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Subscribe to any show for free and download episodes for offline listening.

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Subscribe to any show for free and download episodes for offline listening. All your listening is automatically synced across devices so you can pause on one device and resume on another with the Google Assistant.

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Twenties Fashions, Major Advances in Technology with many of the inventions still in use today, The growth of the movie industry, Start of the Mass Production of cars, Radios For The Home and Popular Culture, The Twenties were a time of radical change caused by the many changes happening in technology with new advancements, discoveries, and inventions. The decade is often referred to as the Roaring Twenties.
Jump To 1920's Fashions -- Toys -- Cars -- Popular Culture -- Homes -- Technology

What Happened in 1920 History

With the ending of World War I a housing boom in Britain and the United States leads to an increase in home ownership.

The League of Nations is founded but the United States votes against joining.

Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified on August 18, giving women the right to vote.

The Russian Civil war ends but the country struggles as a famine begins in 1920 and worsens the following year.

The Summer Olympics take place in Antwerp, Belgium and they emphasize reconciliation after World War I.

The 18th Amendment ( Volstead Act / National Prohibition Act ) goes into force at the beginning of the decade which in turn leads to increased black market alcohol that is sold in speakeasies and run by mobsters who pay off local politicians

The Palmer Raids lead to the arrest and deportation of 6,000 foreign aliens suspected radical leftists.

Personalized Birthday newspaper style front page print features historical information from the chosen month/year. Personalize with Name / DOB / Photos / Personalized Message ( From Our Back In Time History Related Gift Collection ) Features a top news story depending on the month/year chosen, and other more general information from the year such as popular music and movies, world leaders, Broadway shows (1920s), radio shows (1930s), and television (1940s to Present), sports news, prices, and other news events.

What Happened in 1929 History

The Wall Street Crash of 1929 started the period of The Great Depression in the United States

During most of the decade turf wars between rival gangs were frequent and extremely violent. The best known of the many was Al Capone's Saint Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago during 1929.

Vatican City becomes an independent and sovereign state located within Rome after the Lateran Pacts are signed.

Part of our Ladies Hats From The Decade

Ladies Dresses From The Decade

Part of our Collection of Childrens Clothes From the Decade

Check out the new toys pages where you can see some of the children's toys that could be found during the Roaring Twenties and other decades. Toys include Teddy Bears, Velocipedes, Tinker Toys, Gyroscopes, and Magic Lanterns.
From Our Twenties Toys Page
Below are some examples of kids pedal cars, you will notice from the advert below the toy pedal car makers were quick to mimic the cars of the period

Possibly the most significant change during the decade was the mass production of the Car started by Henry Ford in the early 1900's. He had manufactured and sold some 15 million Model-Ts by 1927. I have included 20 examples of cars for sale in the decade

Baseball
The Yankees and Babe Ruth rule the world of Baseball setting records for the team and the Great Babe Ruth.
Major League Teams Buy up Minor League Teams allowing them to get top players much cheaper than the open market.
Association Football (Soccer)
Soccer had been gaining in popularity since the mid 1800's but the Twenties gave an even bigger boost with the Growth Of Radio In Britain making the top players into stars.

To provide an estimate we have given a guide to the value of $100 US Dollars for the first year in the decade to the equivalent in today's money
If you have $100 Converted from 1920 to 2009 it would be equivalent to $1023 in today's money

There were many inventions and new types of technology developed during the 1920s, but possibly the one that had the greatest impact before the turn of the next decade was Radio. It soon became a staple of peoples lives providing entertainment, news, and new ideas. Another very important invention also started to impact peoples lives and that was the uses of airplanes apart from as a weapon of war. Air Mail would provide some of the impetus and investment needed to improve stability and provide a practical use, as a byproduct the airplane became used as a means for entertainment with stunts at Fairs. Man also realized he could push the bounds by attempting previously un-thought of ideas. A good example is Charles A. Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic Ocean by himself in an airplane. It was during the 20's that automatic vending machines began to appear to dispense soft drinks.

Inventions -- The Year Invented, Inventors, and Country (or attributed to First Use)

Aerosol Sprays ----- 1926 Norway by Erik Rotheim
Antibiotic Penicillin ----- 1928 England by Alexander Fleming
Frozen Food ----- 1924 USA by Clarence Birdseye
Handheld Hair Dryer ----- 1920 USA by Hamilton Beach Co.
Vacuum Tube Hearing Aid ----- 1921 USA by Earl Hanson
Iron Lung ----- 1928 USA by Philip Drinker
Liquid Fuel Rocket ----- 1926 USA by Robert Goddard
Quartz Clock ----- 1927 USA by Warren Marrison
Adhesive Bandages ----- 1920 USA by Earle Dickson
Talking Pictures ----- 1927 USA
Television ----- 1924 Scotland by John Logie Baird
Ultracentrifuge (Separates Proteins) ----- 1923 Sweden by The Svedberg
Videophone ----- 1927 USA
Electric Razor ----- 1927 USA by Jacob Schick
Period Leading up to the Decade You can not talk about the decade without mentioning "The Great Pandemic" from 1918-1919. This influenza epidemic (also known as the Spanish Flu) was a global catastrophe which is believed to have caused the death of over 40 million people worldwide. This is one of the main reasons governments round the world are still so concerned with "Bird Flu" and other largescale influenza outbreaks.

