How Can the Social Developments of the 20s Be Considered a Reaction Against Progressivism?

The 1920s heralded a dramatic break between America's past and future. Before Globe War I the country remained culturally and psychologically rooted in the nineteenth century, merely in the 1920s America seemed to break its contemplative attachments to the recent past and usher in a more modern era. The nearly brilliant impressions of that era are flappers and dance halls, moving-picture show palaces and radio empires, and Prohibition and speakeasies. Scientists shattered the boundaries of space and fourth dimension, aviators made men fly, and women went to work. The country was confident—and rich. But the 1920s were an age of extreme contradiction. The unmatched prosperity and cultural advocacy was accompanied past intense social unrest and reaction. The same decade that diameter witness to urbanism and modernism also introduced the Ku Klux Klan, Prohibition, nativism, and religious fundamentalism. America stood at a crossroads between innovation and tradition. Many Americans were looking boldly alee, but just equally many were gazing backward, to cherished memories of a fabled national innocence.

Age of Convergence

Many of the trends that converged to brand the twenties distinct had been edifice for years, and in some cases, decades.

Nosotros recall of the twenties every bit an era of liberation for women. Indeed, the decade gave ascent to the flapper, described by Webster's Collegiate Dictionary equally "a young girl, esp. one somewhat daring in acquit, speech communication and dress," immortalized in the short stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald and by silent picture show stars similar Clara Bow, Colleen Moore, and Louise Brooks. Just women had been breaking downwardly the separate spheres of Victorian culture for quite some time. A powerful women's political move demanded and won the right to vote in 1920. Spurred on past the growth of an urban, industrial economic system that required a larger female person labor force, and by the emergence of public amusements that defied the old nineteenth-century courting system, many immature women now had the wherewithal and drive to pb independent lives. Past the dawn of the decade, anywhere between one-quarter and one-third of urban woman workers lived lonely in private apartments or boardinghouses, free from the watchful optics of their parents, and every bit early as 1896, newspaper columnist George Ade used the term "date" to draw a new convention by which boys and girls paired off to frolic at dance halls, amusement parks, and other public spaces, complimentary from developed supervision.

Closely associated with the ascension of the flapper, the twenties gave ascension to a frank, national word about sex. But this tendency, as well, had been building over time. As early equally 1913, the Atlantic Monthly announced that the clock had tolled "Sexual practice o'clock in America," indicating a "Repeal of Reticence" about issues that had one time been considered taboo. To be certain, these trends accelerated after Earth War I: surveys propose that 14 percent of women born earlier 1900 engaged in pre-marital sex by the age of 25, while as many every bit 39 percent of women who came of age in the 1910s and 1920s lost their virginity before matrimony. Only the fundamental structural changes that were at play in earlier decades—namely, urbanization and industrialization—long predated the twenties. Between 1800 and 1920 the number of children borne past the average American adult female fell from seven to three. Americans were not necessarily having less sex. Rather, in an urbanizing society, where more children were a cost rather than an asset, they stepped upward their utilize of nascence control, and in so doing, redefined sex activity as something to appoint in for pleasure rather than procreation.

We recall of the twenties as an era of prosperity, and in many respects, Americans had never lived so well. But this trend, also, claimed earlier roots. As factories and shops mechanized, the work week of the urban blueish-collar worker cruel from 55.9 hours in 1900 to 44.two in 1929, while his or her real wages rose by 25 percent. Past the dawn of the twenties, Americans had more than fourth dimension and coin to spend on new kinds of public amusements like dance halls, movie theaters, fun parks, and baseball game stadiums. They as well had more opportunities to purchase competitively priced durable items, thanks to new methods of production and distribution. The prosperity of the post-war period profoundly accelerated this tendency. By 1929, American families spent over xx percentage of their household earnings on such items every bit phonographs, factory-made piece of furniture, radios, electric appliances, automobiles, and "entertainment." What people couldn't afford, they borrowed. Past the mid-'20s Americans bought over three-quarters of all article of furniture, phonographs, and washing machines on credit.

