Charles C Parks Trade Show 2006 "America's Greatest Generation"

The Charles Parks Co. joins our customers in saluting America's Greatest Generation. This decade was a time when America experienced great accomplishments at home and shared the responsibility with other great nations of protecting the world from evil dictators and acts of aggression. In every aspect of our daily lives, we can trace back to this period the origin of creative development of many advances in music, technology, communication and improvements in daily living. To this generation, we say thanks.

Facts about this decade......

Population was 132.1 million.

Unemployment in 1940 was 8.12 million or 6%.

Nation debt was $43 billion or $346.46 per citizen.

Average salary was $1,200. A teacher's salary was $1,441.

Minimun Wage was $0.43 per hour.

55% of U.S. homes have indoor plumbing.

Antarctica is discovered to be a continent.

Life expectancy was 68.2 for a female and 60.8 for a male.

Auto deaths were 34,500.

World War II changed the order of world power. The USA and the USSR became the Super Powers.

Cold War begins.

The decade was dominated by World War II. Women were needed in the factories to replace men serving in the armed forces thus causing the exudos of women from the home to the workplace. There were scrap drives for steel, tin, paper and rubber. Automobile production ceased in 1942. Rationing of food supplies began in 1943. Victory gardens supplied 40% of the vegetables on the home front. Returning GI created the baby boom. Because of the GI Bill of Rights, in 1949 three times as many college degrees were conferred as in 1940.

Television made its debut at the 1939 World Fair, but the war interrupted further development. In 1947 commerical television with 13 channels became public. Computers were developed in the early forties. The digital computer,named ENIAC, weighting 30 tons and standing two stories high was completed in 1945.

Big bands dominated popular music. Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman led some of the more famous bands. Bing Cosby, Frank Sinatra, Dinah Shore, Kate Smith and Perry Como were the voices that led the hit parade. Be-Bop and Rhythm and Blues grew out of the era with greats like Charlie Parker, Dizzie Gillespie, THelonious Monk, Billy Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Woody Herman.

Radio was the lifeline for Americans in the 1940's, providing news, music and entertainment, much like television today. Kate Smith and Arthur Godfrey were popular radio hosts. Many of the popular radio shows continued on in television, includiing Red Skelton, Abbott and Costello, Jack Benny, Bob Hope and Truth or Consequences.

In popular dancing, the Jitterbug made its appearance at the beginning of the decade. Rosie the Riveter was the symbol of the working woman. GI's, however, preferred another symbol, the pin-up girl, such as Rita Hayworth or Betty Grable. "Kilroy was Here" orginated during the war . Working women, combined with another new phenomenon the refrigerator, led to the invention of frozen dinners or as later tagged "TV Dinners".

The forties were the heyday for movies. Most plots had a fairly narrow and predictable set of morals, and if Germans or Japanese were included, they were one-dimensional villains. Movie titles included Casablanca, Mrs. Miniver, Lifeboat, Notorious, Best Years of Our Lives, Wake Island and Battle of Midway. Leading actors were Gary Cooper, Humphery Bogart, Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford, Judy Garland, Ginger Rodgers, Jimmy Stewart, Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor and Lana Turner.

Life was good. Life was simple. To this generation we owe a great deal of gratitude; for the unselfish sacrafices made for freedom around the world, social advances for men and women, and the number of inventions that make daily life better for all mankind. No other generation has done so much.