WEBVTT - Trash 0:00:02.160 --> 0:00:07.160 Ephemeralist production of My Heart three D audio for full 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:18.600 exposure listen with that phones for a lot of us. 0:00:19.239 --> 0:00:22.840 With the new year comes an opportunity to take stock, 0:00:23.840 --> 0:00:27.800 consider what you have, what you want, what you may 0:00:27.800 --> 0:00:33.400 not need anymore, and maybe do a little cleaning. It's 0:00:33.440 --> 0:00:36.360 a moment where people are confronted with a question at 0:00:36.360 --> 0:00:40.879 the heart of this show, how do we as societies 0:00:41.120 --> 0:00:45.400 and as individuals decide what to keep and what to 0:00:45.440 --> 0:00:50.120 throw away? What defines trash varies from person to person. 0:00:50.760 --> 0:00:54.520 It's an activity more than it is a category, so 0:00:54.920 --> 0:00:58.080 it should be understood as a dynamic category rather than 0:00:58.120 --> 0:01:02.320 as the thing or a kind of thing. And my 0:01:02.440 --> 0:01:07.680 name is Susan Strasser. I am the Richards Professor Emerita 0:01:07.760 --> 0:01:10.760 of American History at the University of Delaware, which just 0:01:10.880 --> 0:01:14.200 really means that I'm retired from the University of Delaware. 0:01:14.720 --> 0:01:18.120 And I'm the author of Never Done, a History of 0:01:18.120 --> 0:01:23.360 American Housework. Second book was called Satisfaction Guaranteed, The Making 0:01:23.480 --> 0:01:27.640 of the American mass Market and Waste and Want a 0:01:27.720 --> 0:01:32.760 Social History of Trash. If we were to see the 0:01:32.800 --> 0:01:36.560 way most people in the United States lived before eighteen nine, 0:01:37.440 --> 0:01:42.640 it wouldn't look familiar to us at all. By twenty 0:01:42.760 --> 0:01:46.479 things would look old fashioned to us, certainly, but they 0:01:46.520 --> 0:01:51.280 would look familiar. And what that is about is the 0:01:51.400 --> 0:01:58.720 creation of the mass market, the creation of industrial products 0:01:58.800 --> 0:02:05.000 that per meated domestic life, and that really got fundamentally 0:02:05.160 --> 0:02:10.239 transformed during those decades around the turn of the twentieth century, 0:02:12.280 --> 0:02:16.640 people related to material goods in very, very different ways. 0:02:16.760 --> 0:02:22.840 The likelihood was that almost everything that you wore, or 0:02:23.400 --> 0:02:28.960 eight or sat on were created by yourself, or by 0:02:29.080 --> 0:02:32.080 somebody in your family, or by somebody that you knew. 0:02:34.080 --> 0:02:38.280 Soap and candles were industrialized pretty early in the cities, 0:02:38.320 --> 0:02:42.600 but they were not necessarily industrialized in the country because 0:02:42.639 --> 0:02:46.760 they were made of leftover materials. You make soap from ashes, 0:02:47.160 --> 0:02:52.600 the ashes make lie, and from spare fat. When you're butchering, 0:02:52.880 --> 0:02:59.800 you're gonna have spare fat to use. Bottles were very valuable. 0:03:00.160 --> 0:03:05.880 Commercial glass manufacturer was pretty slow compared to other industries, 0:03:06.360 --> 0:03:13.480 so bottles were refilled. Housekeeping manuals advised people when they're 0:03:13.480 --> 0:03:17.080 clearing the table to check and see what can be 0:03:17.160 --> 0:03:19.919 eaten again. And there was not a lot of shame 0:03:19.960 --> 0:03:24.600 apparently involved in taking things off people's plates and keeping 0:03:24.600 --> 0:03:31.200 it to feed people later, and across the social hierarchy, 0:03:31.520 --> 0:03:42.720 people knew how to sew. Rich women sewed, poor women sewed, 0:03:43.120 --> 0:03:47.320 middle class women sewed, All women sewed. If you could 0:03:47.360 --> 0:03:52.000 afford to, you might hire somebody to make your fancy 0:03:52.120 --> 0:03:59.440 dresses or your coat, But even wealthy women sewed their 0:04:00.040 --> 0:04:08.080 underwhere their nightgowns, kids clothes. The idea that you just 0:04:08.160 --> 0:04:11.440 get rid of things when they're torn, or when they're broken, 0:04:11.520 --> 0:04:14.840 or when they're dirty was just unknown, and that was 0:04:14.960 --> 0:04:19.640 partly because people understood the value of the labor that 0:04:19.680 --> 0:04:24.880 went into making them. This is at a point before 0:04:25.000 --> 0:04:27.680 there were very many general stores, and even if there 0:04:27.680 --> 0:04:30.560 were general stores, how do you get to the general store. 