Co Insuming Interest
The Organisation Man
By LESLIE ADRIAN COUPLE of weeks ago it was The Hidden A, LPerstraders: this week it is The Organisation wta , '1 that has me worried. There would be much less to fear from concealed advertising—of which mere a moment—if the consumer was not in process of making himself, inexorably, into a Grade A sucker; and if you want to see how he wh.s doing it, just take a look at William H. Yte's book, now published over here by Jonathan Cape (25s.). The organisation men Mr. Whyte is consider-
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b are the members of the American middle classes 'who have left home, spiritually as well as physically, to take the vows of organisation life They are—much as they would resent the "rd—collectivised. They think collectively. they talk collectively. And—which is what con- cerns buy here—they buy collectively. The more olly collectively, the greater is the oppor- tunity they give to the manufacturer to channel their spending habits in the direction not of the greatest consumer benefit, but of the greatest Producer profit. Consider the aims, as set out by 'motivation researcher' Dr. Ernest Dichter, whom 1 have mentioned before : WO are now confronted with the problem of Permitting the average American to feel moral even when he is flirting, even when he is spend- ing, even when he is not saving, even when he is taking two vacations a year and buying a second third car. One of the basic problems of this prosperity, then, is to give people the sanction and justification to enjoy it and to demonstrate that the hedonistic approach to his life is a moral, not an immoral one. As Mr. Whyte points out, this means that while the average American is constantly being told, and telling himself, that he personifies the cardinal virtue of thrift, he is in fact being con- ditioned to accept a state of affairs when thrift is the cardinal sin. In America, it is probably true to say that if the community suddenly began to be thrifty, in the accepted sense of the word, the economy would collapse. Now, the tendency of advertising is to intro- duce conformity. Other things being equal, we can expect to find goods here becoming more standardised. Cars are an obvious example; as the advantages of economy in production costs to the seller gradually outweigh the advantages of choice to the buyer, fewer and fewer models appear annually. And when this process begins to reach down to everyday consumer goods, then it may become a danger.
The difficulty between culty is to distinguish beeen the bad and the beneficial. Consider, say, the case of pre-packed frozen vegetables. In my experience, they are iNevery respect better than the miscalled 'fresh' vegetables you can get at a grocer's. How n they compare nutritionally I do not know, but a great deal of nonsense is talked about nutrition : all of us normally get far more of the essential vitamins than we need. What counts is palatability and convenience; and here the frozen foods win hands down. with That is why I am unimpressed by the argu- ments th which some correspondents have up- braided me for extolling the merits of super- markets. From New York, for example, Mr. Francis Schwarzenherger writes to me : Your generally favourable view of self-service grocery shopping and pre-packaged foods shows a lack of knowledge of the drawbacks tosuch methods, as shown all too well here in this country, which included continuing rises in the processing costs of foods far beyond their actual costs, more processing than is required for economy, tastefulness or health, and the loss of personal service and attention. `Personal service and attention' is laughable here; those of us who have to cram our shopping into times when everybody else is trying to shop too know it is far pleasanter to wander round a supermarket making personal selections and in- quiring only when in doubt. And the prices are on balance lower than in ordinary grocers' shops. So they should be, with labour costs cut. Nor can I agree with the same correspondent's objec- tion to 'the dull sameness of pre-packed, pre-cooked, pre- tinted, pre-mixed, pre-aged and pre-preserved foods.' 'Sameness' is never dull if by the term is meant con- sistency of quality; we drink pre-packed tea, after all, and eat pre-packed marmalade, without worrying that the packet and the jar always look the same. But what is worrying, is the end result. My own experience, limited though it iS, has been ample to confirm the' common criticism of American food as depressingly tasteless. I can only assume that when one gets things too easily— when one does not have to shove around in queues (or get drenched hanging around Soho stalls)—the appetite is dulled; and with it the capacity to notice whether food tastes or not. Or is there some other explanation?
Barbara Worsley-Gough's second weekend recipe is : GNOCCHI Rossi This is a heartening hot supper dish for a rainy summer' aturday, cooked in advance and need- ingonlyto be heated in an oven. I make my gnocchi with a pint of milk, simmered with four ounces of butter and some celery salt, black pepper and a pinch of nutmeg, and when it boils and the butter is melted I stir in four ounces of semolina very carefully, stirring until there are no lumps and the stuff comes away from the pan. I put it in big spoonfuls in a buttered ovenproof dish, and fill up the chinks with a dozen rashers of thin streaky bacon that I have rolled up and grilled. I use the bacon fat to cook two minced onions and four chopped tomatoes (skinned) in an uncovered pan until they are a thick purée, and pour this over the gnocchi, and sprinkle two ounces of grated cheese over it when it is cold. The dish is reheated, uncovered, in a fairly hot oven until the cheese bubbles.
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