The Organization Man

  The job, then, is not to keep up with the Joneses. It’s to keep down with them.* Even those sophisticated enough to talk, albeit a trifle nervously, about “other-directed” consumption of their group see a valid reason for it. When they see a neighbor vaunting worldly goods, they can see this is an offense—not to them individually, mind you, but to the community. When people comment unfavorably about conspicuous display, they usually stress that they themselves see nothing wrong with it, but that other people might; and the purchase, therefore, was ill advised.

  The group has always conditioned purchases, of course, and the women who gathered over the clothesline thirty years ago could form as influential a group as any Kaffeeklatsch session of today. But there is an important difference. It is the matter of choice. In previous times the group had less effect on what a person bought because there wasn’t as much of a choice to make. Today, with more people with the money to buy more things, consumers have a bewildering multiplicity of choices to make. In making them, furthermore, they have less and less tradition to lean on.

  And the very similarities of suburbia are pitfalls. When everyone lives in an identical house, the most important item of their estate is washed out as a factor, and the marginal purchases become the key ones. How to choose, then? Would an automatic dishwasher be right at this stage of the game—or would it seem like putting on the dog? On this knotty problem of whether an item is a luxury or a necessity, aggregate national statistics are no guide. Some purchases, such as a car, can be accurately described as a necessity; others, such as a swimming pool, a luxury. But in between these two categories is a great shadow area in which national averages can be illusory. Even in a single neighborhood, what in one block would be an item eminently acceptable might in another be regarded as flagrant showing-off.

  It is the group that determines when a luxury becomes a necessity. This takes place when there comes together a sort of critical mass. In the early stages, when only a few of the housewives in a block have, say, an automatic dryer, the word-of-mouth praise of its indispensability is restricted. But then, as time goes on and the adjacent housewives follow suit, in a mounting ratio others are exposed to more and more talk about its benefits. Soon the nonpossession of the item becomes an almost unsocial act—an unspoken aspersion of the others’ judgment or taste. At this point only the most resolute individualists can hold out, for just as the group punishes its members for buying prematurely, so it punishes them for not buying.

  Item by item, the process is constantly repeated, and the norm never stays still. As soon as a certain range of items becomes standard in the neighborhood group, its members grow restive for a new necessity. What it will be is only part determined by national trends; even when neighborhoods are identical in age and income levels, they can vary a lot in the luxuries that are being turned into necessities. Home freezers, for example; like air conditioners, they are not distributed uniformly, and in some blocks there may be a 60 per cent “saturation” while in the very next one no more than one or two. Similarly, in some blocks hi-fi sets are considered an affectation; in others, only a stone’s throw away, they are almost mandatory.

  In this process, merchandisers have been comparatively passive. In the check I made of air-conditioner ownership in Philadelphia, I found only two cases where the original suggestion to buy had been made by a salesman; in almost all cases the initiative in the purchase had been taken by the consumer himself. To a surprising degree, retailers—and most manufacturers, for that matter—fail to appreciate the power of these word-of-mouth networks. Few use “outside” salesmen to speed up the process, and those who do tend to have the salesmen scatter their calls over a wide area rather than work on natural neighborhood groupings.*

  For which fact, I make haste to add, the susceptible can be thankful. With mingled admiration and horror, I heard a door-to-door selling expert explain how a smart merchandiser could exploit the group contagion. First, he said, he’d make a special effort, even if it involved a slight loss, to place air conditioners in the key homes in a neighborhood. Then, after the rest had succumbed, he’d leave them alone for a while. Just about the time they would be feeling guilty that there wasn’t a conditioner in the children’s room, he would return to trigger the next round of purchases. “All you do now,” he said, “is pull the trap. Here’s the way I would do it. I’d go in to ‘check’ the first conditioner, and while I was about it I’d mention to the couple that my wife and I had just bought a second conditioner for the little ones. I’d pause and let that hang in the air for a while. Then, very quietly, I’d say, ‘You know, Mr. and Mrs. Jones, now my wife and I really sleep nights.’ ”

  The good-life standard is being revised upward so rapidly that planners of suburban shopping centers have had a hard time keeping up with it. If one has to err, their experience suggests, it is safer to overestimate than underestimate—even to aim at the center is to be unsynchronized with the suburban rhythm. At what they fancy are slights to their taste level suburban housewives are quick to take injury. When it was announced at Park Forest that the new department store would be a branch of a people’s department store, there was a good bit of who-do-they-think-we-are-anyway muttering on the part of housewives. They wanted Marshall Field. Eventually, Marshall Field did install a store there. To some shoppers it looks almost forbiddingly stylish, but not to most; sales have been good, and on some lines—higher-priced men’s suits, expensive dresses, and moderately expensive home furnishings—beyond expectations. (Hosiery, lingerie, and cosmetics sales were surprisingly poor.)

