The Roaring 20s: Social and political change

The USA, 1920. For the first time, more Americans live in cities than in small towns. Migration from the countryside has been going on since the Industrial Revolution, but now it reaches a new high. People leave their family farms to become telephone operators, dressmakers, assembly line workers… But it’s not all work and no play. City living also offers the best in leisure, pleasure, and partying!

Through the 1920s, moviegoing becomes a favourite pastime. In 1925, 50 million people — half the nation’s population — go to a movie palace every week. They watch silent films with soundtracks provided by an in-theatre pianist or band. Then, in 1927, the first films with inbuilt sound, ‘talkies’, arrive. Movies get longer and new genres like the musical and the gangster film emerge.

By 1929, 110 million moviegoers a week line up to watch the latest release. When they aren’t out for a night at the big screen, many people tune into radios, the newest development in home entertainment. For the first time in history, people across large areas are tuning into the same shows, and raving about the same movies. The actors who star in them become well-known, and people take as much interest in their real lives as their on-screen and on-air performances. Celebrity culture is born.

Celebrity culture spreads to music, too. Musicians like trumpeter Louis Armstrong and singing trio The Boswell Sisters become famous across the US and beyond. They perform a new style that combines swinging rhythms and improvisation in a way never heard before: jazz is the music of the moment. People flock to clubs to listen to the loose and lively music, and to dance new steps like the Foxtrot, Charleston and Lindy Hop. These energetic dances are a break from the more structured dancing of the previous decades.

They represent a challenge to the ‘rules’ of acceptable behaviour. Women, especially, resist traditional attitudes as they strutt and slide across the dancefloor. And many women go further still, cutting their hair short, wearing make-up, smoking cigarettes, and having casual sex. They are known as flappers. Outside the clubs, other social breakthroughs take place.

In 1920, the US government gives women the right to vote, following the lead of Canada and several European countries. Women’s homelives also change. Birth control, in the form of diaphragms and condoms, becomes available and allows women to postpone having children. At the same time, inventions like the refrigerator, electric washing machine and vacuum cleaner mean housework takes less time. Many women use these changes as an opportunity to enter the workforce.

Some are secretaries, nurses and teachers, while others break with traditional gender roles to take jobs on the factory floor. Beyond the US social changes are underway too. While the UK is enjoying a similar economic and social upturn as the US, elsewhere in Europe, poverty and violence are on the rise. Germany is in financial crisis as it struggles to pay back debt it owes to other countries following World War One. Germany’s money, the Deutsche Mark, is worth less and less, and people can’t afford to eat.

There are growing cries for radical change. In Italy meanwhile, Benito Mussolini takes power in 1922. He is the first of Europe’s fascist dictators who will lead into the next World War. But for most people in America, the Roaring 20s are carefree, prosperous times. Economic trouble and large-scale conflict feel far away… at least for now.