The proliferation of advertising—alongside the maturation of the publishing, music, and film industries—exposed citizens to a new gospel of fun that was intimately associated with the purchase of goods and services. "Sell them their dreams," a prominent advertizement-human being intoned. "Sell them what they longed for and hoped for and virtually despaired of having. Sell them hats by splashing sunlight across them. Sell them dreams—dreams of land clubs and proms and visions of what might happen if just. After all, people don't buy things to take them. . . . They purchase hope—hope of what your merchandise might exercise for them."[ane]

Age of Wonders

If many of the social trends that we associate with the twenties had long been edifice, the decade was indeed unique in many means.

It was a decade of firsts. For the first fourth dimension ever, more Americans (51 percent) lived in cities than in villages or on farms.

Information technology was a decade of economical expansion. Between 1919 and 1929 horsepower per wage earner in manufacturing skyrocketed by l percent, signaling a robust wave of mechanization that increased productivity by 72 percentage in manufacturing, 33 percent in railroads, and 41 per centum in mining.

And it was a decade of technological wonder.

In 1912, merely sixteen pct of American households had electricity; by the mid-20s, almost two-thirds did. Overnight, the electric vacuum cleaner, the electric refrigerator and freezer, and the automatic washing machine became staples in middle-form homes.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, automobiles were still unreliable and scarce, just in the years just prior to Earth State of war I, pioneers like Ransom Olds, Henry Leland, and Henry Ford revolutionized design and product methods to make the automobile affordable and trustworthy. When the sociologists Robert and Helen Lynd interviewed high school students in Muncie, Indiana, in the mid-20s, they found that the most common sources of disagreement between teenagers and their parents were ane) "the number of times you go out on school nights during the week"; 2) "the 60 minutes you get in at dark"; three) "grades at school"; four) "your spending money"; and 5) "use of the automobile."[2]

Some other pre-war technology that came of age in the twenties was moving picture. Past the mid-1920s picture show theaters were selling 50 million tickets each week, a sum equal to roughly half the Us population! And the generation that came of historic period in the twenties learned things at the moving picture palace that they couldn't larn in school. "The only do good I e'er got from the movies was in learning to love and the knowledge of sex," a young woman confided to an interviewer in the mid-20s. "If we didn't see such examples in the movies," explicate another, "where would we go the idea of being 'hot?' We wouldn't."[three] These immature informants might have been thinking of the 1923 blockbuster Flaming Youth, which i reviewer described as "intriguingly risqué, only not necessarily offensively and so. The flapperism of today, with its jazz. . . . and its utter condone of the conventions, is daringly handled in this film. And it contains a bathing scene in silhouette that must accept fabricated the censors blink."[4]

Like film, radio was invented in the late nineteenth century but experienced its formative era of commercial expansion in the twenties. On November 2, 1920, radio station KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, circulate the presidential ballot returns. It was the first-e'er alive radio transmission for a popular audience, and although few Americans that evening had the necessary technology to hear the results, past 1922 more than than three million households had acquired radio sets. Vii years later more than twelve 1000000 households endemic radios, fuelling an manufacture that saw $852 1000000 in annual sales.

Americans living in the 1920s could listen to Roxy and His Gang, the Clicqot Club Eskimos, and the Ipana Troubadours. They could hear Gartland Rice announce the World Series—live—or mind to Floyd Gibbons relate the day'southward news. Radio proved a highly democratic medium, and by mid-decade local stations helped bring "race music," "hillbilly" sounds, and ethnic recordings into living rooms beyond the country. In the late 1920s enterprising American businessmen built powerful "Ten-stations" only across the edge in northern Mexico to evade federal radio frequency regulations. From this vantage signal they were able to beam the music of "Fiddlin' John Carson," the Carter Family, and Jimmie Rodgers to every destination from California to New York City.

