单选题
The 1920s was the decade of advertising. The advertising men went wild: everything from salt to household coal was being nationally advertised. Of course, ads had been around for a long time. But something new was happening, in terms of both scale and strategy. For the first time, business began to use advertising as a psychological weapon against consumers. Without their product, the consumer would be left unmarried, fall victim to a terrible disease, or be passed over for a promotion. N/Is developed an association between the product and one's very identity. Eventually they came to promise everything and anything-from self-esteem to status, friendship, and love. This psychological approach was a response to the economic dilemma business faced. Americans in the middle classes and above (to whom virtually all advertising was targeted) were no longer buying to satisfy basic needs-such as food, clothing and shelter. These had been met. Advertisers had to persuade consumers to acquire things they most certainly did not need. In other words, production would have to "create the wants it sought to satisfy". This is exactly what manufacturers tried to do. The normally conservative telephone company attempted to transform the plain telephone into a luxury, urging families to buy "all the telephones that they can conveniently use, rather than the smallest amount they can get along with" . One ad campaign targeted fifteen phones as the style for a wealthy home. Business clearly understood the nature of the problem. According to one historian: "Business had learned as never before the importance of the final consumer. Unless he or she could be persuaded to buy, and buy extravagantly, the whole stream of new cars, cigarettes, women's make-up, and electric refrigerators would be dammed up at its outlets." But would the consumer be equal to her/his task as the foundation of private enterprise? A top executive of one American car manufacturer stated the matter bluntly: business needs to create a dissatisfied consumer; its mission is "the organized creation of dissatisfaction". This executive led the way by introducing annual model changes for his company's cars, designed to make the consumer unhappy with what he or she already had. Other companies followed his lead. Economic success now depended on the promotion of qualities like waste and self-indulgence. The campaign to create new and unlimited wants did not go unchallenged. Trade unions and those working for social reform understood the long-term consequences of materialism for most Americans: it would keep them locked in capitalism's trap. The consumption of luxuries required long hours at work. Business was explicit in its resistance to increases in free time, preferring consumption as the alternative to taking economic progress in the form of leisure. In effect, business offered up the cycle of work-and-spend.