Land of Desire

In Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture, cultural historian William Leach charts a pivotal period in the evolution of American consumer capitalism. Published in 1993, the National Book Foundation nominated it for the National Book Award for Nonfiction. Chronicling the years 1890 to 1932, this volume provides incisive economic, cultural, and social insights on how money transformed the very fabric of American society, resulting in an unparalleled shift in how we work, earn, spend, and save, and how it fueled a distinctly American style of optimism.

Land of Desire opens with a preface, in which Leach states the foundational premise of the book. In the years following the Civil War, money—and, by extension, democracy—shifted because of two major changes. First, land ownership grew increasingly concentrated, with fewer people owning greater amounts of property. At this same time, rural workers began migrating to larger cities, shifting the concentration of labor from farm work to urban settings. These two events were springboards for a new American mindset, one that centered squarely on money. It married the growing wealth and influence of the landowners with the newfound sense of self-reliance workers experienced. Within a very short time, money became a symbol of freedom itself, the gateway to power and self-sufficiency and, thus, a better life. Even religions adopted this new prosperity-gospel vantage point. No area of life went untouched by the effects of the dollar.

The first section of the book deals with the early years of the American commercial empire. Retail giants like Marshall Field, marketing pioneers like John Wanamaker, artists like Maxfield Parrish, and advertising gurus like Elbert Hubbard made the mundane extraordinary by elevating the act of shopping into an art form. The emergence of the department store embodied this new collective need to consume, providing an outlet for even the most discriminating tastes—and a willing receptacle for dollars of any denomination.



The second part of Land of Desire focuses on how this newfangled consumer culture joined forces with the "circuits of power" to become a capitalist juggernaut. Lofty universities like Harvard began offering classes in the art and science of marketing and advertising. Chambers of commerce sponsored events such as beauty pageants to publicize all the spending opportunities their respective cities offered. Even museums, once a bastion of artistic thought and creative free will, took cues from consumer culture in the design and layout of their spaces and in the presentation of their art. This is the period in history where consumerism took a firmer hold of religion as well. Instead of leaving life to some divine plan, more and more people started subscribing to the mind-cure way of thinking, in which the individual's thoughts control their destiny. This directly correlates to consumerism: Just as more money brings more power, better thoughts bring a better life. The popular cultural touchstones of the time reflect this optimism, too; look no further than books like Eleanor H. Parker's Pollyanna and L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz.

The final portion of the book is an account of how the consumerist transformation of these years established the modern capitalist reality of the nation. By the 1920s, the drive for wealth was one of the prime motivating factors for any American of any age, race, or social class. Moreover, what the public wanted, the public got. During this era, things we consider commonplace today were just starting to emerge: opportunities to open new lines of credit, the smoothly grinding wheels of public relations machines, and an entire system of governance squarely focused on the needs of businesses—all revolutionary ideas at the time.

Even the stock market crash of 1920 couldn't quell the eternal optimism and the money-filled dreams of the average American. In a nation of free will and free choice, where anyone can seemingly grow up to be whomever they want to be, the idea of money and spending ingrained themselves in the public consciousness just as deeply as the flag, the Constitution, and democracy itself. Young people didn't dream of someday growing up happy and healthy. They now grew up to want to be rich.



This emerging American construct was there to nurture them on that path. It told then what they wanted and where they could purchase it. For better or worse, this was the reality moving forward. America was the land of desire—desire springing eternal, never quelled, and always looking for its next manifestation. As one radio announcer of the time urged attendees of a business convention: "Sell them their dreams…Sell them what they longed for and hoped for and almost despaired of having…After all, people don’t buy things to have things. They buy things to work for them. They buy hope—hope of what your merchandise will do for them. Sell them this hope and you won’t have to worry about selling them goods."

Land of Desire includes notes on the text and a full index.