Due to the new technology available allowing movies to have both sound and color, the movie industry in Hollywood grew fast, as did the number of Cinemas showing the films. In 1919, laws were passed for the Prohibition of the consumption and even possession of alcohol, making it illegal. Due to these laws, the Decade provided some of the best known gangsters a means to create vast wealth by opening illegal bars called speakeasies that would provide alcoholic drinks for the people that patronized these establishments. The most well known gangster of the time was possibly Al Capone.
Also this period saw the growth of the Ku Klux Klan and the growth of the Vigilante groups who took the law into their own hands and lynched victims most often black without any trial.
The other great change in people's lives came from an invention and technology developed prior to the twenties. After World War I, the birth of commercial radio helped the radio to became a significant part of life providing news and entertainment to the masses in their homes.
Music Jazz was the music of popular choice and some of the best known musicians were jazz musicians including Duke Ellington and Al Jolson. One other popular musician/composer was George Gershwin. Many of his songs are still recorded and listened to today. A popular dance of the times was known as the Charleston.
From Our 20's Music Section

Electrical Home Goods
The range of things you could own was low because the vast number of Americans still did not have electricity, Below is one great example from our Electrical page featuring a radio, as I did the research I was amazed at the complexity involved in owning a radio for your home. All the items shown below were required to own a radio, more information on this and other items can be found on our
From Our 1920's Home Appliances Page

Homes and Furniture From The Twenties
Our new updated Homes page includes a number of self build homes with varying designs and sizes ranging from a small cottage to a two floor large 7 room house example below is taken from our 1920's Homes and Houses Page
Price: Sectional $2,205
It is interesting looking at the furniture and fixtures you might find in a home from the decade, below are just two examples I found interesting from the more than 20 we have included on our 1920's Furniture
Two Bedroom Country Cottage -- Portable Bathtub With Water Heater

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What Happened in the 1920s inc. News, Popular Culture, Prices and Technology

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Twenties Fashions, Major Advances in Technology with many of the inventions still in use today, The growth of the movie industry, Start of the Mass Production of cars, Radios For The Home and Popular Culture, The Twenties were a time of radical change caused by the many changes happening in technology with new advancements, discoveries, and inventions.

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Timeline: U.S. Women’s Rights, 1848 - 1920

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History and major events of the women’s rights movement, including women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, NY, passage of the 19th amendment to the Constitution, and more.

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11 Things Women Couldn’t Do In The 1920s

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From 1907-1922, American women would automatically lose their citizenship if they married a non-citizen.

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The Prohibition Era began in 1920 when the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which banned the manufacture, transportation and sale of intoxicating liquors, went into effect with the passage of the Volstead Act. Despite the new legislation, Prohibition was difficult to enforce. The increase of the illegal production and sale of liquor (known as "bootlegging"), the proliferation of speakeasies (illegal drinking spots) and the accompanying rise in gang violence and organized crime led to waning support for Prohibition by the end of the 1920s. In early 1933, Congress adopted a resolution proposing a 21st Amendment to the Constitution that would repeal the 18th. The 21st Amendment was ratified on December 5, 1933, ending Prohibition.

Origins of Prohibition

In the 1820s and '30s, a wave of religious revivalism swept the United States, leading to increased calls for temperance, as well as other "perfectionist" movements such as the abolitionist movement to end slavery.

In 1838, the state of Massachusetts passed a temperance law banning the sale of spirits in less than 15-gallon quantities; though the law was repealed two years later, it set a precedent for such legislation. Maine passed the first state prohibition laws in 1846, followed by a stricter law in 1851. A number of other states had followed suit by the time the Civil War began in 1861.

Did you know? In 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated the incumbent President Herbert Hoover, who once called Prohibition "the great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far reaching in purpose." Some say FDR celebrated the repeal of Prohibition by enjoying a dirty martini, his preferred drink.

By the turn of the century, temperance societies like the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) were a common fixture in communities across the United States. Women played a strong role in the temperance movement, as alcohol was seen as a destructive force in families and marriages.

In 1906, a new wave of attacks began on the sale of liquor, led by the Anti-Saloon League (established in 1893) and driven by a reaction to urban growth, as well as the rise of evangelical Protestantism and its view of saloon culture as corrupt and ungodly.

In addition, many factory owners during the Industrial Revolution supported prohibition in their desire to prevent accidents and increase the efficiency of their workers in an era of increased industrial production and extended working hours.

Volstead Act

In 1917, after the United States entered World War I, President Woodrow Wilson instituted a temporary wartime prohibition in order to save grain for producing food. That same year, Congress submitted the 18th Amendment, which banned the manufacture, transportation and sale of intoxicating liquors, for state ratification. Though Congress had stipulated a seven-year time limit for the process, the amendment received the support of the necessary three-quarters of U.S. states in just 11 months.

Ratified on January 16, 1919, the 18th Amendment went into effect one year later, by which time no fewer than 33 states had already enacted their own prohibition legislation. In October 1919, Congress put forth the National Prohibition Act, which provided guidelines for the federal enforcement of Prohibition. Championed by Representative Andrew Volstead of Minnesota, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, the legislation was more commonly known as the Volstead Act.

Enforcement of Prohibition

Both federal and local government struggled to enforce Prohibition-Hoover's "noble experiment"-over the course of the 1920s. Enforcement was initially assigned to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and was later transferred to the Justice Department and the Bureau of Prohibition, or Prohibition Bureau.

In general, Prohibition was enforced much more strongly in areas where the population was sympathetic to the legislation-mainly rural areas and small towns-and much more loosely in urban areas. Despite very early signs of success, including a decline in arrests for drunkenness and a reported 30 percent drop in alcohol consumption, those who wanted to keep drinking found ever more inventive ways to do it.

