The Roaring
Twenties:
Social Changes
US History – Libertyville HS
Industrial & Consumption Changes
• Electricity: greater
•
availability, productivity
Business Management
– Frederick Taylor’s “Efficiency
Engineering” (scientific
methods, selection of workers,
training)
– “Cost accounting” (budgeting)
– Greater standardization
– Product advertising
– Growth of retail stores
– Installment buying
Industrial, Consumption Changes
• Household appliances
• Food shipment & storage
– Refrigerators & refrigerated
RR cars
– Frozen foods
– Cellophane
• Automobiles
– 1920:
million
– 1930:
million
8 million cars, 1
trucks
23 million cars, 3.5
trucks
Social Changes
• Greater socio-economic
mobility
– Move to suburbs
– Better jobs
– Demand for entertainment
• Changing values: heroes
– Pre 1920: heroes were
political, economic figures
– Post 1920: heroes were
sports, entertainment stars
Changing Values
• Sports
– Jack Dempsey (boxing)
– Red Grange “The
Galloping Ghost” (football)
– Babe Ruth “The Sultan of
Swat” (Baseball)
– Bobby Jones (Golf)
• Radio Stars
– Bing Crosby
– Rudy Vallee
Changing Values
• Movie Stars
– Charlie Chaplin “The Little
Tramp”
– Buster Keaton
– Rudolph Valentino (the kiss)
– Clark Gable
– Louise Brooks
– Clara Bow “the It Girl”
– Al Jolson “The Jazz Singer”
(1927)
– Cecile B. de Mille
The Music Scene
• Music: The age of Jazz
– Jazz: combine African
rhythms with European
harmonies
– Jelly Roll Morton – jazz pioneer
– Louis Armstrong “Satchmo”
– Duke Ellington
– George Gershwin
– Aaron Copland (folk themed
orchestral music)
– “The Blues”: distinctly A-A
cultural music, based in
spirituals, work songs, hollers
BONUS: Stephen Foster (1826-1864)
Feats & Fads
• Airplane feats
– Charles Lindbergh
• “Spirit of St. Louis”
– Amelia Earhart
– Billy Mitchell
• Fads
–
–
–
–
Charleston
Marathon dances
Flappers
Flagpole sitting
Literature
• 1920s trends
– Rejection of American justice
– Rejection of American small
town life
– Rejection of American
materialism
– Desire for “lasting” values
• Notable authors
– H.L. Mencken: elitist; Scopes
– Sinclair Lewis: 1st Nobel Prize
Literature
• Giants of the Field
– F. Scott Fitzgerald
• “The Great Gatsby”
• “Tender is the Night”
• Emphasized the impact of
wealth, success
– Ernest Hemingway
• “The Sun Also Rises”
• “A Farewell to Arms”
• Preoccupation with death & the
“lost” generation (WWI)
– William Faulkner
• “The Sound and the Fury”
• Satirized the south
African American Literature
• W.E.B. Dubois
– A-A intellectual selfawareness
• “The Harlem Renaissance”
– Claude McKay – “A Long
Way from Home”
– Langston Hughes
• “Harlem”
• “Not Without Laughter”
– All were commentaries on
the black experience, in
America
“Harlem” by Langston Hughes
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Theater & Poetry
• Eugene O’Neill
– Nobel Prize for Drama;
Pulitzer’s Prize
• Helen Hayes “First
“I bet you if I had met him and had
a chat with him, I would have
found him a very interesting and
human fellow, for I never in all of
them yet met a man that I didn’t
like. When you meet people, no
matter what opinion you might
have formed about them
beforehand, why, after you meet
them and see their angle and their
personality, why, you can see a lot
of good.” Will Rogers
•
•
Lady of the American
Stage”
Will Rogers (satirist)
T.S. Eliot
– The Wasteland
– Disillusionment of life