During World War II, a time when most manufacturing was
concentrated on the war effort and Americans were living with
ration books and scrap metal drives, advertising became a very
strange thing. Companies wanted to make people aware they still
existed, even though they weren't currently offering much for
sale and unnecessary consumption was being discouraged. More
importantly, the companies wanted Americans to associate their
brand name with the promise of life after the War. So, what you
got, were a lot of advertisements touting what this or that
company was going to do just as soon as the Germans and Japanese
were defeated. The image above comes from a 1944 advertisement
by the Association of American Railroads. That room is actually
the lounge car on a train — or, rather, the hypothetical lounge
car on an imaginary train that might be built after the War is
over (provided the development of air travel and the
construction of the interstate highway system don't doom the
train industry to a slow decline). B