0:04:31.080 --> 0:04:34.120 An average farmer might have a horse, but the horses 0:04:34.200 --> 0:04:37.239 working on pulling the plow. The horse is not free 0:04:37.320 --> 0:04:41.640 to go into town because somebody decides that they want something, 0:04:42.640 --> 0:04:47.280 So in a primarily agricultural society, they don't go to town. 0:04:48.279 --> 0:04:52.360 The way people got stuff was that people came around 0:04:52.480 --> 0:04:59.040 selling stuff, and they came around in the countryside peddler's 0:04:59.440 --> 0:05:03.120 door to door salesman, slipping both new goods and material 0:05:03.160 --> 0:05:07.520 for reuse. We're an integral part of a newly developing economy. 0:05:08.800 --> 0:05:12.880 The kinds of things that the peddlers would carry would 0:05:12.880 --> 0:05:17.120 be just basic things to live with, things to cook with, 0:05:17.240 --> 0:05:21.240 things to build with, little things that we would not 0:05:21.360 --> 0:05:26.560 even think of, sewing pins, hairpins, nails, the kind of 0:05:26.560 --> 0:05:30.039 stuff we would think you would buy in a hardware store. 0:05:43.200 --> 0:05:47.599 There was another kind of peddling that was organized by 0:05:48.000 --> 0:05:53.400 tin manufacturers. Tin was used for small metal goods, stuff 0:05:53.440 --> 0:06:01.760 like funnels, watering cans, and tin manufacturers would organized peddlers 0:06:01.839 --> 0:06:05.680 to go out in the countryside and sell their tin wear. 0:06:07.839 --> 0:06:12.679 All of these people took stuff in trade two either 0:06:12.720 --> 0:06:16.480 sell back to the person who had sold them the tinware, 0:06:16.920 --> 0:06:20.960 or in some cases the tinware manufacturer might have hired someone. 0:06:21.760 --> 0:06:25.279 I had the really great opportunity to look at the 0:06:25.279 --> 0:06:30.320 papers of tin manufacturer, and he was called a master peddler. 0:06:30.880 --> 0:06:36.080 His name was Marillo Noise. My father was a peddler. 0:06:36.560 --> 0:06:42.520 His name he was your no and he hired peddlers 0:06:42.560 --> 0:06:47.200 to sell his tin and to bring stuff back. You 0:06:47.360 --> 0:06:51.760 don't want to do what manufacturers now do, which is 0:06:51.800 --> 0:06:55.960 to pay for stuff to just go one way. So 0:06:56.360 --> 0:07:01.560 Marilla Noise got really interested in what he could collect 0:07:01.680 --> 0:07:05.440 from the households where his peddlers were going that he 0:07:05.480 --> 0:07:12.760 could then sell. And he collected paper, rags, rubber bones, 0:07:13.720 --> 0:07:17.400 and he collected metal. He had these little booklets that 0:07:17.440 --> 0:07:20.880 would fit into his pocket. In those booklets he would 0:07:20.920 --> 0:07:24.960 say things like, oh, so and so told me about 0:07:24.960 --> 0:07:29.960 a manufacturer in New Jersey who's using old leather. So 0:07:30.120 --> 0:07:32.960 then he goes to New Jersey and he visits the 0:07:33.040 --> 0:07:36.440 manufacturer and he finds out what kinds of old leather 0:07:37.000 --> 0:07:40.840 the manufacturer can use and he's using, and then he 0:07:40.880 --> 0:07:45.080 can give his peddlars instructions to be bringing back that 0:07:45.160 --> 0:07:50.240 stuff as well. He would send the peddlers out to 0:07:50.920 --> 0:07:53.760 sell the stuff that he had loaded the wagons with, 0:07:54.040 --> 0:07:58.960 but he also expected them to come back with full cards, 0:07:59.040 --> 0:08:03.240 so that the price of keeping the peddler and the 0:08:03.360 --> 0:08:10.480 horse alive would be distributed over both directions. The expansion 0:08:10.480 --> 0:08:15.280 of peddling signals an important shift in American society towards 0:08:15.280 --> 0:08:21.160 a culture of consumerism. The development of consumer culture requires 0:08:21.240 --> 0:08:25.400 people to come to believe that stuff can come to 0:08:25.560 --> 0:08:30.680 them and that we can get what we want. If 0:08:30.720 --> 0:08:35.040 the peddlers hadn't been able to take stuff back, then 0:08:35.080 --> 0:08:38.120 there wouldn't have been as much peddling, there wouldn't have 0:08:38.160 --> 0:08:43.600 been as much new manufactured stuff out in the countryside. 