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The Rise of a “Mass Culture” in the 1920s
Mass Culture: A set of cultural values and ideas that arise from common exposure of a
population to the same cultural activities, communications media, music and art, etc. Mass
culture becomes possible only with modern communications and electronic media. A mass
culture is transmitted to individuals, rather than arising from people's daily interactions, and
therefore lacks the distinctive content of cultures rooted in community and region. Mass
culture tends to reproduce the liberal value of individualism and to foster a view of the
citizen as consumer.
Source: “Mass Culture,” Online Dictionary of the Social Sciences
“The J. Walter Thompson Company, the leading advertising agency in the country, devoted the
July 1, 1926 issue of its in-house newsletter to the “New National Market.” The newsletter
claimed that because of a rising standard of living, but more crucially because of the impact of
nationally circulated publications, syndicated news features, motion pictures, automobiles,
standardized merchandise, and most recently, the radio, “we are fast getting to be a nation
that lives to pattern everywhere.” With each year, the lines of demarcation between social
classes and between the city, the small town, and the farm had become less clear. For
advertisers, the homogenization of American society- both vertically across classes and
horizontally across regions- offered the opportunity for appealing to a truly mass market…
Mass culture and consumption, the ad men argued, were standardizing the way Americans
lived and cultivating them for future harvests.”
-Excerpt from Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal:
Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 (1990)
1. In your own words, explain what is meant by the term “mass culture.”
2. What factors encouraged the growth of a “mass culture” in the 1920s?
3. How did the creation of this mass culture help establish a connection between one’s
personal identity and consumption?