The Confident Years, 1953-1964: What's Good For General Motors

The Confident Years, 1953-1964 Lecture/Reading Notes 1 (p. 324-330) I. A Decade of Affluence A. What’s Good for General Motors 1. New Republicanism Satisfied with postwar America, Eisenhower accepted much of the New Deal but saw _________________________________. Eisenhower’s first secretary of defense, “Engine Charlie” Wilson, had headed General Motors. At his Senate confirmation hearing, he proclaimed, “For years, I thought what ___________________________ was good for General Motors and vice versa.” 2. The impact of a booming economy Automobile production, on which _______________________________, neared 8 million vehicles per year in the mid-1950s; less than _________ of new car sales were imports. Average wages rose faster than consumer prices in __________________ ____________ between 1953 and 1964. Industrial cities offered members of _____________________ factory jobs at wages that could _______________________. However, there were never enough family-wage jobs for all of the African-American and Latino workers who continued to move to ____________ and _______________ cities. To cut costs and accelerate Native American assimilation, Congress pushed the _____________________________ between 1954 and 1962. Termination cut thousands of Indians adrift from the ________________ _________________. B. Reshaping Urban America 1. Urban Renewal
3. David Riesman Other critics targeted the alienating effects of __________________ and the ________________ of homogeneous suburbs. Sociologist David Riesman saw suburbia as the home of “other-directed” individuals who ___________________________. 4. The Housing Act of 1949Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique In 1963, Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique followed numerous articles in McCall’s, Redbook, and the Ladies’ Home Journal about the _________________________________ who were expected to find total satisfaction in