Pioneering Consumer Economist: Elizabeth Ellis Hoyt (1893-1980)

Elizabeth ParsonsKeele University, UKe.parsons@keele.ac.uk

Parsons, E. (2013) ‘Pioneering Consumer Economist: ElizabethEllis Hoyt (1893-1980)’ special issue of the Journal of HistoricalResearch in Marketing on the contribution of women to the developmentof marketing theory, 5(3), 334-350

Structured Abstract

Purpose: This paper contributes to the project of recognising the contribution of female scholars to the development of marketing thought. The paper presents a biography of Elizabeth Ellis Hoyt, a Home Economist, who contributed to the shaping of contemporary ideas about consumption and the consumer.

Methodology: Source material used includes the Elizabeth Ellis Hoyt Papers (1884-2009) in the Iowa State University Archives. The collection contains a variety of materials of which the most important for this paper were news clippings, personal diaries (1907-1918), and published and unpublished manuscripts (1953,1964, n.d.). Also important for this study were two sourcespublished by Alison Comish Thorne, Elizabeth Hoyt’s PhD student. These include Thorne’s autobiography Leave the Dishes in the Sink and herentry on Elizabeth Hoyt in the Biographical Dictionary of Women Economists.

Findings: The paper documents Elizabeth Hoyt’s development of marketing thought focusing on her early work on the cost of living index and subsequent contributions to an expanded theory of consumption and consumer learning.

Originality / value: Elizabeth Hoyt is one of a group of female Home Economists who pioneered consumption economics in America in the 1920s and 1930s yet who have been neglected in published accounts. Notwithstanding a short biographical note in the

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Biographical Dictionary of Women Economists, Hoyt’s life and work are not yet documented.

Keywords: history of marketing thought, marketing history, consumption economics, Standard of Living Index, Elizabeth Ellis Hoyt

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Pioneering Consumer Economist: Elizabeth Ellis Hoyt (1893-1980)

Introduction This paper presents a scholarly biography of the American Economist Elizabeth Ellis Hoyt (see Figure 1). It contributes to the yet unrealised project of bringing to light, and recognising,the historical contribution of female scholars to marketing theory. While, as Tadajewski and Saren (2008) point out, marketing theory generally has been stalked by a collective amnesia, this process of forgetting seems particularly dominant when it comes to the contributions of women who have been largelyabsent from historical discussions of the development of marketing thought to date (Zuckermann and Carsky, 1990). This absence is quite glaring if we look at the range of publications which identify key thinkers in marketing history. From the period1941 – 1974, 172 men and 3 women were mentioned in these sourcesi. There are a range of complex reasons for this relative absence of women in marketing history which are largely to do with women’s wider role in society, education and industry duringthe period of industrial expansion in which marketing initially flourished. However, there remains the fact that the role that women did play in marketing’s development seems to have largely been written out of history. This paper therefore is an attempt at writing their contribution back in. The paper begins with a brief biography of Hoyt followed by a summary of her key contributions to the development of marketing thought and indeed to our contemporary understanding of markets and consumption.

---- Take in Figure 1 ----Figure 1 Elizabeth Ellis Hoyt (circa 1952)

The Early Years 1893-1917: An Intelligent and Socially Concerned Young Woman

Elizabeth Ellis Hoyt was born on 27 January 1893 in Augusta Maineto William Adams Hoyt and Fannie H Ellis Hoyt. She was the eldestof three with a younger brother, William F Hoyt born in 1895 and a younger sister, Anna Camilla Hoyt born in 1897. Hoyt attended Boston Latin School for Girls which, founded in 1877, was the first college preparatory high school for girls in the United

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States. Under the early guidance of Dr John Tetlow the school gained a national reputation as one of the finest college preparatory schools in the US. The curriculum focused on the classics with an emphasis on independent learning and active citizenship. During the period that Hoyt would have graduated, inthe early 1900s, more than half of each graduating class was accepted at one of the ‘Seven Sisters Colleges’ii The colleges were set up with the aim of promoting academic education for women at a time when they were excluded from most institutions ofhigher education. As the present day Women’s College Coalitioniii observes, these colleges have played a pivotal role in American history as they ‘trained women in many of the traditionally male disciplines and were the only institutions where women could study science, mathematics, law and philosophy. Virtually all women of science from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries received their training in women's colleges’. They also largely employed female lecturers, and were important in producing a corpus of future female educators; although at this time due to the operation of marriage bars only unmarried women could be employed as teachers and on marriage those in employment would befired. Hoyt attended Boston University to study Latin in 1913 andgained an AB (Bachelors) degree.

