¹ Brinkley, Alan, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995); Nelson Lichtenstein, “From Corporatism to Collective Bargaining: Organized Labor and the Eclipse of Social Democracy in the Postwar Era,” in The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930–1980, ed. Fraser, Steve and Gerstle, Gary (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989); Godfrey Hodgson, , America in Our Time (New York: Vintage Books, 1976); Wolfe, Alan, America's Impasse: The Rise and Fall of the Politics of Growth (New York: Pantheon Books, 1981); Griffith, Robert, “Forging America's Postwar Order: Domestic Politics and Political Economy in the Age of Truman,” in The Truman Presidency, ed. Lacey, Michael J. (Cambridge: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Cambridge University Press, 1989); Fones-Wolf, Elizabeth, Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945–1960 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994); Robert Collins, The Business Response to Keynes, 1929–1964 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981); Collins, Robert M., More: The Politics of Economic Growth in Postwar America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Lears, T.J.Jackson, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (New York: Basic, 1994); Cohen, Lizabeth, A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Knopf, Alfred A., 2003); Jacobs, Meg, Pocketbook Politics: Economic Citizenship in 20th-Century America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); and Bernstein, Michael A., A Perilous Progress: Economists and Public Purpose in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).Google Scholar

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⁴ Secondary school enrollment, which was about 45 percent in 1930 and 60 percent in 1945, rose to more than 90 percent by 1965. Similarly, kindergarten enrollment rose from 21 percent in 1950 to 70 percent in 1965. National Center for Education Statistics, 120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait (NCES Web site); and Barnett, W. Steven and Belfields, Clive R., “Early Childhood Development and Social Mobility” (unpublished paper, Brookings Institution, 2005).Google Scholar

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¹⁴ Lerner, Robert, Nagai, Althea K., and Rothman, Stanley, Molding the Good Citizen: The Politics of High School History Texts (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995), 107; and Moreau, Schoolbook Nation, 210ff.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Fitzgerald, , America Revised, 37; Moreau, , Schoolbook Nation, 230ff; and Rugg, Harold Ordway, A History of American Civilization: Economic and Social (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1930), 596, 606, 615–24. Rugg even offered the heretical observation that women were paid less than men for the same jobs.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Moreau, , Schoolbook Nation, 241, 243, 248; and Fitzgerald, , America Revised, 37.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Brinkley, Alan, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995); and Nelson Lichtenstein, “From Corporatism to Collective Bargaining: Organized Labor and the Eclipse of Social Democracy in the Postwar Era,” in The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930–1980, ed. Fraser, Steve and Gary Gerstle (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989).Google Scholar

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¹⁹ Fitzgerald, America Revised, 55–56.Google Scholar

²⁰ Ibid., 105, 109.Google Scholar

²¹ Casner, Mabel B. and Gabriel, Ralph H., The Story of American Democracy (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co. 1946), v, 301, 342, 577.Google Scholar

²² Harlow, Ralph Volney and Miller, Ruth Elizabeth, Story of America (New York: Henry Holt, 1947), v, 391–92, 664. Harlow and Miller largely avoid the New Deal and World War II, but note that other countries “all recovered from the Depression without a New Deal.”Google Scholar

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²⁷ Muzzey, David Saville, A History of Our Country: A Textbook for High School Students (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1945), 109, 313, 806, 897.Google Scholar

²⁸ Ibid., 137, 164, 320–21. While a hint of change can already be seen in 1950, when Muzzey proudly notes America's pre-eminent position in car and telephone ownership, it is only in the 1955 edition that he devotes a full four chapters to “How Our Reunited Country Increased in National Wealth and Power.”Google Scholar

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³⁰ Ibid., 507, 509, 467; 2, 7, 664; and Wilder, Howard B., Ludlum, Robert P., and Brown, Harriet McCune, This Is America's Story (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1963), 481, xi, 442, 535.Google Scholar

³¹ Bragdon, Henry W. and McCutchen, Samuel P., History of A Free People (New York: Macmillan, 1954), ix, 3, 672, 644. Interestingly for a high school text, Bragdon and McCutcheon commend the CED for helping to prevent a postwar depression.Google Scholar

³² Hartman, Gertrude, America: Land of Freedom (Boston: D.C. Heath, 1959), 577–78, 583. The only discordant notes in this tale of “continuing industrial progress” are the unspoken, but implicit fear that nuclear war, depression or other “natural disaster” (sic) could call a halt to this march of progress, and the surprising exhortation “to increase production and spread its benefits so that every family will share in the abundance which by our united efforts we are now able to produce.”Google Scholar

