through market research and planned obsolescence, a new marketing profession emerged: the stylist as the middleman who mediated between manufacturers’ need for standardization and retailers’ need for containing lines of products displayed, and consumers’ desire for individualization (Benson 1986; Whitaker 2006). The stylist employed in the retail sector had the task of advising buyers on fashion trends and guiding purchases towards the most profitable styles. The stylist employed in the manufacturing sector advised producers as to how to manufacture goods in line with the most fashionable styles of the moment.10 Through his investigation of the field and his knowledge of public taste, he was able to contain product differentiation and proliferation of styles, causing high costs both in production for manufacturers and merchandising for retailers. The stylist as part of effective marketing management moved towards a balance between efficiency of both standardization and differentiation.11 Market research through the help of the stylist had to select the most profitable styles attracting the largest consumer demand, and advertising served as an instrument of differentiation in terms of meanings attached to consumer goods. Marketing mass customization served consumer individualization, and at the same time it secured efficiency in massmanufactured production. It worked through a restrained, though enticing, number of differentiations, presented as something ideated to express the personality and uniqueness of every consumer. A very interesting case in point is the use of colour, which extended from manufacturing to marketing, being exploited in advertising, store design, window display and packaging (Marchand 1986; Leach 1993). What ethnographer Stewart Culin defined as “the magic of colour”12 was used to create product differentiation and a corresponding sense of individualization, and this was explicitly backed up by advertising appeals through pictures and copy. For example, in 1927, a Macy’s ad declared the introduction of “color in the kitchen”13 and colour was in fact

Obsolescence and consumption engineer 193 extensively used in home furnishings. From kitchen to living room, from bath tiles to tapestry, from bricks to roof tiles, its application made possible for the consumer what ad-copy for Alabastine Paint directly explained to him: “With Alabastine Paint you can put your own individuality into every room in your house”.14 Soon every element in the house, from telephones to refrigerators, from towels to sheets, came out of the shop floor in a full range of colours, and mass customization through colour differentiation was not limited to the home sector but extended to practically every consumer good, such as pens, cameras, umbrellas and especially clothes.15 The automotive industry, too, made the most from its use. For example, the Marmon marketing campaign intended to introduce – as the booklet stated – “a new conception of motor car color harmony” that resulted in “truly individualized transportation”.16 The same strategy was adopted, among many others, by Lincoln, Essex and Pierce-Arrow, all giving the product the potential to express “the individuality of the owner”.17 In sum, goods offered – as declared by an advertisement for hosiery – “each her own individuality”18 and in so doing consumer capitalism could flourish. Marketing both answered and stimulated “the insatiable thirst of the American public for something new” and played a crucial role in setting “the wheel of industry spinning in a thousand factories”.19 In understanding that it was the ability marketing had to promote and support the association between desire change and consumption in order to establish and nurture consumer capitalism, Mazur could conclude that “there may be limits to the consumption of particular products” but “there is no theoretical limit to general consumption possibilities”. Mazur’s thesis is summed up as follows: “Give the world and his wife the funds with which to satisfy every need, desire, and whim, educate the world and his wife to want, and the productive capacity of the country will actually groan under the burden of the enormous demand” (Mazur 1928: 225). The foundation of consumer capitalism has been built upon the unprecedented importance consumption has attained in modernity through the contribution of business tools and marketing professionalism. On the one hand, business tools helped to promote the association between desires and consumption as the proper answer to the social and personal anguish of people caught in a liminal transition. On the other hand, marketing professionalism with its double function made sure that desire and consumption never parted ways in the mind of the consumer and in the social imaginary of modern life. The staying power of consumer capitalism has therefore rested on its condition of emergence, and it will probably endure until the creed of man is disentangled from that modern intra-mundane vision of the good life.

Notes 1 On the difference between old and new advertising, see MRSW 11/1924: 7, Advertising of Yesterday and Today and PIM 1/1928: 73, The Development of Style in Advertising Copy. On the associative mechanism, see PIM 1/1923, This Public Opinion Stuff; PIM 1/1921: 29, Selecting a Historic Character to Give Product Personality; PIM 2/1921: 58, Associating a Product With Prominent People; PIM 5/1922: 24, Cataloguing the

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2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19

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Power of Personality; PIM 9/1927: 42, Tipping Mental Associations In Advertising Art; PIM 6/1926: 45, Why Shun the Abstracts? That’s Where We Live; and PI 25/10/1928: 145, Little Pictorial Refinements that Lend Atmosphere to the Campaign. On mimetic desire and the power of image-making, see MRSW 10/1926: 26, Food for Thought; PIM 1/1923: 61, This Public Opinion Stuff; HBR 10/1925: 111, Preliminary Analysis of the Advertising Possibilities of a Product; and also Copeland (1924) and Mazur (1928). On the thetricalized reality, see PIM 3/1926: 50, Dramatizing the Window Display and MRSW 5/1929: 12, Advertising Technique as Applied to Window Display. MRSW 7/ 1928, The New Era of Advertising and Display: 35. Already in 1912 Patten argued that “the non-saver is now a higher type of a man than the saver” and that the aim of the former was to “create a flow of income to enjoy and not an accumulating fund for future support” (Patten 1912: 66). PIM 3/1924, Saturation? Not if Selling is Right: 23. PI 17/3/1921, Don’t Forget Advertising Mr Hoover: 187. See PI 7/1/1929: 196, World Prosperity and Advertising. MRSW 6/1925, The Great Part Played by Advertising: 7. See also PI 15/7/1915: 78, How Can the Harmful Effects of Style Changes Be Remedied? and HBR 4/1927: 23, Keeping in Place in the Style Cycle. On the relation between style change and the fashion cycle, see the article by Paul Cherington in HBR 7/1923: 421, Some commercial aspects of styles and fashions on the clothing and textile industries; Nystrom (1928, 1932); and Copeland (1924). HBR 7/1929, The Effects of the Public’s Demand for Better Art on the Technique of Merchandising: 411. See also MRSW 12/1928: 19, Style Placed First in Modern Retailing. See MRSW 2/1929: 21, Why the Stylist? See also MRSW 4/1929: 9, Stylist Interpret Consumer Demand; MRSW 9/1929: 58, The Relationship Between Fashionist and Display; and MRSW 11/1929: 43, The Place of Stylist in Modern Merchandising. See PI 16/6/1921: 81, How Advertising Affects Standardization and PIM 4/1923: 23, Standardization as a Creator of New Advertising. See MRSW 3/1925: 7, The Magic of Color. Heimann (2004: 210), Macy Department Store’s advertisement. On colour diffusion, see also PI 12/1/1928: 10, Color Appear on the Kitchen Stove; PIM 10/1928: 44, Colors – From the Inside Out; and PI 28/6/1923: 134, Getting the Facts in Commercial Research Work. Heimann (2005: 239), Alabastine Paints’ advertisement. See also the ads for Clinton Face Brick and Mosaic Tiles in Heimann (2004: 212, 257). See PI 31/1/1929: 33. Sheets Now Sold to Match the Personality and PI 13/9/1928: 185, Color Open a New Sales Field for Accessories. WCBA, Vertical Files Box 9 Automobile Folder 4 Marmon Jewel Colors, 1927, and BLC Series II Ephemera Files Box 116 Transportation Automobiles. WCBA Vertical Files Box 10 Automobile Folder 19 Pierce-Arrow. See also, among many others, ads for Lincoln and Essex in Heimann (2004: 94, 144). Ad for Gordon Hosiery in Heimann (2004: 427). PI 29/8/1929, Consumer’s Suggestion is Adopted as New Design for Product: 77.

Concluding remarks

A few concluding remarks may be added to the genealogy of consumer capitalism attempted in this book. The first is about the “sociological” study of consumption and the analytical consistency of “consumption” as a concept; the second concerns the kind of “reality” that modern consumer capitalism has built for the consumer and the chances the former offers the latter vis-à-vis a meaningful life; the third concerns the “cultural criticism” of consumer capitalism and the necessity of scrutinizing its modern, disenchanted premises. To begin with the sociological question, it is true that within contemporary societies the boundaries of consumption as a social phenomenon of mass significance have been enlarged to the extent that almost anything can now be framed in terms of consumption, from consumer goods to personal experiences and social relations; in turn, and as a consequence of this enlargement of consumption’s sphere of influence, the analytical accuracy of the concept “consumption” has been severely reduced. Resorting to the empirical investigation of what subjects intend or mean when acting as consumers is indeed a supple and clever strategy to recover a delimited and consistent definition of the concept. Still, it must be remembered that the “inflation” of consumption, both in the public discourse of media and politics and in the common parlance of lay actors, signals something of the utmost sociological significance if one is willing to accept the genealogical conclusion regarding the elective affinity between consumption and the functioning of capitalism. In this view, even those consumer practices deliberately meant to oppose capitalism play a game set by capitalism itself. In fact, sociologists are well aware that capitalism is able to profit from its critics, even using them to enlarge its sphere of influence. To cast a larger view on the cultural significance of a general phenomenon, even if that means ignoring or being unable to capture nuances and distinctions of the phenomenon, is an equally viable, even necessary strategy to enlighten contemporary society. The Weberian framework elaborated in this book, on the relation between human types and orderings of societal relations, is intended as an attempt along this line of reasoning in the sociological theory. This leads to the second remark, which concerns the kind of reality that consumer capitalism has forged for those who live in it. It is a reality in which the satisfaction of desires is realized through the market, and meaning-building is accomplished through consumption. However, under modern conditions, both the

