The Roaring Twenties

 

One hundred years ago, in 1925, America was changing. From politics, science, and the economy to fashions and entertainment, society was being reshaped by powerful forces both good and ill, many of them having parallels today.

For the richest ten percent, the economy was “Coolidge prosperity.” Republican President Calvin Coolidge, like his Party, believed in small government and unregulated capitalism. In 1923, the Republican Congress cut taxes on high incomes from 50% to 25% and on low incomes from 4% to 3%. By 1927, the number of millionaires had increased from 75 to 283.

Meanwhile, the average worker’s pay grew only 1.4% per year. Most people didn’t share in the prosperity at the top. Farmers had it especially hard, finding that costly mechanized production increased the food supply but reduced crop prices. Hundreds of thousands left their farms and moved to cities.

Economic growth was driven (sorry) by the auto industry. In 1919, 6.7 million cars were in service; by 1929, 23.1 million were using a growing system of paved highways and city streets. Unlike Ford’s open Model T painted only black, auto firms hired trained designers and sold stylish fully-enclosed models in a rainbow of colors thanks to new paint technology.

Radio boomed as well. After the first broadcast in 1920, radio sales were $60 million in 1922 rising to $430 million in 1925 and bringing news, music, sports, and more into homes across the country. Other new products in growing demand were rayon, cigarettes, telephones, and cosmetics. Silent movies made stars like Charlie Chaplin and Clara Bow known around the world.

The Twenties were also dubbed the Jazz Age. By 1925, the Harlem Renaissance, with the help of live radio and records, made musicians like Duke Ellington (pictured) household names and led to lively new dances where young women—Flappers—could show off their newly fashionable short skirts and bobbed hair. The appalling number of deaths in the recent World War and Spanish Flu epidemic fostered a sense that life was short so they might as well live it up. While jazz was the theme song of the Twenties, Nashville’s WSM radio aired, in 1925, the first “WSM Barn Dance,” eventually retitled Grand Ole Opry.

The same year, two Dayton, Tennessee, businessmen hatched a scheme to “put Dayton on the map” by persuading John Scopes, a local biology teacher, to purposely disobey a new state law prohibiting teaching evolution in state schools. Scopes did and was duly prosecuted. A trial was promptly held that attracted news coverage from around the country and overseas including live radio. Billed by the press as the Scopes Monkey Trial, the issue was whether schools could teach about scientific findings based on observable evidence. The local jury found Scopes guilty despite evolution being endorsed in the state-approved textbook, and he was fined $100. The verdict was soon overturned on a technicality.

Science made a quantum leap in 1925 when German physicist Werner Heisenberg published a paper describing quantum mechanics, a revolutionary view of how nature works at atomic and subatomic levels. Quantum physics eventually made possible semiconductors, lasers, MRI, smartphones, and more. 

The Roaring Twenties didn’t end well. The overheated stock market crashed in 1929, beginning the ten-year Great Depression caused, in part, by the Republicans’ failure to strictly regulate the stock market and banks, and by excessive wealth in the pockets of a few. Also, an isolationist foreign policy turned America inward, feeling safe behind its moat of oceans and powerful Navy. Distanced from former allies and refusing to join the League of Nations, an “America first” attitude helped allow the rise of fascist dictators in Italy and Germany and militarism in Japan. Are we making these mistakes again? Now?