The “Roaring Twenties”

1. The “Roaring Twenties”

2. ENTRY #33 • Watch the Roaring Twenties video, while filling out all the squares the correlating sheet. On the back, there is one empty box…Answer: • What was so “roaring” about the Roaring 20’s? • What groups were still excluded from enjoying the roar of this period?

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

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. • 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! • Fordbuilt 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. 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 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. Modernism in Art

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 Saints, Warriors, Tigers, Lovers, Flowers, Art Blue and Green Music

18. 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