Diaries written by Hoyt between the ages of 18-25 offer a window on her thoughts and motivations as a young woman. Reflecting on a job with immigration services that she did not get in 1917, Hoyt appears to be very upset and frustrated:

‘“Si vis tibi omnia subjicere te subjice rationi” I came across those words of Seneca in Problems of Living by J. Brierley one of whose books I read at Nantucket and have never forgotten. I shall never forget this either. I don’t know why it should be hard to bear the inevitable, to submit to reason. There are troubles enough for us in the things reason doesn’t make plain.’(diary extract Sept 1st, 1917)

The Seneca quote Hoyt refers to is translated by Brierley as ‘if thou wouldest bring all things into subjection subject thyself toreason’. These words reflect Hoyt’s continuing attempts at self discipline and spiritual self examination in her mission to help those less fortunate than herself. Hoyt seemed to struggle quite

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a bit with depression in her young life. In coming through one ofthese bouts she observes: ‘There is a certain zest and flavour about life and its experiences which is returning to me’ (Oct 7 1917). She also seems to struggle in some of her relationships. Elsewhere in her diary she refers to the problems of ‘uncontrolled and overwhelming feelings’ (Oct 7, 1917). Although she does not explicitly state what these feelings were in connection with, they may very well relate to her feelings for a Mr De normandie who appears often in her diary. But it seems she never managed to forge an intimate relationship with him:

‘I won’t say I’ve offered myself entirely to Mr De normandiebut it’s near enough that. I have something of a philosophical attitude but attitude alone is a sorry thing tofall back on in a world of corporate reality. I wish I had noneed for corporate things at all, but as a matter of fact I fear I have neglected my needs in that direction already too long’ (diary extract, Dec 17th, 1917)

It is likely that Hoyt is referring to the Latin term ‘corporatus’ which translated into English is corporate and refers to our corporeal existence. It seems that she continued toprioritise the intellectual over the physical for the remainder of her life as she never married. In a newspaper article written on her death, colleagues at Iowa State University (ISU) observed her tendency to be introspective: ‘When you passed her in a corridor you always had the feeling she was thinking about something. She was perfectly within herself’ (Des Moines Register, 1982).

Developing an Interest in Standards of Living: Work on the Cost of Living Index 1917-1921

After graduating from college in 1913 Hoyt spent some time working as a stenographer for the Y.M.C.A. She also spent some time in 1915-1916 studying classics at Wellesley College (Arp, 1988). In 1917 she started work for the National Industrial Conference Board (NICB) on the Cost of Living Index. Elizabeth’s work on the index (which formed the basis for the current Consumer Price Index) very much set the tone for her later work

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and is one of the most often cited of her achievements (Des Moines Register, 1982, 2009; The Iowa Stater, 1980). The index was published on a monthly basis from 1918. In developing the index Hoyt was involved in surveying retail prices in a series ofUS cities, mailing out questionnaires to retailers across the country, as well as conducting telephone surveys (Stapleford, 2009: 23). She conducted research at the household level into household spending and budgeting which resulted in a series of regional guidelines on minimum household food budgets (see Table 1). These guidelines fed into debates at the time surrounding the‘living wage’, seen as the minimum income necessary for an individual to meet her basic needs (including shelter, clothing and food/nutrition). The data was also drawn on by unions in arguing for wage rises and ultimately a uniform system to regulate wages. Union membership was at a peak in 1919 and there were large scale strikes in clothing, meat packing, steel, coal and railroads. However these attempts proved largely unsuccessful‘what emerged instead was a fragmented form of industrial relations in which competing groups (businesses, unions, government agencies) tried to use statistics to achieve order andcontrol in their own local context’ (Stapleford, 2009: 125).

---- Take in Table 1 ----

The sentiment of careful household budgeting underpinning the research is nicely encapsulated in the extract below taken from one of the NICB reports:

‘On a given income some families may do very well and others of the same size and composition may fare badly; some may be so suited as to have a decrease or an increase in income completely alter their scale of living; others may adjust themselves with neither abnormal loss nor ostentatious gain’ (NICB, 1925, p.15).

These differences between families and their knowledge about how and where to spend their finances became a fascination for Hoyt. Her interest in anthropology and the impact of culture on consumer learning were to take her all over the world in years tocome in a series of standard of living studies in Japan, China, Guatemala and the West Indies (Hoyt’s Curriculum Vita).