Return to Normalcy

Since the dawn of the twentieth century, American politics had been dominated by Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, two presidents whose outsized personalities and dueling visions of the progressive spirit defined the tenor and tone of public life. After 1920, Americans seemed to aspire to "normalcy." In Warren Grand. Harding, they got exactly what they bargained (and voted) for.

Harding'southward best qualities were his extreme affability and striking expert looks. Both got him in trouble regularly. Even as a young male child, the future president seemed all too inclined to delight everyone and offend no one. Equally a successful newspaper publisher, local politico and, later on, US senator from Ohio, Harding joined the Rotary Society, the Elks, the Odd Fellows, the Hoo Hoos, the Red Men, and the Moose. He relished poker games and excelled at public speaking. He played the b-flat trumpet in the boondocks marching band. Indeed, Warren Harding was the very apotheosis of Sinclair Lewis's Babbit—and proud to be so.

The ever-genial Harding stacked his Cabinet with cronies from Ohio. He let his attorney general sell pardons and pledges of government non-interference to the highest bidders. He looked the other manner while his secretary of the interior accustomed nigh $400,000 in kickbacks in exchange for a long-term lease on oil-rich federal lands at Teapot Dome, Wyoming. All the while, he adhered to a limited and conservative vision of government, pressing for lower taxes and less regulation and issuing an implicit repudiation of Wilsonian reformism.

Despite—or perhaps fifty-fifty considering of—his limitations, Warren Harding was widely admired past the American electorate. When he died halfway through his term, the public offered up a great outpouring of sorrow and sympathy. It was only in the following months that Warren Harding'due south countrymen learned of their late president's extramarital affairs and scandal-ridden assistants. Simply by then, it hardly seemed to matter. Everything was dorsum to normal.

Silent Cal

Harding'southward successor, Calvin Coolidge, may have been the most reticent human ever to occupy the White House. Austere, laconic, and conservative to a fault, "Silent Cal" perfectly embodied the laissez-faire ethic that governed American politics throughout the "Jazz Historic period." He slept eleven hours each 24-hour interval, vetoed far more bills than he proposed, and claimed that his but hobby was "holding public office." He had little to say. When a elective bet that she could "go more than than 2 words" out of him, the President replied simply: "You lose." Upon hearing that Coolidge had passed abroad in 1933, the famous wit Dorothy Parker asked: "How could they tell?"

Coolidge slashed the federal upkeep past well-nigh half, eliminated the gift revenue enhancement, sliced the estate tax by 50 percent, and lowered the maximum federal surtax from 60 percent to 20 per centum. The president disavowed annihilation across minimal regulation of business and commerce. He denied a federal part in labor relations and repeatedly affirmed his absolute religion in market forces. What was "of real importance to wage-earners," he claimed, "was not how they might quarrel with their employers but how the business organisation of the country might so exist organized as to insure steady employment at a fair rate of pay."[5]

In 1928 Coolidge announced unexpectedly and without fanfare that he did "non choose to run for president" again. His married woman was as surprised as anyone. "Isn't that just like the man!" she exclaimed. "I had no idea."

The Engineer

When Herbert Hoover took the adjuration of function equally the nation's xxx-kickoff president in 1929, the New York Times sounded an enthusiastic note of approval, applauding the new principal executive for his "versatile ability," "sterling character," and "Progressive leanings."

Orphaned at the tender age of nine, Hoover was raised by austere Quaker relatives in Iowa. He worked his way through Stanford Academy, where he earned a degree in applied science and graduated first in his course. Over the next twenty years he ascended steadily up the corporate ladder, etching out a brilliant career every bit a mine operator, engineer, and businessman. During World War I he served as US food ambassador and masterminded voluntary production and consumption standards that kept the American Expeditionary Forcefulness well nourished and domestic prices steady. After the state of war he headed up the American relief effort in Kingdom of belgium, where he was widely credited with feeding and clothing several hundred thousand European refugees. After saving Belgium, Hoover served as secretary of commerce under Warren One thousand. Harding and Calvin Coolidge. In that office he greatly expanded the government's collection and dissemination of industrial data, organized dozens of voluntary corporate councils, and brought the executive branch into close cooperation with business organisation and labor.

