1949 History and Events

Since we are now working on our 1949 Chevy Styleline Coupe, we wondered what were some of the events that happened the year our car was made. I was not yet on this world at that time, so I did some research on the events of 1949. I tried to verify everything through several sources but make no promises as to the accuracy of the information presented here. If you find something wrong let us know and we will correct it.

The 1940's

The Forties were centered around World War II. War production pulled the United States out of the Great Depression. Unemployment almost disappeared, as most men were drafted and sent off to war.  Women were needed to replace the men who had gone to war. This need caused the first great exodus of women from the home to the workplace. The government reclassified 55% of the men’s jobs, allowing women and blacks to fill them. First, single women were actively recruited to the workforce. In 1943, with virtually all the single women employed, married women were allowed to work. Japanese immigrants and their descendants, suspected of loyalty to their homelands, were sent to internment camps. Rationing affected the food we ate, the clothes we wore, and the toys children played with.

There were scrap drives for steel, tin, paper and rubber. These were supplies needed for the war effort. Automobile production ceased in 1942. The rationing of food supplies began in 1943. Victory gardens were re-instituted and supplied 40% of the vegetables consumed on the home front. In April of 1945, FDR died. President Harry Truman celebrated V-E Day on May 8, 1945. Japan surrendered only after two atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The United States emerged from World War II as a world superpower, challenged only by the USSR. While the USSR subjugated the defeated countries, the US implemented the Marshall Plan, helping war-torn countries to rebuild and rejoin the world economy. Disputes over ideology and control led to the Cold War. Communism was treated as a contagious disease, and anyone who had contact with it was under suspicion. Alger Hiss, a former hero of the New Deal, was indicted as a traitor and the House Un-American Activities Committee began its infamous hearings.

Working mothers, combined with the refrigerator, led to the invention of frozen dinners. With the advent of television later in the decade, they became known as TV Dinners. Tupperware and aluminum foil eased the postwar housewives' burden. Diners, originally horse drawn carriages with a couple of barstools, became a stationary, respectable staple of the postwar culture. The Slinky was invented by a ship inspector in 1945. Teenagers became a recognized force in the forties. With fathers away and mothers at work, the juvenile delinquent appeared. With the men off to war, teenagers (boys and girls) found employment readily available. They had money to spend. Seventeen magazine was established in 1944. Advertisement began to be aimed at teens.

After the war a lot of things changed in America. The service men returned home, having seen the rest of the world. No longer was the family farm an ideal. Women had to give up their jobs to the returning men, but they had tasted independence. Returning GI's created the baby boom, which is still having repercussions on American society today. The GI Bill allowed more men than ever before to get a college education. The Servicemen's Readjustment Act, commonly known as the GI Bill of Rights, entitled returning soldiers to a college education. In 1949, three times as many college degrees were conferred as in 1940.  College became available to the capable rather than the privileged few. No longer would blacks accept lesser status.

The dream home remained a Cape Cod. After the war, suburbs, typified by Levittown, with their tract homes and uniformity, sprang up to house returning GI's and their new families. The average home was a one level Ranch House, a collection of previously unaffordable appliances surrounded by minimal living space. The family lawn became the crowning glory and symbol of pride in ownership.

When the war restrictions ended, Christian Dior introduced the New Look. Feminine dresses with long, full skirts, and tight waists. Comfortable, low-heeled shoes were forsaken for high heels. Hair was curled high on the head in front, and worn to the shoulders in the back, and make-up was socially acceptable. Glamorous Rita Hayworth made the sweater look popular.  It took time to put the New Look together, time the women now had as the men returned to their jobs in the factories and offices.

1949

In 1949 after many years of misery through the depression and World War II postwar prosperity is starting to get underway with companies now able to supply the cars, Televisions and the other goods demanded in a consumer society. The cars got bigger, the TV's got bigger, with some 6.2 million new cars sold in the US and nearly 10 million Televisions in American homes. A new type of TV program appeared called the Soap Opera. The name came from the fact that many soap manufacturers sponsored the shows to catch the stay at home mom with advertising. China became a communist country and Russia had the Nuclear Bomb which increased the tension between East and West.