ShmoopTube

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By the 1920s most American city folk had electric fans [Man teaching class]

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washing machines radios record players vacuum cleaners lamps yeah what if we

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just kept naming appliances how thrilling would that be okay well our

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goal is never bore you with our vast knowledge of appliances so why did [students sleeping on their desk]

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everybody suddenly have so much stuff well because mass production had made

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more stuff that we had that's kind of why they call it mass production like [Box opens and items fall on people]

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math lots of people's nothing to do with Catholicism well the key thing to focus

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on is all this good stuff suddenly got super cheap the intense efficiency

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requirements on the line made it profitable for factories to produce [Factory's pumping out cars]

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three times as much stuff before while selling it all for about half as much

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and still keep the same profits well the US of A was number one in the world at [USA with a trophy jumping up and down]

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lack to which the old champ Britain said well nobody heard what it said because

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they were busy chanting USA USA right well seriously it was a manufacturing

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explosion of epic proportions we made more stuff than we knew what to do with [Factory explodes]

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need evidence check out Amazon in 1910 back then it

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was called the Sears catalog we're sure somebody's grandma has one keeping a [Table with Sears catalog under a leg]

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table somewhere from wobbling well it's not just know that the catalog of the

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Sears Roebuck company was once a corny flippin copia of stuff it was a

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mail-order catalogue that allowed country folk to buy big-city goods they

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couldn't get otherwise remember back then there were a lot more [Horses in a field]

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farms here than there are today and there weren't a lot of big stores and

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stuff in it with no Amazon well on one page there might be 13 kinds of bathing

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suits each with a detailed description of what makes it unique and yeah 13

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kinds of swimsuit well even 30 years earlier soon was one kind of swimsuit

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for men and one kind for women and they were both kind of ugly and the MP brands

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enough ended Bennett yet not only are there a bunch of varieties but these [Woman in bathing suit appears on a beach]

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1910 swimsuits also have to have umbrellas shoes and parasols that come

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with that it was crazy well the Sears catalog was enormously

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huge and every year it updated its product offering killing trees by the [Catalog using chainsaw on a tree]

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thousands we're talking or thousands of pages with 13 items on

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each page somebody else has to do the math we're doing history a lot of stuff

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anyway electrification created new businesses even new industry suddenly

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there was a radio industry that included companies making radios somebody's

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making the parts to make radios radio stations the things that broadcast radio

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performers and you know radio news reporters suddenly Americans were

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sitting around listening to music at night and arguing about who made the

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best version of that new product they had never even dreamt of a year earlier [Girl arguing with boy and holding a radio]

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well the point is that mass manufacturing flooded the American

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market with things to buy and Americans were polite enough to respond by buying

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them so good job America yep manners are important [Boy holds arm aloft while being covered in appliances]

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