19. The roaring twenties. The rush for wealth. The movies. The bootleggers. Prohibition.

Girls dancing the Charleston. Gangsters carrying

machine guns. Ch arlie Chaplin playing comical

trick s. T hese arc some ofthe pictu res that come into

people's minds when they thi nk of the United States

in the 19205. The " roaring twent ies," Good times .

Wild times.

T he United States was vcry rich in these years.

HCl"aUSl' ofthe Fir st World War, o ther co un tr ies

owed it J lot of mon cy. lr had ple nt y of raw ma terials

and plen ty offactories. Its natio nal income - the to tal

earnings ofall its citi zens - was much higher . than th at

of Hritain , France, Ccnuan v and japan pm rc gceher.

American factories produced morc goods eve ry yt"a r.

The busiesr were th ose makin g automobi les.

Bcrwccu 1922 and 1927. the number of car s on the

roads rose from under eleven mill ion to over twenty

million. The elect rical indu st ry also prospered . It

92

made hund reds ofth ousands of refr igerators.

vacuum cleaners, stoves and rad ios.

The United Sta tes becam e the first nation in history

to build its way oflife on selling vast quantities of

goods that gave ord inary people easier and more

enjo yable lives. These "consumer goods" poured o ff

the assembly lines ofbig new facto ries. Between

1IJ I9 and 1929 such mass-production factories

do ubled th eir output.

The growth of ind ust ry made-ma ny America ns wel loff.

Millions earned good wages. Th ou sands

invested money in successful firms so [hat they could

share in their pro fits. Many bought cars, radios and

ot her new products with their money. Often they

obtained these goo ds by paying a small deposit and

ag reeing to pay the rest ofthe cos t th rou gh an

" instalment plan." T hei r mon o was "Live now, pay

tomorrow" - a tomorrow which most wer t'

convinced would be like today only better , with even

more mo ncy swelling thei r wall ets .

Businessmen became popular heroes in the 1920s.

Men like I Icnr v Ford were widely admired as the

creators of the nat ion's prosperit y. "The ma n who

builds a facrorv builds a te-mple," said Calvin

Cool idge, the President from 1923 to 1929. "The

man who works th ere. worships there."

Coolidge's words help to explain the po licies o f

American government s ill the 19205. T hese

governme-nt s were cont rolled by the Republican

Part y. Repu blicans bel ieved that i f rhc go vernment

look ed after the Interests o f the businessman.

everybody would become richer. Businessmen

W h OSl' firms were doing well. they claimed, would

take on more worker s and p.aymore wagt's. In thi s

way their growmg wealth would benefit cvc rvbod v.

T o help businessmen Congre-ss placed high import

taxes o n goods from abroad. The arm was to nuke

Imported goods more expensive. so that American

manufacturers would have less competition from

foreign riv als. At the same time Congress red uced

ta xes on high incomes and company profits. This gave rich men more money to invest. Yet there were lots ofpoor Americans. A su rn'y in

1929 showed that half the American people had

hardly eno ugh money to buy sufficient food and

clothing. In the industrial cities ofth e Nort h, such as

Chicago and Pin sburgb, immigr ant workers still

labored long hou rs for low wages III steel nulls.

factories and slaug hter houses. In the South

tho usands ofpoor farme rs. both black and wh ite,

worked (rom sunrise to sunset to earn barely enough

to live 0 11. The wealth that Republicans said would

benefit everybod y neve r reached people like these.

The main reason fo r povert y among industrial

work ers was low wages. Farm ers and farm wo rkers

had a hard time for di fferent reasons. In the South

lIlallYfarm,..rs did not own the land the y farmed.

They were sha recro ppers. For rent, a sharecropper

gan' rhc landowncr part ofwhat he grl'w - o ften so

much that he was left wi th hardl y enough to feed his

family.

In the Wcst most farmers owned their land . But they,

too, faced hard times. During the First World War

they had been ab le to sell their wheat to Europe for

high prices. By 1921. however . the cou nt ries of

Europe no longe r needed so much American food . And farmers were finding it more difficu lt to sell

their prod uce at home. Immigration had fallen. so

the number of people needin g food was growing

more slowly. All the new cars didn' t help either.

Cars ran a ll gaso line. not on corn and hay like horses.

Amer ican farm ers found themselves growlllg

products they could not sell. By 192-1, around

600 ,000 of them were bankrupt.

Bur to Amer icans who owned shares or "s toc k," III

ind ustrial companies the future looked bright. Sales

ofconsumer goods went on rising. T his meant

bigger profits for the firms that made them. T his in

turn sent up the value of shares in such firms.

In 1928 the American people elected a new President .

Herbert Hoo ver. Hoover was sure that American

prosperity would go on growing and that the

poverty in wh ich some Amer icans stilllived would

be remembered as something in the past. HI.' said that

there wo uld soon be "a chicken in every pot and two

cars 111 eve ry garage."

Look ing at the way their standard ofliving had risen

during the 1920s. many other Americans thought the

same.

The movies

In the 1920s American movies filled the cinema

screens of the worl d. Most were made III I lollywood,

a suburb of the city of Los Angeles III

Ca liforn ia. Holl ywood 's big attraction for film makers

was its clean air and plen tiful sunshine.

