Roaring Twenties

The **Roaring Twenties** was a nickname given to the decade of the 1920s in the United States. The era was marked by political isolationism, the Prohibition of alcohol, a sharp rise in crime, excessive extravagance, and economic prosperity, but the start of the Great Depression following the Wall Street crash of 1929 ("Black Tuesday") brought an abrupt end to the Roaring Twenties and ushered in an era of economic uncertainty. The Roaring Twenties' politics were dominated by the *laissez-faire* Republican Party, but the onset of the Great Depression put an end to their concept of "rugged individualism" and led to Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt's landslide victory in 1932.

## History

### Background

World War I had been "the war to end all wars"; when the war was over, the United States retreated into isolationism and disillusionment. The Republican presidential candidate Warren G. Harding promised a "return to normalcy", just as his successor Calvin Coolidge said, "the business of the US is business". The government favored business interests, and the middle class enjoyed unprecedented prosperity. In 1914, there were only 4,500 millionaires; by 1926, there were 11,000. For the first time, prosperity filtered down to the workers as industry boomed. With prosperity came leisure time, with attendance at sporting events increasing, athletes being lionized, and stunts like flagpole sitting and pogo sticks becoming popular.

### Innovations

The family began to change due to the proliferation of cars, the availability of mass entertainment, and migration to the city, as the city moved the center of social activity away from the home. Films also became popular; in 1927, the first talking film, *The Jazz Singer*, was released, ending the silent film era. Clubs like the Cotton Club became popular as jazz musicians moved to New York City, Chicago, and other northern cities from the South. Crime and corruption flourished, as the rise of automobiles made criminals more mobile. Firearms were readily available after the war, including rapid-fire machine guns, and a rise in crime and the wide availability of guns turned the Prohibition era into one of the most violent periods of American criminal history. The growth of business taught criminals to turn petty crimes into large-scale operations, as seen in Al Capone's Chicago Outfit, Meyer Lansky's Jewish Mob, and Lucky Luciano's Genovese crime family. The Mafia ran numbers, gambling, brothels, alcohol, and other businesses. The gambler became a kind of public hero, and the American veneration of the outlaw extended from robber barons to major crime figures like Al Capone.

### Prohibition, crime, and corruption

The Temperance movement had gained srength after World War I and became a major crusade. They advocated for the prohibition of alcohol to protect women from drunk husbands, and their campaigns led to Prohibition becoming the law in 1919. Bootlegging became a major occupation, with neighbors and local merchants illegally selling alcohol; they would occasionally make the alcohol in their bathtubs, at gin mills, or even at drug stores. The law was unpopular almost immediately and contributed mightily to the rise in power of criminal gangs; the laws were also said to be anti-ethnic due to the previous proliferation of Irish pubs, German beer gardens, and the Catholic Church's use of wine for sacramental purposes. Defiance of the law was widespread, and public drunkenness became fashionable. Prohibition was not repealed until 1933. Meanwhile, corruption on a local level allowed gangs, like the Chicago Outfit, to flourish. Corrupt police, judges, and politicians allied themselves with the Mafia; even the presidency was found to be involved in corruption in the Teapot Dome scandal.

### Youth trends

The young in the 1920s rebelled against the Victorian standards of behavior that had been in place prior to the war. Young veterans of the war had wider experience of the world and its ills than their parents had, and the experience of the war led to a *carpe diem* ("seize the day") attitude among many, just as the famous song *How 'Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm After They've Seen Paree?* portrayed.

Young women rebelled against the restrictive clothing and mores of the pre-war period. "The Flapper" became the female idea of the period, sporting shorter hair and shorter skirts; short hair (the "bob" and more revealing clothing were considered to be rebellious.

Many writers and intellectuals of the period objected to the materialism and commercialism of the age and made their homes in Europe (especially in Paris). Gertrude Stein noted, "You are all a lost generation", pointing to writers like Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Dos Passos, and Anderson.

### The end

F. Scott Fitzgerald began to describe the beginning of the end of the Roaring Twenties as "the crack-up", with unemployment rising as businesses declined. The prosperity of agricultural workers had not kept pace with that of the general population, and reckless speculation in the stock market, overextended credit, and risky practices like buying on the margin (buying $100 worth of stocks for only a few dollars, a practice now illegal, as the company would not get its money's worth) led to millions of shares of stock being sold daily at inflated prices. This led to the Wall Street stock market crash of 1929 - "Black Tuesday". Several smaller panics preceded the great crash of 29 October 1929, and the market crash led to a run on the banks, many of which had themselves invested in the market. Bank closures led to the failure of businesses and unemployment soared, as the banks themselves had invested in stocks, and they were unable to come up with the money which people on bank lines demanded. The Great Depression would last from 1929 to 1939, and the Chamber of Commerce even created a sign saying "Jobless Men Keep Going - We Can't Take Care of Our Own".