12.7 The Roaring Twenties

Start-Up Nowadays, we take for granted the right of women to vote and hold political office. Immediately after the Nineteenth Amendment allowing women to vote was passed, what challenges might women still have encountered if they wanted to vote? Write down your answer in one paragraph.

The Roaring Twenties In several ways, the decade of the 1920s was the first period when many aspects of society began to resemble those of modern America. During the 1920s, a mass, popular culture involving movies, radio, and professional sports arose, and women began to assume a more prominent role in American life.

Popular American culture in the 1920s The automobile reshaped American culture, creating new forms of recreation and making it easier for people to travel. Other factors also contributed to changing ways of daily life. Americans listened to the radio, went to the movies, and followed exploits of sports heroes. In the process, a new mass culture emerged – one whose shape and character closely resemble our own. Even as cultural issues divided Americans from different regions or economic levels, technology was beginning to break down other barriers.

More leisure time On Farms, people worked from dawn to dusk, with little time to spare for leisure activities. There might have been evenings in which the family would play games, read or sing together around the piano Sometimes farm families would join together for picnics or games of baseball City life however was a bit different. The average workweek in all industries fell from 70 hours in 1850 to 45 by 1930. The work week also changed from seven days a week to a more manageable five days a week. At the same time, salaries and wages were on the rise.

Innovation in the motion picture industry So, with more free time and disposable income, urban and suburban Americans looked to new sources of entertainment. Motion pictures helped supply that demand. The movie industry rose to new heights in the 1920s. During the 1920s, from 60 to 100 million Americans went to the movies each week. For most of the decade, the studios made silent pictures. These were ideal entertainment at a time when millions of immigrants spoke little English. Unlike theatrical productions or classical concerts, movies were available to anyone with a few cents to spare.

The movies Hollywood’s biggest movies and stars became nearly as popular in far corners of the globe as they were at home. Film was one of the first mediums to diffuse popular American culture to the rest of the world. Many stars of the silent era portrayed ordinary folks, and films often portrayed the social issues and characteristics of the time in which they were made. One of these stars, Charlie Chaplin was equal parts hobo, dreamer, and poet and an eternal optimist in his ability to charm his audiences and continually reinvent himself. “The Great Dictator” 1940 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU_rn1xzItk 3:39

Movies In 1927, film history changed, suddenly and forever, with the release of ‘The Jazz Singer’, the first movie synchronized to the action. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iX2lg4eYwQ Silent pictures quickly faded out, replaced by “talkies” But whether silent or with sound, movies spoke directly to the desires, needs, fears, and fantasies of millions of people in the United States and the world.

Answer this Why do you think there was a significant increase in movie attendance in 1930?

The Radio impacts American society The phonograph (record player) and the radio also became powerful instruments of mass popular culture. Each was a result of both technological advances and business enterprise. Millions of radios and phonographs were marketed in the 1920s. Many of these were bought on the installment plans we learned about earlier On a deeper level, the phonograph and radio helped produce a standardized culture. Americans in the East and West and North and South listened to the same songs, learned the same dances, and shared the same popular culture as they never had before.

Airwaves Radios brought distant events into millions of homes in a way unmatched by newspapers or magazines. In 1927, much of America listened to a championship boxing match between Gene Tunney and Jack Dempsey. That night, theaters and movie houses played to empty seats as Americans huddled next to their seats. Even the men on death row at Sing Sing prison listened to the broadcast. The radio allowed Americans to keep up with current events around the country as they occurred.

Americans share music with the phonograph Early phonographs employed difficult to use wax cylinders and suffered from poor sound quality. In the 1920s, grooved disc recordings and superior sound reproduction improved the sound of the earlier machines, and production of phonographs rose to approximately five million in 1929. Recordings helped bring country and western music from the South and West to the North and East, while pop tunes from New York traveled in the other direction, creating national markets for different genres of music. As they listened to same songs, Americans also learned the same fashionable dances, from the fox trot to the Charleston.

Closing Questions (you might need your book to answer) How do you see issues and characteristics in U.S. history reflected in various genres of music, such as Tin Pan Alley and country and western? How did country and western music, for example, have both positive and negative impacts on American society?