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satisfaction of desires and the process of meaning-building have become neverending in scope for the subject, and this perpetuity is well fitted to the functioning of consumer capitalism, which indeed forever encourages consumers never to rest. Consumer capitalism produces, through rationalization, that which under different conditions would not be subject to one’s will: experiences, encounters, feelings and events, are all really meaningful when they happen, but they are unsatisfying when they are instrumentally produced. When something happens that transcends the caducity of the subject, as a datum, the satisfaction of a desire is possible, which makes one really gratus (grateful); but when something is planned to artificially produce the intended effect, this cannot take place. That which is truly meaningful comes from the reality outside the self; that which does not depend on oneself, and which one cannot produce, but can only recognize when it happens, and even consent to – that is meaningful. Therefore, the satisfaction of desires by means of capitalist-produced consumption is delusive, the “satisfaction” of one desire immediately generates a new longing. The conduct of life based on ethical-religious meanings has been substituted by the modern and postmodern lifestyle based on experimentation, and the ideal of personality development has put aside the concept of character formation. One reason for the substitution is that the idea of character based on ultimate, stable values is unmusical to modern ears, for it requires patience with respect to desire and does not permit the instrumental production of the conditions for desire’s satisfaction. The demise of the form of subjectivity – of the human type – that is based on character formation, and of the corresponding conduct of life, has been a vital ingredient in the rise of consumer capitalism, and it is still today a primary cause of its staying power. This brings us to the last remark, which concerns the cultural criticism of capitalism, and the unprejudiced examination of its modern premises. Since consumption stands in a relation of elective affinity with capitalism, one may not want to criticize capitalism without understanding that its very existence depends upon a number of distinctive traits of the modern world image that we are not necessarily eager to abandon. However, if one wants to go beyond capitalism without envisioning deceptive ways out, like a dramatic “external beating” no one should hope for, those other traits of the modern world image should also be left behind. If this stance implies a simple adjustment of priorities, if it requires a revaluation of values, or if it amounts to a philosophical or even religious conversion of the soul, that must be determined by oneself, assuming that one is persuaded the question can be asked.

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Index

A Child’s World, painting, see “Bubbles” “A Day in the Alps” (Midway Plaisance) 71 “A Message to Garcia”, essay 122, see also Hubbard, Elbert abundance 28, 29, 75, 87, 123–25; 189, see also Patten, Simon N. accent of reality 21, 24n8, 144, see also second reality ad(s), see advertisement(s) Adams, Henry 64 ad-copy(-ies), see advertising copy(-ies) adman, see advertising man advertisement(s) 38, 41–44, 69, 85, 108, 111–13, 132- 33, 161–63, 176, 193; aesthetic value of 87; and scenes of everyday life 92; and social distinction and search for individualization 144–46; and successful parents 129; and the joint effect of image and copy 146–48; as part of a general advertising campaign 161; as ready-to-use instructions for the beautification of the modern woman 132; as tableaux vivants 92; developments of: for Pierce Arrow’s car manufacturer 150–54; dynamic 86; impact of a specific 162; in-depth analysis of 23; number of: in magazines 42; persuasive 112; print 24n1, 141–42; soap 142–43; streetcar 41; turnover of 85, understood from the purchaser’s point of view 163 advertising 18, 20, 22, 35, 38, 41–44, 47n30, 78, 81, 87, 92, 100, 110–12, 119n46, 129, 139–40, 160, 161, 163, 164, 165, 171, 175, 176, 178, 188, 190, 191, 192, 193n1; and market research 162–63; and the associative mechanism 23, 141- 54; and the youth market 126–29, 136n1; development of 9, 22; electricity in 86; for the city

79; illustrations in 113; manipulating power of 11; professional/ professionalization of 35, 42, 64, 78, 87, 109; relation between architecture and 95; truth in 43, 107–08, 175: movement for 171 advertising agency(-ies) 43, 110, 161, 165, 168n10, 169n20 advertising agent(s) 38, 78, 174; as copywriter 42 advertising campaign 85, 161–62, 165, 178, 183, 184, 193, cooperative 129; see also marketing plan advertising card(s) 84, 113; and print advertisements 141–42; inside cars 85; streetcar 84 advertising copy(-ies) 44, 92, 111, 133, 135, 143, 146, 150, 193; claim for more suggestive and interesting 47n29; consumer’s suggestions about 174; denotative 144; persuasive touch in 112; with a more suggestive and attractive punch 43 advertising man(en) 9, 24, 43–44, 109–13, 149, 151, 160, 175, 178, 188; as marketing advisor 161–62, 167n10 advertising manager 73, 84, 112, 149, 161, 162, 173, 189, see also management Advertising Men’s League 161 advertising-as-news idea 22, 43, 47n29, 112, see also Powers, John O. aesthetic of replication 33 affective economics 8, 177 agencies of mass communication/ impression/persuasion 7, 11, 20, 42, 52, 184, 185 agriculture 28, 50; agricultural production 28; occupied/employed in 29, 50

Index Alabastine Paint 193 Algerian and Tunisian Village (Midway Plaisance) 71 American Cereal Company 73, see also dsplay(s), see also Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 American Engineering Council 190, see also Hoover, Herbert American family(ies) 49, 59n3, 125, see also individualization, of family members American system of manufacturers/ manufacturing 28, 31–32, 50, see also manufacturing amusement(s) 86, 125, 179; and business 80–81; commerce, culture and 81; commercialized 49, disciplined 79, 83, 87; parks 77, 83 Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 27, 34, 42 Annual Convention of the Associated Advertising Clubs 190, see also Hoover, Herbert appeal(s): advertising 112, 142, 175, 192; and tests of efficacy 162–63; and the associative mechanism 174–76; and the promotion of articles as operators of social distinction, identity-making and self-fulfillment 149; new selling 164; non-rational ads’ 112; of self-realization through beauty 132; selling 164, 174–75; sex 86, 118n23; to successful parenthood 129; to the emotional, affective and more irrational dimensions of human nature 111 Aristotle 55 Armour & Company 31, see also industry, meatpacking Arrow Collar 151 art (theme): advertising as a fine 43; advertising images and signs as work of 87; and displays 98, see also Fraser, Arthur; and the city as spectacle 78; and the commercial aesthetic 80; -work/ work of 140–41 150; commercial 140; wax figures as work of 93; see also associative mechanism, see also consumer identity art atmosphere 94, 140 artist(s) 64, 72, 82, 123, 143, 191; American 82, 94, 140, see also art atmosphere, see also personality, artistic; and outdoor advertising 87; as merchants 141; personality-based

223

style of promotion inspired by the arts and the 141, see also personality-based advertising; window trimmer and store decorator as half- 40 Arts and Crafts Movement 36, 121–22, see also Hubbard, Elbert assembly line 31, 50 Associated Billposters Association 42 associative mechanism 23, 112, 144, 149, 154, 174–75, 188; first step of 143; second step in 148; via image-making 140–41 Atlantic Monthly, magazine 189 Aunt Belle’s Baby Book, booklet 172, see also Mennen’s Aunt Jemima 143, see also character(s) (trade) B.T. Babbitt; soap 132, see also advertisment(s) Baker Cocoa 73, see also Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 Baldwin Locomotive Works 34, see also Converse, John Ballets Russes 184–85, see also Bernays, Edward, see also Diaghilev, Sergei barter 4, 34, 191 Bask, Leon, see Ballets Russes Bates, Charles Austin 118n4, 151 Baum, Frank 95, 103n12, see also National Association of Window Trimmers Baxter’s cloak 1, see also iron cage Beard William H. 116, see also artist(s) beauty (theme) 112, 114, 149, 150, 175; and commercial aesthetic 189, see also “Beauty the New Business Tool”, essay; appeal of self-realization through 132; beautify the city 79–80; democratization of/democratized 133, 182; of arrengement (in display) 93, 102n7; social duty of 133, 137n14, 138n19; see also woman(-en), see also imitation (theme) “Beauty the New Business Tool”, essay 189. see also Calkins, Earnest Elmo, see also commercial aesthetic Beauty Salon 179, see also concept store, see also Blackstone’s Beecher, Henry Ward 143, see also Pears’ Soap Bel Geddes, Norman 95, 103n11 Bermuda Steamboat Line 84 Bernays, Edward 184–85, 187n47, see also pseudo-event(s)

224

Index

Big Ben, alarm clock 178 big business 38, 45n4–5, 51, 110, 121, 124–25 billboard(s) 41, 83, 85–87, see also outdoor advertising bird’s eye view(s) 66, 72, 76n8, see also Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 Blackstone’s, department store 179 Bloom, Sol 72, see also Midway Plaisance Blue Grotto of Capri (Midway Plaisance) 70 Bon Marché of Seattle, department store 82 booklet(s) 92, 129, 132, 137n10, 168n18, 172, 184, 193 Boorstin, Daniel 184, see also pseudo-event(s) Bourdieu, Pierre 5, see also social distinction bourgeois culture 1, 79; see also middle class brand hijacking 8 brand identity 63, 108, 163, 165, 171, 173 brand loyalty 170, 173–74, 178–79, 182, see also consumer loyalty brand reputation 163; management 109, 172 brand(s) 8, 40, 92, 126, 129, 132, 139, 143, 146, 161, 163, 171, 173, 176, 182; bond of intimacy between people and 10; collective boycott of 8; connection between consumers and 177; consumer loyalty to 23; emotional bond with 8; names 110, 126, new American 65, see also Manufacturers and Liberal Arts Building; positioning 8; relations of intimacy with 178; strong commitment to 6 branding 129, 176 Braudel, Fernand 3, 45n9, see also market economy Brown, Donaldson; 166, see also General Motors Brown, John G. 140, see also artist(s) Bruun, Hans Henrik 14–15 “Bubbles”, advertisement 142, see also Pears’ Soap Buick Day 178, 184, see also experience economy, see also Buick, automobile Buick, automobile 146, see also associative mechanism; 178 Bull Durham, tobacco 146, see also associative mechanism Bureau of Business Research 160, see also Harvard Business School

