When questioning why normal every-day people became seen as criminals during Prohibition, Funderburg reasons that plenty of citizens entirely disregarded the law “every day without feeling the slightest prick of guilt” (Funderburg 31).

Before addressing the waning support for Prohibition, History Editors confirmed the illegal actions of citizens due to the fact that “Prohibition was difficult to enforce” ("Prohibition").

Clark stresses the glamorization of illegal alcoholism, explaining that citizens actually enjoyed “harrowing scrapes with the law” (Clark) during Prohibition, after illuminating the abundance of drinking scenes in plays of the era.

Funderburg simultaneously justifies the illegal actions of women and teenagers with no prior criminal records and portrays bootlegging and speakeasies as simply “the fast track to easy money” (Funderburg 31), nothing to be ashamed of.

After World War One, the great American dream seemed corrupt to the Lost Generation, who came to see that a majority of the wealth in the United States was achieved through “great misery,” and in their cynicism, they chose to become “stunningly rich by any means necessary” (Longley) rather than work hard for their wealth.

Olson noted that conservative forces believed that “A spirit of Libertism [Immorality]” was present amongst the young Lost Generation due to their lack of respect for their parents, and their “Pleasure-madness” (quoted in Sandt) fueled tendencies.

Olson showed that one of the many reasons why the Lost Generation was so materialistic was simply because of how their 20th century industrial “Society [had] surrounded them” (quoted in Glue) in things of luxury and sensuality.

The unchivalrous and disgusting warfare of World War One “shattered [men’s] traditional images of masculinity,” and as such when the veterans of World War One returned to America with the news that traditional chivalry was dead, it caused a complete change in the “perceptions around” (Longley) the different roles of men and women in society.

Countless critics of the Lost Generation’s values, as Olson noted, believed that the young and “improperly clad” women of the generation were causing men to have “less and less respect for the feminine” (Quoted in Sandt).

Before diving into the specific genres of modernism, the Artincontext staff states that the modernist movement as a whole wished to “move away from the traditional aspects” (Modern Art - An Exploration of the 20th-Century Art Movement) of art which were becoming more outdated in the wake of the industrialized and war torn 20th century.

In the midst of clarifying the diverse aspects of the modernist movement, the Artincontext staff reiterate that modernist figures were keen on creating “new forms of art, philosophy, and social structures” (Modern Art - An Exploration of the 20th-Century Art Movement) that were true to the 20th century rather than to the classical west.

It was mentioned that Adolf Hitler used the study of eugenics in an attempt to build a superior race of Aryans. Although eugenics has a bad connotation because of this, it can also be used to treat life-threatening genetic diseases. The first study of this in America was on people with epilepsy. However, there was a more recent study where sterilization was forced in California on people who the government thought was unfit to reproduce because they had “bad” genes. This was performed on people with mental illnesses and minorities from 1909-1979. “..., the U.S. Supreme Court ruled … forced sterilization … does not violate the U.S. Constitution.”(History.com)

This article talked about how these experiments to eliminate the “bad” genes were not only performed on minorities but also on people with disabilities, like the mentally ill and physical disabilities. “...the operation performed upon any mentally defective …resident …not an inmate of any public institution”(Alfred L. Brophy, Elizabeth Troutman). It also mentioned how not only were they trying to get rid of the unwanted genes but how they would sterilize people to achieve this. who the government thought was unfit to reproduce because they had the “bad” genes 

The Four Hundred, named as such because “only 400 people in New York society…were worthy of being included” in it, were led by Caroline Astor, known as “The Queen of the ‘Four Hundred’” (Sieber).

Astor was born into New York’s “Knickerbocker elite”--a clique of old New York elite whose family have been present in North America since its colonization--being able to trace her lineage to the “earliest settlers in colonial North America” (Evans).

Astor was a “name that was a byword for wealth and opulence” given that John Jacob Astor, Caroline Astor’s husband’s grandfather, made “an unprecedented fortune in the fur trade” (Evans) in post-Revolutionary War America.

