Courtesy of Knuckledraggin’, we have this reflection on a greatly changed America:
“It wasn’t always like this.”
I looked up from the litter I was collecting in the park. Discarded trash was a constant battle in the city in which we lived before returning home. It became so bad that my wife and I organized events to pick up litter in the park followed by yard games with other families. The voice belonged to a very old man and I asked him what he meant, fully expecting to hear a lecture about how people were just more diligent back in his day and had more civic pride. He surprised me though.
“Nothing had its own packaging.” he explained. “Now everything has its own wrapper that you throw away.”
Please read it all. It’s a touching reflection on traditions that have vanished, or have been greatly weakened, over the postwar decades. But it also omits something: a bit of context that goes along with the other developments in American society since the end of World War II and the immense demobilization that followed.
Why was it, generally speaking, that “nothing had its own packaging” in those pre-war decades? The unnamed gentleman who said that may have had more in mind than just the litter itself. Though it’s a seeming paradox, an expanded context helps us to see the details more clearly.
Convenience foodstuffs – both “fast foods” and the sort of snack foods that are purchased on impulse, eaten outside the home, and which generate the greater part of the litter the article mentions – were both fewer in number and less frequently purchased before World War II. The ones that existed were less appealing. Their purchasers had the means to buy them far less often. This must be factored into an analysis of the postwar changes.
Production and consumption operate in tandem. Producers need something to produce, but their choice will always be constrained by what consumers choose to consume. Similarly, consumers cannot consume what hasn’t been produced. Something that’s being consumed enthusiastically will be produced in increasing numbers, and by increasing numbers of producers. The immense demographic transition the U.S. experienced after World War II changed a great deal in that regard:
- Nearly 11 million American men were demobilized into civilian society;
- A large number of American women were freed from wage labor to become wives, mothers, and homemakers;
- The men found the women and started producing children;
- An economy that had been oriented toward war production shifted back to civilian goods with a lurch.
At first, the emphasis was on houses and cars, but that couldn’t carry the tide for very long. Houses and cars are expensive; besides, how many people need more than one of each? A substantial number of women found that they missed their workplaces, and were willing to divide themselves between the duties of the workplace and the demands of the home. Concurrently with those trends, true mass marketing, supported by the burgeoning of broadcast radio and television, exploded nationwide. When new consumer goods arose, the marketers and advertisers were quick to popularize them.
Men, absorbed by their occupations, typically were away from their families during the daylight hours. That left their wives with nearly the whole burden of homemaking and child-rearing. Convenience products aimed at alleviating that burden arose immediately, were promoted on the airwaves, and were embraced by their target market: the American housewife. The swelling of postwar prosperity also meant more discretionary family income, some of which found its way into juvenile pockets.
Production stimulated consumption; consumption stoked production. Nearly all the new products came in cans, cardboard boxes, or plastic wrappers. Quite a large percentage of those products were sold to children, who were spending ever more of their time outside the home, essentially unsupervised.
The behavioral changes were inevitable. Both the economics of the marketplace and the economics of home and pantry pushed them along.
America in the Fifties was still highly civic-minded. Adults took care not to litter. Apartment buildings provided centralized disposal services, sometimes through incinerators. Parents taught their children that littering is an offense against good citizenship and good taste. But all that would change as disposable products and their packaging proliferated and the burdens on homemakers increased.
Other influences would have their part, especially the large inflations of the Seventies, which practically eliminated the one-income family as the American norm. In aggregate, the pressures on private citizens pushed them away from traditional American kitchen practices and toward the use of convenience foods and “snack” products. The rise of the “fast food” restaurant, which became pronounced in the late Sixties, partook greatly of those trends.
Unless a consumable product came straight from the greengrocer or the butcher, it came in packaging. The packaging had to go somewhere. It didn’t always go into the trash can… and even when it did, it didn’t always make it to the dump.
It was predictable that there would be an increase in disposable things. Indeed, if there hadn’t been such an increase, the economy wouldn’t have expanded as swiftly as it did, whether or not you think that was a good thing. We of today must cope with the remnants of what we consume. Generally, we do pretty well. But the attitudes of those that produce the mounds of garbage are often less than pleasant, as the city of Baltimore has shown us:
Look, we appreciate anyone who is willing to roll up their sleeves to help Baltimore. More than 170 people came from all over the country and cleaned up nearly 12 tons of trash, according to Mr. Presler’s Twitter feed. He doesn’t post any photos of the totality of the trash, so we’ll have to take his word for it….
Whatever he says his motives were, Mr. Presler’s presence in Baltimore reinforces the tired image of our failing urban cores. That the poor people in this dilapidated city can’t take care of their own neighborhoods and all the public officials around them have failed as well. The bureaucratic, all-talk Democrats strike again. If a crowd of volunteers could clean up 12 tons of trash in 12 hours, how incompetent and helpless must Baltimoreans be if they can’t manage it in decades, right?…
The silver lining in all of this is that the residents of West Baltimore did get a much needed cleaning up. That is something that they deserve. Streets and alleyways free of trash go a long way in improving the psyche of a neighborhood and its residents. Not to mention deterring crime. Mr. Presler says that people around the country are planning similar clean up events in their own communities. A loud round of applause for that as well. Spiffier neighborhoods are good for everyone.
We also hope Mr. Presler keeps his promise to return to Baltimore once a month. It would definitely give his motives more credibility. It might also give him better perspective about the city’s problems than any single visit can provide. Maybe it could even lead him and his followers to advocate for federal housing, health care, transportation, education, criminal justice, civil rights and anti-poverty policies aimed at urban communities.
It’s not just economics, to be sure.
