In the 1950s GIs traded there uniforms for Gray Flannel Suits and settled into rank & file suberbs like Park Forest IL and Levittown PA/NJ and Parma Ohio. William Whyte who was a Marine Veteran writer for Fortune and the son of a railroad excutive noticed that the behavoir of these men who ran in formation to and from the commuter trains and lived in little pink houses and all looked the same was rather disturbing because the freedom that they had fought for had been traded in for the comfort of conformity and sameness even down to the churches.. Miltary ranks had been traded in for middle management ranks at megacorps. Companys cited had been GE and Ford and Vics Vaporub.Men could expect to work at the same company from days from when they got out of "The Service" to when they retire.All along the way making morgage payments and raising a family just like Ward Cleaver in Leave it to Beaver
Now fast forward 60 years later the first string post-war 1950s suburbs have some of the same problems of the inner city and Schenectady NY home of General Electric is a shadow of what it used to be due to downsizing by "Neutron Jack Welch". GE which took American Veterans fresh from the battlefields and put them thru its own in house school and gave them jobs that would last untill retirement now uses contract labor using H-1B visas--- are commonly used by companies to bring foreign workers to the United States to fill technical positions like software developers. Some tech companies say they need foreign workers because they cannot find enough Americans with the skills for these job--meanwhile my fellow Gulf War vets are lucky to get a job at Mcds or Wal-Mart.
BTW the edition I am reading is the 2001 University of Pennsylvania Press edition.
However, the returning Black GI's didn't 'qualify' for the GI Loans that the returning white GI's used to further their educations and to build housing equity.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
BaltACD I am not so sure..My grandmother tells stories that the neighborhood that they left in the city the houses that they had sold were sold to black famlies. White Neighboors who confronted my grandmother about the sale in 1950 where rebutted by her "the blacks where all that was buying". But it is true that racial convenets and redlining by banks prevented the sale of houses in new Levitowns Suberbs to Black GIs. However, the returning Black GI's didn't 'qualify' for the GI Loans that the returning white GI's used to further their educations and to build housing equity.
My next book for fall 2020 about the movement of Southern Blacks from sharecropper fields to factorys in the North.-
highball6868the freedom that they had fought for had been traded in for the comfort of conformity and sameness even down to the churches.
I haven't read the book, but this isn't the first time I've read a statement like that.
Has anyone stopped to think that maybe, just maybe, after the twin catastrophes of the Great Depression and World War Two these men, and their wives as well, wanted a life with stability, security, and predictability?
Who is anyone to judge and critisize them for that? Not me brother!
And let me add these "conformists" that some sneered at are the same people we started calling "The Greatest Generation" about 20 years ago.
Flintlock76 highball6868 the freedom that they had fought for had been traded in for the comfort of conformity and sameness even down to the churches. I haven't read the book, but this isn't the first time I've read a statement like that. Has anyone stopped to think that maybe, just maybe, after the twin catastrophes of the Great Depression and World War Two these men, and their wives as well, wanted a life with stability, security, and predictability? Who is anyone to judge and critisize them for that? Not me brother!
highball6868 the freedom that they had fought for had been traded in for the comfort of conformity and sameness even down to the churches.
Flintlock76Has anyone stopped to think that maybe, just maybe, after the twin catastrophes of the Great Depression and World War Two these men, and their wives as well, wanted a life with stability, security, and predictability?
Just my own perspective, but the ones who really "make out" in the scenario the original poster sets forth, are the banks and lending institutions who collect a percentage making the "cookie-cutter" dreams attainable to the unwashed masses.
Being locked into an 8-5 for 40 years just to keep the bank from repo'ing the house and cars and the lights turned on might be better than working as a slave in an asbestos mine, but it really isn't "freedom". IMO,... either.
The system we are born into "owns" us, except for a fortunate few.
In my opinion he needs to read the C. Wright Mills "White Collar" first, and "The Power Elite" after. Much of the underlying 'capitalism' institutionalized in the 'Organization Man' is gone now, started by that wretch Geneen in the '60s and continued by the takeover mania pioneered by Steinberg with Reliance and brought to an art by people like Milken and Icahn. There's just as much, if not more, conformity pressure in big American business, but it has become diverse.