  The pattern has been similar at Levittown, Pennsylvania. For several years the principal stores were chain stores featuring an economy-priced line. Newcomers to the community were well satisfied; those who had been there long enough to pass through the necessity phase, however, were not. Convenient, some said, but, frankly, a little tacky. When the Allied Stores Corporation decided to put in a department store, it correctly saw that the matter of its “character” was all important. In its preliminary survey in early 1954, it found a strong demand for higher-priced brand lines and better “taste.” In furniture, for example, 25 per cent of Levittowners had mixed-style furniture—i.e., otherwise indescribable—but only about 2 per cent said they would buy this kind again; 67 per cent wanted modern. When Allied put in the store, Pomeroy’s, it found that the people bought just the way they said they would—upward.

  The word “rhythm” is justified, for, increasingly, this upgrading trend seems to be following a regular, cyclical pattern. In early 1954, Levittown, Pennsylvania, had been settled for only two years, yet despite this small time span it was found that small differences in the age of a neighborhood made for considerable differences in average income. In the area settled between a year and one half and two years, Allied Stores found, 24 per cent of the families had incomes over $7,000; in areas settled a year to a year and a half, 19 per cent; areas settled a half to one year, 13 per cent; areas settled up to six months, 7 per cent.

  These differences in average income may seem small, but they are translated into palpable differences in what has come to be called “life style.” Even the degree of wives’ slenderness; as incomes rise, waistlines go down. In their Levittown survey, Allied Stores found that in the area settled long enough for income to have risen to between $5,000 and $7,000, 59 per cent of the women wore the small “misses” sizes; by contrast, in the newer, $3,000 to $4,000 area the sizes were larger—only 42 per cent wore the small sizes and 7 per cent wore the large 38-44 sizes (versus only 3 per cent of the wives of the $5,000 to $7,000 area).

  In this upward course there is physical movement as well. Because small differences are magnified in suburbia, people can upgrade themselves in one location just so long; after they reach a certain income level, there is a strong pressure on them to move, for they cannot otherwise live up to their incomes without flouting the sensibilities of the others. This is true everywhere, of course, but in suburbia so many people regularly find t
hemselves in this position that periodic house changing is becoming an increasingly accepted phenomenon. Not only do people move out and on, but, in a sort of musical-chairs cycle, there is a growing amount of movement within the communities.

  Developers did not plan it this way. When Park Forest was first put up, the developers thought of sticking pretty much to the basic $13,000 house; but they were nothing if not pragmatists. More or less as an experiment, they put in several blocks of houses at $17,000. When these were snapped up almost immediately, the developers started putting in more blocks, and before long they were putting up some $19,000 houses.

  Half in jest, but only half, they are now talking about the possibility of the “life cycle” community. It would work like this: At age twenty-six, a junior-executive trainee, his wife, and baby join the cycle by moving into a two-bedroom court apartment. This is ideal for quite a while, but at the end of three years his income is up to $6,800, they are getting fed up with the court, and the third baby is on the way. As another junior-executive couple takes over their apartment, they move into a three-bedroom, $13,000 house in the homes-for-sale area.

  For five years this is fine too, but as the husband’s salary has gone up, so has that of his successful friends, and one by one they have been moving into the $18,000 area. At age thirty-five, the husband sells the ranch house and moves into a $19,000 split level. Fifteen years later, when the children have married and moved away, they sell the house and move back into a two-bedroom apartment in one of the old courts. The kids playing in the court make good proxies for their missing grandchildren, and the gang is delighted to have them around to baby-sit for them. The cycle draws to a close.

  Too many people are transferred—or begin making too much money—to stay within the cycle, but the basic idea is not so farfetched as it sounds. It is now plain that the best customers for the $13,000 houses are people who moved into Park Forest as renters; the best customers for the $19,000 houses have been either ex-renters or people who had $13,000 homes. Meanwhile, the declining demand for two-bedroom houses by young couples has been offset by a potential market originally not considered. With some signs of success, the developers are beginning to merchandise these to older people without children, (A SECOND HONEYMOON! the ads promise.)

  Somewhat the same kind of movement has been taking place in Levittown. Of 17,600 dwellings, roughly 3,000 change hands annually, and a good part of this turnover is caused by residents trading in old houses as their rising income enables them to move to somewhat more expensive ones in the same community. After about five years a man with one of the early Cape Cod Levittown houses (original price: $8,000) finds that he can get up to $10,000 for it, and he transfers his equity to the purchase of a later, ranch-type model. This will cost him as high as $18,000, depending on the location and the improvements that the owner has added.*

  The optimism that powers this upgrading movement is tremendous. In any period, of course, it is characteristic that couples are most consumption-minded—and sanguine—during the time they are raising their children and accumulating their basic possessions, and as they grow older, their aspirations tend to level out. But there is a real generational difference as well. Even people in their late thirties feel a fundamental difference between their outlook and that of the younger neighbors, and they speak with awe of the liberal spending habits about them. “When we were that age we wouldn’t have dreamed of getting so much in debt,” goes a typical observation. “Even now, when we have more than they do, we put off getting things like dishwashers.” The memory of the depression is still so vivid that they cannot be sure the cornucopia will remain open; and their outlook was shaped in that distant period when Social Security, hospital insurance plans, and other such cushions were not a part of life.