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The Cost of Living Index was a precursor to the large scale social surveys which were to explode in popularity in the US in later years. The depression era of the 1930s spurred on a search for national unity and in the face of rapid urbanization brought about by a new industrial order large scale surveys provided the raw data to ‘organise mass society, turning statistical methods into ways of thinking about people’ (Zunz, 1998, p.xii). There was a widespread belief in social intelligence and behavioural research as providing the keys to real social change and progress. There was a drive to identify national standards and national averages, looking for the ‘average’ middleclass Americanto feed in to policy initiatives and indeed marketing campaigns. One such study was the spectacularly popular ‘Middletown’, a social survey of Muncie, Indiana, subsequently published as a book (Lynd and Lynd, 1929). Igo (2005) charts the considerable resonance of this single study with the American psyche. The bookwent through six print runs in its first year of sales and was discussed in a surprising array of publications ‘from Florida’s Fort Myers Church News, to The American Teacher, to The New York Medical Week – and in classrooms, community centres, churches, and households all over the country’ (Igo, 2005, p.241). Undoubtedly such accessible social data ‘were coming to shape understandings of the US public in the early twentieth century’ (Igo, 2005, p.244).

There were parallel moves in marketing research during the 1920s. Marketers began to utilise surveys to understand and profile the average consumer (Ward, 2009). As with the later Middletown survey, these early attempts at market research were heavily stereotyped by race and class, dismissing black and immigrant consumers altogether as potential markets (Tadajewski, 2012). ‘The consumer became an ideal, both socially and economically – an abstraction derived from the mores of a societythat had long idealized affluence and property ownership, and that harboured hateful stereotypes of those who did not fit that ideal or did not aspire to it’ (Ward, 2009, p.218). There is little doubt that Hoyt’s life long interest in facilitating consumer learning and communication across cultures was a reaction against this type of narrow mindedness. This is reflected in her early (although frustrated) attempts in 1917 to get a job with the immigration office and her subsequent work in

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developing countries. Her feelings were that Americans had a tendency to be very insular in their views, at one point in her diary of March 20, 1915, she observes ‘we do not understand and fail to sympathise with the foreigners’.

A Female Traveller in a Male World: Finding a Home in ‘Home Economics’

After her short period at the NICB Hoyt returned to the fold of women’s colleges and became an instructor at Wellesley college (which is still a private women’s college today) from 1921-23. She then went on to study at the Harvard Annex (subsequently Radcliffe College), which was a private program for the instruction of women by Harvard faculty. She was awarded a PhD ineconomics in 1925. She published her thesis as her first book in 1926, entitled Primitive Trade: Its Psychology and Economics. This work betrayed Elizabeth’s fascination with mid to high range theory. The book was concerned with the learning of the processes of trade (learning to desire goods, to value them in terms of other goods and trust one another in trading goods). In doing so Hoyt reviewed an exhaustive array of anthropological literature concerned with trading practices from around the world.

Hoyt joined the faculty of Iowa State College as associate professor in 1925, being the only female in an otherwise all malefaculty. She was made a full professor in 1928, appointed jointlyto the Departments of Economics and Home Economics. Iowa State was a land grant college which specialised in agriculture and home economics, and it proved fertile ground for the continuing development of her interest in consumption economics. Hoyt was partly based in the Department of Economics and Sociology led by Theodore W. Schultz. Margaret G Reid, who formerly studied under Hazel Kyrk at the University of Chicago, joined the economics faculty in 1930. The two became close friends and Reid proved to be a vital influence on Hoyt’s scholarly development. Hoyt pioneered a line of thinking in economics referred to as ‘consumption economics’ which she published in two key contributions, The Consumption of Wealth (1928) and Consumption in Our Society (1938), which built on the ideas in the earlier 1928 text. These two texts sit alongside Hazel Kyrk’s Theory of Consumption, (1923) and Economic Problems of the Family (1933) and Margaret Reid’siv

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Economics of Household Production (1934), as pioneering works in the field. This line of thinking represented a break with earlier views of the household which viewed it as outside the sphere of rational calculation applying instead economic theory to the allocation of time and resources in the home. This also meant expanding the sphere of economics to encompass a wider range of activities beyond market purchasing to include self-provisioning and living standards (Jefferson and King, 2001).