Bureau of the Census; see Census Bureau Burnham, Daniel 64–65, 79–80, see also Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, see also City Beautiful movement Burroughs’ Adding Machine Company 162 business dramatization/dramatization of 23, 177–78, 182–84 business education 31 business men 33, 35, 36, 37, 45, 73, 77, 89, 93, 104, 107, 119, 128, 131, 144 business orientation of higher education 33, see also business school(s) business personality/personalization/ personality of 22, 105, 107, 115, 136n3; building the 108–09 business school(s) 33, 123 business tool(s), the new 21–23, 37–40, 59, 139, 159, 188; and cultural, social and aesthetic trends 95; and marketing orientation 170; and relationship marketing 172; and the foundation of consumer capitalism 193; and the modern consumer 160, 189; and the new consumer child 52; dramatization of business and 182; integration of 159; necessary to relate the new world of goods to the public for whom they were designed 21; whole array of/whole set of 139, 154, 160–61, 165 Butterick Publishing Company 86, see also sign(s) buying atmosphere 40 buying habits 163–64; analysis of 165; unexpected 164 buying motives 111, 163–64; in-depth analysis of consumers’ 166 C/B Corset 86 Cadillac, automobile 112, 149, 175, see also McManus, Theodor, see also “The Penalty of Leadership” California Fruit Grower Exchange 129, see also advertising campaign, cooperative Calkins, Earnest Elmo 117n9, 160–61, 189–91, see also “Beauty the New Business Tool” Camel, cigarettes 112, 175, see also advertisment(s), see also associative mechanism Campbell’s, Soup Company 33, 84, 126 capitalism 1, 5, 8, 10–13, 15–16, 18, 20, 31, 122, 190, 195–96; consumption as the fuel of 154, 190–91; contemporary significance of 18; corporate 50;

Index functioning of 8, 23, 195; industrial 4, 27, 50, 121; market 73; mechanized 12, 16, 18, see also Weber, Max; modern 1–2, 4, 12, 15–16, 123; prosumer 6; spirit of 12, 15–16, see also Weber, Max; transformations of 5 Cappi, perfume 176, see also Cheramy, Inc. captains of industry 32, 45n4, 115, 125 Captive Balloon (Midway Plaisance) 72 Carleton, William 41, see also Kissam, George, see also streetcar advertising Carnegie, Andrew 32 carnival (theme): commerce 35, carnivalesque fairs and itinerant shows 70, 76n4, 83, Midway Plaisance and 72, 77; carnival spirit 79, 83 Carter’s Little Liver Pills 84, see also Good, Brent, see also streetcar advertising Census Bureau 28, 29, 31 Central Park, New York City 79 chain stores 35 Chalmers Motor Company 165 Chalmers, Hugh 165, see also Chalmers Motor Company character (concept of) 54–55, 57, 112, 196, see also personality (concept of); culture of 55; types of 58, see also Riesman, David; see also conduct of life character formation 17, 22, 49, 52, 140, 191, 196, see also personality development character(s) (trade) 84, 85, 108, 127–28, 143, 163 Charles B. Knox Gelatine Company 171 Cheramy, Inc. 176 Cherington, Paul 170, 174, see also J.W. Thompson Company, see also Harvard Business School Chester, Daniel 76n14 Chesterfield, cigarettes 145–46, see also advertisment(s), see also associative mechanism Cheyney, Edward 29 Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 22, 63, 64, 70, 72, 73, 74, 75, 78, 80, 81; 103n12, see also Baum, Frank; see also White City, see also Midway Plaisance, see also city as spectacle child rearing 49, 51, 129, 172, see also youth culture, see also consumer child, see also youth market, see also individualization, of family members

225

Chinese Exclusion Act 45n2 “Chinese Village” (Miday Plaisance) 71 Christian Union, magazine 56 Cincinnati, slaughterhouses of 31, see also assembly line circulation: and streetcar advertising 41, 46n24, 88n15; cultural 52; newspaper and periodicals 42, 56–57; of capital 5; of money 35; the first souvenirs 63, see also Chicago World’s Fair of 1893; store design and 115 city 17, 52–54, 71, 72, 74, 75, 78–82, 85, 90, 92, 100, 102n1, 150, 179, 183; “showcased” 88n7; and artificially illuminated hours 81, see also Times Square; and country 52, see also urbanization; and the new environment of promotion 87; and the retailer 38; as a way of living 52; beautify 79–80; better leaving into 29; commercial 73; government 42, 53, 79–80, 86, see also urban reform; imaginary of 64, 66–67, 73, 75, 76n8; instruments to advertise 63, see also urban marketing; marketing the 78, 81; of Muncie, Indiana 27, see also Lynd, Robert; proper mode of living 101, see also presentation of self; social differentiation of 54; social landscape of the 41, 85; socio-spatial production of 85; spectacle of the ideal 22, 73; staging of an ideal 22, 64, 66, 69, 75, see also White City; see also urban life city as spectacle 22, 66, 77, 84, 87, see also city, spectacle of the ideal, see also city, staging of an ideal City Beautiful movement 76n6, 77, 79, 88n6, see also urban reform city planning, see urban planning class(es), (theme) 33, 42, 49, 121, 124, 168n18; high-class magazine 44; income 173; social distinction fot the upper 90; social emulation on part of the lower 90; upper 100, 112; upper-class inhabitants 79; working 53, 57, 86, 93; working-class employees 79; workingclass reader 44; see also middle class, see also professional(s) clerk(s) (retail) 50, 114–15, 199n41, see also saleswoman(-en), see also salesman(-en) Clismyc water 146 Coca-Cola, Company 33, 112, 127, 144 Colgate, toothpaste 132

226

Index

collaboration(s) (institutional) 22, 78, 80–82, 173, 184–85, see also event(s), see also pseudo-event(s), see also spectacle(s) Collier, Barron 41, 84, see also Consolidated Street Railway Car Advertising Company Columbia Avenue (Manufacturers and Liberal Arts Building) 73 Columbia University 111, 119n44, 168n13 Columbia, bicycles 31, see also American system Columbian Exposition, see Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 commerce (theme) 8, 37, 73, 77, 95, 140–41, see also artist(s); and culture and amusement in effective displays 81; arts, culture and 95, 140; commercial art 140; commercial artists 87; commercial culture 35, 73; commercial orientation 35; conjunction of art(s) and 80, 82; entertainment with 179; socialization of 38, 40, 82, 177, see also commercialization of society commercial aesthetic 79–82, 87, 95, 182, 189; consumer culture and 82, see also Macy’s,Thanksgiving Parade; growing importance/influence of 98, 189; of the consumer city 35; see also Calkins, Earnest Elmo; see also beauty (theme) Commercial Museum of Philadelphia 81 commercialization 7, 8, 10, 81; of sentiment(s) 174, 177, see also affective economics; of society 38, 177; of the calendar 38, 39, 82, 117, 120n50, 126; see also socialization of commerce Committee of the Fifth Avenue Association 82, see also “Fifth Avenue Week” commodity (theme): “aura” surrounding commodities 47n3, see also Tomlinson, Alan, see also advertising; aestethic 100, see also commercial aesthetic; association between desires and commodities 5; commodification of social life 10, see also commercialization of society; commoditized nature of consumption 6; commodity market 28–29; commodity value 6–7; consumption as 6; consumption of commodities 4; continuity in the flow of commodities 126; de-commoditize/de-commodification 5, 8; differentiation 159, see also Shaw,

Arch W.; individuals as commodities, see also Fromm, Eric commodity aesthetics 100, see also commercial aesthetic communication and transportation (evolution): 28, 29, 31, 32, 35, 36, 41, 52–53, 77, 82, 172; see also structural transformation(s), see also economic life, see also socio-cultural changes competition 42, 44, 108, 110, 141, 143, 169, 188; cut-throat 22, 108; price 22, 45n5, 111; social 90; urban 78; see also overproduction competitor(s) 84, 108, 110, 126, 144, 149, appraisal of 164–65, see also market research; salesmanager and the advertising manager as 161 concept store(s) 179 conditions of emergence: lasting effect(s) of 15–16, 159; of consumer capitalism 21, 59, 159; of modern capitalism 16, see also Weber, Max; of the court society 18; of the methodical and rational conduct of life 18; posed by the disenchantment of the world and intellectualism 54; see also genealogy conduct of life 17, 18, 191, 196, see also character formazion, see also lifestyle Coney Island 72, 83, 125 “Conference de Paris” 116, see also special display(s), see also Wanamaker’s Conrad, Johannes, 123, see also Patten, Simon Nelson, see also historical school of economics Consolidated Street Railway Car Advertising Company 41, 84 conspicuous consumption 5; 90, 118n22, see also Veblen, Thorstein consumer agency 3, 6, 8 consumer as a form of subjectivity/as a human type 3–4, 8–9, 11, 23, 48, 149, 154, 160 consumer child(-ren) 52, 126, see also youth market consumer city 22, 59, 74, 75, 79, 81; and its mode of living 75; commercial aesthetic of 35; development of 22; spectacle of the 81, 85–86; the genesis of the modern 65; theatricalized “reality” of 22, 90 consumer credit 190 consumer culture 3, 7, 10, 17, 81, 82, 87, 125, 136n4, 178, 189

