The greatest boom industry of the Thirties, however, was the electrical industry in its widest sense – electrical appliances, electrical engineering, and the production and distribution of electricity itself. Industrial demand for electricity was high since the new factory machines were run on this relatively new form of energy. Domestic demand was also high, with three-quarters of houses wired up for electricity by the end of the Thirties (compared to only 6 per cent in 1920). The price of electricity had decreased significantly since the Twenties, too, as a result of technological advancement and a fall in coal prices.
Baldwin, an experienced industrialist, understood that a new industrial revolution was taking place, in which the staple export industries of the former industrial revolution were being superseded by new industries serving the home market (over 80 per cent of English cars, for example, were bought in England). The Tory leader hoped that the expansion of the new trades would absorb the displacement of labour from the depressed heavy industries – that jobless miners and shipbuilders would become wireless technicians and electrical engineers. However, Baldwin did not indicate how the government would facilitate this ‘transition’, which would involve retraining and the relocation of countless communities in the north of England.
Other observers were more sceptical about the new industrial utopia. Charlie Chaplin’s film Modern Times (1936) was a satire ‘about the way life is being standardized, and men turned into machines’. In the film, Chaplin’s tramp persona is set to work on an ever-accelerating factory assembly line, suffering physical injury and a nervous breakdown as he struggles to keep pace with the vast and voracious machine. It was as though modern technology was using humans to manufacture a new race of demented robots.
Whether they were built for sale or rent, the suburban houses of the Twenties and Thirties tended to be of the uniform semi-detached variety. They were easily distinguishable from their Edwardian prototypes by their external features. They had roof tiles instead of slates and ‘Tudorbethan’ timbers, together with unadorned stucco or pebbledash walls. Along with their pastiche of older architectural styles, half-timber gables, leaded lights and inglenooks gave them a ‘rustic’ appearance.
To enhance the illusion that the suburbs were in the countryside, every house had a front and back garden. ‘It is amazing,’ commented a journalist, ‘how soon families, many of whom had never had a garden before, turn the rough land surrounding their new houses into beautiful gardens. In summer they are ablaze with colour.’ The front garden often had a privet hedge, to increase privacy and reduce noise. The back garden sometimes contained a shed or a greenhouse and was surrounded by a fence. This was the English family’s hallowed plot of land, the city dressed up in country clothes. The names of the new houses and streets contributed to the masquerade: ‘The Myrtles’ was situated in Meadow Rise, while ‘Acacia Villa’ stood in Fir Tree Crescent. The countrified, nostalgic architecture of the suburbs set the tone of Baldwin’s England.
For those who moved to the suburbs from the slums, the most novel feature of their new houses was an indoor bathroom, often upstairs. There would also typically be three bedrooms on the upper floor, with two reception rooms and a kitchen downstairs. Wired for electricity and supplied with hot water, the houses were well lit, with standard lamps throughout. There were sockets in every room for electrical appliances: wirelesses, gramophones, electric hairdryers, vacuum cleaners and electric sewing machines. The kitchen had the most sockets to accommodate toasters, ovens, electric irons, kettles, washing machines and refrigerators. These kitchen gadgets were ‘labour-saving’ – designed for families without domestic servants, where the woman of the house oversaw its management and maintenance.
The new ‘semis’ were referred to as ‘containers’ for the new mass-produced consumer goods. Stainless steel cutlery was stored in the kitchen drawers, while plastic ornaments were displayed on the mantelpiece in the lounge. That ‘living room’ was often crowded with mass-produced furniture: three-piece suites with a ‘jazzy’ striped design, ‘pouffes’, wooden bookcases, and dining tables with chairs of limed oak. Pastel shades were generally favoured for the walls of the downstairs rooms, while bolder and darker colours were not uncommon in the smaller upstairs rooms. Everything was practical, standardized, time-saving and efficient.
If the family possessed a car, it would be parked in the garage or outside in the street. Car owners, however, were a minority in the suburbs; most travelled by means of public services. There was the electric ‘trolley bus’, more comfortable and quieter than the ‘proletarian’ electric tram, which shrieked its way along the streets. The motor buses of the General Omnibus Company were also indispensable to those who lived just beyond the ever-expanding spider’s web of railways that spread out from England’s cities.
The daily commute from the suburbs was often a near-silent process. Men in dark hats and suits would quietly and neatly arrange themselves along train or underground platforms, or in the queue at the bus stop. Most buried their heads in newspapers and gave no more than a slight nod of greeting to the familiar faces around them. Those who did talk tended to speak in low tones and to stick to uncontroversial subjects, such as the weather, sport or gardening. Carriages were often full, but standing passengers did their utmost to avoid physical contact. Journeys passed without incident, but also without interest.
Train stations and bus stops were located next to the suburban shopping parade, which invariably offered the six essential trades of the period: a grocer’s, greengrocer’s, butcher’s, baker’s, dairy and a newsagent, tobacconist or confectioner, along with a post office. In mock Tudor style and with flats above the shops, these parades were meant to be the focal point of the suburban ‘community’, though they lacked the vibrant atmosphere of older urban markets. The shops were grouped together in order to isolate them from the surrounding residential streets, since tradespeople were unwelcome in addresses that aspired to respectability. The appetite for shopping among suburbanites was so great that it could not always be satisfied by the local shops or door-to-door salesmen. When suburban consumers demanded more, they headed to the high streets of the town or city.
These high streets were rapidly being colonized by ‘chains’ that purveyed mass-produced goods. Sainsbury’s, C&A, Littlewoods, Home & Colonial and Boots the Chemist were supplanting local, family-owned shops. In 1929, Marks & Spencer had a turnover of £2 million; a decade later it generated £23 million in its 250 countrywide stores. The ‘chains’ borrowed huge amounts of money and bought cheap, mass-produced, standardized goods from new English industries and from overseas. They had small profit margins but achieved sizeable returns because of their exceptionally large turnovers – a testimony to high domestic demand. The ‘chains’ seemed to be miracles of efficient business management, while customers marvelled at the novel shopping experience they offered. No assistants goaded them into buying a particular product; they were left to browse the well-stocked aisles themselves, comparing quality and prices for as long as they liked, before making up their own minds. Shoppers could now buy every item on their shopping list within a single store, a striking everyday example of the efficiency espoused by politicians in the period.