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Above: This 1950s modelliving room is arrangedaround the TV set.

After World War II, many Americans feared that theeconomy would return to the prewar depression. To helpavoid that, Congress enacted the Serviceman’s Readjust-ment Act in 1944. Nicknamed “the GI Bill,” this act pro-vided financial aid for returning soldiers who wantedto go to college, buy homes, and start families.

A survey of South Carolina soldiers at the end of WorldWar II showed that over 90 percent planned to return toSouth Carolina and to their home counties. More thanhalf those soldiers indicated a desire to improve their edu-

cation by entering a vocational school, getting a high school diploma, orobtaining a college degree. Enrollment at USC increased almost 100 percentbetween 1945 and 1948. Many other South Carolinians left the state to get acollege education. The return of the soldiers and the availability of the GI billforced South Carolina to expand its college opportunities. In 1947, the SouthCarolina Area Trade Schools Act (SCATS) established the South Carolina AreaTrade Schools, now the core of the state’s technical colleges.

Millions of returning GIs started families. Economists saw the babyboom—the postwar period when millions of babies were born—as thekey to a prosperous economy. Newspaper columnist and economist SylviaPorter wrote:

Take the 3,548,000 babies born in 1950. Bundle them into a batch, bouncethem all over the bountiful land that is America. What do you get? Boom.The biggest, boomiest boom ever known in history. Just imagine how muchthese extra people, these new markets, will absorb—in food, in clothing, ingadgets, in housing, in services. Our factories must expand to keep pace.

A Period ofProsperity

As you read, look for:• the growth of business and industry,• labor unions,• cultural changes, and• vocabulary terms: baby boom and right-

to-work laws.

Did You Know?Did You Know?

?In 1947, there were about44,000 television sets inthe United States versus

40 million radios.

Did You Know?Did You Know?

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An Economic BoomThe 1950s were a time of great economic growth. As Porter suggested,

the factories converted to peace-time operations and returned to makingconsumer goods. The construction industry boomed as thousands of houseswere built to meet the needs of growing families. Real estate developers beganproducing low-cost houses that could be put up quickly. Suburbs grew asmore people took jobs in the cities and wanted to be close to their work.

Sales of furniture and home appliances such as washing machines, stoves,and refrigerators soared. So did sales of clothing, toys, baby food, and otheritems needed by young children. The automobile industry grew as youngparents bought new sedans and station wagons to transport their growingfamilies. Most families had at least one car, and some had two. Televisionbecame a common sight in most homes as a means of entertainment. Tele-vision stations began operating in Columbia, Greenville, and Charleston.

At the same time, thousands of families began moving from the North-east and the Midwest to the states stretching across the southern part of thecountry from California to Florida. These states became known as the“Sunbelt states.” The warm, sunny climate appealed to many Americans.In addition, many businesses relocated to the Sunbelt because of plentifulresources, less expensive labor, and a working population that was gener-ally against unions. South Carolina’s population increased by more than250,000 during the 1950s, an increase of more than 10 percent.

Above: During the 1950s,cars became more than ameans of transportation;they became status symbols.

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Above: Improved farmingmethods, such as contourplowing to prevent erosion,developed during thepostwar period.

The economic growth after World War II led to the growth of labor unions.During 1946, there were a number of strikes by labor unions. Organized la-bor, which had signed “no strike” clauses during the war, wanted its share ofthe country’s prosperity. In 1947, anger against the labor unions resulted inthe passage of the federal Labor-Management Relations Act, also known asthe Taft-Hartley Act. The legislation restricted the power of the labor unions,much like the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act) had restrictedthe actions of employers. President Truman vetoed the bill, but Congressoverrode his veto. The Taft-Hartley Act allowed states to enact right-to-worklaws, laws that permit workers to get and keep jobs without joining a union.The South Carolina legislature passed a right-to-work law in March 1954.

The industrial growth, however, meant there were fewer farm workers.With fewer workers, farmers turned to crops such as soybeans that couldbe harvested by machines rather than by hand. New farming methods andmachinery increased farm production dramatically. By the 1950s, farmerswere once again producing much more than they could sell. The law of supplyand demand took effect. Overproduction caused farm prices to fall so lowthat most farmers could barely make a profit on the crops and livestockthey raised. The trend of farm families migrating to the cities continued into

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the 1950s. Many people did not want to leave the land, but they had noother choice if they wanted to survive.

A Cultural ShiftWith the increasing availability of television and the broadening of travel

in the postwar period, South Carolinians moved closer to becoming like therest of the nation. Consumers wanted those products that were advertisedon national broadcasts. Families sought to become more like those picturedon weekly television shows. The situation comedy, or sitcom, became themost popular type of television program. Shows like Leave it to Beaver andI Love Lucy brought families together nightly. At the center of every sitcomwas a family or a family-like group in the work place. The characters en-countered all the things familiar to everyday people.