0:08:44.320 --> 0:08:48.480 It literally brought that system that was a two way 0:08:48.520 --> 0:08:55.360 system and brought things, brought goods, brought stuff into people's lives. 0:08:56.760 --> 0:08:59.160 I feel like I could see the workings of a 0:08:59.320 --> 0:09:04.280 nineteen entree recycling system that so many things that could 0:09:04.320 --> 0:09:08.480 not be used in the household did get sent back 0:09:08.520 --> 0:09:13.160 to factories to be used again to make other things. 0:09:13.760 --> 0:09:16.880 Metal is an obvious thing because it can be melted down. 0:09:17.240 --> 0:09:23.720 But rags, for example, we're used in papermaking. Before the Revolution, 0:09:24.360 --> 0:09:27.000 there wasn't a lot of paper made in the United States, 0:09:27.960 --> 0:09:31.160 so there was a lot of energy put into creating 0:09:32.000 --> 0:09:38.320 domestic paper manufacturers and saving rags cotton rags and linen 0:09:38.400 --> 0:09:44.120 rags for making paper. That's recycling, that's making something out 0:09:44.160 --> 0:09:49.520 of something that's previously manufactured. It's really difficult for us 0:09:49.559 --> 0:09:57.200 to imagine the spareness of life. The very idea to 0:09:57.800 --> 0:10:01.200 get a tea kettle, something that will boil your water, 0:10:02.040 --> 0:10:06.160 that's a separate object from the pot you're cooking your 0:10:06.200 --> 0:10:11.360 beans in. Those very ideas were really new for most people, 0:10:12.000 --> 0:10:15.960 especially given that the houses that survived the ones that 0:10:16.040 --> 0:10:20.360 we tour as tourists, or the houses of the most 0:10:20.480 --> 0:10:26.320 fabulously wealthy people in America, even they were sitting in 0:10:26.360 --> 0:10:31.640 the dark at night. Whale oil, which was the major 0:10:32.200 --> 0:10:39.080 source before kerosene, it was expensive. Candles were expensive. There's 0:10:39.120 --> 0:10:42.240 a French saying I've seen it translated in a lot 0:10:42.280 --> 0:10:46.079 of nineteenth century books, about something being not worth the candle. 0:10:48.240 --> 0:10:50.520 Is this book good enough for me to pay for 0:10:50.640 --> 0:10:55.080 the candle that's gonna light my ability to read it? 0:10:55.280 --> 0:10:56.960 Or am I going to put it away and go 0:10:57.040 --> 0:11:02.240 to sleep and maybe look at it tomorrow. Yeah, it's 0:11:02.280 --> 0:11:06.360 not like people were lighting up their lives the way 0:11:06.400 --> 0:11:09.760 we light up our lives. And I think we have 0:11:09.840 --> 0:11:14.920 a hard time imagining just how spare life was for everybody. 0:11:22.559 --> 0:11:25.240 In the late eighteen hundreds, there was a wave of 0:11:25.280 --> 0:11:29.960 migration in the United States away from the countryside and 0:11:30.040 --> 0:11:35.960 towards cities. It became possible to feed the country with 0:11:36.080 --> 0:11:42.760 fewer people and jobs in factories looked attractive, and city 0:11:42.840 --> 0:11:46.040 life looked attractive to a lot of people, and that's 0:11:46.080 --> 0:11:51.640 why they went in the countryside. It's much easier to 0:11:52.320 --> 0:11:55.280 figure out what to do with stuff if you don't 0:11:55.280 --> 0:11:59.839 want it. There's some corner of the farm where you 0:12:00.040 --> 0:12:05.840 can dump things. There's just a lot more ability to 0:12:05.960 --> 0:12:08.559 get rid of stuff, to the extent that you even 0:12:08.640 --> 0:12:11.640 want to get rid of stuff, because there's also more 0:12:11.720 --> 0:12:16.280 ability to use things. The example of making soap is 0:12:16.320 --> 0:12:20.200 a good one in the city. If you're living in 0:12:20.240 --> 0:12:24.040 an apartment, you may have ashes, you may have fat, 0:12:24.640 --> 0:12:29.360 but where are you gonna make soap. You may not 0:12:29.520 --> 0:12:33.280 have the space to use things, and you certainly don't 0:12:33.280 --> 0:12:37.480 