Roaring Twenties

The Roaring Twenties refers to the North American historical period of the 1920s, which has been described as "one of the most colorful decades in American history." The decade encapsulates a fascinating story, beginning with the return of young soldiers from the fronts of the Great War and emergence of a new and confident face of the modern womanhood, and ending with the sad note of the Black Tuesday, harbinger of the Great Depression. The years of the Roaring Twenties are marked by several inventions and discoveries of far reaching consequences; emergence of unprecedented industrial boom and accelerated consumer demand and aspirations, coupled with significant changes in the lifestyle; and a series of events, national as well as the international, which shaped a large part of the history of the 20th century.

The Roaring Twenties started in North America and spread to Europe after the aftereffects of the first world war ceased. In Europe, the period after the First World War was marked by a deep recession and many years of rebuilding and coming to terms with the vast human cost of the conflict. Unlike after World War II, the United States did little to try and rebuild Europe, and retreated to an isolationist stance. In Canada, an important economic transformation accelerated as Great Britain was wholly supplanted as Canada's main economic partner. At the middle of the decade economic development started to soar in Europe and the Roaring Twenties broke out in Germany, England and France, where the second half of this decade was termed "The Golden Twenties". In France and Canada they were also called the "Crazy Years" (ann饳 folles).

The spirit of the roaring twenties was marked by a general feeling of discontinuity associated with modernity, and a break with traditions. A new and different era was felt to be coming up. Everything seemed to be feasible through modern technology, the limits ecology and sustainability pose to economic and technological growth were yet unknown. Technologies like trains, cars and mass communication by radio spread the idea of modernity to a large parts of the population. Formal decorative frills were shed in favor of practicality, in architecture as well as in daily life. At the same time amusement, fun and lightness were cultivated in jazz and dancing, in defiance of the horrors of the First World War, which were still present in peoples minds.

Contents

1 Economy of the 1920s 1.1 Demobilization 1.2 New products and technologies 1.3 New infrastructure 1.4 Demographics 2 Culture of the Roaring Twenties 2.1 The Lost Generation 2.2 Social Criticism 2.3 Art Deco 2.4 Expressionism and Surrealism 2.5 Cinema 2.6 Harlem Renaissance 2.7 The Jazz Age 2.8 Dance 2.9 Suffrage 2.10 Fashion and the changing role of women 3 Life During the Roaring Twenties 3.1 Immigration laws 3.2 Prohibition 3.3 Rise of the speakeasy 3.4 Literature of the 1920s 4 Key figures 5 American politics during the Roaring Twenties 5.1 Warren G. Harding 5.2 Calvin Coolidge 5.3 Herbert Hoover 5.4 Fall of labor unions 5.5 International influence 6 Canadian politics during the 1920s 7 End of the Roaring Twenties 7.1 Black Tuesday 7.2 Repeal of Prohibition 8 Timeline 9 See also 10 External link

Economy of the 1920s

The Roaring Twenties were traditionally viewed as an era of great economic prosperity driven by the introduction of a wide array of new consumer goods. Initially, the North American economy, particularly the economy of the USA, took sometime to convert from a wartime economy to a peacetime economy. After this dull phase, the economy was booming. The decade saw North America becoming the richest region on the earth, with industry aligned to mass production, and a society with a culture of consumerism. In Europe, the economy did not start to flourish until 1924. At the same time the 1920s were setting the stage for the Great Depression that would dominate the 1930s.

Demobilization

At the end of World War I, soldiers returned to the United States and Canada with money in their pockets and a great many new products on the market on which to spend it. At first, the cessation of wartime production caused a brief, but deep recession. Quickly the North American economy rebounded as the returning soldiers entered the labor force and factories were retooled to produce consumer goods.

These soldiers formed a tremendous market force. As they were still very young, in their twenties, all things youthful were now increasingly idealized and highly marketable.

New products and technologies

During the 1920s, mass production developed which allowed for cheaper prices of technology. Most of the devices that became commonplace in this decade had been developed before the war, but had been unaffordable to the majority. The automobile, movie, radio, and chemical industries skyrocketed during the 1920s. One of the most important of these was the automobile industry; before the war cars were a rare luxury. In the 1920s cheap mass-produced vehicles became common throughout North America. By 1927, Henry Ford had sold 15 million Model T. In all of Canada, there were only about 300,000 vehicles registered in 1918, but by 1929 there were 1.9 million. The automobile had wide effects on the economy and society. The automobile industry rapidly became one of the largest and a number of peripheral companies running gas stations, motels, and providing oil also became important.

