Paper Proposal for the 2020 Business History Conference
David Stebenne
Professor of History and Law
Ohio State University
I propose to present a paper entitled “Doing Business with the Middle Class, 1933-1968.” The paper grows out of my research on a new book about the rise of the American middle class during that time. While the book (which will be published in the spring of 2020) is a general history of that change and its consequences, my paper will focus more specifically on what that overall trend meant for business. As income and wealth distribution shifted, in the 1940's and '50's especially, in favor of those in the middle of the income distribution, the American business community faced a major challenge in adapting to that change. My paper will explore the factors that helped some businesses to succeed in that new environment and, conversely, why other businesses fared much less well in a more middle class era. Crucial in this was understanding the tastes and needs of middle class consumers in an era when they were highly influential. Those business leaders who understood those kinds of consumers tended to do best then, and much of the paper will explore how such business leaders came to have that kind of knowledge.
The paper will also comment on the challenges that businesses that had adapted most successfully to the rise of the middle class faced when that process began to stall in the later 1960's. Those firms suddenly found themselves facing the difficult problem of adapting to the start of a new, more polarized era in terms of income and wealth distribution and many of them proved unable to navigate that transition successfully.