Standard of Living: The Measure of the Middle Class in Modern America (review)

In Standard of Living, Marina Moskowitz is not interested in the standard, econo- mic-history definition of "standard of living"—that is, a calculation of how much money is required to live in a healthy, comfortable and "decent" manner. Rather, she wants to describe how the manufacturers, advertisers, sellers, and buyers of certain goods and services together created an understanding of proper middle-class life in the early twentieth century.

Beginning in the late nineteenth century, social scientists had popularized the economic concept of an accepted "standard of living"—a bundle of the minimum goods required for health and comfort—in order to assess industrial living conditions. These scientists wielded the standard of living as a tool to measure human comfort and happiness objectively against wages and prices. Moskowitz argues that, for most middle-class people in the 1910s and '20s, the standard of living was understood not as a measuring stick, but as an ideal to strive for. This ideal, she writes, was the product of a dialectic between producers and consumers. She stresses the fact that the "standard of living"—a decent, proper, healthy, and fiscally responsible lifestyle for families—was as much about cultural ideas and mental habits as it was about the specific goods and services that were used to attain that ideal. The makers of bathtubs sold both the tub and the desire to maintain personal cleanliness and health through the use of a bathtub. Buyers, sellers, and a large cast of other parties, such as city planners and hotel managers, together constructed the ideal "standard" to which decent middle-class people could aspire. As Moskowitz writes, "[T]he commercial process of distribution paralleled the cultural process of establishing a standard of living. Neither producers nor consumers alone could create the standard of living; it was a by-product of the marketplace itself." (pp2-3).

In some ways, Moskowitz is merely stating an old idea: that new things bring new ideas. But her book makes explicit the ways in which the machinery of commerce—the trade catalogues, salesmen, and shipping networks—carried ideas about living back and forth between promoters and consumers. Manufacturers were able to convince buyers to slowly and surely upgrade their material surroundings only because buyers constantly sought information from magazines, "experts," and their social betters on the best way to live. Moskowitz ends by showing how the standard of living, intended to be an unassailably objective statistical tool, was, of course, a construction: a cultural self-perception based equally on social science and advertising.

Moskowitz' work bears the marks of the recent confluence of business and consumer history. A history that might have been written using entirely advertising and promotional literature has been bolstered by deep digging in corporate archives. Moskowitz uses four case studies to make her argument. Reed & Barton promoted their silverplated flatware with carefully illustrated catalogs and by placement in prominent hotels and restaurants. The company sold the heirloom status and high-society connotations of solid silverware in a more durable, less expensive form that "all families" (all middle-class families) could afford. The Kohler Company created new wholesaling and distribution systems to solve the problems of shipping heavy enameled-steel bathtubs, while its print advertising encouraged families to insist on a Kohler bathtub (purchased through their plumber or contractor) for their health and comfort. The Aladdin Company "sold" the dream of home ownership with relatively inexpensive kit houses that buyers could assemble themselves (ostensibly) using only a hammer. The company published a newsletter filled with customer testimonials, and encouraged local customer "boosterism" to build communities of proud Aladdin home owners. Finally, the firm of Harland Bartholomew and Associates helped small cities all over the country establish zoning plans, privileging the middle-class single-family home, while at the same time making the whole city more like the carefully-managed realm of specialized spaces that characterized the new middle-class home...