The American Nation A History of the United States, Combined Volume (14th Edition)

840 Chapter 31 From Boomers to Millennials

Main Street faded. By the 1980s, retailers such as
Sam Walton took the logic of price competition
several steps farther. Because the chain stores in the
malls sold the same nationally advertised brands, he
reasoned that all shoppers wanted was the lowest
price. Walton therefore dispensed with the custom-
ary amenities of shopping—attractive displays,
pleasant décor, professional salespeople—and built
“big box” stores that were little more than shop-
per-accessible warehouses. Then came another
shift. Early in the twenty-first century, shoppers
who wearied of pushing carts through dimly lit
warehouses and standing in line to pay now had an
alternative: They could shop via the Internet,
which by 2010 accounted for nearly 10 percent of
all retail sales.
The transformation of retailing—from down-
town to the suburbs to the Internet—was sympto-
matic of a more general shift from public to private
spaces. In the 1950s, people were free to go down-
town whenever they wished, to open nearly any
type of business that suited their fancy, to give
political speeches or distribute leaflets. Mall owners
and big-box managers, on the other hand, set the
hours and conditions of operation, restricted politi-
cal expression and access (most recently by banning
unchaperoned teenagers on weekends) and by
offering leases (or products) that fit prescribed mar-
keting plans.

Within a half century, shopping had not only

become more private, but it also was less social. Big-box

stores replaced commissioned salespeople with low-paid

checkers. In the past decade improvements in scanner

technology have allowed retailers to dispense even with

checkers. And an increasing number of online con-

sumers shop at home. Increasingly, shopping entails no

social interaction whatsoever.

A similar shift from public interaction to private

pursuits has characterized many other daily activi-

ties. For much of their lives, Boomers regularly vis-

ited local banks to make deposits and cash checks.

But during the recession of the 1970s banks closed

many branches and in subsequent decades hundreds

of banks were merged. More branches were closed

and tens of thousands of tellers laid off. Rather than

drive to distant branches and wait in long lines,

banking customers learned to use ATMs and bank

online. Banking for Boomers had been a social

occasion; for Millennials it became an interaction

with a machine.

By the 1970s and 1980s, many service sector

jobs had disappeared: milkmen who delivered fresh

dairy products; door-to-door salespeople who

demonstrated cosmetics, appliances, and encyclope-

dias; “service station” attendants who pumped gas

and checked the oil; bakery owners and candy mak-

ers who sold goods they had made themselves.

Then in the 1990s, person-to-person interactions in

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St. Louis

Percentages of 1950 white

population that had left

by 1960:

80

60

40

20

Majority population

black by 1960

Increase in

percentages:

100

70

50

20

Decrease

No basis for

comparison

Racial Shifts in St. Louis During the 1950sDuring the 1950s, the
white population of St. Louis declined by more than 200,000, while
the black population increased by 100,000. Much of the central core
was almost entirely black.

Growth of Suburban St. Louis, 1950–1960During the 1950s, the

suburban townships in St. Louis county west of the city gained

nearly 300,000 people, an increase of 73 percent. More than

99 percent of the suburban residents were white.