Index consumer demand 6, 8, 23, 160, 163–66, 170, 174, 189, 192, see also market research, see also consumer research consumer desire 7, 22, 175, 188–190 consumer good(s) 4, 10, 40, 43, 75, 80, 86, 90, 95–96, 99, 142–44, 159, 189, 191, 195; act of displaying 97; and the assembly of the self 140, see also personality-based advertising; and the satisfaction of desires 140–41; as a linchpin of modern life 100; as harbingers of identity 141; as instruments of self-refashioning 141, as personality buffers/of personality 139, as tools for social performances 22, 92, 97, 101; commercial aesthetic and 98; displaying social life in connection with 92; intangible dimensions attached to 175; mass customization 193; meanings attached to 140, 192; more complex vision of 44: ready-to-use 139; “realistic” conception of 44; relation between festivities and 126; see also commodity (theme); see also good(s) consumer identity (theme) 8, 23, 139–40, 143–45, 149–50, 164 consumer loyalty 23, 171, 173–74, see also brand loyalty, see also relationship marketing consumer practice(s) 5, 6, 8, 11 21, 38, 159 consumer research 23, 159–60, 176, see also marketing plan, see also market research consumer society 2–6, 8, 44, 55, 188 consumer/customer retention 170–71, 173, 176, 182 consumer/customer satisfaction 172–74 consumer-citizen/citizen as a 23, 80, 123, 125 consumption 2–10, 21, 23, 27, 35, 37, 38, 40, 50, 58, 69, 74, 79, 80, 90, 110, 112, 117, 122, 123–26, 129, 131, 139, 140–42, 160, 165, 166, 170, 174, 176, 177, 182, 189–93, 195–96; and re-enchantment 178, 182; as aphenomenon of mass significance 2–3, 7; as feminine 137; association between desire and 23, 101–02, 167, 170–71, 193; citizenship and 9, 121; democratization and 80, 117; dramatization of 178–79, 182; historicity of 7; identity-building/ making and 5, 171, 190; under- 189–90 consumption communities 9, 23, 173

227

consumption engineer 190, 192, see also Calkins, Ernst Elmo consumption engineering, see consumption engineer consumption of goods 3, 5, 7, 124, 189 Converse, John 34 Cooley, Charles H. 53 cooperation (business): between agencies and advertising and sales departments 161, 168n10; between manufacturers and retailers 164, 167n6, 169n19; brand loyalty and 173; distributive chain and 160–61; of artists and advertisers 87 Copeland, Melvin 165, see also Harvard Business School, see also marketing course(s) corporation (theme): consumer as a corporate creature 149; Corporate America and the democratization of desire 121; corporate business 27, 132; corporate capitalism 50; corporate institutions/order and the city 22, 78, 80; corporate loyalty, see brand loyalty; corporate social responsibility 172, see also Aunt Belle’s Baby Book; corporate turn of American life 95, see also Urban, Joseph; corporate-driven brainwashing 139; corporate-driven commercial events 36, see also spectacle(s); corporations 33, 35, 45n2; great merger movement and the rise of corporations 31; re-personalization of life under corporate auspices 178; the advent of an age of abundance under corporate auspices and Patten 123, the corporate reconstruction of American life and Hubbard’s system of life 122; see also big business Cosmopolitan, magazine 42, 122, 140, see also mass publishing Court of Honour (Chicago World’s Fair of 1893) 65, 68–70, 76n14; see also White City Cream of Wheat 126 credibility (in business and advertising) 107–08, 171; see also brand reputation, see also advertising, truth in Cremo Cigar 85–86, see also billboard(s) creolization 10, see also consumer culture crisis of cultural authority 27, 57–58, see also secularization 107, 139, 141; see also disenchantment, see also sociocultural changes Culin, Stewart 192

228

Index

cultural criticism 2, 11, 195–96, see also genealogy cultural imperialism 10, see also consumer culture cultural significance 13–15, see also Weber, Max 195; see also consumption, see also human type culture of feeling 16–17, 176, 178; see also disenchantment, see also Weber, Max customer loyalty, see consumer loyalty dealer(s), see retailer(s) decoration(s) (show window and interior) 22, 40, 95, 100, 120n50, 167n6; see also display(s) democratization: and urban reform 80; consumer 7; of beauty/democratized 133, 182; of desire 22, 120, 123, 125; of luxury 116, see also fashion; via consumption 117 Department of Advertising and Marketing, New York University 163, see also Hotchkiss, George Department of Promotion and Publicity (Chicago World’s Fair of1893) 63–64, 76n8, 78; see also Handy, Moses department store(s) 35, 38, 43, 50, 95, 97, 98, 118n34, 125, 172, 176; and the Columbian Exposition 74, 76n14; as palaces of consumption 73, 115, 179, see also Manufacturers and Liberal Arts Building; and the commercial aesthetic 80 and event(s) 81–82, 183, see also institutional collaboration(s), see also business dramatization; and outdoor advertising 84–85; window display and 90 as stage 92, 116, see also special decoration(s); managerial revolution and 114 desire (theme): and the construction of the homo economicus 6; and the historicity of consumption 7; association between desires and consumption 4–5, 23, 101, 139–40, 154, 159, 167, 170–71, 193; differentiation/proliferation/pluralization 124, 167, 190; see also Patten, Simon Nelson Diaghilev, Sergei 184–85, see also Bernays, Edward, see also Ballets Russes differentiation 55, 108, 188, 189; advertising 44, 163, 192; goods 111, 190, lifestyles 191; of commodities 159, see also Shaw, Arch W.; of desires 124;

product 167, 188, 192–93; style 188, 191–92; see also social differentiation disenchantment 1 16, 18, 28, 53, 54, 56, 112, 139, 140 display manager 93, 95, 97, 98, 161, see also display(s), see also management display(s) (window and interior) 39–40, 73, 81, 90, 92, 93, 97–98, 100–01, 102n3, 117, 126, 139, 160, 167n7, 183, 188, 192; see also business tool(s), see also special display(s), see also store design see also theatricalization distribution (business); 9, 22, 28–29, 35–37, 39, 40, 109, 160–61, 164–65, 190, see also managerial revolution, see also middleman(-en), see also market research, see also communication and transportation divertissement 72, 75, see also Midway Plaisance Dixon’s Stove Polich 85, see also outdoor advertising Douglas, Mary 101 Dry Goods Economist, trade journal 38, 39, 63, 79, 81, 108, 114, 117 DuPont, Company 36, see also vertical integration, see also industry, explosive earning a living (from making a living to): 22, 27, 29, 48–50, 52, see also structural transformations East Aurora, see Hubbard, Elbert Eastman Kodak 33, 129, 175 economic life (new) 22, 28, 33, 35, 37, 48, 64, 79, 115, 117, 121, 141, 143 educational marketing 8 “edutainment” 73, see also Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, see also display(s) Eiffel Tower 71, 76n9 Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. 19, see also liminality elective affinity 16, see also Weber, Max; between consumption and the functioning of capitalism 195–96; between economic necessities and sociocultural transformations 102; between the economic necessity of keeping the flow of goods in constant motion and the longing for self-fulfilment and fluid identity-making of the modern subject 190; between the modern subject’s perpetual longing for experiences and self-refashioning, and the commercial promotion of consumption as the fuel of capitalism 154; see also genealogy

Index electric illumination: and dramatization of consumption 178; and show window(s) 39; and the city 77, 81–82, 86; at the Fair 69, see also Chicago World’s Fair of 1893; see also sign(s) (electric) Electric Motor & Equipment Company 86 electric signs, see sign(s) Elias, Norbert 3, 18 emulation, see imitation Engels, Friedrich 1 entrepreneur(s) 9, 55; and personality in business 108, 119n46, see also business personality; and the city 79–80; and the rise of big business 33; see also managerial revolution Essex, automobile 193 ethnicity 11 event(s) (business) 80–82, 83, 88, see also “Fete Internationale”; 177–78, 182–83; as real urban celebration 82, see also “Fifth Avenue Week”; Christmas 182–83; commercial 38, 83; corporate-driven commercial 36; made by marketing professionals 80; special 117, 183; sponsor or organizer of 38; windows marking the 40; see also socialization of the commerce, see also commercialization of the calendar, see also business dramatization, see also pseudo-event(s) Everybody’s Magazine 85, see also outdoor advertising exhibit(s) see event(s) experience economy 8, 23, 35, 72, 117, 160, 170, 177, 179 exposition(s), see event(s) factory 4, 28–29, 31, 51, 109, 114, 141; see also labour, see also industrialization, see also managerial revolution fair(s): as liminal 35, 75, 76n4, see also Chicago World’s Fair of 1893; country 35, 81; medieval and carnivalesque 64, 70, 74; street 81, theatrical feature of 73, see also itinerant merchant(s), see also market(s) family (theme) 27, 10, 49–52, 102, 129, 131–32, 172–73; see also individualization, of family members, see also woman(-en), see also child rearing fashion: and the stylist (190–91); and theatre 92, 102n5, 184; industry 50;