Organized Crime

The illegal manufacturing and sale of liquor (known as "bootlegging") went on throughout the decade, along with the operation of " speakeasies " (stores or nightclubs selling alcohol), the smuggling of alcohol across state lines and the informal production of liquor ("moonshine" or "bathtub gin") in private homes.

In addition, the Prohibition era encouraged the rise of criminal activity associated with bootlegging. The most notorious example was the Chicago gangster Al Capone, who earned a staggering $60 million annually from bootleg operations and speakeasies.

Such illegal operations fueled a corresponding rise in gang violence, including the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago in 1929, in which several men dressed as policemen (and believed to be associated with Capone) shot and killed a group of men in an enemy gang.

When Did Prohibition End?

The high price of bootleg liquor meant that the nation's working class and poor were far more restricted during Prohibition than middle or upper-class Americans. Even as costs for law enforcement, jails and prisons spiraled upward, support for Prohibition was waning by the end of the Roaring Twenties. In addition, fundamentalist and nativist forces had gained more control over the temperance movement, alienating its more moderate members.

There were also many unintended consequences of Prohibition: Some cash-strapped restaurants shuttered their doors since they could no longer make a profit from liquor sales. Thousands of people died each year from drinking cheap moonshine tainted with toxins. And revenues shrank for many states that had previously relied on liquor taxes to fund roads, schools and other public benefits.

With the country mired in the Great Depression by 1932, creating jobs and revenue by legalizing the liquor industry had an undeniable appeal. Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for president that year on a platform calling for Prohibition's repeal, and easily won victory over the incumbent President Herbert Hoover.

FDR's victory meant the end of Prohibition, and in February 1933 Congress adopted a resolution proposing a 21st Amendment to the Constitution that would repeal the 18th. The amendment was submitted to the states, and in December 1933 Utah provided the 36th and final necessary vote for ratification. Though a few states continued to prohibit alcohol after Prohibition's end, all had abandoned the ban by 1966.

Sources

Prohibition: A Case Study of Progressive Reform. Library of Congress.
Unintended Consequences of Prohibition. PBS: Prohibition.
Alcohol Prohibition Was a Failure. Cato Institute.

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Prohibition: Years, Amendment and Definition - HISTORY

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The Prohibition Era began in 1920 when the 18th Amendment outlawed liquor sales per the Volstead Act, but in 1932 the 21st Amendment ended Prohibition.

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The Roaring 20's: Crash Course US History #32

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Facts about Speakeasies: Prohibition History for Kids ***

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Find a summary, definition and facts about the Speakeasies for kids. Prohibition history and interesting facts about the Speakeasies and bootleggers. Information about the Speakeasies for kids, children, homework and schools.

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1920s political cartoons - Google Search

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The Roaring Twenties: Definition and Facts | HISTORY

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The Roaring Twenties were a period of rapid economic growth and social change. Read about flappers, Prohibition, the Harlem Renaissance and more.

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Subscribe to any show for free and download episodes for offline listening.

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Subscribe to any show for free and download episodes for offline listening. All your listening is automatically synced across devices so you can pause on one device and resume on another with the Google Assistant.

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Roaring 20s Web Sites

Clash of Cultures in the 1910s and 1920s ★★★★☆
Produced by the Ohio State University History Department, this is an informative introduction to cultural tensions in the 1910s and 1920s, exploring topics such as prohibition, immigration, the KKK, the "New Woman," and the Scopes Trial. There a also a varied array of primary sources, including cartoons, flyers, posters, photographs and other documents. The cultural clash of the 1920s in many ways offers a historical backdrop to issues resonating in American society today.

Jazz ★★★★☆
An online companion to Ken Burns' Jazz video documentary, this PBS site includes a series of articles and biographies that put the development of Jazz in American historical perspective, and has several special features. There is an interactive map to learn more about the roots of Jazz and many audio excerpts - such of music by Louis Armstrong. The Roaring Twenties section in 'Jazz in Time' includes audio commentary by critic Gary Giddins who discusses Prohibition, speakeasies, and Jazz. There are also K-12 lesson plans designed around the Jazz video series and companion Web site.

Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy 1921-1929 ★★★★☆
This Library of Congress site features a treasure trove of materials from the 1920's that illustrate the prosperity of the Coolidge era, the nation's transition to a mass consumer economy, and the role of government in this transition. There are six major categories: The Prosperity of the Coolidge Era; The Coolidge Presidency; The Coolidge Administration; Merchandising and Advertising; Consumer Activism; African Americans and Consumerism ; Poverty in the 1920s. Each section includes an introduction to the topic at hand with links to related individuals, organizations, publications, documents, and more.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - 1920 Silent Film (YouTube video) ★★★★☆

The 1920's Experience ★★★★☆
Another broad introduction to the 1920's, this commercial site has a vast amount of information and images on people, art, events, literature, music, and technology.

The Twenties 1913 - 1929 ★★★★☆
Did the 20s "Roar" or was it just a "yawn?" This Annenberg Biography of America video companion attempts to answer that question. This program centers on changes brought about by Henry Ford's Model T, the assembly line, and the rise of American consumerism. Among the features are an interactive map of the growth of Los Angeles, circa 1925.

The Lawless Decade ★★★★☆
The Lawless Decade is a pictorial history of the "convulsive shocks" from WWI armistice and prohibition to the repeal of the 18th Amendment and the New Deal. The site is based on the book by the same name and is organized by year.

