# The 1950's weren't great **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 2, 2018, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479 "2018-05-02T22:00:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Red\_Wiggler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/red_wiggler/32/13190_2.png) [@Red\_Wiggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Wiggler)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2018, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/101 "2018-05-10T18:03:47Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I fervently agree with the second sentence. But the first is dead wrong. > > You mean “Greatest” generation. The 50s were what the Boomers were rebelling _against_. Yes. YES, goddammit. All that flag waving and insistence on conformity was the basis for the general discontent. We’ve made a little progress but it’s been a long slow haul for someone my age (64). ---
**Author:** ![Rilchiam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/2bfe46/32.png) [@Rilchiam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rilchiam)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2018, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/102 "2018-05-10T22:14:06Z")
> [@Moriarty](#): > > I’ve argued that much of the nostalgia of the 1950’s comes from people who are recalling their childhood innocence, so please forgive me for finding your reference to Bevery Cleary as quaint. It is my impression that the literary zeitgeist of the era is more encapsulated by such titles as Fahrenheit 441, The Crucible, On The Road, Catcher In The Rye, and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Except that **Voyager** was not talking about literary zeitgeist. Cleary’s early books were published and set in the 1950s, and the families portrayed in them had one wage earner. Then in the '70s, she gave an equally realistic view of what was happening by portraying layoffs and working wives/mothers. That’s not someone’s memories being distorted; it’s right there in print. * * * Upthread, **ElderSign** linked to a list of ten reasons life was better in the '50s, one of them being “Access to Education”. They’ve gotta be kidding. I’m in the midst of reading a book about the Little Rock Nine, and it’s giving me nightmares, no exaggeration. I’m amazed that those kids physically survived their experience at Central High. Sure, access to education, if you had the right complexion. Of course, this didn’t happen to the majority of black people. Because the majority of black people “knew their place”. ---
**Author:** ![j666](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de0a6/32.png) [@j666](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/j666)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2018, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/103 "2018-05-10T23:23:46Z")
> [@rat\_avatar](#): > > As the fetishism with the era dies with the boomer generation I expect this era to be remembered as some of the darkest days of our country. Don’t delude yourself. The youth of America is not oh-so-much less racist, sexist, and generally xenophobic than their grandparents. Did you see the marchers in North Carolina? The police assaulting and killing young black men? The Starbucks manager? The school shooters and church bombers? These people were not over 50. Now, I am not saying that Boomers are the apex and epitome of tolerance, but they certainly don’t suffer in comparison to people half their age. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2018, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/104 "2018-05-10T23:28:52Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > The newspapers were anti-Communist because until 1953 one of the greatest mass murderers in history was dictator of the Soviet Union. Anyone who was paying attention was anti-Communist. The Cold War was a real thing - it wasn’t just a misunderstanding. The Soviet Union stopped being “Communist” about the time that Trotsky was murdered. Too many people in Europe and North America confused Soviet-led “communism” with actual Marxist ideas and we spent a lot of money and blood trying to stamp out something that would have died on its own if we had not been so paranoid about an issue that too few people understood (and many continue to misunderstand). And Stalin was hardly the source of “anti-communism.” American papers were attacking it from the end of the nineteenth century–not as an unworkable politico-economic theory, but as a serious threat to our culture. Opposing Stalin and Mao and their smaller imitators was a legitimate activity. Confusing Soviet or Chinese totalitarianism with “communism” and opposing every effort to improve the conditions of the poor or to rein in plutocratic excesses simply demonstrated a tribalism that preferred slogans to thought. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2018, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/105 "2018-05-11T00:20:16Z")
> [@Moriarty](#): > > Your concessions would seem to contradict your earlier statement that " One of the things about the '50s was the lack of concerns (for white males, of course.)" Does it not? People in the 50’s might have had less concerns than people in other decades (I’m not sure), but they certainly didn’t lack concerns. Or is this a case where every concern I could mention doesn’t count, in a no-true Scotsman kind of way? I should have said middle class white people. The ones who are scared today. Not that the 50s were worse for the poor than previous decades. > [@](#): > > Incidentally, I am not clear on how your cite substantiates the fact that the recessions in the 1950’s were mild by today’s standards. I see a chart with GPD and unemployment levels; both were better off in years outside the 1950’s. Take a look at my cite. The economy recovered in a year in both cases, and unemployment rose by only about a percent. Quite mild when compared to recent recessions. > [@](#): > > I’ve argued that much of the nostalgia of the 1950’s comes from people who are recalling their childhood innocence, so please forgive me for finding your reference to Bevery Cleary as quaint. It is my impression that the literary zeitgeist of the era is more encapsulated by such titles as Fahrenheit 441, The Crucible, On The Road, Catcher In The Rye, and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. If you reread my post, I was referring to this as a specific way in which the 50s were better. Especially since those who find the 50s wonderful would be strongly against the economics of high taxes. All in all I don’t think they were better. The books you mention were against McCarthyism, the fascism we just beat, racism, and conformity to some extent. Cleary, who wrote from the 50s into the 80s, was reflecting on the stuff kids could expect to see and be worried about. Not all kids books were like this - I read my kids a book about kids in a housing project in the 50s (written then) in which things were not all suburban peachy keen. But Cleary always reflected the zeitgeist more than edgier writers for kids. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2018, 7:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/106 "2018-05-11T07:06:50Z")