229

journalists 6; show(s) 82, 116; see also style (theme) Ferris wheel (Midway Plaisance) 66, 69, 72, 76n9, see also bird’s eye view, see also city as spectacle “Fête de Printemps” 116, see also special display(s), see also special decoration(s), see also Strawbridge & Clothier, see also Koerber, Jerome “Fete International” 81, see also event(s), see also spectacle(s), see also Strawbridge & Clothier “Fifth Avenue Week” 82, see also event(s) Fletcher, Erving 122, see also advertising manager, see also Saks & Co. floor (or aisle) manager 114, see also management, see also service ethic Force cereal 85, see also “Jim Dumps” Ford, Henry 31, 188, see also assembly line Ford, Motor Company 33, 173, 188–89, see also Ford, Henry Foucault, Michel 2, 18, see also genealogy Fragestellung, see Weber, Max Franklin Simon & Co., department store 95, see also Bel Geddes, Norman Fraser, Arthur 98–100, 103n18, see also Marshall Field & Co., see also window(s), see also display(s), see also commercial aesthetic Fraser, James K. 84, see also “Spotless Town” Frederick, George J. 189, see also overproduction Freiburg address (Weber, Max) 12, 14, 16 Fromm, Eric 36, see also salesmanship, selffrontier (American) 28 Fry, C. Luther 56, see also Hoover’s Committee furniture (home furnishing): and differentiation 191–93; and the focus on the senses in consumer research 176; display 97, 100; manufacturing industry 29 “Garden of Allah” 116, see also special display(s), see also Wanamaker’s Gefühlskultur, see culture of feeling gender 11, 48 100, 131, see also woman(-en) genealogical (approach) 9, 18, 48, 54, 56; problem 10; viewpoint/point of view 58, 187n40; sensitivity 2, 11, 18, 58;

230

Index

standpoint 4, 55, 112; see also conditions of emergence genealogy (concept) 18, and liminality 18–21, and Weber’s mode of questioning 2; see also Foucault, Michel, see also socio-cultural change(s), see also structural transformation(s) General Motors (GM) 166, 169n19, 188–189; see also Brown, Donaldson, see also Sloan, Alfred Geo. P. Rowell Advertising Agency 161, see also Rowell, George German Village (Midway Plaisance) 71 gift (exchange) 4, see also Mauss, Marcel Gilded Age 27, 29, 140, see also artist(s), see also economic life Gillette, razors 33, 86, see also billboard(s) Gimbel’s, department store 95, 116, 187n47 Girard, René 20, see also mimetic desire Givens, Meredith B. 49, see also Hurlin, Ralph G. globalization 10 Goffman, Erving 20, 54 Good, Brent 84 goodwill 23, 161, 170–73, see also consumer loyalty Grape-Nuts, cereal 84, 126, 129, see also consumer child, see also youth market; 146, see also associative mechanism graphic revolution 42, 184, see also image(s), see also pseudo-event(s) Handy, Moses 63 “Hansel and Gretel” 126, see also special display(s) Hard Rock Café 72, see also experience economy Harvard Business School 114, 119n35, 159–60, 165, 169n24, 170 Harvard University 121, see also Hubbard, Elbert Hawaiian Volcano of Kilauea, cyclorama (Midway Plaisance) 70 hawkers, see itinerant merchant(s) Health & Wealth, book 122, see also Hubbard, Elbert, see also psychotherapeutic cults health marketing 8 Heinz, Company 33 Hennis, Wilhelm 12 Higgins, soap 85, see also billborard(s) Hires’ Rootbeer 129, see also consumer child, see also youth market

historical school of economics 13, see also Weber, Max; 123, see also Patten, Simon Nelson Holden, Ralph 117n9, see also Calkins, Earnest Elmo Hollingworth, Harry 111, see also psychology (theme), see also Columbia University homogenization 10, see also consumer culture Hoover, Herbert 27, 190, see also Hoover’s Committee, see also saturation Hoover’s Committe 33, 52, 56 Hopkins, Claude 110–11, see also advertising man(-en), see also “reason-why” horizontal integration 38, 45n5, 143, see also vertical integration, see also big business hospitality marketing 8 Hotchkiss, George 163 House Beautiful, magazine 100 household production 4, 29, 35, 40, 41, 50, 132, see also market(s) Hubbard, Elbert 23; 36–37, 45n12, 107, 121–23, 125 Hudson River Railroad Depot 40, see also special display(s) “human interest” (approach in advertising) 111–12 human type, 1, 3–4, 15, 27, 54, 56, 191, 195–96, see also Weber, Max “humanizing”/“humanization”/“human ize”: mass-manufactured products and business institutions 172; products 144, 178, see also character(s) (trade); of wax figures 93, 98; mannequins 94; Hungarian Orpheum (Midway Plaisance) 72, see also experience economy Hurlin, Ralph G. 49, see also Hoover’s Committee hybridization 10 ideal city, see city identity-building/making (and consumption) 5, 144, 149, 154, 171, 190, 191 illustration(s) (advertising) 42, 78, 92, 110, 113, 133, 146, 150, 162, 163, 176, 178, see also image(s) image(s) 42, 63, 70, 77, 86, 87, 99, 100, 112–13, 141–44, 146, 148, 150, 163, 176, 184, 192; for the city 78; landscape of 52; of fulfilment 142, 182;

Index of good life 44; of social life 101; of the Fair 63; of the self 98; of urban life 97; product’s 41; rapid crowding of changing 53; see also Simmel, George; truth-bearer quality of 113; see also illustration(s), see also imaginary, see also image-making image-making (in advertising) 20, 22, 108, see also business personality, 113, 140–41, 175, see also associative mechanism, 143, 148, 151, 188; see also consumer desire imaginary(-ies) (social) 21, 22, 56, 57, 63; 64, 66, 67, 73–75, 76n8, see also city; 100, 113, 144, 146, 149, 175, 184, 193; see also second reality; see also world image imitation (theme) 7, 20, 90, 92, 108, 124, 189, as a “psychological tendency” 102n1, see also Simmel, Georg; desire to imitate 100; imitative behavior 20, 93, 148, 175; imitative tendencies 21, 154; man as imitative 112; of life/lifelike 92, 98; spiraling process of social 140; see also Tarde, Gabriel, see also liminality immigration (theme) 29, 45n2, 52 impression management 132–33; see also theatricalization, see also performance(s) Indiana, city of Muncie 27, see also Lynd, Robert individualism, see individualization individualization 3, 5, 27, 55; on the part of the consumer 191–92; modern demands of experimentation and 149; of family members 27, 49; of mental and psychic traits 57, see also Simmel, George; search for 144, 192; shift towards 56; strategy of 108 industrialization (theme) 27–29, 31, 33–34, 37; industrial revolution 6–8, 27, 141; industrialism 50, 56, 57, 122–23, 141; see also labour industry 8, 28–29, 33, 48–50, 98, 129, 131; automotive 193; canning 161; explosive 36; fashion 50; furniture manufacturing 29; machine tool 31, 100; manufacturing 29, meatpacking 31, 36 ; of personal hygiene 132; textile 116; see also industrialization institutional advertising, see institutional marketing institutional marketing 75, 79

231

International Advertising Association 165 iron cage 1, 17, see also Weber, Max itinerant merchant(s) 35, 41, 81, 115, see also fair(s), see also market(s), see also patent medicine(s) Ivins Bakery 173–74, see also consumption communities Ivory Soap 142, 144, 145 J.W. Thompson Company 46n23, 165, 170, see also marketing professionalism; see also market research “Jack and the Beanstalk” 183, see also special dispay(s) James, Edmund 33, 123, see also Wharton School James, William 24n8, 57, see also neurasthenia, see also mind-cure movement(s) “Jim Dumps” (Sunny Jim) 85, see also Force cereal, see also character (trade) jobber(s), see middleman(-en) Jones, Chas F. 107, see also Printers’ Ink Jordan Motor Car 144, 176 Karsavina, see Ballets Russes “Keeping Everlastingly at it Brings Success”, see N.W. Ayer & Sons Kellogg, William 40, 115, see also business personality Kellogg’s 33, see also package(s), see also trademark(s); 127, see also premium(s); 162 Kennedy, John E. 110, see also “reason-why” Kiesler, Frederick 191, see also artist(s) Kissam, George 41, see also streetcar advertising Koerber, Jerome 97, see also Strawbridge & Clothier Kulturkritik, see cultural criticism, see also Weber, Max label/labeling (product) 43, 108 labour (theme) 22, 33–34, 45n5, 45n8, 50–51, 59n3, 79–80, 83, 122–23; decline of child 51; de-skilling 34;division of 4, 31, 34, 51, 54; empirical studies on the East Elbian rural 12–14, see also Weber, Max; force 29; organization of 4, 12, 31, 122; -saving technologies 29; scarcity of 28, skilled 31, 34, 50; specialized