Scopes Trial Home Page - UMKC School of Law ★★★★☆
Featured "famous trial" in American history. In a Dayton, Tennessee courtroom in the summer of 1925, a jury was to decide the fate of John Scopes, a high school biology teacher charged with illegally teaching the theory of evolution. The meaning of the trial emerged through its interpretation as a conflict of social and intellectual values between "traditionalists" and "modernists." The site features an introduction to the case, biographies of Scopes, Darrow, Bryan and other key participants, a chronology, trial satire, and more on the evolution controversy.

Leopold and Loeb Trial Home Page - UMKC School of Law ★★★★☆
Featured "famous trial" in American history. Two wealthy youths commit a heinous murder in the heart of Chicago. Their motive? To commit the perfect crime. Yet these young prodigies, who some had even called geniuses, made countless mistakes-and were swiftly captured and convicted. Facing a certain death sentence, they are defended by Clarence Darrow in a trial now infamous in the annals of courtroom history. The site features an introduction to the case, biographies of Leopold, Loeb, Darrow, and other key participants, a chronology, trial transcripts, Nietzsche's philosophy (and its relevance to the case), and a copy of Darrow's famous closing argument.

Black History: The Harlem Renaissance ★★★★☆
Harlem, "the capital of black America," gave birth to a cultural revolution marked by artistic and intellectual contributions. Biography.com provides an introduction to the era though a series of essays and photographs, as well as many biographies of noted Harlem Renaissance contributors.

Photographs from the Golden Age of Jazz ★★★★☆
This Library of Congress site features photographs and related items from Down Beat magazine and its writer-editor William P. Gottlieb.

America on the Move: Americans Adopt the Auto ★★★★☆
America on the Move is a special presentation by the Smithsonian Institute that explores the role of transportation in American history. The link is to a section on the impact of the automobile and features an image collection that includes autos and automotive parts in the 1920s and 1930s, driver's licenses, roads, oil company advertisements, and other related topics.

History Matters (Making Sense of Documents) ★★★★☆
The excellent History Matters U.S. history survey web sites offers an interesting array of primary source articles, essays, and memoirs related to the 1920s. Here is a selection:

Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930 ★★★★☆
A Harvard University web-based collection, this site contains a huge collection of primary sources on immigration to the United States, including 1,800 books and pamphlets, 13,000 pages from manuscripts and 9,000 photographs. The collection has very broad coverage and though the amount of information could be overwhelming, the web site is easy to navigate. Documents from the 1920s include Emergency Quota Act and the Oriental Exclusion Act.

Immigrants at Ellis Island ★★★★☆
This history.com collection contains 10 video clips related to Ellis Island. Among them are a Guided Tour of the Ferry Building, Passing the Medical Inspection, Detained at Ellis Island, Registering as an American Citizen.

Temperance and Prohibition ★★★★☆
This Ohio State University production explores prohibition. It analyzes the Anti-Saloon League and presents arguments for and against prohibition, among other features.

F. Scott Fitzgerald Centenary Home Page ★★★★☆
This is Great Gatbsy novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald's centenary website. Among the highlights in this collection is three recitations recorded by Fitzgerald in California, c. 1940, a series of essays available in PDF format, several stories by Fitzgerald , a brief film clip of Fitzgerald, and Fitzgerald quotes and facts.

Ellis Island ★★★★☆
An online, searchable database of the 22.5 million people who arrived in New York between 1892 - 1924.

Theatre Productions and Players, 1920s-1957 ★★★★☆
This digital collection from the New York Public Library incudes thousands of items, including portraits of performers in the 1920s and their productions.

Henry Ford: This Day in History ★★★☆☆
This page from the Library of Congress links to varied LOC sources related to Henry Ford, the automobile, and his times.

Fatal Flood ★★★☆☆
A companion to the American Experience video series, this PBS site explores the Mississippi River flooding in the spring of 1927 that inundating hundreds of towns and killed as many as a thousand people. Special features include excerpts from African Americans who suffered as a result of the flood, film footage before and during the flood, and an interactive maps with images of the flood. There is a timeline as well as several brief biographies. For educators, there are also classroom activities grouped into into 4 categories: history, economics, geography, and civics.

Lindbergh ★★★☆☆
At age 25 Charles A. Lindbergh became first man to fly across the Atlantic. Fame ensued, but so did tragedy years later with the kidnapping and murder of his first child. This companion to the American Experience video series offers insights into the Spirit of St. Louis, the kidnapping of Lindbergh's son, Lindbergh's hero status, and more. There is also a timeline, maps, and a teacher's guide. A unique feature is an interactive map of Lindberg's transatlantic flight from New York to Paris.

History of the Ku Klux Klan ★★★☆☆
A hyperlinked text essay of the history of the KK from the 1860s to the 1960s. Includes images and documents.

The Aaron Copeland Collection ★★★☆☆
This Library of Congress collection of the great American composer. Of the 1,000 items, including many photographs, most are from the 1920s through the 1950s and include music sketches, correspondence, writings, and photographs.

Nova timeline ★★★☆☆
An outline of movie studio, technological innovation in the 1920s.

Lesson Plans, Teacher Guides, Activities, and more

Pacifism vs. Patriotism in the 1920s
This activity asks students to consider the different political positions on war and disarmament of two women's activist organizations from this period: the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). Students read and discuss letters and complete a short writing assignment analyzing political cartoons reprinted in DAR Magazine. From the Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1775-2000 web site.

NAACP's Anti-Lynching Campaigns: The Quest for Social Justice in the Interwar Years:
This NEH lesson and related simulation activity focuses on the constitutional arguments for and against the enactment of federal anti-lynching legislation in the early 1920s.

