It's called the American Dream for a Reason

Analyzing working Americans in the 1950s from a top-down perspective, including how products were marketed, prevalent attitudes regarding home ownership, and hope for upward mobility, it is apparent that two distinct groups appear. These groups are the working class and the middle class. The former tends to prefer cash purchasing (due to a distrust/lack of knowledge of indebted financial planning), seeks sturdy yet modest housing and “decent” neighborhoods, and has little hope for upward mobility. Publications such as True Story enforce these attitudes, instilling pride in the blue collar class regarding their lot in life. The middle class comes across as more financially savvy, seeks a more glamorous lifestyle (even with respect to the home), and has dreams of lavish vacationing, even bigger consumption capacity, etc. Newman basically takes this approach, and therefore it’s easy to see why she comes to this conclusion.

However, from a bottom-up perspective, it is apparent that the so-called middle class and working class are quite similar in their behaviors, and therefore it is understandable that the U.S. Department of Labor declared in the early 1950s that the two had merged. Essentially, although the “working class” had divergent attitudes regarding consumption, home ownership, and plans for the future compared to the “middle class,” their behaviors led them down similar pathways. Working class families, despite their strong preference for cash transactions, often gave in to their desires for necessary appliances and took on financially taxing installment plans to acquire said appliances. This is shown in the Workingman’s Wife when it says, “Many working class housewives do not like time payments; they prefer cash purchases…This only summarizes the attitudes toward cash payments as opposed to installment planes. Their behavior can be summarized in quite a different way: in our study sample, on the day we interviewed them, about two-thirds of the working class respondents were in some kind of installment planned debt” (pg. 166).As well as this, they also sometimes spent frivolously despite their need for frugality (which was expressed strongly in almost everything they did). This excess spending was far more prevalent in the middle class lifestyle (because it was affordable), yet still existed in the working classes. (it is important to note, however, that this spending undermined many of the goals of the working class, whereas for the middle class, there wasn’t much effect).

The root of this argument is that the American Dream bound both “distinct” classes together in a common struggle for a better life, epitomized in home ownership and a well-stocked household. This is also shown in a study from the Workingman’s Wife when it says, “Those working class families who do not own their own homes look forward very much to being able to do so, and much of their consumer behavior is conditioned by the planning for that nicer, more permanent dwelling” (pg.164). They, as a working class wanted different things, but like the middle class, they were looking towards the future just the same. Although one subset of Americans took a more frugal outlook and had a dimmer attitude toward the future with respect to this dream, all working Americans (both colored collars) shared the same goal.