232

Index

80, 83, 121, 125, unskilled 50; see also mechanization Ladies’ Home Journal 42, see also mass publishing landscape architecture 64, 66, 76, 79, see also urban planning, see also White City “Lapland Village” (Midway Plaisance) 71 Larkin Company 36–37, 121, 189, see also premium(s) Larkin, John, see Larkin Company Lasker, Albert, see Lord and Thomas last man(-en) 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, see also Nietzsche, Friedrich Lears, T. Jackson 47 Lebensführung, see conduct of life Lehman Brothers 114, see also Mazur, Paul leisure 52, 53, 56, 79, 80, 90, 121; time 50, 96 Lever Brothers 73 “Life in the Jungle” 126, see also special display(s) Lifebuoy, soap 146 lifestyle(s) 20, 176, 191; concept of 17, 191, 196; of a Parisian woman 176, see also Cappi; see also differentiation; see also personality development liminality (theme): concept 2, 18–19, 20–21, see also Turner, Victor, see also Van Gennep; connection between imitation and 90; liminal condition(s) 20–21, 23, 48, 51, 58, 59, 64, 148–49, 154, 160, 175, 189; liminal figures 35; liminal period 112; liminal phase(s) 56, 90; liminal situations 35, 75; 56n4, see also fair(s), see also itinerant merchant(s), 148; liminal transition 20, 22, 48, 58, 193; see also genealogy, see also trickster(s) Lincoln, Abraham 27 Lincoln, automobile 193 Liotard’s La Belle Chocolatière, see Baker Cocoa Listerine 113, see also impression management “Little Red Riding Hood” 83, see also special display(s) lived experience(s) 19, 20, 22, 49, 175, see also liminality London Life cigarettes 146, see also associative mechanism Lord and Thomas, advertising agency 110 Lozier automobile 146, see also associative mechanism

Luna Park(s) 56, 72, see also Midway Plaisance; 83, see also Thompson, Frederick; see also amusement(s) Luxite Hosiery 132, see also beauty Lynd, Robert, 27, 48, see also individualization, of family members, 126, see also consumer child(-ren) Lyon’s dentifrice 146, see also associative mechanism machine/machinery, see mechanization Macy’s (department store): advertisement, 192, see also differentiation; and camping life, see also special display(s); booklet 172–73, see also corporation(s); Monte Carlo setting at 116, see also special display(s); show windows 97–98, see also “humanizing”; silk week, see also special display(s); survey 164, see also market research; Thanksgiving Parade 82–83, 95, see also spectacle(s); 95 magazine(s) 41, 42, 44, 52, 56–57, 58, 64, 92, 107, 110, 122, 162, 173; trade 33, 38, see also Printes’ Ink, see also Dry Goods Economist; see also mass publishing; see also illustration(s) management (professional) 31–34, 45n8, see also managerial revolution; 109, 160, 161, 165, 171, 172, 174, demand/of 43, 110, 164; marketing 170, 192; store 22; 107, 114–15, see also Jones, Chas F.; see also marketing professionalism, see also relationship marketing managerial revolution 22, 33–34, 114, see also big business, see also modern business enterprise manufacturer(s) 33, 35–38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 63, 73, 78, 80, 81, 84, 85, 108, 109, 110, 111, 113, 126, 132, 141, 143, 150, 160, 161, 163, 164, 165, 172, 174, 177, 182, 184, 185, 190, 192, see also American System Manufacturers and Liberal Arts Building (Chicago World’s Fair of 1893) 65, 70, 73 manufacturing (theme) 28–29, 32, 44, 100, 107, 165, 171, 189–92, see also industry, see also labour Marchand, Roland 92, 178 market (theme) 4–5, 7, 8, 10, 15, 21, 29, 32, 36, 37, 41, 42, 48, 80, 94, 98, 100, 102, 107, 108, 109, 110, 126, 128, 131, 132, 133, 140, 141, 159, 160–61, 163–65, 166, 172, 174, 188, 195; local

Index 34–36, 48, 73; economy 34, 45n9; -concept 34; publishing 42; outlets 44, 108; historians 45n10; job 50; conditions 42, 110–11, 161, 164, 165, see also market research; place 1, 34, 80; national 22, 34–36, 40, 48, 107, 164; see also youth market market analysis, see market research market exchange 35–36, 37, 38, market research 164–65, 171, 190, 192 market segmentation 44, 163–64, 188 marketing (theme) 8, 11, 23, 35, 44, 63, 111, 159–66, 170–73, 174–78, 182, 184, 187n40, 188–93; and the five senses 176; city 78–79, 81; course(s) 160, 165; function 161; of a new product 161, 164; pioneer 36, 159, see also Shaw, Arch, see also Hubbard, Elbert; postmodern forms of 160 marketing campaign, see advertising campaign marketing orientation 37, 161, 170 marketing plan 23, 159–60, 165–66, 173, 176, 178, 182, 188; advertising campaign and 161, 165; and consumer demand 165–66; see also consumer research marketing professionalism/professional 10, 23, 35, 40, 59, 80, 83, 117, 154, 159–60, 163–67, 170, 171, 174, 178, 182, 184, 187n40, 189, 191, 193; see also professional(s) marketing strategy(-ies) 10, 23, 64, 163, 172, 188, 190, see also business tool(s) Marmon, automobile 173, 193, see also mass customization Marshall Field & Co., department store 98, 114 Marx, Karl 1, 2, 12, 13 Mary Garden’ perfume by Rigaud 143, see also testimonial(s), see also associative mechanism mass customization 188, 191–93, see also consumption engineer mass media, see agencies of mass communication mass production 2, 4, 9, 21, 32, 35, 87, 121, 132, 154, see also manufacturing mass publishing 42, see also magazine(s) mass transit 41, 53, 77, 78, 84, see also communication and transportation, see also outdoor advertising, see also streetcar advertising material culture 3, 48

233

materialism 3, 9 Mauss, Marcel 4 Mazur, Paul 114, 119n35, 159, 189, 193 McClure’s, magazine 42, see also mass publishing McCormick, reaper machines 29 McFarlan Moore, 69, see also White City McManus, Theodor 149 means of consumption 17, 182, 187n40, see also Ritzer, George meatpacking industry 31, 36 mechanism of mental association, see associative mechanism mechanization (theme) 28–29, 40, 51, 66, 129, 142, 165; of capitalism 16, see also capitalism, mechanized; of farming 28; of human resources 34; see also industry, machine tool; see also labour Mellin’s Food, 126, see also consumer child(-ren) Mennen Company, see Mennen’s Mennen’s, talcum powder 85, see also billboard(s); 72, see also goodwill merchandise 39, 40, 81, 108, 114, 115, 117, 136n3, 139, 189; see also display(s); see also merchandise manager merchandise manager 114, see also merchandise (theme), see also management merchandising (theme) 41, 82, 114, 160, 173, 174, 182, 186n 35, 192, 114, see also sales force merchant princes, see merchant(s) merchant(s); 22, 35, 38, 41, 73, 78, 79, 80, 81, 84, 108, 115, 126, 141, 170, 175, 176, 179, 185; see also retailer(s) Merchants’ Record and Show Window, trade journal 82, 83, 93, 97, 172, 179 merger movement 31, see also corporation(s), see also horizontal integration metropolis; see city metropolitan life, see urban life Metropolitan Opera Company 184, see also Ballets Russes Meyer’s, department store 183, see also event(s) middle class 57, 77, 93, 188; consumer culture 81; interior domesticity of 100; readers 42; urban 53; young middle 56; see also class(es) middleman(-en); 36, 39, 42, 109, 160, 165, 192; see also distribution

234

Index

Millais, John Everett, see A Child’s World Mills, Charles Wright 114, see also management, see also service ethic mimetic desire 20, 99–100, 133, 138n19, 188, see also imitation; production of 159, 166; satisfaction of 4, 7, 101, 124, 140, 141, 154, 190, 195–96; stimulation 22, 97, 100, 102, 112, 133, 159, 189–190; see also consumer desire; see also democratization of desire mind-cure movement(s) 57, 122, 125, see also psychoterapeutic cults mobility (theme) 28, 29, 42, 48, 49, 51, 53 mode of questioning 2, see also problematization, see also Weber, Max Model T, automobile 31, 188, see also Ford, Motor Company modern business enterprise 32, see also railroad(s), see also mass production modernism 16, 140, 154n1, see also artist(s) Morgan, John Pierpont 32 see also captains of industry Morris, William 121, see also Arts and Crafts Movement movie(s) (motion-picture theatre) 49, 52, see agencies of mass communication, see also amusement(s) “multiple modernities” 10, see also consumer culture Mumford, Lewis 9, 64, 75 Muncie, city of 27, see also Lynd, Robert Munsey’s, magazine 42, see also mass publishing Münsterberg, Hugo 111, see also psychology Murad, cigarettes 146, 148, see also advertisment(s), see also associative mechanism mural movement 80, see also city, beautify Musil, Robert 24 N.W. Ayer & Sons, advertising agency 43, 110 National Association of Window Trimmers 93, see also Baum, Frank National Retail Dry Goods Association, 119n35 Native Americans 28 nervous illness, see neurasthenia neurasthenia 13, 57, see also disenchantment

newspaper advertising 78, 93 newspaper(s) 41, 42, 52, 58, 63, 110, 111, 174, 178 Nietzsche Friedrich 1, 2, 13, 18, see also last man(-en) Nijinsky, see also Ballets Russes Noah’s Ark 126, see also special display(s) Northern Pacific Railway 28, see also railroad(s) Northwestern University 111 Odorno, deodorant 133, see also advertisment(s), see also impression management Ogburn, William; 48–49, 129 “Old Vienna” (Midway Plaisance) 71 Olmsted, Fredrick 79, see also urban reform Omega Oil 84, see also streetcar advertising ordering of societal relations, see social order Orvell, Miles 72 outdoor advertising 41–42, 83, 84–87; acceptance/appreciation of 80, 89n23; see also commercial aesthetic, see also city as spectacle outdoor publicity, see outdoor advertising Overland, automobile 149; see also associative mechanism overproduction 22, 23, 44, 45n5, 100, 102, 108, 110, 143, 159, 165, 189, 190; see also planned obsolesce, see also saturation Pabst Blue Ribbon, beer 146, see also advertisment(s), see also associative mechanism Pabst Brewing Company 173, see also consumer retention Pacific Railroad 28, see also railroad(s) package(s) 41, 78, 85, 108, 165, 174 packaging 111, 129, 176, 192, see also business tool(s) Pall Mall, cigarettes 144, 146, see also advertisment(s), see also associative mechanism Paramount Pictures 126, see also advertisment(s), see also consumer child Park, Robert E. 54, see also city Parten, Mildred 49, see also family patent medicine(s) 35, 43, 109, see also trickster(s)

