306 THE WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONStries could copy; some indeed made forays along similar lines. But
these older societies did not have the tabula rasa and the optimistic,
open culture that eased the task of the American farmer and manufac
turer. They had to work with cramped systems of land tenure, peasants
(no peasants in the United States) who scrimped on equipment to add
to their holdings, great landlords who saw land more as the foundation
of status and style than as capital; and with craftsmen who saw mech
anization as a personal diminution, an offense to status, a threat to jobs.
The older countries had their machine-breakers; America did not.
European countries also had a consumption problem. Class struc
tures and segmented tastes made it harder there to adopt standardized
products. Even so, I would stress supply rather than demand, the atti
tudes of producers rather than consumers. When Europeans belatedly
adopted techniques of mass production, they had no trouble selling
cheaper goods.
To get a sense of what was involved, look at the great European in
dustrial spurt after World War II. This mirrored earlier American ad
vances and implicitiy testified to previous class-based failure. Europe
had a pent-up demand for consumer durables, whetted by film images
and the American presence. Few Europeans before had thought that
just about everyone might want, even need, a car or a telephone. As
late as the 1970s, many French people were still going to cafés or to the
post office (but only during office hours) to make their phone calls, ei
ther because they could not afford a phone at home or were waiting
two or three years to get a line. Getting a dial tone could take a half-
hour and more. People still reserved ahead for international calls. Busi
ness suffered and the complaints mounted to heaven: no point
directing them to human beings because the authorities were imper-
turbably indifferent. After all, telephones were part of the postal system,
and the post office thought them an extravagance, a plaything for rich
people. What was wrong with writing letters and buying stamps?**
- One should not exaggerate. The use of land for parks and hunting was not unre
lated to its productivity. In wine country, the Bordelais for example, even the richest
owners planted vineyards, especially of the premiers crus, right up to the house,
t An exception was the German vision of a "people's car" (Volkswagen) in the 1930s.
It did not come to fruition, however, until after the war.
** The meanness of the French Post Office was notorious. Until the 1990s, airmail let
ters overseas paid a surcharge above a weight of 5 grams, stamps included. That meant
using specially thin and pricey paper—a boon to the stationery industry. Even so, the
post office would not always have a single stamp for the postage required and would
combine two or three to make the amount, and then these would tip the scale. One
had to experience these exercises in petty tyranny to understand the retardative effects