The Roaring 1920s – By Miles Hodges

CONTENTS
America's does indeed "roar" after the war
America's social culture undergoes accompanying dramatic change
And the new movie industry grows explosively

        The textual material on this webpage is drawn directly from my work
        America – The Covenant Nation © 2021, Volume One, pages 476-478.

A Timeline of Major Events during this period

1920s The "Roaring Twenties"

1920s    Due to the return of the European farmers to their fields and herds, a deep economic "depression"
   hits the American farms (and the rural banks funding those farms) just after the war ... ten
   years ahead of the Great Depression which will hit all America ... urban as well as rural
          But in the American cities, a new offering of cars, radios, home appliances, etc. makes urban life
   dazzling (The Roaring Twenties)
          And the explosive growth of "speakeasy" bars in urban America develops in defiance of Prohibition
          Accompanying this is the development of mobster organizations (such as Capone's Chicago
   organization)
          And race riots (Whites against Blacks) and the growth of the Ku Klux Klan – even across the North –
   shake America's moral foundations deeply
        Popular writers – part of the "Lost Generation" (such as Fitzgerald and Hemmingway) – narrate
   stories about individuals struggling with the meaninglessness or unfairness of life
        And Freudian psychology, which mocks religion as being mere self-delusion, becomes very popular
1920 A payroll robbery and murder in Massachussets (Apr) leads to the arrest of Italian immigrants Sacco
   and Vanzetti ... found guilty at their trial the following year (Jul 1921) ... setting off a bitter
   debate about their guilt or innocense – and the fairness of the American justice system
          The 19th Amendment is ratified (Aug), qualifying women as voters in all elections ("women's
   suffrage")
           A bombing of Wall Street – and death and injuring of many (Sep) – intensifies a growing Red Scare
   (fear of the rising world of Communism ... popular among many immigrants and industrial workers
   in America)
1921   Harding's short-lived presidency (1921-1923) has great difficulty in keeping itself under moral
   restraint ... due to the ambitions of particular individuals (not Harding himself)
          America hosts an international Naval Conference in Washington (Nov 1921-Feb 1922) to set limits
   on the number of naval warships various countries are allowed to have
1922    Presbyterian minister Fosdick is brought under question about his anti-Fundamentalist preaching ...
   causing him to resign from the denomination; Rockefeller then appoints him as pastor of a New
   York City church he himself funded; the Liberal vs. Fundamentalist Christian battle is on!
1923   Harding's death (Aug) brings to the presidency Vice President Coolidge ... who takes the opposite
   path by conducting a morally-tight (even Puritanical) presidency
1925   The "Scopes Monkey Trial" in Dayton, Tennessee (Jul) rivets the attention of Americans ... in the
   form of a huge debate about the origins and development of life on this planet ... and which
   version (Christian or Darwinist) should be passed on to rising generations as the Truth
1927 Ford introduces the Model A Ford, replacing the Model T ... which at that point over 15 million had
   been produced!
         Lindberg flies his plane across the Atlantic from New York City to Paris (May) ... amazing the world!
         Sacco and Vanzetti are put to death (Aug) ... as the international debate continues
1928   The Presbyterian leadership now swings to the Liberal side of the spectrum ... requiring Princeton
   Seminary to move to a move Liberal position ... causing professor Machen and others to quit
   Princeton and form the Westminster Seminary in nearby Philadelphia
          US Secretary of State Kellogg signs an agreement in Paris (Aug) with French Foreign Minister
   Briand, promising not to resort to war (except for self-defense!); other countries join the
   Kellog-Briand Pact, presuming to put the curse of war away forever
           Coolidge choses not to run again ... and Hoover is nominated and elected US President (Nov)
1929   America's speculative fever comes to a crashing end with the selling panic that hits the Wall Street
   Stock Market (Oct) ... when it dawns on investors that the glory days of industrial sales are
   over

AMERICA DOES INDEED "ROAR" AFTER THE WAR

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.