The mo vies made the re we re bright and clear. Uy

the 1920s it had become the film-makin g capital of

the world.

Hollywood movi es we re made by large companies

called studios. T he men who ran these studios

were businessm en and their main aim was to make

as much mOlley as poss ible. T hey soo n found tha t

one way to do this was to sta ndardize their films.

When audiences had shown tha t they liked a

cert ain kind of film, the studios made many more

of exac tly the same kind.

Another sure way for a stu dio to make mon ey was

to run} its acto rs into "stars." Stars were actors

who were so popular that people went in crowds

to see any film they appeared in, no marrer how

good or bad it was. A famous star cou ld make any

movie a certai n success . So the studios went to

great lengths to make their actors into stars . T hey

encouraged fan magazines. They set up special

publicity departments to get sto ries about their

actors into the newspapers.

The mo vies of rhc 1920s we re silent. They spok e

III pictures, not words, and so their language was

international. All over the wo rld, from Berlin co

Tokyo, from Lon don to Buenos Aires, te ns of

millions of people lined up every night of the

week to see their favo rite Ho llywood stars-and,

wi thout realizin g it. to be Americ anized.

Hollywood movies showed people a world that

was more exciting, more free. more equa l, than

their own. To most people thi s world of the

movi es remained a dream world, separa te from

real life. Hut to some it became more. It made

them realize. however dimly. that per haps their

own condi tions of life could be improved. AI Cap one and the bootleggers

In 1919 the American people voted in favo r of J

new amendment to the Consriru rion. The Eightccnt

h Amendment prohibited rhc making or

selling of alcoholic drinks in the United States.

People who supported " pro hibition" claimed

that it would stop alcoholism and drunkenness

and make the Un ited Stares a healthier. hap pier

country.

But nuny Americans were not willin g to give up

alcoholic drinks . Millions beg an to break the

prohi bition law delibe rate ly and regularly. JIIegal

dri nking places called "speakeasies' opened in

basements and backrooms all over the count ry.

The city of Chicago had 10,000 of th em . New

York had 32.000.

Speakeasies obtained thei r alcoholic drinks from

crim inals called "boodeggers." Boork-ggers

worked together III gangs o r " mobs." T he bestknown

mob was one in Chicago led by the

gan gster ..Scarface.. Al Ca pone.

Bootlegging was a dangerous business. COTllpet

ition between rival mobs sometimes caused

bloody stree t wars. fough t out with armored cars

and machin e guns. T he wi nners of the gangster

wars became rich and powerful. TIl ey used their

wealth to bri be poli ce and other publi c officials to

do nothing about their law-breaking. AI Capo ne

became the real rul er of C hicao . He had a private

army of nearly a thousand thugs equipped with

mac hine guns. His income was over 100 mill ion

do llars a year.

By rhc end of the 1920s most Americans rega rded

prohibition as half scandal. half joke. The dis-

hon est y and corruption which grew with it made

them lose their respect bo th for the law and for the

people who were supposed to enfo rce it. Prohibition

was finally given up III 1933. But it had

don e the United States lasting harm. It made lawbreak

ing a habit for many otherwise res pectable

Americans. And gan gsters remained power ful .

Many used the mOlley they had made as bootlegge

TS to set up other criminal businesses.

Prohibition in the United States (sometimes referred to as the Noble Experiment) was a national ban on the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol, in place from 1920 to 1933. The ban was mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution. It was repealed on December 5, 1933.

The Senate proposed the Eighteenth Amendment on December 18, 1917. Having been approved by 36 states, the 18th Amendment was ratified on January 16, 1919 and effected on January 17, 1920.

On November 18, 1918, before the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment, the United States Congress passed the temporary Wartime Prohibition Act, which banned the sale of alcoholic beverages having an alcohol content of greater than 2.75%. (This act, which was intended to save grain for the war effort, was passed after the Armistice was signed on November 11, 1918.) The Wartime Prohibition Act took effect June 30, 1919, and July 1, 1919 became widely known as the "Thirsty-First".

Congress passed the Volstead Act, the popular name for the National Prohibition Act, over President Woodrow Wilson's veto on October 28, 1919, and established the legal definition of intoxicating liquor, as well as penalties for producing it. Though the Volstead Act prohibited the sale of alcohol, the federal government did little to enforce it. By 1925, in New York City alone, there were anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000 speakeasy clubs.

While Prohibition was successful in reducing the amount of liquor consumed, it stimulated the proliferation of rampant underground, organized and widespread criminal activity. The bulk of America became disenchanted after the St. Valentine's Day massacre in 1929. Prohibition became increasingly unpopular during the Great Depression, especially in large cities.

On March 22, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law an amendment to the Volstead Act known as the Cullen-Harrison Act, allowing the manufacture and sale of certain kinds of alcoholic beverages. On December 5, 1933, the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment repealed the Eighteenth Amendment. However, United States federal law still prohibits the manufacture of distilled spirits without meeting numerous licensing requirements that make it impractical to produce spirits for personal beverage use.