Postwar%20Years%20in%20America%20(1945-1960)

1
Postwar Years in America (1945-1960)

• Chapter 20 Sections 1-3
• Focus Question
• If you had to spend 5 years deprived of modern
  convenience (technology, etc.) what would be the
  first thing you would buy after you no longer
  were limited? Why? How would you feel?

2
The Postwar Economy
3
Businesses Reorganize

• GNP and Per Capita Income increase 60
• Major corporate expansionnew products
• Conglomerate corporation made up of three or
  more unrelated businesses
• Franchise business that contracts to offer
  certain goods and services from a parent company
• Ray Kroc (McDonalds)

4
Technology Transforms Life

• Television
• 4 to 5 hours a day
• Commercials
• The Computer Industry
• Transistor circuit device that controls
  electrical signals
• Nuclear Power
• Nuclear Fission
• Advances in Medicine
• Jonas Salks polio vaccine
• Antibiotics

5
Changes in the Work Force

• Blue-collar jobs to white-collar jobs
• Easier physically
• Blue-collar workers move to the middle class
• Wages and working conditions up
• Unions unite

6
Moving to the Suburbs

• GI Bill of Rights
• Servicemens Readjustment Act of 1944
• Low-interest mortgages to WWII veterans
• Educational stipends for college
• William J. Levitt built whole communities
• The average American could afford to buy their
  own house

7
Cars and Highways

• Move to suburbs calls for more dependence on cars
• Automakers make new models each year
• New businesses
• Gas Stations, etc.
• 1956 Federal-Aid Highway Act
• Money to build interstate system

8
The Growth of Consumer Credit

• Gasoline companies begin offering credit cards to
  loyal customers
• Consumer credit debt grows from 8 billion to 56
  billion in 14 yrs
• U.S. becomes an affluent society

9
The Mood of the 1950s
Focus Question What do you consider to be the
proper role for men and women today?
Do your views differ from those of your
parents/grand-parents?
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Reading Assignment Page 675-679
The Mood of the 1950s
Conformity 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Roles in Society 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Challenges to Conformity 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
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Comfort and Security

• Youth Culture
• Silent Generation
• Good economy in school longer
• More free time
• Advertisement aims them
• A Resurgence in Religion
• Response to godless communism
• In God we Trust on currency
• under god in Pledge of Allegiance

12
Mens and Womens Roles

• Men
• Go to school, get a job, and support family
• Earn money and make political, social, and
  economic decisions
• Women
• Supporting role to men
• Keep house, cooked meals, and raised the children

13
Challenges to Conformity

• Women at Work
• Liked their jobs during WWII
• Not all left jobs after marriage
• Secretaries, teachers, nurses, and sales clerks
• Wanted to purchase the items of the good life

14
Challenges to Conformity

• Youth Rebellion
• Rejected parents values, felt misunderstood
• Rebel Without a Cause
• Alan Freed disc-jockey who started playing rock
  n roll (Moondog Rock n Roll)
• Chuck Berry, Bill Haley and the Comets, Buddy
  Holly, Elvis Presley
• Beatniks challenged traditional patterns of
  respectability

15
Domestic Politics and Policy
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Trumans Domestic Policies

• The Peacetime Economy
• Reconversion from wartime to peacetime
• Workers go on strike for higher wages
• Taft-Hartley Act
• Allowed President to declare 80-day cooling off
  period during which workers had to return to
  work, if in an industry that effected national
  interest.

17
Trumans Domestic Policies

• Trumans Fair Deal
• Extended New Deals goals
• 21-point Program
• Promoted a higher minimum wage, greater
  unemployment compensation, full employment,
  housing assistance
• Approval rating drops
• Congress battered Truman

18
Trumans Domestic Policies

• Truman on Civil Rights
• Publicly supported civil rights
• Met w/ African American leaders to discuss their
  goals
• Appointed a Biracial Committee on Civil Rights
• Congress never took action on these issues
• Ended segregation in armed forces

19
The Election of 1948

• Truman seeks 1st term
• Served FDRs term
• Henry Wallace
• Progressive Candidate
• Thomas E. Dewey
• Republican Candidate
• All polls pick Dewey to win
• Truman pulls the upset
• After the win the 22nd Amendment is ratified
• President term limits

20
Eisenhower and the Republican Approach

• Adlai Stevenson
• Democratic Nomination
• Dwight D. Eisenhower
• Republican Nomination
• WWII Hero
• K1C2 Approach
• Korea, Communism, Corruption
• Richard Nixon as running mate
• Nixon hammered the topic of corruption

21
The Checkers Speech

• Snag in popularity
• Secret Nixon Fund
• Suggested to drop Nixon
• Eisenhower sticks w/ him
• Allowed Nixon to Save Himself
• Televised speech
• Admitted to Accepting 1 gift
• Political Disaster Turns into a Public Relations
  Bonanza
• Nixon saved himself and catapulted Ike to office

22
Modern Republicanism

• Dynamic Conservatism
• Conservative when it comes to money, liberal when
  it comes to human beings
• Favored Big Business
• 3 recessions under Ike
• Meeting the Technology Challenge
• Created NASA
• National Defense Education Act improve science
  and math in schools