During the Roaring Twenties, radio became the media of the masses, the first mass broadcasting medium. Radios were affordable and entertaining. Before the days of Hollywood, radio was the grandstand for mass marketing with a massive listening audience. Its economic importance led to the mass culture that has dominated society since its introduction near the turn of the century. Radio entertainment was as varied as programming in modern day. Without the self-censorship that is in place today, editors were free to entertain an audience in any and every way. This set the stage for the entrance of violent crime into film and popular culture.

Film reels and advertisement reels, showed before cheap showings of early films, augmented the already booming mass market. The golden age of films was to be born from its humble beginnings in short, silent film reels. Like radio, film was a media for the masses. A view of a film was cheap and accessible for factory and other blue-collar workers.

New infrastructure

The new technologies led to an unprecedented need for new infrastructure, mostly built by the government. Crucial to the new vehicles were new roads. Several roads were upgraded to become highways, and a number of expressways were constructed. There emerged a class of Americans with surplus money and a desire to spend the same, spurring the demand for consumer goods, including the automobiles.

Electrification, having slowed during the war, saw huge progress during the 1920s as most of North America was added to the electric grid. Most industries switched from being coal powered to using electricity. At the same time, vast new power plants were constructed. In Canada during this decade electricity production almost quadrupled.

Telephone lines also were now being strung across the continent. Another important technology that went from rare to common in the 1920s was indoor plumbing, and modern sewer systems were installed for the first time in many regions.

These infrastructure programs were mostly left to the local governments in both Canada and the United States. During the 1920s, most local governments went deeply into debt, under the assumption that an investment in such infrastructure would pay off in the future. This would cause major problems in the Great Depression. In both Canada and the United States, the federal governments did the reverse, using the decade to pay down war debts and rollback some of the taxes that had been introduced during the war.

Demographics

Urbanization was one of the most important trends during the Roaring Twenties. For the first time, more North Americans lived in cities than in small towns or rural areas. Mass transit systems, the first skyscrapers, and the growing importance of industry contributed to this. A growing service sector was also increasingly important, with the finance and insurance industries doubling or tripling in size. The basic pattern of the modern white collar job is often believed to have been established during this period. Many of the clerical jobs went to women, who entered the workforce in unprecedented numbers. In Canada, one in five workers were women by the end of the decade. The fastest growing cities were those in the Midwest and the Great Lakes region, including Chicago and Toronto. These cities prospered due to their vast agricultural hinterlands. Cities on the West Coast saw increasing benefits from the 1914 opening of the Panama Canal.

Culture of the Roaring Twenties

The Lost Generation

The Lost Generation were young people who came out of World War I disillusioned and cynical about the world. The term usually refers to American literary notables that lived in Paris at the time. Famous members included Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein.

Social Criticism

As the average American in the 1920s became more self-absorbed in wealth and everyday luxuries, some began satirizing the hypocrisy and greed they observed. Of these social critics, Sinclair Lewis was the most popular. His 1920 novel Main Street was one of the most popular of the time. The story satirized the dull, ignorant lives of those in a Midwestern town. He followed with Babbitt, about a middle-aged businessman who rebels against his safe life and family, only to realize that the young generation is as hypocritical as his own. Lewis satirized religion with Elmer Gantry, which followed a con man who teams up with an evangelist to sell religion to a small town. Other social critics included Sherwood Anderson and H.L. Mencken. Anderson published a collection of short stories titled Winesburg, Ohio, which studied the dynamic within a small town. Mencken criticized the narrow American taste and culture through various essays and articles.

Art Deco

Art Deco was the style in design and architecture that marked the era. Starting from Europe, it spread to America towards the end of the 1920s, where one of the most remarkable buildings featuring this style was constructed as the tallest building of the time: the Chrysler Building. The forms of art deco were pure and geometric, even though the artists often drew inspiration from nature. In the beginning lines were curved, but later on rectangular designs became more and more popular.

Expressionism and Surrealism

Painting in North America during the 1920s developed into a different direction than that in Europe. In Europe, the 1920s were the era of expressionism and later, surrealism. As Man Ray stated in 1920 after the publication of a unique issue of New York Dada: "Dada cannot live in New York".

Cinema

The bulk of the 1920s cinema was silent. Late in the decade, early—and eventually, more advanced—sound recording technology was developed, leading into the age of what was known at the time as talkies. The first talking movie, The Jazz Singer, with lead role by Al Jolson appeared in 1922. By 1926, movies with Technicolor had arrived. Walt Disney produced his first cartoon during the Roaring Twenties. Al Jolson's follow-up film to The Jazz Singer, The Singing Fool [1] (http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=110318) in 1928 made the talkies popular with a wider audience. The period also saw emergence of Charlie Chaplin and Valentino as box office draws.

