A Consumer's Republic
Dear Jim,
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StumbleUponYou closed yesterday by asking if these citizen consumers really wanted price controls. It sounds like they did, and more. It sounds, in fact, like many of the first wave of citizen consumers—the ones who most zealously sought out roles as bloc-committee snitches for the Office of Price Administration—were Communists. Cohen is happy to credit them with "spontaneous consumer organization," yet she accuses of red-baiting Martin Dies, Frederick J. Schlink of Consumers' Research, and other right-wingers who would blame citizen consumers for the same thing.
As I say, I think "citizen" here is, often as not, just an umbrella term for "left wing," and "consumer" is used broadly enough to cover those who consume real estate, public education, and bank loans. So Cohen's vague rubric allows her the freedom to cherry-pick the political conflicts of the Suburban Half-Century that interest her most. There is one episode that I found more enlightening than the others, even groundbreaking: Cohen's skeptical treatment of the GI Bill.
When I read Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1962) a couple of years ago, I was struck by its conservatism. Friedan did not lament the perennial subordination of women so much as she deplored the ground they had lost in the two decades since she graduated from Smith. Had the trajectory of women's rights preceding World War II prevailed, she implied, the perennial questions would have taken care of themselves. What happened to stop women's advancement in its tracks? This is a shoe that, in The Feminine Mystique, never drops.
Friedan refers to her subject as "the problem that has no name." But really, it is the problem that dare not speak its name. The problem is veterans' kudos, which those who served in World War II were able to parlay into concrete institutional advantages. These, in turn, not only halted the train of women's rights but set it running full speed in reverse. Friedan is not alone in her circumspection; an unwillingness to interrupt the past few years' rah-rah-ing over the "Greatest Generation" may be the reason there is still no authoritative history of the GI Bill. Cohen, however, is willing to place some of the blame for women's regression squarely on the GI Bill (and related legislation). True, her case is hyperbolic: She cites a University of Chicago study to claim that, "by and large, those who entered colleges or universities were young men who would have gone on to higher education anyway." And Cohen should be faulted for indulging an unscholarly political correctness: She faults the GI Bill for homophobia, on the grounds that it denied benefits to the dishonorably discharged, including gays—as if a gay-friendly alternative were imaginable in the America of the late 1940s.
But the evidence Cohen musters for the deterioration of women's educational position as a result of the war is good. She shows that the percentage of Seattle women aged 18 to 24 enrolled in school dropped from 20 percent in 1940 to 14 percent in 1947. (Two non-war years, so the excuse that they were merely "holding" traditionally male spots won't wash.) After having discussed Cohen's tendency to lard on evidence, I should say that this is one place where more is needed. Such evidence is readily available in The Feminine Mystique—for instance, the datum that "the proportion of women attending college in comparison with men dropped from 47 percent in 1920 to 35 percent in 1958." But Friedan didn't have the boldness to attack this sacred cow. Cohen does. She doesn't prove that the GI Bill was a mistake; but she does show that its gains were offset by side effects and hidden costs.
That leaves me little space to discuss Cohen's defense of the various Mount Laurel decisions passed by the New Jersey Supreme Court over the past three decades. These were meant to end the de facto racial segregation that had resulted from the state's decidedly pastoral zoning laws, and they have had destabilizing side effects. Rich suburbs were originally required to build tracts of low-income housing to remedy the disparate impact of lot-size requirements. Eventually, these towns and townships were able to meet their requirements by sending large sums of money to poorer communities. These transfers have been viewed as protection money and send suburbanites into a blind rage. When covering state political campaigns in New Jersey, I've noticed that Republican candidates attack the Mount Laurel decisions on the stump from one end of the state to the other, while Democrats mumble evasions of the mend-it-don't-end-it variety and hope the problem will go away. So I welcomed—while not exactly buying—the detailed and compelling case Cohen makes for the Mount Laurel decisions in these pages. It's the first time I've ever heard them defended.
Best,
Chris
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Remark From The Fray:
Christopher Caldwell asks, "What happened to stop women's advancement in its tracks? " He goes on to point a finger in the direction of the G.I. Bill. I disagree. The Bill was not the cause. You have to look a little farther back for that.
After World War I, women gained freedom. The woman who drove an ambulance, worked in the fields, or ran an office was a woman who knew she could do more than put on a long skirt and look decorative. The etiquette books of this period called for an end to the chaperone, and made a plea for women to have the right to live on their own without a husband or father to guide them. So many men were killed or severely wounded in World War I that there simply were not enough men to go around.
Then the Great Depression hit. One in six men could not find a job, and the World War I veteran became The Forgotten Man. The Forgotten Man was a hobo, a tramp, one of the dispossessed. This man risked his life for his country, saw the horrors of the Western Front, and was betrayed and forgotten by the very country for which he risked everything. Men, unable to find work, went on the road to earn money to send home. Women became de facto single mothers as their husbands took to the roads for long periods of time, if their men didn't desert them completely.
Now, there was something analogous to the G.I. Bill for veterans of the First World War. The men had been promised a bonus to be paid to them in 1945. By 1932, economic conditions were so bad that veterans marched on Washington to ask for the early release of the bonus money. They assembled in hastily-made shanty towns (the first Hoovervilles), some with their entire families, and awaited Congress's vote. Congress did not release the moneys, and Hoover ordered the protesters to leave. When they didn't, MacArthur led American troops against American veterans and their families. The people were tear-gassed, bayonetted and the shanty town razed.
World War II gave us an opportunity to right the wrongs done to veterans in World War I. We rebuilt trust. We make better promises, and we keep them. The very same etiquette books that cheered on the independent woman in the 1920s and 1930s, shamed the independent woman of the 1950s. Why are you out working, young woman? A man with a family needs that job, a man who fought to keep you free. A woman's stated job in the etiquette books and glossy magazines of the 1950s was to provide the man who fought for his country a haven from hard work and stress. Who cares if there's more scholarship money for men? He deserves it. He fought for his country, and, this time, he would know we did not forget him. The G.I. Bill was only a small part of it. This time, our men would have good jobs, and supportive women to keep their happy homes, moving the image from the homeless veteran to the homeowner veteran. The World War II veteran became The Remembered Man. Ask Tom Brokaw.
-- DeaH
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