Roaring 20s

Roaring 20s

Azlan Zhang

Ms. Petersen

17   February 2025

1.

(Society) This 1926 photograph capturing NBC's first nationwide broadcast shows an announcer reading President Coolidge's speech while technicians operate a 500-watt transmitter with a 4,000-kilometer coverage range.

Positive event: As a transformative event, radio reshaped America's cultural landscape. From merely 5 stations in 1920, the number surged to 606 by 1929, with radio ownership rate reaching 60%. The price of radios dropped from $150 in 1922 to $35 in 1929, allowing farmers and Wall Street elites to consume identical programming, erasing physical barriers of cultural capital. During the 1928 presidential election, 68% of voters relied on radio for information, rendering newspapers' "next-day delivery" model obsolete. The cognitive shift toward auditory processing became a new social force - Calvin Coolidge's monotonous voice was repackaged as "steadfast reliability," boosting his approval rating by 22%. Emerging consumerism infiltrated the airwaves, with radio ad spending hitting $20 million by 1929. General Electric promoted refrigerators as household essentials through "science shows," while ignoring that 80% of rural Southern homes lacked electricity. Meanwhile, agricultural programming occupied just 3% of bandwidth. Radio forged the first de-territorialized national identity: Charles Lindbergh's 1927 transatlantic flight was broadcast live to 20 million Americans across racial and class divides, creating synchronous emotional bonds unattainable through print media. This marked the birth of modern national consciousness, where mass media transformed strangers into imagined communities.

Radio's proliferation revolutionized human history. Information transmission accelerated exponentially, alleviating regional isolation. Social structures - including democratic processes - underwent quiet revolutions in organization and specialization. As a microcosm of the 1920s, from which we can get a glimpse of the prosperous, accelerated, unrestrained, irrational and roaring decade that followed.

2.

(Economy) This 1928 photograph of Sears, Roebuck & Co. department store epitomizes the household appliance revolution and consumer culture transformation. The image shows shelves crammed with new inventions - table lamps, toasters, electric irons, washing machines, and refrigerators. Appliance companies raced to introduce new consumption models like installment payment plans. This buy-now-pay-later revolution in consumption, coupled with assembly-line innovations in production, formed dual engines driving 1920s socioeconomic restructuring.

Positive event: As a complex historical phenomenon, the proliferation of household appliances yielded multifaceted impacts. On one level, credit-driven appliance consumption created an illusion of mass material prosperity. By 1929, 30% of U.S. households owned vacuum cleaners and 50% possessed electric irons, yet 60% of durable goods were purchased through installment plans. This "enjoy now, pay later" mentality drove household debt up 250% within a decade. When the 1929 economic crisis struck, 9 million families lost appliances through loan defaults. Economist Robert Gordon termed this "the perfect paradox of overproduction and underconsumption" - assembly lines created abundance, yet workers had to borrow to purchase what they themselves produced.

Conversely, 1920s appliance adoption both liberated women from domestic labor and accelerated social atomization. Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows women's daily housework hours dropped from 11 to 7 between 1920-1929, while married women's employment rose 47% and female college enrollment surged 120%. Appliance technologies severed traditional household cooperation:

·       Food preservation innovations (tripling refrigeration duration) increased individual meal self-sufficiency by 45%

·       Instant-heat cookware fueled 200% growth in studio apartments

·       Youth independence age dropped from 21 to 18 (Middletown study)

·       Canned food consumption spiking 180% reflected both time savings and individualized eating patterns

Industrialization required mobile labor forces, which in turn demanded liberated individuals. Sociologist Robert Park observed: "Electric ovens did more than bake bread - they melted traditional family bonds. When housewives became career women and youths moved into apartments with hotplates, they collectively signed the contract of atomized social structure."

3.

(Economy) This 1923 photograph of Ford's River Rouge Plant captures assembly line production in action. Through the application of Taylor's scientific management theory, Model T production time was reduced from 12 hours to 93 minutes, with unit price dropping from 850to260 (equivalent to four months' wages for workers).