Activity: The Development of Jazz
Written by the Social Studies School Service, this activity plan emphasizes the importance of Jazz in our history. Students will learn about Harlem, Jazz, and what Jazz is today. Recommended for grade 11.

Jazz: Classroom Resources
These resources are from the PBS Jazz video series and companion Web site. Features a slideshow of historical photos. Don't forget PBS's Jazz home page for educational resources, like an interactive map showing the roots of jazz.

1920s Consumer Culture
This History Matters extended activity is designed to help students understand the importance of consumerism in the 1920s and recognize the connections between commodities and culture.

American Advertising: A Brief History
Since the 1920s American Advertising has grown enormously. This History Matters extended activity prompts students to analyze various ads from the 20th century. Included is an ad from the Saturday Evening Post in 1920.

Fatal Flood
The teacher's guide to the PBS video Fatal flood touches upon topics such as race relations, the agricultural economy, and humanitarian aid. Their activities are divided into 4 categories: history, economics, geography, and civics.

Roaring 20s Quizzes
Scroll to bottom of the page for five high school AP multiple choice quizzes on the 1920s.

Postwar Disillusionment and the Quest for Peace, 1921-1929
This National Endowment for the Humanities EDSITEment lesson examines the rise of antiwar sentiment in the United States and measures taken to prevent the outbreak of future wars.

The "Secret Society" and FitzGerald's The Great Gatsby
This National Endowment for the Humanities EDSITEment lesson attempts to answer: What tensions about wealth and status are revealed in The Great Gatsby? How are these tensions reflected in Nick Carraway's struggle to belong? Students reflect on the class struggles of early twentieth century and write a "credo" for the "secret society" implied in The Great Gatsby.

Herbert Hoover Museum Lesson Plans
The Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum has created a couple of lesson plans covering the Hoover presidency and the use of political cartoons in the Depression era.

The Roaring 20s: A Reunion
In this WebQuest, students research a group chosen from a list and then contribute to a class podcast.

Blues Poems
A part of a history unit on the 20s a teachers asks her students to compose a compose a blues-form poem about some problem of that time.

Interpreting Primary Sources
Digital History provides brief excerpts from primary sources and statistics and questions to think about the Controversies of the 1920s.

Digital History Resource Guides
The Digital Resource Guides provide links to American history web sites by period and provide historical overviews, readings (online textbook chapter, Reader's Companion), primary source documents (documents, maps, cartoons), teaching resources (chronologies, maps, quizzes), audio-visual resources, and additional resources. It is an excellent and comprehensive teaching resource.

The Roaring Twenties, 1919-1929 Practice Test
High School level quiz on the Roaring Twenties from Prentice Hall.

At Home and Abroad: Prosperity and Depression, 1917-1940 Practice Test
High School level quiz on Jazz Age and Great Depression from Prentice Hall.

At Home and Abroad: Prosperity and Depression, 1917-1940 Document Based Essay
This Prentice Hall DBQ is designed to test your ability to work with historical documents and is based on the accompanying documents (1-6).

Streamlines and Breadlines
High School students will learn about the growth and development of cities in America from 1920 through 1940. Immigration, the migration of African-Americans from the South to the urban centers of the North, industrialization, and the Great Depression all affected cities during this period. This lesson will culminate in a student essay that compares two contrasting images from this time period. Students will view two sets of images from Thirteen/WNET's AMERICAN VISIONS Web site. Students will choose one image from each group and compare and contrast the images in an essay.

HistoryTeacher.net: AP United States History Quizzes
A New York teacher has produced a great general site for history teachers that offers AP-level United States history quizzes on many different periods and topics.

AP United States History DBQs: 1875-1925
These student-created DBQs are part of the excellent Historyteacher.net site.

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The Roaring 20s - Best of History Web Sites

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Roaring 20s Web Sites Lesson Plans, Teacher Guides, Activities, and more Roaring 20s Web Sites Clash of Cultures in the 1910s and 1920s ★★★★☆Produced by the Ohio State University History Department, this is an informative introduction to cultural tensions in the 1910s and 1920s, exploring topics such as prohibition, immigration, the KKK, the "New Woman," and the Scopes Trial.

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Advertising as it is known today finds its roots in the industrial expansion of the 1880s. The mass production and the lowering of prices on consumer goods meant that more items were available to more people than ever before. The construction of the transcontinental railroads provided a national market for a company's goods.

Advertising a product changed from simply announcing the existence of a product in a dull, dry fashion to persuading the public they needed and deserved to own the product. By developing repeat customers, advertising also helped build brand loyalty for the company. Brand loyalty helps sell other existing and new products to these same customers.
Prior to World War One, muckraking journals like McClure's achieved widespread circulation by exposing corruption and greed in business and politics. Changes in print technology in the 1890s and a heavy dependence upon advertisers allowed publishers to drop their prices from thirty-five cents to a nickel. Readership for profitable magazines soared from 10,000 readers prior to 1890 to a circulation of around a half-million. But by 1914, readers grew weary and bored with the magazines' campaigns for reform. More importantly, advertisers objected strongly to the investigative articles, which reflected badly on their own kind.

