Generational Conflict in the 1920’s
To investigate the perceived moral and spiritual revolution underway during the
“Roaring 20’s” among America’s youth the editors of Literary Digest, a prominent
magazine of the period, questioned dozens of educators, religious leaders, and college
newspaper editors in 1922. The results were published as part of an article entitled
“The Case Against the Younger Generation” and included these comments:
… There is little or no respect for parents and superiors in many of our homes, schools and
churches. There is an ominous absence of reverence for things sacred, of noble ambition
and earnest moral purpose, and a bold and brazen defiance of decency and modesty in dress
and speech and conduct. Woman paint and powder their faces to excess, they drink and
smoke in public, and become easy prey to a certain class of well-groomed but slick highlivers whose chief business is to pluck the blush of innocence from the cheek of maidenhood
and put a blister there. Pleasure, laziness and love of luxury have become epidemic among
the younger generation. The vast multitudes seem to have banished all noble idealism and
usefulness, and refuse to take life seriously.
There is a great deal of frank talk among them that in many cases smacks of
rudeness and boldness. One hears it said that the girls are actually pursuing the boys more
than the boys do the girls in their dress and conversation. Not all the girls (or boys) are bad,
but immorality is more open and defiance of public opinion and lack of restraint is prevalent
more than was once the case. The situation causes grave concern on the part of all who
believe in the ideals of purity, the home life and the stability of our American civilization…
…One outstanding change among the young set of today is their reckless pursuit of
pleasure. Dancing has become far more popular-and far less respectable. Jazz music
illustrates a distinctly lower level in the spirit and conduct. Even the best in society are
allowing their baser natures to dominate in the ballroom…
…Restlessness is another marked tendency of today. Most of the young people are
drifting about or waiting to change without adequate direction. There is dissatisfaction in
practical or useful courses in schools, there is a less serious attitude on the student’s part
according to professors, and an increasing number doing just enough to get by…
…The riotous torrent of immorality sweeps onward more relentlessly than ever.
And the most appalling menace of this downward trend is the callousness of the popular
mind to it. The youth of today sleep imperiled over the pit of moral chaos! Jazz is more
reckless, the cinema more obscene, the dances more daring, and the manners more loose
each year. More girls are smoking cigarettes and aspiring to be vamps and flappers.
…Also, we fear a subtle carelessness that is slowly creeping into human
relationships that seems to be gnawing at the very foundations of the home in this country.
We have glorified personal liberties and individual rights to the point that they are
beginning to produce a lack of self control and total irresponsibility in the matters of moral
obligation to society. A favorite expression of the youth today is, “Public opinion and
responsibility be damned!” Young people have never been more reckless and society will
pay the price.
The following week, Literary Digest published the second part of its series entitled “In
Favor of the Young Folks.” These were some excerpts:
Young people today are just as home loving and just as moral as their parents were but they simply object to abiding by the superficial conventionalities under which their
parents labored. The conversation of the average young couple today would be shocking
perhaps to their grandparents, but if so it is because the grandparents of the current
generation would have been much better off if they had been shocked a little more
frequently. False modesty is passing and it is a good thing…
…Our difficulty, it seems, is in no small part due to the ease with which the older
generation remembers themselves as they really were not. At heart we believe the youth of
today are sound. Their overflowing spirit for life expresses itself in a little different way than
in the past, but it is the same kind of spirit which is the possession of youth in all times.
Young people are subject to excesses; but no more today than yesterday…
…At present, young people are being attacked because of social standards. The
attack is unwarranted. Students do no set the social standards. They inherit these just as they
are heir to the academic curriculum. No student invented jazz…no student wrote the current
vulgar obscene songs; no student photographed the immoral film and no student created the
coarse fashions for men and women. All these are the gracious gifts of our commercialized
society…
…If society in general had as high ideals as the average high school or college
DIREDTIONS: Summarize main
arguments in your own words below.
student, it would be a different world tomorrow. For the most part, the greatest fault of
youth today is bad taste. Student government associations, fraternity and social groups are
all struggling to maintain high ideals of social life, but the greater society makes their task
doubly hard. In the past, young people had been trained to have reverence for the judgments
of maturity. Today, when youth follows the leadership of his elders, they see the mistakes
and corruptions common in our current political leaders…
…The young people today have not undergone any revolution in character, but
simply moved into a new era of freedom in manners and dress. The same changes can be
observed in literature, music and art. The new realism or candor or whatever one may call it
is appalling to many elderly people who have forgotten the…excess of their own childhood.
…No drinking customs of the present day can be as bad as those of a half century
ago when every college or church furnished rum at the dedication of a new building or the
ordination of a new minister. The sanctuaries in which many worship each Sunday were
built in part by the proceeds of a lottery or liquor sales. Have the “praisers of the past”
forgotten the immodesty of the hoop skirt or the unhygienic immoral kissing games which
once were practiced at every church “social” or the college drinking songs which now have
been replaced by songs of athletic prowess?
…Good manners fifty years ago largely consisted in skillful concealment of
feelings, motives, and the entire self. The shift from concealment to candor [openness] has
its dangers and must shock older minds; but younger minds that have never known the
former inhibitions and repression, find the new frankness refreshing and straightforward.
We notice two characteristics that arouse alarm on the part of some of the conservative
elders. The first is a frank questioning of standards and conventions which must give
reasons for their old-time power or be placed in the discard. If this questioning attitude was
noble in Galileo’s time, then it is not entirely ignoble (disgraceful) on the part of our
youngsters of today, though it may be surprising…
…The second is the craving for amusement and entertainment, which is a normal
result of the age in which the young live. The age which has provided the marvels of the
talking movie and the automobile must expect that they will be used. But these amusements
have helped to teach many things that have been undreamed of by the young of other times.
The new generation face the problems of their age with better understanding of its dangers
and possibilities. They will be able to meet its requirements and excel.
How different or similar are these arguments to those between older and younger generations today?
Explain with examples below.