It was Herbert Hoover'due south peachy misfortune that the Depression began but months into his term in office. Smart, well educated, well traveled, and enormously capable, Hoover considered himself an activist and a Quaker humanitarian. As an engineer, he embodied the guiding spirit of progressivism, with its religion in rational and informed public policy. The poverty and despair of his countrymen profoundly afflicted Hoover.

Only like most public men of his era, Herbert Hoover believed that sound volunteerism was the best remedy for economical distress. Rather than prefer stiff federal regulatory and fiscal measures, he called for more studies and for an organized—merely voluntary—response on the part of the private sector.

By 1930, this blueprint of inaction made Herbert Hoover 1 of the most despised men in America. A popular Vaudeville skit had the directly-man announce that the Depression was over. "Has Herbert Hoover died?" his sidekick would enquire. In public appearances, the president seemed thoroughly defeated. "A rose would wilt in his manus," one observer famously remarked.

Culture Wars

The cracking revolution in morals, aesthetics, and everyday life that was sweeping through America didn't run into with uniform approval. Though the twenties are remembered primarily as a decade of bold innovation and experimentation, they also witnessed a violent counter-revolutionary trend.

In 1925 a grouping of local boosters in Dayton, Tennessee, persuaded a young high school science teacher, John Scopes, to violate the state's anti-evolution law. They but wanted to draw attending to their economically depressed crossroads town. Instead, what followed was a sensational trial that pitted the famous "lawyer for the damned" Clarence Darrow, a committed civil libertarian and most fanatical atheist, confronting William Jennings Bryan, the famously eloquent Nebraskan who had thrice failed to attain the presidency but who remained a hero to rural fundamentalists in the South and Midwest. The trial's climax came when Darrow called his antagonist to the stand up as a biblical expert and Bryan reluctantly admitted that some scriptural language might exist more than allegorical than literal.

The trial seemed like the culmination of a long-simmering disharmonism between liberal and fundamentalist Christians. Although it was technically a win for the prosecution, liberals declared it a great victory for their cause. Bryan, they said, had unintentionally exposed fundamentalism as a simpleton'southward creed, while Darrow had established the supremacy of science over fundamentalist Christianity. In fact, the conservatives were far from beat. They immediately began to regroup and charter missions, publishing houses, and radio stations. Fifty years later, they would reemerge as a powerful strength in American public life.

More than successful in the immediate term was the Ku Klux Klan, a Reconstruction-era paramilitary grouping that had faded from American life until 1915, when Colonel William Simmons re-founded the organization at a small-scale ceremony on Stone Mountain, in Georgia. Past 1925 the arrangement claimed at least five million members and controlled politics in Indiana, Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado; it was enormously powerful in several other states, notably California and Georgia. The Klan's greatest legislative achievement came in 1924, when it joined a broad coalition of conservative groups that won passage and approval of a callous anti-clearing statute. The golden door would remain closed for another forty years.

The new Klan represented diverse ideas to its polyglot membership. It was avowedly white supremacist, but for expert mensurate information technology also included Jews, Catholics, Asians, and "new women" amongst its list of enemies. Its followers could be found in cities every bit well as in the countryside, simply as a general dominion, the organisation was fundamentalist and conservative in both profile and disposition. As one sympathetic observer explained, "The Ku Klux move seems to be another expression of the general unrest and dissatisfaction with both local and national conditions—the loftier cost of living, social injustice and inequality, poor assistants of justice, political corruption, hyphenism, disunity, unassimilated and conflicting idea and standards—which are distressing all thoughtful men."[6]