The seeming invisibility of women in economics at ISU, particularly during the early period of Hoyt’s tenure, is underscored in a paper by Geoffrey Shepherd which charts the ‘Development of Economics at ISU’ from the college’s inception in1858 to the time of its writing in 1976. Shepherd joined the economics department at ISU as a graduate student at the same time as Hoyt in 1925, yet curiously he makes no mention of her, instead focusing his attention on the hiring of ‘The Three Musketeers’, himself, D.A. Fitzgerald and W.G. Murray . Only oncedoes he refer to her in reporting an amusing comment she had madeabout their then head of department. The forty page report ends with a short paragraph with the heading ‘Women in Economics’ where Shepherd observes ‘in the 1930s there were two women full professors in the department, Elizabeth Hoyt and Margaret Reid’. This observation is correct but misses out the fact that Hoyt wasemployed at the same time as him in 1925 and spent the whole of subsequent career at ISU. This is followed by a short musing about why at the time of writing in 1976 there was only one female professor in economics (Jean Adams). He reflects on the possible reasons: ‘Is economics too rough for women to handle, orare no women coming forward in the field? Some of the women tell me they have a hard time to find jobs. Should women be encouragedto come in, or warned to stay out?’ (Shepherd, 1976, p.40). Arthur’s (1973) overview which covers the period 1856-1956 makes no mention at all of Hoyt. More heartening, and probably in response to Hoyt’s absence from Shepherd’s and Arthur’s earlier papers, Hayward and Wolff’s overview in 1985 recognises that ‘Hoyt's professional contributions to Iowa State and the discipline cannot be overlooked’ (1985, p.8). Ironically perhaps,in January 2012 portraits of Hoyt (1925-1975) and Shepherd (1927-1969), who had almost parallel careers at ISU, were hung at the same time in the Department of Economics Hall of Honor.

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The position of women in the academy in the 1920s and 1930s was certainly precarious, especially within disciplines like Economics. The Division of Home Economics in which Hoyt and Reid taught offered its introductory economics courses separately fromthose in the wider Economics department, undoubtedly a hang over from earlier times when educational segregation was the norm and women were not admitted to mainstream institutions. One of these introductory courses was in consumption economics, the field which both Reid and Hoyt pioneered. As Hoyt acknowledges in preface to Consumption in Our Society, Anna E Richardson, the Dean of Iowa State College, played a significant role in promoting consumption economics and facilitating its development:

‘In the days when home economics meant to most people onlycooking and sewing, Dean Anna E. Richardson of Iowa State College perceived that home economics must take account ofthe principles of economics as they relate to the use of goods and services, the home economics itself is, to a large degree, applied consumption. It was she and not the economists themselves who in the first place made it possible for the study of consumption to have exceptional opportunities for its development at Iowa State College’ (1938, p.vi).

This acknowledgement of Anna Richardson’s contribution over and above that of ‘the economists’ who were very likely an all male faculty seems typical of Hoyt’s subtle but relentless approach topromoting women’s contribution to scholarship. Throughout her life Hoyt clearly had a mandate to support, encourage and mentor women scholars. Her PhD student Alison Comish Thorne was the first women to gain a PhD in Economics from Iowa State in 1937v. In her memoir ‘Leave the Dishes in the Sink: Adventures of an Activist in Conservative Utah’ Comish Thorne describes one of herexperiences under Hoyt’s tutelage:

‘Puzzling aspects of the Depression had led to great concern about America’s capacity to consume, the title of a study by the Brookings Institution, which emphasized purchasing power as a factor. Hoyt suggested I write a paper naming additional factors such as time and energy.

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She liked what I wrote and arranged for its publication inthe American Economic Review’ (2002, p.28).

This, and other examples, suggests that Hoyt’s approach to mentoring was sensible and practical.

Hoyt spent the rest of her career at Iowa State and in 1950-51 she received a Fulbright award to conduct research on social conditions in Africa at Makerere College Kampala Uganda. In her usual style of wanting to make a difference to the lives of others she began a programme of upgrading African libraries; in the 1970's a library in Paradise View, South Africa was named in her honour. Hoyt’s contributions to our understanding of the ‘standard-of-living’ continued throughout her life and she participated in a series of studies around the globe including Japan, China and Guatemala. Hoyt published several more books in her lifetime, The Income of Society, an economics textbook in 1950; along with Reid and two others, American Income and its Use (1954) andChoice and the Destiny of Nations (1969). Hoyt retired from Iowa State in1963 but kept an office on campus and remained active in her scholarship and writing.

Key Contributions: Expanding Theories of Consumption and Planned Expenditure

It seems Hoyt did not really publish in marketing journals, instead positioning her writings in political science, home economics and economics journals. However, a survey of citations in the Journal of Marketing reveals that her work was picked up by marketers (see Appendix 1). The first issue of the Journal of Marketing appeared in 1936 (Witowski, 2010), and the subsequent 1938 publication of Consumption in Society received two book reviews. Consumption in Society and the earlier and quite similar, Consumption ofWealth were cited four times in the journal in the period 1938 – 1944. The articles they were cited in explored the development ofconsumer society and consumer movements and also levels and standards of living. Hoyt’s PhD dissertation published as ‘Primitive Trade’ in 1926 has received less attention from marketers.What is clear from the overview of citations is that Hoyt’s work had more impact in the field of marketing theory than anywhere else in the discipline. From 1945-1965 abstracts of four of her

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articles appeared in the ‘Research in Marketing’ section at the back of the Journal of Marketing under the sub-heading ‘MarketingTheory’.

