1950s

Politics and Law
Loyalty Security reviews 

After being criticized by Republicans that he wasn’t hard enough on communism President Truman signed an executive order in 1947 that created the “Federal Employee Loyalty Program.” The program was initially designed to “guard” against the forces of communism infiltrating our government. However the federal government lacked the resources to individually review each of its two million plus employees so the executive order made each supervisor to make sure those under them were loyal and if they weren’t reporting them to loyalty review boards. However like many events in the Cold War US politics and law the system got out of hand. Many criticisms pointed out that the government could fire someone for no reason and no hearing. However after a few years it became evident that the program wasn’t easily able to identify disloyal people. So Truman changed it to allow the boards to fire anyone who could potentially be disloyal or a security risk. According to what Truman said that meant alcoholics, homosexuals and debtors. This created a problem for anyone under the scrutiny; you were guilty until proven innocent which is against everything our constitution stands for. The program backfired over a few years as it added to the growing Red Scare.

House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) 

Created roughly around the same time as the Truman Loyalty Security Reviews the HUAC began to “investigate” the potential communist influence in Hollywood. Hollywood prompted the attention of HUAC with the wealth and glamor as well as the many Jewish and Foreign celebrities. HUAC forced many stars to come to the hearings. While some cooperated many resisted and soon

enough the “Hollywood Ten” emerged. Many r efused to testify on First Amendment grounds of whether or not they had been communists at one point or not. They ended up serving prison terms for contempt of Congress. However for all of the hearings and investigations HUAC never actually proved anything or showed any evidence. The closest they got was an extra whistling a communist song on a set.

McCarran Act 

The McCarran Act of 1950 created requirements for communists to register with the US attorney general. It didn’t allow anyone to come to the country that was from a totalitarian regime, and it allowed the Justice department to detain any aliens it suspected during deportation hearings.

Joseph McCarthy and McCarthyism 

In 1950, Senator McCarthy stood in front of an audience in West Virginia and showed a bunch of papers that he proclaimed had a list of 205 people who were communists in the State Department, although the number seemed to change every time McCarthy was asked about it. McCarthy kept &nbsp 

throwing down charge after charge supposedly uncovering “card-carrying commies” and Russian agents in the government. Oddly, it didn’t bother the public or most of the government that McCarthy never gave proof behind his charges. When his “lists” were finally examined most of the people had either been given clearance by the FBI or left long before the list came out. McCarthy ended up being an instrument for the Republicans of the time to destroy the Democrats. Without any of that support, McCarthy would not have had any credibility. Many of the accusations came from secret information funneled illegally by J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI. The effects of McCarthyism lasted much longer than when Truman stepped down from the Presidency.

At the time Truman stepped down from the Presidency over thirty-one states had teachers take loyalty oaths. Government employers and the government loyalty review boards were investigating what newspapers employees subscribed to or what phonograph records they listened to. Even a library in Indiana banned Robin Hood because taking from the rich to give to the poor was seen as too communist. As time went on in 1953 McCarthy was rampaging and was directing his attention at both democrats and the republicans. McCarthy sent staff members to Europe to investigate the State department’s overseas information agency and the Voice of America radio stations. In response to the books deemed subversive by McCarthy many American libraries burned books. With all of this combined with the loyalty programs under Truman and Eisenhower it gave more credibility



to McCarthy and his supporters. In addition the Rosenburg spy trial seemed to help prove that there were communist spies in the United States. With neither side, President Eisenhower nor the Democrats, doing anything McCarthy slowly started to lose all proportion. When his aide was denied an army commission, McCarthy started to investigate the Army and that’s eventually where he met his demise. For three weeks, the American public was witness to McCarthy question witnesses and mock senate procedures. Soon after that move his popularity slid into the gutter and he was censured in 1954.

National Security Council (NSC) 

An agency created by Congress in 1947 to help the executive branch respond effectively and faster to cold war crises. The council created NSC-68 which p roposed an immediate increase in defense spending to fifty billion and paid for with a massive tax increase. Most funds from the tax increase would rebuild the American conventional armed forces but would also help develop the Hydrogen bomb to combat the Soviet nuclear capacity. This bill didn’t have support enough to be passed until the Korean War. This <span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height: 115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">was practically the opposite of containment policy recommended by George Kennan.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Election of Eisenhower and the moder Republicanism 

