CR #5 — The Roaring ‘20s
When I think of the roaring ’20s I thought of a booming economy and an America in rapid growth. Much of America benefitted from great prosperity. The rich got richer and many jobs were created. I believed it was a time when most people were happy or content with American way of life. The ’20s came on the heels of The Gilded Age, which was a golden age of invention and innovation. Items never thought to be of personal use were now available and were becoming more affordable each day. America had just participated in and helped win WWI. The war to end all wars. The nation wanted to prove it had matured and was starting to become recognized as a world power.
I also thought of the darker side of the ’20s. Not all people benefitted from or even experienced prosperity. There were still very many poor and disadvantaged throughout the country. Another darker part of the ’20s turned out to be prohibition, which for me brings images of all the gangsters of the ’20s. With them came thoughts of the famous G-men who hunted them down and the violent bloody battles that would ensue. Prohibition made it necessary for those who wanted to have a drink to create speakeasies and bootleg liquor. They would have to smuggle the alcohol and sell it on a black market. This kind of rebellious, wild, and often reckless behavior also lends credence to the term “roaring” as it pertained to the 1920s.
With the booming economy came an ever-expanding infrastructure shrinking the country. With the advent of the automobile and its widespread use, a person could easily begin traveling the country and completing trips in a reasonable time. I would imagine it was right around this time that vacationing via automobile became popular in American culture. I, along with my girlfriend, went on a long 3-week road trip last summer to Oregon, down to Southern California, and back up through Colorado. It was a great trip that will provide me many memories. I wonder when national sight-seeing trips such as mine became common.
Our class tried to focus on why the era was called, “The Roaring Twenties” and what was it that made it “roar.” We included all of the above and learned of events that could be said also “roared.” One such event was the Scopes trial. This trial brought the debate of teaching the then mocked theory of evolution in schools to the nation’s attention. It was said to be the “Trial of the Century.” The 1925 trial was crowded with onlookers, indoors and outdoors. It was broadcast far and wide.
Proponents of evolution theory were seen as attackers of Christianity by the faithful. The religious opponents to evolution theory feared a loss of Christian faith, which is the foundation of Western civilization and American values, would descend the country into unholy anarchy that would unravel society. By the end, the idea of evolution or a level of creationism had firmly rooted itself in the psyche of the American citizen. To this day, the theory of evolution is taught in nearly every school. It is creationism or intelligent design that is mocked by popular culture.
One area I don’t think we covered was that at the end of the ’20s, began The Great Depression. It was a worldwide economic depression that lasted a decade. Suffering that long can make any period appear to roar in comparison. The fact that the 1920s were so prosperous when compared to the ’30s and so recent in the memories of 1930s American citizens, those years only reinforce the title of The Roaring Twenties.