Caroline Astor was considered the “gatekeeper to the world of ‘acceptable’ New York society” (Evans) who was determined to “maintain the primacy of family and old wealth” (“Caroline Webster Schermerhorn Astor”) in the upper echelons of New York society, cutting out new members of high society who had only gained their wealth in post-Civil War years. 

Astor, along with many other high-status women at the time, “played a central role in class formation and status maintenance” (Montgomery) in the East Coast social hierarchy, and with the creation of the Four Hundred, finally put, in print, the “strict boundary that had dominated the upper echelons” (Evans) for decades. 

Gumery continues his description of the life of F Scott and how he had traveled to France during his time of “affluence and pleasure seeking”, where “he was able to complete the first draft of The Great Gatsby” during his travels in 1925. 

During his travels, F Scott had published The Great Gatsby on his way to Paris, where despite “critical acclaim” of the book, it had unfortunately  had “sales [that] were disappointing” (Gumery) in comparison to his previous works. 

Expanding on her points of the tensions growing between F Scott and Zelda, including previous accusations of cheating, Hodon details how during the couple’s time in France, Zelda had a “brief but passionate romance” with a pilot known as Edouard Jozan.

After F Scott had finished writing and publishing The Great Gatsby, he had grown more deteriorated, and seen as a “lost soul of the Jazz Age” (Stamberg), as he never had written a similarly significant book afterwards.

After national realization that Prohibition undermined the working class and poor Americans, support for the act ¨was waning by the end of the Roaring Twenties” (Prohibition) and divulged the tremendously negative effects upon the economy. 

Organized crime grew exponentially in the decade that Prohibition was enacted and ¨encouraged the rise of criminal activity associated with bootlegging¨ (Prohibition) which affected society and workplaces with alcohol greatly.

One of the primary components leading up to Prohibition was the Volstead Act, which ¨instituted a temporary wartime prohibition… to save grain for producing food¨ (Prohibition), which later led to the ratification of the 18th Amendment. 

After many acts were passed--including the 18th Amendment and Volstead Act--Prohibition was claimed to be ¨not a uniquely American phenomenon¨ and the ¨United States [further] joined nine other European… countries… with statutory prohibition¨ (Schrad), which led to much controversy upon the country. 

Cheng interprets the Asian racism that's been happening around the world, he puts into words some ways the Asian population is dealing with these “hate crimes happened amidst the backdrop of increasing anti-Asian violence” (Cheng), some of the things that were mentioned a lot was how the many ways Asians everyday were killed just by doing nothing to anyone. 

After explaining the devastating effects of racism, History.com continues to illustrate how black Americans “had more than enough of prejudice and violence against them” (“civil rights movement”) in the 20th century. It affected the blacks by segregation in schools, having them sit in the back of the bus. There was also police violence almost everyday on the streets because of a black person just minding their own business 

When Sinyai considers whether labor unions had political affiliations, he eventually concludes that the true objective of labor movements is “educating working people for democratic citizenship” (Sinyai 2).

After the introduction of the assembly line, Cwiek notes that mass production helped “America's 20th century middle class take off” by providing workers with a comfortable standard of living.

As Ford Model T production began to ramp up, Ford hired wage workers “who would do the same repetitive, specialized tasks…”(Cwiek) in order to create a standardized workforce.

As the 20th century came to a close and globalization increased, collective bargaining became less effective as workers “could be replaced by a cheaper labor force” (“trade union”).

Due to the fact that many economists during the 1920s believed that the economy was a natural system, many influential people, including President Hoover, believed that only “the "natural" performance of the economy” ("Causes of the Crash 1919-1929") was occurring, so therefore did nothing about it.

Between 1919 and 1929, the output of workers increased nearly by 50%, but the wages of the workers only increased by a fraction, which means that most of the “profits went to the rich” ("Causes of the Crash 1919-1929") leading to a larger gap in wealth distribution and a build up of unsold inventory.

The rapid growth of the 1920s was mostly due to growth in most industries and the increasing quality of life, for example the widespread ownership of cars or increase in housing, which was led on by “rise in the productivity of labor and capital” (Smiley).

