15. THE "ROARING 20s"

THE '20S DO INDEED "ROAR"

The war had brought a massive economic boom to a rapidly expanding American economy, with the huge demand for war goods: everything from the food products produced on vast numbers of American farms, to the uniforms, guns and munitions, even eventually tanks, airplanes, and battleships produced in American factories.  But the war-time boom continued right on into the 1920s (at least for urban America) as businesses turned to the manufacture of radios, cars and home appliances – to meet a huge demand of a prospering urban society.  Material goods abounded as never before for the great American urban middle class, imparting to urban culture a decidedly materialist flavor.

Some statistics clearly demonstrate the impact of materialism in American life.  For instance, the radio, the wonderful invention that instantly connected the average American living room to the vast world of news, entertainment and even thoughtful ideas, went from sixty thousand radios owned by Americans in 1922, to a point only eight years later when American radios reached 13.8 million in number.  Likewise, the automobile helped broaden that same world, allowing vast personal mobility never dreamed of during the horse and buggy days (although the development of the railroad in the 1800s had certainly pointed the way to such a possibility).  So rapid was the expansion of the American automobile culture that by 1927, when Ford's Model-T was replaced by the Model A, the Ford Motor Company could brag that it had produced over fifteen million of its Model-T Fords. And to meet the needs of the rapidly expanding automobile culture, the number of gas stations exploded exponentially; for instance, Standard Oil of New Jersey had increased the number of its gas stations from twelve in 1920 to around 1,000 by 1929.

But it was not merely a world of expanded horizons.  Average middle-class Americans lived at a level of material wealth characteristic previously only of Europe’s very upper classes.  The wealth in available food, clothing, housing and furnishings, as well as the mechanical gadgets designed to ease the task of housekeeping, was truly amazing. In the period 1920 to 1929, Woolworth’s 5-and-10-cent stores (founded back in the 1880s) went from over a thousand in number to nearly twice that number; the J.C. Penney department store chain went from over 300 in number to nearly five times that size; and grocery stores exploded in number, A&P numbering over 15,000 stores by 1929, with other grocery stores such as Safeway and Piggly Wiggly each expanding to over 2,500 stores in number; even Western Auto parts stores went from three in number in 1920 to over fifty in number during that same period.