How did US society change in the 1920s?

How did US society change in the 1920s?

1. Industrialisation

   • HISTORIOGRAPHY Grant, who states that, “This vision of physical upward mobility was also a symbol of a fundamental social and demographic shift.”
   • Cars
   • Steel
   • Robber barons
   • Monopolies
   • Republican policy

2. Urbanisation

   • HISTORIOGRAPHY Sheldon Cheney  in his book The New World of Architecture (1930),  “Commercialism is a new God, only too powerful and too appealing, to whom men are now building their highest and most laudatory structures.”
   • Tenements
   • Skyscrapers
   • Elevators

3. Consumerism

   • HISTORIOGRAPHY As Stearns purports,  “By 1930 soap as a grocery item was second only to bread for  American consumers.”
   • Sport
   • Birth control
     •  Margaret Sanger: political radical before war  Frequently in trouble with the law
   • Chain stores
     • Delivered cheaper prices because they made bulk purchases and provided no credit or delivery services
       • e.g. The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (A and P) used chain idea to revolutionize the grocery trade in the C19th
     • End of decade chain stores accounted for 16 % of US retail business
   • Electricity
     • National electricity consumption nearly tripled between 1917 and 1930
   • Cars
   • Radio
   • Cinema
     •  Attending movies and leisure activities  Average American family attended at least one movie per week by 1920 (Stearns 2001)

4. Social tensions

   • Prohibition
   • Immigration restrictions
   • Religious Fundamentalism
   • Crime
   • Anti-Communism
   • Anti-Unionism