Chapter 13:1-3
"Roaring Twenties"

• Economic prosperity
• New ideas
• Changing values
• Cultural development: art, lit, music
• Personal freedom

• Prohibition v drinkers
• Small town v big city
• Creation v evolution
• America became more urban (51% lived in towns of 2,500 plus)
• Speculators made fortunes
• City dwellers took in new ideas at museums, art exhibits, plays, sports events, nightclubs, movies
• City dwellers tolerated gambling, drinking and casual dating—worldly behaviors considered shocking and sinful in small towns.
• But the city was impersonal, anonymous, streets filled with strangers. Life fast-paced, not leisurely.

Prohibition.

• Jan 1920, 18th Amendment went into effect.
• Support came from rural South and West.
• WCTU, Anti-Saloon League.
• After WWI, most Americans were tired of making sacrifices. They wanted to enjoy life.
• Immigrant groups did not consider drinking a sin.
• Not enough federal muscle to enforce the law.
• Speakeasies and bootleggers.
• Al Capone, organized crime, 522 bloody gang killings in the 1920s.
• By mid 1920s, only 20 percent of Americans supported Prohibition.
• The rest pointed to a rise in crime and lawlessness
• Repealed in 1933, by 21st amendment.

• Fundamentalism. Literal interpretation of the Bible.
• Protestant fundamentalists resisted the growing trust in science and the immigrant drinking.
• They rejected the theory of evolution by C Darwin.
• 6-day creation.
• Billy Sunday, Aimee Semple McPherson, era revivalists

• Tennessee made it a crime to teach evolution.
• ACLU and Clarence Darrow defend John Scopes
• WJBryan, fundamentalist, served as special prosecutor.
• The trial became a national sensation.
• Audience burst into applause when WJ Bryan entered courtroom.
• Darrow called Bryan to the stand. To handle the Bryan supporters, the trial was moved outside.
• Believe the earth was made in 6 days? "Not six days of 24 hours." People gasped.

• Rules getting changed; the flapper, a new ideal for women. New fashions; an image of rebellious youth more than a reality. A new sophisticated woman.
• Close fitting felt hats, waistless dresses above the knees, strings of beads.
• Clip hair into boyish bobs.
  New style = new attitude more assertive
• Fox trot, camel walk, tango, lindy hop, shimmy
• Double standard – principles granting men greater sexual freedom
• New work opportunities. Big business needed more correspondence and record keeping.
• By 1930, 10 million women in workplace, 24% of American workers
• Few women rose to the top; patterns of inequality and discrimination established
• Changing family. Birthrate declining.
• Margaret Sanger, birth control advocate. American Birth Control League, 1921.
• Household work simplified with labor saving devices.
• Stores overflowed with ready made clothes, sliced bread, canned foods.
• Public agencies provided services for the elderly.
• This feed homemakers from some traditional responsibilities.
• Teen rebelliousness, teens spend more time socializing, less time with families.
• Education and entertainment reflected conflict between traditional values and modern ways of thinking.

• "Fight of the Century" Gene Tunney, Jack Dempsey
• Modern high school emerged. Before 1920s high schools only for the college bound.
• Teaching the many new immigrants
• Growing mass media. Newspapers, magazines
• Radio comes of age. Most powerful medium of 20s. Market research
• A SHARED NATIONAL EXPERIENCE.