There’s Self Respect in Soap and Water

Judging from the deluge of etiquette and self-help books, magazine articles and advertisements that urged Americans to wash themselves with as much soap and water as possible, the 1920s should have been a fine time for soap makers. Instead, they anticipated a drop in sales. A buyer's market of goods was overwhelming and distracting the consumer. At the same time, Americans were getting less and less dirty. Paved streets and roads, the automobile and electricity all made for people who were cleaner than those who lived with dirt roads, horses, coal stoves and kerosene lamps. More efficient central heating made the wearing of heavy woollen clothes unnecessary. Thanks to more mechanized factories and labour-saving devices, workers and housewives did not get as dirty as before. What concerned soap makers most, however, was the Roaring Twenties' booming cosmetics industry. The most successful advertising campaigns for soap had promised that cleanliness would bring beauty. Unfortunately for them, lipstick, rouge and mascara produced the illusion of beauty more effectively than the most luxurious soap.

In 1927 the soap makers retaliated by founding the Cleanliness Institute, a trade organization devoted to inculcating in Americans a belief in the supreme value of hygiene. Eighty per cent of soap manufacturers supported the new organization, and the New York Times welcomed its initiative. Happy that "the slovenly folk, who have been going on the theory that they can take a bath or leave it, are to be brought to their senses," the Times saw the Institute as meeting a genuine social need. Using magazine advertisements, radio ads and "public service announcements," and a battery of classroom teaching aids, the Institute aimed at making Americans feel that there was no such thing as "clean enough."