Culturally
and socially, the Roaring Twenties were a heady time of rapid
change, artistic innovation, and high-society antics. Popular culture roared to
life as the economy boomed. New technologies, soaring business profits, and
higher wages allowed more and more Americans to purchase a wide range of
consumer goods. Prosperity also provided Americans with more leisure time, and
as play soon became the national pastime, literature, film, and music caught up
to document the times.
The
Second Industrial Revolution
Much of the impetus for
this modernization came from America’s so-called second Industrial
Revolution, which had begun around the turn of the century. During this
era,electricity and more advancedmachinery made
factories nearly twice as efficient as they had been under steam power in the 1800s.
Henry
Ford and the Automobile
Perhaps the greatest
increase in efficiency came when Henry Ford perfected theassembly-line production
method, which enabled factories to churn out large quantities of a variety of
new technological wonders, such as radios, telephones, refrigerators, washing
machines, and cars. The increasing availability of suchconsumer goods pushed
modernization forward, and the U.S. economy began to shift away from heavy
industry toward the production of these commodities.
The automobile quickly
became the symbol of the new America. Although Americans did not invent the
car, they certainly perfected it. Much of the credit for this feat went to Ford
and his assembly-line method, which transformed the car from a luxury item into
a necessity for modern living. By the mid-1920s, even many working-class families could
afford a brand-new Model T Ford, priced at just over $250. Increasing
demand for the automobile in turn trickled down to many other industries. The
demand for oil, for example, boomed, and oil prospectors set up new wells in
Texas and the Southwest practically overnight. Newer and smoother roads were
constructed across America, dotted with new service stations. Change came so
rapidly that by 1930,
almost one in three Americans owned cars.
The
Birth of the Suburbs
Its effect on the U.S.
economy aside, the automobile also changed American life immeasurably. Cars
most directly affected the way that Americans moved around, but this change
also affected the way that Americans lived and spent their free time. Trucks
provided faster modes of transport for crops and perishable foods and therefore
improved the quality and freshness of purchasable food. Perhaps most
important, the automobile allowed people to leave the inner city and live
elsewhere without changing jobs. During the 1920s, more people purchased houses in
new residential communities within an easy drive of the metropolitan centers.
After a decade, these suburbs had grown exponentially, making
the car more of a necessity than ever.
Modern
U.S. Cities
American cities changed
drastically during the 1920s because of factors above and beyond those related to the
automobile. First, the decade saw millions of people flock to the cities from
country farmlands; in particular, African Americans fled the
South for northern cities in the post–World War I black migration. Immigrants,
especially eastern Europeans, also flooded the cities. As a result of these
changes, the number of American city dwellers—those who lived in towns with a
population greater than 2,500 people—came
to outnumber those who lived in rural areas for the first time in U.S. history.
At the same time, new
architectural techniques allowed builders to construct taller buildings. The
firstskyscrapers began dotting city skylines in the 1920s, and by1930, several
hundred buildings over twenty stories tall existed in U.S. cities.
The
Airplane
Aviation developed
quickly after the Wright brothers’ first sustained powered flight in 1903, and by the 1920s, airplanes were
becoming a significant part of American life. Several passenger airline
companies, subsidized by U.S. Mail contracts, sprang to life, allowing
wealthier citizens to travel across the country in a matter of hours rather
than days or weeks. In 1927, stunt flyer Charles Lindbergh soared to
international fame when he made the first solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean
(from New York to Paris) in his single-engine plane, the Spirit of St.
Louis. His achievement gave an enormous boost to the growing aviation
industry.
Radio
and the Jazz Age
Another influential
innovation of the time was the radio, which entertained and brought
Americans together like nothing else had before. Electricity became more
readily available throughout the decade, and by 1930, most American households had radio
receivers. The advertising industry blossomed as companies began to deliver
their sales pitches via the airwaves to thousands of American families who
gathered together nightly to listen to popular comedy programs, news, speeches,
sporting events, and music.
In particular, jazz music
became incredibly popular. Originating in black communities in New Orleans
around the turn of the century, jazz slowly moved its way north and became a
national phenomenon thanks to the radio. Along with new music came “scandalous”
new dances such as the Charleston and the jitterbug.
Hollywood
and “Talkies”
The Hollywood motion
picture industry also emerged during the 1920s. Although movies were nothing new
to Americans, as silent films had enjoyed widespread popularity during the
previous decade, the first “talkies” brought actors’ voices
into theaters and kicked the moviemaking business into high gear. Glamorous
actors and actresses soon enjoyed the status of royalty and came to dominate
American pop culture.
Lost
Generation Literature
While pop culture
burgeoned, a new generation of postwar American authors penned a flurry of new
poems, plays, and novels. In 1920, F. Scott Fitzgeraldgained almost
instant fame when he glamorized the new youth culture in This Side of
Paradise. Five years later, he followed up his first success with the
critically acclaimed novel The Great Gatsby. William
Faulkner became the new voice of the South with novels such as The
Sound and the Fury (1929). World War I veteranErnest Hemingway published
the antiwar novels The Sun Also Rises (1926) and A Farewell to Arms (1929).
Other notable writers and
poets of the era included T. S. Eliot, Sherwood Anderson, Sinclair
Lewis, and playwright Eugene O’Neill. Together, these writers,
disillusioned with war and society, became known as the Lost Generation.
Black culture in the North also flourished throughout the years of the Harlem
Renaissance, during which writers such as Langston Hughes and Zora
Neale Hurston created a new tradition in African-American poetry,
fiction, and scholarship.
Women’s
Suffrage and the Sexual Revolution
The booming twenties also
brought more rights and freedoms for women. In 1920, the Nineteenth
Amendment granted American women the right to vote. Just as important,
more women gained financial independence as the number of women in the
workforce skyrocketed. Approximately 15 percent of women were employed by1930. Although
they were generally confined to “traditional” women’s jobs such as secretarial
work and teaching, the new financial freedom that these jobs afforded opened
the doors to increased social mobility for women.
As women’s rights
increased, so too did social freedoms. A new symbol of the Jazz Age emerged:
the image of the short-haired, short-skirted, independent-minded, and sexually
liberated “flapper” woman who lived life in the fast lane.
Soon, the flapper came to represent everything modern in 1920s America.
With this new image of women, a sexual revolution followed as attitudes toward
sex changed and birth control became widely accepted and available.
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