The increase in quality of life is shown well with the amount of people that have and use cars, starting in “1919 6.7 million” and ending in “1929 23 million”(Mintz), shows that cars were much more available and affordable.

Agriculture did not do well economically during the early 1920s due to the depression between 1920-1921 compounded with the increased prices and amount of products from the “increasing foreign demand during the First World War” (Smiley) that was no longer part of their market because Europe’s production started to recover.

A large reason for the United States’ domination of the World’s industrial market is due to the increasing use of “nonreproducible natural resources as a source of productivity” (Smiley) because these resources(such as oil or coal) allowed for widespread low-cost transportation.

To create more severe immigration restrictions, the 1917 Immigration Act "implemented a literacy test  … to demonstrate basic reading comprehension in any language." (“Milestones: 1921–1936”)

The Johnson Reed act created "a quota system based on 2 percent of each groups population" (“Immigration Act of 1924 (Johnson-Reed Act)”) which is based of the 1890 United States census.

The Johnson Reed Act moved "immigration inspection from American ports to foreign ones" (Broubalow).

The Johnson Reed Act "excluded [people] ineligible for citizenship " from immigrating to the United States. "Asians and Africans" (Broubalow) were ineligible for citizenship so they couldn't immigrate to the United States. 

As sales increased, Ford needed to increase production of his car. He did so by repurposing the assembly line, which allowed him to have a car off the line “every 30 seconds” (Folsom). Furthermore, it cut the time to make one car “from about 12 ½ hours to 1 ½” (Folsom). 

Originally, the automobile was a status symbol, only for the elite. Most cars at the time were “at least $2000”, but at the beginning of the Model T’s production, it was “$850” (Folsom) and by the end it was “$290 for the coupe” (History.com editors). 

C. Wright Mills argues that the robber barons in the 1800's were born in the right place at the right time, as the “nineteenth century was a more favorable time” for businessmen to become wildly successful than “other periods of American history” (Grantham 135).

Contrary to popular belief, while robber barons during the Industrial Revolution were filthy rich, Dewey W. Grantham, Jr. provides evidence that these men believed “idleness [was] the most terrible punishment” (139), as they all had hoped to change the country through their work.

There is a misconceived notion that all robber barons were self made men who used their own hard work to become rich and powerful--like Andrew Carnegie. However, a study from Harvard shows evidence that “Carnegie’s path to business success was not very typical” (Grantham 134), and that most robber barons came from very privileged backgrounds. 

In Stephen Schneider’s article, robber barons or “capitalist pioneers were the ‘antecedents’ of… organized crime”, as both these groups used a lot of the same manipulative tactics to control their respective groups.

One example of the influence that one region could have over the nature of the war is the significance of the American deep South, where southern white supremacists feared that the war might weaken white supremacy’s hold on the nation. For example, politicians in areas such as Alabama and Georgia advocated for keeping blacks “confined to noncombatant roles” (Lamberson) in the war, as well as segregation amongst troops.

Though the United States remained neutral prior to 1917, the country would still have influence over the war, spending money to “ship food, raw materials, and munitions” (“US Entry into World War I) to both sides in the war, perhaps fueling the battle further.

On July 19th to 20th, 1848, the first ever formal women’s rights convention was held in Seneca Falls, New York. The Seneca Falls convention was organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton.  There, the Declaration of Sentiments was signed, not only asserting that women deserved the right to vote, but also that they deserved equality in every area of life, including “politics, the family, education, jobs, religion, and morals” (Wellman).

It should also be noted that the women’s rights movement was “closely allied with the antislavery movement” (Harley) during this time. Many abolitionists also supported women’s rights, including Black men such as Frederick Douglass, and many suffragists supported slavery abolition, such as Susan B. Anthony. Women and Black men often supported each other’s right to be seen in a society where power was held by white men. After the Civil War, this race-inclusive suffrage movement persisted, with the Philadelphia Suffrage Association in 1866 and the American Equal Rights Association (AERA), advocating for both women’s and Black men’s right to vote. However, this allyship was complicated with the proposal of the 15th Amendment, which would Black men - but not women - the right to vote. Some suffragists supported the idea of Black men receiving suffrage at the moment, while others thought it necessary that women be included. 