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">In 1952, Dwight D. Eisenhower faced democrat opponent, Adlai Stevenson, and won with over fifty-five percent of the vote. Eisenhower ran on the promise to end the Korean War. Eisenhower wanted to take America down the “road in the middle” not the left or the right which helped lead him to a decisive victory. &nbsp Eisenhower sought a consensus not more confrontation. Eisenhower said that the radical conservatives like Hoover and Taft would no longer have the helm of the Republican Party. Eisenhower said that he was “conservative when it comes to money and liberal when it comes to human beings” and such would be his policies. Eisenhower, a Kansas native, was not a scholar or an

<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">aggressive general after graduating from the Naval Academy, West Point. However he had ambition and was an amazing organizer. His skills in organization and respect helped keep generals from straying off track during D-Day and the race for Berlin. Eisenhower believed in an even handed approach and didn’t dismantle New Deal programs and in some cases even agreed to increases. Eisenhower also brought the new Democrats in the middle class to the Republican cause. Eisenhower supported cutting back military spending and troop levels to balance the budget. However through all the modern republicanism it never spread outside of his White House. Eisenhower’s final warning was about the “military industrial complex” and that too much military spending would lead to wanted or unwanted influence of the military industrial complex at the expense of democratic institutions over America.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Brown vs. Board of Education 

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height: 115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">The Supreme Court decision that was incredible for its time. The ruling established that a separate school for blacks and whites was unconstitutional. This ruling overturned an earlier ruling, Plessy vs. Ferguson, that established it was constitutional to do so. The decision on Brown vs. Board of Education was unanimous and the ruling itself paved the way for integration and the civil rights movement.

<h2 style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"">Culture and Society  <p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">Racial Desegregation in Public Schools 

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">In its 1954 decision that reversed the Plessy vs. Ferguson “separate but equal” doctrine (1896) in the case of Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka. Chief Justice Earl Warren declared that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” And to divide children “solely because their race,” “[…] generates a feeling of inferiority as their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone. <span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in; ">Although all of what Cheif Justice expressed is true, he realized that it would take time to change historic patters of segration. <span style="text-indent: 48px; line-height: 115%; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">Officials found that states quickly complied with the Court’s new ruling, all but the deeper Southern states, which showed m <span style="text-indent: 48px; line-height: 115%; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">assive resistance. In the Deep South local white citizens councils to fight the retention of racial separation and the s <span style="text-indent: 48px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%; ">chool boards encouraged the acts of deviance and found a variety of ways to evade the court’s ruling. In 1957, nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock’s Central High School, Eisenhower sent 1,000 paratroopers to ensure the rights of the

<span style="text-indent: 48px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%; "> Little Rock Nine. The students finished the school year under armed guard. Despite the low pace acceptance of school desegregation, the Act created a permanent Commission for Civil Rights, and also provided federal efforts aimed at “securing and protecting the right to vote,” which was a second civil rights act in the 1960’s.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">The Beginning of Black Activism 

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"> The beginning of Black Activism stated in the 1950’s when on December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, an African American seamstress and also an active member in the local NAACP chapter, refused to give up her seat to a white person on a local bus (a city ordinance). In 1953, African American church leaders in Baton Rouge, Louisiana has boycotted the city’s bus system for a weeklong protest and eventually changed the segregation seating rules. Rosa Park’s arrest ignited a massive protest movement. African American men and women, in particular, handed out 50,000 leaflets to rally the African American community to support Parks. <span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">The movement also led to the emergence of Martin Luther King Jr., who became the spokesman for African Americans. King agreed to lead the bus boycott, known as the Montgomery bus boycott. In the late 1955, Martin Luther King Jr. and fellow African Americans boycotted the bus system in Montgomery, Alabama. The boycott ended when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the protesters, and marked a new beginning of an activist phase of the Civil Rights Movement.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">Social Trends 

<p style="text-indent: 0px;margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in; ">In the 1950’s not only did the population of the United States increase by nineteen percent but the suburbs of cities across the nation increased by forty-six percent. Levittown symbolizes the most significant social trend of the postwar era in the United States- the flight to the suburbs. In 1947 he announced plans to build 2,000 rental homes, thirty miles away from midtown Manhattan, New York. But by 1951, “Levittown” contained over 17,000 homes, due to the baby boom.

<p style="text-indent: 0px;margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"> The homes were 720 square foot Cape Cod design on concrete with a kitchen, two bedrooms, a bath, living room furnished with a fireplace and expansion attic with room for two more bedrooms. The original house sold for $6,990 in 1948 and even the new ranch-style model in 1951 only sold for under $10,000.