The increased number of young people and the amount of money avail-able to them affected marketing and advertising. Adolescents were labeled“teenagers” in this era. Teens had become a more important economic groupwhen most men over eighteen were in military service. Younger boys steppedin as the “men” of the family and were able to earn their own money in themany jobs available. Girls too were able to earn money by baby-sitting for

Did You Know?Did You Know?

?Harry S Truman was thefirst president to make anaddress to the public on

television from the WhiteHouse. He discussed theinternational food crisisand proposed meatless

Tuesdays.

Did You Know?Did You Know?

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Top: The young people ofthe 1950s reflect the post-war optimism in Americaby dancing to rock and rollmusic. Above: Televisionshows such as Leave it toBeaver contributed to theidea of the perfect family.

parents who worked night shifts at war plants orfactories. Teens had money, and advertisers set towork to get them to spend it. Clothing crazes, popsongs, and dances were promoted through the me-dia. Jitterbugging teenagers dropped their hard-earned money into jukeboxes every Friday andSaturday night to listen and dance to the latestrecords. By the mid-1950s, the two major recordcompanies—RCA Victor and Decca—were eachselling 100 million records a year. The jukebox in-dustry had become an $80 million business. It be-came a status symbol for a teen to have homephonograph equipment.

Magazines began devoting sections to teen interests. New magazines de-voted entirely to teenagers appeared and advertised the latest fashions for girlsand boys. For the first time in history, teenagers had their own identity throughclothing. The outfit for girls, according to the magazines, was a pleated skirt,baggy sweater, bobby sox, and loafers. For boys it was khaki pants, button-down shirts or sweaters, white socks or no socks, and loafers.

The baby boom did present some problems. Most communities faced ashortage of doctors and nurses to treat the baby-boom children. In the cit-ies, recreation departments had trouble providing enough parks and play-grounds. It seemed that most services were in short supply.

The first wave of baby-boom children who reached elementary schoolsin the early 1950s faced a serious shortage of teachers and classrooms. Theshortage followed them from grade to grade through high school and intocollege during the 1960s. School attendance was made compulsory for allchildren under the age of sixteen in South Carolina, and buses were neededto transport the children to school.

Larger amounts of tax money were needed to pay for the additional schoolbuildings and teachers. In 1951, Governor James F. Byrnes convinced thelegislature to adopt the state’s first sales tax to provide the funding neededfor education. Byrnes also hoped that if the state put more money into theblack school system, it might prevent court-ordered desegregation. That tacticfailed when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected segregation in 1954 in the caseof Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka.

1. What was the “GI Bill”?2. What caused the growth of the economy?3. Why were right-to-work laws needed?

It’s Your TurnIt’s Your Turn

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Cultural ConnectionsCultural Connections

Over the last two hun-dred years South Caro-lina has produced manywriters, artists, and musi-cians. Some of the artistsproduce folk art, art thatis often utilitarian in na-ture, but also decorative.During the twentiethcentury, South Carolinahas produced several art-ists who work primarilywith paint. Jasper Johnsis one of those artists.

Jasper Johns was bornin Augusta, Georgia, on May 15, 1930. He grew up inAllendale County, South Carolina, during the depres-sion. Johns grew up wanting to be an artist. He oncesaid: “In the place where I was a child, there were noartists and there was no art, so I really didn’t know whatthat meant.” He later said that becoming an artist wouldmean that he would be able to live in a different place.

Johns studied briefly at the University of South Caro-lina before moving to New York City in the early 1950s.There Johns worked as a window decorator for Tiffany’sduring the day and explored the art scene at night andon his time off. He met the painter Robert Rauschenbergin New York City and together they learned about artand the art world. After visiting Philadelphia in the mid-1950s and seeing the work of Marcel Duchamp, Johnsbegan to create art by transforming common objectsinto art by placing them in an art context. He used twoprincipal objects to create his art, the flag and a target.Between 1954 and 1959 his flags and target images

Jasper Johnsintroduced the pop-artmovement in the UnitedStates. He also created artdepicting maps, letters,and numbers.

During the 1960s Johnsbegan to produce sculp-ture from bronze cast-ings that were also basedon common objects likepaint brushes and lightbulbs. He collaboratedwith some of the mostfamous pop artists likeAndy Warhol and Bruce

Naumann. And he expanded his artistic abilities intothe illustration of books. Johns’ interests changedagain during the 1980s. He once claimed that hewas unconcerned with emotions, but during the 1980she developed a strong interest in painting autobio-graphically.

Jasper Johns has produced a rich and complex bodyof work for over fifty years. He laid the groundwork fora large number of experimental artists who workedwith printmaking, painting, and sculpture. He is at theforefront of American art; almost every major museumin the United States has a least one work by Johns, in-cluding the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New YorkCity. In South Carolina, the Columbia Museum of Arthas several Jasper Johns works, but the GreenvilleMuseum of Art is home to many Johns’ pieces. Fromhis modest artless beginning in Allendale, South Caro-lina, Jasper Johns has become one of the most famousartists in the United States.

Johns made many paintings of the American flag.

Jasper Johns

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