 | DrEntropy (38)
02/25/2006 |  Beyond the ephemera of fashion and business cycles, the 1920s were a very interesting decade. For those lucky enough to live in urban America, this may have been the best time ever: cities had started to outgrow their ugly, utilitarian industrial phase, no one imagined they would soon be eclipsed by suburbs and exburbs. Business was booming: Movies, Radio, Cars, Advertising, Aircraft, Electric Appliances-all of these were mere embryonic enterprises at the start of the decade; by its end, they were giants. With (far more speculative) booms in stocks, real estate and foreign loans as well, the 20s were a businessman's paradise; profits were high and income taxes were low. As in the 1990s, America was booming; but its politics did not keep pace; and in 1929, it would pay the price for a feeding a specualtive boom with de-regulation, easy money and tax cuts. Prohibition encouraged organized crime, but the 20s' violent reputation is overblown; the late 60s, 70s and 80s were all far more dangerous. While the culture of the era was dismissed as superficial and materialistic by the intellectuals of the time, in retrospect it was a cultural golden age the likes of which America has never seen before-or since. Mencken and Edmund Wilson were at the height of their critical powers; Sinclair Lewis, Fitzgerald, and Hemmingway wrote their best fiction. Auden put it best: "Americans have produced the only truly significant literature between the wars." To this accomplishment can be added music and architecture: Jazz and the Skyscraper were born earlier, at the turn of the century, but they truly came of age in the 20s. All this wealth and beauty, however, contrasted glaringly with the poverty of the American countryside, especially the South, where the depression started soon after WWI and lasted until WWII: over 20 years. Beyond America, things were even worse: Britain too had an early depression, and the long-suppressed grievances of the working class, repressed for over a century, exploded into class warfare that lasted into the 1980s. France was still shell-shocked by the mass slaughter of WWI. Many of the survivors abandoned themselves entirely to hedonistic pursuits, making Paris a welcome exile for Americans fleeing prohibition and 'puritanism'. Germany started and ended the decade in political and economic chaos; by 1929, Germans were ready to follow any demagogue who promised to turn the clock back to 1900. Fascism slowly spread across Southern and Eastern Europe, while Stalin vanquished his rivals and tightened his grip on Russia, sharpening the knives for a bloodbath that would make Ivan the Terrible look like a humanitarian. Outside Europe, the colonial world was increasingly bitter at British and French domination; though most of the one-party regimes that replaced the colonies would be far, far worse. In short, for most people the 1920s were a purgatory (some would say, 'a fool's paradise') between two hells: WWI on one side, and the Depression/Fascism/Communism/WWII/Genocide on the other.
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 | weedie (1)
06/27/2004 | Dismal political era in which almost nothing was occomplished and crime skyrocketed due to prohibition must be balanced against probably the most fertile cultural decade of the century. It was the time of Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Faulkner, of jazz and the Harlem Renaissance, of Ellington and Gershwin and Armstrong. The cultural flame of the twenties would light America for the next several decades, until extinguished by the barbarity of the sixties.
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 | LadyShark4534 (12)
10/10/2003 | Wow! What a time made NOT for bisexuals! God, If I was there, I'd be loveless.
Seriously. A bunch of anorexic anemic looking women wearing their short nightgowns with a long pearl neckless with chests as flat as a board and greasy oily hair!
My God! The terrible taste in clothes back then.
Their fashion guidelines: Slip on your nightgown, put on a long necklace, and WOW! You'll get laid!
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 | Solenoid DH (19)
05/25/2003 | Except for the crime, it was a wonderful time...great sports (don't forget Jack Dempsey & Gene Tunney); I would have even liked the NY Yankees in those days! There was good music by Paul Whiteman & his orchestra, George Olsen, & others. Best of all, Calvin Coolidge was in the White House! :)
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 | drbanner (0)
05/21/2003 | Most people today think that the start of the decline of morality in western civilization began in the '60s (or maybe the '50s) but it really started in the '20s. It was after World War I and younger people started to celebrate and rebel against everything their parents did. Young women (called Flappers) began wearing more revealing dresses. Most of them started shaving their underarms and legs (up to the knees). They began smoking in public, cutting their hair short, kissing in public, sun-tanning their skin, and being more sexually promiscuous.
(2 voted this helpful, 0 funny and 0 agree) |
