THE CONSUMER'S WORLD OF TOMORROW
Sheridan, Mary
Your Money's Worth The Consumers World Of Tomorrow By MARY SHERIDAN WHAT will the consumer postwar world of cars, refrigerators, kitchen equipment, houses, and radios be like in America? If you...
...and emphasizing, with questionable taste, a dream future of comfort and luxury while men are dying on battle-fronts and civilians can't buy reasonably priced, good quality everyday clothing—these things are objectionable...
...Other surveys are not so optimistic...
...Hutchins would not like to be without, has cautioned industrialists and advertising men to temper their offers of pie in the sky and, instead, to tell the public what can be realized in the early postwar period, not years from now...
...Kitchens will be so marvelously efficient that they will cook, serve, and wash dishes practically without any human elbow grease...
...Men will drive to work in helicopters...
...I remain suspicious of most of the estimates because of the many factors involved...
...If you could believe some of the most exuberant wartime advertising in magazines, life will be pretty exciting and pretty easy within a short time after the last bombs have been dropped...
...The business and trade press bear out Kaiser's practical admonition...
...Kaiser, who has crusaded for a future day of cheap cars, good low-cost housing, and other comforts of life which probably even Mr...
...And those thrifty ones who have made things do will sooner or later need essentials in clothing and household goods...
...On the basis of its survey of consumers' buying intentions, the Chamber of Commerce estimates that two out of three consumers, if the war ended tomorrow, plan to make a major purchase—a car, a house, or a household appliance—within six months...
...Will We Be Gadget Crazy...
...Will they spend the money, if they still have it, when goods are plentiful again...
...Tide, an advertising publication, recntly said: "After months of describing the brave new postwar world, advertising copy and magazine writers may be changing their tune shortly...
...if so, the result bodes not at all well for either 'big business' or 'big government.' The frugal consumer, war-conditioned to saving and making things do, will tend to buy cautiously...
...We shall all have been deprived of the gadgets to which we have been devoted, whether we owned them or not, and this will make us gadget crazy after the war...
...Robert M. Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago, has ventured a more cynical prediction: "All we can be certain of about the postwar world is that everybody will be thinking about his economic condition...
...But spending millions of dollars on that kind of advertising, along with breast-beating self-praise that the war is being won because of a commercial product, to deduct the money from income taxes...
...Too many people keep right on buying what there is to buy...
...Certainly revolutionary changes in consumer goods are inevitable in the long, long future...
...Automobile industry executives estimate, in a recent survey, that postwar prices for versions of the 1942 models will range from 15 to 25 per cent higher than prewar prices...
...Reason: industry is becoming concerned by the embarrassing position it will be in when it cannot supply consumers, on V-day, with the marvelous gadgets some writers have been promising them...
...What Business Says Somewhere between these conflicting views are the sensible words of Henry J. Kaiser, the production genius, who will explore some of his postwar ideas in coming articles in The Progressive...
...Maybe, but I doubt that...
...The Wall Street Journal predicts that "the most important change in early postwar gas and electric appliances will be the increased prices charged for models made from the same dies and machinery in use at the time of conversion to war production...
...making exaggerated claims about postwar products that cannot be produced for a long time after war ends...
...If you could believe the most blatant of the ads, television and other revolutionary changes in radio are just around the corner, only awaiting the signing of the peace treaty...
...In its March editorial columns, Consumers' Research ventures the prediction that the war has changed consumer buying habits: "Quite possibly a sizable fraction of the public has learned to do without and like it...
...People do have money to spend and not much to buy...
...Not only will there be a delay in tomorrow's dream products—the prices of durable consumer goods will be higher...
Vol. 8 • April 1944 • No. 16
