ECON 460 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: John Steinbeck, Social Gospel, Stoicism
22 May 2018
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Day 10: March 28
John Steinbeck’s “Ma,” ca. 1930
From last time:
• Households are an interesting way of looking at almost everything, including feminism
• Person from Hillary Clinton’s campaign was on TV promoting her book and described
how they did a “grim nod” instead of expressing emotion-- evolved out of 2nd wave
feminism, projecting stoicism like men
o She regrets letting that practice develop-- if you want to cry you should, even in a
professional setting
o What if HC presented herself like Bernie Sanders? What if Obama had even half
the scandals Trump has had? Extremely different standards/starting lines
Cohen reading
• Existing historical narrative is that mass media/culture/standardizing of products leads to
homogenization of the working class and makes them more similar to the middle class
o She counters this: 1) people were not buying the std.ized products as much as
reported/estimated, and 2) they didn’t receive them uniformly either-- often
through local or ethnic lenses
• Significant features/events
o Grocer-- people stayed with neighborhood grocers because they wanted to
speak their own languages and not feel judged
o Radio and car-- both social devices for young people
▪ Radio-- sometimes broadcasted ethnic content, families listened together
▪ Car-- replaced the front porch as location for courting, but now detached
from house/supervision
o Black people patronize middle class standardized stores more because 1) there
weren’t a lot of Black-owned groceries and 2) standardized goods/shopping
system meant they couldn’t be discriminated against/targeted as easily
o Ethnic groups, for example Italians, became more “aggressively” Italian in NY
than they were in Italy because they had to assert/defend their identity
Grapes of Wrath
• Dust Bowl: horrific drought, old-testament type events in Oklahoma
o Oklahomans leave, go to California to get agricultural jobs
o Main characters in GoW: Joad family, they road-trip from OK → CA
• 1900-1920s
o Progressivism, “social gospel”
o We’ve talked about the emergence of “breadwinners” as a result of increasing
professional jobs/emergence of the middle class
o In the 1890s, 90% of African-Americans live in the South but Jim Crow leads to
the migration >> they go basically everywhere in the North but Boston
o Culture of affluence → “new woman” who discards Victorian gender roles
o 2nd wave of the KKK is violently effective at suppressing the Black vote in the S
• Then the economy crashes
o Previously, all economic downturns (even serious ones) were called “panics”
▪ Before, most people were farmers, so they were hurt by a struggling
economy but weren’t “unemployed”
▪ now the self-employed rate has plummeted and 30-35% are unemployed-
- unprecedented, unfathomable
o Worsened by dustbowl-- soil in the Midwest was already poor, but monocropping
and overcropping made it horrible
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