Life in the Twenties

Prohibition• To decrease the crime rates, family violence, poverty and block the reduction of the efficiency of soldiers and workers during wartime, the Congress passed the Volstead Act in October 1919.

• Prohibited the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcoholic beverages (18th Amendment)

Prohibition part2. - Conflicts

• Particularly in the cities, prohibition was extremely unpopular and widely ignored - they were sold in clubs or bars illegally

• Alcohol illegally smuggled in from Canada, Mexico, or the West Indies

• Bootlegging: in large cities, criminal gangs controlled liquor sales

Prohibition part3.

- Al Capone• One of the bootleggers,

Al Capone had a small army of mobsters in Chicago

• Wanting to monopolistically control over all liquor sales in Chicago, his mob attacked other liquor sellers in Chicago, which caused violent wars

What did the government do?

• He organized a squad of young detectives to go after gangsters - their nickname was the Untouchables

Federal Prohibition Bureau hired special agent Eliot Ness to prevent bootlegging, corruption, and violence.

The Result of Prohibition?

• PositiveAlcoholism and the

number of alcohol-related deaths declined

• NegativeWidespread breakdown

of law and order

As a result,Its Act was repealed by

the 21st Amendment in 1933

Political cartoon

Youth Culture

“New Woman” - Flappers• Flappers are stylish, adventurous, independent and often career-minded women

• Wore Shorter skirts and transparent silk hose

• Drove cars and participated in sports

• Variety of occupations: some drove taxis, ran telegraph lines and flew airplanes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJSdk44gWIE

Radio• Diversity - stations broadcast

church services, local news reports, music, and sporting events

• Discovered they could make money by selling advertisement spots - allowed businesses to advertise their products.

• Late 1920s, National Broadcasting Company (NBC) made all Americans across the country listen to the same broadcast at the same time

Movies

• New advances in the art of moviemaking attracted even larger audiences

• The introduction of sound led to the creation of new types of films - musicals and newsreels

• 80 million Americans flocked to the theatres

• More entertainment, jobs and impact in daily lives

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Movies part 2. - Conflicts

• Changed standards of morality and sexuality portrayed in films troubled many Americans

• Some Americans demanded for regulations

• In 1922, Will Hays became the head of a newly created movie industry group - a code to limit offensive material in movies.

Sports

• Professional Sports were put together in the U.S. in the late 1800s

• With the introduction of new technology in the 1920s, professional sports became a form of mass entertainment available to most Americans

Football

• Between 1921 and 1930 fans at college football games doubled

• Red Grange was a college football star who joined professional football teams

• Grange’s first game on Thanksgiving Day 1925 attracted 35,000 fans

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Books and Magazines

• Monthly and weekly publications provided new sources of information and entertainment

• Collier’s and The Saturday Evening Post were very popular

• Reader’s Digest reprinted articles from other magazines in shorter forms

Celebrities and Heroes

• With the growth of media, celebrities gained huge audiences

• Young Americans copied the lifestyle and personal habits of many actors

• Athletes - Babe Ruth, Jim Thorpe• Pilots - Charles Lindbergh,

Ameilia Earhart

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Revivalism• The decline of moral standards

worried many Americans• Religious leaders wrote books

and preached about evils of popular entertainment and alcohol

• Aimee Semple McPherson was one of the most popular revivalists - used strong Christian messages and Hollywood style entertainment to spread message

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Fundamentalism

• Fundamentalists resisted many of the practices of other Protestants– Believed that every word of the Bible

should be regarded as literally true– Modern ideas such as the theory of

evolution were criticized

Scopes Trial

• 1925 - Teaching the theory of evolution in public schools was outlawed by the Tennessee legislature

• The American Civil Liberties Union offered to defend any Tennessee schoolteacher who would challenge the law and John Scopes took the offer

• The trial uncovered the division between traditional religious values and new values based on scientific ideas

• Scopes lost the trial but fundamentalist ideas were portrayed as narrow minded

• As a result, people’s support for fundamentalism decreased