Ward on Benson, _Household Accounts: Working Class Family Economies in the Interwar United States_

[eh.net-review at eh.net]

Published by EH.NET (February 2008)

Susan Porter Benson, _Household Accounts: Working Class Family 
Economies in the Interwar United States_. Ithaca, NY: Cornell 
University Press, 2007. xiii + 233 pp. $45 (hardcover), IBSN: 
978-0-8014-3723-6.

Reviewed for EH.NET by Marianne Ward, Department of Economics, Loyola 
College of Maryland.


The late Susan Porter Benson has left us with a fascinating account 
of the consumption patterns of working class women and their families 
in the interwar United States. The findings are based on interviews 
of working class women by agents from the Women's Bureau of the U.S. 
Department of Labor in the 1920s and early 1930s and studies of 
families confronting unemployment in the late 1920s and 1930s.

The main themes of the book are laid out in the introductory chapter. 
Consumption patterns for working class families in the interwar 
period highlighted a constant battle against insecure and irregular 
incomes, lack of access to credit, and the use of non-market 
alternatives to secure consumption goods and services. In this 
environment, family relationships took center stage, and emerged as 
the source of both conflict and cooperation regarding the allocation 
of household resources. The struggle for survival that characterized 
daily life led Benson to characterize the emergence of mass 
consumption in the 1920s as a "class" phenomenon rather than a "mass" 
phenomenon (p. 12).

Chapter 1, titled "Living on the Margin," examines how working class 
husbands and wives navigated the marriage relationship in this 
uncertain environment. Economic survival dictated that traditional 
gender roles of the male breadwinner and female consumer and 
household manager were fluid, and adapted to individual 
circumstances. Often, the male figure emerged as an unreliable 
breadwinner due to low wages, irregular work, delinquency, or 
desertion. Wives therefore found themselves constrained in their 
management of the family budget. In addition to the need to 
supplement their husbands' incomes, wives often worked due to a 
desire to contribute to the family fund, as a source of discretionary 
income, and to provide support for non-resident relatives. In a 
similar manner, husbands assumed roles traditionally reserved for 
their wives by participating in housework and childcare.

Chapter 2, titled "Cooperative Conflict," deals with the role of 
working children. There were substantial gender differences in the 
nature of children's contribution to the family budget. While girls 
often turned over their entire salaries to the household, this 
occurred in fewer cases for boys. Moreover, girls' contributions were 
seen as a duty, while boys' sporadic contributions were tolerated 
without complaint. Over time, children began to keep more of their 
pay for themselves. This increased autonomy sometimes became a source 
of family contention, as did the increased use of installment credit 
by children.

Chapter 3, titled "The Mutuality of Shared Spaces," examines shared 
housing among working class families. Shared housing was described as 
an important survival strategy for working class families. This 
sharing occurred both for rental and ownership of homes, in single 
family and multifamily dwellings. The formation of these expanded 
households tended to hinge on connections between female kin, with 
cross-generational sharing more common (mothers/daughters or 
aunts/nieces) than sharing among members of the same generation. In 
many cases, homeowners charged co-habiting relatives below market 
rates for room and board, thereby helping to stretch family budgets. 
While shared housing undoubtedly help working class families cope 
with a variety of life cycle changes, it created discontent when 
there were unclear expectations regarding monetary and household 
contributions.

Chapter 4, titled "What Goes 'Round, Comes 'Round," deals with 
reciprocity, or the exchange of goods, services and labor among 
working class families. Reciprocal arrangements were common for 
housework, childcare, clothing, food and cash. A separate, but 
related issue regarding childcare was that of fostering children. As 
in the case of shared housing, reciprocal arrangements tended to 
hinge on the relationships among women. Children were also of 
paramount importance. The provision of food, clothing and other 
services for children was of special concern. In particular, there 
was less pressure for repayment when services were provided for 
children as compared to when they were provided for adults. These 
reciprocal arrangements were often the lifeline that kept working 
class families afloat when they faced setbacks or disaster. Yet not 
all families were able to benefit from these arrangements. Those best 
able to benefit from reciprocity had strong social networks, and, in 
the case of cash, a reputation for timely repayment.

Chapter 5, titled "The Family Economy in the Marketplace," deals with 
the ways in which market transactions enhanced the operation of 
working class households. Purchases of goods and services helped to 
create more time for female workforce participation. For example, the 
purchase of baked goods, ready-made clothing, varying levels of 
laundry services, and household appliances such as washing machines, 
irons and sewing machines could reduce the time women spent on 
household duties. Participation in the second hand market helped 
working class families obtain items that would otherwise be 
unaffordable, such as clothing, furniture and work tools. Credit was 
often used by these families to meet regular expenses, like food or 
rent, during periods of unemployment or difficulty. In general, 
however, the use of credit for additional purchases was viewed with 
fear and avoided.

The final chapter of the book, titled "Class, Gender and 
Reciprocity," presents David Montgomery's tribute to Susan Porter 
Benson and her contributions to our understanding of working women in 
the United States of the early twentieth century.

This book was enjoyable to read due to the detailed and often 
colorful accounts of the lives of individual women and their 
families. It is, however, a very different investigation of working 
class lives than found in the many cost of living studies that are 
based on working class budgets, or Peter Shergold's specific 
examination of the working classes in _Working-Class Life: The 
"American Standard" in Comparative Perspective, 1899-1913_ 
(University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982). Specifically, the book offers 
little in the way of aggregate statistics. When provided, they raise 
questions about the importance attached to specific characteristics 
of the working class lives under consideration. For example, the 
importance of shared housing is addressed in Chapter 3. Tables 1, 2 
and 3 in the notes to Chapter 3 suggest that shared housing was a 
reality for approximately 17 percent of the households surveyed. 
Economists will find this general absence of quantification 
frustrating.


Marianne Ward is Associate Professor in the Department of Economics 
at Loyola College in Maryland. She is currently working on 
reconciliations of international comparisons across time and space. 
She also continues work on a longer term project to produce 
international price and income benchmarks for a large group of 
countries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

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