This video is brought to you by Captivating History. The 1920s looms large in the public's popular imagination as a glamorous era of technological change and widespread prosperity, bookended by two world wars and the Great Depression. The period during the 20s was an oasis of calm wedged between a series of global calamities. Although not everybody felt the benefits of this abundant time, across the US and Europe, More relaxed social attitudes made the 20s a grand time to party.
While economic growth during this era was ultimately built on sand, and the decade would end in disaster, the 20s'reputation as a golden time for art, literature, and music is well deserved. After the horrific events of World War I came to a close in 1918, the mood across Europe and America was one of renewed positivity. Almost 20 million people had died in the war.
and shortly afterward, tens of millions more had been killed by the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 through 1920. With these dark events fading into the past and many novel inventions and forms of entertainment now available, the future looked bright for many. During this innovative decade, a wealth of new technology changed day-to-day life for many ordinary people. Labor-saving inventions such as the blender and the vacuum cleaner were marketed to everyday consumers. Many older inventions, such as the radio and the car, suddenly became affordable and mass-produced for the first time. In the US, Henry Ford developed an automobile that was cheap enough for ordinary people to buy, changing America's landscape.
This era gave birth to modern American consumer culture, partially fueled by the development of modern advertising, in tandem with the rise of inexpensive print media and modern radios. The sudden availability of cheap credit in this period also meant that many people spent more on luxury items. With a wave of new inventions came a wave of money, and in the US, the economy surged on the back of these profitable new industries. The Republican governments of Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge introduced major tax cuts, which, with the rise in wages, massively increased spending. The stock market boomed, and while Europe was saddled with war debt, the US became very confident in its position as a financial giant.
As share prices rose, the American stock market looked like a safe way to make money, and many ordinary people invested their savings in stocks and shares. Lots of people flocked to American cities to share in this increase in industrial activity. For the first time in US history, more people lived in urban areas than in the countryside. Those who didn't move to the cities in this decade would lose out to those who did, both socially and economically. With more leisure time, more money to spend, and more progressive ideas taking center stage, many Americans drank, danced, and partied like never before.
Although the more conservative sections of society were horrified, many people embraced this more liberal atmosphere, especially in the wake of the previous decade's unrelenting tragedy. Women were at the forefront of this revolution of attitudes. Western world, they had been given the right to vote just after the war, and ideas about what women could and couldn't do were changing.
Flappers, as they were known, were a breed of fashionable young women who embraced their new freedoms. Many women had entered the workforce during World War I, and after the war, they were hired in white-collar jobs from which they had been previously barred. These women would go out to drink, dance, and smoke, just like the men did, without shame. The move away from conservative ideas and behaviors influenced women's fashion as well.
Leading designers such as Coco Chanel and Jean Lavon were the era's style goddesses, and their innovative designs encouraged looser and less formal but still glamorous clothing. Short haircuts and shorter dresses were suddenly the height of fashion. In the U.S., these modern women and their male equivalents went to speakeasies, illicit nightclubs, to drink and dance. Prohibition was introduced in the U.S. in 1920. In theory, alcohol was illegal, but we associate the 1920s with excessive drinking to this day.
Prohibition across the U.S. was not policed properly, and it was common for the policemen and politicians to look the other way while bootleggers smuggled alcohol across borders and from coasts. Bars that sold alcohol illegally were raided regularly, but they stayed open due to their vast popularity. Many people found that the raids just added to the excitement of going out for a drink.
One of the darker aspects of life in the 1920s was the massive rise in gang crime caused by the ban on alcohol. Prohibition ultimately caused caused more problems than it solved, with New York and Chicago becoming hives of gang activity during this era. The most famous bootlegger of all, notorious gangster Al Capone, was so well connected to local politicians and police in Chicago that he avoided prosecution throughout most of the 1920s.
He ultimately went to jail because he hadn't paid his taxes. Bootlegging would continue to be widespread until prohibition ended in the 1930s. One reason the speakeasies were so popular in the 20s was that many played jazz music. Jazz spread like wildfire across the US and Europe in the 20s due to the sudden availability of cheap records. Small labels could now record obscure bands in cities like New Orleans at minimal cost, which meant that people worldwide could easily listen to and copy new music styles.
