1. The “Roaring Twenties”

2. ENTRY # 36
Why do you think we call the decade of the 1920’s “The Roaring Twenties”? Make a list of all you know about this time period…include in your list events, products, and trends that became popular in the 1920s.

3. Events, Products, and Trends of the 20’s
MODEL T
FLAPPER
SHORT DRESSES
BOBBED HAIR
MOVIES/RADIO
POST WAR LABOR TENSIONS
SPEAKEASIES
PROHIBITION
JAZZ
THE GREAT MIGRATION
MASS CULTURE
SCOPES TRIAL
RECREATION
HARLEM RENAISSANCE
CONSUMERISM
POST WAR FARM PROBLEMS
IMMIGRATION DISCRIMINATION
RED SCARE
KU KLUX KLAN
SACCO & VANZETTI
LEOPOLD AND LOEB

4. The Roaring 20’s – Areas of Study
Government
Business
Fundamentalism vs. Modernism
New Mass Culture

5. Government A return to “Normalcy” No new Progressive reforms
Pro-Business (“The Business of
America is Business” –Coolidge)
Smaller Government
Republican control of executive
and legislative branches
Corruption in Government
Teapot Dome Scandal rocked the White House
Presidents of the 1920’s
Harding, Coolidge and Hoover

6. Business Booming: Everyone and their mother seemed to be making money.
"
Booming: Everyone and their mother seemed to be making money.
Consumer Revolution: many new products for consumers to buy.
“ I will build a car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family, but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one – and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God's great open spaces."
– Henry Ford

7. Business Booms
After World War I people in the US were feeling happy to be alive and at peace - a period of optimism and excitement developed in the United States…
First shopping mall was built
First fast food chain - A&W Root Beer Stands
Appliances were all the rage—radios, washing machines, telephones, cars
Companies spent $1.5 billion on
advertising in 1927 alone!
Ford built his automobile empire (the 15 millionth Model T rolled off the assembly line in May, 1927)
People began to buy on credit

8. The Economy of the Late 1920s
General feeling that “Everybody ought to be rich,” so no help for minorities, poor, immigrants…progressive era over.
200 large companies controlled 49% of all American industry
2% of population controlled 60% of the wealth
Factory wages up, but unions in decline
Farm prices fell after WWI because of overproduction; farmers not able to repay their wartime expansion debts

9. Tradition vs. Modernism
The Cultural struggle between Traditionalism and Modernism
Traditionalism : “The way we have always done it”
Associated with fundamentalist religion, anti-immigrant sentiment, racism, country life, and conservative social and cultural ways
Modernism: “Out with the old, in with the new”
Associated with science, consumerism, art deco, the Jazz Age, the Flapper, the Charleston, Youth rebellion (especially against sexual taboos), radio and sports as entertainment, city life

10. Victorian Woman Jazz Age Woman
ENTRY # 37 Changing Gender Roles Contrast the women in these two drawings. Take a few minutes to write down as many differences as you can. When I tell you, share what you have written with the person next to you.
Victorian Woman
Jazz Age Woman

11. New Mass Culture
Because of the new technology of Radio and movies all Americans began to watch and listen to the same things: mass culture.

12. Entertainment included the creation of new heroes like baseball player Babe Ruth and football player Jim Thorpe. Hollywood and the movie business
made going to the movies a national habit -
Greta Garbo, Charlie Chaplain, Louise
Brooks were big box office draws.
The Harlem Renaissance showcased African-American culture in music, art, literature, & poetry – became popular with both whites and blacks. Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Langston Hughes were big
names of the Harlem
Renaissance

13. Modernism in Art
Modernism of the 20’s and into the 40’s introduced more abstract features into the art of the time. Images were meant to represent an emotion or a subject matter, rather than just recording an image (that is what photography is for!). Realism in art depicted the world at the time and commented on the struggles of modern, industrial society.

14. Edward Hopper (July 22, 1882 – May 15, 1967) was a prominent American realist painter and printmaker. He often depicted the loneliness of industrial life.
Nighthawks
Gas Station

15. Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasized and glorified themes associated with contemporary concepts of the future, including speed, technology, youth and violence, and objects such as the car, the airplane and the industrial city.
Brooklyn Bridge, by Joseph Stella

16. More Joseph Stella pieces
By-Products Plant
Factory Buildings

17. Georgia O’Keefe Blue and Green Music
Saints, Warriors, Tigers, Lovers, Flowers, Art
Blue and Green Music

18. Modernism in Literature
Often referred to as the writers of the “Lost Generation”, the writers of the 1920’s reflected a general disillusionment of the conservative Victorian Era and commented on the modern
society of their day.
Writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald
(The Great Gatsby), Ernest Hemingway
(A Farewell to Arms), and Sinclair Lewis
(Main Street) wrote about the Jazz Age, Post-war disillusionment and small-town life, respectively.
Modernism in Literature