Positive event: The automotive industrial revolution and assembly line innovation reshaped America's economic geography and social structure. Cars transitioned from luxury items to mass consumer goods, with U.S. automobile ownership reaching 23.1 million by 1929, equating to one car per five people. New industrial chains including gas stations, motels, and highway diners emerged simultaneously, creating derivative economic value accounting for 8% of GDP. "Driving to work" accelerated suburbanization, with Detroit's population surging from 460,000 to 1.56 million between 1910-1930, as nuclear families gradually replaced traditional clan networks. Americans' perceptions of time and space were transformed, with paid vacation systems spurring tourism development: working-class families' average annual driving mileage increased from 200 miles in 1920 to 1,500 miles in 1929. Large centralized schools became widespread, giving students more social and cooperative opportunities. Dating culture grew more open, as cars helped teenagers escape parental supervision by providing private spaces and access to more dating venues. Henry Ford's $5 daily wage system (double the industry standard) both stabilized labor forces and created new consumer classes. Despite alienation issues in assembly line work, the resulting productivity improvements and mass consumption patterns laid the foundation for modern capitalism.

4.

(Politics) This 1921 photograph from Ellis Island, New York, depicts newly arrived immigrants undergoing quarantine inspections. At the time, the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 restricted annual immigration from each country to no more than 3% of that nationality’s U.S. population as recorded in the 1910 census.

Negative Event: The immigration restrictions reinforced institutionalized racism. While the law ostensibly targeted so-called “inferior races” (the share of Southern and Eastern European immigrants plummeted from 81% in 1914 to just 11% in 1929), its true effect was to consolidate Anglo-Saxon dominance. The Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 went even further, completely banning Asian immigration, resulting in a nationwide Chinese female population of fewer than 7,000 by 1930.

Sociologist Isaac Berkowitz noted that these policies “cloaked exclusionary sentiment in the guise of scientific racism,” providing a blueprint that later influenced Nazi racial policies. Ironically, however, Mexican immigration surged by 300% during the same period, as it was not subject to quota restrictions, sowing new social tensions. America aspired to be a nation of “Americans”—yet the very concept of an “American” had not existed for long.

5.

(Politics) This August 1920 photograph from Nashville captures the historic ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment by Tennessee legislature, the decisive 49-47 vote concluding 72 years of suffrage activism and making the United States the 27th nation to grant women voting rights.

Positive event: As a watershed moment, the suffrage movement propelled gender equality. 8 million women cast ballots in the 1920 elections, with female voters comprising 37.4% of the electorate by 1928. However, progress remained constrained: Southern Black women faced literacy test barriers, while working women constituted merely 25% of the workforce. The feminist movement subsequently fractured between Equal Rights Amendment proponents and traditional family values advocates. Historian Nancy Cott observed, "This victory was both culmination and commencement, exposing the chasm between legal entitlement and substantive equality." Nonetheless, the 1920s ultimately witnessed American women claiming their political agency as independent civic actors.

6.

(Politics) This 1925 photograph of a New York speakeasy (the term originating from patrons needing to "speak easy" to persuade doormen filtering out prohibition agents) captures revelers in tailored attire toasting at a clandestine venue. The Volstead Act, enforcing the Eighteenth Amendment, had prohibited alcohol production and sales since 1920. The elevated liquor bottles and raised glasses in the background poignantly reflect public defiance of the legislation.

Negative event: Prohibition exacerbated social divisions and organized crime. Though supported by moral reformers (primarily housewives) aiming to improve family ethics, it spawned a 3.3 billion black-market by 1929 and intensified gang violence (Al Capone′s syndicate earning over 60 million annually). Female alcohol consumption also rose 30% during prohibition, while even President Harding maintained private liquor stocks, undermining legal authority. This "noble experiment" was ultimately repealed in 1933 due to unenforceability, becoming a textbook case of governmental overreach into private life.

7.

(Culture) This 1927 photograph of Harlem's Cotton Club encapsulates the Jazz Age's contradictions. African American musicians perform for exclusively white audiences while dancers sway before jungle-themed decor, revealing racial stereotypes persisting in cultural dissemination.

Positive event: Jazz transcended racial barriers. Although venues-maintained segregation (artists using separate entrances), Louis Armstrong's trumpet improvisations forged new musical vernacular. Record sales skyrocketed from 107 million to 140 million during the 1920s, with white youths flocking to Harlem experiencing "Black Bohemia." This cultural cross-pollination, while failing to eliminate racism, planted seeds for the civil rights movement. Sociologist Gunnar Myrdal noted the Jazz Age created "America's first truly interracial cultural phenomenon."