With new genres of music came new styles of dancing. Old-fashioned ballroom dancing was still popular, but younger crowds were embracing more energetic styles. Phrenetic dances such as the Charleston and the Lindy Hop edged out slower, more conservative styles meant for classical music.
Many forms of self-expression got a considerable boost in this era of radical convention-defying artistic movements. The horrors of World War I had led many people to re-examine human nature. and society at large.
Popular artistic movements, such as Surrealism, Expressionism, and Dataism, focused on the emotional, irrational, and absurd parts of human life. Paris, in particular, was a special place in the 1920s for arts and culture, known as the Crazy Years in France. The early 20s saw a collection of painters and writers coalesce around the great Gertrude Stein, who held a salon in the city. Some of America's best writers including Ernest Hemingway and Zelda, and F.
Scott Fitzgerald, moved to France in the 20s to be part of this collective. Known as the Lost Generation of Writers, they were world-weary and cynical, commenting on the excesses of the day. These great American writers rubbed shoulders with the likes of Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, producing spectacular works of art. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is possibly the defining book of the 1920s.
a commentary on wealth and class in America. The U.S. would also flourish artistically, and many European trends would successfully cross the Atlantic, especially the Art Deco movement. The Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and Rockefeller Center in New York are examples of American Art Deco masterpieces built in the 20s and 30s.
New York produced many great artists. The Borough of Harlem produced the Harlem Renaissance, a collective of African-American musicians, writers, and poets whose art was the basis for the development of the U.S. would become one of the era's defining movements. People working in the arts could now reach more people than ever before, with the rise of film and radio. In California, Hollywood had become a serious film center by the beginning of the decade.
Movie theaters spread across the world, and film stars became the objects of veneration. Early silent films, such as the famous slapstick films of Charlie Chaplin, were a big hit, and popular starlets such as Gloria Swanson and Josephine Baker became the most popular films of all time. became major sex symbols.
Similarly, sports stars could now obtain international renown, as matches could be broadcast via radio worldwide. In New York, baseball player Babe Ruth was one of the first megastars of the sporting world. At his career's height, he hit 60 home runs in a single season.
While the world was undoubtedly a fast-moving and exciting place in the 20s, there were dark clouds at the horizon, as many poor and disadvantaged people were left behind in this decade. decade. Many living in the US countryside were not swept up in this wave of prosperity, and the agriculture sector was facing a severe downturn for most of the decade.
These people could not afford to buy new gadgets and missed the wave of cultural trends happening in the cities. In poorer parts of the US, the politics of resentment gained a deep foothold. The Ku Klux Klan received a massive boost in membership levels in the American South.
While the Klan had always persecuted African Americans and other minority groups, by the 1920s, they were also spreading a message that the day's changing morals were destroying America. Its members campaigned against widespread bootlegging, more relaxed attitude towards sex and desegregation. members of the Klan would tar and feather, and even lynch people they didn't like.
Many Klan members even went into politics. The glitz, glamour, and positivity of the 1920s came to a screeching halt after the Wall Street crash in 1929. Serious economic problems had been brewing across Europe and the U.S. for some time before the crash, caused by significant debts from World War I, shaky global trade, a flatlining agricultural sector, and a slowdown of industry. Due to the new craze of buying stocks and shares in the US, this painful reality did not hit home to the late 20s.
Share prices had risen enormously during this decade thanks to the mania for unregulated speculation. Many people bought shares to get money, but they didn't get any. rich, buying them on the margin, using loans.
When it became obvious that share prices were incredibly overinflated, panic selling began. During the Wall Street crash of October 24, 1929, known as Black Thursday, the Dow Jones stock market was in a state of panic. Jones dropped dramatically as millions of shares were sold in one day.
An ongoing wave of panic across America led to widespread banking collapses, which would have a knock-on effect on Europe. The Great Depression had begun, and the Roaring Twenties had come roaring to a halt. To learn more about The Roaring Twenties, check out our book The Roaring Twenties, A Captivating Guide to a Period of Dramatic Social and Political Change, A False Sense of Prosperity and Its Impact on the Great Depression. It's available as an e-book, paperback, and audiobook. Also, grab your free mythology bundle e-book while still available.
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