Keeping up with the Joneses: Envy in American Consumer Society

Keeping Up with the Joneses Keeping Up with the Joneses Envy in American Consumer Society, 1 890-1930 SUSAN J. MATT PENN University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia Copyright© 2003 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4011 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Matt, Susan J. (Susan Jipson), 1967- Keeping up with the Joneses : envy in American consumer society, 1890-1930 I Susan J. Matt. p.cm. Contents: City women and the quest for status -Envy in the office - "The prizes of life lie away from the farm" - From "sturdy yeoman" to "hayseed" - Corning of age in consumer society. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8122-3686-6 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Social values-United States-History. 2. Envy-Social aspects. 3. Social status United States-History. 4. Consumption (Economics )-Social aspects-United States. 5. Social change-United States-History-20th century. I. Title. HN90.M6 M37 2002 303.3'72'0973-dc21 2002029110 For my parents, Barbara Jipson Matt and Joseph Matt, and for my husband, luke 0. Fernandez Contents Introduction 1 1. City Women and the Quest for Status 11 2. Envy in the Office 57 3. "The Prizes of Life Lie Away from the Farm" 96 4. From "Sturdy Yeoman" to "Hayseed" 127 5. Coming of Age in Consumer Society 148 Conclusion 182 Notes 187 Index 215 Acknowledgments 221 Introduction In 1897, readers of the Saturday Evening Post encountered the story of Mary, "a very pretty girl of sixteen," who was the daughter of "a man in moderate circumstances." "Oh! If I onlyhad a pair of diamond earrings!" said Mary to her mother. She confided, "I believe I should be perfectly happy if I had them. You don't know, mama, what a beautiful pair Esther Haley has. All the school girls envy her." After some quiet consultation, Mary's parents decided to buy her the ear rings, with the hope of teaching her that "happiness does not consist in fine jewelry, but in a contented and cheerful spirit." While she was initially happy with her new acquisition, Mary soon tired of the jewelry. She began to compare herself with the wealthy young women of her acquaintance who sported diamond bracelets and who were far "more richly dressed" than she. "At first this made her envious; but ... she was both good and sensible. gradually she began to see that, as she could not have all she wished, it was better to put a limit to her desires at once." She came to realize that "It isn't what we wear that makes us happy; it is the contented spirit within." Guided by this new insight, Mary gave her earrings back to her father. She told him, "I find now ... that I was unhappy, not because I had no diamonds, but because I was daily breaking the tenth commandment, and guilty of covetous ness .... So, if you please, I'll do without them, and be con tent with old ones, which are more appropriate to your means, dear papa." At this, Mary's parents wept with joy, happy that their child had gained such wisdom so early in life.! Mary had learned a crucial lesson, one widely taught in nineteenth-century America: Envy is the enemy of content ment and must be conquered. She had learned that there were some items, like diamond earrings, which were inappropriate for people of modest incomes. Men and women of moderate 2 INTRODUCTION means should not expect to own the same things as wealthy folks did and should conquer their desires for such luxuries. Rather than act on their envy and struggle to change their condition, they must learn to be contented with their divinely appointed lot in life, no matter its limitations. To envy the rich and to emulate them was to rebel against God's wisdom and to commit a grave sin. A quarter century later, this evaluation of envy and emulation had been supplanted by a radically different understanding of the emotion. A 1923 edi torial in the Ladies' Home Journal captured the new attitude. The magazine congratulated American women for dressing well. It offered particular praise to those women of humble origins who still managed to attire themselves with style and flair: "whatever their background, they seem all to be inspired with what we are told is a typical and somewhat standardized American desire to 'look like a million dollars.' " The magazine queried, "Is it all a wicked scramble to look rich? Is it an immoral stampede to find and worship the false gods of fashion?" The editorial writer thought not. Instead, he con cluded, the desire to appear as well dressed as the rich was a sign of "inno cent vanity-wholesome ambition to look one's best, to achieve beauty and distinction, to assert good taste and cultivated selection in clothes." The edi torialist celebrated the fact that "shopgirls in Salt Lake City" were more fashionably dressed than "some duchesses in London." Rejecting the idea that individuals had to dress in a manner that reflected their economic posi tion, the Journal encouraged women in their desire "to look like a million dollars," regardless of their income.2 Stylishly attired women of moderate means no longer ran the risk of being condemned for their envy and emula tion; instead, they were congratulated for their judgment and taste. Their clothes, modeled after those of the upper classes, were no longer a sign of dishonor and moral transgression but were lauded as visible symbols of their aspirations. Envy, which thirty years earlier had been considered a grave sin, was now regarded as a beneficial force for social progress and individual advancement. This book traces how envy came to be so radically redefined and what this change meant to middle-class Americans. 3 It examines the process by which it became acceptable for middle-class men, women, and children to envy and pursue the possessions of the rich. This transformation in envy's meaning and legitimacy was significant because it was part of an emerging emotional and behavioral style that supported the expansion of the con sumer economy. America could sustain a full-fledged consumer economy INTRODUCTION 3 only after men and women had overcome their religious reservations about materialism and had developed an emotional style that emphasized the value of pleasure, indulgence, and desire and downplayed the importance of re straint and delayed gratification. This emotional and behavioral model is widely evident today. Modem Americans take for granted that all can legitimately pursue their consumer desires, that they need not repress their envy, but can instead gain satisfaction by acting on it. They unquestioningly accept the notion that ownership of particular luxury goods like diamond earrings is not the exclu sive right of the upper classes. While this book focuses on how it became acceptable for middle-class white consumers to envy and emulate, the same transformations would also affect expectations about working-class and Afri can American consumer behavior. Gradually, men and women of all ethnic and racial groups and all economic levels, with the exception of the very poor, have been urged to see themselves as full-fledged consumers with le gitimate desires.4 This book focuses on the years between 1890 and 1930 because it was during that period that the modem understanding of envy emerged. The so cial and economic backdrop for this development was the expansion of the consumer economy. Department stores, mail-order catalogs, mass-circulation magazines, movies, and advertising developed and offered new provoca tions for envy. People could see with unprecedented color and clarity the de sirable goods that they could not always afford. The consumer economy, however, also provided new ways for Americans to express, and sometimes resolve, their envy. The mass production of imitation luxury goods allowed the middle and working classes to emulate the upper-class styles they ad mired. While people have experienced envy throughout history, the expan sion of the consumer economy multiplied the occasions for the emotion and offered new ways to assuage it. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Americans who found their appetites for luxuries whetted, and who tried to emulate the wealthy, encountered strong opposition. Until the 1910s, clergymen, maga zine writers, and social reformers attempted to control envy and emulation in order to preserve a moral economy and a conservative, hierarchical social order. They praised the virtue of contentment, which they considered to be envy's opposite, and counseled the bourgeoisie to be contented with their circumstances instead of yearning for their neighbors' possessions and pri vileges. Magazines, newspapers, fiction, and sermons repeated this theme 4 INTRODUCTION again and again. As essayist Agnes Repplier recalled in 1923, "The virtue most deeply inculcated in our nurseries was content."5 Moralists told the middle class that they should forgo the glittering bounty that stores and cata logs so temptingly displayed. They warned of the moral perils of material ism and urged their readers and listeners to keep their gazes focused on heavenly prizes instead. In the second decade of the twentieth century, a far-flung group of ad vertisers, economists, sociologists, journalists, and consumers spread a new view of envy. They repudiated the doctrine of contentment and rejected the notion that there were divinely ordained limits on what members of each so cial class should possess. They instead argued that people should act on their envy and fulfill their desires.

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