The 1920s
(The Treaty of
The Age of Consumption and
Leisure
During World War I American
industries tremendously expanded their capacities for production. Now that the war was over, they needed to
find ways to sustain this high production of goods. The Protestant work ethic had to go. This PWE imbued people with a Puritanical
sense of frugality; capitalism meant self-denial and hard work. The ultimate hero of civilization, William
Graham Sumner wrote in the 1870s, was the savings bank depositor. But this was to change. "[The American]
was encouraged increasingly . . . not to hoard his savings . . . but to spend
and spend. He was told he no longer
lived in a world of scarcity but in one of abundance, and that he must develop
new values in keeping with that new status.
Leisure was rapidly becoming almost as important as labor, and he must
learn a pleasure ethic, if not to replace, at least to put beside, his work
ethic." This new attitude is called
consumerism.
Advertising was tailored to
produce the illusion of need, indeed, to create need; it gave to material
things artificial meanings.
Bruce Barton
The problem with consumerism:
goes against Bible and what Christianity had always taught about material
things.
Preacher's son,
became partner in one of the largest advertising firms. He harmonized the
religion of his youth with the age of consumption.
1925 published The Man Nobody Knows. In it he recreated and image of Jesus that
was not offensive to the day. Jesus was
not the poor, humble man portrayed in the Bible Rather he was a shrewd
businessman who took the initiative. "[Jesus] picked up twelve men from
the bottom ranks of business and forged them into an organization that
conquered the world." The methods
of Christ were those of advertising; "he is the founder of modern
business." Barton changed
American's attitudes toward money by reinterpreting Jesus.
How effective was Barton?
In a pamphlet entitled Moses, Persuader of Men, an insurance
company wrote that "Moses was one of the greatest salesmen and real-estate
promoters that ever lived" who concocted "one of the most magnificent
selling campaigns that history ever placed upon its pages."
Between 1924 and 1927 the
number of millionaires in the
Henry Ford
Raised on a farm, learn to
hate manual labor. Tinkered with machinery. He inherited no religious belief or
commitment from his parents. He left home for
In spare time began tinkering
with a motor driven vehicle. In 1895 he
met his only hero, Thomas Edison, who encouraged Ford to continue his work.
His cars (he did not
invent them) made him famous, some reaching 70 mph. In 1903 he founded Ford
Motor Co.; at the time there were over 25 automobile manufacturers in US, none
but Oldsmobile sold more that a few hundred cars a year. They were extremely expensive, took a long
time to hand make them, and interchangeable parts were not available. Pres
Wilson thought cars would make the poor envy the rich so much that they would
turn to socialism.
Ford's big dream was
announced in 1907: to make a car available to the average working man. The key to producing them cheaply was to make
them all alike. His new plant at
Ford realized that this the
type of American society he envisioned required new work patterns. Cars could only be popular if people had
leisure time. He created the 5$/8 hour
work day. With work days this short,
people had more leisure time, wanted to travel, have fun. In short, the car
would be seen as a more necessary thing.
Sales went up.
Hence Ford made more money by
paying his workers more, working them less, and reducing the price of
automobiles.
Warren Harding died in office
in 1923. In a farmhouse in
While
Speakeasies
Flappers (relaxed morals due to the car and Freud)
Gangsters (Al Capone)
Reactions: The Lost Generation
Expatriates left for
Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises
Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby
The Age of Heroes
The standardization that
created the affluence of the 20s also created boredom. To escape the monotony of a standardized,
regimented existence, people of the 20s looked for heroes. Someone who could go the
farthest, fastest and do the strangest things.
Billboard magazine began publishing its charts of hits in
1928
The Miss America Pageant began
Charles Lindbergh
Symbolized
good old fashion American values: honesty, individualism, and determination. Lindbergh
captured the attention of the world when he became the first person to fly
across the
Houdini
Houdini's actual name was Ehrich Weiss. Born in 1874 in
He soon moved to
He began performing magic
tricks for fun. Soon he read a book that
would affect him forever. He read, as a teenager in
After seeing a medium claim
to speak with the spirit of someone's death mother, he began to hate phony
psychics and magicians. Started showing up at their performances to expose their tricks.