<span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">Levittown homes were ideal for young people trying to start their lives and families, Levitt’s homes were cheap, comfortable and efficient. There were also Levittown’s in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and despite the similarities of the houses they were made up of diverse communities. Residents had a wide range of ethnicities, religions, and occupational backgrounds. Eventually in time, families had moved on and Levittown became homes for the lower-middle-class families.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">Social Classes 

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">Some sociologist had difficulty putting a finger on the suburban society of the 1950’s, some would say it was classless but others noted the absence of the very rich and very poor and named it the “middle class.” Instead of just one group classified as the “middle class,” there was realization of many different groups known as the “upper lower,” “lower middle,” and “upper middle;” also known as blue collar, white collar, and professional. The beauty of the suburbs is that lawyer and doctors lived in the same areas or developments as salesclerk or master plumbers. As in the past, education, ancestry or size of home didn’t differentiate people any longer.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">Home and Family

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%; ">Although cars allowed and increased more mobility, the home became the main focus for activities and aspirations. The postwar shortage of housing left young men and women living at home with their parents.

 <span style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; line-height: 14px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; "> 

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in; ">Young adults wanted “comfort and roominess” also, “privacy and freedom;” Developments like William Levitt’s, Levittown, became the ideal home. <span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in; ">Young couples moved to the suburbs and cherished their new kitchen and built-in dishwasher, electrical ovens and extra bedrooms that provided from and for the children. The large garage could be turned into a recreational room and the manicures lawns were ideal for outdoor activities. Families did not everything but almost all things together. The stereotypical picture of the father, mother, son and daughter gathered around the television to watch a nightly program, attending community activities to taking vacations in station wagons. “Togetherness” was the code of the 1950’s.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%; ">One negative outcome of the suburban lifestyle was the extended family. In past generations families had lived in close proximities if extended family. The 1950’s suburban lifestyle meant for many families that most children would grow up with close contact with their parents and siblings, while extended family members would only be seen on special occasions.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">Automobiles 

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">Life in the suburbs also depended on have an automobile and often called for two, the husband and wife. Highways and expressways allowed fathers to commute to and from work, which could take up to an hour; children would take a bus to and from school, and after school, mothers drove their children to and from practices and lessons. Fifty-nine percent of American families owned car and just a few short years later every American family has at least one vehicle.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">Gender Roles 



<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">The new 1950’s suburban lifestyle did little to encourage the development of feminism. When WWII ended many of the women who had entered the workforce returned home, where they continu <span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">ed their role as a wife and mother; the appropriate role for a women of the 1950’s. Getting married <span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">early and raising children was the main focus and not pursuing out professional skills <span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">and careers. But still the number of wo <span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%; ">rking wives doubles between 1940 and 1960. But by the end of the 1950’s, forty percen <span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%; ">t of American women and nearly one third of all married women had jobs outside of their family and homes.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">Religion 

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">Organized religion flourished in the 1950’s. Priest, minister, and rabbis all commented on the rise in church and synagogue attendance in majority of communities. Suburban churches became an integral part of the consumer society.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">Education 

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">Since the suburban lifestyle was increasing, it provided an immediate problem for the suburban communities. The number of school-age children increased from two to three million in the first to eight grades. Districts turned for federal aid and received limited amounts. Many people also complained about the nature of education. Affluent parents wanted more enriched programs and grade school foreign language but working-class parents resisted the costly innovations. The number of young adults attending college increased from 1.5 million in 1940 to 3.6 million in 1960.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">Entertainment 

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">In the new 1950’s drive-in cultures, people and families shopped at the stores located in the “miracle miles” on the highways and soon enough shopping centers that had spread across the country side. In 1946, there were only eight shopping centers in the whole country; hundreds appeared in the next fifteen years. And in 1956, the first enclosed air-conditioned mall opened outside of Minneapolis, called the Southdale Shopping Center.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">Music 

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">One of the most powerful and influential cultural forces for American youth was the popularity of rock n’ roll. Elvis Presley, one of the greatest rosck stars of all time bacame a symbol to push at the seams of conventional, normal, and acceptable in America. <span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%; ">Presley was a Caucasian man with an African American sound, which made him a sensation. He was not the only big player in the world of rock n’ roll but musicians such as Buddy Holly and Hill Haley, also possed the African American musical tradition. <span style="font-style: normal; line-height: 115%; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">These white rock icons resulted in the limited willingness of white audiences accepting black artists but the 1950’s did see an increase of popular African American bands; musicians such as Chuck Berry, Little Richard, B. B. King, the Temptations and others.

