"[In early-20th-century America,] [p]opular notions of abundance were moving away from their origins in the rhythm of agrarian life and bodily existence. It was not simply that farmers were displaced from the land but that, in the scientifically managed workplace, factory and office employees were increasingly cut off from the vernacular artisanal traditions that linked brain and hand in "local knowledge." What was obscured was any sense that abundance could be the result of patient cooperation between the human mind and the material world. In a disembodied discourse of abundance, enjoyment of the fruits of one's labors became less important than the pursuit of disposable goods."
(Jackson Lears, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America, 117)