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The s ended bleakly for White Castle. Billy Ingram’s hamburger empire was reduced to virtually half its previous size, with little hope for recovery. Although White Castle’s sales rebounded immediately after the war in ,this good fortune was short lived.Meat shortages,government -imposed price ceilings, and wage freezes continued to plague company operations. Worse still was the continuing shortage of qualified labor to run the Castles, resulting in more closures. During the eight years following World War II, sales rose and fell sharply, buffeted by still another war, fluctuating food prices, and the mixed blessing of a healthy economy. Having endured both the Depression and World War II, White Castle’s managers began to tire of the prolonged years of hardship and uncertainty. Even the optimistic Billy Ingram expressed some regret and a fear of the future . “Our cash is way down, about half of last year, and our hamburger sales show a decrease of twelve percent.” He felt that this decline was “our greatest danger.” White Castle in the s had even more troubles, compounding its already existing difficulties. As the decade began, White Castle soon faced additional worker and food shortages due to the Korean War, intensified government regulation at all levels, a growing crime problem, and the growth of regional and giant national fast-food hamburger chains. At the start of the decade Ingram wanted White Castle to regain its competitive edge and once again to become the industry leader. The external forces of regulation, competition, and inflation, however, made his goal difficult to achieve. After trying several strategies for recovery, which largely imitated those of the newly appearing hamburger chains, Ingram decided to regain the lead by reinforcing his original business principles from : offering customers cleanliness, quality, and service. Although his strategy never brought phenomenal profits during the s or even a return to being the industry’s leader, Ingram was able to navigate his company through still another stressful and potentially devastating era. White Castle Rises Again 5  The 1950s: The Cold War, Suburbia, and Conformity This dismal picture for White Castle was painted on the backdrop of a turbulent and confusing era in American history. Buoyed by the victory of World War II, the American people enjoyed an unprecedented level of prosperity and optimism, but at the same time, they confronted new problems and greater threats than ever before. Americans took great pride in the fact that their country had emerged from the war relatively unscathed as the undisputed victor and the sole possessor of the atomic bomb. This reassurance of military dominance was soon accompanied by a growing sense of American economic and cultural superiority. Life was good in postwar America. Returning soldiers married their wartime sweethearts and immediately began their families, many taking advantage of government -guaranteed mortgages to buy their own homes. In earlier times, buying a house was an elusive plateau of success for many working Americans , achieved only after years of saving money. But now the government suddenly made home ownership available to millions of people, who quickly rushed out to buy their new houses. Their rush to buy homes resulted in a boom in the building industry, which further resonated throughout the economy. Rural cornfields gave way to housing tracts as the growing suburbs expanded far out into the countryside. These burgeoning suburbs created both new communities and an entirely different American subculture. Other veterans’ benefits also caused drastic changes in American society. The GI Bill provided all veterans with access to a fully paid college education, which before the war was available only to the economic elite. To the government’s surprise, many former servicemen used this benefit to go to college, causing a great expansion of colleges and universities across America. These veterans’ benefits transformed American society virtually overnight. Social and economic mobility became more elastic than any time in the past. Huge numbers of poor men went off to college, emerging as educated and employed candidates for the newly forming middle class. Young working-class families bought houses in record numbers, creating the suburban community for this new class. Women once again departed from the workforce, assuming roles as wives and mothers in this new community. Motherhood, in fact, became a dominant occupation in suburbanizing America. Beginning in the late-s, the nation experienced a gigantic surge in the birthrate that was sustained throughout the next decade and that was popularly dubbed “the Baby Boom.” Children and...

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