Introduction

The decade was called the “Roaring ’20s.” Hollywood movies and television make it look like one big dance party with a few gangsters thrown in for dramatic purposes. Historians, journalists, and novelists are fascinated with the 1920s as the beginning of modern America — a decade that helped set the tone for the rest of the century.

But the twenties also saw the Scopes trial, a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, new restrictions on immigration, and ongoing rural poverty.

So how would you describe the 1920s?
Did they “Roar” or was it just a big “Yawn?”

Roar: Did you know that for most Americans who made their living in agriculture, life went on pretty much as usual? And that for many, things got worse?

Yawn: Did you know that during the 1920s, the United States experienced an unprecedented economic boom?

 

Economic Prosperity

The Gross National Product of the nation rose from $74 billion at the beginning of the decade to more than $104 billion in 1929. Wages were up. Workers had more money to spend, and they spent it on automobiles, home appliances, radios, phonographs, and popular entertainment, especially movies. Millions of ordinary Americans invested in the stock market for the first time as stock prices soared upwards.

Farm commodity prices fell dramatically following World War I. By 1925 there was a serious downturn in the building industry, which was in a state of depression four years before the stock market crash of 1929. Black sharecroppers in the South were barely surviving economically on an average wage of about $350 a year. When the stock market crashed in 1929, millions of people were thrown out of work, fortunes were lost and businesses were ruined.

 

So how would you describe the 1920s?
Did they “Roar” or was it just a big “Yawn?”

Roar: Did you know that sobriety increased during the 1920s?

Yawn: Did you know that liquor was readily available during Prohibition?

The Effects of Prohibition

The 18th Amendment to the Constitution ushered in an era of Prohibition, which outlawed the sale and consumption of alcohol. Still, many Americans found ways to imbibe illegally. They went to speakeasies, private clubs that provided entertainment and liquor. Others bought illegal whiskey and beer from bootleggers. Popular movies and novels about the 1920s make it look like one big happy party of booze, jazz, and good times.

Yet very few people actually made gin in their bathtubs. While movies about the 1920s often depict excessive use of illegal alcohol, per capita consumption of alcohol actually dropped from 2.6 gallons per person pre-Prohibition in 1910 to less than a gallon per person post-Prohibition in 1934. Prohibition helped change America’s drinking habits.

So how would you describe the 1920s?
Did they “Roar” or was it just a big “Yawn?”

Roar: Did you know that much of what passed for popular culture in the 1920s was actually fairly silly and frivolous?

Yawn: Did you know that movies and radio created a whole new popular culture in the 1920s?

 

The Impact of Popular Culture

The 1920s witnessed the rapid development of the motion picture industry, especially in Hollywood. For most of the decade, the films were silent. Nonetheless, the public loved them and flocked to movie theaters on a regular basis. In 1927, the first “talkie,” The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson, ushered in an even more exciting era of mass entertainment.

Sales of radios at the beginning of the decade amounted to just $2 million, but by the end of the decade soared to $600 million. Radio networks like CBS and NBC became a major industry, changing the way the country received news, music, sports, entertainment, and national advertising. NBC’s radio coverage of the 1927 Rose Bowl was the first coast-to-coast network broadcast.

Women got the right to vote in 1920. They also took jobs in cities in great numbers and developed greater independence than ever before. Short skirts, short hair, and new fashions characterized the Flapper of the 1920s. As the Saturday Evening Post writer Samuel Crowther put it in 1926: “There is no distinction in the cut of the clothing between the rich flapper and the poor flapper — national advertising has attended to that. The rich flapper has better clothing than the poor one, but a block away they are all flappers.”

Popular culture of the 1920s included young people who entered flag pole sitting contests or swallowing goldfish for thrills. Dance marathons, where you danced until you dropped from exhaustion, were popular.

Young men and women began to imitate the fashions worn by movie stars. The women imitated the ultimate flapper, movie actress Joan Crawford, and the men all tried to be like Rudolph Valentino, the star of silent films who was the heartthrob of millions of women.

While popular novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald lived the high life of the Twenties, his novels portrayed a darker view of modern America and the failure of the American Dream. The Great Gatsby (1925) explores the idea that wealth, material possessions, and fame are not enough to ensure happiness.

So how would you describe the 1920s?
Did they “Roar” or was it just a big “Yawn?”

Roar: Did you know that in 1927 there were more than 3 million miles of roads in America, but only 96,000 miles were paved?

Yawn: Did you know that by the late 1920s, there were 23 million registered cars in America?

 

Effects of the Automobile

One person interviewed for the classic study, Middletown, by Robert and Helen Lynd (1929) said: “I’d rather go without food than give up the car.” Another interviewee said that the biggest change in America could be explained in just four letters: A-U-T-O.

Mass production of automobiles and the urbanization of America also led to a new culture and a whole new way of organizing cities, towns, and markets as cars made it possible for millions to live in suburbs, some with their own shopping centers.

There was no national highway system in the 1920s. Roads were still better suited to horses and buggies than to automobiles. Motorists faced frequent mechanical breakdowns, flat tires, and getting stuck in mud holes. When traveling long distances, they often found it difficult to find lodging or restrooms, stopping at campsites and then small tourist cabins, since motels as we know them today did not exist.

Automobile congestion in cities contributed to a mass exodus to a new place to live — the suburb. The growth of suburbs eventually caused the decline of inner-city business districts as suburban shopping centers began to replace older concentrated business districts.

With what you now know, how would you describe the 1920s?
Did they “Roar” or was it just a big “Yawn?”

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