Twenties Urban Lifestyle

Automobile•Changes America's landscape

• Paved roads• Liberated isolated rural

family

•Urban Sprawl: cities spread in all directions

• Ex. Raleigh v. European Cities

•Economic Underpinning of Cities

• Akron, Ohio• Detroit, Michigan• Pontiac, Michigan

• Symbol of Status: wealth• "rather let the kids starve

than sell the car"

Airplanes & Electrical Conveniences

• Carry mail for government• Disastrous, but gets better

• Navigation & Weather Forecasting

• Passenger Planes (Ford)

• Electrical Conveniences: • Radio• Washing Machine• Refrigerator• Sewing Machines• Vacuum • Toaster

Modern Advertising!

Prosperity?• America is prospering

• Believe it will last forever (Good Times)

• We all know what happens next…

• Preview of Why/How• Installment Plan: enables people

to buy goods over extended period of time without having to put much money down

• Ex. Layaway (Wal-mart/K-Mart)

• Americans are living in the present.• No care for the future

• (Scarlett O'Hara)

Rural vs. Urban• Rural:

– Safe, welcoming, neighborly greetings

• Small towns & communities

• Church = important (moral teachings)

• Urban: • Busy, competitive, impersonal & frightening• NYC: 5.6 million people• Chicago: 3 million people• Philadelphia: 2 million people

ProhibitionNew Ideas

Alcohol is part of new “city life”

Enforcement is lacking.

Speakeasies – secret bars

Bootleggers- smugglersLeads to organized

crime

Ex: Al Capone of Chicago

Old IdeasAlcohol is the root of social problems

18th Amendment created

Prohibition.(No sale, transport or consumption of

alcohol)

Science v. Religion(Scopes Trial)

New Ideas

Science: Darwin’s evolution theory should be taught

Scopes is a teacher who teaches evolution in

TN. (1925)

Gains world wide attention.

Clarence Darrow defends evolution.

Old IdeasReligion:

creationism should be taught from the Bible

Wm. Jennings Bryan defends creationism.

Scopes found guilty and fined

Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, 1925

Clarence Darrow

Clarence Darrow & William Jennings Bryan (the Populist

Guy!)

Clashing Values

Role of Women

New Ideas

•clothes

• New jobs

• 19th Amend / voting rights

•changes in attitudes & norms

Old Ideas

•rural areas don’t change• women have household duties• give up jobs for men• double standard still exists

Famous People of the 20s

• Babe Ruth: New York Yankee Slugger• 60 homeruns in 1 season

• Jack Dempsey: Heavyweight boxing champion

• Defeated by Gene Tunney • Red Grange: "Galloping Ghost" - Fighting

Irish aka Notre Dame• Knute Rockne: Norwegian-American

Football Player/Coach• Gertrude Ederle: 1st female to swim across

English Channel • Charles Lindbergh: flew the 1st solo flight

across the Atlantic Ocean & became America's hero

Famous People of the 20s

• Charlie Chaplin: famous movie star of the time• George Gershwin: combined Jazz with classical music• F. Scott Fitzgerald: wrote of the negative aspects of 1920s• Sinclair Lewis: 1st American to win Nobel Prize in literature

• Took am @ shallow, stifling existence of middle-class America• Ernest Hemingway: Lost Generation of writers

• Best-known expatriate author