After the war, general circulation magazines dropped the theme of reform and picked up on the culture of consumerism. Ladies' Home Journal and The Saturday Evening Post, featuring Norman Rockwell's paintings on its cover, became fixtures in middle-class homes around the country. Hoping to attract serious newsreaders, Henry Luce began publishing Time in 1923. New tabloid newspapers launched after the war, like the New York Daily News,

achieved large circulation by covering crime, sports and scandals. Advertisers, now reaching millions of consumers on a daily or weekly basis, hired movie stars and sports figures to persuade Americans to buy all types of products, from coffee to tobacco products. Business had become America's secular religion, thanks to advertising. Bruce Barton's 1925 book comparing religion and business, The Man Nobody Knows, declared Jesus Christ's parables as "the most powerful advertisements of all time.... He would be a national advertiser today."
Coca-Cola serves as a good example of how product advertising changed over this forty-year period. When first introduced in the 1880s, the product was marketed as a medicine, with claims that it cured headaches, and that it "revived and sustained" a person. Seeking to build repeat business and brand loyalty, by the 1920s the company emphasized it as a refreshment and a "fun food". Consumers demanding the cola at soda fountains could pressure storeowners to stock it, or risk losing their business. Today Coca-Cola is one of the largest and most visible companies in the world thanks to its successful advertisement campaigns.

References:
Pope, Daniel A, The Making of Modern Advertising (1983); Tedlow, Richard, New and Improves: The Story of Mass Marketing in America (1990).

How To Cite This Article:
"Advertising in the 1920s," EyeWitness to History, www.eyewitnesstohistory.com (2000).

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Advertising as it is known today finds its roots in the industrial expansion of the 1880s. The mass production and the lowering of prices on consumer goods meant that more items were available to more people than ever before. The construction of the transcontinental railroads provided a national market for a company's goods.

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F. Scott Fitzgerald - Author | Mini Bio | BIO

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July 10, 1925: In Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called Scopes Monkey Trial begins with John Thomas Scopes, a young high school science teacher, accused of teaching evolution in violation of a Tennessee state law.

The law, which had been passed in March, made it a misdemeanor punishable by fine to "teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals." With local businessman George Rappleyea, Scopes had conspired to get charged with this violation, and after his arrest the pair enlisted the aid of the American Civil Liberties Union ( ACLU) to organize a defense. Hearing of this coordinated attack on Christian fundamentalism, William Jennings Bryan, the three-time Democratic presidential candidate and a fundamentalist hero, volunteered to assist the prosecution. Soon after, the great attorney Clarence Darrow agreed to join the ACLU in the defense, and the stage was set for one of the most famous trials in U.S. history.
WATCH: Rare Footage of the Scopes Monkey Trial
On July 10, the Monkey Trial got underway, and within a few days hordes of spectators and reporters had descended on Dayton as preachers set up revival tents along the city's main street to keep the faithful stirred up. Inside the Rhea County Courthouse, the defense suffered early setbacks when Judge John Raulston ruled against their attempt to prove the law unconstitutional and then refused to end his practice of opening each day's proceeding with prayer.

Outside, Dayton took on a carnival-like atmosphere as an exhibit featuring two chimpanzees and a supposed "missing link" opened in town, and vendors sold Bibles, toy monkeys, hot dogs, and lemonade. The missing link was in fact Jo Viens of Burlington, Vermont, a 51-year-old man who was of short stature and possessed a receding forehead and a protruding jaw. One of the chimpanzees-named Joe Mendi-wore a plaid suit, a brown fedora, and white spats, and entertained Dayton's citizens by monkeying around on the courthouse lawn.

In the courtroom, Judge Raulston destroyed the defense's strategy by ruling that expert scientific testimony on evolution was inadmissible-on the grounds that it was Scopes who was on trial, not the law he had violated. The next day, Raulston ordered the trial moved to the courthouse lawn, fearing that the weight of the crowd inside was in danger of collapsing the floor.

In front of several thousand spectators in the open air, Darrow changed his tactics and as his sole witness called Bryan in an attempt to discredit his literal interpretation of the Bible. In a searching examination, Bryan was subjected to severe ridicule and forced to make ignorant and contradictory statements to the amusement of the crowd. On July 21, in his closing speech, Darrow asked the jury to return a verdict of guilty in order that the case might be appealed. Under Tennessee law, Bryan was thereby denied the opportunity to deliver the closing speech he had been preparing for weeks. After eight minutes of deliberation, the jury returned with a guilty verdict, and Raulston ordered Scopes to pay a fine of $100, the minimum the law allowed. Although Bryan had won the case, he had been publicly humiliated and his fundamentalist beliefs had been disgraced. Five days later, on July 26, he lay down for a Sunday afternoon nap and never woke up.

In 1927, the Tennessee Supreme Court overturned the Monkey Trial verdict on a technicality but left the constitutional issues unresolved until 1968, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a similar Arkansas law on the grounds that it violated the First Amendment.
WATCH: The Monkey Trial on HISTORY Vault

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July 10, 1925: In Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called Scopes Monkey Trial begins with John Thomas Scopes, a young high school science teacher, accused of teaching evolution in violation of a Tennessee state law.

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History is Now Magazine, Podcasts, Blog and Books | Modern International and American history

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There are a number of areas to look at when assessing the decade, one of the most important being race relations and immigration. Whilst it's true to a certain degree that the Roaring Twenties were a period of prosperity and liberalism for some people, for new immigrants and African-Americans, this cannot be seen to be the case. The decade saw resurgence in nationalist and racist sentiment, as well as more understandable concerns about immigration. The division in race was most clearly seen in the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, which probably benefited from the nationalist sentiment and racial tensions which the First World War had brought up, as well as the migration of African-Americans to the north. The Klan's membership rose rapidly to around 6 million in 1920, which totaled over 5% of the population at the time. Whilst that may not sound impressive, the KKK wielded substantial influence in politics, and as there was general popular consent for things like immigration restrictions and less of a liberal attitude towards race relations compared to what we have today, the Klan did not come under serious threat throughout the decade. Even politicians, who often have different and more moderate views than the public at a given time, were in general agreement with their voters in terms of restricting immigration. In 1921, the Emergency Immigration Act was passed, which severely reduced immigration and did so partly on race-based lines in terms of blocking off immigration from the Middle East. These restrictions were tightened further still in the 1924 Immigration Act, which placed further restrictions and quotas on immigration in a further attempt to please the public. There appeared to be a conservative consensus during this time on the issue of immigration; both the public and the political classes were in consensus that there should be a large reduction in the number of people settling in the country, and there was also general agreement that the race of a potential immigrant should play a deciding role.

