The picture above is from a magazine published about 84 years ago, in June of 1939. That would be considered pre-war as September 1st 1939 is the cited date for the onset of WWII.
According to the copy, the depiction of the pre-nuclear Nuclear Family of two parents with two children gathered around a radio (a very nice radio at that) "stirs imagination and creates a vision in which heart appeal is uppermost."
Considering unemployment in the United States was over 15% that year (it had hit 19% in 1938), Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath had just been published, and Federal expenditures (which had been 3% in 1929, prior to the onset of the Great Depression) had risen to 40%, and would climb fantastically to 128% in a few short years due to WWII...that is one optimistic advertisement.
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