Kaufman, L. (1987). Essentials of advertising 2nd ed. Orlando: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. In "The Political Culture," Charles Calhoun argues one of the most important developments in the political culture of the late nineteenth century was the growing strength and importance of the office of president (Calhoun, 1996, p. 208). Calhoun argues a strong national executive emerged as a defining feature of the Progressive Era that followed the Gilded Age. Calhoun is concerned with analyzing the Gilded Age in relation to its effect on the period that followed. He maintains other ways the Gilded Age foreshadowed the Progressive Era were the inclusion of the increasing emphasis on government activism and the impulse toward reform. He concludes by discussing the Progressive Era rather than the Gilded Age, noting Progressivism represented the release of government activism from the restraining effect of the previous era's two decades (Calhoun, 1996, pp. 208-09). By 1920, advertising constituted the largest share of print media revenues and accounted for about two-thirds of all newspaper and magazine income. More important than the volume of advertising, however, was the fact that "the lead in advertising had passed to manufacturers of nationally distributed, brand-named goods" (Leiss et. al., 1986, p. 534). It was through the creation of a national consumer market that the advertising industry as we know it today was born and nurtured. In addition, the same circumstances that nurtured advertising also stimulated the development of personal selling--new products, new markets, and new forms of competition (Bartels, 1970, p. 32)--and the establishment of credit payment plans to service the burgeoning buyer's market (Bartels, 1976, p. 53). At the beginning of the nineteenth century, credit assumed a new role and new importance. Credit granting was increasing and had been for some years. Panics, crises, and business failures had characterized its history, as di |
