with the crucial public issuesof the day" (p195). And so it usually went. Mind curing started up soon after the rise of consumerism throughliterature, mainly. It consisted of "common roots with both liberal andevangelical Protestantism and carried to an extreme many of the most liberaltendencies of in those faiths" (p 226). Such authors as L. Frank Baum andEleanor Porter supported and helped to spread the philosophy throughout thecountry and it held onto a number of poeple for quite a while. The last section of the book, Managing a Dream Culture, was a lot aboutthe accomplishment of stabilizing capitalism in the US. This is where the nittygritty of it all came out. The first chapter of it, was completely about how thebooming businesses were handled and who handled them. The loans andcredit businesses were also hot and so were problems with them. People werecheaply taking advantage of things like return policies (much like they do evennow), doing things like returning whole sets of furniture after using themsolely for a single wedding (p301). Another thing that came up again was the aesthetics of the marketingand of the stores themselves. Elegance was very popular and accessories werebig, especially around Christmas time. Christmas time in the big New Yorkdepartment stores was (and is still) a really big deal, it's actually one of the realreasons that there are toy departments at all. One of these chapters also wentthrough how the whole Santa at the mall thing came about, in the early 1900s. It was all about marketing and making money, and due to it the popularity ofChristmas and Santa sky rocketed. There wasn't any way of getting away fromthe holidays and there still isn't.The final chapter, tells a how lot about Herbert Hoover and what he didto guide the last parts of the transition. "Herbert Hoover was a major architectof change" (p352) and Leach found him as a good man when it came to pushingfor the consumption system. ...