Undoubtedly Hoyt’s earlier work on consumption economics (1928, The Consumption of Wealth and 1938, Consumption in Our Society) has the most significance for marketing theory. As a thinker and theorist of consumption economics Hoyt was ‘a visionary seeking to see the whole picture’ (Thorne, 2000, p.216). While both bookswere based on significant empirical studies, Hoyt was primarily interested in large scale theory of the relationships between culture, consumption and the use of economic resources, an interest which fell under the remit of ‘consumption economics’. The Consumption of Wealth was concerned chiefly with ‘the psychology of choice, how our interests (her word for wants) arise, why and wherein they differ from group to group’ (Kyrk, 1939, p.17). As Hoyt notes in the preface: ‘Perhaps the newest aspect of the following pages is the discussion of our limitations in acquiringnew interests, and the discussion of the culture-idea as determining for a people what they consider worth consuming’ (1928, pv). Hoyt illustrated her points by drawing from anthropological examples from around the globe. Consumption in Our Society published in 1938 was arguably ‘a new edition of the earlier book, sufficiently different to warrant another title, sufficiently similar to make either title suitable for either book’ (Kyrk, 1940, p.112). The book elaborated significantly on Hoyt’s earlier (1928) conception of consumption having sections on consumption and choice, consumption’s wider role within the exchange system, the measurement of consumption and the maximisation of satisfaction.

An Expanded Theory of Consumption

In the introductory chapter to Consumption in Our Society Hoyt observes the tendency for economists working at the end of the nineteenth century to have become ‘hypnotized and bewildered’ by new developments in the processes and practices of production. This, she observes, led to an over focus on production and a neglect of consumption:

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‘It has been left to the present generation to begin to regard economics as a whole from the point of view of the consumer; not only to set up in practice the interests of the consumer as the touchstone by which the value of all existing economic phenomena are to be tested, but to declare that the interests of the consumer must be the point of departure in developing new theory on a broader basis than the old’ (1938, p.3-4).

This sentiment echoes that of the many contemporary consumer researchers who are keen to acknowledge the impact of consumptionon both economic and social life (Miller, 1995). In the extract below Hoyt observes the opening out of consumption to embrace notonly goods and services, but also the future use of economic resources in the service of consumption. Previous theorisation ofconsumption economics was located firmly within the use value of any given commodity. Along with Hazel Kyrk, Margaret Reid and Paul Nystrom, Hoyt pioneered the introduction of theories of marginal utility to understandings of consumption. Introducing the idea that fashion, taste and aesthetics might direct consumption, she thus highlighted the importance of desires as opposed to merely needs, as playing a central role in guiding theproduction system.

‘..we as consumers are interested not only in the goods and services actually offered on the market, but of possible goods and services available if economic resources were put to new uses: we are concerned not only with what the production system offers us now but with possible new desires which may guide the production system’ (1938, p.4)

However, Hoyt’s view of consumption as a democratic process can easily be seen as problematic. In a rare contemporary reference to Hoyt’s work in the realm of advertising, Ewen critiques her view of democracy: ‘Democracy was never treated as something that flowed out of people’s needs or desires, but rather was an expression of people’s ability to participate in and emulate the pluralism of values which were paraded before people and which filtered downward from the directors of businessenterprise’ (2001 [1977], p.89). Hoyt’s view of consumer

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sovereignty is one that relies on knowledge and experience at thelevel of the individual, yet these are still exercised solely through the market:

‘Consumers’ sovereignty is the final authority which consumers as a group exercise over the amount and kind of production…It is effective when consumers get what they want most fully and freely and at the lowest possible cost. It implies that consumers must have utmost freedom in their choices. It is important to note that our conceptof consumers’ sovereignty does not state that consumers are to have what is “best” for them, according to some arbitrary outside standard. It does assume, however, that the value of free choice to a man is greater than the value of an arbitrary standard set up by another’ (Hoyt, 1938, p.75).

Hoyt’s theory of consumption was based heavily on the idea of basic human interests; she identifies six interests in total, twoprimary interests (sensory and social) and four secondary interests which she termed: intellectual, technological, aesthetic and empathetic (encompassing for example spirituality and religion). She argues that, while these interests are presentin all cultures, these cultures are dominated by a single secondary interest, the United States and West in general being characterised by a technological interest. ‘Interest in control over environment we shall call technological. Such interest in control of environment exists wherever invention of science is applied in life’ (1938, p.20).

