Excerpt from Herbert Hoover’s American Individualism (1922)
No doubt, individualism run riot, with no tempering principle, would provide a long category of inequalities, of tyrannies, dominations, and injustices. America, however, has tempered the whole conception of individualism by the injection of a definite principle, and from this principle it follows that attempts at domination, whether in government or in the processes of industry and commerce, are under an insistent curb. If we would have the values of individualism, their stimulation to initiative, to the development of hand and intellect, to the high development of thought and spirituality, they must be tempered with that firm and fixed ideal of American individualism—an equality of opportunity.
. . .
That high and increasing standards of living and comfort should be the first of considerations in public mind and in government needs no apology. We have long since realized that the basis of an advancing civilization must be a high and growing standard of living for all the people, not for a single class; that education, food, clothing, housing, and the spreading use of what we so often term non-essentials, are the real fertilizers of the soil from which spring the finer flowers of life. The economic development of the past fifty years has lifted the general standard of comfort far beyond the dreams of our forefathers. The only road to further advance in the standard of living is by greater invention, greater elimination of waste, greater production and better distribution of commodities and services, for by increasing their ratio to our numbers and dividing them justly we each will have more of them.
Use the excerpt to answer the question.
How is the rise of consumerism as part of the 1920s American economic system apparent in the excerpt from Hoover?
A.
He mentions how rapidly the quality of life has gone up for most Americans.
B.
He links consumer choice with the unique personality of each individual.
C.
Hoover invokes the individual right to engage in commerce and consumerism.
D.
Hoover credits American individualism with the advent of the radio and automobile.
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