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³⁴ Moon, Glenn W., Cline, Don C., and MacGowan, John H., Story of Our Land and People (New York: Henry Holt, 1957), x, 399, 441, 472, 474, 599, 611.Google Scholar

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³⁸ Ibid., 543, 514.Google Scholar

³⁹ Todd, Lewis Paul and Curti, Merle, The Rise of the American Nation (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1966), 810, 556, 545, 815, 797.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Hicks, John D., Mowry, George E., and Burke, Robert E., A History of American Democracy, 3d ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1966), 788–89.Google Scholar

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⁴² Edwin Fenton/Carnegie-Mellon University Social Studies Curriculum Center, The Americans: A History of the United States (New York: American Heritage Publishing Co., 1970), 80–81, 461.Google Scholar

⁴³ Graff, Henry F., The Free and the Brave: The Story of the American People (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1967, 1972), 580–81, 674, 682, 686. Graff wrote cynically of American abundance, under the caption “Atrocities Against Man and Nature:” “The industrial might of the United States has produced oceans of food and goods. This might has enticed Americans into the accumulation of material things a high goal of life.”Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Senior Scholastic, February 1950 and Feb. 9, 1956.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ National Museum of American History, Ayer Collection, Series 3, Box 36.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ “America's Economic System,” Senior Scholastic, March 15, 1950. Sarnoff's forecast of e-mail by 2000 is uncanny. See also Paul Hoffman Papers, Box 118, Harry S. Truman Library Institute, Independence, MO.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ “Business, Labor, and the Citizen Good,” Senior Scholastic, April 11, 1951.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Senior Scholastic, “Our Economic Picture Today: Changing Face of America” (March 17, 1954); “Economic Records Broken” (October 27, 1955); “1956: Another Boom Year?” (Feb. 9,1956); “U.S. Boom Keeps Rolling” (Feb. 8,1957); “Are We Having Too Much Prosperity?” (March 8, 1957); and “U.S. Charts Its Course for '62” (Feb. 7, 1962).Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Senior Scholastic, “America: The Middle Way” (Dec. 8, 1955); “Democratic Capitalism” (April 19, 1956); and “Watchdogs on Wall Street” (Nov. 7, 1958), which concluded that “the owners of the world's richest nation are the people of the world's richest nation.”Google Scholar

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⁵¹ The National Association of Manufacturers presented “Industry on Parade” each week on NBC-TV from 1950 to 1960, and “The American Economy,” produced by the CED, the Joint Council on Economic Education, and the American Economic Association, aired on CBS from 1962–64 (see pp. 33–34, below).Google Scholar

⁵² Moore, Colleen Ann, “The National Association of Manufacturers: The Voice of Industry and the Free Enterprise Campaign in the Schools, 1929–1949” (dissertation, University of Akron, 1985), 376, 379, 715, 716, 731–32. The NAM, at the peak of its influence during the Truman Administration, even sought to educate Americans about their economy's beneficence through the pulpit, briefly sending a monthly magazine called Understanding to tens of thousands of clergy.Google Scholar

⁵³ Hill, Richard Nelson, “The Joint Council on Economic Education: A Program For Curriculum Change” (dissertation, Duke University, 1980), 8; and Haig Babian, “Economic Literacy in a Free Society,” Challenge, March 1964.Google Scholar

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⁵⁶ Hoffman, , the president of Studebaker, was enormously influential in shaping postwar beliefs about the United States and its economy. A driving force behind the CED, Hoffman was a key leader of the Advertising Council, later president of the Ford Foundation, and the domestic administrator of the Marshall Plan. Benton was co-founder of the prominent advertising agency, Benton & Bowles, but also was a vice president of the University of Chicago, a Truman Administration appointee, publisher of the Encyclopedia Britannica, a delegate to several United Nations agencies, and a Democratic Senator from Connecticut from 1949 to 1953. Ruml, an economist, was a dean at the University of Chicago, an executive at Macy's, and a New Deal adviser who proposed income-tax withholding. James T. Howard, “Improving Economic Understanding in the Public Schools” (CED, 1950), 17.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Schriftgiesser, Karl, Business Comes of Age: The Story of the Committee for Economic Development and its Impact upon the Economic Policies of the United States, 1942–1960 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960), 27.Google Scholar

