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Immigration in the 1950s and 1960s was fairly low. The big waves of immigration had been stopped prior to that.
There are a number of other factors that also improved the lot of the middle class. Those roads and interstates stopped the monopolies of the railroads. It is no co-incidence that the peak of railroads and mass transportation was 1914. In Vermont, if you wanted to travel any distance at all during winter or early spring, you HAD to travel by rail. The roads were effectively impassable. The combination of good roads and automobiles was a huge change. You can't gain traction for cosmopolitan ideals in isolated backwoods hamlets without travel and information.
Autos cost less to maintain than horses. The REA put electricity in rural areas (much as is happening with broadband now). Most taxation was only onerous to those with wealth. I remember times before sales tax. I remember very low utility costs. I remember construction materials cost was crazy low. Medical costs - in 1950 the total cost of a hospital stay to have a child was often $200 or less - without insurance.
Both Ford and Hershey broke with the idea of robber baron capitalism, and pushed for eager compliance from workers by providing the basics as part of the job. That put pressure on other employers. Yellow journalism exposed the worst employers.
The extraction of mineral and natural resource wealth created money. If you work a day and have a few tons of coal, the mechanical energy in that coal is leverage to expend tens of times more energy than what was required to get it. The cost of energy in general plummeted compared to most other countries.
The mechanization of farming forced people off the land and into more productive jobs. You don't become middle class by spending all day picking cotton.
The threat of communism scared the poop out of the leaders of industry and politics, and they did what was needed to prevent another great depression by making the capitalist ideal an "everyman" possibility. It also scared those newly freed workers and entrepreneurs who had just gone through major war, and they put for the economic efforts to keep it at bay.
Going back to the basics of the industrial revolution, the "merchant" class was the equivalent of the middle class of the 1950s and 1960s. The rich could no longer survive by holding back education and having economic slaves. They had to use highly educated people, and those people were independent.
Esthetically, the rich had to look at and be fearful of fewer slums. Which is safer, walking down a street in an impoverished area, or a middle class street?
Radio and television. These did to movie theatres and vaudeville what public roads did to railroads. The monopoly on entertainment was loosened, and news came even to those who couldn't read.
The U.S. has a mixed and managed economy, and has since the beginnings of Federalism. Capitalism is just a word. The roads are a socialist project. Public utilities are a socialist project. Crop limits and price controls are socialist. Sin taxes are socialist. No modern functioning country can avoid some socialist ideas. Want to try it without? Try no roads, no internet, no power other than what you can make, etc..
The 1950s and 1960s worked in part because no ideologue of any sort gained more than minimal control, and practicality and cooler minds held the reins.
Immigration in the 1950s and 1960s was fairly low. The big waves of immigration had been stopped prior to that.
There are a number of other factors that also improved the lot of the middle class. Those roads and interstates stopped the monopolies of the railroads. It is no co-incidence that the peak of railroads and mass transportation was 1914. In Vermont, if you wanted to travel any distance at all during winter or early spring, you HAD to travel by rail. The roads were effectively impassable. The combination of good roads and automobiles was a huge change. You can't gain traction for cosmopolitan ideals in isolated backwoods hamlets without travel and information.
Autos cost less to maintain than horses. The REA put electricity in rural areas (much as is happening with broadband now). Most taxation was only onerous to those with wealth. I remember times before sales tax. I remember very low utility costs. I remember construction materials cost was crazy low. Medical costs - in 1950 the total cost of a hospital stay to have a child was often $200 or less - without insurance.
Both Ford and Hershey broke with the idea of robber baron capitalism, and pushed for eager compliance from workers by providing the basics as part of the job. That put pressure on other employers. Yellow journalism exposed the worst employers.
The extraction of mineral and natural resource wealth created money. If you work a day and have a few tons of coal, the mechanical energy in that coal is leverage to expend tens of times more energy than what was required to get it. The cost of energy in general plummeted compared to most other countries.
The mechanization of farming forced people off the land and into more productive jobs. You don't become middle class by spending all day picking cotton.
The threat of communism scared the poop out of the leaders of industry and politics, and they did what was needed to prevent another great depression by making the capitalist ideal an "everyman" possibility. It also scared those newly freed workers and entrepreneurs who had just gone through major war, and they put for the economic efforts to keep it at bay.
