1920s
The 1920s, often referred to as the "Roaring Twenties," was a decade of significant social, cultural, and economic change in many parts of the world. It was characterized by a booming economy, technological advancements, and a shift towards modernity. The era also saw the rise of jazz music, the flapper culture, and significant changes in women's rights and societal norms.
8 Key excerpts on "1920s"
eBook - ePubAmerican Political Movies
An Annotated Filmography of Feature Films
- James Combs(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Yet even with that assumption, the Twenties were anything but normal, unleasing some of the most striking changes in American life in this century, and breaking with the past in ways of which we still are feeling the impact. In many ways, it is correct to date American “modernity” from a time presided over by archaic figures such as Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Andrew Mellon. The Republican beneficent plutocracy, wedded to the rhetoric of tradition and even nostalgia, nevertheless acquiesced in the effects of the new consumer economy, the rise of advertising and public relations, the speculative and merger fever that led to the Crash of 1929, and the technological innovations (such as the radio and the automobile) that were to write significant changes in social mores and folkways. Too, there was a very real sense, for all of the unimaginative passivity of its presidents, that the Twenties was a vibrant if often frivolous time, with revolutions in art, music, and literature, the massive explosion of popular culture, and in truth a good bit of the “wonderful nonsense” we associate with the Jazz Age. Hollywood enjoyed during this time its silent “Golden Age,” and many of its stars—Valentino, Clara Bow, Louise Brooks, John Gilbert and Greta Garbo—became famous as representations of the new sophistication, and indeed sensuality, associated with the changes in moral and social climate. The Twenties make our interpretive task even more difficult, since that period is what we might call “metapolitical,” an era tired of the political turmoil of the time just preceding it, determined to ignore politics, and certainly not interested in directly political subjects in the movies. To be sure, there were a few films among the many hundreds made that used a political setting as a dramatic context, but politics usually was a convenient background without much significance...
eBook - ePub- Thomas S. Kidd(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- B&H Academic(Publisher)
...21 The Roaring Twenties F or Americans in the 1920s, it seemed that good times had come to stay. The horrors of World War I were behind them, as were the interminable squabbles over the League of Nations. Calvin Coolidge’s presidency inaugurated six years of unprecedented prosperity, and even the embarrassing scandals of the Harding administration were fading into the past. Of course, the good times of the 1920s could not obscure ongoing tensions related to race and economic classes in America. And no one could have foreseen just how hard America would fall after its decade of excess. The 1920s were marked by soaring industrial output and household incomes. This meant that more Americans could purchase the new appliances and industrial goods of the era, such as vacuum cleaners, washing machines, and automobiles. More Americans also had disposable income to spend on entertainment, including radios for the home or going to the movies. The 1920s were perhaps the key decade when American culture became consumed with popular entertainment, a trend that still endures today. One of the greatest stars of the “silent era” of moviemaking was Mary Pickford. Pickford emerged in the 1910s, usually portraying independent-minded and even rebellious women. By the end of World War I, Pickford was making sometimes millions of dollars a year and conspicuously displayed her wealth with fancy cars and clothes. In 1919, she cofounded United Artists with other movie titans, including the actors Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks. By then she had become arguably the most powerful woman in the history of the movie business. She would divorce her first husband and marry Fairbanks in 1920. In the past a divorce might have severely damaged a woman’s reputation, but for Pickford and other media celebrities, such scandals seemed only to add to the fascination they generated. Women and Family Figure 21.1. Mary Pickford, ca...
eBook - ePubUnto a Good Land
A History of the American People, Volume 2: From 1865
- David Edwin Harrell, Edwin S. Gaustad, John B. Boles, Sally Foreman Griffith(Authors)
- 2005(Publication Date)
- Eerdmans(Publisher)
...Among other new scientific ideas, Freudian psychology and Einstein’s theory of relativity posed serious challenges to traditional beliefs. American Leaders, 1921 From left to right, Henry Ford, Thomas A. Edison, Warren G. Harding, and tire manufacturer Harvey Firestone enjoy a break. During the 1920s American businessmen once again became popular heroes. Chroniclers of the twenties have been fascinated by the decade’s social clashes, seeing them as harbingers of America’s escalating twentieth-century encounter with modernity. The decade has been labeled “The Age of the Flapper,” “The Jazz Age,” and “The Roaring Twenties.” Its most engaging characters were the cynical, disillusioned young intellectuals who ridiculed their more conventional contemporaries, flailing away at Prohibition and preachers, “rubes” and Rotarians, democracy and do-gooders. They scorned America’s Puritan past as repressive and explored personal freedom with a youthful zest and flamboyance, permanently influencing American fashion, music, literature, and public morality. But interesting and influential as they were, the talented literary rebels of the twenties numbered in the hundreds and did not speak for or to most Americans. The majority of Americans were social and political conservatives, and many of them launched ferocious counterattacks. Indeed, the intensity and extremity of conservative causes in the twenties was a measure of the anxiety felt by many old-stock Americans. Their crusades in the twenties had the appearance of last-ditch battles. Prohibition came to symbolize the conservative desire to establish legally a purer and more Christian society. Protestant fundamentalists tried to ban the teaching of evolution in public schools, and the revived Ku Klux Klan, an extraordinary success in the early twenties, appealed to a variety of people who resented the pace of social change. Alarmed and angered, millions of Americans joined to defend the customs of an earlier and more orderly time...
