1920s: Highs and Lows

What do the 1920’s mean to you?

The 1920’s were a series of highs and lows for the history of the United States, with many experimental changes that came into effect to try and change the United States for the better. One of the most prevalent examples would be Prohibition.

In an attempt to curb domestic violence, led by groups of women that were sick of being beaten by drunk husbands in the home, pushed for alcohol to be banned throughout the country. While on the surface this would appear to work, underground systems of bootlegging and organized crime. These mafia groups and crime rings would manage to get alcohol into the hands of secret bars and those who just wanted something to get them drunk, but often would be unrefined alcohols that were actually dangerous to drink. One large step that resulted from the rise in these organized crime rings was the introduction of mandatory secondary schools, that would keep the juvenile kids that would normally be hanging around the docks and such out of the reach of crime rings.

Just prior to the 1920’s, World War One, then just The Great War, had come to an end. With the United States having a late entry into the war and the fighting mainly staying on the other side of the world, the United States would become the world power that we know it as today, having built a large economy on the war effort, to just leave it to go back to what it was before would cause a depression, and with the people of the united States realizing how good they now had it, they began to live like it. Lavish spending in a time of great economic affairs that allowed many people to obtain wealth and objects they never thought they would ever get their hands on, as well as advancements in technology and banking like buying on credit and personal transportation like the car allowed Americans to buy and move like they never had before. Cities began to look up to build new spaces for business and residents, building skyscrapers and larger buildings that stood as a testament to this new force in the world.

Many other inventions and revelations such as flight and advancements in medicine would mark the 1920’s as a great time to technology and modernization, while civil rights movements like the women’s suffrage movement and the early stages of the African American civil rights movements would cement the 1920’s as a monumental turn for the future in the history of the United States. Unfortunately, as the decade came to a close, the exponential growth that the economy had enjoyed for so long turned out to be a bubble and it burst in 1929. This massive downturn in the economy would come to be known as The Great Depression, and coupled with the Dust Bowl would send the United States economy, plus a lot of the rest of the world, into a massive economic depression that would last for many years and lead to massive changes in how the United States government would play a role in the economy and the daily life of the average United States citizen.