Analysis Of The 1950s: A Decade Of Prosperity Or Hardship?

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The 1950s: A Decade of Prosperity or Hardship? “10 Amazing Years, 1947-1957: A Decade of Miracles” U.S. News & World Report, Volume 43 December 27, 1957 The last year of an amazing decade is about to end [1947-1957]. These 10 years have been a time of change and accomplishment unmatched in the history of America, or of any other nation. In one brief, 10-year period, America’s face was remade. Vast suburban areas sprang up to receive millions of Americans pressing out from cities. Ribbons of superhighways were laid across the country. A huge expansion of air facilities helped tie the nation into a compact unity…. Look back 10 years, and you see how far America has come, how fast changes can occur at this period in history.…show more content…
The title of a brilliant book was widely misinterpreted, and the familiar America began to call itself “the affluent society”. There was introspection about Madison Avenue and tail fins; there was discussion of the emotional suffering taking place in the suburbs. In all this, there was an implicit assumption that the basic grinding economic problems had been solved in the United States. In this theory the nation’s problems were no longer a matter of basic human needs, of food, shelter, and clothing. Now they were seen as qualitative, a question of learning to live decently amid…show more content…
In a sense, it is another interim report on that generation of Americans who came of age while fighting history’s biggest war, then returned to its classrooms to give dubious educators an eye-popping lesson in earnest scholarship while, simultaneously, it began raising bumper baby crops…. It was in July of 1951 that William J. Levitt – president and principal executive of Levitt and Sons – publicly affirmed his intention to construct 16,000 dwellings in lower Bucks County adjacent to U.S. Steel’s new Fairless works near Morrisville, Pennsylvania. Presently, several sample houses went up and Levitt advertised that, beginning December eighth, he would take orders for thousands like them as yet unbuilt…. By mid-1954 at prices ranging from $8990 to $16,500, some 9000 houses had been built, sold and occupied. Barring unpredictable delays, the 16,000th will be finished by the end of 1955, and what, four years before, had been 5500 acres of farmland, scrub woods and swamp will be a city of 70,000
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