I think there is an attempt here to define conservatism in the '50s in light of modern ideas. Conservative anti-Communism? Truman is the guy who resisted Russian expansion and who fought back in Korea. Are you calling him conservative? Taft was the major conservative Republican. Eisenhower, the guy who won, was president during the era of relatively high taxes and federal initiatives like the Interstate system. Maybe he was a liberal. And very few back then from any party wanted to retreat from the New Deal. The parties were much closer together back then. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2018, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/107 "2018-05-11T12:51:17Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > The Soviet Union stopped being “Communist” about the time that Trotsky was murdered. Cite? Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2018, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/108 "2018-05-11T15:34:12Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > And very few back then from any party wanted to retreat from the New Deal. The parties were much closer together back then. Absolutely. In our world the [Taft-Hartley Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_Management_Relations_Act_of_1947) never happened. Uh-uh. Shot down and buried. :smack: > [@](#): > > The Labor Management Relations Act of 1947 29 U.S.C. § 141-197, better known as the Taft–Hartley Act, (80 H.R. 3020, Pub.L. 80–101, 61 Stat. 136, enacted June 23, 1947) is a United States federal law that restricts the activities and power of labor unions. The act, still effective, was sponsored by Senator Robert A. Taft and Representative Fred A. Hartley, Jr., and became law despite U.S. President Harry S. Truman’s veto on June 23, 1947.[1] Labor leaders called it the “slave-labor bill”[2] while President Truman argued that it was a “dangerous intrusion on free speech”,[3] arguing that it would “conflict with important principles of our democratic society”.[4] Nevertheless, Truman would subsequently veto it twelve times during his presidency.[5] The Taft–Hartley Act amended the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA; informally the Wagner Act), which Congress passed in 1935. The principal author of the Taft–Hartley Act was J. Mack Swigert, of the Cincinnati law firm Taft, Stettinius & Hollister. ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2018, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/109 "2018-05-12T12:18:34Z")
Moriarty, You bring up interesting points. I may have lapsed into nostalgia. In 1953 I made 35 cents an hour at the California Academy of Sciences and the same as delivery driver for a florist in Oakland. It cost me about $5 to fill the 35 gallon gas tank in my 1932 Cadillac roadster. Using 35 cents an hour, and the current ~$10 an hour for similar work, as indices gives a multiplier of about 30:1. The student body fees at City College today are $29 v $1 in 1953. So, that’s a wash. However, today, if you are not a resident of the City of San Francisco the fee for my load of 11 credit hours is over a thousand dollars. I lived in Alameda. Using the 30:1 multiplier that would have been ~$33 in 1953 money. That was about the cost of my books for the semester. It would have been difficult. In 1959 I made about $150 a week at the IBM R&D facility. It took $3.75 to fill the tank on my 53 Chevy. So, ten bucks was about the price of three tanks of gas - something like $150 today. I did not have the 10 in my pocket so I wrote a check. The $90 closing was tougher, but still far under what it would take today. After Christmas of 1953 I was on a bus from San Francisco back to my base in Texas. The bus stopped in Anthony New Mexico and the driver told a black soldier in uniform that he would have to move to the back of the bus. Four of us, also in uniform, told the driver what he could do with that idea. The black soldier was a US citizen in uniform and he could take any seat available. The soldier thanked us but moved to the back of the bus. It wasn’t all good. Crane ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2018, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/110 "2018-05-12T12:25:41Z")
Shodan, The Communist period only lasted about 18 months. It definitely ended with the New Economic Policy of 1921. Crane ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2018, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/111 "2018-05-12T13:03:13Z")
Who said so at the time? Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2018, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/112 "2018-05-12T15:23:46Z")
> [@Crane](#): > > Shodan, > > The Communist period only lasted about 18 months. It definitely ended with the New Economic Policy of 1921. > > Crane There’s a weird right-wing meme going around that the U.S. isn’t a democracy, it’s really a republic. My response is that the U.S. is now the dictionary definition of a democracy because that’s how democracy has been defined as for 200 years. To be consistent, I also believe that communist is defined as the way the U.S.S.R. acted from 1917-1989. Just as fascist is defined by the way Italy, Spain, and Germany acted between WWI and WWII. No country ever functions in reality as a platonic ideal of a philosophical theory. I’m comfortable pointing at America and calling it a democracy even though it does a half dozen undemocratic things before breakfast every day. If the U.S.S.R. wasn’t communist, then the term has no meaning and shouldn’t be used. If you want to talk about Marxism as a philosophy, use that instead. But the U.S.S.R. wasn’t Marxist in any day-to-day terms. And no, I’m not getting into a point-by-point analysis of what those terms mean. I’ll go all Potter Stewart on your head. ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2018, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/113 "2018-05-12T15:41:28Z")
