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91 4 The House of Good Taste The greatest good for the greatest number means, in its material sense, the greatest goods for the greatest number, which, in turn, means the greatest productivity per worker. —Inscription on the Hall of Free Enterprise on may 1, 1964, more than two hundred dignitaries gathered at the World’s Fair to pay homage to America’s free-enterprise system. The occasion was the dedication of the Hall of Free Enterprise in the International Area, highlighted by the lighting of the “Torch of Truth” on top of the pavilion. The irony of it being May Day was likely not missed on those individuals in attendance, some of whom seized the event as an ideal opportunity to promote the American way of life grounded in consumer capitalism. John Davis Lodge, president of Junior Achievement (and former governor of Connecticut and ambassador to Spain), delivered a feisty attack against “Russian Communist imperialist aggression,” while Mayor Wagner praised the pavilion as “a most valuable endeavor to explain in practical terms . . . the daily economic benefits inherent to our free enterprise system.” Messages of congratulation came from President Johnson, former president Herbert Hoover, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, and David J. McDonald, president of the United Steelworkers Union, who spoke of the close, symbiotic relationship between free enterprise and “free labor.”1 The main feature of the Hall of Free Enterprise was “Mr. Both Comes to Town,” a seventeen-minute animated show sponsored by the American Economic Foundation illustrating the basics of economics by depicting individuals as both producers and consumers in a small town. The exhibit included a revolving tree in which a machine printed out the answer to any of 120 predetermined questions on economics asked by visitors. As coup de grâce, the Hall of Free Enterprise allowed franchise businesses to advertise opportunities for budding entrepreneurs and, rather amazingly, offered a free two-week postgraduate course given by the Adelphi University Business Institute called Enterprise Economics, with students earning credit toward a master’s degree.2 92 Tomorrow Begins Today Although the Hall of Free Enterprise elevated laissez-faire capitalism to a nearly spiritual plane, organizers of the 1964–65 New York World’s Fair were simply following a long tradition in which global expositions and commerce were virtually synonymous. The very first world’s fair, in fact, the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London 1851, was essentially a large international version of the trade and industrial exhibits common in Europe since the mid-1700s. The fair was a giant display case for the Industrial Revolution and, more specifically , an unprecedented opportunity to prove to the rest of the world that Britain was producing and using the most technologically advanced machinery in existence. With the rise of American consumer culture in the early twentieth century, world’s fairs switched their economic focus from machines for the farm and factory to products for the home and road. As well, American marketers eagerly seized world’s fairs as a valuable promotional and public relations tool, using them to introduce new products to and create corporate goodwill among a large global audience.3 In the 1930s, with capitalism in crisis, world’s fairs were assigned the grander cultural role to shore up Americans’ faith in a consumer-based society. The 1933– 34 Century of Progress exposition in Chicago not only reminded Americans of our past accomplishments but also sent a strong message that the popular value of thrift was not in the best long-term interests of either the nation or the individual. Although President Roosevelt backed the Century of Progress as a form of economic (and psychological) recovery, private corporations, most notably General Motors and Ford, championed the somewhat damaged idea that spending money was the essence of the American way. Other American fairs of the 1930s, that is, San Diego (1935–36), Dallas (1936), Cleveland (1936–37), and San Francisco (1939– 40), carried similar ideological themes, but it was the 1939–40 New York World’s Fair that most enthusiastically celebrated the American way of life steeped in consumerism and rebutted the pessimism of the Great Depression. Tubular chairs, nylon, and television all made their debut in 1939 in New York, just a few of the “products of tomorrow” that would lead us to a better, happier future. With a board of directors dominated by business leaders and an all-star team of industrial designers including Walter Dorwin Teague, Norman Bel Geddes, Raymond Loewy, and Henry Dreyfus, commerce...

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