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⁵⁹ JCEE economist Lawrence Senesh described the four goals of economic education as promoting “growth, stability, security, and freedom.” Quoted in Bienvenu, Harold J., “Economic Education: Problems and Progress,” Elementary School Journal 59, no. 2 (November 1958), pp. 102. The JCEE's associate director, Edward J. Allen, said as much, asserting that economic understanding is essential to preserve freedom in our “most titanic struggle.” Edward J. Allen, “Program of the JCEE,” Journal of Higher Education 30, no. 2 (February 1959), pp. 94–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶⁰ CED, “Improving Economic Understanding in the Public Schools” (1950), 8.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Senesh, Lawrence, quoted in Joint Economic Committee, subcommittee on economic progress. “Economic Education,” vol. II: “Related Materials” (1967).Google Scholar

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⁶³ Hill, , “The Joint Council on Economic Education: A Program for Curriculum Change,” 111.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Ibid., 62, 107, 115–16; and Stowell Symmes Interview, October 2, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶⁵ Frankel led the organization well into the 1970s.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Joint Council on Economic Education, “Bibliography of Free and Inexpensive Materials for Economic Education” (1955). Some other titles included the Ad Council's “An Examination of the American Economic System,” the Chamber's “Free Markets and Free Men,” the NAM's “Industry's Goal: Building a Better America,” and materials by the Conference Board, the American Institute of Management, the CED, the American Bankers Association, Chase Manhattan, Standard Oil of New Jersey, US Steel, Ford, and Chrysler (“Modern Industry and Human Values”). Reprints of New York Times, Fortune, Saturday Review, Life (“U.S. Growth: Our Biggest Year”), and Business Week (“25 Years that Remade America”) were also included in the JCEE's bibliography.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Carskadon, Thomas R. and Modley, Rudolf, U.S.A. Measure of a Nation: A Graphic Presentation of America's Needs and Resources (New York: Twentieth Century Fund/The Macmillan Company, 1949), foreword, 1, 97, 98. Only incidentally, at the end, does the book suggest that we not “overlook in our national exuberance” other values such as relationships, art, and spiritual ideals.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Carskadon, Thomas R. and Soule, George, U.S.A. in New Dimensions: The Measure and Promise of America's Resources (New York: Twentieth Century Fund/The Macmillan Company, 1957), 120–24. This 124-page, illustrated booklet included the Fund's oft-repeated line: “Of all the great industrial nations, the one that clings most tenaciously to private capitalism has come closest to the socialist goal of providing abundance for all in a classless society.”Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Twentieth Century Fund and Encyclopedia Britannica Films, “Productivity: Key to Plenty” (Chicago, 1951).Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Kazanjian, , of the Peter Paul Mounds candy fortune, was a particularly active supporter of economic education.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Joint Council on Economic Education, “Bibliography of Free and Inexpensive Materials for Economic Education” (1957).Google Scholar

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⁷³ Moore, Colleen Ann, “The National Association of Manufacturers: The Voice of Industry and the Free Enterprise Campaign in the Schools, 1929–1949” (dissertation, University of Akron, 1985), 659.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Museum, Hagley and Library, Wilmington, DE: National Association of Manufacturers Records, 1917–70, Accession 1411, Series 6, Box 219; and CED, “Study Materials for Economic Education in the Schools” (October 1961); and Hagley, Joint Council on Economic Education Papers.Google Scholar

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⁸¹ Ibid., 21. Bower, Marvin, managing director of McKinsey, echoed this message.Google Scholar

⁸² CED, “Economic Education in the Schools” (National Task Force on Economic Education, September 1961), 7, 9, 15, 22, 43, 64–78. Task force members included Paul Samuelson, the JCEE's M. L. Frankel, and longtime economic education advocate and Stanford economist G. L. Bach.Google Scholar

⁸³ Schriftgiesser, Karl, Business and Public Policy: The Role of the Committee for Economic Development, 1942–1967 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1967), 209–10.Google Scholar

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⁸⁸ Interview with Schug, Mark, February 7,2005. Walstad estimated that 29 percent of high school students were taking economics by 1987; Walstad, “Economic Instruction in the High Schools.”Google Scholar

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⁹¹ See Senior Scholastic, “Special Issue: The American Economy 1962—From Main Street to Wall Street,” April 18, 1962.Google Scholar