The Fall and Rise of U.S. Frugality

By Frank Trippett

Deep in his recent State of the Union speech, which was mostly devoted to world affairs, the President inserted a two-word sentence of great domestic import: "Eliminate waste." It is likely that a good many Americans reacted to this presidential plea for conservation, as they would to any other, with a silent question: Who--me? Such bewilderment is understandable. The truth is that during the nation's rush to mid-century prosperity the notion of individual frugality practically went out of business. "Prodigality is the spirit of the era," Social Critic Vance Packard declared in The Waste Makers 20 years ago. There has been no reason since to change that judgment. "Waste not, want not" has persisted only as a saying, and most people have fallen out of the habit of taking it personally.

The good news is that thanks to the bad news of the energy crisis and sky-high prices, the prevalent habit of mindless waste may be in the early stages of a reversal. At least some Americans are beginning to pay attention to small savings that were regarded as inconsequential only yesterday. A new scrimpy spirit is most noticeable in direct efforts to conserve gas and other fuels, but it is also emerging in the other routine logistics of daily living.

People are leaning more and more to high-mileage cars. Drivers of all types of autos have begun catching on to the knack of cutting off the engine during long waits. Quite a few Americans have taken to walking or biking on shorter trips, and not just for the exercise. Householders have conspicuously started applying common sense as well as insulation to cut down on heat waste. Why not, it might be asked, with heating oil prices almost coercive?

Still, a mix of motives--the atmosphere of crisis as well as financial reasons--underlies the new spirit. More people are scheduling meatless meals. Some are raising vegetables for reasons other than taste. Solid citizens have taken to buying used clothing, and garage and tag sales are chic in many neighborhoods. Families are also turning to secondhand markets for things like bikes and lawnmowers. The oldtime comforter is replacing the electric blanket in some bedrooms. In certain areas people are taking more shoes to shops for repair; in others, the business of mending goods like handbags, belts and golf bags is up.

The do-it-yourself trend in carpentry, plumbing, electrical work and auto repair is winning ever more converts. People seem increasingly willing to channel the refuse of daily existence--cans, bottles, newspapers--into recycling systems. Some restaurants report more calls for doggie bags for taking home leftovers. A few garbage collectors complain about a decrease in good recyclable items in the trash. Observers report an increase in the number of otherwise genteel people scouting curbside junk heaps for usable stuff such as carpets and furniture. Many people, it is said, are even learning to turn out lights when they are not in use.

Such signs of thrift and prudence have been popping up all over the country, but they have been closely monitored in California. There, in surveys and follow-ups, Stanford University Researchers Dorothy Leonard-Barton and Everett M. Rogers have been trying to get a fix on how Americans are voluntarily adjusting to the prospect of dwindling resources and limited buying power. Concludes Rogers: "It is possible that while our Federal Government talks a lot about conservation, we are seeing people voluntarily doing a great deal of frugal living. It's possible that these people represent a prototype for many Americans for tomorrow."

What is certain is that the people turning frugal today are returning to a prototype that was quite typical in the U.S. not so long ago. Indeed, most Americans once practiced frugality as though it were instinctive, or even religious. It may be well to recall those days for more than nostalgic reasons: they also offer proof that the country has a capability that it could need again if times get truly hard. Moreover, the old ways may even come as an amazement to younger Americans who grew up during the virtually invulnerable affluence that followed World War II.

Before that war, although the word recycling was seldom if ever heard, Americans individually recycled food, clothing and other civilized artifacts so assiduously that what was left could truly be called garbage and trash. Perishables and manufactured stuff alike were subjected to use, reuse and then, by transformation and mending, to yet more use. Food especially got treated as though there would never be quite enough. One day's chicken became next day's hash, and yesterday's leftover vegetable wound up with the bones and gristle in soups and stews. Stale bread got crushed into cooking crumbs, and egg shells were often used to settle the grounds in boiled coffee.

"Waste not" was more than a motto; it was law. Torn stockings wound up not in the trash but in the sewing basket. Trivial Slivers of soap were collected in little wire cages that could be swished through sink water to produce suds for dishwashing. Frayed shirt collars got turned and, when the garment became hopeless on the second go-round, the buttons were salvaged and the fabric was channeled into a rag bag, whence it might emerge as a dish cloth, a shoe wiper, a hand towel. Or it might wind up, along with parts of old skirts, dresses, blouses, pajamas and neckties, as part of a patchwork quilt or a rag rug.

Paper of all varieties was hoarded for reuse as though it were as valuable as fabric. Tissue went into a gift-wrapping kit. Waxy bread packaging became wrappers for school lunches. Brown paper was smoothed and folded for the day on which something had to go out by parcel post. Old newspapers served multiple purposes: they started fires, insulated cots and walls and, cut into convenient squares, assisted in personal hygiene. To want not was to salvage even the straight pins that fastened new garments into neat folds. And it was also to maintain bins, boxes and cans as storage vaults for old screws, nails, bolts, rubber bands, paper clips, thumbtacks and--well, name it. In those days every sort of container was coveted, with cigar boxes especially prized by children as chests for personal treasures that did not often fill up entire rooms.

It would be false to suggest that Americans have been unanimously thrifty in all earlier times. The settlement of the continent, as history teaches, was accompanied by a squandering of natural resources and wildlife on a tragic scale. By the ripening end of the 19th century, Thorstein Veblen could chart, in The Theory of the Leisure Class, the "conspicuous consumption" and "conspicuous waste" that had become the crass proof of status among the very well off. Still, most Americans were not in that privileged class. In fact, they still had the hang of their frugal daily ways when these became indispensable during the lean years of the Great Depression. World War II ended the Depression, of course, and also became the occasion--with everybody saving everything including tinfoil and kitchen fat for the war effort--of the last great popular conserving binge the nation has known.

Then, suddenly, old-fashioned frugality was out of style. What happened? The answer is that the consumer society got born, the fruit of the nation's determination to extend and expand the economic successes that war production had achieved. Growing production and high employment were the aims, and high and growing consumption was indispensable to the formula. Thrift survived in the moral code, but both commercial and political leaders urged people not to save what they had but to get more of what was available. In a business dip of the late 1950s, somebody asked President Eisenhower what citizens could do to help the situation. Ike's terse reply: "Buy anything." Americans, by and large, became used to doing just that.

The consumer society's success in achieving abundance was stunning, but not all of the costs showed up on the ledger sheets. One of them that did not was the spirit of frugality. It was over whelmed partly by a public atmosphere that construed consumption as almost a patriotic duty. It was, as well, violently broken down by the coming of a cornucopia of goods, from plates and cups to razors and lighters, that were made of synthetics and were designed to be used briefly and thrown away. The whole way of doing business soon produced what Futurist Alvin Toffler called a "throw-away mentality."

Now, at last, the success of the consumer economy, as well as its for has brought the country right back to the need for individual frugality. It may be that Americans will never again find and necessary, or even feasible, to save slivers of soap and the straight pins out of shirts. Still, the need to curtail waste seems to be homing in again. It is consoling to know that the spirit is there, needing only reawakening by the irresistible force of necessity.

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