Local Business and the Rise of Corporate America
Freedom through Commerce, Credit, and Consumerism!
American businesses in the 1920s developed a new emphasis on modern management techniques that promised workers higher standards of living and greater affluence. Corporate wealth and influence grew rapidly from America’s astonishing industrial productivity and its position as the dominant economic power following the Great War. Easy bank loans funded everything from home mortgages and automobile loans to new family businesses, which further fueled economic growth.
Big business sought ever greater efficiency, profitability, and fewer regulation and taxes. Believing corporatism would lead to greater prosperity and freedom through consumer choice, businesses began marketing themselves as “working in the public interest”. Modern management stressed the rejection of corruption and backroom dealing in favor of providing goods and services for the benefit of customers while collecting profits based on efficiency and innovation.
A growing middle class enjoyed additional disposable income and increased access to consumer goods and new entertainment options; all heavily advertised in print and radio media. Many small businesses on Main Streets across New Jersey remained unchanged, but more of their customers based their identity upon the trends, fashions, and popular literature and programs sold in nationwide magazines, theaters and radio shows, and newspapers.
As industrialism thrived across the nation, large banks flourished and created profitable loan products for those seeking to finance their first home, a new automobile, or start a business. This ad for a new housing development on Washington Street urged buyers to act quick before planned commuter rail improvements drove prices higher, but, thanks to generous financing options, they only needed a small down payment to secure their piece of the American Dream.
According to this GM ad, their salesmen are more like advocates for the consumer; armed with expert knowledge of the motor car’s engineering, aesthetics, and value in order to benefit potential customers. Marketing during the 1920s stressed how corporations, unlike corrupt or meddlesome governments, acted in the public interest.
Easy credit was a boon for new business ventures and consumers as America’s economy began to rely more heavily on selling mass-produced consumer goods and high-tech manufacturing. Farmers took out bank loans (many for the first time) during the boom years to upgrade equipment and improve their land under the assumption that values would only increase. This ad encourages homeowners to upgrade their furnace for convenience and to reclaim space occupied by old and obsolete equipment, with ‘pay-as-you-enjoy-it’ installment plans for those who cannot afford expensive new appliances.
By the end of the twenties, an over reliance on borrowing even led some to invest on credit. Fear of being left out of the bull stock market, and real estate booms (particularly in Florida), led some to borrow money in order to place risky bets. Speculative investing was conducted by a small percentage of the population overall, but it played a significant factor in the Crash of 1929. When business dried up and land values plummeted, banks foreclosed on home and farm mortgages.