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Bryan McDonald, Emily E. LB. Twarog. Politics of the Pantry: Housewives, Food, and Consumer Protest in Twentieth-Century America., The American Historical Review, Volume 123, Issue 5, December 2018, Pages 1688–1689, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhy289
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During the twentieth century, Americans concerned about the high cost of living repeatedly focused on high food prices, particularly those for meat. The rise of meatpacking and transportation networks in the late nineteenth century made beef a staple in many working- and middle-class American households and a symbol for those families of success, masculinity, and prosperity. Once meat had been integrated into their daily diets, its price then became a key indicator of cost of living. When meat prices rose, Americans voiced their discontent through boycotts in 1902, 1935, and throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
Yet the stories historians have told of these boycotts as an example of the nascent consumer movement or evidence of changing American diets are incomplete, not taking into account that the protests were organized and executed by women—specifically, housewives—who are rarely considered as participants in communal labor actions. Emily E. LB. Twarog’s Politics of the Pantry corrects this oversight, showing how American housewives used meat boycotts and other forms of consumer protest to develop political identities and expand their spheres of activity beyond the home. This fluidly written book uses the home as a lens into collective actions more typically examined in the workplace. Twarog argues that for the middle-class white housewives who form the basis of her study, consumer protest provided a path out of the domestic and into the political sphere.