During the 1920s the radio entered the homes of American families everywhere
connecting even farm folks more closely to a dynamic national culture

The radio department
60,000 families owned radios in 1922; by 1930, 13.8 million

An Oregon family gathered around the radio – 1925

Dancing to the radio

Radio Broadcasting in the 1920s – a Minneapolis radio station

Radio program production

And the automobile became a more central part of American life

Standard Oil of New Jersey – 1920: 12 stations / 1929: 1,000 stations

Opening of a new Gulf station in Kentucky – 1925

But car sales vastly outpace road building

Typical scene in rural America – 1920s

Air Travel has moved up to join automobile travel as part of the new material culture

Pan American passengers boarding a flight to Havana in 1928

A typical air terminal – the Ford Airport, Detroit

Stout Air Lines, owned by Ford – the first to carry mail

Airline pilots take on a dressy uniform as a sign of their prestigious occupation

Some of the first stewardesses – dressed warmly for flying conditions

A steward serving a meal

And just in general – America's material culture explodes to life

Salesman of home appliances – 1920s

Woolworth – 1920: 1,111 stores / 1929:1,825 stores

J.C. Penney – 1920: 312 stores / 1929:1,395 stores

A&P – 1920: 4,621 stores / 1929: 15,418 stores

Safeway Stores – 1926: 766 stores / 1929: 2,660 stores

Piggly Wiggly – 1920: 515 stores / 1929: 2,500 stores

Western Auto Supply Co. – 1920: 3 stores / 1929: 54 stores

And urban American life begins to outpace rural/small-town life in America in growth and excitement

Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street – New York, 1926

Most exciting of all is the New York Stock Market which even ordinary citizens can invest in –
with the high expectation of gaining great material profits.

The trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange – 1920s

AMERICA'S SOCIAL CULTURE UNDERGOES
ACCOMPANYING DRAMATIC CHANGE

The new culture of personal freedom

The new wealth allowed the more adventuresome set, America’s youth, to experiment with exciting new clothing, dance, and general social styles, ones quite distinct from their parents' very traditional ways. Girls had their hair bobbed or cut very short (to the shock of their mothers and grandmothers), skirt hemlines were raised, feminine beach attire became much scantier in its body covering (getting young ladies in trouble with the beach patrols). Likewise, the young men also freed themselves, like the women, with their love of the latest in music trends, clothing styles, fast cars, booze and cigarettes, and sex in all varieties. And, of course, there was the excitement of drinking their alcoholic beverages now forbidden by Federal law under the Constitution’s Eighteenth Amendment that had so recently gone into effect. In short, it looked as if youthful urban America was dedicated to the principle of party, party, party, to drink away the memories of a tragic world they had just left behind.

And along with the Eighteenth Amendment was the Nineteenth Amendment, going into effect in August of 1920 giving all American women the right to vote, just in time for the national elections scheduled for that November. Women no longer needed to rely on their husbands to defend the interests of the American family. Women could also do that as well, or simply defend their own personal interests quite apart from family concerns. The 1920s, after all, marked the rapid growth in the sense of personal rather than community interest, in part due to the reaction to the hyped patriotism the country had gone through in its war to make the world safe for democracy, and in part due simply to the fact that the American family was no longer the key support system that Americans needed to thrive. Under the newly rising culture, Americans were invited to try to undertake life entirely on their own.

Alice Paul celebrating the passage of the 19th Amendment on August 20, 1920
giving women full voting rights

The new League of Women Voters preparing for the Democratic National Convention
in San Francisco – 1920

Coeds at Creighton University, Omaha – 1924

A young lady having her hair "bobbed" by a barber

A young man wearing his "Oxford bags"

A slicked-down, center-parted hairdo as part of the new look

A raccoon coat and peekaboo hat as high fashion

College undergrads doing a bit of "crooning"

American "flapper" and friend

A 1926 Charleston contest in Los Angeles

Doing the Charleston in competition – St. Louis, 1925

Carroll Dickerson's band plays for a jazz floor show – Chicago – 1924

Louis Armstrong

The first Miss America pageant in Atlantic City with contestants from 9 cities – 1921
The winner: Margaret Gorman, 16, (3rd from the left) of Washington D.C.