Planned Expenditure and Human Welfare

In discussing planned expenditure Hoyt emphasises the influences of purchasing power, time and energy on consumption. Her view that knowledge of choices is vital not only in knowing what the market has to offer (goods and services) but in their use and appreciation:

‘These three factors of purchasing power, time and energy…must be applied under a human direction. This human direction, which in production is called entrepreneurship,

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or management, in consumption is capacity to exercise selection of interests, or choice-making. The broader the basis of choice-making the more effective the use of all the factors may be. Under the capacity to exercise selection or choice-making two things are included…first, the native intelligence and inborn interests of the person; second, his acquitted knowledge of possibilities of choice.’ (Hoyt, 1938, p.14)

Hoyt’s view of the democratising function of consumption choice is clear in the following abstract where she considers the role of social approval and emulation in driving consumption. Seeing emulation (Veblen, 1899) as a potentially negative force, she concludes:

‘Social approval is sought partly for its own sake and partly because of the absence of anything else to seek. We

i [An appendix in Bartels’ (1941) dissertation Marketing Literature Development and Appraisal contains brief reference to 40 scholars (38 male, 2 female); in Bartels’ (1988) History of Marketing Thought he identifies Pioneers of Marketing Thought (18, all male) and Contributors to Marketing Thought (22, all male); Converse’s (1959) The Beginning of Marketing Thought in the United States refers to The Pioneer Scholars (20, all male); the Journal of Marketing’s Pioneers in Marketing series which ran from 1956-1960 (21, all male); The Journal of Marketing’s Leaders in Marketing series which ran from 1962-1974 (47 male, 1 female); Wright and Dimsdale’s (1974) Pioneers in Marketing (6 all male)., see Jones, (2012: 16-18) for more detail].

ii [The Seven Sisters, all founded between 1837 and 1889 in Northeastern UnitedStates include: the Harvard Annex (which later became Radcliffe College), Smith College, Wellesley College, Vassar College, Mount Holyoke College, Bryn Mawr and Barnard College]. iii [The Coalition is an American association of women’s college set up in 1972with the aim of promoting women’s colleges. Its current mission is as follows:The Women’s College Coalition, in concert with its members, transforms the world through the education and success of women and girls. http://womenscolleges.org/about/wcc]

iv [For biographies of Kyrk see Kiss and Beller (2000) and van Velzen, (2003), and for Reid see Yi (1996)].v [Seemingly it would be a while before any further PhDs were awarded to womenat Iowa State, in her study of the period 1900-1940 Madden (2002) found only 1PhD awarded to a woman there].

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do not know what to do so we follow the crowd. The remedy for our difficulty is to know how great a range of choice we really have and what are the consequences that follow such a choice. The more we learn of the possibilities in choice-making, the less we need to be limited by social approval as a guide’ (1938, p.54).

One key means of learning about the possibilities of choice-making, she argues later on in the book, is through the observation and study of the consumption practices of others. Hoyt presumably arrived at this viewpoint through her study of standard of living across a range of cultures. She advocates: ‘full knowledge of the practices of other people, in order to have a wide range of choice for one’s conventions. The study of standards of living itself furnishes this basis of knowledge’ (1938, p.383). Indeed, she was often very critical of American consumerism in the 1920s and 30s and felt a strong urge to educate the American consumer in better and more efficient modes of spending. One of her targets for poor money management was theurge towards emulation that came with increasing American prosperity. As she observes in a short piece for the Ladies Home Journal in 1930: ‘Millions and millions of dollars every year go out for fads which lose their attraction overnight. A large part of our income is spent in emulative copying of other people stillmore foolish than ourselves’ (Hoyt, 1930, p.113)

In the penultimate chapter of Consumption in Our Society Hoyt returns to the issues of choice coupled with the planned expenditure of economic resources in the household in order to maximise satisfaction. She employs the cultural interests discussed earlier in the book (intellectual, technological, aesthetic and empathetic) exploring in the case of each one examples through which they ‘may be achieved through the family’splanning’ (1938, p.387). For example, in referring to the cultivation of empathetic interest, Hoyt mentions the economic dimensions of love:

‘The capacity of love itself can be cultivated by economicmeans. Though love acts in us often so spontaneously that we do not think of its costs, it, of all things, demands most from our limited resources of energy. It is a common

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observation that one comes to love that for which one sacrifices. Gifts to peace foundations, Negro schools, animal-rescue leagues and various humanitarian projects and time given to them enlarge the sympathies whether one is aware of it or not’ (1938, p.389).