<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%; ">Another reason why rock n’ roll swept the nation in the 1950’s was because of the new innovations of radio and television programming. Radio station now played records almost entirely and new television programs such as Dick Clark’s American Bandstand aimed rock n’ roll at young fans.

<span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">Literature and Art 

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">One of the most prominent features of the 1950’s was the bitterness expressed by many artists and authors. Many of these authors’ and artists’, for example, Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road, influenced a group call the “beatniks” which were known for their long hair, bizarre clothing, sexual promiscuity and drug experimentation; society dropouts.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">Abstract expressionists created their styles in a way that emphasized individuality and freedom from the constraints from representational and realistic art. Specific painters such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko challenged mainstream America’s view and attitude about the form and function of art.

Wars and Foreign Relations
Korean War

On June 27th, 1950 President Truman ordered American troops to fight in Korea, following North Korean invasion of South Korea. America involvement officially starts in Korean War.  General Douglas MacArthur heads United Nations army into Korea, where ninety percent of the soldiers were American. General MacArthur was later fired in April of 1951 after urging the use of nuclear warfare on China and North Korea. In July of 1953, the Korean Armistice was signed and the Korean border was set at the 38th paralled, a pre-war boundary. A de-militarized zone was set up between the two countries.

European and World Allies

In 1950, American and European intellectuals start Congress for Cultural Freedom, a CIA led program to promote America in Europe as well as deter smaller countries from communism. The Point Four program devolped that same year used $35 million to improve food supplies, health, housing, and private investment in third world countries, hoping to gain these countries allegiance in the cold war conflict. On October 10th, 1951 Mutual Security Act of 1951 was signed granting $7.5 billion to allies of mainly western European countries for military, economic, and techinal aid.

Japanese Relations

In 1951, Japan and United States signed a peace treaty that restores Japan's sovereignty and ended American occupation, but allowed for the military base to stay in Okinawa''. ''

Influence of the CIA

By early 1950's the Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA, had become a significant member of the national security state and had expanded to include covert operations aimed to take out un-friendly foreign leaders as well as create economic trouble in those countries.  The CIA helped overthrow problem governments in Iran in 1953 and in Guatemala in 1954, as well as failed to topple regiments in Indonesia in 1958.

Relations with Communist Countries

In 1959, the Cuban Revolution, led by Fidel Castro, won control of the Cuban government and creating a communist and anti-American regime.  Vice-President Richard Nixon visits the USSR that same year to open an American products show in Moscow. This was the first neutral relation with USSR in over a decade. ''NSC-68 was delivered to the president in April of 1950. The document predicted an ongoing struggle with Communist countries and called for an enlarged military budget as well as a mobilization of public opinoin to support such an increase. This was proven true by Cuba and the USSR''. ''

American Military Innovation

After the American government detonated its first, and the world's first, hydrogen bomb. This gave a message to rest of the world showing them what exactly the American military is capable of. ''

Start of Vietnam War

In 1955, America gave aid to a city in Vietnam named Diem. This action would later lead to American involvement in the Vietnam war. ''

Commerce and the Economy
<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">Postwar Prosperity 

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">The United States economy began its upward surge of the result of two factors. First, after being held in check by the depression and second, scarcities by wartime, American consumers could finally afford the appetite for material goods.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">At war’s end, personal savings in the United States had more than an astonishing $37 billion to spend. American factories had trouble manufacturing the high demands for automobiles and appliances but by 1950, production lines had finally caught up. In that year, American bought over 6 million cars and the gross national product (GPN) reached $318 million, 50% higher than in 1940.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">In 1952, the nation spent $44 billion, two-thirds of the national budget, on national defense, and continued to spend at levels of $40 billion throughout the decade. <span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">The baby boom and the growth of suburbia

<span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""> 

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">served as a great stimulant for the consumer goods industries. Manufactures for appliances and the automobile industry thrived. In 1955, in an era where oil was in abundance, gas sold for less than 30 cents a gallon. The electronics industry flourished and every American family was eager to bring home the newest of home entertainment, the television set. <span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">American Industries averages more than $10 billion a year in capital investment and the number of employment rose about the desired 60 million nationwide.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">The number of houses in the United States doubled. More people were moving from the urban, densely populated city to the open-landed suburban areas. People began to rely on cars to commute to and from work and shopping malls began to spring up. With the low interest rates, the ability to obtain credit cards more easily, and the increase in electronics, Americans began to spend more than they earned.

