Attitudes and standards changed as people were caught up in a consumer market hitherto unknown. For the first time, modern conveniences like automobiles, radios, and refrigerators could be produced in sufficient quantities to supply everyone. To promote their sale the advertising industry rapidly developed into a billion-dollar business. It introduced easy credit and installment-plan buying and strove to convince people to buy things they possibly did not need, perhaps did not even want, and to do so with money they probably did not have.a In the radio it saw a powerful medium for achieving its goals, and it used it to the full.

All the newfangled contraptions now available, although saving time and energy, were not always appreciated; neither were the lazy, easygoing, spoiled tendencies that some people felt they fostered. One elderly lady, for example, was highly distressed upon discovering sliced bread at her grocery store for the first time. Shaking her head in disbelief, she muttered: “When people get too lazy to cut their own bread, you really wonder what the world is coming to.” What would she think today?

But the situation was actually more serious than this. The ready availability of products that the advertising world made so appealing caused people’s attention to shift slowly away from spiritual needs and values and to focus more upon material things.