Though the 1920s were remembered primarily as a decade of firsts, bold innovation, and experimentation, it was also an age of extreme contradiction. The unique prosperity and promotion of politics, culture, laws, cities, movements, scientific discovery, innovation, and equality were underlined and accompanied by intense social anxiety and reaction, bearing witness to organized crime, nativism, discrimination, and resistance. This prosperous age heralded a dramatic break between America’s past and future and showed how great things can be accomplished from the lower points of life. Before World War I, the nation remained culturally and psychologically entrenched in the nineteenth century. However, the end of the First World War brought in a
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As factories and shops mechanized, the work week of urban workers fell from 55.9 hours in 1900 to 44.2 hours in 1929, while their wages increased by 25 percent. This, along with the missing watchful eyes of their parents, had allowed Americans to have more time and money to spend on new kinds of public amusements and competitively priced items. By 1929, over 20 percent of American families’ household earnings were spent on items such as furniture, automobiles, electrical appliances, and radios, and what they couldn’t afford, they borrowed using credit. Radios allowed people to explore new types of music, especially jazz, which was extraordinarily popular. However, production wasn’t the only thing …show more content…
They were expected to be housewives and worked in poorly paid employment, which was commonly the only jobs available to them. Although World War I had provided an opportunity for women to work in a variety of new and different jobs while the men were away, they were still highly underestimated. Outstandingly, the twenties can be viewed as an era of liberation for women. A powerful political movement led by women demanded and won the right to vote in 1920 through the efforts of past suffrage leaders and present prohibitionists. After which, women became more confident and “out-there” than ever before. For many, the culture of the 1920s was epitomized by the flapper, the adventurous “new woman” who rejected the sexual double standards and flouted conventional codes of behavior. By 1929, there was a 24% rise of women working since the beginning of the decade, totalling to a whopping 10 million working females. Now with money in their hands, women’s importance in society increased as companies now had to appeal to them as well in their advertising. Incited by the growth of an industrial economy that required a larger female labor force, many young women now had the drive to lead independent
As factories and shops mechanized, the work week of urban workers fell from 55.9 hours in 1900 to 44.2 hours in 1929, while their wages increased by 25 percent. This, along with the missing watchful eyes of their parents, had allowed Americans to have more time and money to spend on new kinds of public amusements and competitively priced items. By 1929, over 20 percent of American families’ household earnings were spent on items such as furniture, automobiles, electrical appliances, and radios, and what they couldn’t afford, they borrowed using credit. Radios allowed people to explore new types of music, especially jazz, which was extraordinarily popular. However, production wasn’t the only thing …show more content…
They were expected to be housewives and worked in poorly paid employment, which was commonly the only jobs available to them. Although World War I had provided an opportunity for women to work in a variety of new and different jobs while the men were away, they were still highly underestimated. Outstandingly, the twenties can be viewed as an era of liberation for women. A powerful political movement led by women demanded and won the right to vote in 1920 through the efforts of past suffrage leaders and present prohibitionists. After which, women became more confident and “out-there” than ever before. For many, the culture of the 1920s was epitomized by the flapper, the adventurous “new woman” who rejected the sexual double standards and flouted conventional codes of behavior. By 1929, there was a 24% rise of women working since the beginning of the decade, totalling to a whopping 10 million working females. Now with money in their hands, women’s importance in society increased as companies now had to appeal to them as well in their advertising. Incited by the growth of an industrial economy that required a larger female labor force, many young women now had the drive to lead independent