Twentieth Century Consumerism through Newspaper Ads
-
A Central of Georgia Railway ad from the July 20, 1911, issue of the Early County News promoting their train line to Tybee Island, Georgia. Similar ads were place in papers across the state to encourage vacationers to visit the island.
Courtesy of Georgia Newspaper Project, Georgia Historic Newspapers.
-
As automobiles became more popular with adults in the 1920s, merchants increasingly advertised bicycles as toys for children, as exemplified by this advertisement from the December 21, 1920, issue of the Daily Times-Enterprise in Thomasville, Georgia.
Courtesy of Georgia Newspaper Project, Georgia Historic Newspapers.
-
A Coca-Cola ad from the July 9, 1920, issue of the Fayetteville News. The Georgia-based company regularly placed visually distinctive ads in newspapers across the state in the early twentieth century.
Courtesy of Georgia Newspaper Project, Georgia Historic Newspapers.
-
A Buick Car ad from the October 8, 1920, issue of the McDuffie Progress in Thompson. Newspapers began to routinely carry car ads in the early twentieth century and continue the practice today.
Courtesy of Georgia Newspaper Project, Georgia Historic Newspapers.
Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, Georgia’s newspaper advertisement pages were primarily filled with land sale notices and ads that called for the return of self-emancipated African Americans. After the Civil War, the effects of the Second Industrial Revolution resulted in the increasing presence of advertisements for manufactured goods in the state’s newspapers. At the same time, the development of national newspaper advertising agencies increased the availability and importance of advertising dollars to newspaper publishers. By the 1920s, the country was experiencing unprecedented prosperity. Increasing levels of disposable income coupled with cheaper manufactured products resulted in a consumer culture that fueled changes in the content of newspaper ads. A newspaper subscriber in Georgia could find ads for cars, soft drinks, phonographs, and vacations nestled alongside their local news. With expanding page counts, there was space for increasingly larger ads to catch the reader’s attention. As the United States progressed through the Great Depression and World War II (1941-45), the purchasing behaviors of Americans changed, but advertisements in Georgia’s newspapers maintained the conspicuous style that rose to prominence in the early twentieth century.