The 1920s
and
“A disillusioned nation fed on cheap heroics and scandal and
crime was revolting against the low estimate of human nature which
it had allowed itself to entertain. For years the American people
had been spiritually starved. They had seen their early ideals and
illusions and hopes one by one worn away by the corrosive
influence of events and ideas- by the disappointing aftermath of
the war, by scientific doctrines and psychological theories which
undermined their religion and ridiculed their sentimental notions,
by the spectacle of graft in politics and crime on the city streets,
and finally by their recent newspaper diet of smut and murder.
Romance, chivalry and self-dedication had been debunked; the
heroes of history had been shown to have feet of clay, and the
saints of history had been revealed as people with queer
complexes. ”
Frederick Allen, Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the
1920s (1930)
Act One
The Roaring
‘20s
“There was music from a neighbour’s house
through the summer nights… men and girls
came and went …among the champagne and
the stars …On weekends his Rolls Royce
became an omnibus, bearing parties to and
from the city between nine in the morning and
long past midnight…On buffet tables,
garnished with glistening hors-d’oeuvres,
spice baked hams crowded against salads of
harlequin designs… in the main hall a bar was
set up and stocked with gins and liquors and
with cordial..”
- The Great Gatsby
The Opening Act
https://youtu.be/YQi59p-2npA
“Here was a new generation … grown up to
find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths
in man shaken” – F. Scott Fitzgerald This
Side of Paradise
 Loss of innocence (WWI)
 General prosperity
 Sense of endless
improvement
Mass Communication
“It was now possible in the United States for more
people to enjoy the same good show at the same time
than in any other land on earth or at any previous time in
history. Mass production was not confined to
automobiles; there was mass production in news and ideas
as well. For the system of easy nation-wide
communication which had long since made the literate and
prosperous American people a nation of faddists was
rapidly becoming more widely extended, more centralized,
and more effective than ever before.”
Frederick Allen, Only Yesterday: An Informal History
of the 1920s (1930)
New Technologies
 Wide scale electricity – by 1928 over 70% of
factory equipment was driven by electricity.
 Over 2/3s of families in town and cities had
electricity in their homes
 Consumers in the 1920s purchased some 15
million electric irons and 7 million vacuum
cleaners.
 Growth of new technologies in the 1920s
…Such as … The Car!
 By the 1920s the Ford plant was
churning out one car every minute
 By 1930
there was one
car on the
road for ever
five
Americans
Consumer Culture
 Growth in consumer culture,
and leisure time
 Massive growth in related
fields such as advertising
Women’s Rights!
• Women’s suffrage 19th amendment
– passed in 1920.
• Belief that this would usher in a new
era of social policies, and that
politics would change forever…
The Flapper
“(…) the New Woman of the 1920s boldly
asserted her right to dance, drink, smoke, and
date—to work her own property, to live free of
the strictures that governed her mother’s
generation. (…) She flouted Victorian-era
conventions and scandalized her parents. In
many ways, she controlled her own destiny.”
― Joshua Zeitz Flapper: A Madcap Story of
Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who
Made America Modern
Prohibition





Had been a serious issue since 1840s.
18th Amendment, January 1919
Volstead Act, October 1919
Triumph for conservatism?
Widespread resistance – fuelled
gangster culture, lawlessness,
corruption.
Al Capone
 Vast operation
controlling speakeasies,
bookies, gambling
houses, brothels, horse
tracks, nightclubs,
distilleries.
 Estimated annual
income of $100,000,000
in the years 1925-30
In sum…
• An era of flux and change
• Challenges to established roles
and boundaries.
• Emergence of a new American
identity – urban, glamorous
modern..
Act Two
The Myth of the
‘Roaring ‘20s’
 Easy to view as the ‘roaring’ decade,
bookended as they were by WW1 and
the Great Depression.
 Challenges to myth of the roaring
twenties:
 F Scott Fitzgerald, admitted in 1931
that the ‘roaring twenties’ were only
true for the upper tenth’ of the nation
 Importance of growth of media in this
period. Historians may over rely on
these sources to produce an inaccurate
account of a nation obsessed by
consumer products and ‘silliness’
 Popularity of roaring 20s in popular
culture – ‘The Untouchables’ (1958)
audience figures of 30 million.
Rural America
 “The vast obscurity beyond the city” –F. Scott
Fitzgerald
 44% of American’s lived in rural areas; More than 1 in
5 working Americans worked on the land; Most had
no indoor plumbing and almost none had electricity
 The farming economy was in trouble before the
Depression: 1920s saw plummeting prices and high
unemployment: 82,000 Mexican workers deported
from rural Southwest, and a further 500,000 left to
avoid deportation
Political Repression
 Often went hand in hand with anxieties about
immigration
 Sacco and Vanzetti – Italian immigrants
convicted of murdering two men during an armed
raid on a bank in 1920- Executed in August
1927
 Sacco and Vanzetti were anarchists – trial was
suspect - In 1925 Celestino Madeiros
confessed to the murders.
 Became an international cause célèbre
Race
 ‘Red Summer’ 1919 – race riots across
USA in cities such as Washington DC,
Chicago.
 Relationships to WW1 Du Bois:
“We return.
We return from fighting.
We return fighting.”
Growth of the KKK
 Re-launched in 1919 by William J Simmons, inspired by
the 1915 film ‘Birth of a Nation’ Meeting on Stone
Mountain in Georgia.
 Between 1920 and 1924 grew from an estimated 5,000
member to an estimated 5 million members
 Aimed to protect white Anglo-Saxon culture from
‘outside’ threats – African-Americans, Jews, Catholics.
 Staunch supporters of prohibition.
 Not a southern-based movement – Southern
membership an estimated 16% - 40% of members lived in
Indiana, Ohio and Illinois
“the average white protestant was under
attack: his values and traditions were
being undermined; his vision of America’s
national purpose and social order
appeared threatened and his ability to
shape the course of public affairs seemed
to have been diminished” - (Leonard
Moore)
Religion
 Scopes Monkey Trial
 Clarence Darrow defended John
Thomas Scopes against charges of
teaching evolutionary theory in
Tennessee Public schools, in defiance
of the Butler Act
 Scope was found guilty and fined $100
End of the 1920s
 Economically unstable
 Rise of advertising fuelled consumer demand
 Advent of hire purchase/credit - 80% of all
cars were bought on credit
 ‘Old’ American industry ailing – collapse of
the coal industry, decline of the railways.
 Agriculture in trouble – 1919 to 1929 farm
income dropped by 30% - farming community
in chronic debt.
…leads to The Crash…
The Final Scene
https://youtu.be/oa5bRR8EHt8
Fin