At this point, the suffrage movement split in two around 1869. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton  founded the National Woman's Suffrage Association (NWSA), which believed that women's rights were “more urgent issues than the suffrage of other minority groups” in addition to advocating for “more radical shifts in women's social equality” (Rabinovitch-Fox, et. al). Meanwhile, the American Woman’s Suffrage Association (AWSA) advocated for Black suffrage and female suffrage, while taking a “state-by-state approach” (Harley) to securing women’s suffrage. In 1890, the AWSA and NWSA reconciled to form  the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). 

Yet the NAWSA still was subject to racial prejudice against Black suffragists - with Susan B. Anthony even asked Frederick Douglass not to attend a NAWSA convention in Atlanta under the belief that his presence as a Black man “would have offended the southern hosts” (Harley). Racial prejudice motivated Black women to form their own suffrage organizations such as the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in 1896. As late as 1913, a woman’s suffrage parade segregated white and Black suffragists.

Ultimately, the woman’s suffrage movement, mainly through actions of the NAWSA, succeeded in securing the vote for women in the 19th amendment, which prohibited the denial of voting rights on the basis of sex. 

After WWI came to a close, “Immigration to the United States began to rebound” (“Closing the Door on Immigration”) as a result of displacement of refugees from other countries who saw the US as their best opportunity to escape.

The Emergency Immigration Act of 1921 “established the nation’s first numerical limits on the number of immigrants who could enter” in order to preserve job opportunity for Americans who came back from the war and to “keep out ‘undesirable’ ethnic groups” (“Closing the Door on Immigration”).

While the Emergency Immigration Act of 1921 was the first numerical limit on immigration to the US, the first anti-immigration policy of the time period was a 1917 act which “implemented a literacy test that required immigrants… to demonstrate basic reading comprehension in any language” (“The Immigration Act of 1924 (The Johnson-Reed Act)”) among other things.

This literacy test did not “stop most potential immigrants from entering,” so “Congress sought a new way to restrict immigration in the 1920s” (“The Immigration Act of 1924 (The Johnson-Reed Act)”) and settled on implementing these quotas which were based on the nationality of immigrants, the actual numbers for which scaled off of the nationality of people already in the US.

In 1924, the policies addressed in the 1921 Quota Act were solidified with new legislation which also shifted the quotas themselves and how they were calculated, which made “the percentage of visas available to individuals from the British Isles and Western Europe increase, but newer immigration from other areas like Southern and Eastern Europe [and Asia] was limited” (“The Immigration Act of 1924 (The Johnson-Reed Act)”).

This time period saw anti-immigration policy not only in the United states, but additionally in “Argentina, Australia, Brazil, and Canada” who also “enacted new measures” (“The Immigration Act of 1924 (The Johnson-Reed Act)”) to prevent immigration.

Immigration policy was severely tightened in the US after WWI for many reasons, such as “racism, xenophobia…” and “that immigrants crowded out native unskilled workers,” (“The Immigration Act of 1924 (The Johnson-Reed Act)”) keeping them out of work, which is particularly important now that all of America’s soldiers were also trying to find work in the US.

The ash dump eventually developed into a dumping ground for many things that weren’t just ash. Among other things the ash dumps turned into a place where “Scavenging by both humans and rats was a common occurrence.” (8). Fitzgerald described the ash dump in his novel The Great Gatsby by calling it the “valley of ashes.”(8). This shows how the ash dump affected the status of Queens, instead of a thriving community it was turned into a valley of ashes being scavenged by humans and rats. 

Later on in 1938 The World Fair was beginning to take place the following year in 1939. It would be taking place in Corona Park where the ash dumps were previously. As well as the ash dumps taking place for so long from “the turn of the last century through 1936” (Dion 2) the Brooklyn Ash Removal Company didn't have time to remove it all and ended up planting the trees on top of some of the waste. As the years went by according to some “one can spot shards or ceramic, glass, metal, and oyster shells at the base of the great trees planted” (Dion 2).