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98 3 Reforming the Marketplace at the Bureau of Home Economics, 1923–1940 In late 1927, Frederick J. Schlink, consumer activist and assistant secretary of the American Engineering Standards Committee, wrote to Ruth O’Brien, who directed the Division of Textiles and Clothing in the Bureau of Home Economics (BHE), inquiring about the existence of the old-time “thrifty buyer.” He wanted to know if a recent study had determined “to what extent the individual housewife is buying for value rather than for ephemeral appeals of vogue or sales pressure.” Earlier that year, Schlink had coauthored the bestselling Your Money’s Worth, a polemical critique of consumer capitalism, and participated, with O’Brien and many other home economists, in a conference, “Problems of the Household Buyer,” held at the University of Chicago. Schlink and O’Brien corresponded regularly about their shared commitment to consumers. On this occasion, the home economist informed Schlink that the study of thrifty buying was nevercompleted, but she agreed that such an investigation was worthwhile. Sharing Schlink’s interest, O’Brien contacted leading colleagues in her field to inquire about launching such a study. Hazel Kyrk, associate professor of home economics at the University of Chicago, Helen Canon, professor of home economics at Cornell University, and Benjamin Andrews, professor of household economics at Teachers College, all acknowledged the topic’s importance, but none of the three scholars knew how to approach the subject. Kyrk, the nation’s reigning expert in the economics of consumption, admitted that she did not know “the extent to which homemakers ‘buy for value.’” She wrote, “Of course wewould all be tremendously interested in any information on that point.” Kyrk regarded “with utmost suspicion questionnaires that try to reach motives for buying directly” and suggested that the best approach might be “through the salespeople.” Canon questioned whether funding would be available to carry out such a “large study.”1 Home economists and other reformers disagreed about how to use social scientific methods to understand consumers’ motivations ; the “thrifty buyer,” or rational consumer, was an abstraction for them. REFORM ING THE MARKETPL ACE 99 Despite a lack of concrete information on what constituted this “thrifty buyer” in the 1920s and 1930s, O’Brien, bureau chief Louise Stanley, and their coworkers struggled to reform the marketplace on behalf of an “average” consumer who had many of the characteristics of this abstract figure. Officials at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) sought to improve living standards in rural homes, especially among “poor white folks,” but they also intended the bureau to be helpful to “the women of the land,” serving a broad population of rural and urban families. “I draw no distinction between city and rural houses,” explained Stanley.2 Toward this end, bureau home economists directed their attention to an individual, female consumer who was responsible for managing a household budget, a woman consumer they characterized as “normal” and “average.” Whereas other government agencies such as the Women’s Bureau and the Children’s Bureau aimed their services at working-class Americans , Stanley and her colleagues understood the BHE to be “responsible for the normal child.”3 To home economists, “normal” meant an urban, white, middle-class woman—not particularly needy in terms of income or health— who was already becoming entangled in the growing consumer society. This consumer, they imagined, welcomed the idea of scientific buying and rational consumption. Framing problems of consumption as a lack of information, home economists used the bureau both to educate and to advocate for this “average” consumer who wanted to “buy for value.” Bureau home economists collaborated closely with university home economics professors and the American Home Economics Association (AHEA)—with its headquarters located on Capitol Hill, and later in the Mills Building one block from the White House—to create a marketplace where the information required to make cost-benefit analyses of purchasing choices was readily accessible.Work on behalf of an ideal, informed consumer also led home economists to build relationships with producers and distributors. In informal exchanges and formal negotiations with commercial growers and manufacturers who wanted to understand “the woman’s viewpoint ,” bureau home economists served as professional, “typical” representatives of the very consumers they sought to create and influence. When social science data regarding the attitudes of buyers was not available, home economists used their own scientifically derived standards to stand in for the preferences and needs of “average” consumers, and to argue for useable, dependable goods and merchandising practices that...

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