1. The decade was
called The Roaring 20’s or
the Jazz Age. Hollywood
movies and television make
it look like one big dance
party with a few gangsters
thrown in for dramatic
purposes.
Historians, journalists,
and novelists are fascinated
with the 1920’s as the
beginning of modern
America, a decade that
helped set the tone for the
rest of the century.

2. At the beginning of the 20’s America was
a country with enormous potential, and
finished the century as the world’s only
superpower. Yet there are two ways of looking
at this powerful nation in the 20’s:
1. As a wealthy country with a high standard
of living: big cars and large houses.
2. As a country with many people living in
poverty and some enduring terrible racism.
The big improvement started because
Americans by the early 20’s found themselves
tired of crusades, tired to make the world a
safer democracy and ignore the quality of their
lives;

3. President
Warren
G.
Harding
thus the nation joined
president Warren G.
Harding in what he called
a return to normality and
to the good life by
developing the economy.
During that decade
America’s economy
boomed thus the age of
consumerism appeared.

4. At the same time, many
Americans wanted to enjoy
themselves as much as they could
by listening to the new jazz
music, or doing the new dances
such as the Charleston or the
black bottom. Crowds flocked to
watch film stars like Charlie
Chaplin and baseball stars like
Babe Ruth. The emphasis on
having fun and spending money
has led the 1920’s being called
The Roaring Twenties.

5. The Roaring 20’s was a
decade in which old beliefs and
hard work, thrift and personal
restrains crumbled beneath the
influences of movies, jazz
baby's and rulayjam.
During the 1920’s
Americans enjoyed the highest
standard of life in a world
spurred by new inventions and
technological innovations.

6. Shifting from coal to electricity doubled the workers
productivity; the United States economy was in the
med's of a third industrial revolution.

7. What the country’s industry
made was also life changing as
production shifted from things like
still and oil to goods and services
manufactured directly for consumers:
electrical appliances, radios, motion
picture and the automobiles.
To realize his dream of making
a car for every one, Henry Ford
pioneered a moving assembly line that
speed up work, saved costs and cut
the time it took to make a car from
more than 12 hours under 2 hours.

8. Across
America, Companies raised
wages to increase their
buying power, they also
improved worker’s benefits
offering old age
pensions, paid vacations
and insurance.
Still few Americans
could afford to buy an
automobile outright, so
automobiles makers
pioneered another
innovation buying on credit:
BUY NOW PAY LATER!

9. By 1930’s America
owned 8 out of 10 of all the
world automobiles. The
automobiles were one of
the many things which
helped to the acceleration
od America’s prosperity
and ingenuity, cities build
new stores, theatres and sky
scrapers.
Cities were the centre
of the new mass consumers
culture, the proving
grounds of new form od
entertainment and leisure.

10. To create a consumer out
of a citizen required profound
changes in peoples values and
behavior and the segment that of
the nation that changed the most
were women.
Women’s life was
changing fast in the 20’s. First of
all women has for the first time
the right to vote, second more
women than ever before held
paying jobs.
In the 20’s young women
enjoyed more fun than young
women had ever before.
Women were going to high
schools and also to college in
increasingly numbers.

11. They were living away from their families, they were
dating, they were engaged in sports, they wore loser
clothing's instead of corsets, their cut their hair, they drink
bath top gin, thus they were called the FLAPPERS.

13. Inside the home another type
of revolution was taking place, the
country got electrified during the
20’s.
New household appliances
were reducing the housework:
washing machine, vacuum
cleaner, fridge, electric sewing
machine, etc.
In the 20’s Advertising
Industry came of age. Also in the
20’s you had radio for the first
time, you could even advertise
through radio.
Advertising educated
Americans about the new wave of
products entering the market place
improving peoples lives.

14. A whole set of magazines
appeared on the market, magazines
directed to the middle class, to the
working, to women, etc.
Movies provided a dream
world of adventure for the 1920’s
consumers. In that time even small
town had theatres, people even
claimed that they learned a lot from
movies (how to kiss, how to smoke
cigarettes). Movies were the most
powerful and influential media in
the 1920’s.
The movies and it’s stars
celebrated the exciting commercial
night life and the new music of the
nation Jazz provided the sound of
changing and evolving.

15. The prosperity of the 1920’s rested on
weak foundation: the growing concentration
of wealth into fewer and fewer hands cut
back into the industrial production which
leaded to the crush of the stock market in
1929 which declined into the worst
economic depression.