Index Patten, Simon Nelson 23, 33, 51, 55, 79, 123–25, 189, 194n3 Pearline, soap 75, see also otudoor advertising Pears’ Soap 110, 129, 133, 142–43, 146, see also advertisement(s) peddler(s), see itinerant merchant(s) Pepsodent, toothpaste 112, see also advertisment(s), see also associative mechanism performance (social) 93, 107, 114.15; action as 54, 57–58, 101, 133; and consumer goods 22, 92, 97, 101; concept of 20–21; impression management and 132–33; see also theatricalization periodical(s) 42, 52, 56, 57, 85, see also mass publishing personality (concept of) 17–18, 55–56, 112, 192; artistic 140–41, see also artist(s); culture of 55–57, 100; demands of a growing 57; of the citizen 75; product 110, 123, 143–150, 178, see also associative mechanism; store 115, 167n6; see also business personality; see also character (concept of); see also lifestyle(s) personality development/development of 22, 48, 55, 139, 191, 196, see also character formation personality-based advertising 139–141, see also artist(s) Pierce-Arrow, automobile 146, 150, see also advertisment(s), see also associative mechanism planned obsolescence 190–92 pluralisation of life-worlds 57, 92, 107 political marketing 8 Pompeian Beauty Powder 133, see also advertisment(s) Pompeii panorama (Midway Plaisance) 70–71 Pope, Daniel 111 Pope, Manufacturing Company, see Columbia Powers, John E. 43 practice(s) (business) 23, 35, 38, 44, 48, 56, 85, 160, 164, 166, 182, 189, situated 21, 40 premium(s) 37, 127; system 37, 129 presentation of self 92, 98, 101, see also impression management, see also theatricalization Printers’ Ink Monthly, trade journal 164, 174, 175, 176

235

Printers’ Ink, trade journal 33, 38, 40, 43, 78, 85, 86, 107, 108, 110, 113, 190, see also Rowell, George problematization 9, 18, 21, see also genealogy, see also mode of questioning professional(s) 21, 22, 32–33, 35–36, 42–43; 49–50, 53, 78–79, 80, 123, 125, 129, 171 progress (theme) 4, 28, 48; 124–25, see also Patten, Simon Nelson, 129; Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 and 70; economic 23, 28, 45n3; Progressive Era 32; progressive legislation of the Pure Food and Drug Act 43; progressive reformers/movement(s) 53, 76n6, 79, see also City Beautiful movement, see also city government, see also urban reform; social 80, 124, 25; woman(-en) and 50; youth and 51–52, 126 “Promenade de Toilettes” 95, 116, see also Gimbel’s, see also Urban, Joseph, see also special display(s) prosumerism 6, 174, see also brand loyalty, see also relationship marketing pseudo-event(s) 23, 64, 184–85, see also second reality psychology: and advertising 111–13; and the notion of personality; applied 23, 111, 162; industrial 34; see also consumer research “psychoterapic cults”, see psychotherapeutic cults psychotherapeutic cults 57, 122, 125, see also religion public relations 63–64, see also Department of Promotion and Publicity; 184, see also Bernays, Edward Pure Food and Drug Act 43, see also patent medicine(s) Putnam, Frederick Ward 72, see also Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 Quaker Oats 84, see also streetcar advertising, 143, see also character (trade) radio 52, 58, 82, see also agencies of mass communication railroad(s) (theme) 17, 28–29, 31–33, 124, see also communication and transportation; elevated 84–85, 86 railway, see railroad(s) Rainforest Café 72, see also experience economy

236

Index

rationality 19, 21, 53–54; instrumental 1, 9, 16, 53–54 rationalization 1, 4, 16–17, 56, 76n6, 114, 115, 123, 178, 187n40, 196; and re-enchantment 23, 183; and the culture of feeling 53; economic 17, 18; see also religion, see also disenchantment “reason-why” (approach in advertising) 111–12, see also “human interest” Reckitt’s Blue, laundry bluing 85, see also outdoor advertising re-enchantment 23, 178, 182–83, 187n40 relationship marketing 8, 23, 117, 160, 170–72 religion (theme) 12, 16–18, 50, 56–57, 77, 122, 125, 142, 196; and spectacle(s) 82–83; religious disenchantment 16, 28; religious rationalization 1, 16; see also crisis of cultural authority, see also secularization Remington, E. and Sons 31, see also American system retailer(s) 36–43, 82, 84, 85, 94, 109, 114, 161, 163–64, 171, 172, 173, 176, 184, 190, 192, see also department store(s) retailing (theme) 9, 35, 39, 50, 161, 165, 171, 192, see also store design Rice, Stuart A. 52, see Hoover’s Committee Rickert, Heinrich 13 Riesman, David 58 Ritzer, George 187n40 Rivellini, Giulia 44n1 Roaring Twenties 26, 29, 142, 153 “robber barons” 45n4, see also captains of industry Robinson Crusoe 40, see also special display(s) Rockefeller, John D. 32, see also big business Roeckl, Heinrich 63 Root, Charles T. 39, see also Dry Goods Economist Rowell, George 38, see also advertising agent Royal Baking Powder 109, 128, see also youth market Roycroft, see Hubbard, Elbert runway shows, see fashion Russell, Thomas 110 Sahlins, Marshall 4 Saks & Co., department store 84, 112, see also streetcar advertising

sales force(s) 36; 37, 45n12, 121, see also Hubbard, Elbert; 50, 110; 114, see also woman(-en), sales-; 115, 162, 163; 164, see also market research; 172–73, 185n17, see also relationship marketing; 175; see also clerk(s), see also floor (or aisle) manager, see also merchandise manager, see also itinerant merchant(s) sales manager 161, see also sales force(s) salesmanship: absentee 41, see also Veblen, Thorstein; in print: advertising as 110–11, see also Kennedy, John E.; self- 36 Santa Claus 83, 126, 136n4, 183 Santa Fe, railroad 28, see also communication and transportation Sapolio, soap 84, 85, see also “Spotless Town” Sarg, Tony 83, see also Macy’s, Thanksgiving Parade saturation 174, 189–90, see also overproduction Saturday Evening Post, magazine 149, see also “The Penalty of Leadership” Scenic Theater (Midway Plaisance) 70 Schmoller, Gustav von 12, see also Weber, Max Schutz, Alfred 24n8 scientific management 34, see also Taylor, Frederick W. Scott, Walter Dill 111, see also psychology ScotTissue 146, see also advertisment(s), see also associative mechanism search for experience(s) 16–18, 112, see also culture of feeling second reality 21, 24 n8, see also Musil, Robert, see also Voegelin, Eric; of events 184, 85, see also pseudo-event(s); of mediated social imaginaries 21, 175 secularization (theme) 55–57, 59n7, 92; Christmas and 83, 126; of Sunday 56; secular framework attached to the therapeutics of self-realization 125; secular mentality 49; secular social imaginary 57; secularized culture of feeling 176; see also crisis of cultural authority self-fulfilment/realization (and consumption) 44, 139, 145, 150, 154, 171, 190 selling (theme) 22, 36, 93, 115, 160, 173, 174, 176, 179, 182, 190; mail-order 36, 37; of ideas and feelings/sentiments 175, 177; see also appeal(s)

Index Sempre Giovine, soap 132–33, see also beauty service ethic 22, 114, 115, 117, 119n44, 121, 136n3, 179, 182, see also relationship marketing, see also department store(s) Shaw, Arch 159–60 shop windows, see window(s) shopping (theme) 38, 39, 139; “shopping courts” 182; experience 117, 179, 182 show(s), see spectacle(s) Shredded Wheat Biscuit, 129, see also consumer child(-ren) Shuyler, Montgomery 75 Siegel-Cooper, department store 76n14 sign(s) 38–39, 41, 52, 81, 83–87, 108, 144, see also outdoor advertising, see also billboard(s) Simmel, Georg 53–54, 55, 102n1 Simonson, Lee 95, see also Macy’s Singer, sewing machines 31, see also American system Sloan, Alfred 188, see also planned obsolescence social configuration, see social order social distinction 5, 55, 90, 112, 114, 144–45, 150, 175, 191, conspicuous consumption as an instrument of 90; good/articles as the operator(s) of 144, 149, 154; see also individualization social inequality 124 social order 3; 4; 6; 9; 10; 11; 12; 17; 18; 20; 21; 35; 51; 52; 53; 70; 104; 121; 123; 154; 156 social position 51, 54, 98, 100; staging of one’s own 90, see also performance(s) social recognition 101, 132, 135, 182, 189, 191, 192; and impression management 101, 132; business life and 35, 38; mimetic desire and 133; outside close family relations 49; see also individualization, see also imitation social science 13–14, see also sociology social sciences/scientists (in business) 23; 52, 129, 164 social stratification 4, 144 socialization 22, 58; advertisments and anticipatory 144; means of 22, 90; see also window(s), see also agencies of mass communication; socio-cultural changes 7, 21, 22, 23, 48, 59, 159, 166, 177; see also conditions of emergence sociology 2, 15, 18, 20, see also genealogy, see also mode of questioning