have space to dump things. So it becomes more and 0:12:37.640 --> 0:12:41.120 more an issue for people living in cities as to 0:12:41.559 --> 0:12:44.120 what they're gonna do with things that they don't want. 0:12:45.160 --> 0:12:50.439 There's lots of written evidence about people throwing stuff out windows, 0:12:50.480 --> 0:12:53.319 But what are you going to do with things? Vary it, 0:12:54.240 --> 0:12:57.440 burn it, throw it in a ravine if there's a 0:12:57.559 --> 0:13:01.120 ravine nearby, throw it in a body of water. Those 0:13:01.200 --> 0:13:06.480 were the choices. With more people in their trash packed 0:13:06.480 --> 0:13:12.640 together in tighter spaces, came increasing risks of disease. The 0:13:12.679 --> 0:13:19.840 whole question of public health starts to become salient as 0:13:20.320 --> 0:13:27.400 there's this huge series of epidemics yellow fever, cholera in 0:13:27.559 --> 0:13:32.200 city after city throughout the nineteenth century, and people don't 0:13:32.360 --> 0:13:35.640 yet have the germ theory of disease. They don't quite 0:13:35.720 --> 0:13:40.720 yet know about viruses and bacteria, but they do start 0:13:40.880 --> 0:13:46.360 developing an understanding that filth has something to do with disease, 0:13:46.600 --> 0:13:49.680 that bad water has something to do with disease, that 0:13:50.440 --> 0:13:54.000 filth has something to do with bad water. More people 0:13:54.040 --> 0:13:59.240 got sick where people were crowded in that they could 0:13:59.280 --> 0:14:03.880 see They could see it perfectly clearly. In the early 0:14:04.000 --> 0:14:09.280 twentieth century in cities, there were sewers, but there were 0:14:09.320 --> 0:14:14.360 also out houses. There were people living in tenements where 0:14:14.880 --> 0:14:20.360 the one flush toilet would be in the courtyard. Sewers 0:14:20.360 --> 0:14:25.520 and water were the things that created the whole notion 0:14:25.600 --> 0:14:29.800 of what a municipal concern might be about infrastructure and 0:14:29.880 --> 0:14:35.200 about public health. These concerns would be addressed by a 0:14:35.240 --> 0:14:39.600 major advancement that we all too often take for granted today, 0:14:40.080 --> 0:14:46.440 municipal trash collection. What it looked like was those same 0:14:46.520 --> 0:14:52.240 people who had campaign to get sewers and water into 0:14:52.320 --> 0:14:58.680 cities started campaigning to get municipal trash collection. We're talking 0:14:58.680 --> 0:15:03.280 about the nine these in the biggest cities, New York 0:15:03.400 --> 0:15:06.440 because it was the biggest city. The problem was the 0:15:06.440 --> 0:15:11.080 biggest and it kind of led the way in municipal 0:15:11.680 --> 0:15:17.040 services for collecting waste. Now, what they did with the 0:15:17.080 --> 0:15:20.200 trash ones that was collected, we may not have such 0:15:20.400 --> 0:15:23.320 happy feelings about. In New York, it was put on 0:15:23.400 --> 0:15:26.040 barges and taken out into the ocean and dumped in 0:15:26.080 --> 0:15:33.080 the ocean. It was used to create landfill. The ashes, particularly, 0:15:33.120 --> 0:15:37.000 but also other kinds of trash were used for landfill. 0:15:39.320 --> 0:15:44.240 The thing is trashes then and now hard to get 0:15:44.320 --> 0:15:48.880 rid of the most obvious things to do with stuff 0:15:48.880 --> 0:15:52.160 you don't want just to burn it, to bury it, 0:15:52.320 --> 0:15:55.240 or to dump it. Those are the big three that 0:15:55.280 --> 0:15:57.720 you can do on your farm, or you can do 0:15:58.160 --> 0:16:00.920 in a big way in a big city. But if 0:16:00.960 --> 0:16:03.960 you're burning all the trash for a big city, then 0:16:04.120 --> 0:16:07.440 you need some kind of fancy incinerator. You can't just 0:16:07.560 --> 0:16:12.200 do it in the backyard. They were not attractions that 0:16:12.320 --> 0:16:17.640 people wanted to have in their midst So facilities were 0:16:17.680 --> 0:16:21.120 built on the edges of town, and facilities were built 0:16:21.280 --> 0:16:27.640 where people were too poor to effectively complain about the 0:16:27.760 --> 0:16:30.960 hazards to their health. We're here today on a march 0:16:31.080 --> 0:16:36.280 to the Detroit incinerator Um, and we're calling for clean air, 0:16:36.640 --> 0:16:39.680 particularly for the communities that are close to the incenterator 0:16:39.680 --> 0:16:42.880 and are particularly affected by the particular from the burning trash. 