The Making of the American Creative Class

During most of the twentieth century, the production of America’s consumer culture was centralized in New York to an extent unparalleled in the history of the modern United States. Within a few square miles were the headquarters of broadcast networks like NBC and CBS, the editorial offices of book and magazine publishers, major newspapers, and advertising and design agencies. Every day tens of thousands of writers, editors, artists, performers, technicians, secretaries, and other white-collar workers made advertisements, produced media content, and enhanced the appearance of goods in order to boost sales. While this center of creativity has often been portrayed as a smoothly running machine, within these offices many white-collar workers challenged the managers and executives who directed their labor. This book examines these workers and New York’s culture industries throughout the twentieth century. As manufacturers and retailers competed to attract consumers’ attention, their advertising expenditures financed the growth of enterprises engaged in the production of culture. With the shock of the Great Depression, employees in these firms organized unions to improve their working conditions; launched alternative media and cultural endeavors supported by public, labor, or cooperative patronage; and fought in other ways to expand their creative autonomy. As blacklisting and attacks on unions undermined these efforts after the Second World War, workers in advertising, design, publishing, and broadcasting found themselves constrained in their ability to respond to economic dislocations and to combat discrimination on the basis of gender and race in these fields of cultural production.