In closing, Hoyt returns to her expanded view of consumption as involving time, energy and money. This may not appear very revolutionary to us today, but in Hoyt’s time consumption had largely been seen solely as an economic imperative, and an end point of production, especially by economists. She once again returns to the potential for consumption (in this case the planning of expenditure) in directing future desires and therebyacting as a driver of productive activity. She also views the careful and planned use of resources as key to household welfare:

‘One buys the quality of one’s life with one’s time, energy and money. Economic awareness and economic planningare the most concrete and practical ways to set about the attainment of what one most desires…We have usually thought of budgeting and economic planning by consumers too narrowly in terms of money. Time and energy are equally important and the cultivation of new kinds of interest to direct their expenditures of the other factorsof consumption. By planning we can not only obtain what wemost desire but come to desire what is now beyond our power of appreciation’. (1938, p.390).

Hoyt’s conception of consumption might be seen as rather neoliberal in tone, her view of consumption behaviours as driversof future consumption activity being a case in point. However, her concern with the distribution of resources in the service of consumer welfare certainly highlights her as having macromarketing sensibilities. Hoyt was certainly focused on the possibilities for social change through consumption, at both the level of the local household and the wider global level. Her interest in the careful use of resources also marks her out as anethicist, while she does not directly deal with the moral or environmental consequences of consumption, her focus on ‘economic

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awareness and economic planning’ betray a concern for the future use of resources.

Conclusion

In reflecting on the influence of books on his past career, Hollander observes that in the early 1950s his teachers Edmund McGarry and Reavis Cox ‘made sure that we were aware of the consumer-oriented literature produced by some of the female pioneer writers on marketing’ (1998, p.115) citing Hoyt as one such pioneer. Jones and Shaw (2002, p.55) also make reference to the significant early contribution of home economists, including Hoyt, to early conceptualisations of the consumer. However, they observe that this interest in the consumer faded as marketing grew apart from economics. The work of Hoyt and her colleagues did not really emerge in the marketing sphere until the 1970s when marketers returned to the household as the unit of analysis (Grashof and Dixon, 1980). Grashof and Dixon’s ‘General Model of Household Production’ includes a series of factors identified much earlier by Hoyt in her expanded theory of consumption (1928)including income skill and time. However Grashof and Dixon cite Becker’s (1965) ‘Theory of the Allocation of Time’ as inspiration. Elsewhere, in discussing the nature of consumer sovereignty, Dixon does refer back to Hoyt’s work (Dixon 1992).

Indeed, it seems that many of the ideas promoted by Becker in the 1960s as the ‘new household economics’ for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1992 had their seeds in the work of Hoyt, Kyrk and Reid. Becker worked alongside Kyrk, and latterly Reid at Chicago. This association with Chicago may be why Kyrk and Reid are more often cited in association with the ‘new home economics’ than Hoyt, who is sometimes missed out of accounts altogether (see for example Kaufman-Scarborough, 2009). It was a critical mass of female scholars in the 1960s at Columbia and Chicago that really pushed ahead work on the new household economy (Grossbard-Schechtman, 2001). However, broadly speaking, none of these women have received the recognition they deserve. As McCloskey (1996, p.2) observes ‘The “new” household economics of Gary Becker and his mainly male followers, for which Becker won the vaunted prize, was pioneered 50 years before by Elizabeth

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Hoyt, Hazel Kyrk, and Margaret Reid, who figure hardly at all in Becker’s footnotes’.

On a personal level, Hoyt’s determination in pursuing her project of social change is obvious. In an era where very few women made it to professor status, Hoyt is an example of resolve and strength of mind. She died at Glen Eden Beach, Oregon on 22 November, 1980, aged 87. A newspaper article published after her death entitled ‘A professor’s surprising gift of love’ (Des Moines Register, 1982) discusses Hoyt’s legacy to Iowa State University of $800,000 to support international programmes and scholarships forinternational students in need (Thorne, 2000). ISU found the giftsurprising because of the financially frugal and disciplined way in which she lived her life but also her struggle to demonstrate love to others during her lifetime. In an interview with a local newspaper at age 87 she observed that she would have liked to have had children (Des Moines Register, Sept 1980). Her role in mentoring future female scholars was very important to her and, while difficult to quantify, the reference to her by one of her PhD students as having ‘a great influence on me because she caredabout values’ (Thorne, 2002, p.28) is likely to be indicative of the wider influence she had on subsequent generations of female scholars. In a memorial tribute in the Plaza of Heroinesvi at IowaState University Hoyt is described as having ‘lived her ideals ofscholarship and made classic contributions to the literature of social and economic development.’

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Becker, G (1965), “A Theory of the Allocation of Time”, The Economic Journal, 75, 493-517.

vi [The Plaza of Heroines contains engraved bricks each inscribed with the nameof women who inspired donors to the Plaza and Catt Hall (Iowa campus structures). The Plaza has an accompanying website which details short memorials of these women http://www.las.iastate.edu/plaza/].

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Craig, H. T, and Stover, B. M. (1945), The History of Home Economics, Practical Home Economics.