0:16:43.360 --> 0:16:48.920 And I should say that in those early municipal household 0:16:49.000 --> 0:16:53.400 trash collections, there was separation of different kinds of trash 0:16:53.720 --> 0:16:57.560 to be used for recycling. The same kinds of things 0:16:57.640 --> 0:17:03.480 that people had been recyclinging for many decades were separated out. 0:17:05.640 --> 0:17:08.080 Do people start thinking about their materials in a different 0:17:08.119 --> 0:17:12.240 way because of trash collection. Once you have a municipal 0:17:12.280 --> 0:17:17.800 trash collection, then throwing something away becomes a possibility. Before 0:17:17.960 --> 0:17:21.840 municipal trash collection, you either store it in your house 0:17:21.960 --> 0:17:24.160 or you somehow or other get it out of your house. 0:17:24.200 --> 0:17:25.840 And if you're going to get it out of your house, 0:17:25.920 --> 0:17:28.119 you have to figure out where out of your house. 0:17:28.680 --> 0:17:32.640 And municipal trash collection gives you a brand new option, 0:17:32.720 --> 0:17:36.760 which is just get rid of it. It makes it 0:17:36.800 --> 0:17:41.160 a black box. Before then you've got to figure out 0:17:41.200 --> 0:17:43.280 what to do with it. And if you're gonna take 0:17:43.320 --> 0:17:45.080 it down to the river and dump it in the river, 0:17:45.160 --> 0:17:46.840 you're going to dump it in the river, and you're 0:17:46.880 --> 0:17:51.119 gonna know that it went in the river. If you 0:17:51.160 --> 0:17:53.560 put it in the can and you take the can 0:17:53.600 --> 0:17:56.919 to the curb. Who knows what happens to it. It's gone. 0:17:57.840 --> 0:18:01.040 There's not the sense of reciprocity about it. There's not 0:18:01.200 --> 0:18:04.040 the bargaining about I mean, when the peddler comes around 0:18:04.480 --> 0:18:06.960 and you've got your bit of rags and your bit 0:18:07.000 --> 0:18:09.440 of rubber and your bit of metal, and you are 0:18:09.480 --> 0:18:12.680 looking at the tea cattle and the pins and some nails, 0:18:13.000 --> 0:18:15.520 there's a whole bargaining process that's going to go on 0:18:15.680 --> 0:18:19.359 between you and the peddler to figure out who gets 0:18:19.359 --> 0:18:25.560 what and what gets exchanged. Once you have municipal trash collection, 0:18:26.000 --> 0:18:30.320 there's no exchange. It's literally about getting rid of stuff. 0:18:32.280 --> 0:18:37.600 These new systems of disposal dovetail not coincidentally with major 0:18:37.640 --> 0:18:44.359 developments and mass manufacturing. It simply became possible to buy 0:18:44.440 --> 0:18:47.800 a lot of stuff that hadn't been possible to buy before. 0:18:47.960 --> 0:18:50.560 And some of it is because there's more and more 0:18:50.800 --> 0:18:54.240 stuff being manufactured in factories, and some of it is 0:18:54.280 --> 0:18:58.680 because there's all kinds of new distribution methods. Even people 0:18:58.720 --> 0:19:02.880 in the countryside can buy things from the Sears catalog 0:19:02.960 --> 0:19:05.960 and the Montgomery Ward catalog and get them shipped to 0:19:06.000 --> 0:19:11.600 their houses. What are you reading these years catalogs. That 0:19:11.680 --> 0:19:17.120 sounds exciting, you'd be surprised. The Post Office actually made 0:19:17.119 --> 0:19:20.399 it possible for things to be shipped to your house 0:19:20.480 --> 0:19:23.960 even if you lived in the country Rural Free Delivery RFD, 0:19:24.960 --> 0:19:28.480 so you didn't have to come into town and pick 0:19:28.560 --> 0:19:32.000 something up at the train station. It would be shipped 0:19:32.000 --> 0:19:37.000 to your house suddenly, and really it was sudden. All 0:19:37.040 --> 0:19:42.000 of the goods of the new manufacturing were available to 0:19:42.160 --> 0:19:46.320 consumers if they used these companies, and they did use 0:19:46.359 --> 0:19:49.320 those companies, and they used those companies for