Going back to the basics of the industrial revolution, the "merchant" class was the equivalent of the middle class of the 1950s and 1960s. The rich could no longer survive by holding back education and having economic slaves. They had to use highly educated people, and those people were independent.
Esthetically, the rich had to look at and be fearful of fewer slums. Which is safer, walking down a street in an impoverished area, or a middle class street?
Radio and television. These did to movie theatres and vaudeville what public roads did to railroads. The monopoly on entertainment was loosened, and news came even to those who couldn't read.
The U.S. has a mixed and managed economy, and has since the beginnings of Federalism. Capitalism is just a word. The roads are a socialist project. Public utilities are a socialist project. Crop limits and price controls are socialist. Sin taxes are socialist. No modern functioning country can avoid some socialist ideas. Want to try it without? Try no roads, no internet, no power other than what you can make, etc..
The 1950s and 1960s worked in part because no ideologue of any sort gained more than minimal control, and practicality and cooler minds held the reins.
But at that time was there not more unions back than? Was that not rage back than where unions where at the largest in history not like today. So businesses just paid really good wages and thus creating strong middle class?
But at that time was there not more unions back than? Was that not rage back than where unions where at the largest in history not like today. So businesses just paid really good wages and thus creating strong middle class?
They were stronger, yes. You make an error in trying to cherry-pick a single source of higher wages. Very few things in history are single cause and effect, even if it might appear that way at first glance.
most of the products sold in the USA and exported world-wide were manufactured here in the USA. Those factory jobs were paying what was a living wage then. One could buy a house without the wife having to work. The typical home was 2 bedrooms and 1 bath, with a 4,000-5,000 sf lot.
There has always been something of a middle class in the early US and back into the colonial era.
Tradesmen and craftsmen were somewhere in the middle. The existence of a rudimentary capitalist society made it possible for someone to actually own property with an official title, and to leverage that property equity for capital and a greater measure of wealth. The English and the Dutch were ahead of other countries in that idea of common people with ownership. It was not just the wealthy elite.
Fast forward to the late 1800s and the labor movement made (and won some) demands on the industrialists who had similarly used the system and leveraged themselves into a powerful elite. Collective bargaining began to move some trades into the middle class. My grandfather learned the shoemaking trade in a small company town in New York. His dad was a small farmer, not wealthy. He moved to St. Louis around 1900 and worked in the huge shoe factories -- but he was a strong union man and lived a middle-class life, owned a home and had healthy kids. He married a woman who was born and raised in the city's Irish tenements and was one of three kids out of ten who survived to adulthood. Her family illness was TB. She was orphaned and went into domestic service for rich families before marriage...not middle class. She married well considering her roots.
Later the government became more activist and worked to control monopolies, bring people out of the depression, electrified rural areas, implemented reforms and stabilized agriculture. Education and literacy improved. Health improved. Social Security helped the elderly. Post WW2 the government helped veterans gain homeownership. Civil rights and desegregation changed things. All of that raised people into the middle class.
People reminisce about the 1950-60s because that rise of the middle class stagnated in and after the 1980s. Trickledown economics benefited the wealthy who simply did not trickle. Wages did not keep pace with productivity and corporations gained huge profits. Some might attribute that stagnation to Reagan's policies, the Baby Boom, or the rise of an investor class. There seemed to be less attention paid to the middle class. Labor unions declined. Pensions declined. The wealth gap widened. Homeownership (most common form of owner equity) is fast becoming out of reach for younger Americans. First-time homebuyers declined to just 26% in 2022, lowest level on record.
They were stronger, yes. You make an error in trying to cherry-pick a single source of higher wages. Very few things in history are single cause and effect, even if it might appear that way at first glance.
I don’t mean all the businesses that have high wages have unions.
The higher wages could be.
1 the fear of communism taking over
2 A lot of businesses that have unions
3 the businesses that fear union could start if they don’t up the wages. So they up the wages and make people happy so a union does not start.
The country embraced growth and cheap energy resulted in higher paying manufacturing job growth. Affordability was high and a disaster now. Look in the mirror and what do you see wish and hope wise on these same aspects. Then consider if you are typical or not then your answer is there.
The invention of the automobile and all it's ancillary industries created the middle class.
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