237

Socrates 55 Sombart, Werner 3 South Sea Island Village (Midway Plaisance) 71 Southern Pacific, railroad 27, see also communication and transportation space-time compression 52, 72 special decoration(s) 116–17, 182, see also store design, see also department store(s), see also special display(s) special display(s) 40, 82, 93, 97, 116–17 120n50, 126, 136n3, 182, see also business dramatization, see also commercialization of the calendar, see also event(s), see also socialization of commerce special window(s), see special display(s) spectacle(s) (business) 80–81, Christmas 83; circus parades and open-air 81; like street fairs and food exhibitions 81; medicine 35; spectacles as urban rituals 82; travelling 35, 77; see also consumer city, see also event(s) “Spotless Town”, streetcar advertising card series 84, see also Ward, Artemas Springfield Armory 31, see also American System St Peter, Basilica 71, 73 stage (theme): 77–78, 82, 179; consumer city as 22; department store as a themed 116; designer(s) 95, 140; metropolis as 54; professional stage setting 95; stores and windows as 92; urban 97; White City as a colossal stage 66; window- 83; world as a 92; see also theatre staging 66, 75; of an ideal city 22, 64, 69, 93; a representation 66, 75, 97; of one’s own social position 90; of the artistic ambience of the workplace 140; of the event 182; theatre-like 95 standard of life/living 43, 121, 124, 189 standardization 31, 41, 79–80, 192, see also differentiation store design 22, 115, 117, 160, 176, 182, 192, see also business tool(s), see also decoration(s), see also display(s) store management 22, 107, see also managerial revolution; see also merchandise manager, see also sales manager, see also service ethic, see also sales force(s) Strawbridge & Clothier, department store 81, 116, see also special display(s)

238

Index

streetcar advertising 41–42, 84–85, 163–64, see also outdoor advertising Strong, Edward 173, see also psychology structural change(s), see structural transformation(s) structural transformation(s) 7, 21–23, 38, 40, 48, 56, see also conditions of emergence style(s) (theme) 188–90, 191; and the applied arts 192; as a marketing device 191; differentiation 188, 191–92; see also individualization, see also lifestyle(s) subjectivist culture 16, 17 18, 148; and fluid conception of reality and identity 140; see also Weber, Max; see also consumer as a form of subjectivity/as a human type subsistence economy 4 substitution (in business) 109, 161, see also trademark(s), see also retailing (theme) Sullivan, Louis 72, see also Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 Swift, & Company 31, 36, see also industry, meatpacking “Switchmen metaphor” 19–20, see also liminality, see also Weber, Max Szakolczai, Arpad 15, 18 Tarde, Gabriel 20 Taylor, George Robert 28, see also communication and transportation taylorism 34, see also labour, see also scientific management telegraph 29, 32, 52, telephone 29, 32, 172, 191, 193 testimonial(s); 102n5, 109, 126, 143, 144, 174; endorsment of 109, 143; see also associative mechanism, see also business personality The Consumption of Wealth, book 124, see also Patten, Simon Nelson The Fight between Carnival and Lent, Brueghel’s painting 76n4 “The Metropolis and Mental Life”, essay 53, see also Simmel, Georg The New Basis of Civilization, book 79, 124, see also Patten Simon Nelson “The Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe” 83, see also Macy’s, Thanksgiving Parade; 126, see also special display(s) “The Penalty of Leadership”, advertisment 149, see also McManus, Theodor

The Philistine, magazine 122, see also Hubbard, Elbert The Protestant Ethic, essay 1, 11–12, 13, 15–16, 55, 57, see also Weber, Max The Republic, statue, see Chester, Daniel The Show Window: A Journal of Practical Window Trimming for the Merchant and the Professional 95, see also Baum, Frank “The Street in Cairo” (Midway Plaisance) 71 theatre(s) (theme) 58, 66, 69, 75, 77, 79–80, 83, 85, 86, 92, 95, 98, 102n3, 113, 125, 135, 150, 177; and business dramatization 177–78; and new fashion trends 92, 184; as a medium for product endorsement 92; as a narrative model 94; comparison between business and 145; theatre stage managers and display managers 95; theatre lighting techniques used in shop windows and department stores 92; theatrelike staging and show windows and department store interiors 95 theatricalization (theme) 21, 22, 54, 57, 93, 97, 107, 140; theatrical accent of urban daily life 92; theatricalised concept of social action 54, see also performance(s); theatricality of public appearance 92; theatricalized “reality”of the consumer city 22, 90; theatricalized conception of social identity and social relations 112; theatricalized reality 132, 143, 175; see also urban (daily) life, see also presentation of self theme parks, see Luna Park(s) theme(s)/theming (in business) 72, 116, 126, 183, see also business dramatization, see also special display(s) Thomas Flyer, automobile 144, see also advertisment(s), see also associative mechanism Thompson, Frederick 83, see also Coney island “Three Men in a Boat” 83, see also Macy’s, Thanksgiving Parade Times Square 81, 86, see also electric illumination time-saving appliances 50, see also woman(-en) Tomlinson, Alan 47n30 Town & Country, magazine 150 Toy City 183, see special display(s)

Index trademark(s) (theme) 22, 37, 41, 72, 73, 85, 108–10, 112, 139, 160, 163, 171; reputation 22, 109; trademarking 111; see also business tools, see also character(s) trickster(s) 35, see also itinenrant merchant(s); -like figures 19, logic 115 Turkish Trophies, cigarettes 85, see also billboard(s) Turner, Victor 19, 20 see also liminality type of human being, see human type ultimate problems 12, see also mode of questioning Uncle Tom’s Cabin 40, see also special display(s) Uneeda Biscuit 84, 129 United States Economist and Dry Goods Reporter 39, see also Dry Goods Economist University of Halle 123, see also Patten, Simon Nelson urban (dialy) life 22, 63, 64, 74, 75, 77, 80, 90, 92–94, 97, 101, 103n12, 139, 144, 188, see also theatricalization, see also presentation of self urban ideal 66, 73, 80, see also Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, see also city urban marketing 8, 63, 64, 78 urban planning, 22, 64, 65, 76n6, 87n1, see also city government urban reform 22, 77, 79–80, 87n1, 88n6, see also city planning Urban, Joseph 95, see also commercial aesthetic urbanization 27, 29, 51, 77, 132, 141 urbanization of consciousness 22, 48, 52–53 use value 7, 44, 108, 142 Van Brunt, Henry 66, see also White City Van Camp Packing Company, see Van Camp, Frank Van Camp, Frank 161 van Gennep, Arnold 19, see also liminality Veblen, Thorstein 41, 90 vertical integration 33, 36, 38 Victorian morality 55 viral marketing 8, 174 Voegelin, Eric 24n8 W.B. Corsets 84, see also streetcar advertising Waldorf Astoria 82

239

Wanamaker, John 80, 115, 119n46 Wanamaker’s, department store 43, 82, 84, 182, 183, 187n47; japanese garden setting at 116, see also special display(s) Ward, Artemas, 84, see also Sapolio Weber, Max 1–2; 11–19, 24n3, 53, 55, 57, 59n7 Weller, Justus, see Hubbard, Elbert Wharton School 33, see also business school(s), see also Patten, Simon Nelson White City 64–66, 67, 72–73, 76n6, 77, 80 wholesale, see distribution wholesaler, see middleman(-en) Wilcox, Delos 42, see also mass publishing Willey, Malcom M. 52, see also Rice, Stuart A. Williams, Raymond 178 Wilson whiskey 76, see also sign(s) window(s) (show) 17, 22, 36, 38–40, 81, 82, 83, 92, 93, 97–99, 101, 113, 120n50, 124, 126, 133, 139, 176, 178, 179, 183, 184, 189; and culture of personality 100; and theatre-like staging 95; as images mirroring real life 98; as means of socialization to the theatricalized “reality” of the consumer city 90; as representations of an ideal of modern life 93; as tableaux vivants 92; atmosphere 94; theatre lighting techniques used in 92; see also display(s) Windsor Castle, see Lever Brothers woman(-en): 83, 86, 109, 126, 146, 150, 164, 173–74; American 133, 164, 176, 179; and a new share in social life 50–51, 59n2; and beautification 132–35; and wax figures 98–100; into industry and the professions 49–50, 119n41; modern 94, 132; modern American 103n9, 131, 144; -related practices 151; sales- 114, 119n41 Woodbury, John 132, see also beauty Woodbury, Soap Company 133, 176, see also advertisment(s) work, see labour world image 18–20, 54, 56, 58, 144, see also Weber, Max; 196 world of goods 4, 21, 22, 40, 85, 101, 129, 142, 149, 150, 160; see also Douglas, Mary worldview 9, 48, see also world image

240

Index

Wrigley’s, Company 146, see also advertisment(s), see also associative mechanism Wurtzburg’s, department store 183 Yankee farmer 29, see also agriculture

Yeoman tradition 29, see also abundance Young, James 33, see also Wharton School youth culture 51, 126 youth market 126, 128 Yudelson, Sophie 50, see also woman(-en)