During the New Reform Era Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected president in 1952. During Eisenhower’s presidency, prosperity administered yet there were still issues that needed intervention. To list a few of the areas inn which needed improvement was a the fear during this era that was the soviets would take hand of the atomic bomb and use it to make threat of peace of the world. Followed by the fear of the atomic bomb, came “backlash” against the Social Security Acts and a new Red scare worsened by the conflict with Korea. “Finally, there was an increasing ideological frustration that the promises of equality of the 1930’s and 1940’s were still unfulfilled in the fifties” (Day & Schiele, 20013, pg. 297).
By 1950, the gross national product rose to 286.5 billion and 400 billion by 1960. In early 1960’s unemployment reached 4.5 % and rose to nearly 7% by 1958, then dropped to 5.7% in the following decade. In the 1960’s, 20% of the population was below the poverty line. City jobs worsened as the farm population moved to the urban areas. African Americans moved to the cities, by the 1950’s 64% of the US population was urban. The patterns of family life were altered with the population changes. “New middle-class families moved to the suburbs, leaving inner cities with a poor and increasingly African-American population”(Day & Schiele, 20013, pg. 299). Consumerism boomed, age of marriage lowered, women were dropping out of college to marry.
The community relationships of family and friends broke, a separation of poor from wealthy, white from nonwhite flourished. Young white