Equality came to mean equal access to consumer goods rather than equal access to the means of production, and consumers were counselled that they could share the lifestyle of the aristocracy by buying the right toothpaste, breakfast cereal, or automobile. Commercial artwork of the time reinforced this. In his drawings Maxfield Parrish used figures and tales like Cleopatra, the Rubaiyat and the Arabian Nights to sell American manufactured goods. The net effects of mass production, new centers of consumption and new methods of advertising were uniformity and the creation of consumer demand. According to Leach, these 'brokers' included corporate heads, government officials, bankers, real estate brokers, advertisers, journalists, religious leaders, artists, writers, and museum professionals.
Leach notes that American consumerism has been supported by higher education.
Schools like Harvard offered MBAs well before European universities. This figure was triple the 1920 enrollment. The United States government lent its support to consumerism through many ventures, including its financial support of World Expositions and World's Fairs. In 1939, President Roosevelt officially declared that henceforth Thanksgiving would take place on the fourth Thursday of November in response to retailer's concerns about the length of the holiday shopping season. Despite the protests of local, rural merchants, the government lent support to mail-order companies through its expansion of the postal service's rural free delivery in the early decades of this century.