While Murder rates were lower during the 1950’s than they were for a long time after that, it can be argued that the increase in murders beginning in the early 1960’s and peaking in the 1980’s was due to the drug war, cultural upheaval and resistance to civil rights initiatives. Murder rates in the USA right now are dropping and are very close to the low period at the end of the 1950’s and early 60’s. ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2018, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/114 "2018-05-12T16:20:38Z")
Moriarty, In the 50s there was generally a positive attitude toward the use of executive power by FDR and Truman. We were out of the depression and we won the war. That was enough. The Korean war was disruptive. Our government had heavily propagandized the US population about Russia and China as allies and Japan and Germany as the evil axis. As the Korean war developed the propaganda began to shift. The Germans and Japanese were good and China and Russia were bad - new deal! US paranoia returned with anti-communist propaganda and the McCarthy hearings. The hearings discredited themselves and Harry Bridges made fools out of the anti-communists. We all loved McArthur, but agreed with Truman recalling him. The Korean War was not a war. It was a police action. The most powerful nation on earth was losing it. In 53 it was largely over and I still got drafted. Very confusing. Crane ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2018, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/115 "2018-05-12T16:29:25Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > No, but I strongly suspect if you talked to a 80 year old black man in Detroit, he’d tell you things were pretty good in the Fifties, better than they’d ever been before, and that he wished his grandsons could look forward to the kind of high paying factory job he had back then. Funny - I live, work alongside, and talk to black people who were alive back then. Not a one of them is nostalgic for the 1950’s in the way you assume. Why would they want their grandsons to look forward to factory jobs when said grandsons are in college to become doctors and lawyers and accountants or running their own businesses? ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2018, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/116 "2018-05-12T16:41:51Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > A black man who lived in Detroit in 1956 probably thought, “Things are good, better than they’ve ever been before, and they seem to be getting better.” If he still lives in Detroit now, I’m not at all sure he’d say any of those things. Maybe you could actually try talking to a real black man who lived in Detroit in the 1950’s…? No, it wasn’t better for them in the 1950’s because in the 1940’s they could either get ample work in the factories producing war goods, or they could be in the military and perhaps working their way up the ranks to being an officer. After WWII it was “thanks, but the returning white men need work” and “Tuskegee Airman who?” Sorry, the much-lauded prosperity of the 1950’s was for WASP’s, for everyone else it was the back of the bus (if they were allowed on the bus at all). ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2018, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/117 "2018-05-12T16:44:32Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > They were the best of times, they were the worst of times. Great times for some were not so great for others. For many the 1950s was a wonderful decade, for a minority it was shitty. You won’t persuade those who have fond memories of the 50s that they shouldn’t no matter how hard you try. And what does it matter? Hey, if someone has great memories of the 1950’s more power to them. No one wants to rain on their parade. The problem is when those with great memories insist it had to be that wonderful for everyone when it wasn’t. The problem is when people who weren’t alive back then don’t get the full history. I’m sure life was wonderful for the sons of a plantation owner in 1850, too, but that doesn’t mean the antebellum south is something we should aspire to return to. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2018, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/118 "2018-05-12T17:02:24Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > Maybe you could actually try talking to a real black man who lived in Detroit in the 1950’s…? > > No, it wasn’t better for them in the 1950’s because in the 1940’s they could either get ample work in the factories producing war goods, or they could be in the military and perhaps working their way up the ranks to being an officer. > > After WWII it was “thanks, but the returning white men need work” and “Tuskegee Airman who?” > > Sorry, the much-lauded prosperity of the 1950’s was for WASP’s, for everyone else it was the back of the bus (if they were allowed on the bus at all). You mean “MALE WASPS.” Lots of the women who got jobs during WWII were told that the returning men needed work, so good-bye. Go home, get married, have babies. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2018, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/119 "2018-05-12T17:46:24Z")
> [@Chimera](#): > > Murder rates in the USA right now are dropping and are very close to the low period at the end of the 1950’s and early 60’s. A significant number of the people who survived after being shot nowadays would have died in the 1950s and early 60s because of the advances of modern medicine. For example people in 1950s and early 1960s era didn’t even have paramedics: [http://www.jems.com/articles/print/volume-38/issue-10/features/birth-ems-history-paramedic.html?c=1](http://www.jems.com/articles/print/volume-38/issue-10/features/birth-ems-history-paramedic.html?c=1) ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2018, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/120 "2018-05-12T21:16:01Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Absolutely. In our world the [Taft-Hartley Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_Management_Relations_Act_of_1947) never happened. Uh-uh. Shot down and buried. :smack: Oh, so the very same Taft I said was a conservative and who lost to Eisenhower? When I think of the New Deal, I think of bank regulation, unemployment, and social security. Plus that was the '40s, not the '50s. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479.md?page=7)