http:\/\/youtu.be\/fF2MqYjVg50<\/p>\n
The 1920s were an age of dramatic social and political change. For the first time, more Americans lived in cities than on farms. The nation\u2019s total wealth more than doubled between 1920 and 1929, and this economic growth<\/b> swept many Americans into an affluent but unfamiliar \u201cconsumer society.<\/b>\u201d People from coast to coast bought the same goods (thanks to nationwide<\/b> advertising<\/b> and the spread<\/b> of chain stores), listened to the same music, did the same dances and even used the same slang<\/b>! Many Americans were uncomfortable with this new, urban, sometimes racy<\/b> \u201cmass culture\u201d; in fact, for many\u2013even most\u2013people in the United States, the 1920s brought more conflict than celebration. However, for a small handful of young people in the nation\u2019s big cities, the 1920s were roaring indeed.<\/p>\n
THE \u201cNEW WOMAN<\/b>\u201d
\nThe most familiar symbol of the \u201cRoaring Twenties\u201d is probably the flapper<\/b>: a young woman with bobbed hair <\/b>and short skirts who drank, smoked and said what might be termed \u201cunladylike<\/b>\u201d things, in addition to being more sexually \u201cfree\u201d than previous generations. In reality, most young women in the 1920s did none of these things (though many did adopt a fashionable flapper wardrobe), but even those women who were not flappers gained some unprecedented freedoms<\/b>. They could vote at last: The 19th Amendment<\/b> to the Constitution had guaranteed that right in 1920. Millions of women worked in white-collar<\/b> jobs (as stenographers, for example) and could afford to participate in the burgeoning<\/b> consumer economy. The increased availability of birth-control devices<\/b> such as the diaphragm made it possible for women to have fewer children. And new machines and technologies like the washing machine and the vacuum cleaner eliminated some of the<\/b> drudgery<\/b> of household work<\/b>.<\/p>\n
DID YOU KNOW?<\/b>
\nBecause the 18th Amendment and the Volstead <\/b>Act did not make it illegal to drink alcohol, only to manufacture<\/b> and sell it, many people stockpiled<\/b> liquor before the ban went into effect.<\/b><\/p>\n
THE BIRTH OF MASS CULTURE<\/b>
\nDuring the 1920s, many Americans had extra money to spend, and they spent it on consumer goods <\/b>such as ready-to-wear<\/b> clothes and home appliances<\/b> like electric refrigerators. In particular, they bought radios. The first commercial radio station in the U.S., Pittsburgh\u2019s KDKA, hit the airwaves in 1920; three years later there were more than 500 stations in the nation. By the end of the 1920s, there were radios in more than 12 million households<\/b>. People also went to the movies: Historians estimate that, by the end of the decade, three-quarters of the American population visited a movie theater every week.<\/p>\n
But the most important consumer product of the 1920s was the automobile. Low prices (the Ford Model T cost just $260 in 1924) and generous credit made cars affordable luxuries<\/b> at the beginning of the decade; by the end, they were practically necessities. In 1929 there was one car on the road for every five Americans. Meanwhile, an economy of automobiles was born: Businesses like service stations and motels sprang up<\/b> to meet drivers\u2019 needs.<\/p>\n
THE JAZZ AGE<\/b>
\nCars also gave young people the freedom to go where they pleased and do what they wanted. (Some pundits called them \u201cbedrooms on wheels.\u201d) What many young people wanted to do was dance: the Charleston, the cake walk, the black bottom, the flea hop. Jazz bands played at dance halls like the Savoy in New York City and the Aragon in Chicago; radio stations and phonograph records (100 million of which were sold in 1927 alone) carried their tunes to listeners across the nation. Some older people objected to jazz music\u2019s \u201cvulgarity\u201d and \u201cdepravity\u201d (and the \u201cmoral disasters\u201d it supposedly<\/b> inspired), but many in the younger generation loved the freedom they felt on the dance floor.<\/p>\n
PROHIBITION<\/b>
\nDuring the 1920s, some freedoms were expanded<\/b> while others were curtailed<\/b>. The 18th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1919, had banned the manufacture and sale of \u201cintoxicating liquors,\u201d and at 12 A.M. on January 16, 1920, the federal Volstead Act closed every tavern, bar and saloon in the United States. From then on, it was illegal to sell any \u201cintoxication beverages\u201d with more than 0.5% alcohol. This drove<\/b> the liquor trade underground<\/b>\u2013now, people simply went to nominally illegal speakeasies instead of ordinary bars\u2013where it was controlled by bootleggers<\/b>, racketeers<\/b> and other organized-crime figures such as Chicago gangster Al Capone. (Capone reportedly had 1,000 gunmen and half of Chicago\u2019s police force on his payroll.)<\/p>\n
To many middle-class<\/b> white Americans, Prohibition was a way to assert some control over the unruly immigrant masses who crowded the nation\u2019s cities. For instance, to the so-called \u201cDrys,\u201d beer was known as \u201cKaiser brew.\u201d Drinking was a symbol of all they disliked about the modern city, and eliminating alcohol would, they believed, turn back the clock<\/b> to an earlier and more comfortable time.<\/p>\n
THE \u201cCULTURAL CIVIL WAR<\/b>\u201d
\nProhibition was not the only source of social tension during the 1920s. The<\/b> Great Migration <\/b>of African Americans from the Southern countryside to Northern cities and the increasing visibility of black culture\u2014jazz and blues music, for example, and the literary movement known as the Harlem Renaissance\u2014discomfited some white Americans. Millions of people in places like Indiana and Illinois joined the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. To them, the Klan represented a return to all the \u201cvalues\u201d that the fast-paced, city-slicker Roaring Twenties <\/b>were trampling<\/b>.<\/p>\n
Likewise, an anti-Communist \u201cRed Scare\u201d<\/b> in 1919 and 1920 encouraged a widespread nativist, or anti-immigrant, hysteria<\/b>. This led to the passage of an extremely restrictive immigration law, the National Origins Act of 1924, <\/b>which set immigration quotas that excluded some people (Eastern Europeans and Asians) in favor of others (Northern Europeans and people from Great Britain, for example).<\/p>\n
These conflicts\u2013what one historian has called a \u201ccultural Civil War\u201d between city-dwellers <\/b>and small-town residents, Protestants and Catholics, blacks and whites, \u201cNew Women\u201d and advocates of old-fashioned family values\u2013are perhaps the most important part of the story of the Roaring Twenties.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
http:\/\/youtu.be\/fF2MqYjVg50 The 1920s were an age of dramatic social and political change. For the first time, more Americans lived in cities than on farms. The nation\u2019s total wealth more than doubled between 1920 and 1929, and this economic growth swept many Americans into an affluent but unfamiliar \u201cconsumer society.\u201d People from coast to coast boughtContinue reading<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2167","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrglackin.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrglackin.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrglackin.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrglackin.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrglackin.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2167"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mrglackin.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2172,"href":"https:\/\/mrglackin.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2167\/revisions\/2172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrglackin.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}