A Small Price to Pay: Consumer Culture on the Canadian Home Front, 1939-45 by Graham Broad (review)

Graham Broad’s A Small Price to Pay joins a growing international literature on the history of consumption in wartime. It is an especially good companion to Meredith Lair’s Armed with Abundance: Consumerism and Soldiering in the Vietnam War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), for both books de-bunk national myths of wartime penury. Just as American soldiers in Vietnam experienced war as a time of unprecedented abundance, Canadian civilians during World War II enjoyed rising consumer levels. Together these studies encourage helpful re-considerations of economic surplus during war.

Another valuable contribution made by A Small Price to Pay is its macro level approach to consumer history. Whereas many scholars investigate consumption by studying the history of a particular commodity, Broad approaches consumer society as a complex whole. As he puts it, during the “late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries … consumerism became an activity around which governments shaped policies that transformed the cultural, material, and even spiritual lives of millions of people.” (3) By envisioning consumer society in this way, Broad is able to discern large scale changes in consumer patterns over time.

For the most part, A Small Price to Pay is an empirical overview of Canadian spending. It does, however, reference other studies. Most significant is Joy Parr’s Domestic Goods: The Material, the Moral, and the Economic in the Postwar Years (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1999), which argues that wartime shortages meant that Canadians had to wait until the early 1950s to begin consuming in earnest. Broad concedes that there were shortages in some areas – particularly consumer appliances, which are the commodities upon which Parr bases her study. At the same time, Broad also takes aim at narratives of wartime penury. Consumer spending began increasing before war’s end, he argues. Greater employment boosted Canadians’ discretionary incomes, meaning that as soon as they could afford to do so, Canadians began spending.

A Small Price to Pay is fast paced. Chapters on patriotic consumption, automobile usage, and theatre attendance offer sweeping overviews of their respective topics. Some historians might grumble at the short shrift given to individual subjects within these areas – Broad barely touches on the National Council of Women’s campaign to reduce spending, for instance – but overall, the book remains balanced between expansive arguments and detailed analyses. Broad notes, for example, that poor Canadians remained poor between 1939 and 1945. He also offers an impressive array of spending and sales statistics, proving conclusively that Canadian spending did indeed rise. These figures are usefully compiled in an appendix offering tables on consumption and retail between 1939 and 1945.

Broad’s book does slow down in discussions of advertising. Two chapters are offered on this topic. The first explores the state of the Canadian ad industry in wartime; the second offers content analyses of selected advertisements. Historians of advertising will find Broad’s in-depth excursions into adworkers’ occupations significant. From a capitalist history perspective, the most valuable contribution is Broad’s observation that in wartime, institutional advertising – or advertising of particular firms, rather than of particular products – went up. Commercial advertising, in contrast, went down. As Broad notes, capitalist organizations took it upon themselves during wartime to portray themselves as patriotic. Given that Canadians were fighting – and dying – overseas, it seemed unseemly to hawk wares. By depicting themselves as committed to the war effort, Canadian businesses sought to combat moral criticisms of profit seeking.

And moral criticisms there were. A Small Price to Pay demonstrates that a deep discomfort with abundance accompanied Canadians’ rising consumer levels. Canadians at home should live austerely, many argued; in wartime, it was sinful to have fun while others suffered. Broad’s contribution to this aspect of consumer history – Canadians’ moral discomfort with spending – is important. Recent studies by Bettina Liverant and Len Kuffert have similarly shown that a moral strain of purity existed alongside mid...