He went to seances and exposed their methods.
Changed his name to Houdini,
began to perform card tricks to amuse. Began using handcuffs in his act. Performance got bigger and
bigger, finally performing at the
Met a dancer named Bess, and married her two weeks later.
After the success of his
handcuff acts, Houdini began offering rewards to anyone who could successfully
restrain him, first in handcuffs and later in all manner of objects. Houdini
escaped from handcuffs, leg irons, straightjackets, jails and prison cells, a
mail pouch, packing crates, a giant paper bag (without tearing the paper), a
giant football, an iron boiler, milk cans, coffins, and the famous Water Torture
Cell. In most of these escapes, upon later examination, there was never a sign
of how Houdini accomplished the release, that added to
the miracle. Some of Houdini's escapes, such as the Straight Jacket or being
tied with a hundred feet of rope, Houdini would do in full view of the
audience. To help draw crowds and sell tickets, Houdini would do escape
challenges, often at police stations with newspaper reporters present, assuring
a headline story. He invented the act of
challenged escape artist. His
reputation grew, he toured
His point was that none of
this was miraculous, there was no need to think
anything supernatural was behind it.
As escape artist imitators
popped up to take advantage of Houdini's tremendous success, Houdini began to
originate new and more difficult and dangerous escapes. Houdini invented the
underwater packing box escape as a fabulous publicity stunt that was copied by
many others. He was the first person to do the Straight Jacket Escape as well.
He introduced the sensational Milk Can Escape in
Created the
Chinese Water Torture Cell, practices holding his breath in the bath.
He died on Halloween, 1926
from a punch in the stomach. He promised
to return to his wife if possible.
Babe Ruth
The supreme
hero/celebrity of the decade.
Stadium sports became popular
in 20s. "The mechanization of life generally, when combined with the
mounting effort to rationalize all aspects of man's activities, produced a
particular middle-class delight in what could be measured and counted. . .
Americans could delight in the data players provided. Athletic records provided
a means of measuring achievement."
Baseball was a professional
sport as early as 1870. By 1903 it has a
mass audience and national following.
People's faith in the game was destroyed in the winter of 1920-21.
--it was discovered that the White Sox lost
the 1919 World Series on purpose; several players were paid to throw the
game. Hugh trial followed. Small boy to a player: "Is it
true?" "Yes son, I'm afraid it
is." The game's reputation seemed
fatally wounded.
One person revived the game
and turned it into a national pastime: The Babe.
born in
parents were immigrants; dirt poor.
At private Catholic school,
he was made fun of by his peers and remained always a private individual, an
"abandoned child," so to speak.
Keeping tract of his homeruns
became a national pastime. The Babe (the
Great Bambino) was a legend in his own time.
He passed out once in 1925. The
world was on the edge of its seat. Press said it was indigestion, called it the
"stomach ache heard round the world."
He toured the country
(without his team), spoke in theaters.
He endorsed products, sold his name to ghostwriters to increase article
sales, appeared in movies.
His life represents the age
well: glamour covering of sad reality.
Despite his religious education he had no sense of
religion at all
He had an insatiable appetite for sex, even visiting
brothels during Spring Training.
(His "stomach ache heard round the
world" as actually a bout of syphilis.)
The Babe had a drinking problem, drank all the time
Gambled heavily, losing large sums of money
Although he led in homeruns, he also led in strike outs
Summary of Babe's
legacy: 1925 Bill McGeehan
wrote: "Babe Ruth is our national exaggeration. . . . He has lightened the
cares of the world and kept us from becoming overserious
by his sheer exuberance."
The Age of Anxiety
Underneath the veneer of
glamour, dancing contests, and superficiality of the
age was a sense of anxiety, of uneasiness about the world. Things were not as certain as they had been
in the past. The 1919 World Series had
proved even the national pastime could be corrupted. Just as the Babe had a dark private world
beneath the celebrity personality everyone knew, the decade itself was in
despair.
With leisure and wealth come
unrest and anxiety.
Albert Einstein
Do we really know the
Universe?
The Scopes Trials
Do we really know how we got
here?
Sigmund Freud
Do we really know ourselves?