America's Recovery

• America's Recovery

  The USA’s recovery from Depression began in the 1930s due to government policy and America's involvement in World War 2.
• Recovery

  • The USA’s recovery from Depression began in the 1930s with President Roosevelt’s New Deal, a series of government policies intended to stimulate the crashed economy and create jobs for the unemployed.
• WW2

  • America’s involvement in World War 2 between 1941 and 1945 also created a massive economic stimulus, with over 17 million new jobs being created, and industrial productivity increasing by a staggering 96%.
• Role of women

  • One of the most important changes in American society in the war years was the massive increase of women in the workplace, as they helped make up the labour shortage caused by rapid industrial growth and the drafting of male workers to serve in the war.
• America’s Golden Era

  Death of a Salesman was first performed during a period of rising living standards and social and cultural change, such as the rise of consumerism, mass-marketing and suburbanisation.
• Period of prosperity

  • Death of a Salesman was first performed at the moment when the USA had achieved unprecedented economic success and was embarking on a sustained period of prosperity when living standards for the majority of American citizens would rise.
• The suburbs

  • With the beginning of the ‘baby boom’ and a rising, more prosperous population, more and more Americans moved out of the cities and into the suburbs, taking advantage of factors such as G.I. Bill benefits (a series of measures intended to help returning servicemen build new lives back home) and lower house-building costs due to new mass-production techniques.
• Consumerism

  • These years also saw the emergence of consumerism in the USA.
  • World War 2 had seen Americans hit by product shortages.
  • However, technological advances helped create a flood of new products available to ordinary Americans in the years after the war: cars, televisions, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners etc.
• Sales figures

  • 20 million refrigerators and over 21 million cars were sold in the USA between 1945 and 1949.
  • Both of these products play prominent roles in Death of a Salesman.
• Advertising and marketing

  • The explosion in consumer spending power led to a revolution in marketing techniques, leading to advertising becoming a billion-dollar industry.
  • Mass-marketing strategies (e.g. the use of television to develop brand awareness) began to make the world of the travelling salesman more and more old-fashioned and irrelevant.