The Habit

Despite the clogging setbacks of the coal and steel strikes, and the mountainous burden of taxes, the U.S. was still an amazingly prosperous nation. The almost-forgotten recession of last spring had left only barely noticeable scars: personal savings were dropping a little and the old problem of unemployment, though lessening, seemed back for good. But even in comparison with the war years, the U.S. was doing fine.

Winter's first snow seemed to have muffled summer's uneasy fears and forebodings (see BUSINESS). When Christmas shopping began last week on the day after Thanksgiving, the U.S. public demonstrated dramatically that it was still a game gang with a pocketbook.

Chicago's Loop was clogged with honking automobiles and pushing shoppers; the Indianapolis street railway had to put every last car in service to handle the great crowds, and Seattle had one of the biggest downtown traffic jams in history.

The crowds were not clamoring to buy overpriced mink coats or $50 bottles of perfume. They shopped slowly and demanded their money's worth, but they were not afraid of expensive items so long as their money was going for quality and serviceability; in television sets, they largely ignored both the low-priced portables and super-priced sets with Chinese lacquer. Most stores expected a drop in dollar volume, but still anticipated a big and profitable Christmas rush.

Few people talked any longer of a threat of depression; the relatively minor damage done by the spring recession seemed to have reassured most of the doubters. The sight of smoking factory stacks and the feel of cash in the weekly pay envelope had been habit forming; rightly or wrongly, millions seemed to feel that there was such a thing as looking too hard for a worm in the apple.

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