The difficulties for immigrants and minorities during this period were not just political though; the Klan did not limit its activities to the political arena. The passing of the immigration restriction legislation was a success for the Klan; it had in many ways fulfilled its purpose. With the public satisfied at the restrictions on immigration, membership of the Klan plummeted from its peak of 6 million in 1924 down to just 30,000 in 1930. But during the 20s, such was its fervor in defending what it believed to be traditional, white, Protestant values and morality, that it took to more violent methods to attack those who it believed to be corrupting the morals it defended, including violence against black people up to and including the infamous public lynchings, serving as yet more evidence against the fairly common perception of the decade as being liberal, care-free, and fun.
Female Suffrage
Women are often portrayed as having a new-found freedom in 1920s America, having undergone a sexual liberation and seen their role in society turned on its head. This is perhaps the only section of society where the myth of the 1920s fits quite well. There can be no denying that for many young women, their willingness to challenge the status quo increased; photographic evidence alone serves as evidence of new short skirts, provocative dances, and more open and flagrant promiscuous behavior. In contrast to the attempts to enforce morality and good behavior, youthful women found a new side of life and many of them embraced it with open arms, throwing themselves into exciting new jazz music and dances like the Charleston. Luchtenburg succinctly summarizes the increased personal freedom of women: "Before the war, a lady did not set foot in a saloon; after the war, she entered a speakeasy as thoughtlessly as she would go into a railroad station."

Aside from in the social context, the increasing move for more power for women in politics was seen in the suffrage movement which became increasingly powerful before the 1920s. This culminated in the 19th Amendment to the Constitution in August 1920, when women were finally given the right to vote on equal terms with men. Opposition came primarily in the form of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, which disbanded after the 19th amendment was successful, but continued to publish works which opposed the liberation of women and their changing role in society. There was also considerable opposition in Congress, with 25 members of the 100-strong Senate voting against the amendment, alongside a number of abstentions. There was also considerable difficulty in getting the amendment ratified by some states, particularly Southern states, where members of the state legislature faced considerable lobbying by various groups.

Even the politicians and lobbyists who supported women's suffrage cannot necessarily have been doing so purely out of the moral cause of increasing women's rights and making the nation more democratic. The extent of the dominance of conservative thinking in the era can be seen in Daniel Okrent's argument, who believed they could only make alcohol illegal and have popular consent for doing so with the votes of women, who were generally more in favor of it becoming illegal than men.

Interestingly, even the women's suffrage movement cannot be seen as entirely progressive and liberal; particularly in the South, the women campaigners sought to gain more support from men by playing upon the issue of race. They said it was unfair that males from ethnic minority groups could vote whilst women could not. Even more divisively, there was also the suggestion that allowing women to vote would ensure that white voters remained dominant and more politically powerful than minority groups. We can see that even the progressive political causes in the decade were in some ways heavily regressive and conservative.
Prohibition
Something important during the 1920s that we're all aware of is prohibition. Alcohol became illegal in early 1919 with the passing of 18th Amendment and whether it should continue to be so remained a contentious issue throughout the following decade. Prohibition is the best and clearest example of an increasing trend towards enforcing morality and an attempt to return to traditional Protestant values. The nation was divided over the issue, with much of the division being between traditional rural areas and the more liberal and less morally strict urban areas. Leuchtenburg writes that prohibition served as a way for rural America to "impose their social mores on city folk"; for Protestants to stop Catholics drinking; and for Anglo-Saxons to change the behavior of immigrants. As is well known, making alcohol illegal led to a reliable source of income for many criminal and mafia gangs, and so far from enforcing morality, prohibition is often seen as just opening up new avenues of immorality.

Similarly, prohibition led to speakeasies and other illegal hidden parties at which people continued to indulge in alcohol. However, despite the common wisdom that prohibition was a complete failure, it did actually succeed in substantially reducing alcohol consumption, a reduction which largely remained in place even when prohibition had ended. By 1933, when prohibition came to an end, alcohol consumption was 70% what it had been before prohibition. Whilst not a raving success, it's safe to say it fulfilled its purpose at least a little bit. Though of course other factors could also have led to these variations in consumption.

Conversely, prohibition brought out the very worst in the American policing system; bribery was common, with many police willing to turn a blind eye to illegal bars provided they had received a bribe or other benefit for doing so. This is an important lesson for today - laws imposed without significant popular consent cannot work; they will be subject to capricious enforcement. Leuchtenburg argues that the public anger at the police's mix of corruption and harsh treatment of bars led to anti-police sentiment springing up, with one example being crowds cheering on the boat of a bootlegger in New York when being pursued by the police.

