Measuring the Narrative of “It’s a Wonderful Life” against more Traditional Historical Evidence
It’s a Wonderful Life assumes that the desire to own a home is “deep within” most people because it anchors them in a positive way to the world immediately around them, and thus secured, they become more confident and more caring people toward those who are their neighbors in sharing the status of home ownership.
When we look at home ownership data for the United States, we find that nearly two thirds of Americans own their home, and that this figure has been remarkably stable for the last fifty years. Stepping back and looking at the longer trend line, we find that the number of Americans who owned their homes didn’t go above 50% until the year 1950. How can we combine traditional historical sources with what we are told in It’s a Wonderful Life to understand why this situation changed: Did American capitalism become more democratic over time?
Before the New Deal , the federal government did not provide any assistance to either borrowers or lenders. That earlier economy simply did not have the institutional capacity to support credit arrangements that could stretch far enough into the future to make homeownership available to the vast majority of wage-earning Americans. Indeed, Soule found that “while the poor did not grow poorer, the rich grew richer more rapidly than the poor did” (Soule 317).
Thus, even in comparatively prosperous times (and even with the assistance of a building and loan), financing a home remained a daunting challenge. A building and loan association could help the aspiring homeowner in two ways: by offering a higher interest rate on the account in which the nest egg was accumulating; and, secondly, by offering to finance as much as two-thirds of a first mortgage over twelve years. Even under these terms, homeownership still remained generally restricted to those in the upper middle class and above. Indeed, it was the utilization of building and loan associations by these Americans that most accounted for the associations’ exponential growth in the 1920s (Halbert 15, 24–25, 27–30; Mason 57–58).
If the blueprint of capitalism presented by the building and loan industry was elusive yet attainable to white immigrants, there is a fact that is utterly absent from It’s a Wonderful Life: this model of democratic capitalism in the United States was generally reserved for whites only.
Questions for Discussion and Reflection
- What were the major barriers to owning a home in the early twentieth century and how did building and loans associations help make that process accessible to working families?
- How, according to George and Peter Bailey, is home ownership a positive moral value? Are they right? Does this mean that renting your home is “wrong”?
Teacher’s Guide
Content Standard
- USH 4 (e): Describe the booming economy based upon access to easy credit through installment buying of appliances and inventions of modern conveniences including the automobile.
- USH 4.2 (a): Identify causes contributing to an unstable economy including the overproduction of agriculture products, greater speculation and buying on margin in the Stock Market, and the government’s pro-business and laissez-faire policies.
Compelling Question #2: What did it take to own a home in George Bailey’s America (1907-1941)?
This chapter places the Building and Loan movement within the context of the expanding economy that preceded the 1920s, which led to an increase in home ownership. It also considers barriers to broader participation in later years.
