{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","uuid":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","normalized_title":"timeforthingslaborleisureandtheriseofmassconsumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","isbns":["9780674250529","9780674250536","9780674979512"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":355,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Time%20for%20Things%20Labor%2C%20Leisure%2C%20and%20the%20Rise%20of%20Mass%20Consumption","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/search"},"page":{"printed_page":204,"pdf_page":212,"physical_index":212,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"29f33f8ca03a93784694e39b3d6b21505ab3d69a633dad4988e9230eefcb6d4b"},"chapter":"FOR","content":"The promotion of product standards and testing by the state, and by engineers working in industry, had, as mentioned, a good deal of influence on the consumer movement. Many of the important figures in the consumer movement who advocated a systematic program of product testing had backgrounds in engineering and sympathized with the ethics and aesthetics of the standardization movement. Schlink, one of the founders of Consumers’ Research, was a trained engineer, as were many other influential figures in the movement. Schlink was also a former employee of the Bureau of Standards, and so was Arthur Kallet, cofounder along with Schlink of Consumers’ Research. Chase, a key figure in Consumers Union (which broke away from Consumers’ Research in 1936) and author of Your Money’s Worth, one of the founding texts of the consumers’ movement, had a background in accountancy. Under these figures, CU and Consumer’s Research preached a gospel of eficient consumption. Influenced by Thorstein Veblen’s ideas, the early consumer testing organizations criticized status-driven consumerism and espoused a narrowly utilitarian approach to consumption. Consumers were to be taught to be skeptical of the claims made by corporations about their brands and encouraged to spend their income in a maximally eficient fashion. In addition, the state was tasked with protecting consumer interests and promoting this rational approach to consumption (Schlink 1934).\n\nGiven the prominence of zealous members of the eficiency movement in early consumer testing organizations, it is tempting to see the difusion of testing as being a result of the eforts of an enlightened reforming elite to educate the public about how to consume in a rational manner. It would be wrong, however, to interpret the rise of consumer testing solely in a “topdown” fashion, as the work of a vanguard of reformers, or of an increasingly technocratic state. For such an approach gives little sense of why product testing became so popular with the public and increasingly so as the century wore on. Moreover, how consumer product testing began (and who its pioneering figures were) did not determine the meanings it took on and what it subsequently became. While product testing might in its early years have been closely associated with reformist politics and the eficiency movement, it evolved into something quite diferent. The growth of consumer product testing was not just a manifestation of a grand historical process of technocratic rationalization. Rather, it also reflects changes in thinking about the locus of utility and in general attitudes toward commodities that took place in the context of the growing legitimacy of wage labor as a form of exchange.\n\n204\n\nTime for Things","previous_page":203,"next_page":205}