8.

(Culture) This 1926 photograph of a Chicago ballroom captures "Flapper" girls dancing the iconic Charleston, their bobbed hair, knee-length skirts, and pearl necklaces subverting traditional femininity.

Positive event: Following kitchen appliance liberation and the Nineteenth Amendment, urban middle-class women represented by Flappers began claiming cultural autonomy. From 1920-1929, women's haircut rates surged from 12% to 89%; hemlines rose from 30cm to 50cm above ground, defying hemline regulation laws; working women accounted for 34% of jewelry market consumption by 1929, with symbolizing economic independence, pearl necklaces becoming neo-feminine totems. Over 2,000 dance halls nationwide taught the Charleston in 1926, using bodily rebellion to deconstruct Victorian propriety - female smoking rates skyrocketed 300% in a decade, while the penetration rate of contraceptive knowledge increased 45% (Women's Health survey). Sociologist Paula Fass argued this "physical revolt" challenged patriarchy more directly than suffrage. However, the movement had limitations: African American women comprised merely 7% of Flappers, while working-class women remained trapped in sweatshops. Though constrained by racial and class barriers, its cultural DNA endured: 54% of women surveyed during the 1960s sexual liberation movement acknowledged "Flapper grandmothers as their enlightener". The Jazz Age's dance steps became modern feminism's groundbreaking stride.

9.

(Economy) This May 1927 photograph at Roosevelt Field captures Charles Lindbergh's historic solo transatlantic flight in a monoplane, with 100,000 citizens waving flags in celebration below.

Positive Event: Aviation breakthroughs accelerated globalization. The flight not only boosted airmail services by 400% (spawning companies like Pan American Airways) but also stimulated aluminum and navigation equipment industries. By 1929, the U.S. commercial aircraft fleet reached 2,000 units - twenty times 1921 levels. Aviation became the second distance-shrinking transportation revolution after automobiles, uniting crowds in collective celebration of heroic achievements. However, technological euphoria bred irrational optimism: The New York Times proclaimed "the perpetual economic machine is born" merely three months before the 1929 crash. Historian David Kennedy notes Lindbergh's hero narrative diverted public attention from wealth inequality, becoming "the last ode before collapse."

10.

(Politics) In this photograph, handcuffed Bartolomeo Vanzetti (with mustache) and Nicola Sacco enter Norfolk County Courthouse where Judge Webster Thayer would sentence them to death. Despite flimsy evidence, their conviction stemmed from Italian immigrant status and anarchist affiliations.

Negative event: The Red Scare poisoned American justice. The legal system became a political weapon persecuting socialists, communists, and anarchists. Systematic oppression epitomized by the Palmer Raids decimated union membership from 5 million (1920) to 3.6 million (1923), alongside 47% surge in labor crackdowns. Ironically, under "Bolshevik infiltration" pretexts, only 3% of 1920 FBI arrests involved actual violence. J. Edgar Hoover exploited this panic to prototype the surveillance state: Annual interception of 2 million telegrams, creation of 2-million civilian fingerprint database (10x criminal files), infiltration of unions with 500 informants, and postal censorship screening 300,000 immigrant letters yearly. Foucault's panopticon became reality - citizens lived under perpetual suspicion. This security-state precedent culminated in the 1924 Immigration Act linking "radical thought" to Southern/Eastern Europeans, laying institutional groundwork for McCarthyism.

11.

(Economy) This October 24, 1929 photograph outside the New York Stock Exchange captures "Black Thursday" chaos. Crowds stare in horror as the Dow Jones plummets 11% in single-day trading, brokerage windows plastered with margin call notices.

Negative event: The crash exposed the fragility of artificial prosperity. While superficially caused by speculative frenzy ($8.5 billion in margin loans by 1929), it revealed structural flaws: 40% of national income concentrated among the top 5%, 600 annual bank failures, agricultural income 60% below wartime levels. The Hoover administration's laissez-faire policies deepened the crisis, unemployment reaching 25% by 1932. Economist Galbraith's The Great Crash exposed credit-fueled illusions as "the poor's debts sustaining the rich's savings." The Roaring Twenties ended abruptly - no revelry lasts forever. War and depression would dominate the next decade, and the decade after that.