eBook - ePubIndustrial Relations to Human Resources and Beyond: The Evolving Process of Employee Relations Management
The Evolving Process of Employee Relations Management
- Bruce E. Kaufman, Richard A. Beaumont, Roy B. Helfgott(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...2 The United States in the 1920s Breaking with European Traditions Roy B. Helfgott DOI: 10.4324/9781315498331-3 The Roaring Twenties: Jazz, Prohibition, Laissez-Faire, and “Normalcy” It was the Roaring Twenties, the Jazz Age. The decade began in 1920 on an ominous note with a bomb explosion on Wall Street that killed 30 people and injured 100, but things settled down after that. America had returned to “normalcy” and was keeping cool with Coolidge, yet people craved excitement. The Census of 1920 revealed that for the first time, the United States was an urban nation, and half the population was first or second generation. People were still moving west—California’s population increased by two thirds during the decade, making it almost equal to that of Texas. The most populous states remained New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Ohio, and the northeast quadrant continued to dominate the nation’s manufacturing and, indeed, its total economy. In politics, the Republican Party, devoted to laissez-faire, was in control throughout the decade. Disillusioned with the results of the First World War and Wilson’s failure at Versailles, the nation in 1920 elected the Republican ticket of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge by seven million votes over the Democratic slate of James Cox and Franklin Roosevelt. The Teapot Dome Scandal rocked the new administration, but President Harding conveniently died and was succeeded by the impeccably honest Calvin Coolidge. In 1924, a third party appeared on the scene when a coalition of farmer groups, liberals from both major parties, and the Socialists supported Senator Robert La Follette (Republican, Wisconsin) on the Progressive ticket, but Coolidge garnered four and a half million votes more than La Follette and Democrat John W. Davis combined. In 1928, Republican Herbert Hoover won by a tidy six million votes over the Democrats’ “happy warrior,” Al Smith of New York, who even lost some southern states because he was Catholic...
eBook - ePub- Jeffrey A. Hirsch(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
...entered World War I in 1917 until 1919, prices more than doubled with the Consumer Price Index up 110 percent from 1915 to 1920. Inflation settled down in the 1920s, but the economy and the stock market played catch-up. “Normalcy” was returned to politics as President Harding promised on the campaign trail and a dynamic nine years of artistic creativity, liberalization of social mores, and financial speculation carried the Dow up 504 percent from 1921 to 1929. Peacetime, inflation, political cooperation, and systemic changes in social and cultural behavior provided the base, but it was the sweeping array of enabling technology that ignited the boom. Prohibition’s ban on alcohol did little to quell its demand and usage. In fact, it created a taboo factor that fueled organized crime and speculative fervor. But it was the next amendment to the Constitution—the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, giving women the right to vote—that had a much greater positive impact on the country. Women not only voted, this newfound equality inspired women to work more, providing many families with two incomes and more money to spend in the new age of consumerism. Laissez-faire government growth policies allowed industry and business to thrive, but it was the new enabling technologies that became available to the middle class that powered the 1920s boom. It was the mass production of the automobile, making cars affordable for the middle class, that was the single most important cultural paradigm-shifting event. Movies and radio skyrocketed. The government funded new road and highway infrastructure projects to carry all the cars. Electric and telephone lines were strung across the nation. Power plants were constructed and cities of all sizes grew as new industries, business, and construction sprung up from coast to coast. All this expansion and innovation created an air of invincibility that fanned the flames of rampant speculation and irresponsible financial activity...