  For the younger couples, however, there has been an almost unbroken momentum; they came to adolescence at a time of rising hope, and throughout their early adult years they have known nothing but constantly increasing prosperity, personal as well as general. Suburbia has further confirmed them in their optimism. Here they are surrounded by others like themselves—too young to have failed. Disillusionment and diminishing raises are yet to come, and there are few about them whose example would temper their aspirations. No crazy drunkards, no embittered spinsters—there is rarely even death in the new suburbia—and though there are some whose hopes are already blighted, it is without the cruel finality that one can see elsewhere.

  Depression? They don’t even think about it. If they are pressed into giving an opinion on the matter, their explanations would suggest that America has at last found something very close to the secret of perpetual motion. And the gears, they believe, can no longer be reversed. “They can’t dispossess everybody,” goes a frequent observation, and equally frequent is the even more optimistic thought that the government not only wants to keep prosperity from slipping even slightly, but that it knows exactly how to do it. “The depression would be a political issue,” explains a twenty-six-year-old junior executive. “The government would certainly see to it that a depression would not take place.” In the unlikely event one did take place, some add, it wouldn’t hurt them personally. Whatever their occupation, almost all organization people feel their particular job is depression-proof. (“People always need electricity”; “The food business couldn’t go down much,” etc.) Furthermore, it would all be relative. “If my salary goes down,” as one puts it, “prices would be going down too, so in the end I would be just about as well off as I was before.”

  But all this is highly academic. Not only do the younger people accept the beneficent society as normal; they accept improvement, considerable and constant, as normal too. In a continually expanding economy, they reason, future prosperity will retroactively pay for today, and there is, accordingly, no good sense to self-denial. They have a point. The great expectations have a certain self-enforcing quality, and in an instinctive kind of way suburbanites sense this—at times, after hearing one after the other refer to that same boat they’re all in, one gets the feeling that they have ganged together in a great collective blackmail operation.

  Suburbanites have a wonderful capacity for interpreting demands for more of the good life as the expression of idealism. Back in 1953, to cite one instance, Park Foresters demanded that a special $60,000 multi-purpose room be added to a new school then a-building. Klutznick said no; eventually the town was going to have to take over the financial burden and it was questionable whether they would have the tax base to pay for the regular classrooms, let alone the extra facilities. I asked the young head of the school board about this. With great heat, he declared that it was a matter of principle. “Our children deserve the best,” he said, and since a multi-purpose room was part of modern education, that should be that. I asked him about Klutznick’s argument. He shook his head sadly; he didn’t know where the money would come from either. “But,” he repeated, “our children deserve the best.” To ask why, of course, would be unpardonable in suburbia.

  They save little. the average bank savings deposit throughout the country—$1,342—sounds reassuring, but the average is illusory. Examine the individual accounts that make up this average, and it becomes evident that older people contribute to the aggregate out of all proportion to their numbers. Significantly, in both Park Forest and Levittown, Pennsylvania, where there are few older people to swell the figures, the banks report the average deposit is $300.

  Most young couples carry life insurance, but the actual cash value of their policies is very little. A considerable number make modest accumulations of E Bonds through pay-roll savings plans, and here and there the venturesome few buy stocks. But that’s about it. A check of budgets of a cross section of younger-marrieds in the $5,000-to-$7,500 bracket indicates that the median equity in savings deposits, bonds, and stocks is about $700 to $800. The median amount of loan money outstanding: $1,000.

  The exceptions to the rule are revealing. Among younger people, bankers report, there is one
kind of couple that in matters of money remains conspicuously faithful to the Protestant Ethic of eighteenth-century America. They are the first-generation children of foreign-born parents.

  For the middle-class majority, however, saving is no longer a virtue in itself. What the average young couple does save is not put aside in the old rainy-day sense; it is, rather, accumulated for some anticipated expense—e.g., the next baby or a down payment on the next house. So much, they explain, is being saved for them. It’s not government Social Security they talk about so much; middle-class people become uncomfortable dwelling on the benefits of welfare statism; and, anyway, they point out, the retirement payments won’t amount to so very much. What they refer to freely are the compulsory savings bestowed by the organization they work for. Thanks to annuity plans, profit-sharing funds, and the like, they argue, the future is already in good part prepaid. To save heavily on one’s own initiative would be redundant. It would also, according to another rationalization, be bad economics. “Why should I save today’s dollars to spend tomorrow,” asks one young husband, “when they will be worth less than they are now?”

  For short-term emergencies the young suburbanites expect to take shelter under personal loans. They use loans for planned purchases too, but the primary reason they take out personal loans is for debt consolidation and for emergency medical expenditures. Significantly, medical loans are rarely taken out to cover obstetricians’ bills; these, being a highly anticipated expense, are generally taken care of by savings.