It really began in the Progressive Era, late 1800's to early 1900's. Before this was known as the 'Weak State' era, where the government didn't take any real control over the commerce. However, in this time corporations began to form, producing at an increasingly high rate. The corporations began to form monopolies, which frightened the American people into creating many reforms to prevent the corporations from gaining and holding too much power, as well as corruption. It was this time period that social classes also began to form, separating the wealthy from the non-wealthy. This, combined with cheap products from the corporations who could no longer charge however much they wanted on their products, created the first real consumer-product era, which didn't even really define themselves as that until much later on.