eBook - ePubAmerican Stories
Living American History: v. 2: From 1865
- Jason Ripper(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...7 The 1920s Al Capone’s free soup kitchen, 1930. (MPI/Getty Images) Cars, Commercials, and Crime The 1920s started in 1919 and have not really stopped. They are movies with sound—“talkies”; women in pants or short dresses smoking cigarettes in bars with men, laughing and teasing, not giving an inch; state work crews spreading asphalt over mountain passes and along Main Street, followed not ten feet behind by herds of honking, puttering motorists—and women are driving, cigarettes in hand. The 1920s are commercial radio; blackjazz menjazzing up white-only dance halls; Ku Klux Klan rallies in the heart of Washington, DC; race riots in big cities; debates about the benefits and dangers of immigration, leading to immigration restriction; fear of communism and interest in communism; fear of difference and exaggeration of difference; fundamentalist Christians challenging the teaching of evolution in public schools; national surveys and sociological studies of every habit, curiosity, peccadillo, belief, and disbelief of the American people; mass marketing campaigns designed to create brand image, brand recognition, and brand affiliation for cigarettes (“Reach for a Lucky Instead of a Sweet”), for cars (“Buy a Ford and Spend the Difference”), for mouthwash (“Often a Bridesmaid but Never a Bride”), and for every other product on the market whose backers had enough money to pay for ads. Advertising agencies themselves developed aggressive techniques, seeking to scare, shame, or scam shoppers. Here was the new motto of selling: “Advertising helps to keep the masses dissatisfied with their mode of life, discontented with ugly things around them...
eBook - ePubThe Climax of Capitalism
The U.S. Economy in the Twentieth Century
- Tom Kemp(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The new techniques of the twentieth century, based upon applied physics, chemistry and mechanics, were generally first applied on a large scale in the United States, though they may have been invented elsewhere. The financial resources ot the big corporations, the huge size of the internal market and the innovative flair of its entrepreneurs made the American economy the trail-breaker, not only in new technology, but also in organizing the large-scale manufacture and marketing of the product. Favoured with plentiful natural resources, a large and expanding home market and uniquely mobile population aspiring to material success, the American economy never ceased to startle the world with its power and dynamism. It was the prosperity ot the 1920s, America's own 'economic miracle', which set new standards and established new models which other economies could only try to emulate. The strength of American industry lay in its ability to turn out long runs of standardized machine-made products. By lowering unit costs, this brought within the grasp of large numbers of consumers goods embodying the new technologies ot the twentieth century, making possible a new style of consumption summed up in the phrase 'the American Way of Life'. A big role in new patterns of consumption came with the mobility offered by the automobile and by the ability of many to buy (usually on mortgage) a one-family house, equipped with an array of electrically-driven appliances. But it also included expenditure on a range of services reflecting a high per capita income, such as restaurants, beauty parlours, movie theatres, dry-cleaning establishments and spectator sports. The 1920s are usually regarded as a decade of prosperity; especially because of the contrast with the 1930s. As it turned out, the prosperity, though real enough, did not herald a new era and was short-lived. Looked at more closely, economic performance was patchy both by sector and from year to year...
eBook - ePubEssays
On Entrepreneurs, Innovations, Business Cycles and the Evolution of Capitalism
- Joseph A. Schumpeter(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...No decade in the history of politics, religion, technology, painting, poetry and what not ever contains its own explanation. In order to understand the religious events from 1520 to 1530, or the political events from 1790 to 1800, or the developments in painting from 1900 to 1910, you must survey a period of much wider span. Not to do so is the hallmark of dilettantism. Evidently the same applies to economic history. The quickest way to give effect to this principle is to take our clew from the felicitous phrase, “the Economic Revolution of the Twenties.” Only we must interpret it in the same sense in which Sir John Clapham maintained that an earlier economic revolution occurred, not in the last decades of the eighteenth century but in the first decades of the nineteenth. This is true if it means that effects did not fully manifest themselves—especially in the cotton textile and machinery industries-until the twenties and thirties of the nineteenth century. It would not be true to locate the sources of these effects in those two decades: the decisive industrial events did occur in the last quarter of the eighteenth. Similarly, everyone knows that towards the end of the ninteenth century and in the first decade of the twentieth a number of industrial events occurred that were bound to change the world’s economic structure fundamentally but, partly owing to the “first” World War, did not take full effect until the twenties. To mention but one instance, it was not until then that the technological changes in agriculture that had occurred from the nineties on disclosed their power to dislodge eventually the majority of farmers in all industrialized countries. The response of the business organism to the impact of changes of this type adequately explains the general features of that period in the United States...
