But, mostly, the fundamental change was an atmosphere of collective sympathy,
like the feeling in the wake of a shared tragedy. This atmosphere explained
people’s willingness to work for a contingent fee or to buy apples on a street
corner even when they were not in the mood for an apple. However, by stopping
any conspicuous consumption, they inadvertently worsened the Depression.
Street begging was not limited to the United States. In Germany, where the
unemployment rate was even higher than in the United States, there was a
striking rise in panhandlers and in unemployed youths involved in crime in the
years just before Adolf Hitler came to power. The higher crime and
unemployment rates help explain Hitler’s appeal to many voters.18 After his
election in 1933, Hitler dealt with the problem by imprisoning German
panhandlers and homeless people in concentration camps.19
Meanwhile, much of the world had embraced the frugality narrative. Film
critic Grace Kingsley noted in 1932 that motion pictures had become less
interested in luxury:
Due to depression and its effect on the public producers are soft-pedaling
luxury display in their pictures. Whereas heretofore the heroine appeared to
live in the public library building, so vast was her domicile, now smaller
rooms are shown and display of wealth is not nearly so lavish.… And now the
elegant Richard Barthelmess and the exotic Marlene Dietrich are scheduled
for roles in simple stories of home life.20
These movies offered scripts for living. People may find themselves not ever
consciously deciding to consume less but consuming less out of pure
subconscious suggestibility.
Church sermons also inveighed against the display of wealth, as reported in a
newspaper article in 1932:
In this time of depression, publicly displayed extravagance is an offense, the
Rev. Dr. Minot Simons, pastor, asserted yesterday in his Christmas sermon in
All Souls Unitarian Church.
The article further quotes his sermon:
I hope that any one tempted to splurge in costly rejoicings will get that
thought that they would be in bad taste.… Such things always stir a profound
resentment, and this Winter such resentment must not be stirred. 21

Note that the argument here is basically moral, not an appeal to self-interest.
As Anne O’Hare McCormick had noted when writing about Main Street,
USA, people’s attitudes toward one another had changed. They became
concerned about managing others’ perceptions of them. The Washington Post
observed that the conclusions one might draw about others’ status and human
worth from observing their frugality had changed entirely:
And then the mode turned a handspring, as so often happens, and poverty was
chic! “I cannot afford it,” was said brazenly, even boastingly—because didn’t
this imply that one had lost lots of money in stocks and things. Whether one
had had any or lost any, of course.22
Indeed, during the Great Depression, people took (and still sometimes take even
today) a strange pleasure in telling Depression hardship and loss stories about
themselves, their relatives, and their friends. The narrative has moral
dimensions. Because their poverty was not their fault, there was no shame in it;
and there was a dignity in sympathizing with those who suffered. In addition, the
“sin” of enjoying riches amidst poverty was more immoral when one had long-
unemployed neighbors who were barely getting by.

New Modesty Crazes
The “poverty chic” culture spurred new crazes in the 1930s. The bicycle craze
was notable: many people began riding bicycles to work or to go shopping in
urban environments. Department stores installed bicycle racks for their patrons.23
The bicycle craze arose partially from the desire to postpone buying a new
car. Those who already owned a car decided to keep the car going rather longer.
Those who did not own a car decided to continue taking public transportation as
they always had, or to ride a bike. Why did people postpone their car purchases?
Being unemployed was one key reason. Another was thinking that they might
become unemployed.
A 1931 sound movie, Six Cylinder Love, based on a play produced during the
depression of 1920–21, shows some of the complexities involved in a man’s
decision to buy an expensive car. As a result of that decision, his wife and
daughter are transformed into extravagant spenders, and the family also attracts
sponging friends who believe that they are rich because they own a pricey car.
The movie plot itself became part of a narrative constellation about the
consequences of extravagant purchases. Seeing your neighbor unemployed, and
hearing stories of desperation and struggle, made it obvious to many that you
should not buy a new car this year. A 1932 article in the Wall Street Journal also
noted the anti–conspicuous consumption motive for delaying a car purchase:
One serious but not easily discernible obstacle is now blocking the exercise of
their spending power by those who have it and are capable of using it
judiciously in the benefit of industry. This is the widespread fear of being
considered ostentatiously extravagant.… It is no mere guesswork that asserts
such a handicap upon efforts to revive trade. The automobile industry, for
one, has proved its reality on an extended scale by gathering conclusive
evidence that important numbers of people with money and the actual need of
a new car are denying themselves through fear of neighborhood criticism. A
new species of sales resistance is among the “psychological” products of
depression, namely, the haunting doubt whether or not ownership of a new
car may be, or may seem to others, an indecent display of affluence.24
The Wall Street Journal makes an excellent point. A “visibility index” of
consumption categories, created by Ori Heffetz, seeks to measure how much