The deeper I searched for topics and revelations that occurred in the 1920s, the more I found corruption, crime, and unjust rulings at all levels. In 1922, the Great Railroad Strike was a massive blow to labor laws, where the United States government ruled in the favor of railroads firing the strikers and hiring scabs to replace them, instead of following union rules. In the Teapot Dome Scandal, I would find corruption at the top of the United States government, where private oil companies and government officials were getting rich off of the Navy’s oil reserves illegally. There were many highlights though, with the Ford Model T bringing inexpensive personal auto transport to the masses that was capable of the same tasks as a horse and more. This would go on to reshape how we design our cities and towns, as well as how we move about in our daily lives. I also mentioned in my first post how our cities changed shape drastically in this era. In the 1920s, especially in New York City, planners realized there was not much room left to expand outwards on Manhattan Island, and therefore had to go up for more space.

This would lead to the rise in skyscrapers and other tall buildings that would become the staple of many cities around the world. The revelations made in the 1920s, in the senses of technology, politics, and laws would set the stage for the modern United States, and would be the basis that the United States would build off of when finally building out of the Great Depression in the next decade. Overall, I learned a lot more about the 1920s than I thought I would, and even just looking at the three event for my blog posts were enough for me to see how much of our lives were influenced by this one decade in our history.

gregk

Gregory Kruimer is currently enrolled in his senior year at Ramapo College as a History major.

The database that is provided by the New York Central Historical society is a fairly recent addition to the society itself. The database is powered using the service Omeka, which is a well known and established database system used by many other historical groups. Therefore, if you’ve used a database that is Omeka based before, this one will be immediately recognizable to you. The database is searchable via different modes depending on what you’re looking for. There is a table of contents but it does only cover broad aspects of the different aspects of the society. If you do not see what you’re looking for there is an advanced search option that allows you to search via different fields. There are also multiple help pages in order to steer you in the right direction. The site itself loads quickly and lacks ads, providing a clear interface to work with. The database itself is also regularly updated with new content as the members are able to upload them. 

The content that is available on the website is mainly primary sources. Most of which are photographs that have been cataloged based on what’s in them. There are other formats available, but are limited. This database is mainly for photos, and is useful to historians that are trying to aim for historical accuracy in projects. As for secondary sources, the society runs a couple magazines and columns where they will provide secondary accounts of events and background on different primary sources in their collection. While the people that are writing these are not always “historians” by their main job, they are usually well versed people on the subject of the society and are extremely dedicated to the craft and getting things as accurate as possible, which is where the photographic database is important. This can take away some trust in the secondary sources, since they are not by a historian’s standard of the term “peer reviewed”, but since the evidence that is being provided is free for anyone to look at and interpret, you can also draw your own conclusions. The magazine that is published by the society is normally only available to subscribers and members however. 

The NYCSHS archive system is useful as a source to the 1920s. The company that it mainly follows, was one of the largest railroads in the world at that point in time, and therefore was present for many of the monopoly-breaking, regulation changing, and notable strikes that occurred in this decade. This archive also has a very large catalog of photos, which allows for a literal insight into what the average railroad would look like in this era and get a better image in the mind of who is searching for 1920’s info on what the average person would be seeing or using in this timeframe.

gregk

Gregory Kruimer is currently enrolled in his senior year at Ramapo College as a History major.

STATEMENTS ON RAILROAD STRIKE

New York, July 24.- Asserting that the rail strike has not already been settled “because the die hard group of Eastern road executives want it to go on” shop craft union leaders today submitted that only the roads’ refusal to assure returning strikers reinstatement of seniority rights prevents an immediate [immediate misspelled in original] settlement of the controversy. 

“The government now admits that the railroad strike is a grave public issue; the public knew it two weeks ago,” was a statement issued by the central strike committee. 

“It is only the die hard group of Eastern executives who deny it. They deny it because they want the strike to go on. They are using this crisis in a vain attempt to install the open shop.