<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">The United States was prospering to the extent that no one had dreamed of in the 1930s. The GPN grew to 440 billion by 1960. Workers labored less that forty hours a week and rarely worked Saturdays. <span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">By mid-1950s, the average American had twice the amount of income to spend than those in the 1920s. From 1945 to 1960, per capita disposable income rose for $500-$1845 for every man, women, and child in the nation.

<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">In one generation, America had moved to poverty and depression to the highest standard of living the world has ever known.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">Shifts in the Work Force

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">The economic abundance was not without problems. The steel industry increased during the decade but began to fall behind the rate of national growth. With the implementation of the GI Bill of 1944, more people went to get an education and fewer people were present in the factories. The US economy shifted towards services, education, information, finance, and entertainment and the middle class began to swell in size. The number of clerical workers increased by 25 percent while the salaried workers in enterprises increased by 60 percent.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">Agriculture experienced bumper crops and low prices. Fewer people were working on the farms as the farm population fell from 23 million to 15 million. Despite that, agricultural production rose by 50 percent because more efficient machinery, fertilizers, and insecticides. US people now had more access to fruits, such as oranges, that were once considered a luxury because of the low prices.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">Those in the labor unions saw an increase in wages in 1955 with the union merger between the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). As the new union had more negotiation privileges, the real earnings for production wages increased by 40 percent and the workers saw better conditions. These changes in the work force did not help the forty million who still lived in poverty. Unemployment, despite the boom, raised 7% which hit the nation in the fall of 1957 until summer of 1958. And the rate of economic growth slowed the second half of the decade.

A Network of Highways

Traffic from the suburbs to the cities was backed up with the old roads. In 1956, President Eisenhower and Congress enacted the Interstate Highway Act. This act picked up ninety percent of the costs to create a network system of highways that connected one side of the United States to the other and was planned to take 20 years. The average annual driving time increased by four-hundred percent. Eisenhower argued that this public works project, the largest in history, would allow many to evacuate cities in the future, if necessary. This eased some of the cold war fears that many had. Many communities now had gas stations, drive-in restaurants, and stores. The highways also diverted traffic from downtown areas which then lead to a decline in mass transit.

Science and Technology


Technological Advances

The introduction of the transistor in the 1950s allowed computers to revolutionize and led to the creation of the microchip in the 1960s. With the

transistor, computers and radios could now decrease in size and in cost. Computer costs could be up into $120,000. Radios eventually moved from off the desk and into pockets in later generations.

The Hydrogen Bomb

In January of 1950, President Truman gave permission to start to build the “Super” bomb.

thumb|300px|rightThe “Super” bomb was a hydrogen (fusion) bomb that is more powerful than the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in World War II. A fusion bomb works by using the temperatures created by a fission, or atomic, bomb to fuse two atoms together.

The first tested hydrogen bomb was set off in 1952 at the Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The bomb threw off a fireball that was five miles high and four miles wide and devastated the Eniwetok Atoll, leaving only the seabed. The next year, the Soviets then tested their first hydrogen bomb.



Medical Advances

In April of 1955, Dr. Jonas Salk created a vaccine that became available to the public that cured a person of polio. Polio is a disease that causes intense pain and eventually paralysis. This was the disease that caused paralysis for former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Missiles That Travel the World and the Formation of NASA

In 1957, the Soviets fired their first, and the world’s first, intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). That same year, the US tested their ICBMs and the rocket set fire on the launch pad. One year later, the United States wanted to make sure to be the leaders in technological advancement and so the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was created.

The “Space Race”

The Soviet Union launched the Sputnick satellite into orbit in 1957. The satellite caused hysteria and this was

the first time that the United States was not leading the “Space Race.”

In 1958, the United States launches its first space satellite after many flops. Some Americans blamed the schools for the Soviets leading the "Space Race." Eisenhower enacted the National Defense Education Act to strengthen graduate education and teach students science, math and foreign languages. Because of the fear of ICBM's and the Soviet's ability to launch a satellite,

In 1959, the Russians crash-landed a large load on the moon. Many thought that i f they could target the moon, then they could target the United States easily. Americans then began to build fall-out shelters.

The Spread of the Television

At the end of the decade, almost 90 percent of homes had a television. Daily television viewing increased to average almost five hours a day. More ads, aimed at the middle-class primarily, were found on the TVs. The spread of the television allowed more Americans to see the famous “Kitchen Debate” between the Vice President, Richard Nixon, and Soviet Nikita Khrushchev.