When is the last time your local newspaper ran a feature like this?

[launderess]

You notice again in the OP linked article

There wasn't a conventional (wringer) washer to be seen.

My guess was the advert's purpose was to get people either to buy a new automatic or upgrade from "last year's" model. *LOL*

It was back then IIRC a big deal if someone gave your family a "used" washer and or dryer. Second hand appliance stores/departments did a brisk business just like automobiles.

 

[lordkenmore]

>my folks first automatic set was a '63 turquoise Kenmore "70" floor sample

If I remember right, my parents washer, a Lady Kenmore, was also a clearance special. Last year's model or some such thing. I don't think they needed clearance pricing--they almost certainly could have afforded a basic washer at list price--but I have to imagine that a good deal on a TOL washer was not be passed up.

The dryer came later, but the only effort in matching was color and brand. The model was probably considerably lower in the line. But it got the job done.

 

[wayupnorth]

The person handling the National Advertising at that paper was basically told you will write about automatics by us big guys if you want our money. And our ad agency has to proof read it and no wringers to be mentioned, I am sure what he heard. If he wanted to pull something that big off, he had to bow to them. This was long before a woman could be an ad manager or even better.

 

[launderess]

Perhaps

However going by Consumer Reports back issues in my collection by the mid-1950's it was all about automatic or at least semi-automatic washing machines.

CR had their own beef with conventional washers, but for the money am sure appliance makers then as with today (with HE washers) made more money on the newer automatics than the mature wringer washer market.

Don't get me wrong, Maytag and others were still cranking out wringer washers well into the 1960's through 1980's, but it was a small slice of the market. IIRC GE was one of the first to get out of the conventional washer market concentrating solely upon automatics.

The profit margins were probably much more favorable on automatics than wringers. More so if you could make a double sale (washer and dryer) or even triple (adding an ironer).

By 1956 both WWII and Korean wars were over and many Americans were looking forward to new and modern future. For a young housewife and mother in that period a wringer washer must have seemed antediluvian. For the "active" housewife automatics turned laundry from a chore that went on for a few days to something she could knock off in a few hours, especially if she had a dryer.

Then you would have had promotional films like this: post was last edited: 5/1/2016-00:57]

 

[lordkenmore]

Thanks, Launderess, for posting that video! It's interesting seeing some of the details behind the engineering, and then part of the actual assembly of the washers.

 

[launderess]

YW

It is amazing the amount of promotional materials appliance makers put out back then. When you couple that with advertising campaigns like the one in my OP it was clear there was a consumerism push going on.

 

[vacerator]

Ther sure was

a consumer push going on. Also every nine months from most households in a hospital maternity ward.

 

[lordkenmore]

> Also every nine months from most households in a hospital maternity ward.

Probably not quite that often. I think it was a spacing of about 2 years for both sets of my grandparents. But this aside, I do have to imagine that automatic washers were very appealing for the mothers of the 1950s larger families. One can even imagine one saying: "We will buy this new washer, or else we won't [be having any more babies]!" (The part in the brackets would have been different words, but they probably wouldn't be suitable for this forum.)

 

[vacerator]

So true

but during the depression, my grandmother raised 8, and had no electric washing machine until after WW2 ended.
Arranged marriage, and he must have raped her repeatedly, because she told me he was mean, drank, and she never loved him.
So much for happy wife happy life. She did divorce him. When my dad wanted us to finally meet him, he told us he had been in WW1, and been gassed by the Germans with mustard nerve gas.
So sounded like ptsd, and pain from nerve damage, so they drank.
My dad was the complete opposite. Compassionate yet stearn and tactfull. My mom was treated like gold. Dad was her prince charming. Together till death, 54 years.

 

[lordkenmore]

>he must have raped her repeatedly

The sad thing is that while that probably was the case in reality, my best guess is that it would not have been considered rape by law in many places. At least, she was able to escape in the end--and that alone is sort of a miracle, given how hard it was getting divorced once.

As much as I like some things from past eras--like old washers--I cringe at other things, such as the way that past eras were only really good to live in if you were white (and with ancestry from the right place, such as England), Christian, straight, and a male.

 

[launderess]

There are two ways of doing laundry

Shifting of clothes or shifting of water.

Semi-automatics and conventional (wringer) washers are the former, and automatics the latter.

When nothing else existed and or you didn't know better then doing washing by hand (with or without mangles) and or using a conventional washing machine was fine. The latter probably was considered a step-up from the former. However once fully automatic washers come upon the scene the case for using wringers became slimmer and slimmer as the years went on.

Looking at the features of washers in the linked OP housewives and others must have thought they'd died and gone to heaven....

Read a comment on another site where a woman had announced her husband had just purchased and given to her as a gift a wringer. One of the other ladies quipped back that if her husband had given her a mangle he'd be one of the first things she would put through it. *LOL*

We know from across the pond how bad laundry day was well through the 1950's as women were stuck with either hand washing or using wringer washers.

 

[vacbear58]

Across the pond

Don't disagree with you Laundress on your point about the UK, but we did have a war to pay for. In the immediate postwar period the majority of UK production was assigned to exports and, even in the mid 1950s when equipment was more easily available there was a purchase tax (its actually a sales tax) of 40% and upwards - from memory it was not until 1958 that this was reduced, alongside an easing of hire purchase controls.

Picking up your point about second hand items these were sold without the tax. the washing machine market pre WW2 was pretty small (although there were some machines available), the vacuum cleaner market was much more mature so people were encourage to trade in their old cleaners which could then be re-sold without the tax

 

[vacbear58]

Across the pond

Don't disagree with you Laundress on your point about the UK, but we did have a war to pay for. In the immediate postwar period the majority of UK production was assigned to exports and, even in the mid 1950s when equipment was more easily available there was a purchase tax (its actually a sales tax) of 40% and upwards - from memory it was not until 1958 that this was reduced, alongside an easing of hire purchase controls.

Picking up your point about second hand items these were sold without the tax. the washing machine market pre WW2 was pretty small (although there were some machines available), the vacuum cleaner market was much more mature so people were encourage to trade in their old cleaners which could then be re-sold without the tax

 

[Chetlaham]

Great find!

I really enjoyed reading this.