In 1924, the organisation enjoyed sufficient strength to force a deadlock at the Democratic National Convention, where supporters of New York's governor, Al Smith—a Catholic—faced off against Klansmen aligned with former Treasury Secretary William McAdoo. While Smith'due south supporters shouted "Ku Klux McAdoo!"—to which McAdoo supporters taunted their opponents with cries of "Booze! Alcohol! Booze!"—the convention came to a deadlock. On the 103rd ballot, exasperated, and drastic, the convention agreed on a compromise candidate, a lackluster federal gauge named John W. Davis, who was resoundingly defeated past the incumbent, Calvin Coolidge. It was the high-water mark for the Klan.

Arguably, Prohibition was the almost successful achievement of anti-mod forces in the 1920s. Writing just afterward Congress and states ratified the Eighteenth Subpoena, which authorized a ban on the production and auction of alcoholic beverages, the great urban wit H. L. Mencken attributed such "crazy enactments" to "the yokel's congenital and incurable hatred of the city man—his simian rage against everyone who, as he sees information technology, is having a improve time than he is." In his shrill, visceral response to Prohibition, Mencken may have overstated the intensity of America's rural-urban dissever. Over the adjacent decade there would be no shortage of bathtub gin and woodshed stills in the countryside. Yet he was right on one count: passage of the Eighteenth Subpoena and its accompanying federal statute, the Volstead Act, both of which took outcome in 1920, were the culminating events in a long endeavour past conservative forces to check the growing power of America's immigrants and urban dwellers—one and the same, in some respects, since first- and second-generation Americans comprised the overwhelming (75+ percent) office of the population in metropolises like New York, Chicago, and Boston. Though Americans widely flouted the new law (and, appropriately, the twenties are remembered as a especially liquid era), in fact, per capita booze consumption plummeted during Prohibition, lending the decade yet another paradoxical trait.

Cease of an Era

The twenties were e'er something of a gilded age. Even amongst the great prosperity and excess of the decade, America's economic system was fundamentally weak. Over 40 percent of Americans got by on less than $1,500 each year, which economists cited equally the minimum family unit subsistence level. The income of the elevation 0.i percent of families equaled the income of the bottom 42 percentage. Near country folk did not experience the prosperity of the Roaring Twenties. Farm prices hitting rock bottom in the backwash of Earth State of war I and widened the gulf between America's (relatively) prosperous cities and impoverished farms.

Such glaring inequality had consequences. Blast times relied on mass consumption, and eventually, working people reached their limit. The very wealthy could merely purchase and then many cars, washing machines, radio sets, and film tickets. When consumer demand bottomed out, America's economy simply stopped functioning.

When the stock market collapsed in 1929, and when the twin influences of under-consumption and over-speculation began wreaking structural havoc on the American economic system, the nation'due south revolution in values and aesthetics remained incomplete. The twenties were arguably the nation's showtime modern decade, but many of its social and cultural revolutions would play themselves out in time to come years.

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[ane] William Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power and the Ascension of a New American Culture (New York, 1993), 298.

[2] Robert Southward. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture (New York, 1929), 257, 524.

[iii] Garth S. Jowett, Ian C. Jarvie, and Katherine H. Fuller, eds., Children and the Movies: Media Influence and the Payne Fund Controversy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 276.

[4] Joshua Zeitz, Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Fashion, Celebrity, and the Women Who Fabricated America Modern (New York: Crown, 2006), 211.

[5]  William Due east. Leuchtenberg, The Perils of Prosperity: 1914-1932 (New York, 1958, rev. 1993), 97.

[6] Lynn Dumenil. Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s (New York, 1995), 235.

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Joshua Zeitz has taught American history at Harvard Academy and Cambridge University. He is the author of Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex activity, Style, Glory and the Women Who Made American Modern (2006) and White Ethnic New York: Jews, Catholics, and the Shaping of Post-War Politics ( 2007). He is currently writing a joint biography of John Hay and John Nicolay.

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