the same 0:19:49.400 --> 0:19:54.520 reasons that people use Amazon, because everything was available and 0:19:54.560 --> 0:19:59.760 it was easy to get. In the nine twenties, lots 0:19:59.800 --> 0:20:03.680 and lots of appliances started to be produced, and many 0:20:03.720 --> 0:20:06.760 of these had been patented earlier, but it wasn't until 0:20:06.760 --> 0:20:10.439 the nineteen twenties and the relative prosperity of the nineteen 0:20:10.520 --> 0:20:14.639 twenties that the large numbers of people started to buy 0:20:14.760 --> 0:20:18.800 these things. At first, it was small appliances, things like 0:20:18.880 --> 0:20:22.679 toasters and irons. By the end of the nineteen twenties, 0:20:23.160 --> 0:20:29.600 refrigerators were available to wealthy people. Everything in its place. 0:20:30.119 --> 0:20:34.840 That's easy with my printed air cold pantry. Even after 0:20:34.880 --> 0:20:37.640 the depression, started. They were sold on the installment plan 0:20:37.960 --> 0:20:41.080 with the promise that you could save money. You could 0:20:41.080 --> 0:20:44.920 buy things on sale and keep them longer in your refrigerator. 0:20:45.880 --> 0:20:49.120 We think of the depression as a time when nobody 0:20:49.200 --> 0:20:54.639 had anything, but if there's a twenty unemployment rate, that 0:20:54.680 --> 0:20:59.880 means of the people have jobs. It's not like more 0:21:00.400 --> 0:21:03.440 people had lots and lots of money, but they did 0:21:03.520 --> 0:21:10.560 have some money, and both refrigerators and radios were appliances 0:21:10.800 --> 0:21:16.680 that became big during the thirties. Another consumer good flooding 0:21:16.680 --> 0:21:21.440 the market in this era was, of course, the automobile. 0:21:23.680 --> 0:21:28.800 Henry Ford, who not only introduced the assembly line and 0:21:29.200 --> 0:21:32.679 a certain new kind of manufacturing in that respect, he 0:21:32.800 --> 0:21:36.320 also introduced a theory of employment that he called the 0:21:36.359 --> 0:21:42.440 five dollar day. He wanted to pay workers well enough 0:21:42.520 --> 0:21:46.359 that they could buy automobiles, but not everybody has a 0:21:46.400 --> 0:21:50.280 million dollars to ride the economy is what they want. 0:21:50.960 --> 0:21:54.280 He envisioned a time when it would not just be 0:21:54.480 --> 0:21:59.000 rich people, and over the course of the twenties, automobiles 0:21:59.080 --> 0:22:06.120 got cheaper and the used automobile market started to develop, 0:22:06.560 --> 0:22:09.439 So by the end of the twenties it's fair to 0:22:09.440 --> 0:22:11.639 say that there are large numbers of people brought in 0:22:11.680 --> 0:22:17.959 cars with this version, and consumer culture came an onslaught 0:22:18.000 --> 0:22:23.400 of disposable goods. At the beginning of the twentieth century, 0:22:23.760 --> 0:22:27.840 paper cups starts to be the first big thing because 0:22:27.880 --> 0:22:32.399 people are out in cities more and they're drinking publicly. 0:22:32.960 --> 0:22:35.199 She knows that dickte cups, they were a lot of 0:22:35.320 --> 0:22:39.320 extra glasses to waste. She knows that dicknecup means there's 0:22:39.400 --> 0:22:42.840 less of breaking glasses. And you know too that drinking 0:22:42.840 --> 0:22:46.640 from a Dicte cup is more sanitary because everyone has 0:22:46.680 --> 0:22:52.600 his own individual cups. Again, there's this concern about public 0:22:52.640 --> 0:22:56.760 health as the germ theory starts to be accepted, So 0:22:57.080 --> 0:23:03.080 there's the introduction of paper cups for sanitary purposes. Other 0:23:03.280 --> 0:23:09.359 kinds of paper goods and disposable goods are being introduced, 0:23:09.440 --> 0:23:14.960 but they're not super popular. They really require a whole 0:23:15.080 --> 0:23:20.360 different mindset. The idea that you have something, you use 0:23:20.400 --> 0:23:22.960 it once, and you throw it away. That's like a 0:23:23.000 --> 0:23:26.840 brand new idea. And there are certain kinds of disposable 0:23:26.880 --> 0:23:32.600 things like bottles, caps and razor blades that we don't 0:23:32.640 --> 0:23:37.120 think of. But starting in the eight nineties, bottle caps 0:23:37.280 --> 0:23:43.359 and razor blades, start to give people the idea that 0:23:43.480 --> 0:23:47.320 this one time used then toss it might be a 0:23:47.359 --> 0:23:51.480 good way to live your life. In a moment of 0:23:51.560 --> 0:23:56.959 changing attitudes around creation and disposal, everything got ratcheted up 0:23:57.400 --> 0:24:01.119 during more time. One of its is to remember about 0:24:01.119 --> 0:24:02.960 World War One is that the United States was not 0:24:03.119 --> 0:24:07.080 in it for very long. The Republic must awaken, the 0:24:07.200 --> 0:24:13.679 people must understand our safety lies in pull realization. The 0:24:13.800 --> 0:24:17.199 faith of the nations and the safety of the world 0:24:17.320 --> 0:24:20.919 will be decided on the western battlefront of Europe. The 0:24:20.960 --> 0:24:24.080 United States didn't get into it until nineteen seventeen, and 0:24:24.119 --> 0:24:28.720 the war was over in nineteen eighteen. They were instituting programs, 0:24:28.800 --> 0:24:31.440 but they never really got a chance to get that far. 0:24:32.880 --> 0:24:36.600 World War two they were full blown. Only men went 0:24:36.640 --> 0:24:41.640 to war, so there was a huge amount of propagandizing 0:24:42.119 --> 0:24:47.000 around various kinds of what we would call recycling drives 0:24:47.040 --> 0:24:50.160 that were called scrap drives at the time. I want 0:24:50.200 --> 0:24:54.280 to report about another great American army and rolling one 0:24:54.359 --> 0:24:59.119 in every four American the Army of organized education, boys 0:24:59.119 --> 0:25:02.880 and girls collect crap to build up our national stockpiles. 0:25:04.680 --> 0:25:10.160 There were school curricula that we're developed if this many 0:25:10.240 --> 0:25:13.680 pots and pans can make this many airplanes, then how 0:25:13.720 --> 0:25:17.400 many part you know that kind of word problem. They 0:25:17.720 --> 0:25:24.679 organized kids in their scout troops to collect materials, and 0:25:24.720 --> 0:25:29.040 they militarized the talking about it. Practically all of us 0:25:29.040 --> 0:25:33.840 have fats. Fats make ncroistans for shows. My father, who 0:25:33.880 --> 0:25:36.800 was a physicist, during World War Two he served as 0:25:36.840 --> 0:25:41.359 an army research facility. He said that he didn't really 0:25:41.440 --> 0:25:44.359 think that the kinds of explosives that the household fats 0:25:44.400 --> 0:25:49.320 could be used for actually were very common kinds of explosives, 0:25:49.359 --> 0:25:52.359 so he, even during the war, thought that that fat 0:25:52.400 --> 0:25:56.760 collection thing was mostly for propaganda purposes. More than a 0:25:56.800 --> 0:26:00.359 million people are crowded into Washington in wartime, say, with 0:26:00.400 --> 0:26:03.440 a peacetime population of half a million. The city was 0:26:03.520 --> 0:26:06.400 never planned to accommodate such a huge, ever growing army 0:26:06.400 --> 0:26:10.719 of workers. But Washington in wartime is people, people intent 0:26:10.840 --> 0:26:14.840 on contributing their personal effort, people seeking information and advice 0:26:15.119 --> 0:26:18.960 and sometimes papers others to see history in the making. 0:26:22.080 --> 0:26:25.520 It was a way of mobilizing the whole population to 0:26:25.640 --> 0:26:29.320 be behind the war effort as much as it was 0:26:29.440 --> 0:26:32.480 a way of collecting materials that could be used to 0:26:32.600 --> 0:26:37.480 advance the war effort. You couldn't buy a new washing 0:26:37.520 --> 0:26:41.680 machine or a new car during the war because the 0:26:41.720 --> 0:26:45.879 factories that produced washing machines and cars had been converted 0:26:45.920 --> 0:26:52.359 for war production. So people were experiencing these kinds of shortages. 