Technology as Freedom

The New Deal and the Electrical Modernization of the American Home

Ronald C. Tobey

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9780520323735
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780520323742
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Social Sciences

Before 1930, the domestic market for electrical appliances was segmented, but New Deal policies and programs created a true mass market, reshaping the electrical and housing markets and guiding them toward mandated social goals. The New Deal identified electrical refrigeration as a key technology to reform domestic labor, raise family health, and build family assets. New Deal incentives led to nearly fifty percent of Title I National Housing Act loans being used to buy electric refrigerators in the 1930s. New Deal policies ultimately created the mass commodity culture of home-owning families that typified the conservative 1950s. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1996.

Many titles in the Voices Revived program are also newly available as ebooks, offered at a discounted price to support wider access to scholarly work.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Plates
• Illustrations
• Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Appendix
• Chapter 1 The Limits of Private Electrical Modernization, 1919-1929 The Perspective of Enterprise
• The Consumer’s Perspective
• Appliance Sales and Household
• Dwelling Fitness for Electrical
• Appendix
• Chapter 2 The Reform Tradition
• The Reformers’ Charge
• The Public Power Movement
• Enter, Franklin Roosevelt
• Chapter 3 Homes or Industry?
• “Ten thousand towns from Albany to San Diego”
• Homes Before Electrical
• Public Electricity for Homes
• Electricity for Industrialization
• Defining Quality of Life
• Appendix
• Chapter 4 The New Deal in Electrical Modernization Public Enframing
• The Housing Crisis Cometh
• Home Ownership for a “Settled Place of Abode”
• The New Deal in Housing
• The New Deal in Electrical Modernization
• TVA’s Lessons about Electrical Mass Consumerism
• Chapter 5 The New Deal Saves the Home, 1933-1949 Local Property in Crisis
• State-sponsored Consumerism in the Home
• The Electrical Standard for Housing
• Labor Housing
• Defense Housing
• Postwar Housing
• A Dry Storm
• Appendix
• Chapter 6 Political Paths to Electrical Modernization
• The Leap to Modernization
• The Radio Jump
• The Refrigerator Jump
• Wartime and Postwar Prosperity
• Strategies for Economic Security
• Conclusion
• Appendix
• Chapter 7 The Culmination of the New Deal in Electrical Modernization, 1945-1960 History’s Armillary Sphere
• The Storm Breaks
• The Culmination of the New Deal
• The Invisibility of the Revolution
• Notes
• Index