“If the government wants to relieve the transportation crisis it will settle and strike. And the war to settle the strike is to persuade Gen. W. W. Atterbury and his ‘hard boiled’ Wa;; street clique to cease holding up the nation’s business by their private refusal to allow seniority rights to workers. It is inconceivable that a half dozen men can impose their selfish will upon the welfare of a hundred million.”

These charges brought from the Eastern executives; conference in session today a declaration through their chairman, L.F. Loree, president of the Delaware & Hudson, that the “possibility of the strikers typing up the Eastern railroads had passed.” 

He announced that the 88,804 men are now employed at full time in Eastern shops, compared with the 145,872 the day before the walkout and declared that the 60.8 per cent force now employed “has an output that compared favorably with the work of the larger force before the strike.” 

“This is due,” The statement continued, “to the fact that we formerly employed more men than we needed because there was not enough repair work to keep the shops going at capacity, and partly due to the fact that many union rules designed to restrict output have been eliminated. One willing mechanic now does the work that formerly was taken up in the routine by several, with the consequent delays.” 

The conference made plans for inaugurating on additional roads the “company union system” which already has been started on four eastern lines as an outgrowth of the strike. Although it was tacitly admitted that the effect of such organizations would be to weaken the national strength of the mother union of the six shop crafts, the American Federation of Labor, rail presidents refused to comment on the conference program.

The Union daily times. (Union, SC), Jul. 25 1922. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn86071063/1922-07-25/ed-1/.

gregk

Gregory Kruimer is currently enrolled in his senior year at Ramapo College as a History major.

Fun Fact: The leftover wood from the production of the Ford Model T was recycled into charcoal, and sold as Ford Charcoal. When Ford stopped using wood for production, the charcoal branch became its own company, known today as Kingsford Charcoal.

The Ford Model T made a massive impact on the lives of Americans and how we move around in society. Prior to the Model T, personal transport that wasn’t a horse or bicycle was only for the very rich. If you wanted to go far, you took a train. Then the Model T became the most popular car in the United States, it also set the stage for the concept of the personal car to reshape our cities and towns. Prior to this, the roads were generally paved dirt or gravel, and had no clear direction or flow besides rails for streetcars or businesses that lined the streets. Streets, especially the main roads in towns, were social places, they were full of people milling about and conducting their lives. The people that worked in these cities and towns also lived very close to where they worked, since traveling daily long distances on horseback was not easy, and the only other option was a train, which would get expensive over time, or bicycle, which was not easy either on the unpaved surfaces. When the cars started to hit the roads en masse, the infrastructure around them had to change. Roads changed materials and got tougher, smoother, faster. Cars zipping through streets had to stay in dedicated lanes, people could not freely move across streets without the chance of getting run over. Another consequence of the popularity of the car was the rise of the suburbs. Since it was not substantially easier to cover longer distances without the need to follow a train schedule, people began to move farther away from their places of work, where they could have larger horses and properties compared to the apartments in the cities. This would evolve more and more over time to the structures we have now, large cities where people work then surrounding suburbs where they live, with highways to connect them. The Model T and its popularity was the catalyst for the advent of the personal car, and in the process, revolutionized how we go about our lives. 

The fifteen millionth Ford Model T is preserved today, part of The Henry Ford Museum collection and is currently displayed at the Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. You can learn more about it here.

Sources:

“First and Fifteen Millionth Fords.” Detroit Free Press. May 27, 1927.

“The Model T and American Life.” The New Atlantis, no. 22 (2008): 115–115. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43152452.

Wells, Christopher W. “The Road to the Model T: Culture, Road Conditions, and Innovation at the Dawn of the American Motor Age.” Technology and Culture 48, no. 3 (2007): 497–523. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40061274.

gregk

Gregory Kruimer is currently enrolled in his senior year at Ramapo College as a History major.

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.

gregk

Gregory Kruimer is currently enrolled in his senior year at Ramapo College as a History major.