THE BUSINESS OF AMERICA ★^783inhabitants up to what he considered the proper standard of life (this meant,
for example, forbidding his workers from using alcohol and tobacco and try-
ing to get them to stop eating traditional Brazilian foods). Eventually, the cli-
mate and local insects destroyed the rubber trees that Ford’s engineers, lacking
experience in tropical agriculture, had planted much too close together, while
the workers rebelled against the long hours of labor and regimentation of the
community.
A New Society
During the 1920s, consumer goods of all kinds proliferated, marketed by sales-
men and advertisers who promoted them as ways of satisfying Americans’ psy-
chological desires and everyday needs. Frequently purchased on credit through
new installment buying plans, they rapidly altered daily life. Telephones made
communication easier. Vacuum cleaners, washing machines, and refrigerators
transformed work in the home and reduced the demand for domestic servants.
Boosted by Prohibition and an aggressive advertising campaign that, according
to the company’s sales director, made it “impossible for the consumer to escape”
the product, Coca- Cola became a symbol of American life.
Americans spent more and more of their income on leisure activities like
vacations, movies, and sporting events. By 1929, weekly movie attendance had
reached 80 million, double the figure of 1922. Hollywood films now dominated
the world movie market. Movies had been produced early in the century in
several American cities, but shortly before World War I filmmakers gravitated
to Hollywood, a district of Los Angeles, attracted by the open space, year- round
sunshine for outdoor filming, and varied scenery. In 1910, two French com-
panies, Pathé and Gaumont, had been the world’s leading film producers. By
1925, American releases outnumbered French by eight to one. In the 1920s,
both companies abandoned film production for the more profitable business
of distributing American films in Europe.
Radios and phonographs brought mass entertainment into Americans’ liv-
ing rooms. The number of radios in Americans’ homes rose from 190,000 in
1923 to just under 5 million in 1929. These developments helped to create and
spread a new celebrity culture, in which recording, film, and sports stars moved
to the top of the list of American heroes. During the 1920s, more than 100 mil-
lion records were sold each year. RCA Victor sold so many recordings of the
great opera tenor Enrico Caruso that he is sometimes called the first modern
celebrity. He was soon joined by the film actor Charlie Chaplin, baseball player
Babe Ruth, and boxer Jack Dempsey. Ordinary Americans followed every detail
of their lives. Perhaps the decade’s greatest celebrity, in terms of intensive press
coverage, was the aviator Charles Lindbergh, who in 1927 made the first solo
nonstop flight across the Atlantic.
Who benefited and who suffered in the new consumer society of the 1920s?