Perhaps the weakness of the whole attempt to enforce morality upon parts of society which were pursuing liberalization was that Eliot Ness, a key prohibition enforcement agent and leader of the elite 'Untouchables' group, died an alcoholic.
Radical Groups
Radical political dissent during the Twenties was not tolerated. It is important to view policies in era in context. Having just come out of the First World War, the United States now saw a new threat emerging in Russia. The threat was Red. The Bolshevik revolution in what was to become the Soviet Union began in 1917, leading to a civil war between defenders of the old Tsarist regime, and those who sought to impose a communist-inspired regime. America has always feared communism - it is anathema to its principles of liberal democracy and free trade, and red scares have become part of its history. Whilst McCarthyism in the 1950s is fairly well-known, the red scare during the 1920s is less well remembered.

There was increasing government action against radical left-wing political groups and moves to clamp down on leftist groups had already begun before the 1920s, as seen most clearly in the arrest and imprisonment of Eugene V. Debs - the leader of the American Socialist Party - who had performed remarkably well in elections considering his outsider political position. Deportations without due process or trials became common, particularly against the Socialist International Industrial Workers League; in January 1920 around 10,000 people were arrested for holding radical political views. Furthermore, the immigration acts which were discussed earlier were also used to restrict radical literature and punish any immigrants with sympathies towards left-wing political groups.
The economy...
But aside from all this, wasn't the economy at least growing - wasn't everyone sharing in a newfound wealth? In some ways, yes. The economy was growing and people were generally more affluent, giving the majority more access to consumer and electric goods. However, not all shared in the increased prosperity; urban workers saw their wages increase quite rapidly, but the wages of farmers stagnated, and some manual laborers such as miners saw their wages decline, and with the rise in machinery and technology, some manual workers were replaced by automated systems. Union membership during this period fell, dropping from 5 million in 1920 to 3.5 million in 1929, a sign of general increasing prosperity as well as the government's crackdown on radical elements. As often happens during economic booms, the gap between the rich and the poor widened, with the poorest seeing their standard of living stagnate whilst the richest saw their wealth continue to skyrocket.

Undoubtedly, though, the economy did improve the standard of living for many people during the decade. Gross National Product grew by 40% through the decade, wages for most workers rose in real-terms, and prices on some previously inaccessible goods became accessible. The prices of cars, for example, fell due to more efficient and faster production, leading automobile ownership to rocket by nearly 200%, from 8 million to 23 million people owning cars. Similarly, increasing access to the radio gave a source of entertainment in almost everyone's home, and with increasing demand came national programming which provided most of the nation with access to some of the same programs. This boom in the economy also led to an upsurge in the number of people buying shares, with it becoming increasingly common for middle class families to buy into the market; as we know, this ended in catastrophe in 1929. The great tragedy of the decade is that, though the Wall Street Crash impacted everyone, those who bore its brunt most heavily were the poorest, who had seen the least benefit from the economic boom.
Election results
Finally, the clearest indication of the conservatism and consistency of the decade which helps to dispel the myth of the decade being progressive and unique is the actual results of election. We've already seen that from prohibition, to the Red Scare, to attempts to enforce morality, the politics of the decade were conservative and at times regressive. But the real flavor of a decade can be found in its election results.

In the 1920 Presidential election, Republican candidate Warren Harding won with a massive 60% of the vote, leaving the Democrat candidate James Cox with an abysmal 34%. In 1924, Coolidge was victorious with 54% of the vote, leaving the Democrat with just under 30%. This election was notable because of a rarity in American politics - the strong performance of a third party candidate, which came in the form of Robert La Follete who stood for the short-lived Progressive party. Whilst it could be argued that the Progressives split the Democrat vote, thereby allowing the Republican in by default, the vote for the Democratic candidate and the Progressive Party candidate still falls 10% short of the Republican vote. In 1928, Herbert Hoover continued the Republican ascendancy. Pledging continued economic growth, he won 58% of the vote, leaving his Democrat opponent with only 40%. Whilst some of these margins may not sound incredibly wide, bear in mind that American Presidential elections are apt to have very narrow margins of victory. In the year 2000, for example, the result between Bush and Gore was less than a percentage point apart.

But Presidential elections don't give us the full picture. The Congress Republicans were also dominant. They gained control of the house in 1918, and comfortably retained control of it until 1930. The Republicans also gained control of the Senate in 1918, keeping it until 1932. This means the decade saw uninterrupted Republican control of the Presidency, and both chambers of Congress; a very rare thing indeed. There is no way this could have happened unless the vast majority of the public were aligned in a conservative consensus. They were content with Republican policies and did not desire change.
On reflection
So we've seen that in very few ways can the decade which has been dubbed the Roaring Twenties be seen as a time of radical change. It was conservative and reactionary, and in some ways regressive. Even in modernizations like female suffrage, the forces of conservatism were involved in their support of it in order to ensure more support for prohibition. Modern liberal ideas had little place in this decade; they would not gain common support until the 1930s, when the much-lauded (though much-overrated) Franklin D. Roosevelt put into practice his new vision for the role of government in society and much greater regulation of the free market.

This article is provided by Bradley Phipps from bphipps.co.uk.
Want to read more? Well take a look at this article on how American stereotypes of the Japanese from World War II linger on... Click here!

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The roaring Twenties! But were the 1920s a liberal or conservative period in the USA? - History is Now Magazine, Podcasts, Blog and Books | Modern International and American history

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Bradley Phipps from bphipps.co.uk has provided us with this fascinating article on 1920s America. Was the 1920s a decade of fun, liberal values? Or was it rather a time of great conservatism? Bradley presents his view by looking at key topics in the decade - race, immigration, female suffrage, pro

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The American Flapper: Feminist Revolution in the 1920s

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PROHIBITION is a three-part, five-and-a-half-hour documentary film series on PBS directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick that tells the story of the rise, rule, and fall of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the entire era it encompassed.