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______ (1982), A Professor’s Surprising Gift of Love, Oct 4th, 1982. RS 13/9/51, box 1, folder 1, Iowa State University Archives, Ames, Iowa.

______ (2009), Guest Column: Measure Price Index Differently for Social Security Recipients, Dudley Luckett, Sept 19, 2009, RS 13/9/51, box 1, folder 1, Iowa State University Archives, Ames, Iowa.

Dixon, D.F. (1992), “Consumer Sovereignty, Democracy, and the Marketing Concept: A Macromarketing Perspective”, Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences, Vol.9, No.2, pp.116-125.

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Ewen, S (2001) [1977], Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture, McGraw-Hill, New York.

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Grossbard-Schechtman, S (2001), “The New Home Economics at Columbia and Chicago”, Feminist Economics, Vol.7, No.3, pp.103-130.

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______. (1930), “Prosperity and the Good Life”, Ladies’ Home Journal,April 1930, p113, RS 13/9/51, box 10, folder 2, Iowa State University Archives, Ames, Iowa.

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______ (1965), “Choice as an Interdisciplinary Area”, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol.79, No.1, pp.106-112.

______ (1969), Choice and the Destiny of Nations, New York: Philosophical Library.

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Table 1Minimum Food Budget for a Week for a Man, Wife and Three ChildrenUnder Fourteen Years of Age, Fall River, Massachusetts, October, 1919

Item and amountCost

October1919

Item and amountCostOctober 1919

Meat and Fish2 lbs. flank2 lbs. chunk½ lb. bacon1 lb. dried cod1 can salmon

Dairy Products1 doz. Eggs1 lb. butter½ lb. oleomargarine or lard1 lb. cheese14 qts. milk

Vegetables1½ pks. Potatoes3 lbs. carrots2 lbs. onions3 lbs. cabbage2 lbs. dried beans1 can tomatoes

$ .32 .40 .21 .20 .27

.61 .66 .18 .41 2.10

.77 .12 .13 .14 .23 .15

Fruit3 qts. apples3 oranges4 bananas½ lb. raisins1 lb. prunes

Bread, Cereals, etc.12 lbs. bread2 lbs. flour1 lb. corn meal1 lb. rice1 lb. macaroni3 lbs. rolled oats3 lbs. sugar1 pt. molasses

Tea, Coffee, etc.¼ lb. tea½ lb. coffee½ lb. cocoaCondiments

Total weekly cost

$ .27 .12 .15 .12 .24

1.28 .16 .07 .16 .16 .21 .33 .12

.15 .23

24

.22 .11______$11.00

Source: adapted from The Cost of Living in the United States, 1914-1925, NewYork: National Industrial Conference Board

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Appendix 1

Publications and Citations in the Journal of Marketing (first issue 1936)

Book Reviews:Consumption in Our Society (1938), July 1939Consumption in Our Society (1938), April 1940American Income and its Use, (1954) July 1954

‘Research in Marketing’ Abstracts (all of these abstracts appeared under the ‘Marketing Theory’ heading):The Place of Gestalt Theory in the Dynamics of Demand, The American

Journal of Economics and Sociology, Oct 1944 (Apr 1945)Want Development in Undeveloped Areas, Journal of Political Economy,

June 1951 (Jan 1951)Impact of a Money Economy on Consumption Patterns, Annals of the

American Academy of Political and Social Science, May 1956 (Oct 1956)Choice as an Interdisciplinary Area, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Feb

1965 (July 1965)

Citations in General Articles:Consumption of Wealth (1928) cited in Consumer Movements and

Business, Louis Bader and J.P. Wernette, July 1938Consumption of Wealth (1928) cited in The Development of the Field of

Consumption, Hazel Kyrk, July 1939Hoyt’s consumption economics course at Iowa State cited in

Considerations in Developing a General Course in Consumption,Mary Jean Bowman, July 1939

Consumption in Our Society (1938) cited in Consumption Level; Consumption Standard; Plane of Living; Standard of Living, Joseph S. Davis, Oct 1941.

Consumption in Our Society (1938) cited in Concepts of Plane, Standard, Level and Satisfaction of Consumption and of Living, Adolf Kozlik, Jul 1944

Primitive Trade (1926) cited in Notions About the Origins of Trading,George W. Robbins, Jan 1947

Consumption of Wealth (1928) cited in Lost in the Library, Stanley C. Hollander, Jan 1998

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Citations in Book Reviews:Consumption in Our Society (1938) cited in Consumer Economics by James

N. Morgan, Jan 1956General reference to Hoyt’s work cited in Consumption Economics: A Multidisciplinary Approach by Marguerite C Burk, Jan 1969.

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