Harlem Renaissance

The African American culture developed rapidly during the 1920s under the title of the "Harlem Renaissance". In 1921, the Black Swan Corporation opened. At its height it issued ten recordings a month. All-African-American musicals also started up in 1921. It 1923, the Harlem Renaissance Basketball Club was founded by Robert Douglas. During the later 1920s, and especially in the 1930s, the basketball team became known as the best in the world.

The first issue of Opportunity was published. The African American playwright, Chip Woman's Fortune, debuted at Frazee Theatre.¹ African American culture has contributed the largest part to the rise of jazz music.

The Jazz Age

The first commercial radio station in the United States, KDKA began broadcasting in Pittsburgh in 1922. Radio stations subsequently proliferated at a remarkable rate, and with them spread the popularity of jazz. Jazz became associated with all things modern, sophisticated, and also decadent. Louis Armstrong marked the time with improvisations and endless variations on a single melody. Armstrong contributed largely to making scat singing popular, an improvisational vocal technique in which nonsensical syllables are sung or otherwise vocalized, often as part of a call-and-response interaction with other musicians onstage. Apart from the clarinet, Sidney Bechet also popularized the saxophone. Dance venues increased the demand for professional musicians and jazz adopted the 4/4 beat of dance music. Tap dancing performances entertained people in vaudeville theaters, out in the streets or accompanying bands. At the end of the roaring twenties, Duke Ellington entered the scene to start the beginning of the big band era.

Dance

Starting in the 1920s, ballrooms across the U.S. sponsored dance contests, where dancers invented, tried, and competed with new moves. Professionals began to hone their skills in Tap dance and other dances of the era throughout the Vaudeville hall circuit across the U.S. Electric lighting and air conditioning made evening social entertainment available to much wider audiences, giving rise to an era of dance halls and live music.

Harlem played a key role in the development of dance styles. With a number of entertainment venues, people from all walks of life, all races, and all classes came together. The Cotton Club featured black performers and catered to the rich, glamorous, and white clientele, while the Savoy Ballroom catered to average, working, and mostly black clientele.

From the early to mid-1920s, Breakaway and Charleston dominated the emerging dance scene. Both were based upon African-American musical styles and beats, notably the blues. The Charleston's popularity exploded after being featured in two Broadway shows in 1922. A brief Black Bottom craze, originating from the Apollo Theater, would sweep dance halls from 1926 to 1927, replacing the Charleston in popularity. By 1927, Lindy Hop, a dance based on Breakaway and Charleston, and integrating elements of Tap, would become the dominant social dance. Developed in the Savoy Ballroom, it was set to stride piano ragtime jazz. Lindy Hop would remain popular for over a decade, before evolving into Swing dance.

Suffrage

At the end of World War I, the State of Tennessee became the last of 36 states needed to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment, in the summer of 1920. Women were thus recognized as equals as men in every state—at least at the polls.

Fashion and the changing role of women

Due to the dreary economic situation after the First World War, many American and European families needed to replace the incomes of the family fathers lost in the battlefield; women had to accept a job, and move outside the home. This also gave them a new self-confidence. The change in role was also reflected in the media: the gar篮ne-look, with its most notable exponent actress Marlene Dietrich, portrayed the ideal woman as androgynous, working woman that had reached equality with men while simultaneously possessing the appeal of the femme fatale. Pantsuits, hats and canes gave women a sleek look without frills and avoiding the fickleness of fashion. The style was named after the novel La gar篮ne by Victor Margueritte. In Europe, this look featured women with short hair (Bubikopf) for the first time; in the U.S., the bob was introduced by actress Louise Brooks in the late 1920s. As a result of this move towards practical androgyny, corsets went out of style, and some women even bandaged their breasts to make them look flatter. Flappers, as these women were called in the U.S., wore short dresses with a straight loose silhouette. By 1927 seams had risen to just below the knee, so that part of the knee could be seen when dancing Charleston.

Thus, the Roaring Twenties gave a new definition to womanhood—a new woman was born, who smoked and drank in public, danced and exercised her franchise, kept her hair short, wore make-up, dressed differently, and confidently participated in economic activities.

Life During the Roaring Twenties

Immigration laws

The United States, and to a lesser degree Canada, became more isolationist during the Roaring Twenties. The American Immigration Act of 1924 limited immigration from countries where two percent of the total U.S. population, per the 1890 census, were immigrants from that country. Thus the massive influx of Europeans that had come to America during the first two decades of the century slowed to a trickle. Asians and citizens of India were prohibited from immigrating altogether. Alien Land Laws such as California's Webb-Haney Act in 1913 prevented aliens ineligible for citizenship from owning land. Similar laws were passed in 11 other states. In Canada, the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923 prevented almost all immigration from Asia. Other laws curbed immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe.

Prohibition

Main article: Prohibition