CONSUMERISM AND ITS HANDMAIDEN, advertising, developed in the late 1900's and the first decades of the twentieth century. Like many historical trends, these two grew largely outside of any direct decisions by those who were most affected by them-in this case, women. The period around the turn of the century was a time when, in fact, fewer women held professional roles than they had only two or three decades earlier. Moreover, active women of the period threw their energies into either the suffrage movement or various social welfare fights. Even Florence Kelly, Executive Secretary to the Consumer Union in the early 1900s, saw it as her role to generate pressure to improve working conditions under which products were made, rather than to create a movement to fight the growth of advertising or buying. Without women's participation at higher levels in business and industry or an active women's movement concerned with these issues, the home was increasingly shaped by forces whose interests were not its own. As one woman argued in 1908, Perhaps the real danger to the home lies in the fact that women . . . are not free to control the industrial changes which affect it, and that these changes are being determined too largely by commercial interests.1 Nonetheless, there was much about the condition of women that made them receptive to the changes taking place. It is this receptivity that I want to explore. For history is never completely beyond people's control, even when they are not at the helm where decisions are made.