“Democracy's Third Estate:” New Deal Politics and the Construction of a “Consuming Public”

Abstract

In the 1930s, the “consumer problem” captured the attention of American working-class leaders, consumer activists, and liberal economists. As sociologist and New Dealer Robert Lynd warned, “There is a ‘consumer problem' of national proportions and it is here to stay as a big white elephant on the doorsteps of business.” He continued: “The only way that democracy can survive, if indeed it is not now too late for it to survive at all, is through the quality of living it can help its rank and file of its citizens to achieve.” Progressive reformers feared that the modern consumer was powerless in the face of corporate market manipulation, mass technology, and the maldistribution of income. Without well-informed, independent, and financially secure consumers, their argument ran, the nation risked economic and political decline. Indeed, to many Americans, the Great Depression made clear that consumers did not possess enough purchasing power to sustain the economy. Moreover, the rise of fascist regimes in Europe suggested that poverty could in fact threaten liberal capitalism. According to this conception of economic citizenship, only powerful consumers with both economic and political clout could prevent economic ruin and civic decay. Robert Lynd, “Introduction,” in Persia Campbell, Consumer Representation in the New Deal (New York, 1940), 9–10, 23.