As a lot of you know I am an old car guy. After experiencing the MGs, Rileys, Triumphs and Morgans of England during the war it became quite the thing for the man in the gray flannel suit to stop by Hoffmann Motors on Park Avenue on the way to the train. Once he had the wife, the kids and the dog all settled into New Rochelle prosperity it was time to shop for a reward for all that conformity. That may have been a way out for the flannel suit to have a name and not a serial number.
To this day, if you are looking for an antique foreign car, the best places to look are the suburbs reached by the commuter trains out of Grand Central or Penn.
highball6868 BaltACD I am not so sure..My grandmother tells stories that the neighborhood that they left in the city the houses that they had sold were sold to black famlies. White Neighboors who confronted my grandmother about the sale in 1950 where rebutted by her "the blacks where all that was buying". But it is true that racial convenets and redlining by banks prevented the sale of houses in new Levitowns Suberbs to Black GIs. However, the returning Black GI's didn't 'qualify' for the GI Loans that the returning white GI's used to further their educations and to build housing equity.
Two excellent examples of institutional racism that worsened inequalities, racial and economic/wealth.
I'm curious- were Highball and Balt's original posts deleted? Or are they on another thread?
Planning a Stop at Metra "Park Forest" Station on way thru Chicago later this summer which was the model Burb for "Organization Man". Need recomendations on places to eat and drink.
54light15I'm curious- were Highball and Balt's original posts deleted? Or are they on another thread?
No, I think that the formatting of the quote in the third post is just messesd up.
I think that highball's response to Balt is shown in the post before and inside the quotation box. Highball's reply being the non blue lettering
Dave? Is that you man? Let me in.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Dave's not here, man. He went to Portland for a tractor show, and nobody has seen him since.
highball6868 Planning a Stop at Metra "Park Forest" Station on way thru Chicago later this summer which was the model Burb for "Organization Man". Need recomendations on places to eat and drink.
I think those ex-GIs that you felt lacked "freedom," because so many were identical to a casual observer, would have resented anyone saying they lacked freedom. You don't have any idea of how different each one was in use of spare time, what sports they enjoyed and watched, what music they enjoyed, which magazines they read, etc. etc.
When I sing in a choir, and follow the Music Diroector's leadership and the printed score exactly, do I lack freedom?
Short of eating Rocky-Mountain trout, while viewing Glenwood Canyon or Book Cliffs in a dining car, singing great music in a choir is "heaven-on-earth" for me.
For our President, saying what he wishes to say at the moment, apparently with no real involved consideration of what the total USA population might think, seems to be his personal idea of freedom. As a memer of the choir, I must follow the printed score and the director's baton or arms. Am I less free than the church organist extemporising with music that comes into his or her head to fill a time gap in a service or a jazz musician making up music on the spot? Or a stand-up comedian improvising on the basis of what comes into his mind? Was Howard Fogg less free than Jackson Pollock?
I choose the discipline I follow. So did those Ex-GIs. In the Land of the Free.
BaltACD However, the returning Black GI's didn't 'qualify' for the GI Loans that the returning white GI's used to further their educations and to build housing equity.
Mr. Klepper- it's interesting what you say about music. I'm thinking that the be-bop music of the era may have been a way of rebelling against the conformity of the time. The release of Playboy magazine in 1953 ties in with that as well as Hugh Hefner was a great promoter of jazz as well as comedy. Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl and others were all pointing out the hypocrisy of society and who could blame them? And they all got in trouble.
duplicate post, deleted.
Heffner may have gotten into some trouble much later, but first he became a millionair.
Which tells me that not everyone was toeing the conformist line. Meanwhile, their chidren were reading Mad magazine. How subversive!
daveklepperdaveklepper wrote the following post 6 hours ago: Heffner may have gotten into some trouble much later, but first he became a millionair.
He followed Marshal Fields dictum, "Give the gentleman what he wants"
Highball, another good read about the great migration and its links to railroads is "The Warmth of Other Suns" by Isabel Wilkerson published about ten years ago. Railroad employment in Pullmans and dining cars was an opportunity for good employment as long as you stayed onboard when down south and long service with steady income allowed many black skinned men to establish secure homes in Chicago, NYC, etc. and gave their families a leg up in the world.
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