0:26:52.440 --> 0:26:56.679 And this was after ten years of depression. So now 0:26:57.040 --> 0:27:00.359 people have money. They have money because they're working in 0:27:00.440 --> 0:27:04.240 the war factories. The economy is amped up, but there's 0:27:04.359 --> 0:27:07.879 not stuff to buy, and the propaganda is saying you 0:27:07.920 --> 0:27:10.960 should buy war bonds. The presidents now have the added 0:27:10.960 --> 0:27:13.600 burden of printing billions of dollars worth of war bonds 0:27:13.600 --> 0:27:16.560 and steps to pay for the planes, hips and guns 0:27:16.560 --> 0:27:20.040 that our defenders must have. Your husband's and your brothers 0:27:20.080 --> 0:27:23.640 and your uncle's are off there in Germany and Japan 0:27:23.760 --> 0:27:26.440 and doing their part, and you've got to do your part. 0:27:26.600 --> 0:27:30.840 And your part is to not buy stuff and give 0:27:30.960 --> 0:27:34.399 your medal to the government and not complain about it. 0:27:34.840 --> 0:27:38.920 Saving is as easy as squandering. You'll give us the scrap. 0:27:40.280 --> 0:27:43.000 We will turn it into tanks, we will turn it 0:27:43.040 --> 0:27:48.600 into plane we'll turn it into jeeps, we'll turn it 0:27:48.640 --> 0:27:52.280 into guns. Then our fighting men will have enough and 0:27:52.480 --> 0:28:10.480 on time. The American consumer economy brought with it a 0:28:10.520 --> 0:28:18.199 new buzzword, convenience. The twentie century promises life is going 0:28:18.240 --> 0:28:21.320 to be easy for everybody. When we think about it, 0:28:21.320 --> 0:28:25.560 it's really about the physical body. We shouldn't have to 0:28:25.680 --> 0:28:28.760 work very hard, we shouldn't have to use our muscles 0:28:28.880 --> 0:28:32.760 very much. We should live like the kings and queens 0:28:32.800 --> 0:28:37.440 of old. That's what convenience is about. We should be 0:28:37.520 --> 0:28:44.640 able to exchange money for this feature of goods that 0:28:45.120 --> 0:28:49.640 will make our lives easy. The products are going to 0:28:49.720 --> 0:28:53.640 make it that way, and disposable products are particularly going 0:28:53.720 --> 0:28:57.040 to make it that way. If something is disposable, you 0:28:57.120 --> 0:28:59.600 don't have to wash it, you don't have to clean it, 0:28:59.800 --> 0:29:02.840 you don't have to worry about it. You can toss 0:29:02.880 --> 0:29:06.200 it away. Where is a way? Nobody knows where a 0:29:06.240 --> 0:29:10.760 way is. A big part of this shift in thinking 0:29:11.440 --> 0:29:18.080 was demonstrated and how manufacturers began packaging their products. Manufacturers 0:29:18.120 --> 0:29:23.040 stop selling you a thing, and they start selling a 0:29:23.200 --> 0:29:28.520 new kind of product, which is that thing in its package. 0:29:29.240 --> 0:29:34.320 From their standpoint, the advantage of selling ivory soap in 0:29:34.400 --> 0:29:38.160 a wrapper is that you can write ivory on the 0:29:38.240 --> 0:29:41.240 outside of it, and then the consumer is going to 0:29:41.280 --> 0:29:45.040 go to the store and ask for Ivory soap, and 0:29:45.240 --> 0:29:48.480 the retailer has to get it from Procter and Gamble, 0:29:49.040 --> 0:29:52.800 especially when it comes to personal size. Ivory so white 0:29:53.400 --> 0:29:58.360 looks pure, even smell pure, my pleasure loving side a 0:29:58.600 --> 0:30:02.920 door did in the bath. So that's the reason why 0:30:02.960 --> 0:30:08.080 that new kind of product comes into being, because the 0:30:08.160 --> 0:30:11.120 product in a package can be branded, and the product 0:30:11.160 --> 0:30:16.720 outside of a package cannot be branded. Woven into these 0:30:16.760 --> 0:30:23.000 trends was the concept of fashion, fashion and material goods 0:30:23.640 --> 0:30:28.480 suggests that there's something beyond the way that the product 0:30:29.000 --> 0:30:32.840 does its job that you should be paying attention to. 0:30:35.160 --> 0:30:39.400 Luxury is a warm towel gently touching your skin, making 0:30:39.440 --> 0:30:45.160 you feel soft, special, even a little bit spoiled. There's 0:30:45.200 --> 0:30:49.520 a lot of introduction of things that used to be 0:30:49.560 --> 0:30:53.080 available in black or in white, and now they're available 0:30:53.120 --> 0:30:55.840 in color. No longer do you have to have just 0:30:55.960 --> 0:30:58.760 white towels. Now you can have towels and a whole 0:30:58.840 --> 0:31:01.760 lot of different colors. And it may be the fashion 0:31:01.880 --> 0:31:06.040 this year to have blue towels. So it becomes a 0:31:06.080 --> 0:31:10.520